I had my work party tonight. Sorry to say I have no exciting stories like (e:Mike)'s Eckerd story, but what do you expect from a private Franciscan institution? They had free beer and wine, so I was stoked. Apparently, they do not believe in any type of de-icing agent here at Hilbert. I skated all the way across campus on this lovely sheet of ice. Thankfully (e:frogedelic) gave me a ride back to my building.


Lori and I with the President of Hilbert


This was funny. One of our fellow GA's was walking us out the doors when he reaches into his coat pocket and says "what is this"...then pulling out a little Santa figurine. How random.


(e:frogedelic) trying to scrape the coating of ice off her window

In a spontaneous gesture, two classmates and I decided to play in the snow. Since the snow was too fluffy to make snowballs and have a proper fight, we decided sumo style with fists of snow fury was the way to go. As I was taking one of them down I somehow was flipped and ended up going head first into a deep bank. I got a seriously compacted cork of snow in my ear canal! It was so bizarre, and quite cold. In all my years of playing in the snow, even having spectacular snowboarding crashes in Aspen, I have never had this happen. Weird.

We went back inside to defrost. Then we had the brilliant idea that we should continue our snow theme and imitate penguins by sliding across a giant boardroom table on our bellies. On my first attempt, I caught my thigh on the edge of the table and ended up doing a booby flop. That's right, a booby flop - with a bounce. Ayna! (That is Afrikaans for 'Ouch'). Subsequent attempts proved much more successful when I had the idea to wrap my abs with my fleece scarf. This allowed for maximum slide down the runway. It was a nice interruption from finals. One paper to go!

Yah, so I am still up. I just finished another paper. I find it ironic that tonight I am tired. It is the first night in about 45 that I am actually tired before 4 am and I have to fight through it to crank out a paper. Insomnia, how I loathe your mockery. Truly I am just frustrated that it took me this long to complete. It should not have, I simply cannot concentrate. I think I need to be tested.

While I was sitting here working on my assignment I had the TV on, you know, background noise. So in the corner of my eye I catch a soccer match. I got excited; oh how I love footy. Suddenly Mario comes running onto the pitch and knocks a guy over. He steals the ball and dribbles down the pitch, kicking and punching guys along the way. It was very entertaining. The point of that was to say there is a new game called Super Mario Strikers out for Gamecube. Looks like so much fun! Soccer with bombs!

Out of curiosity, has anyone seen this commercial where there is a hooker straddling a man she calls 'Senator'? They are on some skanky hotel bed and she starts beating his chest and yelling at him not to die because a new phone is coming out soon. I am not sure I am following that marketing campaign. Ciao.

Wow! Talk about a throwback in time. I turned on my TV to see if I could catch some of the soccer championships as I finish another final and work on a paper. What do my wandering eyes find but the Lewiston-Porter 6th grade orchestra playing some very boring holiday song.

There was a guy in my class whose dad used to join us and play the bass with him. I always thought he was cool because he carried around one of those battery pack mobile phones. He was playing tonight. How weird. (e:Theecarey), do you remember 'Pinker'?

Anyhow, I cannot believe the same director is there. I never liked her. I thought her teaching method was uncreative and stifling, not to mention totally demeaning. She always yelled at people about how bad there were or how poor their posture was instead of sharing with them the ways they can improve.

She also used to make us stand to play. I always hated that. Well, obviously not the cello players, but the violins and violas had to stand. In watching this song, I see nothing has changed. Not to mention she still plays along instead of conducting like a conductor should. Who does she think she is, Andre Rieu?

That guy can get away with it because he does not do it for every song and he is a fun and amazing musician. He smiles when he plays, he lets the beauty of his sound move him. She always looked like she had a corncob up her butt. Anyhow, it was a quick trip down memory lane; I just wanted to share it. Ciao.

Warning: This is a bit wordy.

THE NAZCA LINES
The Nazca people of Peru left no trace cities, but did leave the marvel of the Nazca Lines. Geogliphs. Built for extraterrestrials? Runways? They are figures only visible from the air, when modern flight was hundreds of years away. Some lines run 10 miles long. Birds, monkey, spider, whale, human like figure, there are thousands of figures. What was their purpose?

