| cartoons & tv | 1:05 AM |
i was at the gym tonight watching drawn together and it was a spoof of the donald trump reality show (i've never seen an episode of either of these shows so i'm sort of guessing). anyway -- there was this upskirt shot right up a fat betty boop's skirt and it was horrendously realistic. labia visible out the sides of her panties, pubic hair coming out the top and i thought, jesus christ -- are kids watching this? to be fair there was a disclaimer at the commercial break that said something about it being unrated...mature audiences, etc...
speaking of tv...last night i watched four hours of law and order (well, 3 then a closer). i was over at ed's -- i meant to just do laundry and then go, but those law and orders start right up after one's ended and it doesn't even give you time to disengage yourself from the couch. i had to drag myself out at midnight so i could go home and sleep, and i was afraid i'd get mugged in the parking lot of the condo complex he lives in.
then i was afraid to go upstairs into my loft for fear someone was up there. the whole time i was taking a bath, i kept thinking, wow...now would be a really good time to come kill me -- i'm naked in the tub without my contacts in. before i went to bed: should i leave my front door unlatched in case the police come and have to break the door down?
random acts of violence aside -- it's love you should worry about. four crime drama episodes and they all involved murder and love. in one, a daughter poisons her mother and puts her in a coma (ok, she doesn't actually die, but wouldn't you rather be dead than in a coma?), a mother kills her son (who totally randomly killed people, but he was schizophrenic), in another one an italian mobster's son kills his father's beloved mistress, and in the fourth, a nice catholic girl kills her boyfriend when she finds out he's actually a girl -- by mashing her head in, then shooting her in the face, then she cuts off her hair and strips off her clothes.
yup. love is what you want to avoid if you wanna live a long time ;)
| cooler than me | 11:44 PM |
i did all my christmas shopping this weekend. a couple hours yesterday, a few more hours today. lightning fast. loads of dollars poorer. i have a ritual of dining alone in the nordstrom cafe, reading (and i've been reading feverishly again since i've moved out!) whenever i can -- coffee, tomato basil soup and the salmon nicoise salad. and while i was enjoying my fine coffee, an older woman sat a couple of seats away from me and i heard her on the phone talking about gifts and how she got someone this "very blingy bling" piece of clothing. i'd guess she was in her 50s. i gathered she was a grandmother from her conversation. a well kept, up to date grandmother. i thought to myself, wow, i wouldn't even utter the phrase "blingy bling". how much cooler is she than me?
| I Am a Dirty Rotten Deer Murderer! | 1:52 AM |
I drove into a deer this Saturday night. You know me, Ms. Animal Lover, Ms. Mushy Hearted Teary Eyed Can't Bear the Thought of Animals in Pain lady. Yeah.
I took the 92 West exit off 280 South and I was driving slow -- even for that little bit of road between 280 and 92, and next thing I know, less than a mile from the exit, I see a young deer and drive smack into it. You can't imagine my horror. I drove another 30 yards and then stopped, backed up slowly, and I could see the deer lying on the side of the road in my brake lights. And I'm shaking and scared and have no idea what to do. For a brief moment I thought about just taking off and ignoring the whole thing.
So there I am, sitting in my car, looking in the rear view mirror at the deer's ribcage lifting up and down. And I'm still not sure what to do, but I'm completely horrified at the thought that he's hurt and I hurt him and there's no one to look after him so I get out of the car, foolishly thinking I might be able to comfort him, but of course, he sees me as I get closer and freaks out and starts to try to get up. I must've broken one of his front legs because he's moving, but not very well. Once I realized what an ass I was being, I immediately backed away from him and got back in the car. Then sat there wondering -- what the fuck do I do now? Concluded that I must call the police -- surely they know what to do. Dial 411 on the cell phone, say "Woodside", then "Police Station", and it connects me directly with the emergency services line -- why the hell would I call 411 if it was an emergency?! I would've called 911 if I wanted them! So they transfer me to the non-emergency police line, and they transfer me to the San Mateo County Sheriff's office.
