The sneak synesthete

I feel kind of like my brain gave me a present this week. On Tuesday, I learned that I’m a synesthete.

One of my friends shared this article, “Your name tastes like purple” on Facebook. “Uck,” I thought. “I really hope my name doesn’t taste like purple.” That should have been a sign.

Synesthesia, I learned, by reading the article, is a harmless perceptual condition in which one sense is directly related to another. Some people see colors when they hear sounds. Some people associate tastes with colors. The synesthete who penned the piece wrote about her ability to see letters in color and visualize the year. As I read, I thought “So? Who doesn’t do that? Everyone associates the letter A with red, right?” By the end of the article, I realized that everyone does not. Read more

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Valentine’s Day at the movies.

It’s Valentine’s Day and I’m willing to bet a ton of cheap chocolate that a lot of people will be watching romantic films this evening. Rom-coms, tearjerkers, An Affair to Remember. The Notebook. Anything with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks in it. All of that will be hot property on Netflix streaming video tonight.

But not in this house. We’ll probably be watching a film that features spaceships, dinosaurs, or a cunning combination of both. Still, in honor of Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d post a list of lessons I’ve learned about relationships from some of my favorite movies. After all, love is everywhere. Read more

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Why I Tweet

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It seems like every time Twitter comes up in conversation, at least one person wants to know what it is and why it’s important to be Twitter-literate (Twitliterate? Twiterate?)

Why, when there are so many ways to communicate, would you join a service that allows you to write only 140 characters worth of text at a time? My husband, who is new to the Internet, has referred to it as “texting the world.” Who wants to do that?

I’ve had some doubts of my own lately. But then the last two weeks happened and I witnessed a variety of things take place on Twitter. These events ranged from the historic (the unrest in Egypt) to the adorable (watching Rupaul learn to tweet) to the personally relevant (The Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference in Washington D.C.) After all that, I’m in love with Twitter again. Read more

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