I was thinking about eReaders the other day because Daddy asked me about it. I read Treasure Island recently on Mommy's iPad and so I was trying to think of what specifically I did'nt like about it, or why I preferred books.

1. The backlight kept turning off if I took too long to read the page.
- Kindles wouldn't have this problem.
- There's probably a way to set the iPad to not dim the screen or turn it off after inactivity.

2. You can only bookmark pages, not lines.
- Not really a huge deal, just convenient.
- Not sure how bookmarks work on Kindle.

3. If I accidentally rest my hand on the screen while reading it'll bring up the menu or randomly flip pages.
- Again probably not an issue on Kindle.

4. It's not as natural to hold up (maybe a size issue?).
- Could just get used to it over time. Or buy a stand, I don't know. I know Tanya said she prefers reading her Kindle in bed because it's lighter so it's easier to hold up than a book.

5. You have to flip the page more often.
- If you hold it upright, it only shows one page. If you hold it sideways, it shows a spread but the pages themselves are smaller.

And then I just like to riffle through pages, and I like the smell of books. But those aren't important to the function I guess.
I did like that since it was backlit I could read in bed with the lights off and then when I got tired I could just turn it off and go to sleep without getting off my loft bed to turn off the light. And it is also admittedly more space and weight efficient than a real book. Battery is not really an issue, even less so for Kindle I assume. But Kindles aren't backlit right?

So I think at the end of the day I'm still on the fence about eReaders. And when I'm on the fence, then I tend to stick with the status quo. -buries nose in a book- They really do smell lovely, don't they? :]

Moral letters to Lucilius/Letter 59
That which Fortune has not given, she cannot take away.

Moral letters to Lucilius/Letter 63
5. For, as my friend Attalus used to say: "The remembrance of lost friends is pleasant in the same way that certain fruits have an agreeably acid taste, or as in extremely old wines it is there very bitterness that pleases us. Indeed, after a certain lapse of time, every thought that gave pain is quenched, and the pleasure comes to us unalloyed." 6. If we take the word of Attalus for it, "to think of friends who are alive and well is like enjoying a meal of cakes and honey; the recollection of friends who have passed away gives a pleasure that is not without a touch of bitterness. Yet who will deny that even these things, which are bitter and contain an element of sourness, do serve to arouse the stomach?" 7. For my part, I do not agree with him. To me, the thought of my dead friends is sweet and appealing. For I have had them as if I should one day lose them; I have lost them as if I have them still.

Mom: Lady Gaga yao4 chang4 Farmville de ge1 a? [Rough translation: Lady Gaga is going to sing the Farmville song?]
Me: What the..? What are you reading? o.O
Mom: Yahoo! Finance.
Me: ???

Okay, so ever since I was a kid, whenever we got cut or scraped we would apply Neosporin. But I never appreciated the awesomeness that is Neosporin until today.

Two days ago I gave myself a coarse paper cut on a piece of cardstock/cardboard (it was the part of the packing liner of a box of reusable glass containers). Yesterday I had grown a nice scab (score one point for my increased ability to heal), but the area around the cut was red and kind of hurt (take the point away again).

Today, around 11a, Mom picked me up from the airport and I asked her if she had any Neosporin in her purse. She didn't, but she had those special Bandaids that have Neosporin on them or whatever. So I took one and put it on my finger just because I thought at least I wouldn't bang or scrape it against things and make it worse.

But around 9p I ripped the Bandaid off and holy crap most of the redness was gone, and the best part was that the area around the cut wasn't tender to the touch anymore. I could poke it and it didn't sting. Yay.

Okay yeah, boring story but that's all I have. Enjoy your day. =)

Remember when I was reading Seneca's letters? Yeah I'm trying to get back into that. I have to find the file, but I had some letters printed out that I hadn't read yet so I went through those first.

Here's what I picked out:

Letter 50:
"...the faults which you attribute to circumstances are in yourself."

Letter 52:
"...eloquence does them harm, making them enamoured of itself, and not of the subject."

Letter 53:
Did he really jump out of a boat? Seems like a dumb thing to do...

Letter 54:
"Death is non-existence..."
"...the wise man does nothing unwillingly. He escapes necessity, because he wills to do with necessity is about to force upon him."

Also, the letters are sounding to me more and more like scripture (in style and tone).

So one of my jobs here is that twice a week I'm supposed to refill the liquid nitrogen tanks on the SEM and TEM. We have one of those big tanks that's around five feet high, and I fill a smaller dewer a few times to fill the tanks on the machines. When the big tank is empty, Anja and I swap it out for a new one. This involves getting the tank on a big green dolly, going down the elevator to the first floor, going through two double doors, entering the loading room, and getting the new tank, then bringing it back to the lab. In the past, Anja has always done this, and I just open the doors for her so she can get the dolly with the big tank through without stopping. Carl and Anja made fun of the fact that the tank is bigger than I am and I might have trouble handling it.

But this morning, the tank was empty, and Anja had the day off, and I needed to fill the machines. Anja said before I came, she used to do the job herself. And she's not that much bigger than me, so I thought I could do it. Plus, Chris, who is probably somewhere between me and Anja, said he's done it before without trouble. So I set off to do the job.

