Signals, Signals, Ring, and Cold Cooking

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It occurred to me today, while sitting at a red light, that there must be a language to describe the pattern of traffic signal changes. There are a few specific patterns that seem common enough that there must be some field of study that gives them names that are not commonly known outside of the field. For instance, in computers, we have concepts with names like linked lists and binary trees. We have repeated design patterns like singleton, factory, facade, adapter, and composite. It seems to me that a concept like “the northbound traffic gets a green light and green left-arrow, then the left-arrow goes to red, then the southbound main traffic gets a green, then the northbound gets a red, then finally the southbound gets a green turn arrow” probably has an obscure name in an obscure field, because that would be a tough thing for the people programming street lights to describe all the time without referring to it by a concise name.

A cute girl with long blonde braids, terminating in pink hair dye, hit on me today. On the one hand, I’m always flattered when any sort of compliment comes my direction. On the other, I feel sort of guilty. “HEY LOOK! I HAVE THIS STURDY METAL RING ON MY FINGER! I CAN’T TALK TO YOU!” is what a piece of my mind is saying. An equal and opposite piece of my mind is saying “WTF? Where does it say that I have to plug my ears and say LALALALALALA every time someone cute talks to me? She’s probably a really nice person. I have no intention of going out with her, but that doesn’t mean I can’t close myself off to talking.” I later realized that I told her my Red Robot hoodie was from Diesel Sweeties, when I should have said it was from explodingdog.

Speaking of rings, I had a dyslexic freakout the other morning. “Holy crap! Where is my wedding ring?!” It just was not on my finger. I never take that thing off, which made it more of a mystery. It took me a good 15 to 20 seconds to realize that I mixed up my right and left. It was not on my right hand because that is not where it is supposed to go. It had been on my left hand all the time, only I did not notice or feel it because I was so freaked out about it not being on my right hand. It was sort of a “where are my glasses? Oh, they’re on my head” moment, only more bizarre.

Currently, I have Peruvian ceviche “cooking” in the fridge.

Posted in: Dear Diary

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