counting compulsion

One thing that is very very strange about me is my tendency to count things. And by things, I mean everything. I think that this started with me counting the number of mini marshmallows in my hot chocolate, which my mom thought was cute. I just liked to have a prime number of marshmallows, so sue me! If I had seven to start with, I couldn't add just one or two more, I had to add four to get it to a nice (even?) eleven. It was just a little bit of fun, and a little puzzle to keep me entertained as I kept myself warm on a snow day.

But then it expanded. I had to have five gummy bears in my oatmeal (one of each color except orange, and two of the red ones because they taste the best). More than that would have been too much sugar to the small amount of oatmeal that I eat. I have to count the M&Ms that I eat and I like to have an order for the colors that I eat them in - though I know a lot of people who do this, especially since we played with them in AP Stat, so I guess I'm not that weird.

I also have to count the number of ceiling lights in a room and when it's not prime, I have to reclassify the way that I'm counting them (perhaps that whole chandelier should count as one light?) until I get a number that I like. If it's not prime, then it's better to be even than to be odd. I hate odd yet not prime numbers because they can be so deceiving. One of the weirdest things that I do is count the number of window panes at church that are "solid"...the ones that you can only see the sky through, in other words, which have no hint of plant life edging into them. When this number is not prime I don't worry too much, because I can just sit down and then the number will change! But if this is also not prime I decide not to sit in that seat again.

The last weird thing that I do is count people. I count the people in a scene on a tv show - and if that's not prime, sometimes I count me, and sometimes I count the people in the room with me, to try to get a good number. It's really fun because it's always changing and I can always count in different ways with different meanings to get a number I like. For example, there may be seven people to consider - two in the room with me watching the tv and five on screen, but then only one will flash on screen so then I get to count three people visible to me and seven people on my mind and five on the set and three in my room (two other than me). WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME THIS IS SO MUCH WORK. But I can't stop. It also applies when there are multiple people in different rooms in a house or whatever...I know that there are, say, twelve total people in our group but five are in the room with me, so there must be six people in the other room, but when I walk into that room I have to count to make sure. Maybe part of this is to do with me not wanting to lose track of any particular person? But I just have to know how many people are in any given place. And when I get really bored I start doing the statistics of male to female ratios, different hair color classifications, people older than me and people younger than me...people are so much work to be around. Maybe this is why I'm an introvert.

At least I don't count my steps...usually. It really bothers me when there are different numbers of stairs in each stairway in the same building so I've found it's best just to never count and never get weirded out by it (like in Landrum, or my house where one set has 12 and the other 13...this makes literally no sense to me considering that I assume our ceilings to all be the same height). Like I said, it's best to ignore these things and not find new things to count...

bad dreams

I don't really have good dreams. All of my dreams are on some level terrifying, mostly because they are not realistic. They twist parts of reality into this awful place where time doesn't matter and random people from my past somehow all know each other. The only part I remember from the night before last's 10-hour adventure (well, I'm sure I wasn't dreaming the entire time, but it felt really long) was that I was taking time-series econometrics and I was so confused, but my friends who had just taken mathematical econ said that the stuff we were learning was easy. I was so mad at myself for not taking this other seemingly unnecessary class. It was terrible. (Just like regular econometrics.) This dream was clearly inspired by real-life events, since this week I was thinking about taking another econometrics class (which is like math/statistics/economics) and since my friends are taking math econ together next semester which I'm apparently subconsciously jealous of (except not at all; I'm already taking two math classes and two econ classes).

Since college started I've been remembering a lot more of my dreams. I think that anything that disrupts my pattern of sleep causes me to remember a higher percentage of dreams - and college is nothing but a disruption of sleep! You stay up late because you know you don't have to wake up at 6 am anymore, but then you still have to wake up at 8 or 9 so you're running on maybe four hours of sleep. I pretty consistently got seven hours last semester, which was decent all considered, but not enough. I can clearly function doing that, but I will not be in a good mood about it. So of course after morning class but before mid-morning class I take a nap. And after lunch the best way to spend some free time is napping off that Sadler salad and fries. And I have gotten some crazy dreams during those afternoon naps. One dream last fall was so terrifying that I slept through most of lunch and ran to catch my friends finishing their meal - but it was pretty lolzy, so they forgave me and sat with me.

