The other day, I realized I had “infinity” tabs open on my phone’s Firefox app. This is a way of showing I have over 99 idling, but I think the number was well into the hundreds. As I was emptying these out, I thought it might be entertaining to share some of the more interesting ones to give you all a glimpse into what goes on behind the screen. This is, in fact, a rather common experience for me and a widely known joke among author circles, the FBI, my friends, and my family alike. No matter how incriminating this following list may be, rest assured that my browser history is nowhere near as disturbing as texting my nurse sister out of the blue, “Hey, could you drink embalming fluid?” and receiving an answer from her supervisor, questioning if I needed to be reported.

oops

If you can relate to this, I’ve even made a sticker! You can pick up your very own “It’s for Research, I Swear…” on my sticker shop!

• Ethanol safety data sheet (I spilled some on my hands in lab) (I was not wearing gloves) (Its fine)
• Did Punxsutawney Phil see his shadow on Groundhog’s Day? (He did.) (Grr.) (I wanted an early spring) (The groundhog hath betrayed me)
• Mirror stat blocks and magic items in DnD (My players are going to encounter thematically appropriate challenges if it kills me.)
• Little Old Lady memory magnetic coil (aka LOL memory, used in early space missions, literally knitted together)
• St. Brigid’s Day prayer (her feast day came up recently!)
• Pizza menu (Church group does weekly Italian nights after Mass to make sure we’re extra vampire proof.)
• Translation of the Italian aria I’m learning for voice lessons called Lasciar d’amarti (I’m a soprano?! PLOT TWIST?! I’ve been laboring under the assumption I’m a contralto for years but it turns out I just can’t breathe.)
• An unfilled google form for the Classics Club on campus (I’m a senior, so I’m not going to go. I just wanted to stalk the GroupMe)
• Berberis thunbergii fact sheet (An invasive thorn bush called Japanese barberry I was trying to identify. I did not eat it though it’s technically edible.)
• Organic chemistry functional groups sheet for class (should I have them memorized? yes. Do I. absolutely not.)
• the HECKIN WIMDY meme (it was HECKIN WIMDY)
• Ciphers (as in the codes)
• Cipher (the ttrpg system)
• Religious teachers Filippini habit pattern (a nearby convent my friend may be joining soon, and she asked me to help her sew the old version of the habit because the current one is bleh)
• Cognitive Surplus (an online store I found from an Instagram ad that sells neat science themed stuff)
• Nova Impossible Art Challenge audio (for an Instagram reel) (my characters did not pass the impossible art challenge)
• Wrench Wench TV Tropes page (I’m doing a 6 fanarts challenge of fictional Women in STEM and wanted to gather data)
• Daily readings from a month ago (the USCCB site has them all! in podcast form too!)
• Stretches for shin splints (I spent three days climbing ladders for a cabling job and then suffered for a week)
• The Four Humors (I got into a heated argument with my roommates about which temperaments we were)
• Yerba Mate (a type of tea that uses a strainer straw but my roommate uses the straw for not that tea)
• Deciduous Trees (I cannot spell Deciduous)
• Pinnate vs Palmate and Single vs Compound leaf identification (helping to homeschool 3rd grade botany class)
• Adorkastock drawing references (practicing gesture and movement)
• Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (I cannot spell this correctly on my own and it came up in a relevant conversation)
• Guitar chords (I am self taught and struggle with barres)
• Shiraishi name meaning (Did I name my character this intentionally? Yes. Did I forget? Also yes.)
• Crab cake recipe from December (Christmas dinner of the 3 fishes. traditionally 7, but I live in a landlocked state)
• Ceolocanth fish (my friend didn’t know about this very important living fossil)
• Match-girls Strike (looking up the history into the story The Little Matchgirl for some reason, I think my mom brought it up)
• Sewing instructions for a skirt lining (with secret pockets)
• Calumny definition (It is related to false claims and trickery)
• Myths about the moon (story research)
• Sodium Citrate Safety Data Sheet (I don’t remember)
• Purdue Graduate program (I am not going to grad school)
• Seance (no further context. I don’t remember why I was looking this up either because I wasn’t conducting any seances)
• Did the stock market exist during the Civil War (It opened in 1865 in the same year the civil war ended. This was for a call of Cthulhu game.)
• (OH! THE SEANCE ONE WAS FOR CALL OF CTHULHU!)
• (anyhow)
• How to use a French Press (I was successful in obtaining caffeine after a few tries)
• Heimdall (his role in actual myth, the MCU, and DnD cosmology)
• Fusion breakthrough (one step closer to sustainable energy!!!)
• [Real Name] Apocalypse (No clue guys)
