Starry Nights

16 September 2010, 2:28 pm by Giggles
Categories: Happy Things, Science & Tech

:star: Cleaning out my saved files I found a bunch of Astronomy Photograph of the Day photos that I really liked but hadn’t gotten around to sharing yet. So here we go.

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An unexpected problem

13 September 2010, 7:42 am by Giggles
Categories: Health

This might seem like a strange problem to have, but I haven’t had a kidney stone in a year now.

It was a year ago today that I called Brett up in the worst pain of my life and he came and took me to the ER where they did a CT scan and told me I had several stones in both kidneys. I still believe that it was an angel that turned Brett’s phone on that morning because his phone is never on.

If I have stones in there, why aren’t they coming out?

See. This is the problem. I know they are there. And they’re going to have to come out at some point. It’s the not knowing when that gets a little weird some times.

I mean, I’m grateful that they didn’t come out during our wedding. Getting married on morphine didn’t seem like a good idea. I’m grateful they didn’t come out during our two honeymoon trips. If they would’ve moved during my marathon in December I don’t know if I would’ve noticed since my knee and hip were hurting so bad and my toe was turning into one giant blister. And I’m grateful they haven’t moved around during our travels this summer.

But geez! Just when are they going to come out?

Brett still married me, even after having to clean up after me throwing up twice and seeing me look like death with bed hair, wrinkled pjs, and knocked out on pain killer. We still laugh about it. That was quite the morning. There’s just no telling when we’ll have another one like it. It’s like having two ticking bombs inside of me. And I have no idea what the clock says on either of them.

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Never Forget

11 September 2010, 10:38 am by Giggles
Categories: Life, Politics

People will never forget where they were for certain things in their life. There are certain moments in my life that are forever imprinted on my mind and I could describe the scene perfectly.

Most people can tell you exactly where they were 9 years ago today. It is something they will never forget. And that phrase, “Never Forget,” has come to be associated with this date.

But possibly some have forgotten something. They’ve forgotten that remembering isn’t about them as an individual. I know in the past I have looked at this day only from my point of view, where I was, what I was thinking, what I was doing. And in doing so, others have been forgotten.

Forgotten where others were, what they were thinking, what they were doing. They were in offices, restaurants, prayer rooms, stair wells and they were in planes. They were Americans, British, French, Canadians and many other nationalities. They were Christians, Jews, and Muslims. They were men, women, and children who will never sit down at a computer and blog about where they were on this day in 2001 like the rest of us do.

But their families will never forget where they were. Their families will never forget who they are. And that is what we must never forget.

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Now for the News

7 September 2010, 10:24 pm by Giggles
Categories: Education, Folks, News, Random, Relationships, Science & Tech

I have realized that I have saved WAY too many news stories for future blog posts and it’s time to go through them and clear them out. So here are just a few I’ve found interesting in the last year (yes it’s been that long since I’ve gone through them) with just a short comment or two about each.

  • 100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About (WM) – One way to feel old. A lot of things have changed. Some for the better. Some, well, we’ll just wait and see.
  • What Are the Benefits of Tetris? (BBC) – Fascinating what people will research these days.
  • Roman Postcards to Go on Show (BBC) – I love the idea that postcards have been around that long. I should send more.
  • Does Falling in Love Make Us More Creative? (SA) – Fascinating. So I should be heading into the most creative part of my life then, right?
  • Is Texting Making Us Bad Spellers? (SA) – Okay. So maybe it isn’t the death of good writing. But my students better not dare throw it into any of their papers. Apparently the BBC reports a similar thing. Phone texting helps pupils to spell (BBC).
  • Scary Music Scarier with Eyes Shut (SA) – That does it. I’m not shutting my eyes in scary movies any more.
  • The Chemistry of Information Addiction (SA) – Sometimes I’m glad that while so much information is available, I don’t have instant access to it wherever I go. Sometimes it’s nice to say, “Let’s look that up,” and then forget to do it. My phone still just makes phone calls. And technology use is just going up. Sometimes you just need to disconnect for a while. If Your Kids Are Awake, They’re Probably Online (NYT).
  • It’s Funny Because It’s True (SA) – Brett and I watched Last Comic Standing this summer and got a big kick out of it. We also really enjoyed analyzing the jokes over the following week and talking about why some of them were funny and some of them really not so much. Without fail, the funny ones were funny in large part because they were true, they offered a sort of side-view of humanity, a perspective we normally don’t bother to look at. Of course there are whole theories about humor. And perhaps I’ll get into those more later.
  • The Death of Language? (BBC) – I find this very sad. I think about how my life has been enriched by learning other languages, how it has allowed me to think about ideas in new ways (see Sunday’s post for just one example). Language is more than just a way to express words. It expresses thoughts, emotions, values, ideas and ideals. It is a type of living history.
  • Say What?! Musicians Hear Better (NPR) – I particularly like that they point out how learning music helps to learn language. People who are musical have a slightly easier time learning a foreign language because they are more used to hearing the slight differences in sounds for different languages. On my mission those Americans who were musical could hear the different accents in Portuguese better than those who weren’t. And that can be big when you are differentiating between Grandma (avó) and Grandpa (avô), which is only differentiated by the pitch of the last vowel.
  • What Our Stuff Says About Us (SA) – I’ve mentioned before about how your space reveals who you are. Now they’ve taken into the virtual world as well.

And I’ll finish (for now) with this one:

  • If Time Flew, You Had Fun (SA) – When you are having fun, time flies. But if you think time went by faster than normal, you’ll also report that you had more fun. So with that in mind, this whole post only took you a few seconds to read. Now wasn’t that fun!

