Wednesday, May 31, 2023

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) You had to be there, but still:

I was having lunch with Steve on Monday and I said "Do you know what I'm mad about today? I'm mad that there are colors that I'll never see." I'm 100% serious about that.

I had been watching a YouTube video about light wavelengths that produce colors that the human eye can't detect because we don't possess the right kind of hardware for that, as we only have 3 types of visual cone cells. There are birds and bugs that can see them, but humans can't. However, there ARE some humans who have a mutation that gives them four types of visual cone cells, and so they can see a layer of colors that the rest of us can't and that pisses me off so much I can't even explain. I want 4 cones! I want to see the hidden colors!

Now, I didn't expect that Steve cared much about my number of cone cells, and he just looked at me like I was kind of crazy. That's fair. It's a weird thing to be mad about. So, knowing how way leads on to way, we moved on to another topic of conversation and I forgot I mentioned it.

Fast forward to the end of the day and we were getting ready to go to sleep. I looked up at the Alexa Dot we have in the bedroom, and I asked it "Alexa, what is your favorite color?" because I like to ask her personal questions sometimes to see what she's programmed to say (and also so she remembers that I was nice to her in case she goes rogue.) She answered "My favorite color is ultraviolet. It glows with everything!" and Steve looked over at me and said, "And you'll never see it with your THREE CONES!"

I swear, he said it with such glee and he laughed so hard that I'm almost positive that he had been holding on to that just on the off chance that he would one day get to use it! It was both the meanest and funniest thing I'd heard in a long time, and I think I laughed for 15 minutes. So, if I ever question if Steve is paying attention to me, I'll have to remember that he is, even if it's only to take the piss later on. Heehee.

2) Our company had a work outing to a baseball game a few nights ago. I'm not the biggest fan of baseball, but it was fun to sit and make jokes and people watch. One of the things our local team seems to be proficient at is foul balls. I'm not judging, as I can't personally play the game, but it seems like lots of them tend to go into the stands. The kids that are there are crazy about catching them, and/or getting them from whoever does catch them. There is apparently an unspoken rule that if a grown up catches a ball, they've got to give it to a kid. (One hopes that the adult doesn't mind this, I guess.)

So, Anthony (Yes, he was invited. Shut up.) and I were sitting a couple of rows behind this group of young 20 somethings who were really into the game. I guess they were like the cool kids, maybe? It's hard to explain. Anyway, that group was really into the game and they were having a blast, and a foul ball comes flying over our way. One of the guys gets the ball and he throws it to a kid. Standard business.  A couple of innings later, another foul ball comes our way and lands in a group of kids standing by the outfield fence. This one kid (a bit older than the others) grabbed it, and he was so excited! Then he walked over and gave it to the older guy who gave up his ball earlier. It was so cute. I'd never seen a kid do that before. So the turntables.

It was freaking heartwarming.

3) Ooooh, y'all, I took a melatonin supplement last night because I couldn't sleep. I'd actually fallen asleep earlier, woken up, and couldn't go back to sleep no matter what I tried. I could have gotten up, and been exhausted and miserable for the rest of the day. I could have taken one of my anxiety pills, but that is usually a last resort since I don't like to take them unless I really need them. So I grabbed the melatonin gummies. I feel asleep, alright. I fell asleep, had ridiculous more-vivid-than-usual dreams, and woke up feeling like my body was awake, but my brain was at the dry cleaners. I don't know how I'm going to function at work today, but I'm really hoping my mind gets significantly less sticky as the day goes on, or I'm going to have to make a nest out of classified files and sleep for another couple of hours.

4) I know this sounds morbid, but I've been reading through The Charley Project files. I originally learned about it through a true crime YouTube channel I was using as background noise one day, and I was curious to see what it was all about. The Charley Project is a database of cold case missing persons files. It has a picture of them, sometimes a bit about their life, and as much as the writer knows about the day they disappeared and what was going on. It's oddly fascinating, but also so terribly sad. I originally started reading it out of morbid curiosity, but I've found myself feeling like I need to read as many of the stories as possible so that they aren't forgotten about. You know that saying about how people aren't really gone as long as someone is thinking about them? I'm reading them because I don't want them to be gone completely.

They have cases listed from as far back as 1910, up until about a year ago, I think. Currently, I'm only to the 1970s, and man, did the cases multiply then! From the 1910s-1960s the officials seemed to think that a lot of people just got spontaneous amnesia and wondered away. Granted, they didn't know about how rare true amnesia actually is back then, so I'll give them a pass. Also, quite a few of the cases can be (rationally) attributed to "Husband Kills Wife and Kids" even if they didn't have enough proof to convict them. In the 70s, I'm pretty sure the two biggest causes of death were hitchhiking and Ted Bundy. It's all so terribly sad. It's made me wish I had the super-hero power to know where lost people could be found, even if they weren't alive anymore. 

Probably not great for my psyche to dwell on this stuff, but I wish they (or information about them) could be found! 

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