Describing Interesting And Notable Antics

Today I joined my first Zoom meeting for one of my current courses; however, it didn’t go as planned. From my limited understanding, the way the app works when you first enter it, is you can either sign up for a Zoom account, or immediately join a call. I chose to do the latter, and turned off video before joining the class. But that also meant no one on the call knew who I was . . . Just then, the teacher somehow manually turned on my microphone, so that ANY sound I made could be heard through the call. I didn’t know how to respond, or how to turn it off. Luckily, I was alone at the time, and could shut my lips and not reveal a peep of who I was. The teacher sent me a message through the app—at least I think so; all I heard was ding , because I had turned my phone face down in fear that the teacher could somehow turn on my video settings like before, with my mic. I think the purpose of the message was for me to say my name without the other callers hearing, but I wasn’t ...

In my lifetime so far, I have worn three casts for arm injuries. Really, it’s quite ridiculous if you think about it. In Kindergarten, while running in the gym one day, I had just completed a length of the room and, as I was nearing the wall, I leaned forward to collapse against it in fatigue. Only, I missed the wall entirely, and landed on my right arm. I don’t remember too much of what happened after the fall, but I do know I cried and was taken home early. Even after that, I actually stayed home for a few days before being taken to the doctor because I had a tendency to exaggerate pain.  Following a long time in the waiting room, my mother and I were sent to the hospital for an x-ray, which, after even more waiting, revealed my injury to be a fracture to the right forearm, directly below the elbow. Subsequently, I was given a hard plaster cast which wrapped my arm from the hand halfway up the upper arm. Now, because I am right-handed and at the time love...

For as long as I can remember, one of my many interests has been juggling. When I first witnessed it, in a movie or on the street I can’t remember, I became inspired . I remember how I started out with just two plastic salt shakers from a toy kitchen set, just tossing one up and literally pressing the other into my empty hand. It certainly wasn’t juggling, but I remember feeling ecstatic doing it . Over the years I’ve gotten quite a bit better, and can now handle a three ball cascade while varying toss height, angle, and ball weight. But now that I’ve been spending a lot more time at home, I’ve decided to bring the balls back out and learn a few tricks. I’ve been working on the column, shower, and box routines, but it’s really difficult to learn the new techniques because of how ingrained in my mind the basic cascade is. In the cascade, the balls are thrown with alternate hands in a figure eight pattern, but in the column, one hand controls two balls, and the other, one, all thro...

Biking is one of my favourite pastimes. Not only is it fun, biking is also a great way to get your daily exercise in. Rather than drive to the store, school, or work, you can bike and build up some muscle while you’re at it. I ride my bicycle just about every day, sometimes for hours at a time. The only problem is, my bike is crap. I mean it looks nice, but there are a lot of hidden issues in its craftsmanship. For starters, the brakes are crazy terrible. No matter how much bike lube I use, or how much I loosen or tighten the attachments, they are always stiff. I can still brake okay, just not efficiently—at all. It only really causes problems when I bike with someone else, because I can’t stop within the same distance that my buddy can in front of me.  Now right under the seat, the bolt that keeps the seat upright was so cheap that it stripped almost immediately. This means the seat jiggles up and down as I lean forward and back on it. It almost never stays ...

    In theory, audiobooks sound like a wonderful creation. Hearing a story and its characters’ voices can make it all come alive, at a level only just below that of a movie. What is more, you can listen to them at pretty much any time of day, like while exercising, commuting, eating, drawing, or even while taking a bath. You can ‘read’ far more material than ever before, all while accomplishing your other day to day tasks. But the problem is, almost all audiobooks, at least in my experience, are read by people who cannot voice act. Some of them read in monotone, and others don’t even try differentiating between the narrator’s and individual character’s voices. I would really like audiobooks, if they were actually read naturally and with expression.  Another issue I have with audiobooks is that most of the time they are read too fast or the readers mumble a few of the important words. Since I’m multitasking, my hands are often too occupied to skip back a few seconds...

About a week ago I discovered this 2017 game called Little Alchemy 2 , and ever since, it has been the bane of my existence. The gist of it is you start with the basic ‘elements’: fire, water, earth, and air, and can combine them to create other things in existence. For example, fire + water makes steam, and earth + water = mud. You can also combine pairs of items, like water + water = puddle and solar system + solar system = galaxy. So far these have made sense, but there are also incredibly dumb and inexplicable combinations. I’m talking about things like seahorse + philosophy = small. What is the logic behind this? I suppose one could maybe claim that through ‘philosophical thinking’, a small object or animal creates the idea of small, but that is a major stretch. The concept is pretty fun and discovering new objects is actually satisfying, but the reason I hate the game so much is because of how ADDICTI...