Hi, I just hit a deer and I wasn't sure if I was supposed to do something. My voice and my legs are all shaking and I feel like I'm just going to spill over with tears at any moment. I was on southbound 280 and exited where it said 92 west. I can't take my eyes off the deer in the rear view mirror. No, it's still alive. It starts to struggle to move again. I can't stand the thought of the poor thing suffereing. It's past 2am, so there are few cars and there's only a minimal shoulder so I'm sitting mostly blocking my lane on a two lane road with my emergency lights on. A single car passes me in the ten minutes I sit there.
Even after she tells me they'll send someone out and I don't need to wait, I don't want to leave it just lying there. It struggles some more and then is half way in the road and I have these vivid images of the poor thing getting run over by some other hapless schmuck and I can only leave when I see that it's gotten itself mostly off the road again.
I bawled in the car as I was driving away. Once I did what I had to do, made all the clear headed decisions I needed to make, I just let myself break down.
And the odd thing for me thinking back on it, is how little guilt I feel about it. Not just little guilt, no guilt. I was driving safely. I was driving slow -- slower even than I needed to or most people do. It was just an accident. The deer stepped out of the bushes at a really bad time. I don't think I could've prevented it. And thank god for that, or else I'd be tormented about it.
| new bike! | 12:16 AM |
speaking of new apartments, i got a new bike, too! it's a beauty. gsf400. i don't have pictures yet, but i'll show her to you real soon. it was the bike i originally wanted for my first bike, but i couldn't find a decent one to buy when i was finally ready to do it. i love je oola, but i couldn't pass up this bike either. 1991 bandit with just over 7000 miles and no damage, never dropped at speed. a cute little high revver just like the ninja. and it's comfier, too, for someone of my stature.
of course, first thing i do just after i've handed over my cash and signed all the paperwork is drop the poor thing as i'm trying to take off to take her home. I was a little horrified (my new bike!) and embarassed (since they were both standing there watching me -- nerve racking), but i dropped it so slow that the tank didn't suffer any damage at all. i broke the ball off the end of the clutch lever (that's two I have to replace now), and scuffed up some bits, but those are easily replaced bits. denting the gas tank is far harder to recover from :)
| new apartment | 12:08 AM |
I have a new apartment! It's so adorable. It's got a little mini tub, like my old Mission apartment used to have (except it's not a claw foot tub). It's a little studio with a loft in downtown Mountain View (close to work -- I love living close to work). But best of all, a downtown. I can exit my front door on foot and easily find yummy food a short walking distance away. I can walk or ride my bike to work. I have alone space. I can cook for one again.
| i blog, you blog, we all blog | 10:44 PM |
A friend of mine is reading Blink, which I also recently picked up after seeing Malcolm Gladwell speak at Google. He said that is was the first time that he'd read anything that promoted trusting your intuition. I think it's been popularized. Intuition is now scientifically sanctioned so we can talk freely of it without resorting to condescending language.
Blogs are funny little things. You can't talk about the band you saw last week and try to promote their upcoming show if you wait four days to blog about it. You can't save up "blog" stories and then expect to be able to write them just the way you originally told them to yourself in your head as you were trying to keep yourself from forgetting to blog about it.
Btw, Tsu Shi Ma Mi Rae rock.
| log, log, log | 12:40 AM |
i rode right into a log the other night. we decided to go for a night ride down skyline blvd. but i was freezing my ass off not too long into the ride, so i was hunched over hugging my gas tank and watching the road and next thing i know, there's a stinking log in front of me. i whacked it with my tire and drove on my merry way. the bike was fine and hitting the log didn't even startle me.
tonight as i was riding home, the back end got all squirrelly on me -- squirming around as i was braking -- and it didn't even phase me. which is probably a good thing. it's got to be better to stay calm and under-react then freak out and over-react, right?
i was walking towards the elevator this morning and a co-worker said i had a nice bike. yeah, i heard it was a good beginner's bike. Oh, you're a beginner? yup. Tell me more. And I did -- I told him where to take his MSF class and about the bay area riders' forum.
