Prepoceros

Some of these items weren’t technically “missing,” as I had a vague sense of where they were, but I found them nonetheless.

1. Passport
2. Contact lens case
3. Coupon for a free haircut
4. Ball of ticky-tack
5. Smashed highlighter
6. Bug spray
7. Tax paperwork from 2003
8. Harry Potter DVD (one of the two DVDs I own)
9. Sixteen cents
10. To-do list from July
11. Many, many pay stubs
12. Prescription for Paxil, unfilled
13. Hole punch
14. Sinterklaas wrapping paper
15. Extra camcorder tape
16. Old debit card
17. Velcro tabs
18. Pair of pliers
19. Miniature bottle of salad dressing
20. Sam’s harness
21. EKG printout from 2004
22. Chapstick
23. Tape measure
24. English Grammar for Students of Latin
25. Valentine’s Day card
26. Dry erase markers
27. Extra key to my car
28. Cell phone headset
29. Mathematical Association of America membership form
30. Two necklaces, two bracelets, and three earrings I’d been looking for
31. Electrical tape
32. Two boxes of dental floss
33. Fifty empty CD cases
34. iPod sleeve, pre-chewed
35. HBU student ID
36. Little book I used to keep the insurance card in
37. Insurance card, expired May 2006

I think it’s funny that I can date whole piles of clutter from only a few items. Name tag from work, old apartment key, handwritten draft of an email? March 2006. Crossword puzzle, note from Mom, chocolate bar wrapper? October 2004. Stack of recipes, appointment card from shrink, multi-page rambly monologue about how I’d accomplished nothing at the office that day and was only pretending to work until I could go home and bury my face in the carpet? June 2005. I imagine this is why people scrapbook*.

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* I don’t, but I wish I did, and I’ve often thought of making one (or several). I’m not interested in the froo-froo kind some folks make with stickers and rickrack and photos cut into whimsical shapes; I just want a place to capture a bit of representative detritus of my daily life. It’s so easy to forget the little things, you know? (Sappy sappy, yes.)

His name is Samson, but I only use his full name when he’s in trouble. The rest of the time he usually goes by Sammy, Baby, or Punky.

But on occasion I just make shit up, as you can see in the following list. I’ve tried out a bunch of different nicknames, and these are the ones that have stuck so far.

You may notice that many of them make reference to poo. I blame my mother, whose favorite term of endearment is drolletje (sp?), which means “little pile of poo,” or, more whimsically translated, “turdlet.” Apparently Dutch folks think it’s perfectly normal, even adorable, to go around calling their kids poo-piles.

I’m not going to make this a numbered list because (1) it takes up a stupid amount of space on the page and (2) it requires extra effort. I promise there are really thirty-seven:

Samson, Sam, Sammy, Sammy-son, Sammy-Sam, Sam-Sam, Puppy, Puppydog, Puppy-wuppy, Puppers, Pupperkins, Pup-pup, Pooper, Poopy, Poopsie, Poopydog, Poopybutt, Pumpkin, Punkin, Punky, Pookie, Baby, Bebe (bay-bay), Booboo, Babycakes, Sweetie, Sweetheart, Sweetie-pie, Sweetie-puppy, Shnookums, Munchkin, Honeybuns, Hun-bun, Wuvvy-dovey, (like lovey-dovey, but without the ‘l’), Pookum-pie, Bubbles, Fleabag

And to think, for a while I was tempted to name him Hammurabi. Ok, I guess that wouldn’t have been too different: Hammy, Ham-rab, Ham-ham.

I thought I was ready, but all of a sudden, when I sat down to register, I found myself groping wildly for something with which to distract myself—a not-unfamiliar feeling, but one that I usually associate with overdue papers and lab reports, not signing up for classes.

Long story short, it’s been 13 almost 16 hours. I’m really really good (or bad) at the distraction game. Since 11:00 this morning I have

