Today at work, I wandered over to the bag of trail mix I had brought in last week. The mix contains almonds, cashews, peanuts, raisins, and plain m & ms. Kris bought it for me for Regionals last week, but it was a Costco purchase and I had a lot left over.

So, I opened the bag, peered in, and started picking out the chocolate and almonds. About three almonds later, Doyle said, "Hey! No picking out the almonds and chocolate. Eat it all."

Did I mention I hate raisins?

I like other dried fruit, dried cranberries being my favorite. But not raisins.

I was reminded of two events when I heard Doyle's voice.

The first was of my grandparents, and a road trip with them and the rest of my family. I have no idea where we went, I'd guess Colorado, but have no idea if that's correct. We were sitting in their hotel room, I was sitting on the bed. The room was of orange/red decor.

I was eating the chocolate out of the trail mix, and my grandmother was upset about it. "Eat the peanuts!" she admonished.

Ugh. Peanuts.

I compromised and would eat a peanut with an m & m. That was about the right proportions.

That memory was similar enough to the experience with Doyle that remembering it would be completely expected. But as I looked at Doyle, and continued to eat the almonds and chocolate out of the trail mix bag, I remembered when I was 24 and went grocery shopping with Roland, my then boyfriend.

We were in the cereal aisle, looking for tomorrow morning's breakfast. Halfway down the aisle, Roland turned to me and asked, "What cereal do you want?"

"Cheerios," I answered, reaching for the biggest box.

"Why do you want Cheerios? How about a sugar cereal?"

I turned to look at him.

"Oh, no, my mother doesn't allow sugar cereal in the house."

blink

blink blink

"And you're how old?"

Warning: guaranteed ramble that you can safely skip.

No, really.

"You have more gray hair up there than I realized. I never noticed it before."

Hmph.

I've been amazed at the number of people who have commented about reading this site. I don't think I can count you on one hand any longer (Kris, John, Megan, Mike, Paul - and two of you were because I insisted). Warren said today that he's been feeling a little gypped with the posts as of late, they being short and not very informative.

To which I respond, "That's because you haven't been logged in reading the good stuff, Warren."

Since this site is more for me than for you, not everything is publicly viewable. There are chunks of my life I'm happy to share with my friends and family, but I'm really not interested in telling some random person I don't know.

This is probably the fundamental difference between my introvert personality and, say, an confirmed extrovert's personality. I'm completely enjoying the "social web" and participating the various social network sites. Some are completely entertaining, some have become stale, some are tools but still networks, and the world it opens up, meeting lots of new and interesting (fascinating!) people, working on projects I wouldn't have imagined four months ago.

The whole concept of being able to learn the arc of a recently-met person's life is fascinating, if not a little (a lot?) voyeuristic. Google and Yahoo! are certainly a starting point, but you can also walk through various websites, reading someone's life for the last few years, if they've been putting it out there. (Sorry, Andy, you were an easy target and a clear example of how you can learn about a person's last few years quite easily.)

Fundamentally, a large part of me still resists putting information out there. Resists sharing even though I think this stuff is cool.

And part of me fears losing my voice here. Fears I might start worrying about what "they" might think. Might stop writing as if I'm talking to myself, and start talking to you instead.

I know there's enough information on this site for someone to destroy my life. As Andy puts it, "I could destroy your world. I know enough about how you react to situations to ruin your life. Fortunately, I'm not interested in destroying worlds." How lucky for me.

But it's true: there's enough information to find me, enough information to know what my buttons are and plenty enough to know how to push them. There's enough information to make my life a living hell.

But, I guess I have to trust that won't happen. That the people who read this site are my friends, or at least people who know me somewhat or some way. If I've met you before, then, "Hey! Drop me a line if you haven't recently. If I haven't met you, introduce yourself.

I won't bite.

Too hard.

Reading this from Bloglines or blogher? I'm sorry if this makes no sense. You're not my "target audience," so all of this may be completely boring.

Hell, it's boring for me, and I wrote it.

I'd say "I'm sorry," but I don't know you, and have no reason to feel anything (positive or negative) there.

Eh.

Holy crap! It's been over six months since my last migraine. Given the number of times I've danced with my triggers (disrupted sleep patterns being the number one), I'm completely amazed.

I'm also completely wishing I could figure out what I was doing right, so that I can keep doing it.

Kris and I had just finished up throwing in the wind at Baylands this afternoon when I realized I couldn't see anything to the left. The lighting was really weird, so I wasn't sure if my vision issues were the lighting or a migraine. I kept thinking, 20 minutes. I have 20 minutes before I lose all of my sight.

So, four for the year. Damn, if I can have these once every six months, I would be very, very happy.

Tried vicodin for the headache. Not sure if it's as effective as I need it to be. I slept for four hours (through some of Bella's barking), but woke up with a nasty headache on the right side (following Dad's advice of leaving the headace on the one side). Had to follow up with Tylenol after four hours, though.

Bah.

Puts a damper on my evening run tonight.

Kettle.

Black.

When I was in high school, I cheated one time, on an English test.

No, I didn't copy answers from another student's test. No, I didn't bring in a cheatsheet and look up the answers. No, I didn't ask someone for help.

But I did game the system.

When the instructor, Mr. McClellan (he taught AP English the next year), would grade papers, he would mark the incorrect answers, total all of the incorrect answers, subtract that number from the number of questions on the test, and mark the score.

I had watched him grade papers a few times, and noted he went on auto-pilot after the first few papers. I don't know if he gave the same test year after year or what, but after the first three or four tests, he wouldn't look at the answer key, he'd just read the student answers, noting which were incorrect.

Well, this test I was taking was 50 questions long. I had actually studied for this test, because I was struggling in the class. Struggling in the class at the time meant, "I have a 93% in this class. Lose much more and I might get a B! Oh no! Work hard!"

Uh...

Yeah.

So, I was taking this test, and realized I didn't know the answer to question #27. I think there was another question I didn't know, but could guess at. This one, I had no clue.

Not sure if most people know this, but colleged-ruled paper has between 25 and 30 lines on it. If appropriately numbered, one could, say, number a paper 1 through 26 on one side of the paper, and 27 through 50 on the other side of the paper, and use only one sheet for a 50 question test.

Or, if you wanted to, you could, say, number the front side 1 through 26, and the back side, oh, I don't know, maybe 28 through 50.

Which I what I did.

Knowing the teacher counted wrong answers when determining the score, and that he would flip my test over when nominally zoned-out while grading papers, I chanced that he wouldn't noticed I skipped question 27 when he was gradiing.

I was correct.

I missed one on the test, and it wasn't number 27, for a 98% on the test.

After taking the test, before receiving it back graded, I looked up the answers to the questions I didn't know. I did that all the time, so looking them up was nothing new or unusual.

Remembering the answer over a decade later probably is.

The answer to question #27 is, by the way, "Guilt by Association", a logic fallacy where one quality implies another quality because an item has both of the qualities. A shallow example: The apple is red and round. The box is red. Therefore, the box is round. A better example is from wikipedia:

Anti-war activists has made statements critical of Israel. Neo-nazis have made similar statements. Therefore, opposing the war is equivalent to supporting Nazism.

A dumb statement, but one that some people would make.

If the purpose of school is to teach a person, then I would have to say that I learned that lesson pretty well.

Apparently guilt for cheating on a test in school is a good teacher. I didn't make that mistake again.