One of the good things about having a roommate is that when you wake up and want to tell someone your dream before you forget it, they are pretty much stuck there to listen to you. I told Abby about a lot of my weird dreams last year, and this is why I still remember some of them. One was about zombies in a shopping mall/school except it was also a tv show and my aunt was there and Katie was like the zombie expert, but she didn't tell me there were zombies, just that we had to leave before 10:56 (which was when the zombies woke up) but we had to finish hat-shopping and exploring before we could return to safety through a giant iron door. I was so mad at Katie when I woke up, because we just barely escaped being nommed.

This week I had a dream that I was going to some sort of water park and we all had to stand in these long lines, and then all of a sudden I was in a diner talking to a friend who told me she had been lying about her job for years. I didn't remember much of the dream except being upset with her, and I remembered more of it as I got on facebook in the morning and saw people's names who I knew were also at the water park. Facebook is actually a very handy tool for dream-recollection because just seeing a face is all it takes to remember a large portion of a dream. It makes me wonder how many dreams I forget or don't get to recall because I don't have enough contact with the people in them...

Sometimes I do have lucid dreams, and those are the best. They occur when I start to wake up, realize that I've been dreaming, then decide that I need to go back to sleep to finish the dream properly since I'm clearly in the middle of something big. Sometimes this doesn't work and I'm stuck being awake and knowing that a giant flock of butterflies are in the middle of attacking me in some parallel universe, which is the worst, which is why people shouldn't wake other people up (even unintentionally by slamming doors, say). But anyway, sometimes I can be in the middle of a bad dream and then go back into it and make it awesome. It can be really frustrating because the more things I make better, the more things seem to go wrong, and I can't just control every possible outcome - but it's kind of nice to play out what I would like to happen, which is sometimes all that a lucid dream is.

And now for the most interesting part...last night's dream! I made a specific attempt to remember everything about this dream because I wrote most of this yesterday but didn't feel like I had a bad enough dream to write about. My dreams responded by being totally whack, which I greatly appreciated and wasn't scared by at all. Enjoy!

First, somewhere between 2:30 and 8:30 I had some fairly normal dreams. I was first reading/watching Harry Potter and Ron was really mad at Harry for some reason (typical), but he was passing these notes and things to Hermione, which Harry intercepted and they turned out to be a random stack of pictures of Harry (they were the Muggle sort, they didn't move). He found this really strange but he couldn't ask Ron about this because they were fighting. This obviously has direct correlation with my conscious thoughts because I'm in the middle of reading Goblet of Fire, in which Harry and Ron don't speak for like two months.

Then all of a sudden I was watching Friends, which also fits in with my life because when I'm too tired to read I'll just watch Friends (I'm on season 7!). Rachel was sleeping and Phoebe was trying to trick her into telling her how many surgeries she had had while she was still asleep, and when she answered (six), Phoebe was super mad at her. Ross kept lying and saying he only had one surgery, but he had two because he used to have two brains. This was a little bit strange to me since Friends doesn't usually go into the abnormal, but I was ok with it. Then Rachel woke up and apologized to Phoebe and said she didn't want to ruin her engagement because somehow lying about this (she had previously said two) proved that all people lie. Chandler was doing something interesting but I forget it now. Then there was another episode, where we meet Phoebe's fiance who likes to cook naked, except it's a tv show so you don't see anything but his upper half. Rachel lives with Phoebe so she finds this really uncomfortable. Finally she confronts Phoebe and the resolution is that they all agree to wear clothes, but Rachel has to clean up every time he cooks...so he and Phoebe make a salad and then throw all the ingredients everywhere as they're eating it haha. Then there was a third episode about how the fiance somehow sets their apartment on fire, but I didn't find it interesting so I stopped watching slash woke up.

