Random Reasons Why I Swear 1 -- Eighty Fifth Post

I swear at Watson and Crick a lot. Or at least, I do some yelling and fist-shaking when their names come up. I'm not saying they weren't good at researching, or that they didn't make important contributions to science, or that their conclusions about DNA weren't valid.
I just hate them for being huge douchecanoes who didn't give credit where credit was due. Specifically, they used information obtained from Dr. Rosalind Franklin and only barely credited her in their paper. As a result of their rudeness, she was denied her place in history for a really freaking long time.

 According to her wikipedia page, she's pretty badass. She got a BA from Cambridge before they were even giving them to women and  was recognized as pretty awesome. Watson and Crick had a lot of wrong ideas about DNA which were only set straight by Franklin's data, and they gave her and her grad student one stinking footnote.
It bugs me that it's okay for anyone to do this to anyone and then be lauded for great science for decades. So I freak out whenever people go on and on about Watson and Crick and how they discovered the structure of DNA without mentioning the awesome lady to the left, Rosalind Franklin.

Guerrilla Gardening Tip of the Whenever I Get Around To Posting -- Eighty Fourth Post

Sorry about the lack of posting, but good news! I'll be in university a few years longer, as I've been accepted to a couple of graduate schools' PhD programs. More time for this blog to be relevant to my life!

Anyway, I've become quite taken with the idea of guerrilla gardening lately. Being a broke college senior who rents in a town with lots of green space within walking distance means I can't really do it now, but I have big plans.
Big.
Plans.

So here is a definition of guerrilla gardening, made up by me with input from various sources: it's where you plant stuff without permission, preferably on public grounds, really preferably without anyone knowing it's you. Alternatively, it's planting food instead of a lawn. Actually, it's whatever you want it to be. It can be taking control of your food source (especially if you live in a "food desert"), or just making a vacant lot prettier. It can be composting all your food scraps and then growing plants in that compost or just planting an avocado seed in your room. The whole point of this movement, as I see it, is just doing what you can.

Here is a video of a food-planting guerrilla gardener in south central Los Angeles, California. I'm not planning on living permanently (owning my own place) anywhere for a while, though.
So my preferred form of guerrilla gardening is just planting things where they don't belong. I'd like to point out that other people's yards are off-limits, although it's tempting to toss a seed bomb into a really run-down lawn.
Seed bombs are an easy form of guerrilla gardening. They would be fun if you lived by vacant lots; just toss and wait for rain to wash the seeds and their probably nutritious surrounding material into the ground, where they should grow without much care. It should go without saying that you shouldn't plant invasive species, noxious weeds, or anything like that in public spaces, so please do some research BEFORE you set out to change the world.

Etsy has lots of seed bombs. Photo by PulpArt, all rights are belong to them.

For the more ballsy guerrilla gardener, planting seedlings or bulbs in public spaces under cover of darkness is an option.

For the purposes of this blog, my Tip of the Whenever I Get Around To Posting will mostly consist of general garden tips; it just sounds cooler to call it guerrilla gardening. I'm planning to post about starting seeds indoors and keeping them there, growing food in small spaces, and generally beautifying your living space in affordable ways.
Sneak peak: use yogurt containers with holes poked in the bottom as planters.

I'm pretty excited about this, so hopefully I can keep going with it. For some reason, I've become more dedicated to things since getting into grad school; maybe it's the fact that I'll have to be devoted to a single project and goal for three years, minimum. Anyway, I've started feeling serious about things like feminism and equality and doing things for yourself.
But that's a topic for another post.

Growing Things -- Eighty Third Post

I've been absent for a while. I could blame this on school, and up until the middle of December, that would be true.
I haven't been really busy with school for the past month and a half, man. I've just been lazy as all get out. I mean, I've done some stuff, but I get really tired when I do just one thing (research) all day and then have to go home and work on applying to graduate schools. Bleh. I slept all the time during Jan Term. All. The. Time.

This happened, too. I love making snowmen, because my hometown has crappy snow.

The times when I wasn't sleeping, I was at a friend's house where we are crawling through Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, a fantastic anime series based on a manga that I would love to find and read. Having seen both dubbed and subbed, I can say that the dub is pretty good. You should watch it.
When I wasn't watching TV at my friend's, I was doting over my plants. I love growing things. Over my abnormally long Christmas Break, I was overcome with a need to plant all the seeds. I stayed up late researching how to grow mangoes (got one for Christmas), pomegranates (got one to eat on Christmas), grapefruits, and oranges and it turned out to be supposedly simple.
Since pomegranates have ten million seeds, it wasn't hard to make them plantable. It's a bit harder to keep them alive once they've sprouted, but I've got one out of the five (out of about 24) that sprouted still kicking. Not the best ratio, but I just want one to mature. I don't need 24 pomegranate trees.
Mangoes are harder because of that slippery flesh and the woody seedcoat. I probably maimed it because my information was bad (do not pry the seed coat open at the fat end, that's where the embryonic root joins the seed), but it appears to be not dead yet. Like avocados, mangoes are supposedly able to sprout in water before being planted in dirt. Unlike avocados, however, you have to clean out the water and mine doesn't appreciate being stabbed by toothpicks even though someone on youtube did it no problem and they have to be fully submerged and... It's just generally a different process. However, mine is developing a little shoot, which is encouraging. I have to remind myself that my avocado took months to sprout, and that big seeds are just going to take longer because, frankly, they can afford to. Little seeds have to get those chlorophyll loaded cells up into the sunlight as fast as plantly possible once they get wet, but big seeds have huge stores of energy.

Fat mango seed with all its energy stores.

 Speaking of avocados, mine is about five months old (as of sprouting; closer to eight or nine as of planting, yet another illustration of big seeds taking their own sweet time) and I'm super proud of it. It's got a million leaves (11) and is super tall (1.5 feet at most) and just got repotted with apparent success. I'm pretty happy. I named it Avogadro (long time ago) because that's a chemistry joke that I would deserve to be shot if I didn't make. Almedeo Avogadro, man, what a guy. Discovered one of the most fundamental concepts of chemistry, was a revolutionary, had six kids, and no one ever remembers his first name.

A humble homage to the great man.

 My grapefruit seeds and orange seed (clementine-type) are kind of under the radar right now, but the grapefruits definitely sprouted in a baggy before I planted them and have hopefully not rotted in the soil, while I just stuck the orange seed in some dirt.

Citrus seeds not doing anything interesting.

And, because I'm obsessed, a bunch of Chinese Lantern seeds went into a pot. They've sprouted and turn towards the light like pros. 

Follow the lights!

After weeks/months of seeing "grow your own garlic!" pins on Pintrest, I finally decided to plant one of the garlic cloves laying around my kitchen (in a Häagen-Dazs^® Mango Sorbet pint container because it's deep enough), and that's already sprouted, yay! I also planted four spinach seeds (Nobel Spinach from Winco) in the same container.

Gettin' in on this instant gratification/grow your own food thing.

 Also, I have a hyacinth bulb that my grandmother gave me. It was already started, but it's starting to turn purple.

I love those vases, too.

So, to recap: I can't do things and also do other things at the same time and I love plants.

I do not think that means what you think it means: Etsy edition

If you are a denzien of the internet, perhaps you have heard of Etsy.com? The site is a global marketplace sort of thing where people post handmade, vintage, and wholesale crafty things on the internets for people to buy. With a seller account, you can post whatever the hell you want, unlike Amazon.com, freaking amazon, which only lets you post known items, for whatever price you want. You upload your pictures, add a title and description, and wait.
In my case, I type in a search term and spend hours and hours looking at stuff I don't need, and favoriting all of it. You can follow people and see their favorites.Yes, favorite is a verb; I favorited that item, I am favoriting things, I favorite the items that I like.
I got my iphone case, which has a cool owl picture on the back, from a reputable seller with good reviews and feedbacks regarding the style of case I got.

Anyway, where I was going with this is the use of "vintage" by sellers. The beauty of etsy, the ability to post whatever, means that you can call anything "vintage" and get away with it. My main issue is with people who seem to think that items from the 1990s count as "vintage."
This is not exactly true. Vintage (in the sense of items, not wine), according to Wikipedia and Merriam-Webster online, is not actually a thing. I know, right? It just means "from a time" but in popular culture can refer to retro or antique.
Let's start with retro. The officialish websites say that retro is "an outdated style that has returned to fashion". By this definition, I suppose that the 90s could be retro, especially given wikipedia's 15-20 plus year range. Still, I would maintain that the 90s styles went out of fashion for a reason and should not come back, with the possible exception of a few elements of certain sub-styles, such as punk, grunge, and goth. And for me, retro just makes me think of poodle skirts and diners.
If "vintage" means antique, the 90s are way, way too recent. I am not 102 years old, okay? To be an antique by the US customs law, a thing must be 100 years old. In antique shops, the rule is usually 50. The late 90s is only 13 years old or so, so I would maintain that a thing from the mid-nineties would just barely qualify for "retro".
NB: I am also not yet 52.
Another problem with categorizing "vintage" is that it's so widely used and yet undefined by authoritative sources as far as the popular definition goes. I've heard that hipsters like "vintage" everything, so I guess this makes sense. "I liked vintage before it was defined" and all that. It kind of seems like vintage just means "used stuff that's pretty old that isn't produced any more or is indicative of a bygone era." For example: a vintage star trek shirt that was produced for a few seasons of the original series (or, in 20 years, shirts from Doctor Who or Heroes or Lost or any other show playing now), or a vintage phone with a rotary dial (or anymore, a landline), or a vintage poster from when a movie came out 20 years ago, or a hat that you found in a thrift store that you've never seen anywhere else. A vintage bike would be one that was made years ago, although updated models may be made currently. A vintage scarf would be one that you found in your mother or grandmother's closet that she's had since before you were born.
As far as retro goes, I'd like to submit that it implies that high-up people are mass producing and selling an old style again. For instance, Nordstrom and Sears and JC Penny's are selling garments composed of geometric color-blocked knit and woven fabric, such as were worn somewhere between 1960 and 1980 (the Op Art era on this page, there's a picture of it about three quarters of the way down if you click the title). People were mass producing peasant blouses for a few years, which I think would count as retro, although if you could find a vintage peasant blouse, you were a lucky girl. For men, I'd say that fedoras and pea coats/great coats/overcoats can be vintage or even antique but are currently mass produced, making them a retro trend.

So, the conclusion I make is this: it's okay to call some stuff vintage, like my dad's university shirt from 1978-1982 (30+ years old) that I wear all the time because the fitted style looks good on girls nowadays, or the chair that I swiped from the neighbor's front lawn (garish yellow/green/tan floral print with orange accents) that probably came from the 70s or 80s because I sincerely doubt anyone produced items with this color scheme between 1990 and 2005 on purpose; these things are old enough to have belonged to this generation's parents when they were our age (by which late teens to early 30s). Although, I would actually argue that my chair is just garish and not vintage.
This means that the definition of "vintage" is changing all the time. In about 10 years, even I will not be able to complain that the 90s is too recent, and it will fall solidly into the realm of vintage for kids younger than 15 as of today. What I think of as vintage now, at age 22 in 2012, will all too soon become "antique" (if it isn't already; I freely admit that my definition is fuzzy).
The main thing I'm getting at with this whole post is that the 1990s aren't vintage, they're just old and typically out of style. 
Damn kids.

School is starting back up -- Eighty Second Post

I find myself in an oddly familiar state: Denial.
I get like this every time a big life-changing event comes around. I was in denial up until two weeks before high school graduation.
I can't afford denial this time around; I have to register to graduate (occurs in May) by late November. I have to take the GRE, which is not stuffed down my throat like the SAT was. I have to apply to grad schools, which will be considerably less easy than my "apply to one school with a special no-essay-no-fee early application, get in, and don't apply anywhere else because that's where you wanted to go in the first place" method from high school. I researched schools for about twenty minutes over two months that time around; I've been looking at schools far more intensely for a little while longer this time.
This is my last year of undergrad, come hell or high water. If I don't graduate, well, I'm out of money. So.

Anyway, this was all brought on by wandering around campus and seeing all the freshmen. It suddenly struck me how young they all look, and I realized that everyone on campus except the 1990 summer-born seniors and the odd fifth-year senior is younger than me. That's about five eighths of the university population. A lot of people are still the same age as me, but it's still so weird. SO. WEIRD.

