I Feel Like This Should Say “Leaf Me Alone,’ Instead Of ‘Leave Me Alone,’.

Hiccups Vignettes (Astronomy)

Okay, so I have this weird thing: I have the hiccups. Perpetually. I always have the hiccups. Every single day, since I was about eleven years old. Yeah, seriously. Now, it’s not like I hiccup all the time. They just kind of happen randomly throughout the day. For all I know, the next one will be in two minutes, twenty minutes, or two hours. All of this is weird enough. But they’re not just consistent, they’re loud. And ridiculously high-pitched. I emit a high-pitched squeak that is frequently mistaken for a puppy, a bird, or a dying mouse. (And on one odd occasion, a horse.) Now, I have quite a lot of stories relating to my hiccups, but this is the one that people tend to find the funniest. Actually, it’s more like a series of funny vignettes.

So, in my freshman year of university, I was taking Astronomy 101. And you know, it was one of those big lecture hall classes with a couple hundred people in it. So when I hiccuped during class, it echoed around the room. Everyone could hear it, but no one could figure out where it was coming from. When it happened, my professor would pause for a second, and everyone would glance around, looking for the source of the strange sound. Again and again it happened, throughout the semester. Then in the last two weeks of school, this happened:

First: I was standing in line at Starbucks on campus one morning, and I hiccuped. The girl two people in front of me turned around, stared for a second and said, I kid you not, “Are you in my Astro 101 class?” She recognized me purely from the sound of my hiccups.

Second: Astronomy had just let out, and as I was walking out of class, I hiccuped. The two guys in front of me were like, “Did you hear that?” And then they started speculating about the weird noise that had plagued the class the entire semester. I’m standing behind them, blushing bright red, and so I interject into their conversation. “I have really weird hiccups!” I said. They both turned to look at me like I was insane. “That sound,” I explained. “It’s me. I have really strange hiccups.” Then of course they started laughing. One of them suggested that I should go up in front of class and explain to everyone – actually, that I should just stand up and announce my hiccups in every class at the beginning of the semester. I was still blushing, and I was like, no! I’m not going to do that.

Third: My dorm was having a movie night at the end of the semester to watch The Polar Express. So I’m sitting on the couch in the basement in front of the TV chatting with this guy, and I hiccuped. And he gives me an odd look, hesitates, and says, “I’m sorry, but are you taking astronomy this semester?” And I was ready to facepalm. This was the second time in like six days that someone from that class had recognized me by my hiccups. It hadn’t happened all semester – it hadn’t ever happened like this at all, really.

Finally: Spring semester starts. I’m taking Astro 102 and I have the same professor. This time, the class is a lot smaller. There were thirty-six people in the class. (Only four of us were girls, by the way.) On the first day of class, I hiccuped. The professor stops. This time, instead of brushing it off and moving on, he asks the class, “What is that sound?” I suppose because it was a smaller class. So anyway, I ended up explaining my hiccups to him in front of the entire class. Sigh.

That’s basically it for the Hiccups in Astronomy Vignettes.

I’m kind of invested in learning this choreography now

this week in I Am Very Smart: having enough money to go to the opera, museums and concerts correlates with having enough money for food, shelter and basic health needs

I would rather choose To love and lose - Than to never have loved you.

me

I wrote this a long time ago, but I went to see How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World today, and this suddenly seemed very appropriate.

Love - real love, the kind that lights your chest up and rushes in your throat and is selfless - is always worth it. We lose everything in the end. Some things we lose sooner than others, and some losses are more painful than others. But the choice to love is always worth it, even when it hurts.

- Rachel Platten

I love this quote. Lately, it makes me think of Princess Allura. (weeps)

this is cool and I’m definitely going to look into it more

Cool Tip

If you are like me and always need to be working on something to keep your anxiety under control, during this quarentine why not helping scientists by looking at pictures of some neat penguins? or even galaxies?  There’s this site call Zooniverse, where you can help on scientific projects by analyzing pictures and data!  Right now my favorite project has returned, called Penguin Watch (where yeah, you get to watch penguins, it’s amazing)

you basically have to analyse photos looking for penguins, their chicks, eggs or even predators and human interaction But there are lots of interesting projects you can help in areas such as biology, physics, history or even art: 

Oh and the best part, some institutions even accept it as volunteering/service hour requirements for graduation and scholarships!! It’s helping me a lot during this time, so I thought it was worth sharing 

Humans are awesome

Yeah, have any of you read The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter? (It’s the first book in a series called The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club.) The series features a blend of characters (specifically female characters) from 1800s stories such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein, Dracula, The Island of Doctor Moreau, Rapaccini’s Daughter, Carmilla, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Great God Pan, She, The Jewel of Seven Stars - and possibly a couple others I might have missed, because there’s obviously a lot.

