aprilstarchild | (no subject)

My other new icon, of course. Should come in handy here and there.

I was reading a friend's thing on ADD, and apparently it's not just me, it's an ADD thing: I can only remember something if it's connected to something else.

This was driven home to me last week. I opened up the back door before turning off the alarm, and because it was the back door it immediately went into that horrible "whoop! whoop!" noise that means it's going to call the cops. I turned it off but didn't hit cancel, so the alarm company called to ask if everything was all right. Then they wanted the password, and I couldn't remember it. My dad's told it to me a few times, and I totally blanked. I went upstairs to find

ruby_wings, and when I said her name her head popped up from the blankets, her face all squinched up and her hair all curly around her face, and she said the password (which is a really goofy word) in a flat voice.

The sight of that was so comical (sorry, but it's true) that I'll never forget the damn password.

I have an excellent head for trivia, because it's all connected to something. I've got a reputation among my coworkers, actually. One asked me today if salt water taffy had real salt water in it, and I was able to tell her: It depends on the brand, but if they do, it's not seawater, it's purified sea salt dissolved in water, because seawater is polluted and nasty.

I can tell you that the American Psychological Association decided that homosexuality wasn't a mental illness in 1973. I can tell you that the recreation of Plimoth Village is 2.something miles from the original site and that it's reenacted to be exactly 1627. I can tell you that Strattera is an SNRI, a Selective Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitor. I can tell you that broiler chickens in a modern farm get less room to stand on than the size of a piece of notebook paper. I can tell you that there are 275,000 people in Iceland (approximately), that there are 13 sheep for every person in New Zealand, and that West Virginia was formed when it split off from Confederate Virginia during the Civil War. I can tell you every phone number I've had since first grade except for one, and keep in mind I've moved a lot.

I know all of these things because they relate to me or to something else I already know. If something seems unconnected, I'll have a really hard time remembering it. The only reason I can do my job is because I know how the actual department works--when I try to memorize how to do individual tasks I screw up, but the more I know about how files move around and why we do things certain ways, the better I get at my job.

It's all about context!

My mom's cooking for a whole bunch of us now that Chris is back from Drum Corps stuff. So it'll be DJ and

silverrose79 and Chris and

ruby_wings and my parents and....me. Just like Thanksgiving, actually. I commented to my mom that it's too bad

dragon_mintz works tonight, but then, that's probably a rather intimidating way to get to know all of them: all at once. *lol*