This is the archive of tumbledry happenings that occurred on January, 2012.
I’d post the following on a social network, but I’d just be baiting people. Facebook is no place for nuanced, informed discourse. Anyhow.
These three words make people angry and make your world better: “taxes aren’t bad”.
Loved this quote from a NYTimes article “Furniture - The Big Get Bigger”:
McMansions, which still populate the suburbs like domestic mastodons.
I don’t have really many screenshots, mock-ups, etc. at all of what this website has looked like through the years. I do have a 9-year-old desktop computer that probably still contains those things; perhaps I will compile them sometime. Anyhow, this lack of documentation is somewhat ironic, because I run tumbledry to write about my life. Apparently, writing about myself is enough navel gazing for one place; adding another layer by contemplating the tool I’ve written for contemplation would be quite narcissistic, wouldn’t it? All that said, here’s a screenshot of how tumbledry looked not too long ago:
I’ve been thinking about how lucky I am. Please understand that I am not using the word “lucky” as shorthand to describe the idea of ‘fortunate’ or ‘secure’ or ‘genetic lottery winner’. I am lucky. I’ll explain why.
“Ya see, this one lady is persistent, but the other’s the only one I want to date.” At Lifetime, I found myself inadvertently eavesdropping on a conversation between two men, one in his late 40s, the other in his 30s. The one talking was the older of the two, and from the way he was speaking, I couldn’t decide if he’d been through a difficult divorce or simply never married. It didn’t matter, though, he was describing how interested he was in this woman in his life.
Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes gave a commencement speech at Kenyon College in 1990. The number of topics Watterson addresses is striking. A few that caught my attention:
The Galata Tower in Istanbul was built in Medieval times as a part of fortifications. Its stone walls are 9 feet thick. I guess it has a more historically accurate cone top to it now, but I think the wooden cupola pictured here looked cooler.
That is a tooth, with its friends milk and carrot. I think that sums up why I love Sesame Street.
While bench pressing yesterday, I dropped 205 pounds on my sternum. It wasn’t an “uh oh, I can’t push the weight up anymore”, instead my left wrist unexpectedly rolled forward, and the grip has completely worn off my right glove, so I had nothing to stop the bar from rolling forward. After leaving my left palm, the bar’s downward trajectory was slowed by scraping along the inside of my left forearm (I don’t actually remember any of this, but I was able to trace the abrasions later… I originally thought my right wrist was the one that rolled), and then the bar ran into my chest, totally pinning me between the left side of the bench and the bar.
This is what “Creamy Grapefruit”, recipe 51 from The Big Book of Juices, looks like. It is absolutely, thoroughly delicious. Here’s what’s in (Mykala’s slightly modified) version:
I have never, in my entire life, as I tried to complete the spectacular variety of electronic tasks that modern life throws at us, thought this: “Damn, I wish I understood Unix less.”
Before I was a senior dental student, I used to pull up their schedule online just so I could jealously admire it. “What must it be like,” I wondered, “to no longer have to go to class and just to show up in clinic each day?”
Now, I know — it. is. awesome. Through all those days and nights of studying and stressing, I’d tell Mykala “but hey, fourth year is really great!” At the time, she was understandably skeptical. But hey, this year has definitely lived up to expectations; the decrease in day-to-day stress is unbelievable. As students, we’ve started to get more leeway from our supervisors, in part because we’re rapidly talking and opining more and more like doctors and less and less like students. When people are working under your license (as we do with the dentists at the school), I’m sure it’s easy to give an almost-doctor more wiggle room than an overwhelmed second year student. So that’s nice.
I do weird things now, things I never consciously realized would be a part of my life. I clean trash cans. Sort mail. Go to the store to purchase toilet paper. Clean out the fridge. It’s fascinating that, though you have relatively little freedom as a young person, you have a very unique freedom from these adult responsibilities.
The GPS parsing logic I just wrote into this site has paid off unexpectedly — I put it there so I could start to add images with built-in locations when I (someday) get an iPhone, but Mykala just got her picture taken (by her mom’s iPhone) in front of the wonderful New York Times building during their trip to New York City. So, I get to show off the new capabilities of the site a little early.
Finished another root canal today, which means I can stop worrying about that person’s tooth. Wrote up an extensive treatment plan. The school is generally horribly inefficient — though it can be a great place to learn if only you have the right instructors.
Now, I’m at home, waiting for Mykala to get here. She’s at work until 10pm. We don’t see one another nearly enough: maybe two hours on a good day. Last night, she fell asleep in my arms on the couch. That’s my absolute favorite.