Anyway, these books are a super fun read, and I highly recommend!

Schrodinger’s OC

...I’ve got some ideas! (This ended up kind of long...oops)

Okay, so the six books in the Enola Holmes series cover events over one year. I don’t think the movie will cover nearly that much time, so I think it will cover only the case from the first book (The Case of the Missing Marquess) and then it will end with the resolution from the sixth book in the series - perhaps with scenes from the other books sprinkled in.

There’s also going to be a number of things that are different from the books - in the books, Enola is not trained to fight, while in the movie she clearly is. In the books, Enola and her mother are not that close, but in the movie they clearly are - although, giving Helena Bonham Carter more screen time is certainly not something I’d complain about. Another major thing that might have plot ramifications is that in the books, Enola runs away before Mycroft can send her off to boarding school. Meanwhile, the trailer clearly shows scenes of Enola at boarding school, so the means of her escape are going to be different in the movie.

In the books, The Case of the Missing Marquess is actually one of the simplest that Enola solves - probably because it’s the first book, and so a great deal of it is taken up with exposition rather than mystery-solving. In the movie, I expect they’ll change that up and make the case more complicated and dramatic. Viscount Tewksbury (i.e. the marquess who went missing), who is introduced in the trailer as a blond teenager on a train, plays a very minor role in the books - also, in the books, he’s twelve. The trailer suggests that his role will be significantly expanded in the movie.

One thing that did bother me a bit about the trailer is that Enola disguises herself as a boy in it. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, but in the books, she makes it a bit of a point of pride that she never disguises herself as male - for a couple reasons: one, she knows it is what her brothers will expect her to do, and she is trying to hide from them; and two, in the many ridiculous accoutrements of female fashion, Enola conceals money, candies, other bits and bobs, and her knife. In the books, Enola disguises herself as a widow, a nun, a secretary, an assistant, a scholar woman, a street-seller, an orphan girl, and, as shown in the trailer, a high-born lady. I think it will be something of a pity if the movie forgoes all those many disguises and uses only the disguises of a boy and a lady.

Also, in the books, Enola is largely solitary and mostly works alone, though she occasionally teams up with Sherlock. The movie, it seems, will be giving her some companions. I think that will be fun, but it will kind of reduce one of the books’ main arcs - that Enola can and will do very well on her own.

All in all, I think the movie will be fun to watch and will stay true to the spirit of the books, but the plot of the mystery will be different than anything already present in print. I think it probably would have been more effective to make this a TV series in order to cover more of the story and character development, but what’s done is done. I think the actors will do a marvelous job - I am really looking forward to how Millie Bobby Brown and Henry Cavill portray Enola’s and Sherlock’s sibling relationship.

Some scenes that I hope would show up in the movie in one form or another, but that I think will probably get left out:

when Florence Nightingale gives Sherlock Holmes a piece of her mind

when Enola bursts into Dr. Watson’s home looking for help dressed as a nun and covered in blood, and Watson and Holmes think that she is injured until she whips a bloody knife out of her bodice

when Enola hides from her brother in his own flat, knowing it is the last place he would think to look (actually, I think this one might very well show up in the movie - at 1:00 in the trailer looks like it could be the scene I am referring to, but I can’t tell for sure)

when Enola throws a cat at Sherlock in order to create a distraction and slip out unnoticed

when Enola bumps into Mycroft and kicks him in the shin to get away

when John Watson tells Enola (while she is disguised) that he is worried for Sherlock, as he seems quite distressed over his missing sister

When Mycroft and Sherlock post an ad in the classifieds asking Enola to come home, and she replies: To M.H. and S.H. Rot. E.H.

When Mycroft bursts in to stop a wedding, claiming the bride is an imposter, and Enola rips off her veil, shouts at him, throws off the dress and runs out the door

(also, try this link to download an EPUB copy of that second book, The Case of the Left-Handed Lady.)

I read the Enola Holmes series in one afternoon like two years ago, and I really enjoyed it! I’m excited for this movie. I’m sure some things that I liked in the books will be missing, since that’s just the way of movies, but I really think I’m going to like this movie anyway!

I’m gonna re-read the series before I watch it though. 

(Also Henry Cavill is playing Sherlock?? So Superman is joining Iron Man and Dr.Strange in being Sherlock Holmes and I think that’s fun)

if I were the kind of person who used tiktok I would arrange a video with a bunch of my cousins and friends and put together clips of us doing greek dances. I feel like we could make that look cool