I feel like this warrants a "what I wish I had known" post, but I honestly enjoyed my period of learning. For the most part. Except for the first half of first semester freshman year...
So here's the things that I would go back in time and tell myself.
1. You do not have to eat all the food in the cafeteria. I know there's a lot of food, but you just became vegetarian. You can't afford to get all your protein from cheese. Try for a salad with beans, even though you don't like cold beans. Just try it once a week. Maybe then you won't be crippled by a dislike of salads FOUR YEARS LATER.
2. College is harder than high school. I know you were the smart kid in high school. You coasted through and didn't actually pick up any study skills. Sure, you can write a decent essay and do some pretty good math, but your college professors aren't teaching classes of ten or twenty people. Lots of first year science classes are packed with non-majors, including yourself, and they aren't going to make review sheets with everything you need to know. You have to study, and you'll still get Bs. In fact, you'll fail some tests regardless of how hard you study. Get over it, princess. If you don't just roll with it and summon the willpower to do better on the next test, you'll have a breakdown in your adviser's office.
3. Study abroad. You already want to, now just do it and don't look back. Go with an open mind and a fairly empty suitcase and come back laden down with memories.
That one was cheating, because I actually did that. But you should, too.
4. Make sure you clean your hair out of the shower every time you use it sophomore year. You have really long dark brown hair, and it bugs the crap out of other people when you leave it on the floor. It's just polite to clean that up, if only so they don't blame you instinctively for the clogged drains.

There are lots of things I feel obligated to add, like "open up more in class" and "relax around other people" but I really don't want to. I like who I am and who my friends are now, and I look back fondly on the years before I met my current close friends. I'm kind of the quiet one in class; my housemate said she mentioned me in conversation with other chemistry majors in our year and had to describe me as "the quiet girl with the really long brown hair." This elicited an immediate "oh, yeah," response from everyone.
I'm okay with this. It might bother a lot of people, but I don't go to class to socialize. I'll sit with people I know and chat before and after class, and I'm friendly with people in the class, but I don't need my friends around to feel comfortable.
Introverts of the world, nothing is wrong with you. You don't have to be BFFs with everyone in your class, and you don't have to relax around large crowds if you don't want to. It's okay to be "the quiet one" as long as you're happy and comfortable in your skin. You do still need to learn how to deal with an extrovert-focused world, but you don't have to change who you are.

Running -- Eighty First Post

Dear reader(s), I have a confession. It's terrible, and it makes me a bad interneter. Sharing this will, in fact, have the potential to move this blog from its solid "random tidbits about my life that have little interest for anyone else (except that craigslist thing)" position to something more like a "fitness blog".
I know. Terrible. However, this blog also solidly reflects where I am in my life, and where I've been, and where I would never like to be again (in the case of a whole lot of my earlier posts). So here goes.

