Deja Vu

Have you ever experienced deja vu? I feel like I get it all the time. The last time I got a really strong feeling of deja vu was a few months ago in Hawaii. I was hiking with my dad. He was ahead of me on the trail and turned around to tell me something. I remember that when he turned around on this trail that neither of us had ever been on before, he had this certain look on his face. I looked at him and whoa, deja vu. I started thinking about this deja vu stuff last night while eating dinner with my family. I randomly brought up the fact that I often dream about people yelling at me for something that I did wrong. After mentioning that, the conversation moved into recurring dreams and then somehow moved onto deja vu. My brother brought it up first. He said that he'd heard of this theory on deja vu that stemmed from tests done on military snipers. The military found that their snipers were getting deja vu over and over again throughout their everyday experiences. After testing, they came to the conclusion that the snipers were constantly getting this feeling of deja vu, because of their vision. It's common, if you're a sniper, to have one eye that is quite a bit stronger than the other. This is because snipers are used to holding a gun and closing one eye in order to aim with the other before shooting. Over time, one of their eyes will become stronger. What does vision have to do with deja vu? Well, this "sniper theory" states that you'll get a feeling of deja vu in an instance after one of your eyes (the stronger eye) takes in an image a millisecond before your other eye does. Since our brains process things so incredibly fast, the image taken in by the stronger eye is made into a memory before the other eye has time to take it in. So once your weaker eye gets around to taking in the image, you see it, and feel like you've seen the image before, at a different time; You get deja vu. This theory fascinated me so much that I decided to read up a little on deja vu instead of reading the chapter due for my lecture tonight...Maybe my next blog post will be about the dangers of procrastination. Anyway, here are one doctor's findings on her study of deja vu:

• A majority of people experience Déjà Vu, roughly two-thirds of the population.

• The frequency of Déjà Vu decreases with age and is most common among people ages 15 to 25.

• People with higher incomes and more education have more Déjà Vu experiences.

• Déjà Vu appears to be associated with stress and fatigue.

• Those who travel have more Déjà Vu experiences.

• For some, Déjà Vu experiences appear to repeat prior dreams.


Speaking of dreams, you know how I mentioned earlier that I often have dreams about people yelling at me. Well during our dinner conversation about deja vu, we also talked about dreams and the interpretation of dreams. Leesh said that she totally believes in dream interpretation. I'm on the same page with her and tend to gravitate more toward the possible meanings behind dreams instead of believing that dreams are completely random neuro explosions inside your brain. I guess the neuro explosions are a more logical explanation, but when has logic ever been any fun? So I looked up what my dreams may mean by going to this handy dream dictionary. Here are two common themes in my dreams and what it all possibly means:

Yelling

To dream that you or someone is yelling, represents repressed anger that needs to be expressed. If you are yelling and no one hears, then it suggests that you are not being heard. You feel that your voice does not matter.


Screaming

To dream that you are screaming, symbolizes anger and fear. It is an expression of your powerful emotions which you have kept pent up inside.

If you try to scream, but no sound comes out, then is suggests that you need to immediately confront some situation. Perhaps you are unable to pinpoint your fears or feelings.


As you can see, I don't usually have very pleasant dreams. You may also have observed that I am clearly in need of some major therapy.

Our dinner conversation ended with a lovely story my dad told us about a dream he had as a kid. He said that back when he was about 6 or 7 years old, he had this really vivid dream where he was ice skating on the street right outside his house in Tucson. Everything was frozen over and he was just ice skating by himself up and down the street. My dad went on to say that just a couple years ago, he was out jogging around his old neighborhood in Layton (real life, not a dream). It was a really cold morning. He turned a corner and came across this street that was completely frozen over. He had to cross the street, so he found himself having to "ice skate" across it to complete his jog. At first, he had an overwhelming feeling of deja vu, but then he remembered that old dream he had when he was just a kid back in Tucson. He was finally fulfilling his dream. I loved hearing this story. I guess dreams do come true. Sometimes we just have to wait 50 years for them to become reality.

Weekend Photos

Here I am with Luke and Melanie up at The Beav on Saturday. We had a lot of fun.








Sunday photos. The boys love to come down and play around with photo booth for a few minutes every Sunday. It's starting to become kind of a ritual now. We're so cheezy in that last photo, I love it.

