Loves and Loathes of my life

It is time to rhapsodize. Naturally, it is also time to complain, but we'll get to that in a minute. First, I'd like to tell you about some of the loves of my life.

Loves of my life

1. Bubbles

As in air bubbles rising up through a liquid. While floating soap bubbles are fun to create and chase around like a toddler (yes, I'm 33, and yes, I still sometimes chase bubbles), I am particularly amazed by how bubbles look when you're underwater and you see them rising up around you. They don't look at all like those perfect round bubbles I'm always doodling—rather, they flatten out like mushroom caps and wiggle their way awkwardly to the surface.They remind me of cute little jellyfish. When I first conceived this list, I thought that was all I was going to have to say about bubbles, but then I noticed these in the bottom of my Diet Coke on an airplane.

Aren't they just the most lovely little spheres?


2. Lists

   While we're on the topic of this list, let's talk about how much I love lists in general. I have a whole category for them in my blog. I have 199 notes in Evernote (at this very moment), many of which are lists. I love articles in list format (they call them "listicles" now, though I'm not sure I'm ready to adopt that term into my vocabulary), I love keeping lists to keep me organized, and even the way a short, concise bulleted list looks. Whoever thought up the idea of a list surely deserves a spot in the top ten greatest inventors of all time!

3. Color gradients

   There was a time when color gradients were a very popular thing to do in design (it happened to be while I was in design school!)—so popular that our classmate who was already a professional designer warned us all against using them (that and drop shadows) unless we had a very good reason for doing so. For a few years, that scared me off of using gradients, but I love them! Who am I to go against my true nature? There's something inherently soothing about the smooth progression from one color to another that I can't explain, but only enjoy. To celebrate, here's a picture of one of the first digital gradients I ever employed in my art!
   

4. The heater in my office

   It's summer now, but winter will be here soon enough, and rather than find something about it to complain about (as I usually do in my "loves and loathes posts), I'm going to take the positive route and mention something that's nice about it: my personal heater in my office. Despite the wide variance in comfortable human temperature preferences, most office buildings nonetheless try to set a sitewide temperature that suits a majority of the inhabitants – which never includes me – but in our building (or at least many parts of it), each individual room has its own heating/air-conditioning unit. This means that I'm free to set my office temperature to 80 in the winter (it never quite reaches 80, but at least it tries) and turn off the air completely in the summer. Of the many things I really appreciate about my job, this is definitely up there near the top. One can be so much more productive when one's fingers are not frozen stiff!

Loathes of my life

1. Clattering dishes together

   I absolutely can't stand the sound that occurs when I am putting away dishes and I accidentally knock two of them together. Strangely, I used to work in a restaurant and the sound never bothered me, even though it was a pretty much constant racket. I am fairly good at ignoring loud noises, as long as they are occurring ambiently, but apparently, one type of noise I can't tune out is one that I make myself. It's enough to make me want to replace all my dishes with plastic!

2. Everything about sunscreen

   Sun avoidance is a regular part of my lifestyle these days, but it's somewhat disheartening that I have yet to find a sunscreen I don't despise. The skin experts annoyingly bombard me with reminders that "even if you're in the shade, you're still getting exposed to UV light," and "windows don't block out harmful rays," and "You should be wearing sunscreen every day—no exceptions!" These reminders are annoying because they put me between a rock and a hard place—between blatantly ignoring the advice that could save me from both visible aging and cancer, and having to wear a nasty goop on my skin all day every day! Ugh! Don't try to offer a suggestion for a sunscreen that's less disgusting than the others, because they're all disgusting! Texture not even withstanding (although I have lots of complaints in that department too), they all stink, and I mean that literally. The chemical sunscreens smell like chemicals, and the physical sunscreens smell like dust. No matter how much perfume has been added, there's no getting around the fact that the active ingredients make me feel like I've doused myself in my own personal nightmare. Why does living healthy have to be so unpleasant!?

3. Going to the bathroom at class-change time

   While it's great to have a personal heater, there are of course things I dislike about my job. One of them is the very people that make my employment possible: the students on campus! Again, because it is summer, at present I don't need to deal with this problem, but during the semester I am routinely inconvenienced. Like any normal human, I prefer to perform my bodily functions in private, but more often than I can explain, just as I am heading to the loo, I am rushed by a stream of students all leaving class at the same time, crowding into the bathroom and completely ruining my peace and solitude! I actually memorized the university's class schedule so that I could save my bathroom breaks for an off-time, but it seems like at least once every day, I slip up and have to face the herd. Sometimes when I get up to use the bathroom, I immediately turn around and go back to my office, to wait another 10 minutes until the hallway has cleared. Speaking of bathrooms...

4. People playing on their phones while leaving the bathroom without washing their hands

   No, really! This just happened yesterday! I was in the bathroom washing my hands, when a person left the stall and passed me (and all the sinks) to go have a look in the full-length mirror, poking away at her cell phone the whole time. Like, ew, which hand did you wipe with, because you're using both of them on your phone right now! I cannot say for sure that this particular person didn't return to the sinks after I left, but I do know that it was already too late for her phone. I can't believe that educated adults (hello, this was at a university!), living in a world with ebola, still aren't washing their hands after using the toilet. This could possibly be the absolute number-one item on my list of loathes...ever.