Huit!

This mushroom has nothing to do with anything regarding the theme of this post.
These fungi have taken over my front yard, so I decided to go on a snapping spree and capture the surprise smattering of beauty before they all were unfortunately crushed underfoot.



I did have fun themed posts in mind. In fact, I had one half written about the odd nature of dating. But after a long first day training at my new job, particularly when I had to get up just past 6am the night after I went to an Arctic Monkey show, I decided that scattered was the way to go today.

So, in honour of this, and fact # 6 (that I am a collector of tacky mushroom memoribilia, which apparently generalizes over to photography), I present to you another 8 Princess Factoids, in my eventual quest to 100!

#25 - Lately I've been thinking that if I wasn't an almost-psychologist, I would like to be a documentary filmmaker. The notion of being able to research something due to genuine passion and wanting to share it with the world sounds invigorating. This newfound notion could be due to me becoming a little jaded with the bureaucracy inherent in academia. I also think it is tied to my awareness that people spending all their time doing "important" research seem to rarely take the time to disseminate it to the general population. It may also be that I want an excuse to learn to scuba dive-- an epic seahorse documentary is waiting!

#26- While I am generally a hygenic person, I have a horrible pen chewing habit. I will shred the lid to a perfectly good pen near instantaneously. I have been known to get plastic pen fragments caught in my throat. However, the worst part is it is so automatic that my tendency knows no etiquette-- I am that horrible person you later regret lending a pen to.

(and I am cutting off any oral fixation comments at the pass)

#27 - This probably doesn't come as a big surprise, given my previous disclosed voyeuristic tendencies... but I find personal ads really fascinating. It just strikes me as so telling of our various subcultures of North America society what ends up in these little snippets. When I'm bored, I will sometimes browse through the ads on Craigslist to see what odd quirks squeeze through people's well-honed (or not so well-honed) impression management attempts. All this despite the fact I have never written one myself...

#28- Okay, so maybe I lied. I have written a personal ad. However, before you get too excited... it wasn't a real one.

A few years ago, when discussing our mutual interest in such ads, and the odd characters that sometimes emerged out of the woodwork in the weird landscape granted by anonymity, a friend of mine and I suddenly came up with an idea: A personal ad contest.

The rules were simple-- we would post an ad for a completely fictional woman on craigslist, with no restrictions other than no direct promises of sex, and no photos. As you would expect, the one with the most replies wins.

She went for the exotic European woman angle. I went for the new girl in town angle. I kicked her ass with nearly 300 replies.

In all honesty, I wasn't prepared for a sense of guilt to come out of this endeavour. From what people had told me of their experiences, I had expected my newly created hotmail account to be bombarded with photos of male genitalia and various random suspicious sounding propositions. And while I did get, amongst other things, detailed accounts of back-door lovin' and some rather sketchy propositions from a man in exchange for a trip to Mexico, I also received genuine emails from nice sounding people. And I felt like an utter ass.

So I wrote another ad for Craigslist, saying that my fictional 26-year old who liked biking and was looking for a new friend to show her around was so sorry she wouldn't be able to respond to everyone's replies, because there were so many--even though I obviously didn't contact any of them.

And my attempt at morality failed again, as this attempt to let them down easy resulted in even more emails, saying that in my kindness, I had attracted them even more.
If they only knew.

It was then that I decided "new girl in town" needed to be retired, before she could cause anymore heartache.

#29- Whenever I finish a good book, I feel as though I can't start a new one for a day or two, as though a new story would somehow betray the just completed one, which is still in the process of fully sinking in.

#30- One of my career aspirations as a child? Girl detective extraordinaire!

Like many a ten year old, I probably read too much Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, and, of course *swoon* Hardy Boys. But, as a part of my ever-so-active imagination, I wanted to integrate all this glorious knowledge about how to pick locks with a paperclip and escape when tied to a beam in an abandoned manor to my real life. As such, I tried to create mysteries in my day to day life. I recall convincing my friend to help me set up a case file with a list of prime subjects, motives, and alibis when her science project was vandalized. I probably tried to take fingerprints using baby powder and scotch tape, too, and was constantly on the look-out for counterfeit money.

#31- One of the less fortunate aspects of my new(-ish) apartment is its distance from my university campus and my new workplace. This was a conscious decision on my part after nearly three years of living in the suburbs, with the university and Wal-Mart seemingly serving as the only two relatively interesting things close to me (see how low my standards became?)-- I came to the conclusion that I would rather travel for work than fun.

However, as you may remember from Factoid #24, I am without a car, which makes for some long rides home, especially as I cannot read for the portion of my trip on the bus.

The odd bit of creativity that has come out of this, though, is blogging inspiration. My best ideas come about as I am staring out the window with my headphones on, or trudging up a hill... something about motion helps organize my thoughts, it seems.

#32- Oddly enough for a family that fled to a small Bohemian town to become environmentalist vegetarians, I spent half of my first ten years on a hobby farm. While I remember it being somewhat idyllic, just outside of the city's hustle and bustle, to be able to collect eggs from my favourite chicken with the red tie 'round her leg and to go chase the pigs in their muddy pen, I think I actively surpressed the fact that these animal friends of mine would disappear at seemingly infrequent intervals-- and my parents colluded with me in not reminding me where breakfast came from.

On a side note- is it a little creepy that the pigs were named after our grandparents?