I originally wrote this in like 2006. It was published in one of my Spandrel zines, but I decided not to include it in my e-book, so I’m posting it here for posterity’s sake.
1. Water is the only substance that naturally exists is gas, liquid, and solid form outside of a laboratory setting.
2. The adult human body is about 70% water. This is roughly the same percentage of the planet Earth that is covered in water.
3. 97% of the Earth’s water is oceanic. 2.4% is locked in glaciers and ice caps. Less than 0.6% of water is found in bodies of land (i.e., rivers, lakes, streams)
4. Water is found on meteors. It has also been detected on five of the eight planets in our solar system, as well as one of Saturn’s moons and several of Jupiter’s.
5. Given the right conditions, water can flow uphill. Water molecules adhere to each other via a hydrogen bond (this is why water has such strong surface tension and tends to stick together when it’s, say, running down your windshield in a rainstorm), and because it is a polar molecule. In plants, water is constantly evaporating out of the leaves. The evaporation of one water molecule pulls another to the surface, and so on and so on, so that water from the roots flows uphill via capillary action.
6. Given enough time, water can dissolve anything.
7. Water moderates the Earth’s climate. It can absorb large amounts of heat.
8. Water becomes less dense and expands upon freezing. This is why melting ice does not raise the water level in a glass.
9. Water is a byproduct of a forming star.
10. Ice and snow can sublimate directly into water vapor before melting into liquid first.
11. Blood is, in fact, thicker than water. But if you get dehydrated, your blood gets thicker, which is generally considered a bad thing.
I like water.
One of the only sitcoms that I make an effort to watch is The Big Bang Theory. It’s also one of the only sitcoms, outside of The Simpsons, that makes me laugh out loud. When I first started watching, I enjoyed that there were socially maladjusted nerds on tv who weren’t just the butt of jokes–yes, their social maladjustment is sometimes the target of humor, but they have well-rounded characters and full lives and, by and large, give as good as they get in the insult department. I like Sheldon and the line he walks between total discomfort with himself and exasperation with the world because it’s not as good as he is. I especially like Amy Farrah-Fowler, one of the newer additions to the show–she’s got Sheldon’s abrasiveness, but her abrasiveness is a front for vulnerability that Sheldon simply doesn’t have. She so badly wants to be friends with Bernadette and Penny, she goes about it all wrong, and I see a lot of myself in her (though I’m not as smart as she is). Her impressions of social gatherings and friendships seem to be gleaned from movies and Young Adult books, and it’s charming. 
spandrella 