Things Anna and Chris Like

Anna is sitting right here next to me (mostly because I need the moral support to write a blog today. This blog-a-day thing is getting harder. Especially when I wait until it is night time.)
So, we decided to make lists.

The first list is of small things we like:
Anna: stockings with fun designs
Chris: Doll house furniture and miniature gumball machines
A: Small snakes (from a safe distance)
C: I used to catch garter snakes (garder snakes? garden snakes?) They were really tiny and were cool. Isn't it cool that I used to catch a play with snakes? I am actually really impressed with myself right now...
C: Small pieces of metal. I think there is something very substantial about it.
A: Sand paper. "I wish more craft people would make cards out of it instead of crepe paper... not crepe paper, pretty paper" [Editor's note: this is all verbatim, so I thought it would be more realistic If I wrote out my mistakes. It seems cooler that way.]
A: Your turn
C: Ummm...
A: Ha ha ha [Editor's note: Anna laughed because I wrote "ummm" as I said it. Is this guy great or what?]
C: I can't think of anything else I like.
A: I am going to be really quiet from now on so this will go faster.
...
...
...
A: Or maybe I should type.
C: Whatever. I'll stop with the verbatim record. It was great while it lasted.

Big things we like:
C: Hot air balloons
A: Greenland. Nobody talks about it much, but I like the shape, and that it is not really green. Its name is a lie.
C: Sophie's head to body ratio. HA!
A: METOOMETOOMETOO!!
C: LOL:OOLOLOLOLOLOOLL!!!1111!!!!!!
C: Oversized realistic sculpture. Also, Damien Hirst. he has some sweet art. He did the diamond skull and he has some other cool things. Maybe I'll put pictures up.
A: Fields of grain. I love the amber waves
C: Booooooooooring
A: @%#$!!

Things we both like:
A: Soapy
C: Whatever. Don't be schmarmy.
C: Airplanes?
A: Yeah.
A: Pride and Prejudice
C: I neither confirm nor deny that allegation
C: frozen pizza and A&E spy and detective shows (Poirot, Inspector Morse, Miss Marple, John Le Carre stuff)
A: True. but not until we got married
C: Suckah...
A: Libraries
C: Totally.

Animals we like (last one):
A: Frogs. They swallow with their eyeballs.
C: I like lizards. I like that they have fat bellies that are wide and that they get narrow on either end.
A: Frogs have fat bellies too.
C: But I like lizards.

There you go everybody! I hope you enjoyed 10 minutes in the life of Chris and Anna!

Special Suprise Today

It is a FIELD TRIP!

Pack up your lunches and come with me to today's posting on Anna's blog.
This is a rare opportunity to see what your loyal host is like while visiting other people's turf. Considering I have failed in my original goal of trying to win more admirers than Anna, I was tickled at the opportunity to post on her page for Sophie. Hopefully this will result in the brief burst of fame that followed Bridget's generous recognition.
I am hoping for a sponsor soon. Adidas? J.C. Penney? You want mediocre humor and ambiguous sentence fragments? I'm your man. Please let me know at thomaschristopherlewis@gmail.com.
Please enjoy.

Why Everyone Should Shave Their Armpits

1) It saves on deodorant. You can put enough on in like, 3 or 4 swipes.
2) It saves on stink. Armpit hair stinks like death. No matter how many times a day you shower or how hard you scrub, armpit hair retains nastiness.
3) Armpits are a weird place to have hair. What is it for? I have no idea. Nobody has any idea. I don't believe people who say they do.
4) In case you ever need to win a swimming contest or enter a bodybuilding contest, you already have a bit of that competitive edge.

So I just read some site that said that it is a myth that shaving your armpits keeps it from stinking. I say that this is not a myth. If you shave your head, will it keep your head from stinking? Yes. There you go.

Also, Julius Caesar shaved his armpits. The Pharaohs did too. It is a great way to connect to history and make it alive. Probably Saladin shaved his armpits too.

I found this awesome and not too long but very interesting article on shaving throughout history. I kept on reading and reading. It really is pretty fascinating. Why did it start? Why does the beard/no beard preference keep cycling? Alexander the Great made all his men shave for safety (the enemy could grab you by your beard), and Mussolini said that whiskers were "a sign of decadence." Jesus Christ is usually depicted as having a traditional beard and 1000 years earlier David's servants to Hanun the son of Nahash had half of their beards shaved off and half of their clothes cut off "even to their buttocks." Ha!
I haven't used shaving cream in about 4 years. I think I would like it, but I have just never really gotten around to getting any. I only need to shave once a week or so, thanks partly to the lack of a facial hair honor code stipulation more more importantly to my Mom and Dad who blessed me with a sissy mustache (remember the Jordan fiasco? No? Maybe someday I will share...)