Astronomy theory relates to the positions to the moon, stars, solstices etc. The lines can point out horizons and figures relate to constellations. Is it just a map of the sky to mark the seasons? Astronomy theory doesn't fully explain it. It can only match up with 30% of the lines. Random at best.

Water theory suggests the figures coincide with aquifers that lie under the desert surface. They spiraled wells to tap into the aquifers. These 2,000 year old aqueducts are still in use today, fantastically preserved. Yet, only 30% match up with the lines. Random at best.

Ritual theory suggests they made huge images so that the gods in the heavens would be able to see them. They performed ritual dances but evidence of brutal rituals has never been found. Weak at best.

ATLANTIS
Could it be the island of Santurini in Greece? The island has many geological similarities to Plato's writings. The hot and cold springs, the red, white and black rock, the fact that it is an active volcano and could have been the cause of extinction. Atlantis supposedly sank into the sea. How does this compare to the city of Pompeii that was buried under a hundred feet of ash? The concentric circles described by Plato, do they offer evidence of advanced life? Yet there is no mention of a volcanic geological event. It is possible that they simply had no concept of what they were witnessing, if the piroplastic plume was obscuring the view, but it was a most violent explosion of priroplastic bombs. Scholars suggest that violent earthquakes and floods occurred over one day and night, sinking the city of Atlantis and making all the area impassible as mud. Such an eruption would do just that..

Was Plato writing entire fiction, entire fact, or fact based fiction? Was he simply the Dan Brown (author of The DaVinci Code) of the day? Was his writing merely a tale of mortality? Why are we so intrigued by Atlantis over the factual history we know of? Is there some psychic connection to the human mind collective that Atlantis has something to do with our future?

Aquitiri is a city that was unearthed much like Pompeii. An old city, supposedly of high functioning individuals. However, unlike Pompeii, no bodies were ever recovered.

THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE
The Bermuda Triangle is a triangular region in the Atlantic Ocean between Florida Keys, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda. An average of five planes goes missing every year and more than 50 ships have gone missing in the last century. However, is this phenomenal for an area consisting of 1.5 million sq miles of ocean? Surely, there are logical scientific explanations: gas bubbles, electromagnetic interference, violent seas. The geography of Bermuda is amazing. It is a coral reef perched on an extinct volcano 1 mile down at the bottom of the ocean. Its precarious environment is at the mercy of this vast deep ocean with easy changing weather.

Water spouts, essentially tornados on the water, form easily in the Atlantic and can be very deadly in open water. Many times, they are invisible to ships on the water. Methane gas bubbles releasing from the ocean floor in a localized concentration can cause a drastic density difference in the water, easily sinking an object. Random rips can suddenly turn 3ft waves into 6ft waves, and if the wind is blowing the opposite direction, it can make it worse. Microbursts produced by thunderstorms could tip an object.

When flying over water and a long way from land, spatial disorientation can occur. In other words, in flight Vertigo, the loss of sense of up and down, left and right. We fly by horizon, without it, the mind cannot compensate.

Have you ever been in the water in total darkness? While snorkeling a beautiful underground river in Cozumel I experienced this madness. I was face down, enjoying the beauty of the floor some 30 ft below when darkness swallowed me. Almost instantly, I had no idea where I was. I literally had no sense of direction.

I was far from the caves walls so I thought I might try to swim slowly with an outstretched hand and eventually reach a wall. I would then follow the wall and either head back to the light from which I came, or emerge on the other side of the blackness. My friend and I were calling out to each other but within the acoustics of an underground river, our primitive echo location was useless. I didn't panic, but I will admit I wasn't loving it. Slow and cautious, I swam in what I hoped wasn't a circle, trying to reach a wall. I ended up cracking my head on a razor sharp rock. Blood running down my forehead, the salt water burning my cut; it was fanfuckingtastic. Anyhow, that is my small version testament to spatial disorientation. Human beings like to feel centered; having no sense of where you are in space is disturbing.

Back to the triangle, there are many natural scientific explanations for probable causes of these tragedies, but why is no trace found of the majority of these missing modes of transportation? We were able to find the Titanic with no accurate coordinates, and she lies 2.5 miles below the surface.

I guess I shared these thoughts because I have always had a passion for archeology, both land and marine. Secrets of our future buried in our past, that sort of thing. Ciao.