The Best Invention EVER

AQUA NOTES - That's right, now I can write while in the shower! I have waited my whole life for someone to invent this and one day when shopping for something else on Amazon.com I found what I was looking for. Aqua Notes comes with a pencil that writes on a waterproof pad of paper. Both the pencil and pad of paper stick to tile with suction cups. So far I have used my Aqua Notes for To Do Lists and for jotting down notes to myself about dreams I had the night before and don't want to forget. Better is to write these notes in my dream journal, but sometimes I need a hot shower to remember dream details. 

Things I DO NOT LIKE for No Rational Reason

I was asked recently if there are any animals I am scared of. The answer is no, though I am not a fan of centipedes or fire ants, though for good reason (I have had one too many of these in my field pants and their bites are extremely painful). There was a time when I was a kid when I really didn't like spiders, but I cured myself quickly of this after a summer at a camp filled with giant wolf spiders, which are no match for the much larger spiders I lived with in the forest in Borneo for years. 

For a long time as a child I had an irrational fear of sticky things--but this I could relate back to all of the band aids I remember getting while suffering through spinal meningitis when I was 3 years old and I finally got over this as well. And I think panty hose should never have been invented--but that's probably because when I had to wear it for a time in the 80s I found it horribly itchy and it made my legs turn purple. But there are a few things I will admit to having a strong aversion to for which I cannot pinpoint any obvious trigger. Here they are, in no particular order except that clowns will likely remain #1 on the list:

#1) CLOWNS. "Nice" clowns, evil clowns, clowns in any circumstance--but especially clowns in sewers and drains (of course this last part I can at least blame on Stephen King's "IT", even though I didn't watch the movie for the first time until I was in grad school). I don't find clowns the least bit amusing and I certainly wouldn't want to meet one in a dark alley. I was overjoyed when the giant clown face blew off the side of the Fun Land building at the boardwalk at Rehoboth Beach in a hurricane, but then discovered it years later, reattached at another site within Fun Land, right across from the Haunted House. 

A man I work with shares my aversion to clowns. I left him this drawing on his dry erase board::

 Pennywise, the clown from Stephen King's "IT"

#2) DOLLS. Especially old fashioned ones. My great aunt  Jean owns a doll shop--never have been there. My poor mother had to buy herself doll houses when I was a child, since I had so little interest in dolls. There was a time as a kid when I expressed an interest in learning ventriloquism. My mother, being the wonderful mother that she is, got me a vintage Charlie McCarthy ventriloquist dummy to practice with. I didn't have the heart to tell her until many years later how creepy I found Charlie to be and for a long time I covered him with a blanket, since it seemed that he was always looking at me. He is currently back at my parents' house in a rocking chair in the guest bedroom, as creepy as ever!

I find all dolls to be creepy, but especially vintage ones

 A Charlie McCarthy ventriloquist dummy

#3) A CERTAIN SHADE OF PURPLE. I understand that many people like purple and I have nothing against the color per se and certainly not with the people who like purple of all shades. But this particular shade of purple makes me uncomfortable. Once in undergrad the only binder available at the bookstore was of this shade of purple and I eventually gave it away because I was starting to dislike the course for which I was using the purple binder to store my notes. As soon as I started taking notes in a different color binder, I loved the course again as well. I also once found myself inside an airplane flying between Japan and Chicago that was upholstered in this shade of purple. I will admit feeling abnormally relieved when we landed safely in Chicago.

#4) SMALL TALK. Small talk at work, small talk in a social setting. Some people recharge by going out and being social. Although I do experience extreme loneliness when I focus on the memory of people who are no longer in my life who I miss, I enjoy being alone or spending time with cats, non-human primates, or trees in the forest more than I do with most people most of the time.

