Recap: Holiday at home

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, even if it isn't the holiday you'd traditionally celebrate. It's always good to have a day where you can take a moment aside and reflect on what you have and be thankful for it.

Of course, most of the people I've encountered in the past few days never looked beyond the food and the shopping of today and tomorrow, but that's beyond the point.

So-- it's Thanksgiving, and I'm at home. The tomatos are somehow miraculously alive still, and have even given out little fruits that are green and about the size of sugar-peas. I still have a paper (formerly ten pages, now holding at eleven) to finish editing and half a bio report to type up. Mostly though I'm just amused by my lit teacher's side comment, on a certain section of the paper, as it being "too academic." After eight hours of drilling about scientific, i.e. academic writing, I can't just dismantle everything I know and switch gears at a snap of the fingers (though I'm at the point where I wish I could because oh--how much time that'd save me, to say nothing of the efforts). The easiest way to go about it is probably to go and read something that's actually literature, and not scientific text, but at the current stage that might still take too long.

That's my Thanksgiving so far, my parents are off working on something or the other and most of the cacti that I brought home the other time have died, how's yours?

I got another cmera. I think. (The sudden and inexplicable sentence parallels the sudden and inexplicable arrival of the camera.)

Recap: A little extra time

This week there are no labs, as far as I know, for any of the UCD classes. Consequently that means that I got four extra hours yesterday to cram for my bio midterm (which I still possibly flunked, because on top of the technicalities of plants having both haploid and diploid phrases of life, there was a cladogram that I had to fill in and I DID NOT remember where each character of the land plants evolved from). End of sneaky parenthetical rant. Really. Another indirect result is me getting off of work early now with three and a half extra hours, since half of my job is, supposidely, to prep for the student's labs. Therefore, after packaging the pepper seeds for half an hour (aka sneezing off your nose for half an hour) I'm able to go home and, apparently, sit in front of my laptop and type up this blog entry. Don't think I have to go to work tomorrow, either, which is nice because it means my day will end at ten. In the morning. Such a thing does not often happen.

I think my erratic schedule this week is scaring Kate a little. (I have a very light schedule once you've taken off work and all the labs. Such is the life of a science major.)

Have to send Rose to Gabrielle's place tonight and am feeling a little depressed about that, especially since she's making so much progress right now and sending her away to an alien environment might actually force her to take a step back in terms of socialization. She's gotten used to me to the point where she knows she can walk all over me (literally) in the middle of the night and suffer from nothing more than an extremely disgruntled "Rose, ge'off" (and a light push when I'm feeling more energetic). She has just jumped onto my lap and bumped her head against the table in the process. Yep, still a little uncoordinated. That goes for both of us.

To Thanksgiving and the blessed holidays we go.

Recap: Sunday fun

This weekend we had fun with doors.

More specifically, this weekend Annie and I had fun with our bathroom doors (and by "fun" I mean "various issues").

The bathroom has two doors, one of the sliding type and one with a regular doorknob. Yesterday, while Annie was trying to close the sliding door, something broke and door suddenly lost its ability to slide which, as you might imagine, is an issue for a slide door. Upon investigation we have discovered that the door has no track to roll on at the bottom, and apparently whatever broke broke at the top, where the door is set into the wall. We can't see what's wrong, and it was only by partially lifting and shoving the door that we managed to close it at all. We left a note with the management who promised people who will come and resolve the issue, hopefully on Monday.

So, one door down, one more to go, said some unknown god of Murphy's Law.

This morning, when Annie tried to enter via the other door to take a shower (we have the habit of leaving that door closed, now that Rose is being trained to the living room and the hallway) she found the door locked. As in locked out. Consequently I had to take apart the outside half of the lock so she could get in and after I reinstalled that it was discovered that that door didn't, in fact, lock. So post shower, post morning, post everything, I took down both sides of the lock (knobs, screws, and all) and discovered that the inside half wasn't aligned properly. Re-installation was needed-- but at least this, unlike the sliding door, was something I could do. Now the bathroom of two doors has one functional door and it remains to be seen what will become of the other one.

Alas, the poor striken door.

