Likes

An Incomplete List of Things that Make My Life Worth Living

Think of this as a primer on how to charm me.

1. the twenty seconds just after waking up when i am exquisitely comfortable and warm— before my body remembers that it can’t regulate its own temperature

2. oh my God, tab browsing. It changed my life.

3. Danny, the Champion of the World

4. quidditch dreams

5. scenes in movies where someone is trying to sneak past the snoring villain/guard/parent and just at the critical moment, the villain/guard/parent snores really loudly and turns over, but keep sleeping, allowing the protagonist to escape, but, you know, just barely.

6. reisling

7. describing reisling as “racy”

8. Norway for its political policy based in science, the endless, unforgiving mountains, exotic (to me) fjords, the stave churches, the complex traditional , Viking past, and Bergen. Plus its mythology full of giants,witches, trolls, and clever girls on skis. But, much as I hate to admit it, I’m not thrilled by Jarlsberg.

9. Oliver Sacks’ case studies

10. oboe concertos and oboeists generally, who seem to me to have the best sense of humor in both the woodwind and brass sections. Tuba players take themselves much to seriously.

11. Battlestar Galactica, Veronica Mars, Foyle’s War, and most Masterpiece Theatre dramas. Also, Firefly, not that it makes a speck of difference, thanks very much FOX.

12. butter rum toffees

13. greyhounds & bull terriers

14. playing old schoolyard games like marbles, conkers and cat’s cradle.

15. when easily-purchased processed food emerge from my kitchen as they were first conceived: mayonnaise, paté brisé, pizza dough, dill pickles, blackberry jam

16. reading exhaustive literary references to unusual fruits on Wikipedia

17. the smells of Autumn

18. alto-cumulus clouds

19. artistic puctuation flourishes such as: ,—

20. composing elaborate alternatives to staid pangrams, such as “’Zounds, everybody in Foghorn Junction knew the queer vermillion platypus was out for bloodclots… except you.”

21. letters G, L, and O, all present in my favorite word, igloo.

22. People whose given name and surname suggest very different ethnicities. Ex: Soledad O’Brien, Bjorn Wang, Ayoka Singh
23. remembering to use “surname” rather than “last name”
24. studying fly-fishing lures

25. listening to the foghorn as I fall asleep