Slosh slosh.

A few minutes ago, I overheard an I.T. guy telling a coworker how to get to a network location by going to Start, Run, and then typing "whack whack, networkaddress, whack, folder." 

Whack whack? 

That reminded me of my recent personal confusion over slash vs. forward slash vs. back slash. I have to tell people fairly often, as well, how to get to a different network location, and I'm always concerned that in telling them "backslash" I'm confused and telling them wrong (and I usually end it with, "the one above Enter"). I decided to look it up today and as it turns out, I was using the term "backslash" as being "the one above Enter" correctly. Good.

As it further turns out, "whack" is a nickname for "slash" (or "forward slash," though a lot of internet sources say that "forward" is redundant and unnecessary).

However, "slosh" is a nickname for "backslash."

So he was still saying it wrong. He should have said "slosh slosh." 

Personally, I'm considering referring to the (forward) slash as a "sepratrix" from here on out, just to see who I can confuse by trying to look smart.

Then again, it's not "smart" to use words you're fairly sure your audience won't understand, as it simply hinders communication and makes you look like a wiseass. So perhaps not.

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone had as great a Christmas with their families as I did with mine.

(Raiden is seriously the best toddler ever. He is talking so much it's getting hard to keep up, and I get more and more proud of him every second.)

Clean dirty hippie.

Some months ago I became intrigued enough by a friend's talk about washing her hair with "no-poo" that I gave it a shot. Weeks and several experiments later, I got fed up with it and went back to shampoo. Weeks after that I got over my defeat and tried again, with more success. Weeks after that I got lazy and went back to shampoo just because it was there. And weeks after that, I realized that I really didn't like the feel of my hair with shampoo, after I got used to the feel of it with no-poo, and went back to no-poo again - or, at least, a combination of methods I'd read about during the earlier trial phases. 

For the actual no-poo mixture, I simplified it back down to plain old baking soda and water. If I'm feeling saucy I'll put some essential oils in it, but that's about all. For a conditioner, I realized that it was the apple cider vinegar that was keeping my hair too oily before, and decided to just stick with plain old cheap conditioner. So I guess I'm not totally "no-poo" as their definition states that "with no 'poo, you don't use conditioner," but I'm still not using shampoo. 

Why? My hair seems to get greasy faster with shampoo, and it's a different kind of greasy than with the baking soda and water. I'm not even sure quite how to explain the difference, but I'll try anyway. With shampoo, my hair actually feels greasy and gross; with no-poo, my hair has a simple oil build up that is oily, but not gross feeling. I can also go longer without feeling like I need to wash my hair - 3-4 days, rather than 2 at best.

The "no-poo" description also says, "some of us transition away from using baking soda as a wash once the scalp's oil production has subsided," and I think I've almost reached that point. The past shower or two my hair didn't feel too bad after simply wetting it down, but I chickened out on not doing anything and still used the baking soda, anyway. I didn't feel like I needed to condition, though. And again that's a feel that I'm not sure how to explain... it didn't "still feel oily" after washing it, it "already felt conditioned," and after it dried, it was a little staticky but that was it. I was actually kind of impressed.

Over the weekend I thought I'd try what I guess is referred to as the "curlygirl" method (though I don't have curls), and what I had also seen referred to elsewhere as "conditioner only" - the idea that your hair could be "washed" with conditioner. 

Yeah, fail.

I'm not sure if my hair just wasn't ready for it, or if I used too much conditioner, or if I didn't wash the conditioner out good enough, but it just didn't work out. It wasn't bad, just not great, and again my hair didn't "still feel dirty," it just felt over-conditioned. I haven't rewashed it yet, though, and it doesn't look bad, so it's not an epic fail, just a fail. Think I'll go back to baking soda and water with a little static-killing conditioner next round, and go from there.

On a side note, however, through the process of testing out hair cleansing methods, I figured I'd try the baking soda and water mixture as a full-body cleanser and see what happened. And I. Freaking. Love it. I don't come out of the shower needing to lotion myself all up - which I never followed through with before, so I'd just be terribly dry after a shower until my oils built back up - and, and, I need less deodorant than I ever have. I used to be really, really smelly if I'd have the slightest bit of underarm perspiration and now? I've tested going for days without deodorant and 90% of the time, you can't tell a difference. And believe me, I check - I have always been paranoid about body odor, and I will not allow myself to smell. I've known people who had some serious BO and either weren't aware of it or didn't care, and I promise you I am not one of those. I just don't get as smelly as often, and that's pretty dang nice. 

I use it as a facial cleanser, too, with similar results. My skin seems better, I'm not overly dry or overly oily, and on the days I do feel dry after I wash my face I use rose oil for a moisturizer, and I love that better than any other moisturizer I've ever tried, as well.

It's funny, one of my friends once told me that he doesn't like hippies because they don't use soap and they smell. I must be the cleanest dirty hippie he's ever not hated :).

Flash cards.

He's pretty much the smartest ever. Snotty nose, distractions and all.

