Killian's Blog/Website/Whatever

My local pool, Columbia, was officially closed-- condemned --in 2022. I still haven't gotten over it. As a person who suffers from a chronically bad case of nostalgia, I don't know if I'll ever get over it.  I spent my very early childhood going to swim lessons there, spent afternoons at open swim with my mom and siblings when we were being homeschooled (middle-school), spent a few high-school mornings trying to swim a mile before having to sit my butt down in a chair for seven hours*, and spent my summers on the city's youth swim team from age eleven (if not earlier) to seventeen, repping Columbia every year but the last**. I got really, really good at swimming there. I was basically raised in that pool. The main place of my childhood joy, and the only place I ever did sports. The only place where my body has ever exceeded expectations. I'm much, much older now (nearly twenty years, jeezus). College was busy (and there was no swim team), I moved away for a while, ...

Just watched (five times) an excellent video by a microbiologist ( @tardibabe ) who posts all kinds of amazing stuff. This particular video was focused on a tray with lil dot of human blood.  I am awestruck every time I can look closely at our bodies—everything is in constant motion (at least ideally), sticking together, bouncing off of each other, flowing down rivers between slow, red glaciers; white blood cells moving alone, pushing against the current with wide open mouths.  We're made of so many living (and dying) pieces. Despite all of the ways we can break down and fall apart, I think you could call us truly, literally marvelous.

 We found a praying mantis in our backyard last night, and it was still against the house in the morning--until the dog started freaking out (understandably) and then tried to play with it (an odd choice). So Daniel and I embarked on a rescue mission.  It went well. I briefly flirted with the idea of nudging it onto the paper with my finger, but when one of those  "raptorial legs"  got its grabbers on said-finger with great speed and strength, I backtracked* and we got an additional piece of nudging paper. I made sure it got to take the blade of dead grass it seemed very attached to (literally, and perhaps emotionally). The relocation progressed uneventfully from there, and we gingerly placed it in a protected area. I've never seen one of these guys in real life, let alone touched one. Did you know they have FIVE EYES? I did not find this out until after the encounter, so no photo evidence, but scientists have told me this is the case.  It's difficult to go...