Black fading

Before anyone asks no, I have not uploaded the photographs. My USB cord's in Davis and so I probably won't be uploading much of anything before Sunday at the earliest.

As for everything else, well, our reunion went pretty much the way it generally did. Kate and I arrived first this time and we met Anna and Victoria exiting their car just as we were walking over to meet Christine. I noticed that the lamp in the kitchenware department at Macy's reminds me of jellyfishes and Anna and Christine discovered the hilarity of strange Christmas decorations. Including, but not limited to: diseased goats, over-stuffed birds, and beady-eyed Santas. Soniya even stopped by for a while and we commiserated over metabolic pathways specifically and biochem in general. I found out that I'm possibly still the only person who actually likes the labs, which goes to prove that strangeness does not, apparently, decrease with age.

Lunch at the Cheesecake Factory was fun. By that I mean, of course, "fun" only in the sense that a Lunatics get-together can be. For those of you who saw the photos Victoria's uploaded to her facebook account -- this is where the unicorn-squid comes from. It made more sense in context...well, slightly more sense anyway. Especially when the context was about unicorns, concepts, hypothetical concepts, and contexts. (It was actually an appetizer dish with calamari, but that's alright, we were very imaginative and creative. Especially with the celery stalks.)

The crowd, by the way, was as horrible as you would've expected. Santana Row was only slightly better than Valleyfair but it had the decided benefit of having most of its crowd outdoors where free oxygen-carbon-dioxide exchange was allowed to take place. Also, Victoria is still addicted to hoods but, I'm sorry Victoria, I really don't think anyone's really surprised at this point. (She did buy something else that's hooded, and Anna bought a matching something that's also hooded. I will get the photos up, yes.)

Of course we ended up at Borders. We always ended up in Borders. Only this time we dutifully avoided the children's book section and marveled at the conversion of a Stephen King book into a pop-up book in the sale's section instead. Christine mourned the loss of dinosaurs from "back in her day" and the Japanese store had horsetails (the plant) in ornamental pots. Who plants horsetails as ornamental plants? Asked and answered, I guess.

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With no transition of whatsoever: I have spent two hours in the garden. The peas are running wild and require their support be put in, now. The slugs and snails got to the radish and the sunflowers but we still have almost all of our garlics, onions, beans, and peas. Something also ate most of the germinating lupines, so I had to put in the seeds again but gardening was still very relaxing (also, the irises and the amaryllis came up and I'm absurdly pleased about that). I took pictures (two, exactly) of the marigolds which I will hopefully upload someday, as well.

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Went to Michael's today (found the one next to Westgate) and the matting (for frames) are hideously expensive. I wonder if I can just buy the material and talk one of the art teachers into letting me use the cutting boards instead, considering that Mr. Sugita from junior high did give me a fairly good idea of how to cut my own matting. Everything also smelled excessively of cinnamon, which was very strange if you consider the sort of things you'd find at Michael's.

The sum is greater than its parts, but the whole is greater still than the sum of its parts.