i love my bike. and i've ridden it all summer, but it still happens to be early enough in my riding career that every single time i ride, i love it more and more. riding to work, i zip along the freeway and wish it would never end. and i used to hate the freeway. i used to take surface streets when i could. which i think was good for me and good practice, but now i just want to tear down the freeway and not have to stop. i still ride carefully. i don't go too fast. my bike can do 80 comfortably, but i haven't pushed it past that. and let me tell you, the ninja ex250 is an awesome bike. i love it and think it was a more than suitable choice as my first bike. i just need to find warmer gear now that summer is slipping away...
| Skin Deep | 7:49 PM |
Saturday I went shopping with the girls -- something I haven't done since high school. Didn't buy anything, but spent 5 hours at the mall. And it doesn't matter how beautiful you are, girls still end up feeling self conscious about something, and usually several things. We talked about ballet classes -- how one of us went to a ballet school that didn't take girls with fat mothers, another one got told she needed to see an orthopedic surgeon when she was six. I took ballet off and on just for fun and I remember being in high school and my ballet teacher told me my legs were crooked and to quit riding bicycles cause it was deforming my legs. Every time I'm in front of a mirror standing up straight, I look at the back of my knees where she said I was crooked and can't help but think of her.
And the four of us -- each of us is young, attractive, healthfully thin (I was the heaviest girl there and I can hardly be called fat) and successful to boot, and I don't think there was any one of us that didn't feel somehow inadequate, or had some memory of feeling inadequate at some time in our lives.
| shallow thoughts | 12:42 AM |
jesus, i feel like i haven't had a deep thought in a long time. i don't read anymore, i don't work the long hours i used to, i don't write or blog, i don't work out. it's like i don't have the drive to push myself to do anything. or enjoy anything. i do just enough and that's it.
i haven't felt quite like myself in a long time. in a very long time. and i think i know why, but i keep shuffling it away. telling myself it'll get better on its own. give it some time. i'll sort it out.
i was thinking how you can be brilliant and still be a jackass. being brilliant doesn't give you insight into other people. nor does it necessarily increase one's empathic abilities, or tolerance, or patience. how arrogance and intelligence seem to go hand in hand for some people. excuse me, do you know you're being a prick? probably not -- being brilliant doesn't necessarily mean you know anything about yourself either. i know lots of really smart people who aren't assholes -- i just hate hearing stories about the ones that are.
| dead racoons | 12:05 AM |
i rode past two dead racoons on sand hill today. they must've been hit while crossing the road together not too long before i passed them -- they clean up roadkill pretty quickly around these parts. one was on the side of the road and the other was in the middle of the lane. the boyfriend was riding his motorcycle home for the first time and i was afraid he was going to hit the one on the road. i could see the rings on their tails and it made me feel worse. it's easier to see a dead animal that you can't identify, or is smashed so bad you can barely make it out, or so destroyed and damaged it no longer looks real. it's the roadkill that doesn't look like roadkill that makes me want to cry. because they still look so alive, and you know they're not, but so recently were.
| christians my ass | 1:38 AM |
my son went on a trip with my mother's church down in southern california. he enjoyed the trip, but when i asked if he'd met any interesting people he said no. he said that most of them weren't nice. he made one new friend, but didn't like most of the other boys. and he told me why and it just broke my heart. and i just wanted to hug him and hold him. children are so cruel. they say such mean things to each other. so relentlessly.
the weekend before last i'd listened to a radio program on how cruel young girls were. 10, 11 year olds in canada. how relationships are so important to girls and because we're socialized to not be overtly agressive, we take out our anger and hurt and frustration by sabotaging the relationships of other girls -- the things we hold the nearest and dearest to our hearts, we break.
