here again

April 8th, 2020 -- I’m far out of the habit of website tweaking, but I do kind of miss it, and being home from college / constantly online for classes, slime mold facts, recipes, food, soup (and did I mention food?) brings me here once again. Although I did very occasionally visit other sites for essays and anything, I haven’t logged in for quite a while. I had nothing to add here, because finding time for writing beyond submitting class write-ups and madly journaling whenever I felt I needed to was—though not impossible—beyond my level of motivation. Still not certain of any future motivation, but probably lurking will increase in frequency. Things I was doing a few weeks ago: Going on long walks at night along the bluffs (and in the process, learning skunks are nocturnal), eating subpar dining commons food, talking to friends from high school less than I wanted to, debating the differences between animals and humans (at what point does nature become culture?), dipping my arms entirely into Pacific-Ocean-temperature filtered seawater to place urchins into children’s hands, staring down a seagull that was watching me eat a sandwich, taking naps, rubbing the dust off of library books *, spending copious amounts of time on math and chemistry and a little physics and, most of the time, enjoying it. Things I have recently been doing: Going on aimless walks to the park or around the neighborhood, observing birds nest in the backyard, thinking about moss terrariums, answering emails within five minutes, keeping track of seven-spotted ladybug pupae, cooking, eating, Zoom / Discord-calling for both recreational and education-related purposes, watching Kdrama, taking naps, spending copious amounts of time on math, chemistry, and physics and, most of the time, enjoying it despite falling increasingly far behind on work. But online labs are disappointing. Watching someone grow alum crystals is not the same as growing alum crystals yourself. Other thoughts, some not exactly timely or relevant: Lucky to be able to wait this out / continue learning / still be slightly motivated Chalkboards are really still being used and when they’re not completely cleaned the eraser smears white across the board and then people may continue to write with their white chalk, making all figures indecipherable except at small distances. There’s only one kind-of developed female character in East of Eden and that might be because the author was describing her as a monster instead of a person. Tardigrades can survive dessication for decades because of their production of “bioglass” through intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), allowing for protection of cell parts. Tardigrades are also a type of eutelic organism (each species has a fixed number of somatic cells when they reach maturity). * The book covers were all plain, so I judged them by their titles instead, read a few lines, and compiled another to-read list. Crocodile Soup - Julia Darling Sauce for the Goose - Peter de Vries Midnight Cowboy - James Leo Herlihy Children Are Bored on Sunday - Jean Stafford Eye Killers - A. A. Carr Some Doves and Pythons - Sumner Locke Elliott Will Mrs. Major Go to Hell? - Aloïse Buckley Heath Trick Pear - Suzanne Cleary Currently reading: La Casa en Mango Street Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore