Pterodactyls in the sky

This morning on my way to work, I kept thinking that the geese in the sky were pterodactyls. I must have done five double-takes (or a deca-take?), laughing at myself every time. Unfortunately for my fellow commuters, I think this was a clear sign I was still half asleep.

Pterodactyls were always my favorite dinosaur. I was obsessed with dinosaurs as a kid. I think it started in first grade: we had what we called Sixth Grade Buddies, and my sixth grade buddy just so happened to be my best friend’s sister. It was great because as a class, we would go to the sixth graders classroom and marvel at how big and adult they all were. So my buddy started to teach me how to draw. Specifically, how to draw dinosaurs. I thought she was pretty much the coolest thing ever, and so my mind also made the assumption that dinosaurs must then be really cool too. I started to read up on dinosaurs: what they looked like, what period they lived in, what they ate, how big they were, even their anatomy. I cried because my parents wouldn’t let me go see Jurassic Park when it came out, Land Before Time was my favorite movie, and my favorite tv show was Land of the Lost (Nickelodeon). Dinosaurs, yeah!!

(I’ve always been a reader, despite my recent lull. I learned to read pretty early on and got pretty good at it. In elementary school we had this reading program called Book It!, and for every book I read, I would get a hole punched into my little Book It card, and after five books I could get a free personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut. I averaged a pizza a week.)

So every Monday (I think it was Mondays), I met with my buddy Barbara and we would draw dinosaurs. And that is pretty much the only thing I remember from first grade.

So by middle school, I knew about as much as a thirteen year old could know about dinosaurs. And I could draw them pretty well! I bet I had at least a couple sketchbooks full of dinosaur drawings. In my seventh grade English class, we had one of those English textbooks with about a hundred short stories and weighed thirty-six pounds. As a class, we probably only got through maybe 30% of it by the end of the semester. But because I loved reading, I read the rest of it for fun. One story stuck out: The Smallest Dragonboy. My obsession of dinosaurs VERY quickly turned into an obsession of dragons. Anne McCaffrey (RIP) became one of my favorite authors, I’ve read almost all of her Dragonriders of Pern series (I recommend!!). And I started to draw dragons. And watch dragon movies. And read more dragon books. And collect dragon figurines. I remembered a book I had bought at one of the elementary school book fairs called Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher and read it again, and again.

I’m stopping there because I just realized there is really no point in my writing this post at all. Except to show how obsessive and weird I am.

Mission Accomplished! 🙂

 

Did anyone else get this song stuck in their head?

Remember Domino Rally?

Domino Rally was one of my favorite toys as a kid. I use the term ‘kid’ loosely, because I’m pretty sure I played with it until I was fifteen. It was that awesome.

I realized a long time ago that my mind makes really strange, disjointed chain of connections that usually results with me making a comment that probably seems like a non sequitur to everyone except for me. I will give you an example of one chain of thought that I had today, that led me to think about Domino Rally.

On the way into work this morning, I was listening to Florence + the Machine. This is somewhat out of character for me because I so rarely find a female artist that I like, but I’m mildly obsessed with Florence. Anyway, Drumming Song was playing, which is a catchy song but doesn’t have much lyrical depth.

“I swallow the sound and it swallows me whole
Till there’s nothing left inside my soul
As empty as that beating drum
But the sound has just begun

As I move my feet towards your body
I can hear this beat it fills my head up
And gets louder and louder
It fills my head up and gets louder and louder

There’s a drumming noise inside my head
That starts when you’re around
I swear that you could hear it
It makes such an all mighty sound”

Since a good chunk of connections that I make relate back to Doctor Who, I naturally started to think about The Master and the drumming he perpetually heard in his head that drove him to madness. 1234  1234  1234…

This led me to think of my favorite movie, Ink. (Ink is on Netflix streaming, watch it IMMEDIATELY! Please excuse the first few words of the movie, though) In the movie, there is a pathfinder, Jacob, who can hear the beat of the universe. 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4. (SPOILER ALERT – don’t watch the video I’m linking to and skip the rest of this paragraph if you plan on watching the movie, which I know of course you will because it’s awesome) He can hear the rhythm of life around him, and because of that, he can then figure out exactly how to change the path  of someone’s life, by interrupting its flow. Jacob causes a chain reaction of events that eventually cause John’s car crash, which lands him in the same hospital where his daughter is lying in a coma, and they are finally reunited.

So then I start thinking about chain reactions and how awesome the Rube Goldberg machine was in OK Go’s music video “This Too Shall Pass”.

Which logically led me right to Domino Rally.

Of course, this progression probably only took a couple of seconds in my head. But I think someone would probably have been pretty confused if they asked me “Do you know Florence + the Machine?” and I responded with “Yeah! And wasn’t Domino Rally AWESOME??”

I am an awkward conversationalist

Sheldon: I made tea.
Leonard: I don’t want tea.
Sheldon: I didn’t make tea for you. This is my tea.
Leonard: Then why are you telling me?
Sheldon: It’s a conversation starter.
Leonard: That’s a lousy conversation starter.
Sheldon: Oh, is it? We’re conversing. Checkmate.

I love The Big Bang Theory. I make fun of Sheldon’s quirks and obsessive compulsiveness yet I find that he is often the character I can relate to the most.  Mostly because I’m so awkward. And I make tea. Constantly.