Not my favorite clubs to have joined.

Friday night, the husband and I were indicted into the Parents Who Have Cleaned Vomit Off Their Child And Their Bed In The Middle Of The Night club. I'm not entirely sure what that was about, as the little guy isn't acting terribly sick, but there you go.

Sunday, we were given a follow-up invitation to the Parents Who Have Cleaned Up Their Child's Vomit In Public club. As a result, my blonde minihuman is forbidden from eating fries until he outgrows the Testing Out His Gag Reflex phase.

Further note that today is one of the days I'm grateful that I have a job and my MIL watches the little guy during the day, as it meant that after a weekend of vomit, I was given a reprieve on the following runny diaper.

Ahem.

Point to ponder.

Let's assume that wherever your thoughts are drawn, whatever thing or phrase or belief you give your attention and energy, happens. In short, let's assume that thought is cause.

Take a few moments, an hour, a day, to notice your thoughts.

What are you causing?

Turtles all the way down.

I was at the School of Metaphysics on Monday, and was semi-involved in, mostly overhearing, a conversation about Fruit Day. Fruit Day, the school's director was explaining, is one day a week that SoM members only eat fruit. Sounds obvious, right? Their definition of fruit, however, isn't the same as the grocery stores. From what I gathered (and I'm sure I didn't wholly gather it), "fruit" to them consists of anything that has a skin on the outside, seeds on the inside, and some kind of pulp between the two. Given this definition, plantains, green peppers and cucumbers count as fruit, but strawberries do not. Blueberries are apparently still up for debate.

The student (actually) involved in the conversation asked if the blueberry debate had anything to do with how blueberries grow, and started talking about the mechanics of a blueberry bush. I, a mommy, offered, "Thanks, now I have Yertle the Turtle stuck in my head." The other two, not mommies, in fact childless (I believe) older men, looked at me like I was crazy. I explained that it's a Dr. Seuss book I read to my kid, gave the general premise of the story - the king turtle wants to rule more, so he builds a higher throne out of his turtley subjects - and then quoted the section in question, "I'm king of a house, and what's more, beyond that, I'm king of a blueberry bush and a cat. I'm Yertle the Turtle, O marvelous me, for I am the ruler of all that I see." Blueberry bush. See?

As it turns out, the director was in a "former life" a pretty big fan of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who, he informed me, put out a song called "Yertle the Turtle" on one of their albums. I had to check this out. Today, I finally remembered to.

I hit up seeqpod today and, sure enough, there's a "Yertle the Turtle" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It's excruciatingly long and only about a quarter, maybe a third of it has lyrics, none of which I could understand so I had to look them up and read along. Most of the lyrics are taken straight from the book, though it rearranges a bit in the second part and totally leaves out the moral ending. Whatever, my point in looking it up was just to see if it existed and what it sounded like, not to critique a song released in 1985. Yes, Virginia, it does exist.

While listening and reading, I became curious to see if there were a music video and, if so, if it incorporated images from the book or was just kind of a bunch of metalheads bouncing around or what. A YouTube search later, I found myself distracted by a reading of the book put to images and events from the Bush administration. Funny, because I'd kind of made the relation myself before as well. One of the comments on the video states, "Mr. Suess said that Yertle the Turtle was in fact Adolf Hitler." I thought to myself, "No way, really?" and immediately went to Wikipedia to find out if this is true, because Wikipedia knows everything. Everything.

It is, in fact, true. The Wikipedia article also notes, completely irrelevant of what I was looking to find, that the story is written "using a type of meter called anapestic tetrameter." Click. Anapestic tetrameter, it explains, "is a poetic meter that has four anapestic metrical feet per line. Each foot has two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable. It is sometimes referred to as a "reverse dactyl." Click. A modern example of a dactyllic meter is the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." I remembered hearing that this particular song was pretty much drug-induced, and wondered if that were true. Click. It isn't. The song was actually inspired by a drawing John Lennon's son, Julian, had done in school. And now you know.

Back to the original query on Yertle the Turtle, I found a curious tidbit in the "In popular culture" section indicating that, "In an episode of The Simpsons, Lisa Simpson remarks that "Yertle the Turtle" is possibly the best book written on turtle stacking." There's a link referenced with the phrase "turtle stacking"? Click. This article makes a lot of references to a supposed (but not necessarily) Hindu belief that the Earth is balanced on the back of an elephant, who is standing on the back of a tortoise, the problem with this being, "What is below the tortoise?" and the response being that it's "turtles all the way down." Apparently this is a major cultural reference, sometimes called the "turtle problem," which Wikipedia further explains, "often arises in debates pertaining to creationism, for instance in the debate over intelligent design and its postulated intelligent designer. By raising the question of the need for a designer, intelligent design also raises the question, "what designed the designer?" according to critics."

To recap, today I have learned about the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Hitler, poetry meters, the Beatles, and philosophical arguments about creation.

And to think, this all started with the mention of a blueberry bush.