pack it full of secrets. that, and wash every other day. go easy on the heat styling.

i told you this one once, but it reigns supreme. i was at an honors' society awards ceremony in undergrad, i think it was, when i was asked if i was lost, and looking for the sweet sixteen down the hall at the venue.

5.) moisturize your skin. drink water. take care of your body. 4.) being 'too cool' to be excited about something just ends up in you missing out on something great. never fails. 3.) always be kind. people will remember you for how you make them feel. 2.) learn what you believe, and then fight for it. 1.) no one can ever make you feel inferior without your consent. you, and your human experience are valid. you are enough and worth defending.

it's not my idea, but universal healthcare usually tops my wish list.

i have one that's kind of taken the cake recently. so i'll spill for the class. how many of you have ever heard of the pleiades? the seven sisters? it's a star cluster that you can see clearly here. they're allegedly seven sisters that are the children of atlas and pleione; from what i can gather, the most popular myth is that the girls were turned first to doves, then to stars after orion pursued them across the sky. orion still chases them to this day, but he'll never catch them. anyway.. they're a cluster that you can't quite see with your naked eye. you need to look at the whole through your periphery to see it properly.. and there was one night this fall that i spent with someone doing just that. so.. that's my favorite. long story, but there you go.

yes, because it means i'm challenging you. you're welcomed to kick my butt once you're up and running.

make a drone into a flying jellyfish. turns out people were looking when it almost crashed into a house. sorry, lyle.

ruth bader ginsburg.

in heels, i'm close to 6'4" -- it works out just fine. thank-you for asking, and that's all you're getting, london.

coffee, mascara, my phone, a sharpie pen that doesn't have the tip bent, and a hair tie.

there was a catsuit and a broken table involved.

touch. that sounds scandalous, but it's not, i swear.

the photo of dr. christine blasey ford during the kavanaugh hearings. there are no words for that image, and many others that skilled photojournalists can capture. i still can't stomach photos of refugees in the mediterranean. in terms of fiction/media.. fight club blew my mind in high school. i was not ready for that.

that this moment in time is one i've worked over twenty years for. by the close of the 2010's, i will have worked my tail off to be doctor cara davies, phd.

i parallel park like a champ.

agree wholeheartedly. y'all; actively choosing to do nothing in the face of injustice or a situation that could benefit from something? it's as significant a decision as perpetuating whatever atrocity is being committed. complicity is real. it really is that simple.

my hands. i'd thank them for all they've done, and then warn them that they still had lots of work left to do.

mandles would not exist. or maybe more of them would. oh god, what a thought.

sight: a clear sky at night, sound: jeremiah's belly laughs, smell: peonies after the rain, taste: the perfect cup of coffee, touch: a full-body hug.

jules. jeremiah. wyatt. teddy. you. the people i love deserve the best me, and i'd give them even more if i could.

clear as day, old man. and it was ".. oh no."

intentional ignorance.

i can, because i grew up without social media and turned out okay. so many young people would have to unlearn what they've taught themselves about their value in this world, and i don't know if a good portion of people (young and old) would know how to re-teach it to themselves. that frightens me.

'scintillating' is one of my favorites. not new, but always in the top 5.

i've been convinced that shawarma isn't the worst thing in the world, but i once had.. some gnarly shawarma.

i was raised in the south, so we went to church on sundays when we were kids. when my brothers left home, that family routine kind of went with them. i know that i believe in something up and out there, i just don't know what that something is.

disappointment and fear. we lose our sense of wonder when we lose faith in something, big or small.

you know? it's growing on me, but someone already beat you to it. 10/10 will swat anyway.

failed relationships. through those experiences, i've learned about who i really am (not who i think i am), what my flaws are, and who i want to be. it's made me a better person for me and a better partner for my partner.

it helps when you don't know anyone and need something to start with, but you can't build a relationship with it. talk about the hard stuff; i promise, you'll thank yourself later.

i organize things; giving my life a little bit of order helps in stressful situations (#justprofessorthings), but so does working out. working your body and mind to the point of exhaustion gives you no choice but to settle down.

cherry garcia. kitschy and delicious? hello there.

a planetarium show. i'm keeping it surface-level for this one. go watch a planetarium show.

i wouldn't say either is easy. they're both difficult for different reasons. love requires a willingness to be vulnerable and honest, to do the hard things for either someone's sake, or for them as a person. hate.. hate'll kill you in the end.

lighting a fire. maybe the first cartographers. the wheel. things like that. the firsts.

i stick with expiration dates. bless anyone who operates with smell/taste tests; i'm entirely too safe, and like it that way.

what in the fresh hell is a 'yeet'?

more.

i want to meet a real life jedi. does that count?

clear my browser history.

r.kelly.

you know me too well. the amazon guy who doesn't donate any of his own profit to charity is a close second.

phone/charger, lighter, first-aid kit, a car (keys included), and a baseball bat for double-tappage.