Then there were the interesting dreams between 8:30 and 12. I was lost in the streets and I was trying to find Aromas. I kept walking into random stores and trying to find someone who could give me directions, but everyone said confusion corner was in a different direction than it actually was. I finally found it and then I was there with a bunch of people, but it wasn't the Aromas I know and love...we were in a back room with a giant bunk bed that was super comfy, and it was raining outside so we didn't want to leave. But this girl kept coming up to us from outside and telling us that we had to leave because that was her hang out place. I was not happy with her at all. But we put on our shoes and left, and all split into different groups. Marigene and I were going to the beach but we were wearing normal clothes and we didn't pack anything special because we were planning on going to Jamestown beach just to sit there, but then we decided to go to the ocean, so we kept driving over these bridges and islands. Finally we got there and it was this really fantastic beach with a ton of white sand and people our age. This guy kept wanting to hang out with us, but we were like no thanks. Then Marigene pulled out two towels, but one of them was for her and one of them was our dry towel, so I just sat on a tarp that was underneath both of us. She also had snuck along a bathing suit, and all I had were the clothes I was wearing and a ski suit, so she told me to put on the ski suit so I would wear my dress later. This girl told us to get in the water with her so we did.

It was super warm and I was in my matching dark blue ski pants and jacket, so I didn't really get wet. The water was like a swimming pool, and the bottom literally looked like a swimming pool, but the girl told us it was the ocean. It was very clear and not salty but I just assumed that the water hadn't gone through enough soil to collect any salt. So then this other smaller girl and I were on the lefthand edge, where the bottom started, and I could see where the bottom of the pool was and I stood on it. She and I walked on a slope until we were past Marigene and the tall girl and then we were in this sunken part where we could stand because the water level also sunk. Then all of us were there and we were exploring. When we wanted to go back, I had to go first, but instead of the inclining ramp to walk up, I had to climb this wall of ice, which was perfect considering I was wearing my ski clothes. But it was difficult, and halfway through climbing it, I was like hey wait a minute guys wasn't this a ramp before? And then it was a ramp again. HOWEVER, it was still made of ice and it was very slippery. It also could disconnect from the bottom, and then it was a ragged ice wall again. So I was about to go up it when a wolfman (I told you it was a weird dream) came down and was like, this is what you get! And he took away the ramp and I ran and grabbed the end of it. But he and I had a history of him threatening my family, and he looked like Kris except he had brown hair and a beard and he was tall and had wolverine claws. And he was like, is this what you want? And so I had to drop the ramp down a ravine and we were stuck in there.

FLASH SIDEWAYS to the spider-man movies, except there are four of them and they are not at all like the spider-man movies. I'm not really in any of them, but I know that this wolfman is which is why I'm watching them - kind of in the exact same moment when I'm deciding to drop the ramp, this is like my thought justification. Also the wolfman has these giant claws, which should be enough reason to do what he says. Whatever. So in these movies, I'm trying to figure out which scene belongs in each movie. I know that the fourth one got bad reviews and it's about to be shown on tv even though it just came out this year, and spider-man is super old in it. His assistant/sidekick is this blonde girl with a ponytail who totes around a little kid, who I assume is going to be the next spider-man's love interest because spidey has a grandson who's totes (haha) going to be the next spider-man. Anyway there are all of these villains and I have to remember which belongs where in the timeline of spider-man so I can figure out why the wolfman is so mad at me (because apparently movie villains are accurately depicted?). There's this giant earthwormy guy in the fourth one who is creepy but spider-man defeats him. The blonde girl gets a phone call and we see a kitchen scene where the cooks have to create non-sushi sushi for the kid's table for one of Peter Parker's special dinners, and I know first of all that this sushi is poisoned and second of all that they used the same set for a hospital scene in another one of the movies but I can't remember which one. There are a bunch of other parts but then I just start watching the last one, with the grandson who's just a baby, and there's all of this disease and mystery and he's going to die, and I don't know who the blonde lady is because she was supposed to be the love interest of Peter Parker except he's like forty years older than her, and I'm wondering why Tobey Maguire isn't here because then it would make sense (except the grandson part), so I'm left to assume that he got hit with some sort of aging potion while his girlfriend stayed frozen in time - but he had to marry someone else because how else would he have a huge estate and family?

By this time I had forgotten about the wolfman, but right before I woke up I remembered him again and there was something about how I had helped him before and now he assumed I would always help him, or else he would just kill me. But since we were stuck in what was now an ice cavern in supposedly the Atlantic ocean, I didn't see how that was not killing me. And then I woke up.

acronyms I have learned from my dad

My dad has taught me a lot of important stuff over the years, like how to be resourceful in finding food in the kitchen without my mom around (no dinner? a spoonful of peanut butter and some string cheese will tide you over until someone can make you a real meal). He basically taught me physics because I wouldn't have understood a single thing in that class without his 1970s textbook recall. As a small child, he taught me not to be afraid of lightning/thunder by explaining what it actually is (and not just angels bowling). And growing up, he has shown how cool it is to have an excellent memory - I am always impressed when he tells me a specific story about his elementary school teacher or tells me about a random science fiction book he read in middle school, but it's also kind of awesome when he randomly quotes Seinfeld or the Simpsons after not watching the shows for like five years. He's also taught me serious stuff, like morals and the importance of hard work and how to approach my faith intellectually. Cool cool, but this post is not about serious stuff...at least not that kind of serious.

Recently, he has decided that I am old enough to talk about very technical things with me. His job title is project manager (I learned this for college applications) but as far as I can tell he is a satellite engineer. Although he has always explained things to me that are far above my comprehension, in the past few years it has become way more complex. Instead of talking about relatively simple stuff like how slide rules really work and what trunking is (like the landline telephone infrastructure along with the whole antitrust lawsuit resulting in so much phone competition), he has gone off into the world of frequencies and bandwidths and other things I couldn't repeat.

A typical conversation will start on a normal subject, like me wondering what 4G really means (what delineates it and 3G) or him commenting on a satellite launch. Ok, these may not be normal conversations with your dad, but they seem innocuous enough to me. He will start to get to the bottom line, but he will say some word and I will nod and then he will note the expression on my face and ask if I actually know what that word/acronym means. Usually it's something that I've heard him say before but that I couldn't use on a fill-in-the-blank test...recently, for example, it's been FFRDC, but he has told me what this stands for about five times now so it's not a great example (because he has talked about it so much I now know it, but most acronyms I forget because there are so many). In the process of explaining this first subject, we will hit another roadblock and he will have to explain another term. These explanations last about ten minutes apiece, so it is best to pay attention so he won't have to explain them again in a week. Finally he will get back to the original answer to my question which can usually be summed up in about one sentence using words that I know...but I suppose it would be like asking for an answer about the economy: there may have an answer to what you're looking for but it will be much longer than you want/need, and when you boil away the econ-speak it is usually, "It depends."

Fyi, 4G has not officially been defined by the Powers That Be, though there should be an agreement on what it exactly entails later this year. Basically, it's just way more advanced than 3G in terms of internet accessibility and capabilities which I could describe a little bit more, but not much.

Anyway, some more cool acronyms to throw around as if you knew what they meant: SIPRnet, DARPA (they created the ARPANET, a prelude to the internet), SHAPE, TEM vs. ICWG (I think?), and obvious ones like the NRO or DISA. Of course, I can only recall these ones because he literally talked about all of them today, and if you accumulated all of our conversations from the past twenty years (I imagine he told me about these things before I could talk...), there would probably be a lexicon of several hundred acronyms and words that only engineers understand. I have heard more about circuits and wave propagation and encryption than I thought was possible or relevant. It seems like the world runs on a lot of very technical things understood by a small number of people, which is cool because email and other things just wouldn't work on their own if we didn't have some really ingenious people to figure out public and private key authentication. So I guess all this is to say that physics does matter more than they say in high school, and my dad is a super genius by all measures that matter to me.

anger

First, I am not angry at anyone right now nor have I been angry recently...this post was prompted by my reading and some random thoughts. It's super long, but there are pictures to make it easier to read!

Sometimes I am very good at not getting angry. If something is annoying or disappointing, I can be very good at brushing it off and looking for silver linings. If all else fails and you can't think of anything good about a situation, at the very least it's teaching you to be a more patient, forgiving, less self-absorbed person. But sometimes I am very very bad at avoiding anger. Sometimes a situation or word or thought will get under my skin and I can't stop myself from rage (not the Pokemon attack, or really any kind of attack, just the emotion). Side note, according to wikipedia where I do all of my research, the anger spectrum goes from annoyance to rage! I am so good at knowing these things before I even look them up. Anyway. Rage is not good. It is not very rational, though it is often rationalized. It usually ends up with me slamming a door on someone or storming away from a situation and I let myself be in a rage for about two minutes before I decide that I'm being stupid and then I have to apologize. (But instead of apologizing I'll just do homework for a while to cool off.)

Gyarados Dragon Raging is almost as terrifying as a velociraptor attack.

So I was thinking, if this is a natural human emotion, is it ok to be angry? Is it worse to experience rage than annoyance? Can you really control these things, and should you aim to minimize them, or should you let them go unchecked, or should you experience them but be hyperaware of your interactions with others? I don't know all of the answers to these questions, but I have some thoughts (surprise!).

First, I think it's ok to be angry. I think it's good. I don't think it's part of the original plan for humans - if we were perfect and hadn't sinned, there wouldn't be a need for anger, would there? There wouldn't be anything to get angry about. But God gets angry, and jealous, and lots of things that we think are bad. The motivation is what matters. Anger exists just like hunger or pain to tell us something is wrong - it can be an indication of social injustice, which is totally acceptable and good to be angry about, or it can show us our own selfishness which is a way less pleasant process to go through (not that fighting injustice is all sunshine and daisies, but it's always a bummer to realize that you aren't that amazing).

As for the annoyance to rage spectrum...obviously rage is way less controlled and a much bigger deal than annoyance. But both of them serve the same purpose. I don't think it's a good thing to ever experience rage, but sometimes it's worth getting upset over a big deal thing. Not everything is nbd, even though I may say it at totally inappropriate times ("but who cares? nbd, I want mooooooore!").


Related side note...hipsters are cool and all, but anger for anger's sake is bad. Angst just to be different is bad and shouldn't be directed at people who do or don't deserve it. Fake angst, however, I find hilarious! Hipster Ariel aside, I think storming out of rooms is probably immature and I should probably just deal with all kinds of anger by addressing the source (or, you know, biting the bullet and finding a silver lining...btw, why Wormtail's silver hand didn't come into play in killing Lupin I still don't get. SO MANY RED HERRINGS.).

More random pop culture/nerdiness aside, my thoughts on anger aren't entirely unfounded and nor is my pondering really that random. I just reread part of Jonah, the guy in the Bible who gets swallowed by a great big fish because he was running away from God's call to preach to the wicked people of Nineveh. After he gets spit up by the whale, he decides to actually listen to God and travels to Nineveh and preaches to them, and then they repent and God has compassion, sparing them from threatened destruction.

But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord, "Isn't this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live."

But the Lord replied, "Is it right for you to be angry?" (Jonah 4:1-4, NIV)

There's more to the story, but this is where I got stuck. So God gets angry, but he doesn't rush into it (he doesn't rage). The most important part of this is his love. He is just, that's true, but he gave the Ninevites who were crazy awful a chance to repent, and then he didn't destroy them even though he knew that their change of heart wasn't going to last long. This goes along with the turning the other cheek idea - when someone hurts us, we don't have to make ourselves into victims but we do have the opportunity and responsibility to show them love. Another thing of note which I totally blew past as a child learning this story...Jonah realized that God would forgive the Ninevites. He was afraid that they would repent and they wouldn't get "what they deserved" and that's why he didn't want to go and preach to them. Sometimes I start to feel like this. There are some people, I think, who are so far gone that they can't be saved. Some people are so self-righteous, so self-absorbed, so self-exalting that they can't possibly submit to God, and God would be so dumb to accept their confessions. When I start to think this, it only takes me a minute to realize that I am so self-righteous that God shouldn't love me, and shouldn't give me a second and third and seventy-five thousandth chance. But he does. If he can love me, he can love anyone. And he does.

The main part of this which blows me away is the Lord's question to Jonah. If I were God (this is a common theme for me it seems, but I think about it a lot in terms of how far I fall short of being perfect), I would be focusing on the fact that Jonah, who I just saved from death by storm/drowning/giant fish, who then realized that I was right and followed my command, that same Jonah was saying oh hey you're awesome and all...but I don't like how fair you are, and that unfairness is worse than death. He is so mad that God is merciful that he doesn't even want to live anymore. What. What is wrong with you Jonah? He is so mad that God is showing mercy to people who were wicked...right after God showed him mercy. He doesn't think that life is fair.

