out of the blue

I passed out today! Woohoo! It made me excited, and amused, and gave me some stuff to think about. Yeah. Probably not your typical reaction, but I'm not your typical person. So I decided not to pass out in a typical place. It went something like this…

My glasses have been giving me trouble for some time now. I snapped one of the earpieces off about 9 months ago, and they've never been the same. They break down often; I think they're enchanted so that the tape wears off at the most inopportune moment. I was finally able to take action against them by making a devil's contract with a lady certified as an optometrist. Dark magic, indeed.

I went there, suspecting trouble, but she was a most helpful lady with an interesting accent I can't place. It seemed she was going to help me after all. I sat down in her chair, looked through her arcane instruments, and allowed her to direct my actions. She peered carefully into my eyes through lenses, and flashed bright lights into them, and made notes on a small piece of parchment she held absently in one hand. Finally, she told me it was time to dilate them. What deviltry is this? I thought to myself, but still I submitted. She removed a cork from a cleverly crafted bottle that was kept unlabelled in a dark cabinet, buarded by enchantment so secure that not even a full-mage could break through them. She tilted the vial slowly, and let fall two silver drops glistening into each eye.

A strange sensation ran through my body, my eyes tried to blink, but felt strangely heavy. For a moment my mind whirled in meaningless circle. Then it faded away, and I thought everything was normal. After all, wouldn't one expect strange feelings and otherworldly humours when dealing with such magic as optometry? We went into the other room to discuss frames for my new pair of glasses. They would be carefully crafted with dwarf-forged hinges, and bespelled to resist scratches. The shape was being discussed, when the dizzy feeling returned. It began to get worse, quickly. What have you done to me! I cried to the sorceress, but she looked just as confused as I was. "I'm going to sit down", I told her fuzzily, and walked towards the chairs on the other side of the room. I was mostly there, when my mind left me, and I fell into a blurry oblivion.

What would have happened had I not taken my mother along with me, I don't know. All I can be sure of is that the optometrist didn't do untoward things to me. I returned to my body slowly, and my mind took a minute to grow accustomed to being back. I didn't realize anything was wrong for a minute, before the slow thought pushed itself into my head that I was lying down. "Now why is that", I wondered, and through a series of remembrances and deductions, I realized that I had passed out. Naturally, my first thoughts were, Cool! I had been wondering how that felt. My thoughts soon crept over to the sizeable lump developing on my head.

Apparently, from my mother's account, I had been walking towards the chair, when I suddenly veered off towards the right and crashed into a glass case full of glasses frames. They flew everywhere, and scattered about the room, as my body decided to react by falling backwards. In the process of falling, my head hit the corner of a small table for magazines, and I came to rest lying on my back, unconscious.

So, I was pretty much aware of my situation by now, but I was still a bit dazed, so when I sat up and saw the glasses on the floor, I wondered what they were doing there. I wasn't as surprised as I should have been, because I didn't make the connection between the glasses' unusual resting places and my own spectacular collision.

I soon was able to get up, and complete my bargain with the optometrist. All devil's bargains have a cost, and it seems I have paid mine. We left under cover of bright sunshine that burned my eyes. Apparently all of my enemies were still hiding in their dark caves, for we weren't attacked in my state of weakness. Soon I had the story out of my mother, and I expressed my gratitude at her assistance.

My glasses will soon be in their full power, and I will be possessed of unusual clarity of Sight. May the world fear.

Found a mention of this book on an author's weblog. It's called The King in the Window, it's by Adam Gopnik, and it has an awesome first sentence:

I promised that I'd get my pictures up pretty soon, and I may have implied that a story would come with them. You're going to have to wait for a story, though, because I'm don't want to take the time right now to tell you one. Just make do with the pictures!

I encountered this on Making Light. It's a brilliant puzzle, and it actually does have an answer. I wasn't able to figure it out before I gave up and looked at the answer (which can be found on the linked page). I'd like to know if anyone can figure it out without looking.

