I haven't blogged in almost two months. It's a new record! It makes me think of this, from one of my favorite bloggers, Dan Bergstein:
"[I'm] going to start a blog called "Sorry I Haven't Updated in a While" and it will only feature articles apologizing for not updating more often. Sample: Sorry I haven't updated the blog in a while, but a spider hopped into my mouth, laid eggs, and now I'm pregnant with spiders."
Meanwhile, I've been back at ISU for a month now. This has been/will be a busy semester. I'm focusing on my music minor, which I've just started. That means music theory, which I haven't studied since high school... ten years ago! Music theory. Aural skills (sight singing and dictation, both of which I've been doing on my own for forever so it's easy). Trombone lessons with Dr. Brooks (I'm playing the bass Trombone this semester, and it is so much fun!). Mr. York coerced me to join the marching band by telling me there was a $400 scholarship (there was). So far there are a lot of sentences in this post that end with a statement in parentheses (like this one). In addition to marching band, I'm in the symphonic band, both jazz bands, and a brass ensemble (that's five total ensembles). Busy times! I also have a couple geology projects I'm trying to get done, but time and computer access has been an issue.
That's what's up in brief... enjoy this photo of my now eight-month-old beard!
Normally I like to keep the content of this blog completely original, but this is too good. Here is a list of incredible facts that you can impress your friends with. I got this list from blogger Dan Bergstein at Sparknotes. Enjoy:
- When placed in warm milk, raisins re-plump into grapes.
- The metal backs of iPods are made from recycled zippers.
- Eskimos don't believe in bridges or tunnels.
- Every sixteen minutes, someone named Richard dies.
- Billy Bob Thornton's grandfather was the first person to own a television.
- Dolphins kill more people annually than sharks and influenza combined.
- On a dare, former President Rutherford B. Hayes declared war on Chile for 17 minutes.
- The original title for Catcher in the Rye was Hey, Look, a Carousel!
- Professionals call the top socket on an electrical outlet the "Martha," and the bottom socket the "Jasmine."
- In the archives at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., there are two identical snowflakes preserved in a freezer.
- Three out of every ten nickels has been in someone's mouth.
- If you hold one nostril closed for 72 hours, you will slowly lose the ability to see color. (Your sight will instantly return to normal when you release your nostril.)
- Wave a magnet at the lower left corner of a vending machine to receive a free soda.
- The glossy paper from the backs of stickers can be used to soothe sunburn.
- To be a train conductor, you have to cut off one of your own toes during a loyalty ritual.
- The Z in Jay-Z's name stands for "Zeppidemus."
- Jean shorts were invented three weeks prior to the invention of regular jeans.
- Whispering instead of talking on cell phones saves significant battery power.
- In Austria, the traditional Christmas colors are not red and green, but purple and clear.
- Benjamin Franklin coined the phrase "Baby Mama" in a satirical poem published in Poor Richard's Almanac.
- If you take the first letter of each word in the Monopoly board game instruction manual, they spell out an X-rated sentence.
- The original name for the laptop computer was "Hinged Smart Slab."
- The average person inhales 3 pounds of spider webs in his or her lifetime.
- When first introduced to the public, plastic laundry baskets cost $75 each.
- Winnie the Pooh started out as a non-fiction account of mental illness.
- Reading backwards for twenty minutes burns the same amount of calories as walking a half-mile.
- The Q in Q-tips stands for "quantum," as the small bit of cotton on the tip contains more atoms than the entire human body.
- Revolving doors were first invented as a way to keep horses out of department stores.
- Peru and the moon weigh the same amount.
- Human beings and anteaters are the only animals that can snap their fingers.
- If you soak a baseball hat in coke, and then let it dry on someone's head, over a 3-hour period the hat will shrink with skull-denting force, causing intense pain and irreparable damage.
- Clouds cannot travel south southwest.
- In sign language, there are 72 ways to say "drawbridge."
