Slip Down The Path To the Old Ruined House…

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Photo #801: Cedar PathLocation Taken: Arcadia, Michigan
Time Taken: December 2006

I was up far far too late last night, and slept somewhat poorly. It’s thanks to a lovely little collection of short scary stories I stumbled upon. And when I say short, I mean a couple paragraphs at most. So I literally read hundreds of scary stories last night.

Mind you, that wasn’t why I slept poorly, though it was why I was up so late (It’s tough to stop reading when you know the next one will only take half a minute to read…). I’ve never had any problems with scary stories disturbing my sleep one bit. Scary pictures, on the other hand… But that’s a story for another time. The poor sleep was mostly due to staying up so late and then getting woken up far too early and not being able to fall back asleep. Pure chance.

Still, if you’re not the type to have problems with scary stories, give that sight a check. Especially if you’re like me and find the suspense that’s such a common feature of the genre to be more annoying than tension-building. It’s tough to build up suspense in 275 words or less. On the other hand, that’s plenty of time for the lovely mental twists and terrors that make the genre so delightful.

And besides, they only take, say, half a minute to read! Really!

Let’s see, half a minute times three hundred is 150 minutes, and I suppose I did read a lot of comments too… Yeah, I can see why I was up until 4AM…

  

The Bitter Temps, the Difficulty of Getting Around, ah, how I miss it…

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Photo #800: Snow BellLocation Taken: Valparaiso, Indiana
Time Taken: February 2007

I miss snow.

Mind you, saw plenty last winter. It’s just wandering into the summer months, and well, I miss snow. Happens every year around this time, even years with lots of snow. Even years with no snow.

Something about early June just makes me want it to snow.

This seems backwards somehow.

  

The Tangled Knots of the Mind

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Photo #799: Tangled FenceLocation Taken: Mount Saint Helens area, Washington
Time Taken: June 2010

I- I seem to have forgotten what I was planning to say about this photo, in the time between deciding to write about it and when I actually started doing so. How embarrassing.

Maybe I shouldn’t have wandered off to check some webpages and get a drink in between those steps.

Ah well, I probably got caught by the doorway effect. It’s the odd mental quirk that keeps causing you to forget what you were going into a room for the second you cross the doorway. And then you find yourself doing three other things before suddenly realizing “Keys! I came here for my keys!”.

The really odd part about it is that the doorway itself is important. It’s not just wandering away from what was reminding you of your task, it’s entering a new space that triggers the memory blank.

Essentially, when your brain finishes one task and starts another, it dumps all the info on the old task it was holding in easily-accessed memory back into the general memory banks, clearing the way for new info. This would not be so bad if swapping rooms didn’t also trigger this dumping. A new space must mean a new task, no?

I wonder how many times our species used to encounter this, back deep in human history before we invented doorways. This patch of dirt with the pile of furs isn’t that different from that patch of dirt with the fire. Maybe it’s just, shall we say, a bug in our programming, something that didn’t reveal itself until we came up with newfangled ideas like housing and doors.

  

Oh, to see the squid hounds flying as through air!

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Photo #798: Squid HoundLocation Taken: Terra Nova National Park, Newfoundland, Canada
Time Taken: July 2012

There’s something oddly compelling about bones. They both are what they are and are what they were, if that makes sense.

Peer long enough at any bone and you start to wonder what creature created it, what they looked like, how they lived. A bone is a connection to the past, and yet, on its own, it’s not that special. Without knowledge of what it is, what it represents, it’s only an oddly shaped whitish stone.

Not that bones are stone, mind you. They’re still created by life, via carefully arranged molecules of calcium phosphate and many others, all shaped to perform a function. And yet, bones can become stone. One of the most common stones, limestone, is made up of a plethora of tiny shells and bones and all the hard debris of undersea life, crushed and compacted into a single mass. And yet, even in limestone, subjected to large amounts of pressure and time, some shells survive, showing us a hint of what came before.

This bone, or rather, this set of bones, won’t become limestone. It probably won’t even fossilize. Most bones don’t, after all, and this one is far from the conditions required for either fate. But it still holds a future, to show and educate and spark the joy that is letting what you know about an object make it more special.

The creature that formed these bones was a White-beaked Dolphin, a common sight in the north Atlantic ocean. Well, as common as any species that fills its sort of niche is, which is to say a special treat to see, but not an unexpected one.

The locals call this species “Squid Hounds”, though really they call many species that. Squids gather around the area, and many predatory fish, including this dolphin, chase after them, darting through the water like a hound darting through trees after a rabbit. It has a certain poetic flair to it, but that’s common of Newfoundland dialect, born of a hard life rich with stories and pride in the land and sea.

  

Cucumbers, they float! Like Jellyfish! Sort of…

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Photo #797: Floating JellyfishLocation Taken: North Sydney, Nova Scotia
Time Taken: July 2012

This may seem random, but cucumber water is fabulous!

I just made up a batch today, and it is delicious. Super-simple to make, too. Just slice up a cucumber, toss it in a pitcher of water, and let it sit for an hour or so. The cucumber taste will migrate into the water, and it just works marvelously well. It looks pretty nifty too, since the cucumber pieces float at the top.

You can also toss lemons in there, if you want. But I don’t. I just like the cucumber-y goodness.

It’s super-hydrating too. There must be some sort of electrolyte or what not that the cucumber add to the water, because I’m feeling properly hydrated for the first time in weeks.

…Though that might also have something to do with the, oh, five glasses of water I just had.