Puzzle: Person x and y have the following conversation:

x: I forgot how old your three kids are.
y: The product of their ages is 36.
x: I still don’t know their ages.
y: The sum of their ages is the same as your house number.
x: I still don’t know their ages.
y: The oldest one has red hair.
x: Now I know their ages!

What are the kids’ ages?

Please, no posting the answer. If someone wants the answer, they can look it up on the other site. Just tell me when (and if) you get it, or when (and if) you give up.

EDIT: I made a page showing how to come by the answer. I think it's pretty well written. You can find it here: ( A Puzzling Resolved )

No, I am not a "troll". Trolling is a type of fishing, which involves dangling a line behind you as you drive your boat slowly through the water. This means that I was strolling across the internet, and as I moved slowly, I got a few bites. Actually, in this case I was through a long list of feeds, but it amounts to the same thing. A couple of my catches I kept, because they were interesting enough that I was allowed by Law to keep them. I'll be doleing them out to you folks in a careful manner.

First of all, an interesting commentary by Jim Winter, one of John Scalzi's guest bloggers: Time for a Change in the Language

He takes a look at the problem in English grammar of having no singular genderless pronoun. A common way of getting around that is using "they", but many people complain that using a plural form is even worse than using a gender-specific form such as "he" (the accepted method). Something you may or may not have realized, he reminds us, is that "you" is actually a plural form. If it's acceptible to use "you", then why wouldn't it be acceptible to use "they"?

Second, on a completely different subject, there's an article on the New York Times about hybrid cars. It seems that the trend isn't going towards more efficient cars, but rather towards more power. The extra efficiency given by a hybrid system is going to faster acceleration rather than towards consuming less fuel. Luckily, there are still options that get in the vicinity of 70 miles per gallon, but they don't have the impressive 0 to 60 numbers.

Finally, BBC news presents an article that shows us a glimpse of what might come in the future of cities. We all know that urbanization is a huge trend, but did you realize that 70 million people every year move to the city from the country? The last section of the article, "Waste as Energy", is by far the most fascinating. Imagine a city with parks layed out so people can go from place to place without crossing traffic. Imagine a city that uses it's own waste (energy waste, organic waste, etc.) to power other things. Methane from sewage used for cooking. Lighting will be carefully planned so that artificial lights aren't necessary during the day. As a final touch, "the soil will be moved onto the roofs. The city will be inhabited by species and the top of the city will be green." Talk about coexisting with nature! This is a beautiful dream, and if it comes off as planned, I look forward to visiting it someday.

Hope you enjoy this issue of Smurf's Random Internet Extravaganza, With Complimentary Thought and Consideration

I'm back. I lived through the experience, and I have many tales to tell. Perhaps I will spice my entries for a while with anecdotes of the mysterious far-away land of the Maple Leaf. Or maybe you'll have to talk to me yourself and wheedle the stories out of my unwilling mouth.

I will soon put up lots of pictures.

Until then, anticipate away!

Yes, I get to leave the United States for a while. Leaving today, my family is driving up into Canada and partaking in the wonders that the glorious Rockies have to offer. Expect lots of pictures upon my return, for my camera has been restored to me. Hopefully I can steal the nice film camera for a few real pictures, too. I'm excited!

This means I won't be at frisbee, I won't be at church, I won't be online, I won't be on LiveJournal, deviantART, or anywhere else in the area for the unprecedented sum of 9 whole days! I'm off, travelling again!

I'm hoping to stop by and say "Hi" to Becky as we go through the area, but that depends on my parents' whims. So, wish me luck.

Lots of things have happened recently, haven't they? I've been enjoying frisbee, I did a lot of stuff with Soren and Nathan, I have a job, and now I'm going on a crazy family trip. Wow. And then there's all that crazy stuff going on in the world, what with the war and the bombings and the "Freedom Tower". Ugh. I did run across a poetic Times headline, which I appreciated:

"An Umbrella in a Shower of a Million Bits That Had Been a Bus."