On the other hand, I have called Gabrielle from FFO and she's very nice and agreed to cat-sit Rose over Thanksgiving (Winter Break remains a mysterious nightmare that I have yet to deal with). Charleen called the other night and after some quick decisions we'll also be temporarily fostering another kitty after Thanksgiving, until a permanent foster home can be found for him (or, as Charleen has hinted, we decide that we'll foster the other cat too). He. Yes, it's a 'he'. Short-haired orange tabby of undetermined age and name. At least he's already fully socialized and can be treated just like a normal cat. Rose is still getting there and so this new temp will be Annie's reponsibility.

We'll see how this goes.

Recap: You have to wonder

Sometimes mail can say very strange things, such as the sentence that went somewhere along the lines of "if you've been unexpected terminated". I suppose, then, that the insurance will not cover expected termination?

Euphemism. The mark of higher society as well as bureaucracy. The wonderful, wonderful ways you can take to say whatever you want without actually saying it. Central cause of paranoia and the proof of the power of words. Dumbledore would've agreed with me: You Know Who sounds much more intimidating than just Voldemort, and a word has no power except what people grant it.

We've given a lot of words more power than they should've have.

Random, but continuous hours of staring at notes does get to one's (already questionable) sanity.

Know what else's interesting? Lactose-free milk. It's like selling citric-acid ( ~ vitaminc c) -free oranges. And no, those do not currently exist (yet), to my knowledge.

Recap: Untitled

It was very wet this morning, and it wasn't even raining.

The windows (yep, 2, isn't that great?) in my room overlooks the narrow parking lot into the next series of apartment complexes, so looking outside of it, I didn't realize just how foggy it was until later. That was what was wet. The fog. There was a lot of it and from what I saw this morning the residual patches hung around for quite a while. The main things, however, was there and very cold and clammy it was. My hair was actually wet by the time I showed up in my testing room and I did not ride through a rain, just very thick patches of fog.

If it weren't so cold and wet it'd be very neat, actually, because everything outside of the 10 feet zone of me was gray-white and everything familiar looked very alien. Davis this morning looked uncharacteristically exotic.

I blanked out on a problem on the midterm and mixed up the orbitals and possibly declined stuff wrong in the quiz that followed the midterm. On the other hand-- another week over, yay, and my lit teacher has shifted his essay deadlines back (mostly because he hadn't came up with a theme yet).

Rose is at the "tentative-exploration-of-the-house" stage and has stolen one of my pens today, when I wasn't looking, to take with her to her corner of the room to gnaw on. I think I must have very attractive school-things. Or at least, very attractive to household pets school things. Lucy made off with part of my chem lab manual the other time and made an attempt at my chem book last night (which is rather sad, actually, because come on, it's CHEM) and Rose has developed a fondness for my writing implements and on occasions can be caught napping on my binder).

Thanksgiving next week.
Huh.

Recap: On the other hand

Annie, the dill has sprouted and I've taken over one of your pots to experiment with the two broken off tips of lycopodium that my disgruntled lab partner thrusted at me, telling me that "here, you can have a new pet."

The weather has been MOST uncompromising. Feel sorry for my parents, they have to drive all the way here tomorrow, and then all the way back.

Recap: Untitled

This has been the most eventful week since the beginning of the school year, and I'm thankful that it's only four days. Mostly though, I just wish that my comp lit professor will stop giving us impromptu GROUP (yep, required) writing projects. That eat up much of my time like you wouldn't believe. On the other hand, I believe I have achieved a new level of patience.

Will have to go to work tomorrow morning but at least won't have to wake up at seven-- except Rose will probably wake me up at six. Well, won't have to wake up at seven to GO TO CHEM which is really quite an improvement anyway. Have let Lucy out for a bit already earlier, as both of my roommates have gone home for the weekend. Kate, if you're reading this-- I think your rabbit-pouncing has actually made Lucy more sociable. Enough so that I, suffering from a 39-chem-prelab-slides headache, was allowed to rest my head on her for a while. She makes a good pillow (joking, joking-- of course I wouldn't drop the full weight on her, even if she'll let me, which she probably won't). I'm currently very appreciative of the fact that she does not have cat breath.