Oh man. I always think life is unfair. It's not fair that I can work harder than someone else and get the same grade as them. It's not fair that I can try to serve with as good an attitude as I can muster, and forgive when I don't want to, and love when I certainly could be indifferent, and God loves me no more than any other person. It's not fair that I didn't get a job when I clearly deserved it. It's not fair that my room has the silverfish infestation. Do I have a right to be angry about any of this? No. In fact, it would be way more unfair/uncool if we got grades for effort because then I wouldn't spend time with any of my friends or I would just fail all of my classes. If we were judged on our merit, God couldn't even look at me, much less love me. Even if I still think it's unfair that I have to deal with some more minor annoyances, my life is pretty easy. And if it wasn't, I would have absolutely no right to be angry about it. I might still be. So what should I do? Ask for forgiveness. Unrighteous anger, like anything unrighteous, is sinful: it is wrong, on an absolute scale of morality, and there is no excuse to make it right. There is only confession and repentance. I find this very very very difficult. I do not like it.

Ok, just one last thought, stay with me for a minute and take a look at the second half of this passage.

Jonah went out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city.Then the Lord God provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the vine. But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the vine so that it withered. When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah's head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, "It would be better for me to die than to live."

But God said to Jonah, "Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?"

"I do," he said. "I am angry enough to die."

But the Lord said, "You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?" (Jonah 4:5-10)

It is very easy for me to look at this passage and think Jonah is being foolish. Like, really, he is angry enough to die? He sounds like a fifteen year old. He needs to grow up, like, a LOT. But the vine was a very good way for the Lord to demonstrate his point. We get a lot of blessings that we ignore or take credit for ourselves. And when one minor thing goes wrong, it gets blown out of proportion like crazy (RAGE). When I get a bad grade, it ruins my day. I can't think about anything else and I start reevaluating my life and my worth. I know that this is really really dumb, but I start to wonder what's wrong with me and why I thought I should take that class anyway. Then I get mad at my professor and the other students who are doing well, then I go back to being mad at myself, and it is just awful. But grades are like that vine - nice things, sure, but not necessary for life and definitely something that I can't earn on my own. Wait, Marisa, you're thinking now - you definitely earn grades. Ok, yes, I decide to sit down and study and then I get a grade back after a test, but the fact that I can read and write because I had parents who taught me and the fact that I'm breathing is nothing to do with anything I control. And I have no right to be angry about my bad grades. I need to take a breath, brush them off as annoyances, resolve to study earlier and not let them put me in a bad enough mood to move me into rage.

Especially not a CAPSLOCKE RAGE.

P.S. "Don't tell me what I can't do!"? Locke is sooooo self-centered. His anger could be the subject of an equally long post, which would come to the same conclusion as this one: anger is sometimes good, is a gift to prompt good change, is not appropriate at all times and is only right when it's not unrighteous (? this seems very obvious but it's basically what I argued). And also, Locke makes great angry faces.

summer playlist

I have a problem regarding music...when I pull up iTunes I will listen to music essentially nonstop for as long as I am at my computer, which can be several hours (because I actually do live a sedentary life). But as soon as my computer restarts on its own because it's a dell, I will forget that music exists. This can go for up to five months. It is a huge problem because there is such a contrast in obsessive music consumption and utter silence, and there is no jarring transition between them...I don't even notice it until I've started listening to music again. Generally I will remember that music exists during finals, and I ease into listening to it again by going through all of my Death Cab once or twice. I just find this all very strange and I don't understand myself at all, ever.

Anyway, I'm going to try to listen to some more music this summer. I'm not really looking for new music since I already have a lot that I don't listen to very regularly, but I guess I'll be expanding my iTunes collection as necessary. Here's the beginning of my summer playlist slash my recommendations for your listening pleasure...a lot of them are under-appreciated by me according to my play counts, but they're all solid songs. Also I don't recommend listening to them in alphabetical order, but that's the way that I chose to list them anyway. There is about a 30% chance I will be listening to one of these songs as I write any given blog post this summer.