some girls go home every day with their hearts broken. i'm sure some boys do, too. and what can you do as an adult? how do you teach your child to cope with that? if your kid is just being psychologically damaged, there isn't anything you can do. you can't control the children around your child. you can do your best to teach your kid to be tolerant, to communicate, to work out problems, to not purposely hurt people, but it doesn't necessarily shield them from those kids out there that don't have those skills.
i think the hardest part of being a parent is knowing that your child hurts and feeling like you can't do anything about it. and when you're so far away, you can't even wrap your arms around him to comfort him. and yourself.
| Book Burning | 10:30 PM |
A few weeks ago, Human Events Online (The National Conservative Weekly) came up with its list of the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries. I find the list really interesting -- a few communist books, one of the core feminist books, a couple philosophy books, a book on male sexuality, Hitler's Mein Kampf, and a couple of others. It astounds me that in this day and age, in our country, people still figuratively burn books. To me, this is the equivalent of having someone say you're too dumb to be exposed to the dangerous ideas in these books. It assumes you don't have the power or the ability to think critically for yourself. Writing a non-fiction book is like having your say, sharing your ideas with anyone who'll read it. For a site that puportedly supports individual freedom, having had this list created seems somewhat ironic. What is it that Jesus calls his followers? Oh, sheep.
The other irony is that lists like these only make books on them that much more tantalizing. By the way, the 15 judges that came up with this list were 14 males:1 female.
| My Photo Album is a Star! | 7:36 AM |
Someone blogged about my album application! Someone completely random -- and by that I mean someone I don't know (as in not a friend giving me a plug). I only found out about it because someone else emailed me asking if they could download it. Which made me feel both really good and semi-guilty. This was always one of those projects I wanted to complete and make open source so other people could use it, but of course, I just started using in when it was done enough and never did get around to finishing it. Ah well...it's nice that someone still liked it :)
| Moving Again | 12:21 AM |
I started a new job two months ago, but didn't physically move so I've been enjoying the company of my old team mates who I still sit next to, while also enjoying my new team mate who I communicate frequently with even if I don't see her every day. But today I had to pack up all my things so facilities could move me tonight, and we've been joking about it -- they got a new contractor (Jay!) on Monday and need the space -- but it was really sad. We've all been sitting there for so long now. And I have these daily rituals -- tea and snack breaks with Danan, smoke breaks (whether I smoke or not) with Ed. Lunch with everyone every day. Conversations on all manner of topics -- even if I don't want to talk, there's always something interesting to listen to -- especially when the two Indian boys start on a topic :)
I know that the new space'll be great -- another wonderful window spot, closer to a micro kitchen, right next to a balcony, and right next to my co-worker, but I'm really going to miss those boys...
| Pet Rats | 12:21 AM |
I finally gave up the idea of adopting kittens -- so, I got rats instead! I adore rats. I drove out to Petaluma to get them a few weeks ago -- I found the rat breeder on craigslist. The rats are beautiful -- healthy looking, shiny coats, bright little eyes, and very social and friendly. I asked the breeder what she fed them so I could make sure to have food for them before I picked them up. Trader Joe's lite dog food and a grain mix her daughter makes for them!. When I saw how big the bag of Trader Joe's dog food was, I said forget it...rat food for these guys (my last rat ate store bought rat food and he lived for over three years!)
Alas, I've discovered that a 1 gallon ziploc bag can hold 9 coffee cups full of Trader Joe's lite dog food. And a 20 pound bag of Trader Joe's lite dog food fits into almost exactly six 1 gallon ziploc bags. And the stuff I need to buy for the rat mix is easily obtainable -- I think I've got enough rat food for the rest of the year (if none of it goes bad that is).
| Google Shirts | 12:58 AM |
I've accumulated so many Google shirts that it's often all I wear to work -- I'm a lazy dresser. This is fine at work, but sometimes I feel a little awkward outside of work. I was at the grocery store tonight after my Korean lesson. The guy behind me in line says, you work at Google, pointing to my shirt, and I said yes, and he said lucky you. This isn't the first time someone's said that to me and I always wonder what exactly they mean. Lucky me because Google's an awesome place to work? Or lucky me cause you think I've made money on the IPO? If it's the former, then yay! lucky me! If it's the latter, I didn't go full time until after the IPO. I sort of have this desire to tell people that. I had a cashier at Long's tell me once how lucky I was to work there; when did I start? About a year ago. Oh! Before the IPO. So lucky. What university did you graduate from? USC. It's a question my mother would've asked. I wanted to tell her I started there before the IPO, but was a contractor for almost a year before I went full time. But what right does she have to that additional information about me? I guess in some way I want to comfort her -- to let her know that she may think I'm luckier than her, but I'm not really. I'm a lot like her -- just a working girl with bills to pay. Maybe I like my job and the company I work for more than she likes hers, but we're really not so different at all.
| Relearning my first language | 12:35 AM |
I had my first Korean lesson tonight with a girl I found on Craigslist. She was great. But I was horrified because I didn't use the polite form and made her a little embarassed/slightly uncomfortable and I didn't really know the proper way to say things and so then I was afraid of saying anything at all. It passed quickly -- if I just tacked on "yo" to the ending of everything I said, I was pretty safe. So I did -- a little excessively I think, but I was trying to be polite.
And I was wondering what it felt like to her -- the way I spoke was too casual -- did that mean too intimate? Like close friends intimate or lovers intimate? What I imagined was that I spoke as a child familiar with a parent -- is that what embarassed her? A stranger speaking to her like a child to a mother? I was five when I came to the states and lost my Korean. I'm sure my vocabulary and my grammatical skills reflect that.
And how on earth does my mother let me speak like that?! To all and sundry -- isn't she embarassed of me? Or horrified about me making an ass of myself? What must I sound like to my relatives or other Korean speakers! I cannot wait until I no longer sound like a moron. My pronunciation is good and we did some reading tonight -- I had fun and learned a ton and I can't wait to see her again next week.
| micropod | 12:34 AM |
i picked up one of those ipod shuffles this weekend for the gym. and i think i hate it. i haven't even taken it to the gym yet, but i hate it. it's slow as molasses in updating (i'm pretty sure i'm using a usb 2.0 port, but i'm going to check the hardware specs tomorrow). and the switch on the back to toggle power/no shuffle/shuffle feels like it's made of rice paper. i guess i'll need to fuck around with it, but as a consumer product it's pretty hard to recover from immediate and intense dislike only minutes after you've been unpackaged.
| Blogging While Bathing | 12:27 AM |
Sounds dangerous, doesn't it? Someone searched on 'hot whores in Florida' and hit my site today. I don't think Ed counts as a hot whore. He is in Florida, though. In Panama City. I was emailing him today catching him up on little tidbits of information and it just hit me that he's only been gone for one full week. Seems like an eternity though.
I had my regular gynecological exam yesterday -- the only outstanding element of this visit (wait, other than the longest breast exam of my life) was the change of venue -- I change doctors very reluctantly. I considered doing what I've done with my eye doctor -- make a long ass trip once a year for that exam just so I won't have to switch doctors, but I've recently decided that that's absurd. No more southern California trips to get my yearly eye exam or to have my taxes done, and no trips to San Francisco for my pap smears. So I got a recommendation and checked out the new place. Too large for my taste, but everyone was real nice so I think I'll stay.
The weather has been so amazingly nice -- warm and sunny and it feels like summer. And I sit right next to a very large window and I get so antsy! I want to get up and go outside, but I can't think of anything to do out there that would make me feel productive. I can't work outside cause my eyes are too sensitive to light and I'd just be so distracted. I like watching volleyball when it's on. I can't wait for them to open the pools so I can go swimming in the middle of the day and at least enjoy the sun a bit that way...
| Passive blogging | 11:27 PM |
I've been a terrible blogger. I think reading Ed's travel blog, with his multiple updates in one day is making me feel a) an itch to go to new places and b) like a lazy writer. The last few months I've held a lot of things in -- like I've been holding my breath or something. I'm not even writing at home on paper. There's been so much going on the last couple of months -- enough to make me feel overwhelmed, and I've shared little of it here. Everyday I walk around with a running commentary in my head about the things I want to point out to you and share with you -- things I don't want to forget, things that seem immediately important but then less so as the day goes on and I've run out of time or energy to stay up for another half hour or so to sit and write something for myself.
And even now as I'm sitting here typing in front of the fire, I'm trying to recall all the thoughts I've had recently -- those ones I didn't want to forget...and I guess it's ok if I don't remember them all because this is just a warmer up exercise.
| Ed's Sanity Run | 10:49 AM |
He's on his way to El Paso right now. He's making great progress -- right on schedule. Check out the map and blog.
| Butt Stoked into Flaming SUV | 7:24 PM |
I've been waiting for one of these stories for a long time -- it was one of my constant fears when I smoked that I'd burn my backseat upholstery. Even when I didn't throw my cigarette butts out the window, I always dropped the cherry out the window and every single time, I thought, what if the wind blows this into the back of my car where I can't reach it. Still did it. That's the amazing power of smoking. I can laugh about this guy because he wasn't hurt -- but he burnt up his cute little SUV just because he didn't want to dirty his ashtray and stink up the car.
| Thirst For Young Blood | 6:27 PM |
This headline is straight out of a sci-fi/horror film! Young Blood Makes Muscles Spry. It's simultaneously funny and creepy.
Researchers at Stanford University have found that an infusion of young blood has significant benefits.
It's about stems cells in old muscles being activated by blood from a younger host -- so the environment those stem cells are in can affect their ability to be therapeutic. But what fodder for the imagination, too!
| Deer Sighting | 2:03 PM |
The rains seem to bring the deer out. There were ten of them by the house this morning (I only saw seven of them). I tried taking photos, but only got one good shot. They have excellent hearing :)
| Loss of Language | 1:06 AM |
I read this today on Nature about the ability to understand math grammar versus the ability to understand language grammar. Aphasia is a disorder caused by damage to the temporal lobe or higher up in the frontal lobe -- usually caused by a stroke or other brain injury -- that impairs a person's linguistic abilities. Words don't make sense -- people with this disorder sometimes can't speak or read or write or understand what's being said to them. But they seem to be able to do mathematical calculations with pen and paper. They understand the Arabic numeral 30 when they see it on paper, even though they don't understand the word thirty when they hear it or see it.
Grammar is an innate ability for humans. Research has shown that spontaneous language development, without external influence, develops grammatical rules within a single generation. And while some of the same cognitive regions are used for both language and math grammars, it appears that our brain's ability to understand math grammar (think about the rules of nested equations) isn't dependent on the same regions as linguistic grammar is. Which is why people who can't understand language in any form can still do math.
It's an interesting exercise -- trying to imagine what the world would be like without words. How do you understand other people? How do you make sense of your senses? The things you hear, see, smell and feel -- how do you organize that data into coherent and meaningful sets? I was reading about alexithymia in Goleman's Emotional Intelligence. It's the inability to express your emotions in words. People can't explain what they're feeling because they don't understand what feelings are and don't have the language to adequately describe them. Many people who suffer from it often go to the doctor because they think they're ill or have some physical disorder when they feel upset, angry, or start crying. They can't differentiate the physical sensations they feel when they feel intense emotions from physical pain.
Being able to talk about my emotions, to express myself in words, to appreciate the beauty of language when it's used well -- I can't imagine living without these things. But I guess if the worst were to happen and I were to lose all of that -- I'd still have math :)
| New Car | 1:17 AM |
I bought my first car, a used Audi TT. I've been driving that Escort for 10 years -- anything would've been a step up and I was thinking of getting another little affordable hatchback, but we've got a Subaru already, so I got myself a fun little car instead. The only complaints I have about it are 1) backing out is a little bit of work since rearward visibility is partially limited due to the placement and shape of the C-pillars, and 2) it's too easy to shift into 4th gear when I'm trying to shift into 6th. I've only done it a couple of times and now that I know about it, I pull the shift knob to the right and down when I shift from 5th gear instead of straight down. Other than that, she's quiet and smooth and handles beautifully. And she's easy on the eyes to boot.