Rose says "Mrrw?" and then stalks away, apparently offended that I didn't spend 30 + minutes fussing over her tonight like I did last night, after she had been hauled out of my blanket, where she was hiding, to receive her shot.

On the other hand, Annie, I think you did forget your pomegranate, after all. I'm sticking it on the top shelf just so it won't end up morphing away in the cold forgotten back corners of our fridge.

Slightly horrific to-do list tomorrow but you know what-- it's a three day weekend, and I'm training Rose to let me sleep in!

Recap: Randomly at will

Pyrotechnical display is just a fancy word for fireworks.

Daylight saving has ended and the days are one hour later now. Though I understand that in a way, this signified the beginning of winter, the weather change yesterday was ridiculous. It was even foggy outside, when I left. And it was cold enough that this morning I got out my poofy jacket, all ready to go.

Annie was moaning earlier today about bio. Or more specifically, about something along the lines of "bio is killing me in slow and painful ways". Added to her list of grievances is her eight 'o clock o-chem class. Once the nights get longer, gloom seeps in either but hey, all in the spirit of All Hallow's Eve, yes?

Class reg yesterday for me. 16 credits so far. Annie had taken a look at my schedule and pronounced me to be insane. I was not encouraged by the fact, but oh well, I'll take it as it comes.

Rose has had the free run of my room for three days now, and is currently deriving much pleasure from stalking the cat-nip-scented toy that Annie brought back over the weekend. (It's dead, Rose. DEAD. You may stop trying to kill it now.) She's also been sleeping outside for two nights, making it a very restless night for me the first night out and a very wary one the second. Last night she has migrated up the bed and eventually slept on my head (her breath's awful, for future references) so this morning I found my hair sticking out in all directions I've never thought possible before, despite of my discovery over the summer that I have, apparently, the type of hair that sticks up if clipped short enough. Hats are wonderful things.

And there will be lectures and work and homework and much rejoicing (with candy, of course) when it's all over. Cheers.

Recap: A picture's worth

Photo entry!

Gotta love one of these, eh?

All done just this morning. With labels for your amusement.




Bienvenido a mi casa. Or should I say, a nos casa?







Cat picture at the very bottom, so keep scrolling down. How's that for an incentive?

Recap: It's green AND it wiggles

This week has been stressful. As predicted, group papers, much like group projects, means that the overall efficiency per person decreases while the total time spend on project increases. I had three hours of extra time on Sunday because the others didn't send in their stuff, and, try as I might, the efficiency of three hours on a Sunday was not enough to cover for the toll of the midterms week.

There, enough of that kind of language-- let's see if anything interesting has happened to me this week. Checking. Checking.

And the answer is, no, most assuredly. I can tell you about my midterms but that will either give people heartattacks or bore them to sleep, depending on the person. Rose is progressing slowly in terms of socialization and I'm currently at the point where I'm debating between getting her used to being picked up and getting her used to living outside the cage. Annie has donated some spare towels to day, and the most shredded one will, very likely, end up as the cat's chew toy. We also talked of starting our own herb garden indoors eventually, from the other day when I adopted the peas. Kate and I carved a pumpkin this afternoon and there are no reported human casualities. Annie's mom said that she'll be missing out on all the blood and it turns out that we're missing out, too. For some reason I don't feel particularly regretful.

Well-- onwards then. Possibly two more midterms next week, and then there's always the class registration....

Recap: Feuille

The amount of time spent per class, as usual increases dramatically with the arrival of midterms. This has been a particularly eventful week with what I hope was the longest Monday this school year (hope, since I don't care to repeat the experience, ever again. There's a certain limit to the number of hours I'm willing to spend at school, and this's pushing it).

There are other events too, such as the final arrival of our foster kitten, Rose (will post picture within two weeks, promise). A description? Of course. Rose is a four-month old black and brown, medium haired tabby found in a litter of four in an abandoned attic/roof type place. She's, so far, petite with ears still on the large-ish side as typical of kittens. She also has round, terrified looking gold-eyes, which slowly gets less terrified looking and round as I chant my text at her. Eventually she event went to sleep during parts of it (proving that 1. textbooks really are that boring and 2. that textbooks are actually good for something such as, say, putting a high-strung kitten to sleep). Though she did purr through the bit about oxalate ion during chem, much to my bemusement.