• Rolling in the Deep by Adele, because there is literally no escaping this song
• Fake Tales of San Francisco by the Arctic Monkeys
• Another Sunny Day and Funny Little Frog by Belle and Sebastian
• Gamble Everything for Love by Ben Lee
• Three Rounds and a Sound by Blind Pilot
• The Boxer and Life Less Ordinary by Carbon Leaf because I listened to so much of them before the concert that I am now officially obsessed
• Show Me What I'm Looking For by Carolina Liar
• Letters From the Sky by Civil Twilight
• Cemeteries of London and Strawberry Swing by Coldplay
• Overkill by Colin Hay
• Dreaming of You by The Coral
• Grapevine Fires, Summer Skin and Stay Young, Go Dancing by Death Cab for Cutie
• My Girl the Horse by Fences
• No Such Thing by John Mayer because I just realized what this song is about even though I heard it a lot during senior year and ironically didn't understand it
• Notion by Kings of Leon
• Speechless by Lady Gaga
• Goodnight Goodnight by Maroon 5
• Daylight by Matt and Kim
• Animal by Miike Snow
• Missed the Boat by Modest Mouse
• Animal by Neon Trees (also, they do a good cover of Justin Bieber's Baby, though the original is also a good addition to any playlist)
• Mercy and All We Are by OneRepublic
• Take Me Away by Plain White T's
• Hero by Regina Spektor
• The Journey by Sleeperstar
• Me and the Moon by Something Corporate (it's kind of strange, maybe go for one of their more popular songs)
• That Dress Looks Nice On You by Sufjan Stevens
• She's So High by Tal Bachman
• Mine by Taylor Swift (of course :))
• California Stars by Wilco

Also, shout out to Muna for some of these awesome recommendations...I'm not nearly as good at finding music as she is!

thunderstorm thoughts

It is thunderstorming and Barky is taking refuge in my window. He is so cute. I don't blame him, but I hope he's not getting too hungry since he also slept all day. I would be so mad that it was raining if I had to wait for the night to eat and then was afraid of my wings getting soaked and weighing me down. I hope it stops raining and he gets some yummy insects.

Also, I had to drive home in the rain tonight. It didn't rain all day and then it started lightning-ing while I was like twenty three minutes away from home at bible study. It at first seemed like heat lightning, but by the time I got on the highway it was pouring in sheets/buckets/all over a huge amount of water. It was almost impossible to see and I was behind a big truck for a while, but when the lane next to me cleared up I risked a merge and then I could see a little bit better. But still, I was going like 35 on 66 which is approximately 32 miles less than I am used to (unless it's in the afternoon, in which case it's about 18 miles faster!).

barky the bat

Yesterday I posted a photo on facebook of a bat that I found in my window. Little did you know that I spent the rest of the afternoon keeping an eye on him (and reading in between taking pictures of him). He is very small and according to my family he looks an awful lot like the same bat that was spotted in my other window about a month ago. Once night fell, they closed the second glass window and he didn't return, but they didn't close all of the second glass windows (there are three windows in my room). I wasn't that freaked out to see him yesterday, mostly because I knew he couldn't get inside my room, and also because I had been curious about having a bat in my window ever since my family had told me the story of the first one. I have decided that bats are basically flying mice and are equivalently cute (they are just about the same size!). If you tap on the glass he'll wiggle his ears.

Anyway, I wanted to name him Batty but my sister said that was a fairly predictable name, and liking to be contrarian I settled on Barky. Barky has made literally no noises that my ears can detect. He flew away to stalk night insects sometime after 10:30 pm when I left my room to watch some tv and he was safely there, but before 1:30 am when I went to sleep. Amazingly I have found a creature which sleeps more than me, because I didn't get a chance to close the window while he was away. When I went to sleep last night I didn't have enough energy to deal with closing a window - especially because this would make my room vulnerable to an infiltration of bugs, which I just didn't want. My brother was in the basement so if I happened to get a bunch of bugs or even Barky in my room, I wouldn't have had a place of refuge. So when I woke up this morning (I use that word loosely, since it really was 11:30), I wasn't that surprised to see that Barky had returned. I snapped some more pictures. Now I have to wait until the middle of the night again to close him out. It will be a little bit sad, since he would make a pretty cute and harmless pet behind glass, but I recognize that, as Hagrid once rather ironically said, people can be stupid about their pets. I don't want to be stupid. I just want Barky to have a nice insect-eating life.

Since I took 71 pictures of Barky (how on earth did that happen why do I take so many pictures I don't even), here are some of my favorites!

He is so cute.

Obviously he stayed through sunset, but surprisingly he stuck around until well after that too - until after 10:30! What a champ.

He is kind of like a vampire.

A very, very small vampire.