• Amazon listing for sword earrings (very important! I now own these! Thanks to the same nurse sister who puts up with all of my existing whacky requests.)
• How did Avatar Kyoshi die? (Unclear! Evidence suggests she just decided not to die until she was done. Badass bitch behavior)
• Directions to a Catholic store in my area (for a field trip with future-nun-friend)
• Is it safe to eat a box of edible packing peanuts? (yes, but you will have a stomachache. Source: my roommate. I did not eat packing peanuts.)
• Hostel listings for Florence Italy (I’m going in August hopefully!)
• Fanfiction (So much fanfiction)
• Pigeon feathers (for my grandfather)
• Apollo Dodgeball Meme (we all know the one)
• Hammered Dulcimers (demonstrating the better version of the instrument I built in high school)
• Grey DeLisle-Griffin (voice actor for Azula in ATLA)
• Wholesale fabric stores (courtesy of my enabler friend who wanted to save me money, arguably, by pointing me towards a cheap bulk store)
• Molasses cookie recipe (I’m pretty sure this is from October lmao)
• Sno Cones (for a heated argument with an international friend about local treats)
• Patron Saint of malfunctioning printers (inconclusive)
• Instagram bots (I kept having people ask me if I was Indian, which was weird and I thought they might be fake?? Apparently they are not? If I had a nickel for every time a stranger mistook me for a different ethnicity, I’d have like a whole dollar at this point, so it’s especially weird it’s happened so many times.)
• Acrylic sheet pricing for research (and making knives on the laser cutter at work)
• Black as Night (an excellent dark modern Catholic fairy tale retelling I read in middle school)
• Z-Library (piracy babeeee!)
• Canadian postal abbreviations for provinces and territories (I’ve never sent or bought anything from Canada I am so confused.)
• History of absinthe (I tried absinthe, it was good)
• tactical bags (listen, I don’t shop for myself often but when I do…)
• Autism self diagnoses test (as if this list were not proof enough)
• Various poems and song lyrics
• The mechanical turk (I think this came up in a quiz bowl question and also The Magnus Archives)
• why does ancient copper have arsenic in it? (my boyfriend is a metallurgist and likes info dumping about history and we’re both nerds so I looked up why you can date archeological digs by the amount of poison in their alloys. I do not know why this came up.)
• keys2cognition (a personality test you have to pay for that I did not take)
• Chatelaine (illustrating why I want a pretty keychain that you effectively could beat people with)
• MBTI cognitive functions (ok don’t @ me I’ve been obsessed with personality typing since 10th grade)
• Armillaria glowing fungus (It looks. So cool. No clue why I was looking this up. I don’t think it’s native anyhow)
• Moby Dick web comic by one of my friends @pocketsizedquasar which will not be getting deleted as I still need to read it and it got buried in tabs dlkfjdfsljk.
• Mutter Museum (it’s dedicated to medical history!)
• Various tabs on the writing industry gossip (outdated)
• A YouTube channel I don’t actually watch????? A Netflix show I don’t watch???? Add them to the TBR I guess???? Who recommended these??????????????????
• So much DnD research
• Beginner’s guide to Bo Stances (so I can be even more dangerous)
• Flower Fairy books (my childhood <3)
• Too many piccrews for various ocs
• Webb Space telescope pictures (I think we’re back to the summer now lol)
• The Scarlet and the Black (An excellent movie I watched in 8th grade as confirmation prep about the Vatican during WWII)
• How to make lapel pins at home (I’m saving this one too, I forgot this was a craft I wanted to do)
• Bergmann’s Rule (about how size correlates to the environment for fictional world-building purposes. Cold = big)
• Arwen costume references (future project for after my hair grows out again)
• Seventh Son of a Seventh Son folklore gift (for Runaways Research)
• Everything we know about the Stormlight Archive Heralds (for debating with my one fandom friend)
• Do plants get growing pains? (the topic of a future poem)
• A beginner’s guide to Heraldry (for historical and fantasy purposes. Also, I want a custom coat of arms for Reasons.)

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Thanks for reading! Hopefully this was a somewhat entertaining read lol. I want this blog to be more than me shouting into the void. If I can use this platform to help boost other creators, I’d love to see your work too. If you want to have your recommendations and/or your own writing featured in a Resource Rec post, or if you want to collaborate with me, you can leave a comment below for both, or contact me on either tumblr or IG! If you feel so generously inclined, you can support my writing by leaving me a tip or buying stickers on my Kofi. Until next time, thanks for reading and happy writing!