I also adopted five pea-plants from my bio lab, from when our group did the gibberellin experiment. We had the option of either throwing it or adopting it, so of course I adopted the one for our group (there were two pots of five plants each for each group of five people). My labmates are amused by my tendency to adopt plants. So where my parents, come to think about it. My roommates are, however, the ones who will have to deal with it.

Am mostly caught up in terms of homework now. Still have one more paragraph to write and one more chapter to read (not to mention another midterm coming up) but all in all, I'm making fair progress, I'd say. Before you ask, Lusine, I am still working on the story. In fact, I've the rough draft in long hand and if I can get to an open computer lab somewhere on campus next week I see about getting it mailed over.

Davis homecoming game tomorrow. I'll see about going online again (really, my state of contact has been shameful lately). Rose says 'hi'. (Actually, she says "eow", but use that imagination, folks, use that imagination....)

Recap: No depth involved

Home again, after school has started.

School has been interesting so far (notice I used the word "interesting", which therefore means that it's been a very mixed-sort of inexperience and I'm still unable to pin a more specific, one-word adjective on it). Latin is both more and less helpful than I'd expected, as far as connections with English go. It probably helped my Spanish more, had I continued to actively learn the language. In terms of English, I just get clobbered (repeatedly) over the head with all these grammar/ syntax terms that I've never heard before. My only consolation is that the native English speakers in my class are as confounded by the gazillions of rules and exceptions as I am which, in retrospect and considering the current standards of English, is poor comfort. One interesting fact that I've learned though: English apparently had regular (by which I mean weird and irregular) endings for words (think Spanish) all the way until the French took over, at which point they've apparently decided that the endings weren't fashionable anymore and dropped them.

I repeat, and will probably continue to repeat for the rest of my life: I do not understand fashion.

Being home again? It is nice, of course, as it generally is when you visit, which is what this actually is. But I AM thankful that I could be home on Mid-Autumn (happy belated Mid-Autumn to you all, too, though the Americans tend to call it the Mid-Autumn festival, much to my bemusement.) (You do not say "happy fourth-of-July BARBEQUE", you say, "happy fourth of July." So as for why people insisted on tagging on the word "festival"...well...?) I had "I'll Be Home for the Holidays" going through my head during part of the train trip, which amused myself no end. I also tried to write too, with dubious results. Clearly being on a swaying (side to side motion) train does very little to improve my penmanship. Equally apparent was the fact that cacti are a good conversation starter so, ladies and gentlemen, if you ever want to go out and meet people, lug around a container of cacti and see where it'll get you.

I have just blogged with no intentions in mind, and I find that I don't mind, either. I am still on schedule and on par for everything. Most of the plants in my garden have made it. The sky is blue outside of my window and has the particular sort of appearance that always made me feel like it's very close. Within reach, in fact.

Recap: Quis es?

End of week two and I've already lost track of the number of cups of tea that I've drank. Not that I've had that many. In fact, on school days I doubt I'd have time to drink tea at all, so even THAT's going to be reduced.

Two days of school so far, and moving on to day three.

The temperature's already started dropping, which can only mean one thing-- that it will keep on dropping. I've a pretty good idea of my room configuration now and where to put stuff if more stuff comes, so should I find the time and the incentive, I'll take pictures of my room and post it. (Have added and will add the newspaper clipping and postcards unto my wall, thanksverymuchLusine, in that order.) No sign of the cat yet but it's going to be a whole new week soon.

Over and out. If I remember more later, I'll post.

Recap: End of week one

At a glance:

Hours worked: ~10
Cups of tea consumed: 6
Number of times kitchen flooded: 2 (and there is still no sign of the dishwasher repairman)
Phone calls made: 5< n < 10
Hours of movie/clips watched: ~4
Items destroyed by animals other than human: 0
Number of disputes with roommate: 0

All in all: so far, so good. Now let's see what happens when classes start on the 28th.