weekend at bernies it? i don't know. this is terrible. jules, help.

i mean, she seemed like a perfectly lovely lady buying her coffee this morning, but i can't have a decent marriage with anyone that has six pumps of vanilla. i just can't.

da vinci. easily.

if i'm a spy? maybe spain or italy would be the best. least, probably somewhere tiny like monaco. spying is hard when there's extreme populations, big or small.

my dog. hands down.

now that i think about it, i feel like we'd all go a little nuts if we didn't hope for the best. expecting fairness is taking things a little far, but without hope for things working out, nothing would ever get done.

the sun's inability to power itself'll be the reason why in the end, but that's a long way down the line. ignorance'll kill us all much quicker if we don't do something about it, and fast.

proud of getting this far. cautiously optimistic. understandably dubious.

and in the end, she cared.

i want to be better at slowing down, in a general sense; i never used to be any good at it. i'm getting better.

fall down seven times, stand up eight.

in a roundabout way. i just knew that i wanted to be very smart and wear pretty shoes. technically, i'm all the checking boxes.

diplomas, the kinds of hugs where people bury their face in your shoulder, remembering my password on certain websites, the normal stuff.

wyatt wu. the tall guy with the best smile you've ever seen. you know the one.

depends on how bad it is. i fully admit that there are some days when it benefits everyone to leave me alone, but usually, i like having someone else around.

the kinds that are filled with what people call little details; the ones that are a really big part of what makes you feel human. good coffee, fancy breakfasts, time with people you love, self-care, good sex, long drives, day trips, cuddles with a four-year-old space marine biologist.. the important things.

i'm going to costa rica in march; that's a pretty big dent in the 'perfect' column, but i maintain that i dream of going to iceland one day. hot springs, northern lights, whole nine.

when all my term papers were graded on time during midterms week. YOU'RE WELCOME, TEDDY & CHARLIE. (okay, i have more, but that's the one i feel decently about sharing).

doctor. cara. davies. phd. and then to actually drop a mic somewhere.

anywhere on lands' end, near the presidio. someone once asked me where my favorite stargazing spot was, and that's it. let me relax there for an hour or two on a warm night, and i'll come back all kinds of clear-headed. but savannah, georgia in the spring is also unparalleled. haven't been there in years, though.

cracking my knuckles. sorry, guys. it's nothing poetic; unless you count moving my body in some way, shape, or form. i don't feel right if i can't move myself to the degree of which i'm capable.

you wouldn't believe me if i told you. scratch that. you might. no one else would.

you're going to want to give up. don't.

it was a poetry book by rmdrake. star theory.

elle woods. that'd be a damn good one.

i am something i can't explain.

honestly? losing my cool and relapsing. losing my everything, because i have so much that i'm thankful for.

my mother. she was one hell of a woman, and i'm so lucky to have had her while i did.

i'd be a certain candle i have in my house. i light it at least three times a week, because it smells incredible, and burns evenly without any of the formaldehyde that a lot of candles do have. warm, smells good, gets good amounts of use and rest? sure. i'll be a candle for a day.

build things. i can math 'em out, and tell you how they should work, but that's where my expertise ends.

related to the above, i'm almost done building a microcontroller. so.. while i'm not super with building things, i'm figuring it out. let's talk arduino.

only if we're going about our day to day with that same soundtrack.

exactly the opposite, actually. think about how fast light goes; light is made up of massless particles that move trillions on trillions of times faster than we ever will or could. black holes are dense enough to squelch a photon's ability to escape their environment. if anything, you chuck a tin can into a black hole, and it's going to get crushed so fast, your fingertip'd probably go with it. wild, right? my dissertation's written on measuring the geometry of black holes/dark matter. i get real nerdy about this.

i promise to explain the multiverse theory to you someday, dom.

midnight pizza, or an omakase at kusakabe.

the times when i didn't speak up on something. no matter what it was.

i adopted a cat.

oh god. the words "she really is too much" vs. "i really am too much" have happened in conversations between jules and i.

capitalizing on someone else's suffering.

no. there's a time and place for that. when i was a kid though -- i did want to name my son simba.

taming scraggly ice dragons. it was an ice dragon, right?

the failure that comes with it. it can be physical failure in a workout, or academic failure when something doesn't go according to plan, or you don't do as good a job conveying a point to a group of hungover students. coming back from that is hard, but it's worth it.

a finished one. my house is always my project, and i bought it because of that. it's something that's wholly mine, for better and for worse. it's on me to make it work, one piece at a time.

not even amazonwhatshisface could pay me enough.

childhood, 10/10. i mean, you know a lot about it, but relatively speaking? i think that's the thing you know the least about.

they've become more visual as of late. not a lot of words, just lots of things to see.

people. you guys. my place in the universe, and why that matters. my day. my tomorrow. normal stuff.

neither. i'm listening to explosions in the sky. the band. not actual explosions.