Getting the empty tank down to the loading room was easy peasy. It went surprisingly smoothly actually. But I knew it was the full tank that would give me trouble if there was any trouble to have. I guess, in the end, everything was fine and I could do this on my own every time. Though it's true that it's much much easier to have someone open the doors for me. I got lucky two or three times and there was someone passing through the door I needed to get through who held it open for me.
The funniest bit was when I was trying to get the full tank on the dolly. So what you do is first you tilt the dolly forward to match the hook into the hole on the tank. Then you slide the dolly flush against the tank and use the entire dolly as a lever and tilt it back. Then you tilt it back a little more so the second set of wheels touches the ground so you can push it. So I hooked the tank on fine, but when I had to tilt it back, I couldn't get it to move. I put my foot on the little bar on the bottom of the dolly and pushed while pulling down on the handle with my arms, but it just wobbled a bit. I had to hop on the foot bar to get the full tank to tilt back. =P

I read the little label. I guess the tank is around 250 pounds. Is that when it's empty?
Anyway it was kind of fun, and I'm glad I got to do it once before I leave. =)

~whisperingsea~

"Peel onions. Pare potatoes and carrots. Cut meat into bite-size chunks. Drop into boiling water. Add sprinkle of parsley, sage, rosemary, simon and garfunkle."

I was listening to a song today. It's an instrumental piece called "Pachelbel Meets U2" (you can listen to it here if you're curious). The beginning is so clean and clear it just made me feel very... I don't know, introspective? I first heard the song when I was driving with Torrey somewhere. I can't remember where we were going, so my mind just put it into one of those random driving trips that Torrey took when he just felt like driving. I think there was something so comfortable about curling up in the passenger seat in the dark of night, with Torrey driving in circles, just listening to whatever music he put on. And I tried to remember how we became friends.

The weirdest thing about Torrey and I is that I can never remember how we became friends. It always feels like we met and became friends instantly. But how I really feel is that there's a chunk of my memory missing, the part where we got to know each other and became close enough to actually be called "friends."
I write a lot about my thoughts and feelings and people I've met and talked to in my journals. But I've gone back and can never really find much on Torrey until all of a sudden the pages explode with his name. With other people, even if I didn't write it down, I remember. But when I don't remember, then I go read back on what I wrote. But with Torrey I can't remember and I didn't write anything. It's very disconcerting.

I know that a lot of times I don't really know what's important to me until after the fact. I don't write things down because I don't really think they matter. But when I realize they do matter, then I dig around in my memory and start to record things that I didn't put down before. But there isn't anything like that for Torrey. There's a lot of me speculating on why I can't remember anything.

I only remember a few things. One is that René and I needed help on some Ph1a investigation (or possibly homework) and she knew Torrey was in the class, so we went to ask him for help. I'm pretty sure the only person from the other class I knew was Christine Tung (but that's a different story). I remember Torrey being awesome with the gyroscope, but I don't remember if that was the one where we met or one of the ones after.
Okay, I also remember working with him and Mike Easler on some homework for some core class, but I can't for the life of me remember what class. I just remember sitting on the floor and Mikey was sitting on a couch of some sort. And it was odd to me that Torrey had a couch in his room. Was this even freshman year, this memory? Seriously, it could have been at any point, because I didn't really become friends with Mikey until we took that environmental class together. And then right after that he left Tech...

I think with Torrey I always felt comfortable. And I think he made me feel calmer somehow, so I liked being around him. Is that weird? There could be a bunch of people around, and I guess there usually were, but I just wanted to sit near him because when I could see him then I knew who I was, and I belonged in a sense. And it didn't really matter if there were other people around talking and laughing. And it didn't really matter if he wasn't even paying any attention to me at all. Sort of like that feeling being in Mr. Haas's room. I always thought it was Haas himself, but I realized later that it was that whole environment of his classroom. I mean, he was a big part of it, but it wasn't just him. Because when I went to visit him in Santa Cruz, I didn't get that home feeling.

And I think I was content to just be in the background of Torrey's life. And actually I was the most comfortable there, in the background I mean. Maybe I just like being invisible. And then maybe we just got used to each other and we became friends. It didn't really bother me that he was so popular. I just realized, I hope I didn't cause trouble for him being around all the time.
But I remember one time, we went out to eat with some people. I don't remember who it was. Either Nick, or Akshay and Rob. Probably Akshay and Rob. I don't remember why I was there. Maybe I was just around when they came around and so I tagged along. But I think...at the time, I thought maybe it was because I was an easy target because I was the only girl. But now I think maybe one of them thought I might be feeling left out, so they started teasing me, and sort of ganging up on me a bit? And I remember feeling hurt that Torrey would do that to me. Maybe I got too used to being ignored.
Actually, I think Torrey pokes fun at me a lot, but when it's just us two it doesn't bother me. But for some reason that night it really bothered me. And I don't know, I felt a bit betrayed. It's funny, I haven't thought about this episode in ages.

I think, actually, I may have asked Torrey once if I gave the wrong impression to girls that he was interested in. But I didn't honestly think it was a problem because most of the time when I went by his room there were already other people there. And Kita and Cece were both there a ton. Probably even more than I was actually, but I don't really know.

And we don't really have similar interests, you know? I don't know if we have a lot in common. Maybe there's something about him that reminded me. I don't know. When you first meet him maybe he seems like a quiet personality. But then sometimes you see this odd bravado type air. He's a lesson in opposites, that boy. Maybe I was intrigued by how he could change. Like a chameleon. I guess sometimes I feel like I'm that way too. Maybe I felt like I had found a fellow chameleon. -laughs-

It's been a long time since I've felt the need to write something just to try to collect my thoughts. It feels good. Not that I think I've accomplished anything, but I do feel a bit more collected.

Maybe I'll go listen to that song again...

~whisperingsea~