Had to go in for work yesterday as Friday was VERY windy and we couldn't plant anything (and by "windy" I meant the roadcrew telling me I have to take a detour because "the trees are coming down and you want to be careful"). Still getting to know my coworkers (three, so far), and am reaching the conclusion that you meet much more interesting people at work than at school (though all of them do go to school here).

In a series of comments and conversations religion and homosexuals again surfaced. One of my coworkers reaccounted how she met one of her friends while the friend was dating a guy and now the friend's dating a girl. This coworker grew up in the middle of the desert and has referred to herself as a Christian and a red-neck. She said something along the lines of that 'she doesn't approve of what her friend's doing, but if her friend is really..you know...she's not going to stop being friends of her because of it.' Which then made me think of Annie's grandmother, who's convinced that Annie's going to hell because she's studying evolution biology. It begs to differ between the ideas OF religion and the ideas IN religion.

I repeat: I have nothing against religion in general, or anything specific type of religion. I think that it'd be wonderful to have that much faith in something but frankly, religious fanatics tend to scare me.

Meanwhile, from NY Times we give you this article:

Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat
By MARK MAZZETTI

A stark assessment has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.


Give the agencies a medal, will you?

Recap: People, impending school, and dust

This would be the second "Oh look I have internet at home again" entry I've typed in the past three months, which means that, by default, it wouldn't be as interesting as the first entry (which wasn't that interesting either) and therefore, to avoid that, we'll just sum up the entire thing in one sentence and be done with it so the time that you'd normally expect to spend on the rant of the virtues of cyberspace can now be devoted to some other random form of rambling.

The apartment now has internet access.

Okay. Now, moving on.

[Warning: long post.]

A description of the apartment is, I suppose, in order. The apartment is large and very airy-seeming because of the vaulted ceiling in the living room and the MILLIONS of windows. Okay, that's an exaggeration. But there ARE a lot of windows. Two per room and five in the living room/dining room area (they're connected). That's not taking into account the glass door to the balcony and the window in the kitchen. The windows themselves are very unique, being the up-down kind instead of the slide-sideways kind and always letting out a monstrous squawking noise when you let it down. We also have lots of shelves, most of which we have discovered and a few of which may still be hidden. We'll eventually have to make acquaintances with all the shelves just to make sure that the previous owner didn't leave something evolving away in a backwards cabinet.

Annie was here all the way until Monday, during which we went through our joint possession and discovered that we had three cheese graters and the odd mayo-maker (I kid you not; and then later Kate used the mayo-maker and made mashed potatos). Kate's been here and will continue to be here, exercising her increasingly frayed self-control over the numerous phone calls from her relatives. Just during lunch today we discussed whether or not she was in denial still, as she originally said she was, after she pointed out that she's not finding anything to freak out over at all. I pointed out that if there's nothing for her to freak out over then there shouldn't be anything for her to be in denial about, either, so we hypothesized that she's in denial about being in denial.

My new job started this Tuesday, more or less to my surprise (especially given that I've just contacted the professor on Monday) and so far it has involved a lot of labels. I've successfully wrote the word 'SPINACH' 120 times and noticed that it is in fact similar to the word 'SPANISH'. I've also in the course of my employment (i.e., Tuesday and today) tried a piece of smoked salmon. That was interesting.

Layout? Yes. I did say that school's starting, didn't I?

Just to mention: clicking squirrels. If anyone's curious, ask Kate.

Recap: On your marks

Tumbling blocks-wise, this's going to be very interesting.

My conclusions so far:

A.) That inside the house internet will not be possible until 20th the earliest.

B.) Davis is currently at the stage where the temperature can be anywhere from 70-something (high point of the day) to 90-something.

C.) I'll need to learn how to operate the dishwasher. Which shouldn't be too bad, considering I had to deal with the dishmachine in the DC and I don't have to take apart the dishwasher each night after I'm done using it. I hope.

D.) Cats and plants do not mix, so I'll need to start adapting whatever plants possible to outdoor weather.

It turns out that all three of us (my roommates and I) are going to be there on the Saturday, so that our first night together will really be our first night together. And the furniture dragging that will ensue. Oh yes.