1. Gone to Latin class. This doesn’t count as a distraction since it’s something I should have done anyway, but it happened after registration opened, so it makes the list.
2. Eaten lunch. Again, not a bad thing, but I could have registered before I ate.
3. Checked my email. Several times. In the last thirteen hours I have gotten all of one email. Damn, I *do* need to stock up on cialips, xavnax, and armbien.
4. Read all my Bloglines feeds. This is a brilliant meta-distraction, as it includes both Slashdot and BoingBoing, each of which are compilations of external links. Reading through all of them took about two hours.
5. Checked on the blogs I read that don’t have feeds. Ten minutes.
6. Read all the interesting-looking news stories at CNN.com.
7. Reread my own last ten blog entries.
8. Perused my website stats. Usually the traffic here increases 5–10% every month, but April is more or less even with March, month-to-date. Hmmm.
9. Noticed that three people have found Prepoceros by searching for “Caltech cannon” or “MIT cannon.” Did a Technorati search for “Caltech cannon” and read the first twenty or so blog posts that came up.
10. Bought two t-shirts.
11. Looked for dressier shirts on Amazon, because any place you can buy discount toasters, dog food, cell phones, and lawnmowers is bound to have cute shirts*.
12. Looked for shoes on Overstock.com. Learned that Overstock.com is a terrible place to look for shoes, unless you’re in the market for clogs. Cheap clogs, but clogs nonetheless.
13. Played a few rounds of “tear camelsheep to bits” with Sammy.
14. Eaten the other half of the tub of rainbow chip icing I started yesterday. Wondered why I felt sick to my stomach.
15. Debated going to fetch my iPod, which, according to the door tag the deliveryperson left behind, is apparently sitting in a FedEx depot 16 minutes away.
16. Decided I could wait until Monday.
17. Wandered over to the kitchen table, shuffled the schedule cards around a little more.
18. Designed and implemented a color-coding scheme using highlighters. This is a clever sort of distraction, IMO, as it’s close enough to the real assignment that I can convince myself I’m “working on it,” but inane enough to avoid any risk of productivity.
19. “Samson, would you rather live with a Physics major or a Linguistics major? Both? But Sammy, that means Mommy can’t take Greek. Don’t you think if would be fun if Mommy could read Greek? Me too, pumpkin, but it won’t all fit, see? Well, no, there’s no *law* that says I have to graduate in two years…”
20. Taken a three-hour nap, under the rationale that “sometimes your unconscious solves hard problems for you in your sleep.” This was just an excuse at the time, but when I woke up, there *was* an answer sitting right at the “front” of my mind: I need to see myself in a different role. (Scroll down to “Third Principle.”) But what role would that be? Whether this is actually part of a solution to the what-major problem or just a random association (I read the article earlier this week) remains to be seen. I don’t often wake up with clear, purposeful thoughts like that, so I feel like this might be worth something.
21. Walked the dog.
22. Fed the dog.
23. Eaten several handfuls of very stale pretzels. I’ll cook dinner after I register. Just like I’ll do my taxes after I register. And prep my next LSAT class after I register. And do research for my Women in the Ancient World paper after I register.
24. Read a first-person account of the World Sudoku Championship.
25. Rummaged through my garbage bags of not-yet-unpacked stuff, looking for my sudoku books. Didn’t find them.
26. Acknowledged that sudoku would not be a feasible distraction anyway, as it could take up an indeterminate amount of time, a la Minesweeper or Spider Solitaire. I removed all such “pointless” distractions from my repertoire several months ago. Baby steps.
27. Registered for an online puzzle game similar to the superfabulous MIT Mystery Hunt, which I’ve long admired as pretty much the awesomest thing ever. If you like puzzles as much as I do, or even half as much as I do, or even if you’re just curious, I’d love for you to join my team at The Puzzle Boat. (Team Name: prepoceros, Password: rhino) It’d obviously be easier if we were in the same geographic location, but if you want to log in and solve a puzzle or two sometime, that’d be great. It would take me years to do the whole thing myself, if I even could. Thems hard.
28. Checked mail again, Bloglines again, CNN again. World hasn’t exploded in the last four hours. Shocking.
29. Given Sammy a cookie and a belly rub because awwww, wook at mommy’s widdle shnookums wif his sweet widdle face.
30. Pondered the reasons behind the apparent mental block I’ve put on picking classes for next semester. Connected it to my inability to make decisions, and, of course, how life is short and I only get one shot at it and if I continue on in this wishy-washy way and never throw myself into anything with confidence then I’ll waste all my opportunities and nothing will ever become of me and I’ll lead a miserable life, grow old, and DIE full of regret.
31. Written and published a 1000-word post on the above topic—an absolute bog of self-pity and dreary inner monologue. Wallow wallow wallow. (Don’t bother scrolling down—it’s gone.) Anyway, there went another hour and a half.
32. Gone to Sonic for an ice cream sundae. Came back with mozzarella sticks and a strawberry limeade. The four guys in the car next to mine were so. baked. Dude, get the bacon toast thing. No seriously man, get the bacon thing I want the bacon. Like, with cheese. And toast. Okay? Seriously, dude. Dude. Seriously. I love bacon.
33. Realized that I haven’t washed my hair since Wednesday morning. Gross. Resolved to do so FIRST THING after I register.
34. Removed the post mentioned above. It was self-absorbed, whiny, and not even all that funny. Those of you who subscribe to my feed might still be able to read it. Sorry.
35. Considered replacing the deleted post with a quick five-liner about my trip to Sonic.
36. Decided instead on this behemoth. Three hours in, I realize that this is a vicious distraction. Have you made lists before? Because 37 things is A LOT OF THINGS**. But I can’t stop now and waste all that work…I’m so close.
37. Finished the goddamn list.

