Boo

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Saturday, April 23, 2011

The Persistence of My Memory

My memory has always been a source of pride. I've always been able to recall vast amounts of (mostly useless) information. It stretches far into the past, and encompasses all the senses. I can remember things like everyone I've ever had a crush on, conversations I had years ago, where/how I learned a particular word, and many scenes from my early childhood. My earliest memory is of having my picture taken by a professional photographer. I was 2 and a half months old.

One of the things which makes me most proud is from when I was in YAP. For my psychological evaluation, one section required me to briefly study a key of symbols, each assigned a number. I then had to write the corresponding number under each symbol, doing this for as many symbols on the page within a time limit. Kathy Lawrence, who administered the evaluation, said she'd never seen anyone complete that much of the sheet.

My memory has been failing me lately, however. I've been forgetting things. I asked a friend if he had moved into a new apartment yet, completely forgetting that he had already told me he did a month or two before, even showed my where it was on a map. I had been going through my Magic: The Gathering cards, and realized that I was missing a large number. I no longer had a few of the cards I used to great success against my opponents. The more I looked into this, the more I noticed what was missing. I used to have an entire artifact-themed deck, most of which is just...gone. I'm sure it's possible that I tried to sell a number of cards, after I had to stop playing because I became obsessed with it. I should remember having done this, though.

This is very troubling for me. It scares me, losing my greatest asset.

The other night, Mom told me that we had once been in one of those old-fashioned elevators with the grates you close before ascending/descending. I should remember something like this. Her mention of it didn't even trigger the memory that should be there; I'm taking her word for it.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Meleagris gallopavo!

Last week I tracked a large dinosaur. I went out for a walk and found her on the sidewalk a few houses down the row. I followed her around for a bit, taking pictures, before she flew off across the street into a wooded area. I now know wild turkeys can fly. I tried to find her, searching through the trees, to no avail.

I decided to go to the park then, where I found her tracks, as well as at least one other bird's. The tracks went back and forth all over a large part of the park. It seems a dog had been chasing them through the baseball diamond as well.

I wonder what they were doing in the city?

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Entire Passenger Load of Bus Found Asphyxiated

I was able to cross off a few things from my bucket list this past week. Mom and I went to the Elmira Maple Syrup Festival for the first time. We'd both always wanted to go for the toffee made by pouring the syrup into snow. The toffee wasn't bad (painfully sweet, though), but it took over an hour of waiting to get it. Their toffee delivery system was unorganized. There was no line up; everyone just crowded around the small pen, and toffee was handed out randomly, making it so that someone who showed up 30 minutes after you could even get theirs before you did. It wasn't worth the wait, in my opinion.

I also tried deep-fried Mars Bar for the first time: SO good-better than regular Mars Bar. There was an antiques show, in which I was close to checking off a third item from my list. Someday, I want to own a fire grenade (filled with carbon tetrachloride), and there were two of them at one of the tables. I had never beheld one in person before. They're quite heavy, despite the glass being not much thicker than a light bulb's. One was gorgeous, with a lovely metal bracket for mounting it on the wall. I had forgotten how dangerous they could be until he mentioned it (they work by sucking all the oxygen out of the area once smashed); I put it down after that. I didn't get it because I didn't have a secure way of transporting it home, and Mom would have been uncomfortable having it in the house. As it turned out, the bus ride back to Waterloo was packed; I had to stand the entire way back. I'm quite proud of my mother, however. She imagined me bringing the grenade aboard and dropping it, killing everyone inside; it made her laugh. I can just imagine the authorities finding the bus full of dead passengers, thinking it's some sort of bio-terrorist attack. She's becoming more like me as time passes; this is not a good thing for her.

Before leaving the town, I bought a bottle of maple syrup (so much better than normal syrup), as well as a block of lovely extra old white cheddar for only $2.00!

Monday, April 4, 2011

Dinosaur Sculptor

The lecture at this month's gem club meeting was incredible. Mark Rehkopf, an artist from St Jacobs, talked about his career making dinosaur sculptures. He started off working on a T. rex for a Discovery Channel special. He has built sculptures for museums all over North America, and done fossil reconstructions as well. He did the Diplodocus outside of Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, the mastodons outside Indiana State Museum, and various dinosaurs in Chinese museums. He's worked on the blue whale hanging in the American Museum of Natural History. He even did the Chasmosaurs and Daspletosaurs (not T. rexes, it turns out) at the Nature Museum in Ottawa. He showed us his hidden signatures, such as in the hair folds of a mastodon and the Great Red Spot of Jupiter. He talked of building an animatronic Triceratops for Universal Studios Park, and the Jurassic Park: Lost World travelling exhibit.

At the end of the talk, he pulled out a couple pieces actually used in the film: a raptor claw, and a chunk of skin from the T. rex's neck. I actually got to touch a piece of Jurassic Park. I became very sad afterwards, and couldn't stop crying once I left. I know it had something to do with touching a part of my favourite film, but I have no idea why this would make me so sad.