Happy birthday

Happy birthday to me, Google, and Scott Pilgrim! Also B. Thanks to the parents who (1) conceived me, (2) birthed me, (3) raised me, and (4) visited me this pre-birthday weekend, carrying flavorful apples from home. In that order.


This post's featured word is a really cool one I haven't been able to work into any other post: coelom, "a cavity lined by an epithelium derived from mesoderm. Organs formed inside a coelom can freely move, grow, and develop independently of the body wall while fluid cushions and protects them from shocks."

More honestly, this post's theme words: bedlam, "an old woman; a hag," and the related word termagant, "a scolding, nagging, bad-tempered woman."

Red Mars

I tried to read Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, on the grounds that (1) it is a science fiction classic, widely loved and lauded, and (2) A. recommended it to me so strongly that he lent me his copy.

Blah. The book began in the present and then jumped back in time to the beginning of the lifetime of events that led to the present happenings. I kept reading in the hopes that we were working towards the present, but it... took... so... long... that I gave up. The book is divided (I think?) into thirds; in each third, we are shown one character's point of view. I didn't like the characters, their points of view were frustrating because they mentioned fascinating things, then ignored them in favor of their own dull interests.

And that is all I have to write about that. It's another book off my "to read" list.


This post's theme word: chelonian, "turtle-like." As in, "The plot progressed in a chelonian fashion."

Crisp

As our hemisphere slowly tilts away from the sun, night reclaims its territory from day, and the crispness of early mornings and late evenings stretches to meet at midday. Today was the product of this merry converging of cold: a perfectly crisp day. The whole day was perky and gleeful and alive. A day for running, working, eating apples, taking snuggly naps.

The undergrads felt it, too -- today was their celebration of their summer-camp-like initation of incoming students via t-shirt-wearing, loud music, and silly activities.

Their spirits will be plenty damped by classes, beginning on Monday.


This post's theme word: jitney, "bus." I saw a flock of hard-hat-clad purple undergrads debark from a jitney.
This post written like Stephen King.