There, self. I did it. Happy? No, of course you’re not—you still haven’t registered. What’s that? You’re sleepy now and want to go to bed? Well no shit, it’s 3:30 in the morning. But you’re not going to bed until you pick classes, do you hear me? NOT GONNA HAPPEN.

[Edit (4:46 AM): HIST1378 POLS1336 POLS 1337 // ENGL3302 ENGL4305 LATN2301 MATH3333 MATH3338 PHYS3110 PHYS3111, bitches! It’s bedtime!]

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* Did you know that Old Navy has rescinded their 8-item-max fitting room rule? ’strue. You can waltz in there carrying 18 items and the salesdude won’t even blink as he says “Back again?” and unlocks your room. I think it might be because sometimes the people who walk in with 18 items end up buying 14 of those items, plus like five other things they see on their way to the front. Happened to a friend of mine. Friend of a friend.

** Three hours of early-morning list-making has done wonders for my diction. I do things. I like stuff. It is very good and fun and interesting. Before long I’ll be reduced to grunts and primitive hand gestures.

Wendy and I spent most of yesterday at the Nutcracker Market, an annual “holiday shopping jamboree”/fundraiser for the Houston Ballet. If you’ve never been, it’s hard to describe. Intense? Enormous? Hilarious?

For an idea of the scale of this thing, take a look at this map of the market. That section of tables at the top is about the size of an average auditorium. Hundreds of shops, and we hit at least ninety percent of them (the only section I remember not getting to was the aisle next to the pewterware, top right).

I can think of few more entertaining ways to spend six hours than wandering up and down aisles of Christmas-y crap (and some non-crap), stuffing my face with free food samples, getting slightly sloshed on overpriced wine, and making snarky comments about other people’s outfits. If I’d thought to bring my camera phone, I would have taken many, many pictures of these malfunctions to share with you. The most common offenses were impractical footwear selection, dressing inappropriately for one’s age (whether that age be 12 or 50) and sparkle abuse (*any* sparkle on ordinary walking-around clothes is too much sparkle, IMO.)

The booths themselves ran the gamut from classy to tacky to scrumptious to ridiculous. One of my favorites was a shop from Nashville selling “holiday fashions for ladies and European gifts.” Hats and cloaks and shawls and skirts, all of it cheap cheap cheap, with friendly salesfolks to boot. I bought this adorable hat ($15!)

and we both bought shawls/cloaks/wearable blanket things. Were we a wee bit tipsy at that point? Yes. Do I regret buying a hat and cloak, when I’ve never in my life worn either? Hell no. Forty bucks well spent.

Because we’re nerds, we spent a good bit of time translating the Latin on the manuscripts these folks were selling. The lady running the booth kept pulling manuscripts from the stack we were reading to give to people who actually showed an interest in buying them. I guess she didn’t want our help fixing the incomplete (and occasionally incorrect) translations attached to the pieces. Whatever, lady. This was two stops after the wine booth, so I didn’t much care.

Another highlight was the cherry people’s booth. I like cherries as much as the next person, but oh. my. god. these cherries were phenomenal. Not only were the cherries themselves delicious, but they’d managed to add them to just about any foodstuff you can imagine, and none of it bombed. Dried cherries? Been there. Cherry preserves? Done that. Cherry salsa? Weird, but conceivable. Cherry mustard? Cherry pepper jelly? Cherry BBQ sauce? Knocked ‘em all out of the park. Un-frickin-believable. They probably had twenty different products out for sampling, and we tried them all. We said we’d swing back by before we left and buy something, but we forgot. I feel bad about freeloading on their cherry-infused generosity, but I’m going to absolve myself of guilt by telling you to go right now and buy all their stuff. Here’s another link to the site if you don’t want to bother scrolling up. Quality cherry goo, I promise.