Poetry Time

My brother Jason got me the perfect gift for Christmas this past year, a giant book of poetry. The book is literally called The Giant Book of Poetry, kinda funny. Anyway, this gigantic book is a compilation of many great works of poetry by some of the world's best known poets. It starts out with poetry written as early as 4,000 BC and ends with poems written in the late 20th century. I love it and have been using it to get my weekly dose of quality poetry. The book is edited by William H. Roetzheim if you're interested. Here's a poem by William Blake that I just read today and really like...

To See a World in a Grain of Sand

To see a world in a grain of sand
and a heaven in a wild flower,
hold infinity in the palm of your hand
and eternity in an hour.


Dave Chappelle is also a good source of quality poetry. Here's Dave reciting one of his own original poems for an episode of Def Poetry Jam. Hilarious.

Blog. Tagged.

So Leesh tagged me, blog style. Leesh, I love doing stuff like this and reading random facts about other people, so thanks for tagging me. Okay, here are my 7:

1. Big animals freak me out. Horses, whales, cows, etc...I don't likey.

2. It bothers me when people have perfectly straight teeth. I like it when someone's teeth are slightly crooked, not totally jacked up, but just a bit off. I see it as a sign that they're keepin' it real, 'ya know?

3. One of my biggest vices: cracking my knuckles.

4. Longtime fantasy: Owning my own workshop where I sell a bunch of pottery, made with my own hands. Can anyone teach me how to work with The Wheel?

5. I've always wanted to own a Carmengia, yellow or red.

6. I'm super gullible and usually take a while to catch onto sarcasm. So I guess I don't really appreciate sarcasm, in large doses anyway.

7. Worst fear: suffocation.


Oh and I love hanging out with Matt and Leesh's kids. Here's what happens when I let the boys play around with photo booth on their own...They crack me up.

Snow Day!

Class was cancelled today 'cause of all this snow. Gotta love snow days! Funny thing is, SLC only got a couple of inches, but we got slammed. Hopefully I can get my car out of the driveway tomorrow.

January Sunday Vid, starring Isaac & Luke

I think I'm gonna do one of these every month and see what the boys come up with. Next month I'll try to get Maya in on the action. I like these guys, they're funny guys.

Trees and Other Musings

Every now and then I struggle with bouts of insomnia. Tonight, or this morning really, I can't seem to sleep, so what better way to deal with it than to blog about my recent trip to the great Pacific Northwest. I decided to ring in the new year up in Portland. The trip was excellent, although really short. I was only up there for like 2.5 days, so here are 2.5 reasons I think everyone should visit Portland if given the chance.

#1 - The Trees!

I'm a girl from Arizona and Utah, respectively, so any good amount of trees and/or green foliage is always a big deal to me. I love trees, and Portland has them everywhere. It was really beautiful and was like being up in the woods all the time, nice.

The greatest host in all the land, Benny T. Idn't he cute? Thanks for showing me around the place, Ben!

#2 - No Cranium at the New Year's Eve party!

I'm not a huge party-goer, but if there's one thing I've learned from going to parties over the years, is that it's not cool to have to perform any combination of charades, playdough molding, or word/vocabulary tests and/or puzzles in front of people you don't know well or don't know at all. So thank goodness for the New Year's Eve party I went to up in Portland. A bunch of Ben's friends threw a party at some cabin up there, so we went, we partook of refreshments, we hung out. The people at the party were very welcoming and super nice. And there was no sign of Cranium anywhere, best part.

#2.5 - Gas Station attendants!

Did you know that it's against the law to pump your own gas in Oregon? Some people may think this is lame, but I think it's great. I mean, you have to know that I'm the type of person who would choose to be chauffeured around if given the option, so the idea of not having to pump my own gas is really enticing. This is an especially good thing during the cold winter months; You get to stay in your car while someone else does the dirty work for 'ya. I think I heard that New Jersey is the only other state besides Oregon that has this law.

So the trip was fun, and I highly recommend visiting Portland if you've never been.

I should've taken more pictures and wish I could've stayed longer than 2.5 days to have been able to take in more of the sites. But it was great to have a break before school starts next week. Hope you had a fun New Year's Eve! Hello 2008!