A New Word

I'm going to make up a word.
There are several conditions that greatly affect life in the oceans. One of these is salinity. Some animals can live in highly salty water (such as lagoons) others can only survive with a little salt (such as right off a delta where the river water waters down the salt in the water) and some can survive in both. Animals that can live in both very salty water and not very salty water are called euryhaline (meaning broad salt). Creatures that can only survive in water that has a specific percentage of salt are considered stenohaline (meaning narrow salt).
Today I was thinking about how some people are very particular about the weather that makes them happy. They don't like when it rains or when it snows or when it is too hot, etc. Then I extrapolated out and thought about how some people seem only happy occasionally, when a specific set of circumstances align, but others seem like they can find happiness in most situations.
I'm not sure why this is exactly, but some of the contributing factors may be natural disposition, faith, humor, and actually choosing to be happy. But thinking about all this made me want to be eurysatis (meaning broad satisfied) and find satisfaction and happiness in a broad range of situations and environments. Let it rain! And be blistering hot! Let me be with friends and family. Or be far away from them. Let me be working on school things, work things, other peoples projects, my projects. Let me be under green trees, on desert sands or sitting at a computer desk. Let me be eurysatis.

Curiosity: Part 2

A while ago I posted about being curious, and I talked about a spreadsheet of terms I had put together so I could do well in my studies. Now that I have been working in my new field of study for a while I don't find myself looking up quite as many terms as I did then, but I haven't given it up completely. I think I added some to my spreadsheet just last week, but as I said, it isn't quite as much the life line it was when I started. Despite this, I think I am still curious. This week I worked on a Dinosaur Train (aka I talked to little kids and their parents about dinosaurs while they went on a train ride. There was a fair amount of down time and I found myself asking the conductor and the other train workers about their jobs and how the train worked. I asked one of the teenagers that worked on the train something about one of the procedures. She had no idea (I'm not sure she had even noticed). So I guess I still count as curious. :)
Another thing I have noticed though, is sometimes I use curiosity as a coping mechanism. Occasionally when I am stressed or decidedly uncomfortable (especially in a new environment) I will start studying the mechanisms around me, trying to figure them out so I don't think too much about whatever I'm stressing out about. So, if I ever become excessively engineer minded it might be because I'm stressed out.
On another note, I find that my curiosity sometimes heads in a different direction then most peoples. On the train perhaps the two most questions about dinosaurs was "What was the biggest dinosaur?"^ and "How big was a T-rex?"* But I don't really care about "the biggest," "the fastest," "the smallest." I guess I'm just more about the stories then the stats. (You can google the stats if you need them for some reason). So, when I wasn't answering stats questions I tried to tell people things that they wouldn't be able to find out with a quick google search... well they could, but only if they knew what to ask, which--granted--would be the hard part, especially when doing it off the top of their heads. However, I am sympathetic. Good questions are sometimes hard to think of, especially when you are asked kind of out of the blue, so I guess I was even more grateful when people asked good questions.


^The Argentinosaurus, a long neck that was 130 ft long and about 90 tons (roughly the weight of two passenger train cars). And yes, it was found in Argentina.
*About 15-20 feet tall.

Textures

Last week I was laying on some pea gravel rubbing my bare-feet through it. At least twice a friend asked what I was doing with a tone that said she thought I was crazy. Then she did it and admitted it felt pretty good. I've been known to do the same thing with mud.
I hate lotion. The slimy feel of it makes me cringe, but my two year old niece brings her mom lotion and cries if she doesn't put it on.
I like al dente noodles and toast and crunchy things... in fact squishy things, or even a large quantity of non-crunchy foods with a homogeneous texture make me gag. Texture is a huge thing for me in regards to eating.
So, overall I dislike squishy things (eating or feeling...unless it's mud apparently.... I don't get it) solely because they are squishy.
My mom hates "weird fabrics," I think this means shiny smooth ones or spandex like with a stretch, because she hates the feel of them. However, she has no problem with eating squishy foods.
It is just interesting to me that it seems like many people (I won't generalize to "all") have very distinct reactions to textures, but not always in the same category. Food is the primary category that texture is an issue for for me but for my mom it is cloth. So maybe different body parts are more susceptible to being picky about texture for different people. Or maybe it is something else... I guess I will have to ask more people about this.

Deciphering Character

I just finished rereading Brandon Sanderson's novella, "The Emperor's Soul." This is a fantasy novel with a complex, original magic system. Recently, I have also read some of Sarah M Eden's books. She primarily writes clean regency romance. Today I realized that I actually like "The Emperor's Soul," and Eden's books for the same reason, or at least some of the same reasons.
"The Emperor's Soul," is about a girl who is a master forger, and in her world that doesn't just involve the typical type of forgery we have in out world but with an intricate type of magic if she knows the history of an object she can essentially rewrite it's presence. But what is cool, is that she does it for a person. In order to be successful she has to do a ton of research. She not only has to know what his favorite color is but why... even if he did not know himself. This is because:
 "a person [is] like a dense forest thicket, overgrown with a twisting mess of vines, weeds, shrubs, saplings, and flowers. No person [is] one single emotion; no person [has] only one desire. They [have] many, and usually those desires conflicted with one another like two rosebushes fighting for the same patch of ground." The whole book is about how she not only learns about the Emperor (who she is trying to forge) but also those around her as she discovers their motivations and their own deceptions and idiosyncrasies.
Eden's books are usually categorized as clean romance, which they definitely are, but unlike many romances (and just books in general) her characters are very well rounded and as the hero and heroine get to know each other they are discovering each other's motivations, and deceptions and idiosyncrasies, and why. Just like getting to know real people they are slowly piecing together each other through words and actions and sometimes they are able to come to conclusions that are true but might not even be recognized by the person. I just reread her book "Seeking Persephone" and Persephone recognized that Adam is shy, genuinely uncomfortable talking to people. Yet when you are in Adam's point of view he never once thinks of himself as shy.
I feel like I'm pretty self aware (I have made some of those types of connections about myself before) and I also find if fascinating to observe and talk about this kind of thing in other people. Plus, doing this well is one of the more rewarding parts of writing. So, I guess it is really no surprise that I like reading about it too.