I also start a new job in a little over a week after President's Day. I'll be leaving my group and joining another, but I will finally be a full time employee again. I'm very excited about the change though I'll miss the hell out of working with Ed and probably spend less quality time with him than I already do. But he's got exciting things coming up for him, too :)
| Broken Heart Syndrome | 5:15 PM |
This is interesting. Emotional trauma can result in cardiomyopathy, aka broken-heart syndrome, and is physiologically similar to a heart attack.
It's especially interesting to me right now because I'm reading Emotional Intelligence and Goleman writes at length about the various physiological effects of peoples' negative emotions. He cites study after study on such topics as the effects of anger on the heart, optimism and pessimism and how one's tendency to be one or the other is a better prognosticator of recovey (for example from cancer or a major medical procedure) than a person's physical condition, and hope and its affects on recovey as well. And it seems like this should be common knowledge, but you can't base medical or scientific treatments on 'common knowledge'.
I picked this book up after reading The Gift of Fear in which Gavin de Becker recommends we listen to our intuitions. Because our brains and our bodies are primed to survive -- whether we are cognitive or not of what our impulses are or how our intuition makes us feel, there's probably a good reason for it. He also cites example after example, sometimes chilling and sometimes simply creepy, of cases he's worked on in which peoples' intuitions accurately warned them of impending danger.
De Becker cites Emotional Intelligence several times and the first section of EI is the most interesting to me because it essentially explains the mechanics of the brain and how it generates an intuitive sense (or a 'gut feeling' if you prefer). The most interesting tidbit from that section is this: signals from our sensory organs get sent to the thalamus which then sends them on to the neocortex of our brains which processes those signals into something we understand. But, there is a shorter, single synaptic neuronal pathway between the thalamus and the amygdala, a primitive center of emotions, which allows the amygdala to receive a smaller subset of the signals sent to the neocortex and allows it to immediately process and generate an emotional response (when significant) *before* we fully understand what it is we're experiencing or seeing, or why we feel the way we do. A telling example cited in the book is about a young man who sees a woman standing at the edge of the water looking down with a distressed look on her face, and before he knew what he was doing, he'd jumped into the water to save a child who'd fallen in.
Our brains are endlessly interesting little things. So are our hearts. Today's Nature, along with the article about cardiomyopathy, also has an article about the regenerative ability of certain heart cells and how this could potentially help patients with heart attacks.
| Family at Christmas | 12:07 PM |
Spending time with family this holiday I was wondering what it was like to grow up in one culture, one country with certain expectations of your family, and then to be transplanted as an adult to another country. You've been here for multiple decades, but do those expectations of your family still exist?
Christmas was nice, but busy. I met my sister's boyfriend's mother and brother. I saw my son and spent Christmas morning with his family (and realized again as I always do when I get to spend time with them that I miss seeing them terribly). The mothers are devout non-Catholic Christian. At dinner with Doug's mom and my mom sitting across from each other I hear Doug's mom ask, So Sharon, when did you come to Christ? and I almost snorted water out of my nose. I've been telling all my friends because it's such an incredulous question -- to me anyway. And to most people I know. It's a completely meaningless and non-sensical question if you yourself are not a devout Christian. But the two of them were dead serious about it.
It was nice to see my mother socializing with someone. Patty kept saying what a wonderful job she did raising us girls and all I could think was how superficial most relationships are. How when you first meet people all you really see is someone's ability to be social and polite. Meeting the three of us -- my mother, my sister and me, you'd have no idea the ways we hurt each other, the ways we're cruel and disappoint. But I suppose that's why familial relationships are so complex and painful -- you don't get to know most people that intimately, you don't have to spend that much time with most people. But when you do, it's equal parts heartache and unconditional love that make it worthwhile.
