And I Get Lost Again

I've developed a habit of posting most of my stories from getting lost. Not all of them, because if I posted all of them I wouldn't post much else. I'm not sure if this really counts as being lost, but I'll let you be the judge of that.

Today I went to interview for a possible summer job in Indianapolis. The woman I was emailing offered to give me more detailed directions, but upon checking Google Maps it looked pretty easy to find. All I had to do was drive toward home, get off at a different exit, and stay on that street until I found the relevant office. Just to be safe, I left with ten minutes of buffer room in case I somehow managed to get lost.

I made it all the way to the desired street without event. As the checkered flag indicating my goal on Janet (my GPS) drew nigh, I scanned both sides of the street for any signs of the office. I couldn't find it. I turned around, and drove back the way I had come until I had once more passed Janet's flag. I still didn't see it. So I turned around again. And still didn't find it.

Convinced that turning around and driving past the alleged location once more wouldn't be very helpful, I pulled over in a parking lot to get out the business card of the woman I had been emailing, only to discover that I had left it in my dorm room. I called my mom, and she was kind enough to look up the location on Google Maps again. We pin-pointed the block on which the place should have been, and she tried to get me there that way. I still wasn't seeing anything.

My ever-helpful mother then checked online to find a phone number for me to call. She couldn't find the person I had talked to, but she did find a number for me to try. I called the number, and a friendly man answered it. He was happy to help me find the office. After describing my location, he found the place where he thought I was on Google Maps and then instructed me to drive north. I did so. He named places and streets I should be passing, but I didn't see any of them.

Apparently I was supposed to have headed south rather than north, so I turned around yet again. A few minutes later, I finally found the office thanks to the kind man. It wasn't labeled. It was in a warehouse complex, but the company name wasn't on the sign by the road. Nor was the name on the building itself. There was a pleasant woman sitting outside eating lunch, and she confirmed that the building I had pulled up to was in fact the correct one.

In the end, I was twenty minutes late. My buffer time had not been sufficient. I somehow managed to be lost on the same mile-long stretch of road for a half hour. Fortunately, the interviewers didn't seem too upset by the delay. The interview went well, so hopefully I get the job. I should know sometime next week.

Spring Songs

It's time once again for another season playlist and blog background. Today's background is not only spring-like, but relates to what I would be doing right now if I were responsible and hadn't lost my keys: science. It's time for planting arabidopsis like crazy in the lab. I was tending to some plants in the greenhouse when I got my keys locked in the lab. Since it's Sunday, nobody was there to unlock it and let me get my keys. So now I'm unable to finish what I need to get done, so I'm just going to publish this post instead.

I finally got around to categorizing all of my iTunes music by season, and as a result I have far too many songs in each season to continue my 20 songs per season trend from fall and winter. I have 270 just for spring, and that's one of my short lists. With great effort, I've narrowed it down to 40. In the process I had to get rid of some excellent spring songs, so just because I've missed a nice song doesn't mean I don't believe it suits the season.

1. Prelude No. 1 (Bach)
2. If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out (Cat Stevens)
3. The Door in the Air (from The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian)
4. Raindrop Prelude No. 15 in D flat Minor (Chopin)
5. Analyse (The Cranberries)
6. Danses Sacree et Profane (Debussy)
7. La Fille Aux Cheveaux de Lin (Debussy)
8. Sons and Daughters (The Decemberists)
9. Old Old Fashioned (Frightened Rabbit)
10. When U Love Somebody (The Fruit Bats)
11. Ballooning (Gulley)
12. That’s No Way to Get to Heaven (Guster)
13. Death of a Tune (Hidden Cameras)
14. Moths (Jethro Tull)
15. Saria’s Song (from The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time)
16. Title Theme (from The Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker)
17. Houses of the Holy (Led Zeppelin)
18. Many Meetings (from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring)
19. The Morning: Another Morning (The Moody Blues)
20. Nice to Be Here (The Moody Blues)
21. Flaming (Pink Floyd)
22. Dawn (from Pride and Prejudice)
23. Leaving Netherfield (from Pride and Prejudice)
24. Intro et Allegro (Ravel)
25. Scheherezade - The Young Prince and Princess (Rimsky-Korsakov)
26. Tendrement (Satie)
27. Je Te Veux (Satie)
28. Allegro (Satie)
29. Meet Me by the Water (Saturday Looks Good to Me)
30. Black Hole (The Silent Years)
31. For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her (Simon & Garfunkel)
32. America (Simon & Garfunkel)
33. Rustles of Spring (Sinding)
34. Kiss Me (Sixpence None the Richer)
35. Nutcracker – Waltz of the Flowers (Tchaikovsky)
36. Swan Lake – 7. Sujet (Tchaikovsky)
37. I’ve Always Loved You (Third Day)
38. Whiskey in the Jar (traditional Celtic tune)
39. Drowsy Maggie (traditional Celtic tune)
40. All Creatures of Our God and King (traditional hymn)

Edit: I've decided that since I typically refer to new blog layouts as they are used, but once I change it again it's hard to know what I'm talking about, I'm going to post screen-shots of the new-to-that-post design after I've changed things. Here is what my blog looked like when I published this:

Unexpectedly Unnerving Experiences

I was looking at a picture from a visit to Spring Grove Cemetery back at home, and it reminded me of a rather unsettling experience I had immediately after taking that picture. What follows is an explanation of what happened along with several other things I find oddly unpleasant.