I've taken up working out to stave off the boredom of an exceptionally boring summer. Since I didn't have a job for most of the summer, I was pretty much stuck at home filling out job applications. All. Day. Long.
I turned to the internet, since I could take internet breaks from filling out applications and switch back in a heartbeat. Or not. Whatever. In the midst my pintresting, facebooking, and tumblring, I came across several workout blogs. I pinned a few workouts, did fewer, and then started reading the blogs.
This was a mistake. I was no longer content to just sit on the couch and watch Doctor Who all day. Instead, I picked up Buffy the Vampire Slayer because there was a "workout game" on my current favorite tumblr, Back On Pointe. Also, I ran out of seasons of the revamped Doctor Who and I'm stuck in the middle of the second Doctor because of missing episodes. Life in the first world is rough, let me tell you.
Anyway, I joined Fitocracy, which not only tracks your workouts for you (including compiling you a history for each exercise that you've done since joining) and has a thriving community of "fitocrats", but also has a points system that lets you level up, complete with challenges that give you extra points and allows you to "prop" other people's accomplishments and workouts. You can join groups made up of potentially like-minded people whose accomplishments and comments encourage you to work out more. It also has a cute little robot image that calculates your workouts; to close the dialogue box, you have to click the "I'm Awesome" button. Working out is both a game that can be won and a self-esteem booster.
Anyway, one thing led to another and I got into running. And it's not my fault. I tried at the beginning of the summer, and then I got shin splints from wearing heels when I went to The Dark Knight Rises as Catwoman. Admittedly, I was a slightly pudgier catwoman than Anne Hathaway, but still. Shin splints? Running was clearly not a good idea. Besides, I couldn't even run down my very short street without gasping and wheezing for breath. So I gave up on running "for the time being", figuring that I would try again when I was in better shape, with stronger legs, a stronger heart and lungs, and less flab to lug around.
I'm not an unhealthy weight: according to both my doctor and the internet, I have a perfectly healthy BMI. What the internet chart told me that my doctor didn't is that I'm right at the upper limit of healthy. I've been about the same weight, give or take 10 lbs, since ninth grade, and I haven't grown more than half an inch since eighth grade. The thing is that I'm not happy with the way my body looks. Don't get me wrong, it's a great body. It's taken me through a lot without too much griping, and it's put up with a lot of crappy food and piercings over the years. It's just that it could look better if I gave half a fuck.
Besides, I'll never be a Doctor Who companion if I can't even run down the block. Have you seen how much running they do?
So the summer went on, and I kept reading about workouts and working out. Eventually, I found my way to the "Couch-to-5K" (or C25K) site and realized that I could do that. It eases you into running and stresses the importance of not doing too much too soon. Running is hard on your body. It's very good for your body, but that's partly because it's so stinking rough on it. The thing with the body is that to make it stronger, you have to break it down. Muscles get big when you do strength training because the exercise breaks down your muscles just a tiny bit. The body repairs them when you rest, and they grow back bigger and stronger. Running builds up your bones because it's a high-impact activity, meaning that your bones jar against each other and break down a little. As long as you're not running all day, every day, your body will build those bones back up stronger. The problem is that people start too fast, run every day, or just run too much the first day, and hurt themselves. Most of my friends that run regularly enjoy it a lot, so why is it that I hate it so much?
According to the internet, it's because I get myself hurt. I start too fast and expect too much of my body. If I were to ease in, only run a few days a week and for shorter distances at a time, then I'd have a better shot at actually enjoying it. My little brother is on a cross country team, and he loves it. Clearly, running is hiding somewhere in my genes. Now it's my job to convince my body that this running thing is okay. So far, C25K is the best way I've found. Just reading about running, especially trailrunning and minimalist/barefoot running, will make me want to bolt out the door for a lap around the city, but I have to stop at the end of the street. I need self control, will power, and a strict plan to follow. You can buy a C25K plan for your smartphone, which would be nice if I had one, or just keep track of where you are on your own for free, which is what I do. I log my distances and approximate times to fitocracy and run on monday, wednesday, and friday, which should work well for school. I have easy tuesdays and thursdays, so I guess I could run tuesday, thursday, and saturday, but I'm not good at working out on weekends when everyone's around all the time.
N.B.: The people at C25K did not pay me to say all this.

So here's my tip to you: find a workout plan that you can stick with. Make it up yourself or find it on the internet, or both, but stick to it. Work out every day or every other day or even just once a week, but stick with it. Don't let a change in your life like moving or going back to school throw you off. And don't even worry about running if that was your least favorite part of those long-ago PE classes. There are lots of ways, impact or non-impact, indoor and outdoor, to get your cardio done.

I've been tracking my progress since july, and, quite frankly, nothing much has changed. I lose an inch here and there, then gain it back the next week. Granted, I'm more motivated now, but those love handles ain't goin' nowhere. I still can't do a real pushup, although for that I mostly blame my screwy shoulders, since I'm pretty good at tricep dips, knee pushups, incline pushups, and wall pushups, all of which put my arms at different angles but still use the same main muscle groups as real pushups.
That won't stop me from keeping on working out, though. I like working out. I like the way I feel after I've worked out, and I like logging my progress on fitocracy. I like being a part of the internet communities that work out, and I like the smell of my own hard-earned sweat. I like having an excuse to buy yoga pants and a new sports bra. I like giving a fuck about the way my body looks.
Also, I don't mean that I like the smell of not showering for three days, just that I like proof that I worked hard enough to break a sweat.

Craigslist Scam Tip Site -- Eightieth Post

Since this blog is getting some nice ratings on Google for searches craigslist scammers Ashleigh Loudon and Scott Doyle, I'd like to alert you all to a website dedicated to craigslist scams. It's called "Let's Get the Craigslist Scammers" and consists of posts regarding the various and sundry scams that people( lots of people all over the world) run across, not just the ones that I personally run across in my particular area in my particular interests (jobs, namely).

I'll still be posting any information I run across that seems scammy, especially screenshots of emails, but this blog is not dedicated to that. It's dedicated to my life, in all its boring glory, or at least the bits that I feel like sharing with the internet.

Happy Interneting!