Apparently this woman was just boarding the bus and bringing down her umbrella to fold it up, and the bomb exploded. I'm sure nothing deadly was heading her way, because the umbrella wouldn't have stopped it, but she says "I was shielding myself with my umbrella, and it all landed on my umbrella." At least she saved her clothes from being ruined.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again. Death is a natural part of life for humans, and hate probably isn't going to die out soon, but whereas death isn't necessarily a bad thing, hate is unarguably horrible.

The moral of the story? Love is good.

See you when I return.

I go out to the mailbox today to mail a letter to Becky, and I look inside the mailbox, and there are already things in it. Oh, blast, I think, assuming that the mail has already come today. I bring the mail in, and set it down, bringing the letter back to my room to wait tomorrow.

A little while later, I think more about the mail, and decide that it might have been the mail from saturday, since my parents weren't even here most of the day, so I go back out to put the letter in the mailbox so that it might get sent today, and guess what? There's more mail in the mailbox. The blasted mailman came by in the 15 minutes it took me to wonder whether he hadn't come yet.

I guess I'll send it tomorrow.

So, I had a really fun time this weekend. Two of my friends from high school that don't get back here very often came to visit, and I spent nearly all my time with some combination of them and other folks, or with my family. Crazy activities include:

• Walking to the Beaverton Mall to get sushi, but ending up getting thai food instead (Nathan)
• Having Soren over to talk for a while, then going to frisbee (Soren, Sarah)
• Afterwards going to see War of the Worlds (Soren, Aaron, Sarah)
• After that going to Soren's new house to sit by their waterfall-fountain thingy, and talk until 3 in the morning (Aaron, Soren)
• Sunday, we went to see the Blues Festival in downtown Portland (dad, mom, sister, Elana)
• We made it to sushi, and ate tasty things. The spicy tuna sushi was the best (Elana, Nathan, Cami)
• Going to Nathan's house and watching a funny show (Elana, Nathan, Cami, Aaron, Nathan's family)
• Going to Soren's house (Aaron, Elana, Soren)
• Next day, going to the beach, kayaking in the bay, and reading on the sand (mom, dad)
• When I got back, I went to Soren's again, to try and watch a movie (Aaron, Elana, Soren)
• Wandered around blockbuster, and finding a few movies that three of us would like to watch. We gave up after an hour or so! (Aaron, Elana, Soren)
• Going back to Soren's house, and doing random stuff until midnightish(Aaron, Elana, Soren)

Nathan went back Monday morning, and Soren goes back today morning. We'll see them again in August! :)

All in all, I had a lot of fun, but I spent way too much money.

The long:

I've been talking for a little while about my job, and I've actually told a few of you. Well, here are the details.

Last week, on Friday or Saturday, Laila IM'ed me with these simple words: "Do you want a summer job?" Now, these words aren't necessarily enough to make me drool by themselves, but the phrases with which she introduced her comment were such that, when taken in context with the statement which I have already related to you, they indeed DID make the saliva run unhindered from my mouth. They were, "You know html. And general stuffs about web sites." I would have been happy to get any job (I had been looking for one for a few weeks, and had become discouraged), but this was simply amazing. A job doing a lot of the stuff I would do with my summer anyway!

My enthusiasm was only heightened by further conversation. It seems that the person eager to hire me runs a home business, and has a couple things going on the side. So, it's a rather informal arrangement, which means no dress code, no complaints about my unwillingness to comb my hair, etc. Even better than working at a college was, in fact. PLUS, and this is the clincher, I get 30 dollars an hour. That's a wage that didn't even enter my imagination when I first began looking for a summer job. I got excited about the prospect of working at a BANK. You can only guess how happy I am now. A few other benefits include being able to work from home, and, when I'm not, I'm allowed to raid their fridge and get sodas/snacks. Now I haven't yet worked up the COURAGE to do that, but I am certain I will by the end of the summer.

I am happy. And very lucky.

Much thanks to Laila for having a mom. Much thanks to her mom for having a friend. Much thanks to her friend for hiring me!

And the short:

Job: Web design and tech support
Informal
Wage: $30 an hour
Hours: Varying — this week I worked 20 hours, but it should slow down
Informal
I can work from home on a lot of things
My employer is nice