First we have car washes. I hate car washes. Being moved slowly through a dark tunnel with all sorts of bristles and brushes and floppy things attacking my car makes me incredibly nervous. It's even worse if I'm in the front seat. I don't mind Mike's Car Wash, but that's because they make it child-friendly. It's white and well-lit on the inside with stuffed animals chilling around. For practical reasons, it also shoots liquid and soap at you rather than attacking you with large, frightening, apparati.

I also hate having my blood pressure taken. Anything that restricts blood flow makes me queasy, but one would think such a little thing as the blood pressure cuff shouldn't be a problem. The worst was when we did a lab in A.P. Biology involving taking each other's blood pressures. I decided to face my fear and permit my classmate to take my blood pressure. First he pumped it fuller than he needed to. I started panicking, and he fumbled about for a few seconds (it seemed like forever at the time) before finding the release valve. I was not a happy camper.

This next one is probably the only one that has a good chance at being genuinely unsettling to others. If you don't like needles, skip to the next one. My brother once had me try to re-pierce his ear. It was terrible. He gave me a needle or safety pin or something and told me to just make it go through. I have no doubt that he would have withstood whatever pain I might have caused, but after a brief try I just couldn't continue. You see, I felt the pin ripping through layers of skin. Little vibrations or something came through the pin and I felt it. It was terrible.

And now we move on to a surreal, H.G. Wellsian sort of experience. Just north of Purdue on I-65 is the Fowler Ridge wind farm. Hundreds of wind turbines stand in military-like ranks on hundreds of acres flanking the highway. In the daylight, they are impressive and intriguing. I'm sure they might intimidate some, but mostly they just look neat. It's a different story in the dark. Each of these windmills has a red light on top that blinks to warn planes. That wouldn't be too bad all on it's own; I could just pretend they were red fireflies or something. But they all throb on and off in unison in a steady beat. It's eerie. Not the thing you want to drive past at 5:30 on a dark December morning.

Sometimes if you're driving and making a turn, you can't immediately see the lane you're planning to get into. I'm sure we all know of an intersection or two like that. I always have a moment of panic in which I believe I'll somehow end up on the wrong side of the road. I will highlight two such turns: the turn left from going north-west on Northwestern to going west on Stadium, and the turn left on the East Ronald Reagan entrance ramp in Colerain.

I've saved the best for last: being slowly approached by a flock of walking Canadian geese. Josh and I were at Spring Grove Cemetery walking around and taking pictures one fine afternoon. I saw several geese down by a pond and decided to take a picture of them. They even turned to face me, much to my delight. My delight quickly turned to dismay as they stretched out into a line facing me and began to slowly advance. At first I believed they were just going to cross the street or something, so I turned and walked in a different direction. The line shifted to follow me. Josh offered the rational explanation that they were probably just hoping for me to feed them, but that didn't help me out much. I think in the end we ended up semi-leading them to some other people, but I don't remember for sure. I just remember that it was creepy as all get-out. I haven't even seen Alfred Hitchcock's Birds and I was afraid. As far as I was concerned, they were closing in for the kill. Josh didn't seem to be bothered by it, but just ask him and he will verify that I was irrationally terrified of those birds.

Here they are, gathering to scare the living daylights out of me.

Spring, Please Hurry Up

This may have been the longest, greyest, snowiest winter I've ever experienced. We didn't see the grass up here at Purdue from Thanksgiving through mid-February. With the wind chill keeping things down in the teens or single digits for daytime highs, most of the winter has also been rather cold. Yes, I know, there are colder, greyer places to spend the winter, but there's a reason I'm not living in one of them.

Last week we got a nice warm spell with days up to fifty degrees. It was grand. I even got to wear a skirt. Naive as I was, I thought that this faux-spring would be enough to hold me over until vrai-spring arrived, but I was wrong. I'm more impatient than ever. It's currently below freezing, and it snowed enough yesterday to stick to the wet, half-thawed ground. Punxsutawney Phil predicted an early spring, and if we don't get one I'm going to have a choice word or two for him.

People keep on reminding me that it's still February, and that early March is just as bad. Yes, I know that. Yes, I also know that spring will get here soon enough if I'm just patient. But I'm not, so I'm just going to mentally huff and puff at the weather for a few more weeks until it does what I want because it's the proper time and not because I told it to. In the meantime, I'm making my blog more spring-like, as you may have noticed.

I hope you haven't minded my complaints. They're only to be taken moderately seriously. On another note, I should be writing more often this semester, so I'll see you again soon. Have a happy stupid, grey, cold February day.

Book Review: Life Is Too Important to Be Taken Seriously

This short book by Mandy Smith matches its curious title with an even more unusual subtitle: Kite-Flying Lessons from Ecclesiastes. Emily McClure picked this book out to study with the ladies at the college group at home, and after working through one chapter with them I decided to read the entire thing on my own.

The goal of the book is to teach you to re-prioritize your life to find true meaning and in the process truly enjoy the things under the sun that aren't meant to give you meaning. Whether it's health, money, job, education, relationships, or just about anything else that you find yourself putting ahead of God, Solomon touches on it in Ecclesiastes and Smith expands on it in her book. When we learn to loosen our death grips on the less important things and put them under God, our lives will be more peaceful and focused through the good and the bad, and we may even re-learn to have fun. She also includes a list of carefree little things to do in the back.

While I've never lost the ability to enjoy the trivial joys in life, I do tend to run the risk of trying to focus on a dozen morally-neutral pursuits to the point that God becomes my fall-back when I've been run to the ground by the stress of chasing everything else. To use Smith's analogy, I tend to chase the wind and try to catch it rather than harnessing it to fly a kite. I highly recommend this book. It's a short, refreshing read with welcome reminders and a redirected look at what I once considered a depressing book of the Bible.