But there you go. I'll give anyone an ice cream sandwich or a tootsie roll pop that shaves their armpits this next week. Just let me know in the comments section. Hmm. Actually, I will probably not find it after tomorrow. Give me a pledge that you will do it. I will follow up on this in one week.

Google's coolness defeats my life AGAIN

Hey. So this daily posting thing is tough. It is 10 pm and I just finished homework. Part of that is because Anna taught tonight so I was watching the flea. I have learned that if she gets water in her mouth during her bath, she hates the world for about 12 minutes, and then things are okay again.
But she's asleep now so Anna and I are going to have dinner.

So I read today that Google is sending information to the CDC about searches for flu-related symptoms in order to track the spread of the flu this season. Google has taken out any sort of personal information, so it is just general numbers for locales, but it is supposed to be way more efficient than anything the government is doing right now. Pretty sweet hey?
here is the full text of the story:

(I don't know if copying and pasting is legal, so here is my citation: Big Red Headline, The Drudge Report, drudgereport.com, 11 November 2008)

SICK SURVEILLANCE: GOOGLE REPORTS FLU SEARCHES, LOCATIONS TO FEDS
Tue Nov 11 2008 15:34:50 ET

GOOGLE will launch a new tool that will help federal officials "track sickness".

"Flu Trends" uses search terms that people put into the web giant to figure out where influenza is heating up, and will notify the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in real time!

GOOGLE, continuing to work closely with government, claims it would keep individual user data confidential: "GOOGLE FLU TRENDS can never be used to identify individual users because we rely on anonymized, aggregated counts of how often certain search queries occur each week."

Engineers will capture keywords and phrases related to the flu, including thermometer, flu symptoms, muscle aches, chest congestion and others.

Dr. Lyn Finelli, chief of influenza surveillance at CDC: "One thing we found last year when we validated this model is it tended to predict surveillance data. The data are really, really timely. They were able to tell us on a day-to-day basis the relative direction of flu activity for a given area. They were about a week ahead of us. They could be used... as early warning signal for flu activity."

Thomas Malone, professor at M.I.T.: "I think we are just scratching the surface of what's possible with collective intelligence."

Eric Schmidt, GOOGLE's chief executive vows: "From a technological perspective, it is the beginning."

Developing...


Google has done it again. This is so cool. Imagine you could watch the spread of disease in real time on a map or something.



And then run...

Religion and Birds on Hiatus

So that last post bored me nearly to death. The rest of the birds are going to take a break for a while. I just have to talk about what a rotten day this started out to be.

First, I was going to get up and use the new gym in our apartment complex, but instead I slept in. Actually, that was awesome. So today started out great.

Then, I took a really long shower and got ready really slow and leisurely-like. That was awesome too. Sounds like the beginnings of a great day, huh?

























BUT I spent too long getting ready and I had 9 minutes before class started when I got out of the bathroom. It usually takes me 13 minutes to get from my front door into class if I run the whole time. If I was responsible and didn't have to rush anything, it would probably take me about 16 or 17 minutes from the front door to my seat in class. I had 9 minutes. Here is where my day started going sour.

I got out the door to take my bike and my tire was flat so I took the DweebCruiser6300 to school. Also, I left my brand new, never-been-used fender on my nice bike because it didn't seem worth it today. (Remember that. It just might come up again later.)

I forgot that I wasn't on my fixed-gear, and that I couldn't slow down by pedaling slower, so every time I approached an intersection and when I got up to the bike lock poles I had to hit the brakes and they squealed so loud. I was humiliated. And I wasn't even on a slick looking bike to make up for it.
At least when I am on my nice bike I can comfort myself with the knowledge that I have the finest parts in the whole bike rack- TIG welded 4130 ChroMoly steel track frame, Sugino cranks and bottom bracket, tektro brakes on my sweet Alex DA-22 rims, MKS track pedals and Surly hubs and track cog. Also, I have some rockin quads and hams.


Aaaaaaaaaaahh yeah...
But anyways, today was bad. I haven't changed or fiddled with the brakes on the DweebCruiser6300 since I bought it over a year ago. So I parked it and ran into my Torts class which I am ALWAYS late to (it's just that usually my professor is late too, so he never knows. Ha!) But he beat me today and I walked in sheepishly and turned on my computer...
...
...and I had 26 minutes of battery. So I waited 22 minutes and then stood up and moved to the very back of the room and plugged it in. That wasn't so bad though... I checked my email because he went overtime.

And I got free pizza at a presentation put on by the Nebraska Attorney General, the Nebraska District Court and the Lancaster County Court to try and win over new summer law clerks. That was pretty good. And Anna and I used a gift card at Target tonight and I got some Craisins (I should have put Craisins on my favorite candy list because I really like them, but I can rarely justify buying them because they are a splurge that is good for you. That is hard to justify sometimes...)