Lucid Dreaming

Since I was quite young I have off/on kept journals in which I record my dreams when I remember them and if I think about them soon enough to write them down. When I was younger I taught myself how to have lucid dreams--dreams in which I recognized at the time I was dreaming and could therefore have some say in what happened next in the dream. I haven't done that in a while and so I have decided to take a more active approach to all of the time I spend asleep dreaming. Considering one-third of the average human's life is spent dreaming, I am surprised that more people don't take more of an interest in recalling and trying to understand their dreams.

The best way to get to the point of being able to be lucid while dreaming is to record your dreams. So I have a book by my bed and a light that I write in whenever I can force myself awake just enough to write down what I remember of the dream before getting out of bed - by that time my memory of the dream is typically already gone. I also have a book in which I will record certain data relating to the dreams I remember most fully, especially any I wish to analyze. I am gradually entering certain information about the dreams I record into a spreadsheet to help me make sense of the patterns I observe and I have started a blog about dreaming that I may later link to my Home Page: Dr Pongo's Dream World

I have a few books about lucid dreaming that have been very helpful. Two of the best are Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold's classic "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming" and "A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming: Mastering the Art of Oneironautics" by Dylan Tuccillo, Jared Zeizel, and Thomas Peisel.

Oops, I forgot to Spring Forward!

I somehow managed to go through all of yesterday without realizing it was Daylight Savings, thinking that the clocks didn't have to move forward until next weekend. So when I thought I was waking up this morning at 5:45am, it was really 6:45am. It's a good thing I live right next door to work, but not a nice way to start the work week, realizing that the time on my phone (thank goodness they change time automatically!) did not match the other 6 clocks in my apartment, which I had failed to move forward on Saturday evening. I even thought yesterday afternoon that it seemed to be getting late sooner than it should and felt slightly confused, convinced that the clocks didn't change for another week. Oops! 

At least I'm in good company:

Blast from the Past

As a kid, I spent many happy weeks at Geneva Glen, a summer camp in Indian Hills, Colorado.

The other day I came across the following nice words in the camp's newsletter, the Alumni Glen Breeze, having forgotten I sent an update: "We must admit the most bizarre catch-up we've seen is from Meredith [my last name]. She's the curator of primates at the National Zoo in D.C. She worked with wild orangutans in Borneo for 8 years. What camper wouldn't relish her life living next door to the zoo! Hope to see you some time Meredith!"

R.I.P. Leonard Nimoy

Netflix streaming finally has all original cast Star Trek motion pictures as well as the original series from the 60's that so many of us grew up watching. As I watch my favorite of the movies right now (probably for the 100th time), Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, I think of the true genius of Leonard Nimoy, who died last week of lung disease, though he had stopped smoking over 30 years ago.

And the movie was consistent with Nimoy's devotion to wildlife conservation, helping to raise awareness about the endangerment of the humpback whale, extinct in the 23rd Century, but with a song consistent of that being broadcast from a probe threatening to destroy Earth without the appropriate response. So the crew of the former U.S.S. Enterprise travels back in time to 1986 to return with two whales, saving the whales and Earth in the process. For as Nimoy's Spock notes, hunting humpback whales to their extinction is not logical: "Admiral, if we were to assume these whales were ours to do with as we pleased we would be as guilty as those who caused their extinction."

Nimoy directed and co-wrote Star Trek IV and so many great lines in this movie make me laugh every time I watch it. Among my favorites, for those of you who know what I am talking about:
"Everybody remember where we parked."
"Double dumb ass on you!"
"Excuse me, sir! Can you direct us to the naval base in Alameda? It's where they keep the nuclear wessels."

Leonard Nimoy, may you LLAP!

2014 Taxes

Dear IRS,

I finally finished my taxes and am exhausted. My taxes are so comparatively straightforward, I would lose money by paying for someone else or a service to do my taxes for me, so every year I calculate them myself and have my father review them. Yet even with a PhD and a father who minored in math checking for mistakes, I find the tax instructions to be terribly confusing and had to laugh when I came across this cartoon: