We’ve all been there: the plan to read a little before bed keeps you up turning pages half the night.
You sink your social life for days or weeks in a row spending every free moment on successive volumes (or episodes) of a book (or TV) series.
I have a friend who gets so wrapped up in her reading, she does so while brushing her teeth.
Of course, it would have to be a tropical island. Being one of those people who is always cold, spending a year on an island in the Arctic – or worse, the Antarctic – would create a whole new set of problems.
I’ve been snow camping before during my great outdoorsy days, but never in -34°C (-29°F).
Because I don’t own a TV, I attempted to stream the coverage on my laptop. Yet, because so many North Americans and people from around the world were also watching, the stream timed out every minute or so, in need of constant refreshing.
It was in this way, along with commentary from a battery-operated radio and the #ElectionNight hashtag on Twitter, that the end result eventually – astoundingly, at least to me – became clear.
This is not just a clever turn of phrase. My impatience is probably my worst personality trait – the one with the greatest effect on how I relate to the world around me, and how the world relates back as a result. But all that is a story for another blog post.
For this post, I’m instead talking about lost material items.
Over the five years that I’ve been blogging, I’ve written a number of what I consider important posts – posts that would make excellent candidates for my most popular post ever.
They are probably right about that. I should know; over the years, I’ve rearranged my entire lifestyle to be as conducive to my writing as possible.
I’ve excised almost all extraneous disruptions, I schedule my days and weeks to within an inch of my life, and go to great efforts to minimize personal drama of the sort that annoys and hinders far more than it excites and inspires.
One may not agree with this statement, least of all as pertains to me. But I recently read an article on the popular social news and entertainment site that had all the answers I presently seek.
This an article is helpfully titled 15 Tips That Will Trick Your House Guests Into Thinking You Have Your Shit Together.
It’s hardly worth referencing a specific incident to support this statement. Just turn on your TV. Turn on the radio. Log on to any social media platform. Open your front door. You could spit and it would land on something awful taking place. The reasons why are too numerous to count.
Left turns, I agree, makes sense. There’s inherent danger from exposing your broad side as you cut across the path of oncoming traffic.
Left turns also put you at the mercy of the volume of oncoming vehicles; it can be a long wait before you get a chance to make your move. If you’re a somewhat timid driver, you may fail to take advantage of opportunities that seem iffy, thereby resulting in an intimidating amount of traffic backed up behind you.
Image of a Native American man from J.K. Rowling’s History of Magic in North America.
Admittedly, this isn’t an issue I’ve devoted much thought to in the past. Of late, however, following the J.K. Rowling #MagicInNorthAmerica controversy, it’s been on my mind a fair bit.
For those not familiar, #MagicInNorthAmerica has to do with a series of fictional monographs discussing the history of magic in the Harry Potter universe. Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling recently released these on her Pottermore website to promote the release of the upcoming movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
A Frame Around Infinity 