I took an introduction to nursing class in high school where we had to know the names of all the bones, the chambers of the heart, CPR, etc. During one particular topic, one of the students kinda snapped and exclaimed “I’m too stupid for this!” The teacher, a badass ER nurse who was a single mom, rode a Harley, and had seen everything from electrocuted flesh to years-old bed sores, simply said “Good. That means you’re learning.”

I work with special needs kids, and whenever they complain about feeling stupid, I pass along that wisdom, but in a bit nicer way: “You’re not stupid, you’re just learning.”

Highly recommend the Piano Guys. They mix classical music with modern hits.

I’ve never understood this. What’re they gonna do? Vote to make crimes legal?

I think the first my sister and I played was A Link to the Past. We didn’t know what we were doing, and we didn’t know why the princess and the green guy had the same name… We really got into the series when we watched our dad play Ocarina of Time. Detailed graphics, 3D, a day-night cycle, horse back riding… That game had it ALL.

Their loss.

https://neal.fun/deep-sea/ Experience how deep the ocean can go. May cause thalassophobia.

https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html Scale the universe if the moon were the size of a pixel.

https://www.robinwords.com/ Fun word ladder game to test your vocabulary.

http://make-everything-ok.com/ For when you feel like things are just not going your way.

https://stellarium-web.org/ Look at and learn about the stars.

I was waiting to buy Tears of the Kingdom, thinking the price would go down eventually. Should I not do that?

My aunt and uncle got married new years day of 2000. Very easy to remember.

I think I stopped reading just before that chapter…

I was diagnosed with clinical depression around 2013, but definitely suffered from it as early as 2007. At first I was very embarrassed and ashamed of it, especially when I first started taking antidepressants. I didn’t want to take medicine / be in therapy for the rest of my life. It didn’t help that my parents were under the impression that I could eventually get over it – saying things like “you don’t want to be in therapy forever do you?” “You want to eventually not have to take antidepressants, right?” After a few years, I stopped trying to “cure” myself and began to accept that it’s going to be a part of my life (and that’s okay). Even my parents slowly started to realize that it will always be present. In fact, I started to become a little grateful for my depression, because I think it gives me a unique perspective on the world and life in general. I’m pretty open about my diagnosis now. I’ve had a few people tell me they’re taken aback by how honest I am about my struggles. I tell them that, for me, living with depression is like being grass. Too much happy, yellow sunshine will make you dry, dead, and brown, and too much gloomy, blue rain will make you gray and root-rotted. You need a healthy balance of both to be lush and green (my favorite color).

A self help / “how to be successful” book for my birthday from my parents. It wasn’t even that good – it had typos and grammatical errors all over. I was in my early-mid 20s. My dad made me read a chapter every week (and take notes) and then he’d go over it with me. Eventually he stopped forcing me to read it because I put up too much of a fight.

Nothing says “I love you” like being reminded your parents see you as a failure.

There’s a reason I’m in therapy…

• The Gettysburg Address.

• Lincoln’s assassination and the aftermath.

• The trial of the conspirators. I’m fascinated with (and saddened by) the trial and execution of Mary Surratt.

• Pretty much anything related to Lincoln and the Civil War.