Lydia Schoch

Over the weekend I was interviewed about writing, self-publishing, and my latest book, Waiting for Earl to Die and other stories, by Aleen on her most recent podcast at Less Than or Equal.

I’ve never been interviewed before, so I was a little nervous about what it might be like. It was a great experience, though! Go listen to our conversation.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

I will be sharing exciting news later on today. Stay tuned!

Here is this week’s list of blog posts and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

The Murder of Creativity via SingleMAhoy. I really like this approach to life. It’s similar to how my parents raised their kids.

Wind. This reminds me of the kinds of stories that my friend Daphne writes.

The Assistant Economy. Fascinating stuff.

80 Mother’s Day Quotes to Show Mom You Care. A few months ago I shared a link to the love poetry generator on this same site. Now the bloggers who runs it are back with a long list of quotes about motherhood. Some of the quotes made me laugh while others made me smile. It’s impossible for me to pick just one to share with you. I loved almost every single of them!

Trouble at the Drive-Thru via RHTDaly. There are a few words I don’t like to say in public either because of how I pronounce them.

From Unfreed:

Only after Rene Lima-Marin walked out and the gate of Colorado’s Crowley County Correctional Facility shut behind him, on April 24, 2008, did he finally decide he didn’t have to worry anymore. He was 29 years old and a free man, released after serving a decade of what had first been a sentence of 98 years.

What have you been reading?

It was harder to see how natural selection could have produced allergies. Reacting to harmless things with a huge immune response probably wouldn’t have aided the survival of our ancestors. Allergies are also strangely selective. Only some people have allergies, and only some substances are allergens. Sometimes people develop allergies relatively late in life; sometimes childhood allergies disappear. And for decades, nobody could even figure out what IgE was for. It showed no ability to stop any virus or bacteria. It was as if we evolved one special kind of antibody just to make us miserable.

From Why Do We Have Allergies?

This whole article was fascinating. I hope you’ll go read it, especially if you have any allergies yourself. My thoughts on the topic in general are below.

When I was very young I wondered what it would be like to have allergies. My parents both had a lot of them and I was fascinated by how all of that worked. Well, maybe fascinated isn’t the right word. I definitely didn’t like to see them suffering the effects of a bad reaction, but I was really interested in why one person could be exposed to something without reacting to it while another one developed hives or had an asthma attack.

Eventually I developed some allergies of my own and they were annoying, not fascinating.

If I had to pick one allergy of mine to get rid of, it would be the milk one. It’s mild, but I’d be a much more adventurous eater without it. It would be easy for me to transition to a vegetarian diet if I could eat cheese. A vegan diet would be harder, although I have toyed with the idea in the past.

Seasonal allergies aren’t hard for me to handle. They’ve been so tame this spring that I’ve barely even noticed they existed.

My allergies to animals like dogs and cats are sad, but I don’t think I’d have a pet at the moment even if I was able to do so. My home isn’t set up for a four-legged companion, and I’d need to do a lot more research about finding the right one for my lifestyle and taking care of it properly before I made that kind of commitment. There’s so much I don’t know about this topic that I wouldn’t even be sure of what questions to ask if I had to decide right now.

Wouldn’t it be cool if the theory in this article turned out to be true? It would make all of the discomfort of allergic reactions worth it.

Here’s hoping.

I was weirded out by the beginning of this short film for reasons I can’t talk about without giving away spoilers.

The ending, though, was fantastic.

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, short stories, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Closure. This is a documentary about a woman who was transracially adopted from foster care as a baby. At 26 she began searching for her birth parents.  Those of you in the  U.S. can see this film for free if you have Netflix.  It was fantastic.

Hope via jcahannigan. I like this.

Compassionate Cure via LifeIsntBroken. I also like this. I wonder if the authors of this link and the one above it have ever met? It sure seems like they’d get along well together.

Whooping Cough at 31 in NYC. This is what it’s like to have a mild case of pertussis.

NASA scientist: We’ll find signs of alien life by 2025 via earthskyscience. Do you think this is a realistic timeframe? I don’t know enough about this topic to answer that question, but I’m assuming the first alien life we find will be something very small like a virus or bacteria.

Off-Beat Zen:

This, too, is a typical Zen understanding — that life cannot be described, only experienced. Trying to see all of life is like trying to explore a vast cave with a box of matches.

From Beatification of the Second Fall:

God fearing people are born in these hills, walk the streets of Saint’s Crossing, bow their heads on Sundays. What is at the top of the stairs gives face to their fear.

What have you been reading?

I am slightly obsessed with Twitter. It’s by far my favourite social media platform due to how easy it is to use and the wide variety of reasons people have for using it.

You can rant, debate politics with strangers on the other side of the globe, make new friends, sell your products or services, share cute cat pictures, or retweet everything that shows up in your timeline. Most users have more than one tweeting strategy.

If Facebook is a never-ending reunion with everyone you’ve ever known or will ever know,  Twitter is a bus ride with an incredibly friendly, talkative group of strangers. A tweep is a person who uses Twitter, although some of the accounts I’m recommending today are actually run by more than one person. It doesn’t matter. Tweep can be a singular or plural term.

The list is in alphabetical order. I was originally planning to sort it into categories, but so many of these accounts talk about more than one topic that it made more sense to mix everything together.

CGAyling dives into conversations head-first. He has a sharp mind, a keen wit, and the uncommon ability to change his opinion in a heartbeat if presented with convincing evidence.

CoyoteSings can be poetical, political, or punny. And that’s just the letter P!

FacesPics makes my brain tingle. All kinds of inanimate objects have faces if you pay attention.

ForteanWriter knows about all kinds of weird and incredible stuff. If you’re very, very lucky, he will tell you about some of it.

hedwyg silently watches over the Internet. Ok, so maybe this isn’t literally true, but her compassion for other people makes me feel like she’d be one of our  sacred guardians if such a thing actually existed.

IFL Science proves that science can be funny. What kind of science, you ask? All of them.

mediocreventure finds the whimsical angle to everything. Are her tweets responses to things that have actually happened to her or topics she’s wondering about in general? Sometimes I’m not entirely sure, but I’d still love to go on an adventure with her one day.

LoveCatJess is the fan account for a gorgeous cat named Jessi. Every cat deserves their own fan club, of course, but not every cat is lucky enough to have such a big one.

MeanwhileinCana makes me shake my head and laugh simultaneously. You need to know the most common stereotypes about Canada to understand this account, but I think most of my readers will fit this bill.

MicroSFF redefines the term flash fiction. Imagine reading a whole story that only lasts one or two sentences.

MsForrestRaven. loves words. I first met her a few years ago when someone else retweeted a link to one of her poems, and I’ve been a big fan of her Twitter stream every since.

phx_dna should be read by everyone and their brother. Not from Phoenix? This tweep will make you wish you lived there. Planning a visit to that part of Arizona? You’ll know exactly where to go and what to do when you arrive.

ShireReckoningW recounts the events of the Lord of the Rings novels in real time every year.

TransEthics is the newest Tweep I know on this list. I sit and listen carefully when this account posts something.

TTCWelps needs to be known worldwide. Most of my readers actually come from the United States, but I think everyone can sympathize with feeling frustrated about something in their community. In Toronto, some people are annoyed with the Toronto Transit Commission for reasons that are parodied, exaggerated, and turned into a source of humour with this account.

How would you live your life if you knew it would begin and end in the same day?

Once again I’m incredibly impressed by how much storytelling can happen without the use of any dialogue.

Photo credit: ForestWander.

Ontario hasn’t had a warm or sunny spring so far by any stretch of the imagination.

It snowed yesterday. We’re supposed to get a little more snow today and later on this week.

I’ve gotten to the point now where I’m making irrational deals with Mother Nature.

March was chilly. Now April is cold and snowy as well. Does this mean that you’ll be giving us an unseasonable cool summer as well?

Every once in a while Ontario has a  warm, mild June that lasts until autumn. It’s glorious. My allergies are milder when that happens, and nobody has to experience the misery that is breathing in August humidity or sweating your way through a subway ride.

Mother Nature might be a metaphor, but I still say she owes us.  I’ll trade her one cold, wet spring for a beautifully cool summer.

Now to wait and see if she’ll accept it. 😉

What irrational things have you done recently?

Here is this week’s list of blog posts and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Sex and Suffering: The Tragic Life of the Courtesan in Japan’s Floating World. The title says it all. Some of the details about the lives of geishas and courtesans were tough to read.

10 Rules for Thinking About White People. One of the biggest reasons why I enjoy the Abagond blog so much is that it posts satirical stuff like this.

First Sign of Green. This reminded me of all of the deer my dad spots whenever we’re driving on rural roads together. He has such a sharp eye for noticing wildlife.

This Is Not an April Fool’s via hedwyg. It takes a lot of courage to talk about this sort of thing in public. I don’t know how many of you know hedwyg from her various accounts online, but she’s been a great source of inspiration and support for me.

Tend the Fire via david_duChemin. I really loved this.

This Is Why You Shouldn’t Believe That Exciting New Medical Study. There’s a lot of interesting stuff to read here.

On Misleading Questions via CGAyling. I’ve been wondering the same thing lately.

What have you been reading?