Also, I got some real headway done on my next project.

Oh right...sadnesss. It did rain on my ride home and I had a hard time steering because my fingers were frozen.
But that was ok.
I didn't even get so very wet. It was mostly just really cold. So I guess it was a pretty good day overall.

OH YEAH! I remember the reason why today was so bad. I didn't get the call from the FBI. But it's ok, don't panic like i did until 2:45 today. They are just behind on their notifications and probably won't call until Wednesday (seeing as tomorrow is a federal holiday) so we'll just have to wait to hear about the internship.
Which means I will just procrastinate filling out my forms for a few more days.





P.S. These photos of the baby are offered as a token of good-will after serving you a hefty helping of my rippling masses of man muscle.

Religion and Bird Series Part I

Hello.
I have decided to write a little mini-series about birds and religion. I have put together a little list of different bird that are connected to religion. I think it is pretty cool. I only have four, so if you have any ideas for other birds that you can think of please let me know. Otherwise this will be the first of a four-part series.

Ahem...

The Quetzal

This is the national bird of Guatemala and was considered sacred by the Mayans and Aztecs. It is a pretty bird. I like its long tail. It is cool because the figure Quetzalcoatl is the Feathered Serpent, the king of the earth and the sky, had visited the central Americas before, and is prophesied to return again. This is who the Aztecs and Moctezuma thought they were meeting when Cortes landed (although some people think that maybe the second coming stuff is a result of the conquistadors bringing Christianity and mixing it into the local religions).
There is a good article about the plausibility of Quetzalcoatl links to Christ written in an article for the Maxwell Institute here. It is a lot more detailed and critical look at the myths than I had ever heard of or read before.
Here are some of the plausible reasons why Quetzalcoatl could be a representation of Christ as a memory of his visit to the Mesoamericans (yoinked from the article):

• A deity playing a role in the Creation
• A deity associated with the bread of life
• A deity assisting the dead by visiting the spirit world
  
• A deity shedding blood to save mankind (Quetzalcoatl spilled his blood on all the bones of the dead, promising them that they would reanimate and live again)
  
• A deity dying on a tree
• A deity resurrecting and being responsible for the rebirth of the deceased
• A personage of light
• Associated with the Sun
  

Also, I think pictures of Quetzalcoatl look pretty cool (all yoinked from Wikipedia. Whatever, don't judge. Wikipedia is a pretty good source.)


This one is my favorite. I like that he is eating
this guy.
I have always like the way the Mayans and Aztecs drew people and animals and everything.So that is all. I got bored of the research part- this is just a blog after all. Read the article on your own and let me know what it says.

The Goals of the Life

What's up loyal followers?
I thought I would give you all the pleasure of reading some of my life goals. I don't have a whole lot and none of them are particularly deep or meaningful, they are mostly just things that I would like to do.

• I would like to take a trip on Air Force One. I don't really know how I will ever do this. I suppose I wouldn't mind going into politics at some point in my life, but it isn't in any of my plans. Maybe we'll have to worry about that when I have an income so I can start donating to campaigns and getting on some short lists or whatever.

• I would like to carve a sculpture. I have this awesome idea that I am sure would make me famous for a while. Maybe enough to get a public school named after me. It is sort of like a huge obelisk and I am still working on the details and what it could mean, but I am pretty sure it will be awesome.

• I would like to learn French. It would be pretty useful. If you were to take a random citizen of the world that didn't speak English, what would be your next guess? French. You never know when you might wake up somewhere in the world and not know where you are. Don't be stuck only knowing bonjour and omelette du fromage .

• I would like to learn Turkish. Cyprus is what got me hooked on Turkey, what with the occupation and all. I think it also has the most interesting history of any country in the region.

• I would like to do a full Ironman sometime. It is a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile biking portion, and a 26.2 mile marathon. I like all three sports, but it'll definitely be years before I could handle that. But goals are good, right?

• I would like to ride across the U.S. doing the bike camping thing. That seems like it could be pretty fun.

• I would like to take a vacation to the Virgin Islands and go kayak touring. I read about it in a magazine once and it has always sounded cool since then. You could go snorkeling once you hit your camping spot or hotel! Doesn't that sound so cool?

• I am pretty much planning on living on an island. Anna and I are thinking Puerto Rico once I finish law school. It is sort of the best of both worlds; you get to live in a new environment where you don't totally fit in and you have to learn another language and they use the dollar and you get all the benefits of being in the United States (it being a commonwealth and all. What does commonwealth even mean? And why are Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky commonwealths even though they aren't treated like commonwealths?)

• I would like to own all of the Tintin books. Those are really cool.

• I would like to go on a safari.

• I would like to live in a brick house in a city.

That's about it. I am sure I have some more, but these are the only ones I can think of. What are some of your cool life goals?