The License Plate game

I've come up with a new game for all you lexiphiles.

In years past, I've found a need to recognize cars by their license plate. Since strings of letters are especially difficult to remember, I've taken to assigning a word to each license plate as a sort of mnemonic device. For example, MNG becomes mango, RST becomes wrist, and ILR becomes pillar. They don't always sound the same, but the key point is that each letter in the license plate is present in the correct order in the associated mnemonic word.

Originally I only used such devices to recognize my family's cars, but on a recent trip to Salt Lake, I began extending it to a more general scope. I was trying to trace the flow of traffic between the various lanes, so I'd pick a certain car and assign it a mnemonic name. Then, if I saw that car again, I could assume that his lane was going at least as fast as mine.

Coming up with the words was interesting, so before long, my goal was to "name" as many cars as possible on the trip. That's the game. Obviously some are more difficult than others, so it becomes a competition with my traveling companions to mnemonicize each car first. I don't have a scoring structure set up yet, but I'm not sure it needs it. Simply coming up with the words is fun in and of itself.

Enjoy!

As a side note, occasionally I'll run across an exceptionally difficult one, so on Wednesday I finished up a program which searches a dictionary of 293,000 words for me. I'd offer to e-mail it to anyone who's interested, but it only works on OS X and gMail hasn't been cooperating when I've tried to send it previously. Sorry.

When everything feels like the movies, yeah you bleed just to know you're alive

I have a history of liking girls who don't return the favor. I'm sure that most of you have had that experience, but let me be clear. I'm not saying "Whenever I liked a girl, she didn't like me back." I'm saying "Always I liked a girl who didn't like me back." I mean it. I'm not the type to say "Oh, I'm not really interested in anyone right now." I'm always interested, and they historically haven't reciprocated. This started when I was 8 and lasted until about a year ago, with only two brief exceptions, so some simple math leads to the conclusion that for 14 years I grew up with constant emotional tension.

I learned to deal with it well, though. I wasn't an angsty, overwrought, emotionally-unstable teenager. I learned to smile at the tension, to laugh at the tragedies, and though I probably created a couple of awkward moments on my more poignant days, I think that overall I was (and am) very pleasant to be around. Though my relationships weren't always what I wanted them to be, I always had hope for better days, and hoping, despaired not. I excelled in my musical and academic pursuits, and I didn't have a sense of low self-worth. I just grew accustomed to the drama and learned to get on with things.

I didn't realize, though, that I had grown dependent on it. Relationship drama usually brings with it an acute emotional response. Excitement, longing, rejection, disappointment, hope, and anticipation all run wild in such situations, and I grew to feed off of these emotions. The excitement and energy I had often pulled from this fount, while the longing and disappointment led me to value my loved ones even more. Odd as it seems, this constant emotional tension served as a sort of anchor for me. It was a steady, sure part of my life. It also served as a barometer to my inter-personal feelings. I knew I still cared about someone so long as these emotions existed, and thus knew I had something to fight for.

Sometime in the last couple years, I figured a few things out socially. I no longer pine for the unattainable. I no longer hope and wish and pray after something, just to have it taken away despite my best efforts. My hopes and desires are acheivable. Things have been going well, and now I'm dating a girl that I really care about. We're so similar that it's uncanny. We get along excellently, and though no relationship is without a bump or two, the gates are open and the road is clear.

I'm lost, though. I don't have my anchor. The emotional tension I grew to expect is gone. I feel a bit like Joseph Smith when he said "I should feel a bit like a fish out of water, if I were out of persecutions." I'm not sure which way is up anymore. I've found myself reluctant to move on, searching for anything to recreate those acute emotions I've grown to expect. I've got what I always hoped for, and now that I'm here, I don't know where to go. My anchor is lost and my barometer is broken.

My impossible dream has been attainable after all, and now I have no stars to follow, no hell to march into for a heavenly cause. I'm just not sure where I'm going anymore.

And so it goes

I now present you with a collection of brief thoughts, events, or points of interest from my life. I didn't really feel that any deserved a post on its own, but together they're fun.

While entering Dragon Lady's house a couple weeks ago, I opened the storm door door. Or rather, I attempted to open the door. I immediately pulled my hand back when I felt a sharp prick and saw a bee fly out of the handle. I'm cautious every time now, but apparently it's earned me the title of "Gallant Knight" who protects the inhabitants from guerrilla bee stakeouts.

If you lay your hand flat on a table and close the thumb in toward the rest of the hand, you'll see a small area of skin poke up near the base of your thumb. That area of skin contains almost no nerves, and somewhere along the way I developed the habit of biting it when I'm thinking. Did you know you can bite hard enough to leave significant teeth marks without much pain? Yep, it's pretty fun. (Make sure to just get the skin, and not the veins, arteries, tendons, or muscles underneath. Also, I take no responsibility for any personal harm caused by your own experimentation. Don't be stupid, okay?)

In a recent move to secure control, China has declared it illegal to reincarnate within their borders without express government approval. This caused me to laugh for hours.

I recently finished my internship at a local software company. As I rode the elevator the seven floors down to the main entrance for the last time, I couldn't help but hum the theme from Europe's "The Final Countdown." Optimistic. would have been proud of me.

And so it goes, and so it goes, and you're the only one who knows.