Tvindy

Hobbits are Real!

Lately it seems I've had no shortage of blogging material. One very exciting development in my life is the birthday present my parents are sending me. (I'll be blogging about that later.) Even better news is the fact that michael is alive and blogging. But tonight I want to interrupt my regularly scheduled mediocre blogging (not that Michael is in any way mediocre), so I can be one of the first to talk about this, which I learned about from Receptionista.

Here's the gist of it. Thousands of years ago there were these teeny-tiny three-foot-high people who lived on an island. They were very smart, since they made tools and apparently some kind of boat to get out there in the first place. They lived in a magical world that they shared with tiny elephants and giant rats and fearsome komodo dragons. (Can you imagine being that tiny and sharing and island with these guys?) And then one day a volcano erupted, and they all died. (Well, at least we assume they all died.)

Young Society Matrons

In my language teaching course, the prof was showing us transparencies of old teaching materials. This is a page from a very old Spanish language textbook. I thought the caption under the photo was particulary interesting. Unfortunately, all of the matrons' faces are off-screen.

Me No Tired

I got up sometime yesterday morning and haven't slept since. The fact that I am still awake and alert is kind of alarming. But I have been remarkably productive. Many hours were spent last night working on a take-home final. I can't believe I did almost all of that writing in one night. Well, I'm in no condition to blog, so I'll just let you read the answers I wrote to the exam. The instructions, and my diagram for question B1 can be seen by clicking on the thumbnails. The tome I wrote last night can be accessed here. Enjoy!

Jack O'Lantern

Today my dorm had pumpkin carving. This one is mine. (I assume everyone recognizes Strong Bad.)

Oh, I almost forgot. The entry I read the day before yesterday is from this post by Wil. I'm surprised no one identified it, since I have at least two readers who have blogrolled him. If you haven't already, I strongly recommend you check out his blog.

Ancient Comments

So far no one has even ventured a guess as to the identity of the blogger whose post I read yesterday. I'll leave it a mystery for one more day to give everyone a chance to hear it.

In the meantime, here's an idea I've been toying with for some time, and only now am getting around to actually doing. I sifted through my old comments and found the first ten commenters who meet two criteria:

--They can't have already have been blogrolled by me. I've made it a point from the start to only blogroll people who stick around for awhile. There are so many people who show up and start leaving comments for a few days only to disappear when I don't immediately blogroll them.

--Their blog or website has to still be active. Remarkably, almost all of the people who didn't stick around long enough for me to blogroll no longer have active sites. Those who did stick around and got blogrolled are almost all still active. The only exceptions are mg, who hasn't updated since June, and Courtney, who appears to have deleted her blog but not her account. (Too bad, since she is the only person I've ever known who shares my prosopagnosia affliction.) I certainly hope no one else is planning on closing shop any time soon.

So who does that leave? The first ten commenters who meet both criteria are one-time visitors who somehow stumbled onto my site, left a brief comment, and never returned. And not all their sites are blogs. The last one on the list may look like the result of a spam comment, but I'm pretty sure it was genuine, given the context.

So without further ado (I do have a tendency to put way too much ado into my posts, don't I?), here they are:

• Michele -- 10.12.3
• sushiesque -- 10.16.3
• john cass -- 10.23.3
• bayona -- 10.28.3
• Coup de Vent -- 11.9.3
• Matt -- 11.12.3
• Phil -- 11.14.3
• Crawford Kilian -- 11.14.3
• Jim Moore -- 11.21.3
• lizz -- 11.22.3

Two in a Row

Yesterday's audio entry was correctly identified by Bakerina as a reading of this post by Oblivio. That man can write! But not everything he says is true, at least not in a literal sense. Years later, he wrote this entry in which he explains how the earlier entry came about. I originally discovered Oblivio through a link on Snowball's site.

Okay, now that my interest in audio blogging has been rekindled, let's try another. Can anyone tell me who wrote this?

The Color of Intimidation

Remember Audblogging?

I haven't engaged in the audio blogging meme in quite some time. For those of you who have forgotten (or never knew) what it is, here are the guidlines:

Go to Audblog and set up a free trial account. This will allow you to make one free one-minute audio post to your blog (or you can sign up for the service for 13 four-minute posts a month). Select an interesting entry from another blog. It can't be something that was written by you or which is quoted in your blog. There is no limit on the age of the entry, but it must be from a blog that is still online and active. The entry you select must be short enough for you to be able to read it out loud in its entirety in the allotted one minute (or four if you signed up for the service). Make an audio post of yourself reading the selected entry. Do not make any additional comments. The only words you speak are those written in the entry. (Funny voices and sound effects are still allowed.) Do not reveal the source blog. If there is identifying information in the entry (like the name of the blog or blogger), omit or disguise it. Also, do not publish the text of the entry. Wait at least 24 hours, and then identify the source blog and provide a link to the entry.

This one goes over the four-minute time limit, necessitating a two-parter. (Yes, I know; I'm breaking my own rules.)

If you know the source of this entry, feel free to post it in the comments section. There's no need for any of that I-know-who-it-is-but-won't-say-so-I-won't-ruin-it-for-everyone-else business. Go ahead and ruin it; people will recover. I'll post the answer tomorrow.

Part 1

Part 2

And the Moral Is?

The other day as I was driving to Target listening to NPR, I heard one of the funniest and most entertaining things I've come across in a very long time. Fortunately, I've managed to track it down on the internet, so you can hear it too. Just click here. Then click on the Real Player icon in the upper left margin of the page, and advance the time bar position to exactly 36:00. You'll hear one of the greatest short stories of all time. (Although I think that one bit about the nanny goat was probably awkwardly translated.)

Golden Trampolines

As most of you know, I'm taking trampolining here at the U of O. Since I tend to be slow at internalizing new motor skills (i.e. I'm clumsy.), have a herniated disk, and lack flexibility, I'm repeating the introductory class this quarter and will probably take it again next quarter. I'm not a complete basket case, though. I am improving, just very slowly. I could have taken level 2 this quarter, since I passed (barely) the skills test. But I was still way behind what the other students in the class could do. No worries. I'll be in Eugene for years to come. I really have no problem with it taking another decade for me to get to level 10.

Today was an exciting day. It was the first time this quarter that we had an open trampoline day. This is a time when the gym is opened for a couple of hours, and anyone from any of the trampolining classes can come in and play on them. It was also the first time this quarter that I got to jump on one of the supercharged yellow trampolines. The funny thing is that my teacher has started refering to them as "golden trampolines", which I think is an apt term.

One level one student who was unaware of the magical properties of the golden trampolines, and of the restrictions against using them, stepped onto the bed of one and was quite startled to find himself suddenly hurled hundreds of feet into the air. That's sort of like stepping into the driver's seat of a Ferrari and expecting it to handle like a Volkswagen Beetle. Fortunately he was unharmed.

I tried to stay for the full two hours, but I found that toward the end I was getting tired and starting to make some really stupid mistakes. When I came down once with most of my weight on my head and did something very interesting to my neck, I decided it was best to call it quits.

Crud Bug

Shortly after I moved into my room, I had a visit from this insect. What I find really odd about the photo is that there appears to be a small patch of crud in the upper left corner that is almost exactly the some color as the insect. Since I no longer remember the exact location in my room where this was taken, I have been unable to find and examine the crud firsthand. Therefore its true nature may forever be a mystery.