Key: BBC = The BBC; NPR = National Public Radio; NYT = New York Times; SA = Scientific American; WM = Wired Magazine

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Espero – I wait. Espero – I hope.

5 September 2010, 8:47 pm by Giggles
Categories: Gospel, Life, Musings

I pray out loud. It keeps my mind from wandering and I’m better able to focus when I can hear what I’m saying. It’s also interesting what I learn from simply hearing the words that I say. I have used Portuguese when I am praying in private since the start of my mission almost 11 years ago.

I recently heard myself pray, “Dá-me esperança enquanto espero.” Give me hope while I wait. I paused. And I thought about what I had just said. For some reason I had never realized before that one way to say “to wait” is also a way to say “to hope.”

Espero. I wait.

Espero. I hope.

Ever since I have been thinking about the relationship between waiting and hoping.

I have waited for many things that I have hoped for. I waited and hoped for a chance to go to college, to serve a mission, to get a job, to go to college (again) (and then again). I waited and hoped and prayed for the blessing of marriage. I hope for the good things in life and I wait for the timing to be right for them to come into my life.

In the priesthood session of this year’s April General Conference President Uchtdorf gave a talk titled, “Continue in Patience.”

Patience – the ability to put our desires on hold for a time – is a precious and rare virtue. We want what we want, and we want it now. Therefore, the very idea of patience may seem unpleasant and, at times, bitter.

Nevertheless, without patience, we cannot please God; we cannot become perfect. Indeed, patience is a purifying process that refines understanding, deepens happiness, focuses action, and offers hope for peace. (emphasis mine)

Many times in my life I have prayed for patience. I’ve needed patience as I’ve dealt with different people and situations. Many nights on my knees I have prayed “Dá-me paciéncia.” Give me patience. The saying, “Lord give me patience and I want it right now” has adequately described my level of patience at different times.

Patience is not passive resignation, nor is it failing to act because of our fears. Patience means active waiting and enduring. It means staying with something and doing all that we can – working, hoping, and exercising faith; bearing hardship with fortitude, even when the desires of our hearts are delayed. (emphasis mine)

And for me now, as I find myself praying for hope more often than patience, it is also a prayer for the faith to understand that, “Heavenly Father [has] a purpose in requiring that His children wait.” It is an exercise in faith, faith that has been rewarded time and time again, that when things happen according to the Lord’s schedule they work out for the best.

My hope is in the Lord. “The promises of the Lord, if perhaps not always swift, are always certain.” And so it is a well placed hope. A hope that can sustain me through the waiting.

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A sink and an overhead?

30 August 2010, 8:15 pm by Giggles
Categories: Education, Science & Tech, Work

There are so many strange things about the class I’m teaching this semester. Of course the teacher being strange is a given. Next is that I have four students. But that part is actually an awesome strange.

The strangest part is actually the room I’m teaching in. It has a TV with a VCR/DVD player. So that’s nice. But then it has a sink, with no paper towels so I’m not sure what to do with that. And it has an overhead projector. And that’s the limit of the technology in the room. Welcome to the 21st century folks! :computer:

There are white boards and I do have the cool clicky whiteboard markers. But me scribbling on a board is going to get real old real fast. Although I am quite good at it. I had to take a class on board writing in college. It wasn’t a whole class, but we did have to pass it off in three main handwriting styles.

So we’ve had to be a little creative.

The department has a small computer projector and so I’ve been loaned that for the semester. And I have my netbook. But then the trouble is getting everything situated right so my students and I don’t feel like we’re sitting front row at a movie theater.

Today I figured out how to use the overhead though!

The cart the overhead sits on works as a great extension cord to the middle of the room. Then I can set my computer and the projector on top of the overhead. And from that point in the class the projection is just the right size.

Brilliant! If I do say so myself.

I’ll let you know when I figure out what to do with the sink.

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Not enough to do

28 August 2010, 9:54 pm by Giggles
Categories: Education, Life, Quilting/Sewing/Knitting/Crafting

Brett came home Thursday and laughed at me. This is getting to be a regular occurrence. He just laughs for a different reason each week.

This week he laughed at me because I was in the Tigger room (we’ve named our rooms) working on hand quilting the quilt I’ve been working on for a while (six years). I set up the quilt in our kitchen back in May with the idea to work on it during the summer and have it finished by now. I wasn’t going to classes so of course I had plenty of time to get it done.

And then I didn’t work on it at all over the summer. Eventually it got moved out of the kitchen and into the Tigger room.

School started this week. So what have I done? Did I take the quilt down? Nope. I spent several hours on Tuesday and Thursday sitting in the Tigger room (the ceiling fan really cools it off and I watch shows on Hulu while I’m in there) working on the quilt. In fact, I’m almost ready to roll it so I can reach further in.

And that is why Brett has laughed at me. Also because I’m sitting on the other side of the quilt from the door so it looks like I’ve wedged myself behind the quilt (the quilt is as long as the room). He just hasn’t seen me crawl under the quilt a dozen or so times in the last week. He thinks my scheduling issues are funny.

During the summer I had the wonderful problem of having not enough to do and too much time to do it in.

Now I’m on campus for large chunks of my week and so I’m spending my time at home actually doing stuff.

I have the same “problem” with my reading for fun. During the summer when I have plenty of time to just sit and read I get almost nothing read. But when I’m taking the bus to and from campus several times a week, a round trip of at least 1.5 hours every time, I get a LOT read (only 10 more books in the alphabet!).

Having a schedule makes me get things done. I’ll let you know how this quilting on my days off each week goes.

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