KRUG

rainy days are so dreary. more so for some than others but i think most people would agree that rainy days are not fun. i hate them mostly because i don’t like getting wet in clothes. there’s just something about having the formerly loose material sucked skin tight to my body, restricting movement, and making me heavier.

but it also makes people sleepy. i think that most people would agree that when it rains, they want to be lazy and just take naps or veg all day. i have a theory as to why this is so. the most common reason given to this phenomenon is the sound of the rain. when you are in a building and it is raining outside, most of the time you can hear the rain pounding on the roof. this sound just seems to make people not get out of bed because it instantly drugs them into sleep again. well i would remind you about pavlov’s dogs.

in case you’re not familiar with the experiment, this guy named pavlov decided to do an experiment with some of his dogs (hence the name). what he believed was that animals’ (which includes us) brains are triggered by environmental stimuli. to test this, he put some dogs in a room and would only feed them a certain way. before feeding them he would ring a bell. and that’s all of the important stuff. over time though, the dogs began to associate the ringing of the bell to them getting to eat. it got to the point that when he rang the bell, the dogs would begin to salivate even there was no food in the room at all.

we’ll get back to that in a second. my theory about us getting sleepy when it rains has to do with the pressure of the atmosphere. i might need to give you a little background on atmospheric pressure though. air has weight. it is minimal but when you have an atmosphere full of it, the numbers begin to add up. and think about it, above you is about 50 miles of air. gravity affects all things with mass and since air is made up of lots of tiny particles and each of those have mass, the air above you has mass and is being pulled down by earth’s gravitational pull. this amounts to atmospheric pressure. the farther you get away from earth, the less air there is because the majority of the air is being pulled down towards the surface.

another quick thing. air will fill up a space it is in but it is easily compressed as well. think of a balloon. the reason it keeps a uniform shape is that the air you are putting inside of it is trying to space itself out prefectly and is putting uniform pressure on the lining of the balloon. also, think of a room. if you put a little bit of air in there, you will have difficulty breathing because the air will be spread out and you will not be getting the oxygen you need. by puttin gmore air in (which will also increase the pressure in the room) you will be able to get the oxygen you need to breathe. this is because the oxygen is more condensed to to the hightened pressure.

so back to the rainy day. since it is caused by a low pressure front, i conclude that we get sleepy because there is less oxygen per cubic foot around us than we are used to. not getting the oxygen you need causes your body to get “sleepy”.

and pavlov’s dogs. i think that we have been conditionally trained that when we hear the sound of rain, our brains automatically associate it with being sleepy.

i think i think too much. i’m goingto kill some brain cells with a video game.

i decided last night that my method of typing was unacceptable.  meaning that i needed to learn to do it correctly.  i learned to type when i was dating kayla and it was a child born of neccesity.  the time that is recorded on the pages of history as “craig and kayla” was spent while she lived in houston and i lived in georgia.  we didn’t really get to see a whole lot of each other.  it was helped by the fact that my dad did work for one airline or another the whole time that her and i were an item but it still only came out to about two times a month.  that was also before cell phone plans came with great long distance options.  so for the two years and eight months that we were together, our main form of communication was by talking online through ims.

the constant typing for hours a day got me to a place where i could type about forty words a minute.  the catch was that it required that i look at the keyboard.  i only used at most, four of my fingers while i was typing and i even hit the spacebar with the index finger on my right hand.  this method of typing actually suits me just fine for the most part.  i really do type fast enough incorrectly that it doesn’t matter to me.  the problems don’t really arise until i am trying to type something that i am reading.  then i have to actually read a few words, type them, read a few more, type those and so on.  also, since i only use about four of my fingers while typing, i can only type so fast.

so that’s what fueled my decision.  pretty much all of the typing that i am doing right now is correctly (unless it is imperative that i type something quickly.  it is very slow right now but soon, with enough practice, i will surpass my previous typing speed and gain the ability to type without looking at the keyboard.

that’s about all the time i have to devote to this right now.  this is actually really frustrating knowing that i can type everything i just typed in about a fourth of the time but making myself do it right for the practice.