As for losers, there wasn’t any one booth I can single out as being particularly awful; many were tacky, kitschy, or way too pink, but not horrifyingly so. The worst part about many of them were the names. It’s a Girl Thing!, Funke Flopz (flip-flopz, that is), Scribbles ‘n Doodles, MIS-TEE-V-US, Bunnies and Bows, Patchwork ‘N Petals, Klassy Kidz, Swankie Blankie…ok, I actually like “Swankie Blankie.” I think that’s adorable. But the rest? Gag me.

One phenomenon I found myself unexpectedly offended by was the abundance of Christian paraphernalia, much of it utterly tasteless. I know that Texas lies deep in the heart of Jesus country, and I’m not offended by the *presence* of so many crosses, but I do feel that a religious symbol should be treated with more respect than, say, a drawing of a reindeer, or a picture of your cat. In particular, a crucifix should not be fashioned into a throw pillow, a yard sign, a birthday-candle holder, a light switch, a cutting board, or a fist-sized necklace slide, nor should it sparkle, flash, or light up in any way. Gross.

Does this sort of thing offend Christians, or do they just avert their eyes whenever they drive past that house with the light-up plastic Jesus in the front yard and the crucifx wind chime?

In a similar vein, I thought it went without saying that nativity scenes should consist only of people (and possibly sheep). Baby Jesus as a moose? NOT CUTE. Tacky tacky tacky.

But on to the main event: the food. According to the program there were forty-five food booths, and all of them offered free samples. Most were delicious. Apart from a single Twizzler pull-n-peel for breakfast, I ate *nothing* yesterday that wasn’t a free food booth sample (except for the wine, which, sadly, cost money). No lunch, no dinner, just a six-hour-long gourmet snack. Mmmmmmm.

I present, to inspire jealousy, a partial list, in approximate order of ingestion, of the things vendors were throwing at me yesterday. I bought none of them. (I did buy a jar of olive-something spread for my parents, but I relied on Wendy’s taste-testing in that case, as I can’t stand olives.)

1. Honey, served on an apple slice with feta cheese and a blueberry. Yummy except for the wax, which we were still picking out of our teeth five booths later.
2. Lemon-pesto spread
3. Artichoke & garlic spread
4. Cherry candy
5. Dried cherries
6. Cherry mustard
7. Cherry BBQ sauce
8. Cherry salsa
9. Cherry almond preserves
10. Plain cherry preserves
11. A chocolate-covered dried cherry (I’m not kidding about this cherry shit. Go order one of everything right now, while you’re thinking about it.)
12. Tortilla soup
13. Cranberry turkey
14. Summer sausage
15. Pinto bean soup
16. Chicken alfredo
17. Chili
18. White wine
19. Chocolate truffle cake
20. “Bumbleberry” pie
21. Popcorn something something
22. Whole roasted garlic
23. Tomatillo white chocolate sauce
24. Tomato-something soup
25. “Spinach Finach” dip
26. “Veggie Weggie” dip (This place had several other dips with similarly ridiculous names, all of which I tasted.)
27. “Double Dutch” hot chocolate
28. More wine
29. “SXUL” chocolate
30. Apple cider
31. Cream cheese with nutty slime on top (Several booths featured similar dishes. None of them were any good.)
32. White chocolate bark
33. Key lime white chocolate bark
34. Peach salsa
35. Garlic-onion dip
36. Shrimp-something dip
37. Amaretto pecan honeybutter, on a warm biscuit

Not bad for an entry fee of nine bucks, eh? Some of the free samples were duds, but there were enough amazing ones to keep me going all day. I have Thai food in my refrigerator, but I haven’t felt like eating any of it until just now.

You bet your ass I’m going back next year. I hope the cherry people feel the same way.

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Let me know if you see the pictures doing weird things, like appearing off-center or extending beyond the text. I’ve wrestled them into submission as they appear on my computer, but I’m bad at doing the internets.

I like words. Maybe you’ve noticed. Of the three “37 Things” lists I’ve posted so far, two of them are lists of words. And I’m only just getting started.

I promise the next list won’t be about words. Probably. My longest non-word list is at 28 right now, while my longest (unpublished) word list is only at 15, so I predict the former will see the light of day first.

Anyway, THIS list is about words that are funny because of their pronunciation.* This is by no means a complete list. I started it sometime last week, wrote down the first ten or so right away, then forgot about it until yesterday, so really, these are just the first 37 words off the top of my head that make me giggle when I say them.

Ticklish, apparently: words with many syllables (onomatopoeia), words with long strings of consonants (conflagration, monstrous), words with unexpectedly positioned emphasis (epistemological), words pronounced differently than their more common relatives (circuitous, capacious).

