penn

Where babies come from

Friends tease me for this, but I openly admit that I had some strange misconceptions of sex when I was younger. The biggest misconception concerned the act of sex itself. See, for some reason, I thought that a man and a woman had sex by lying very still next to each other with the man inside the woman. I understood the biological part, but I entirely missed the whole "sex act" part.

I've had several people ask where this misconception may have arisen. I wasn't 100% sure until tonight.

I got to my parents' house. Sitting in the bathroom (yes, we read books in the bathroom here. Magazines and newspapers too) was "Where do babies come from?" by Margaret Sheffield. It's a children's book from my childhood (and apparently out of print, so I'm going to encourage my parents to keep it). I remember reading this often as a small child.

Each page explains something about sex/babies and has a drawing accompanied by text. It was this page in particular that stood out:

The only way for the sperm to get to an egg is through the woman's vagina. This is how babies are begun, with the man lying so close to the woman that his penis can fit into her vagina. If one of his sperms can get to one of her eggs, a baby will begin to grow.

Maybe it is because the book doesn't mention passion, thrusting, or even how the sperm leaves the penis. I think I may have once imagined that men could control the flow of sperm (ha!). I suppose I thought the book covered everything about sex rather than just explaining the baby part.

In any case, it was an interesting memory lane type find. I'm sure they'll be many more in my next few days at home as I sort through old books and continue cleaning out the dregs of what I've left at my parents' house.

yay Phoenix?

The Phoenix airport has free wireless. I guess that makes up for the fact that there's four different terminals and no clear, posted directions on needing to travel between terminals in order to connect to flights on different airlines. Even worse is that you have to exit the terminal and go back through security again.

In Detroit, I had to go through an air puffing machine (testing for explosives, I assume). In Phoenix, they barely let me through security because I had a boarding pass from Northwest (not in this terminal) despite the ticket clearly stating that I'm flying Alaska. I got quizzed about where I'd come from, where I was going, and what time my flight left. Twice.

Guess the three hour layover was a decent idea. I've got one more hour left before embarking on my flight to Seattle for 6 days of enjoy Pacific Northwest goodness.

Making life easier for the stalkers

I'm in the air right now. Yay for going home. Not the most opportune time, as I'm arriving back in Ann Arbor the day after classes arrive, but I'm not missing too much. And it's a much needed break before a semester of craziness. I'll post room pictures after I get back to A2 and finish putting my room in order.

August 29 2007
Northwest Airlines 265
Depart: Detroit, MI at 7:00 AM
Arrive: Phoenix, AZ at 8:05 AM

August 29 2007
Alaska Airlines 735
Depart: Phoenix, AZ at 11:08 AM
Arrive: Seattle, WA at 2:05 PM

Best investment ever

Yesterday, I moved. I have a prodigious amount of books and photo equipment, and I was worried about how long it would take.

The damage? Four hours. Not even. Which leads to my best investment ever. I spent $40 on a u-haul truck. I picked up the uhaul around 10.15, and I returned it at 2. In between, I had two excellent friends that helped me load the truck, take it to the new place, and unload. My roommate and her parents also helped out. So, with six of us, two dollies, and a 14 foot u-haul (not completely filled), the moving was almost painless. I say almost because I'm a bit sore today, and I'm sure my friends are too.

Later that night, I took my friends out for a nice dinner (damage? $60). I had decided to budget $100 for moving expenses, and I figured $60 was well worth it to repay my friends for their amazing feat of helping me have the shortest move ever.

I'm not completely unpacked, but I'm getting there. And then there will be pictures.

A few ultimate pics

I put up a small set of ultimate frisbee pictures on flickr. This past summer, as I think I've mentioned before, I played on a recreational league ultimate team. I'm going to play again this fall, and I'll also be taking part in a multi-week women's camp to improve my ultimate skills. Again, no pictures of me . . . I need to hand someone else my camera every once in awhile, I suppose.

I'm packing up to move right now. I've got to move out of my room on Monday, but I'll be storing my boxes in the basement here. I'm not moving into my new apartment until Sunday, so I'll be couch surfing for the next week. Therefore, I'm unsure of how much I'll be blogging. Maybe a lot; maybe not very much.

Another video

Here's a video I made back in April for a Livejournal community I belong to. Earlier this week, I went through and gave a "video post" category to all my posts with videos of me in them, and I realized that I never posted this one.

It's a showcase of my accent, as people in the LJ community hail from around the globe.

I honestly think I will do more video posts. It's a lot of fun to look back at the previous ones I've done. Or maybe I'm just a little narcissistic. It's quite interesting to see what I actually look like; my self-image was a little off before.

Some good food being made around here

Two great meals made recently with a friend:

-> swiss chard and tilapia. Said friend had a bevy of swiss chard, so we set out to use as much as possible. Despite filling a pyrex baking dish with chard, we were unable to slay the chard beast. However, we did get good dinner.

We first cooked the chard stems and some onions up in some balsamic vinegar. Meanwhile, we parboiled a sweet potato. After the stems and onion were half cooked, we pulled out the baking dish and added the chard leaves, sliced mushrooms, sweet potato chunks, and more balsamic. On top of it all, we laid some tilapia that had been seasoned with lemon zest and pepper. We baked it -- mostly covered -- until the fish was flaky.

It was my first time having chard, and the experience was good. Quite a colorful dish, too, between the green chard and the orange sweet potato. And who doesn't love tilapia?

-> vaguely mid-eastern chicken with chard mashed potatoes.

Our mission for that night was "use tahini." Sadly, I didn't end up using much tahini (we had copious amounts to use), but I did end up making a mid-eastern inspired dish. I didn't have time to marinate (poor planning on my part, I suppose). We mixed up some vinegar, plain yogurt, tahini, sage, garlic, and a touch of vegetable oil with some well-cleaned chicken thighs.

We then mashed potatoes and put in steamed chard. Yum. And thus ended the life of the chard beast. At least it was put to good use.

I'm into concept cooking these days. I pick a random thing and run with it (random, like "no garlic" or "use tahini"). And, to be fair in attribution, my friend imposes many of these random rules. Anyone out there want to give me some new concept/recipe ideas?

Softball Photos

I finally took photos of one of my team sports. Here's a photoset from my softball team this summer; the pictures are from a "pickup" game we played when the other team didn't show up for the last game.

Also, my softball team is the defending 3-time Ann Arbor Rec League championship team. Pretty snazzy.

Stars

Somehow, I missed the information about the Perseids meteor shower until about 1.30 am this early morning. But I did see the information, and I immediately texted a friend so we could head out into the country.

After a bit of wandering and finding fields that weren't suitable for sitting (we didn't want to ruin anyone's crops), we finally found a nice little patch of ground from which to watch the meteors. It was really nice. The meteors should still be pretty decent tonight, so I recommend that all my readers make for the country and low light.

On August 27th, I've heard that Mars will be super bright. I'm already forming plans in my little head to have some sort of star watching event that evening. Unsure just yet of the form that will take, but I hope to make it a bit more planned than last night's impromptu country run.

Video post!

Who doesn't love videos? Not I. Can you tell that I don't want to write a paper or work on packing up stuff in my room?

I forgot to add this in the video (and will be better next time, as I found out the youtube limit is actually 10 minutes) -- the reason my jacket was really nasty in NZ is that it never really dried out. Seriously. It got all mildewy and funky. It was so bad that my I had to keep my jacket outside at my brother's flat. I finally washed it, and that made things just fine. Luckily, it didn't rain again on my trip, so I was fine.