i feel like i’ve been hit by a truck.  or maybe i got beat with a baseball bat while i slept.  either way i feel like i should still be in bed drugged up on nyquil or benadryl.  i might just do that tonight after church.  so i’m at work for the next 5.5 hours and i really don’t want to be here.  i need to remember to bring my craft supplies home.

been battling the loney bug.  no details really.

i went to a concert last night with lula.  we went and saw the five browns.  it’s a group of siblings (3 sisters and two brothers) who are all phenomenal on the piano.  they play classical pieces that have been arranged for 5 pianos as well as playig solos, duets, and the like.  while i don’t have any crazy musical talent, i have been raised around music my entire life and have even learned to play some on several brass and wood winds as well as piano so i can definitely appreciate the skill and complexity of what i witnessed last night.  they were absolutely incredible!

i would have to say that the middle child (the oldest boy) was the best one out of the group.  none of them would have said such a thing (and in fact, they emphatically said they were all equal in skill) but to me, he was clearly above the rest.  he played a song by jerry lee lewis (the piano rocker) and i think that was my favorite of the night.  he really got into it and it was great fun watching him throw his left leg onto the ivory and bang out some notes with the heel of his shoe! 

i also enjoyed the piece “gargoyles”.  i liked the contrasting movements.  it started dark and menacing, moved to a less menacing but still dark melody (basicaly more lyrical and less abrupt banging but still in a minor key), and then ended back with the ghastly stuff.

they played a 1916 ballet piece as well called “the firebird” and since the dancers couldn’t fit on the stage with the 5 steinway grands, they told us the story of what the dancers would be telling us before they played the piece.  that made it great for me because i just closed my eyes and let the music tell me the story.  it started out in a grassy field where some handmaidens were dancing.  it was beautiful music at that time.  absolutely amazing.  then a young prince shows up as he is traveling down the road and the handmaidens tell him of an evil king that turns people to stone forever.  well the prince decides he is going to go defeat this king and free the stoned people (see that’s waht drugs does to you).  so all of a sudden the lyrical music stopps and BANG! all five of the browns slam flesh into ivory and the fight begins.  during the horrific battle (that in my mind, was leaning toward the defeat of the courageous prince), a large, magnificent beast enflamed in a fury of fire swoops into the midst of the battle and gives the prince a magical feather from his wing.  the sight of the firebird frightens the king, invigorates the prince, and swings the momentum of the battle the other direction.  the prince defeats the evil king (he must have been ticklish) and the proceeds to wake up the stoned people and free them from their rocky prison.

one of the coolest things was right after intermission.  they did this thing called “a conversation with 5 browns” and to tell you the truth, when i read that in the program i knew what it was and was kind of worried that it would turn out kind of bad and uncomfortable.  but it wasn’t.  it wasn’t the greatest thing i had ever seen but it did get some questions answered about who they were and how they had formed a 5 piece piano band.  and we learned who the boss was of the group.

so all in all it was a fantastic night.  i got to spend the evening with my lovely best friend and got to do it listening to perfect music.

i spent the night at a friend’s house last night.  it was one of those last minute things.

i left my house around 8 30 in the morning so i could run a couple of errands and still make it to class on time at 10 30.  i didn’t lock my house because (if you’ll read an earlier post) i don’t have an extra house key and i like to keep the one i do have on the inside of the back door.  so i go to school and then work and then leave the school around 7 30 to go tutor down in hampton.  that went pretty well and then i went over to lula’s house to help her with excell.  i left there around 11 30 or so and finally make it back to my house.  i still had to finish writing a c++ program for class that i had to submit before going to bed.

i walk up to the door and immediately think, “man i hope the spanish church people didn’t lock the door when they left.”  (that in itself is another story and if you don;t already know it, ask me about it)  i try to turn the handle only to find out it has been locked.

so i called andrew’s house at midnight asking if i can sleep on his couch and thankfully i was able to.  but i had to finish the program first.  so i got to sleep around 2 am.

i got up at 8 45 so that i could make it to the church at 9 where i could get the church secretary to loan me her spare key.  so i was able to get into my house and take a shower and get all cleaned up before going back to the school.  i guess a priority on my list is to get some another key for my house that i can add to an empty keyring.