Bonus points for you if you can work one of these words into conversation today.

1. tintinnabulation
2. jonquil
3. onomatopoeia
4. obfuscate
5. mischievous
6. befuddled
7. conflagration
8. epistemological
9. tutelage
10. ordnance
11. behoove
12. suave
13. prescient
14. confabulate
15. monstrous
16. corpulent
17. litigious
18. ingrate
19. aghast
20. willy-nilly
21. albeit
22. nuisance
23. behemoth
24. epiphenomenon
25. lugubrious
26. rapscallion
27. tomfoolery
28. fisticuffs
29. circuitous
30. pusillanimous
31. mugwump
32. peripatetic
33. phlebotomize
34. capacious
35. polysyllabic
36. inanity
37. musculature

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* Another list of words with funny meanings is in the compiling. Approximately half of the items I’ve collected so far involve poop.

** Should the ’s’ in thirty-seven be capitalized (in a title)? I have a feeling that it ought to be, and I’m too lazy to look it up, though in the time it’s taken me to type this, I probably could have found the answer myself and fixed it already.

You all know (or you will at least pretend you do if you know what’s good for you) that an adjective describes a noun or pronoun, while an adverb describes a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. The quick and dirty way to tell between the two parts of speech is to look for the -ly ending: most adverbs end in -ly, and most words ending in -ly are adverbs.

As always, there are exceptions. The list below is concerned only with the false positives (”Type II errors” to all you statisticians out there) which crop up when an adjective, waggling its -ly tail, tries to masquerade as an adverb. The two examples I’ve commonly heard are “lovely” and “friendly.”

When I spot one of these little buggers, I chuckle inwardly (because I’m a dork) and add it to my mental list. Thing is, I can never find that flingin-flangin list when I need it, so about a week ago I started writing them down. I thought of seven or eight right away, then kept adding to it a couple at a time until I got to 37 earlier today. I didn’t think it would go this fast, but I guess there are a bunch of them out there.

I excluded certain categories of words I felt weren’t “fair”, like slang (bully, fugly), hyphenated words (touchy-feely), and words whose legitimacy I couldn’t confirm without a dictionary (warbly, marbly).

I’ve hidden the list itself in case you’d like to play along. If I could think of 37 in just a week, there are sure to be a least a couple hundred more floating around out there. Feel free to leave new words in the comments if you come up with ones that aren’t in my 37.

(more…)

Why thirty-seven? Because that’s how many there are. There are undoubtedly at least a couple more I haven’t thought of, but I’ve been working on this list for two or three weeks now, so I figure it’s complete enough to be worth posting.

Needless to say, I am not a movie person. I don’t go out to the movies often, and if I see one I like, I usually just think, “Huh. That was a good movie,” and then go on about my daily life. I’ve rarely been motivated to spend time watching a movie I’ve already seen, much less pay good money for the privilege. The exceptions comprise the list below.

[I should note that some of these, particularly the children’s movies, I didn’t *chose* to watch more than once. I just happened to be around when they were playing, usually at school or at a friend’s house.]

1. The Little Mermaid
2. Apollo 13
3. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
4. Homeward Bound
5. Homeward Bound II
6. Death to Smoochy
7. Dead Poets Society
8. The Man Who Knew Too Little
9. It’s a Wonderful Life
10. The Wizard of Oz
11. Forrest Gump
12. Peter Pan
13. Back to the Future I
14. BTTF II
15. BTTF III
16. E.T.
17. The Lion King
18. Home Alone
19. Home Alone 2
20. Austin Powers
21. Austin Powers 2
22. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
23. Ocean’s Eleven
24. Grease
25. The Parent Trap (the original one)
26. The Sound of Music
27. Rocky Horror Picture Show
28. Bambi
29. Mary Poppins
30. The Music Man
31. Fantasia
32. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
33. Wet Hot American Summer
34. Miracle on 34th Street
35. Billy Madison
36. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead
37. Cool Runnings

I’m planning to make this a regular feature. I like lists, but I usually think of interesting things one or two at a time, and by the time I think of something else that fits into that category, I’ve already forgotten the first couple. I want to pick all these formerly-unconnected tidbits out of the dark corners of my brain and scrape them into orderly little piles, mostly for my own entertainment…and now for yours as well.

To this end, for the last six months or so I’ve been maintaining a huge-ass text file of lists. This is the first of them I’ve deemed complete enough to share. From now on, whenever another of the lists hits the big 3-7, I’ll publish it. It’s the perfect filler for those uninspired days when I have class early the next morning and need to get to bed. Like this one.