Recap: A little of this and that

Taken from NEW YORK TIMES today:

Interviews found voters expressing degrees of skepticism
about President Bush's motives in delivering a set of
high-profile speeches on terrorism.

-"In Unpredictable District, Some Say Bush Is Politicizing
Terrorism" By CARL HULSE

You know what's better yet? The fact that THAT article was followed by THIS:

President Bush sought to place the war in Iraq in the
context of an epic battle between tyranny and freedom.

-"In Prime-Time Address, Bush Says Safety of U.S. Hinges on Iraq" By JIM RUTENBERG and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

Well well. Some of those who chose to remain blind are so because they don't know any other way of existing, and some of those who choose to be blind chose with their eyes wide open. The latter are always the ones who baffle me but, as the saying goes, there's no accounting for taste, i.e. opinions, i.e. I'm sometimes so incredibly bewildered by people and am even more bewildered to find out how NOT alone I am.

But those who pay any marginal kind of attention do notice things. That's good to know.

I'll wager that the region here-abouts would be listed as one of those "unpredictable districts"-- oh wait, nevermind, we're predictable. We're predictable enough that Mr. President wants to avoid SF at all costs which is still, I think, showing an remarkable deal of forethought for him (or for his counsellors, who knows?). Or maybe that was self-preservation. In the present era, it's often hard to tell them about.

In terms of Davis preparation, I'm at the stage of "Okay all my stuff except for my laptop and my sketchbook are in boxes now so those are the two things that I will waste all my time on". (It's a very long name for a stage, but it's also a very important stage in what I'm now going to call my Yearly Migration Period.)

Meanwhile, according to ENN, global warming will bring back dinosaur-era-like weather (though, as far as I know, no dinosaurs). Which makes me wonder what some of the fast-evolving species, the drosophila (fruitfly) for example, will look like by then. Then again, it probably wouldn't look THAT different. Bugs (Hexapoda/ Insecta, specifically) have very resilient design and the majority of it's always kept the same, as can be seen in those bug-containing ambers. Maybe we'll see a return of the giant dragonflies? Or maybe ants and cockroaches will finally take over the world. Species extinction is imminent, anyhow.

Not-so-subliminal message made yet more obvious: global warming is no cause for joy.

The cacti live on. Mom's afraid she might accidentally kill it, so I might be bring THOSE with me to Davis as well.

Recap: Phones? Phones.

The joy of explaining the same thing to three different people after thirty minute waits is namely this: there isn't any. I tried to get some information for setting up the phone-internet at the soon-to-be apartment-home and was sent from the original phone reception center to the online service reception center and finally to an online service specialist. On the other hand, I got to listen to some very impressive guitar playing over the phone (the style of the waiting music varies greatly from company to company, as I've learned), though half way through I think it's switched over to saxophone.

I don't know, I wasn't entirely paying attention, having been deriving immense pleasure in drawing phones being zapped afire by a certain floaty-type robot. Drawing is a very good way to channel impatience. I even drew a waiting-for-phone Nick comic which might show up somewhere, eventually.

Why the three people? Namely because the apartment place made an error with the zipcode and the phone company disagreed with the error in zipcode, but it took a specialist to figure out the disagreement with the error in zipcode. There was a lot of numbers involved this morning and, if I were to look over my random scribbling (which I won't, because it looks ...alarming is an understatement) it'd look like I was trying to solve a calc related-rates problem. There're less pertinent drawings, however.

Mostly it came down to "Huh, okay. Moving on and THANK GOD that it's over."

I have located a tea kettle and it's roughly the size of a grapefruit.

A bloggy entry, isn't it?

Random: Rubber duckies

I don't know how many of you have heard this, but it's a pretty interesting story.

Once upon a time, a cargo of twenty-something thousand rubber duckies (and frogs, and other things) accidentally went overboard in the middle of the ocean.

Some of them drifted so far north that they froze, and then the mass of frozen things hang around for a bit until the ice finally melted and soem of the rubber adventurers then bobbed up on the beaches of eastern US. (More info see here.)

The drift path of the duckies, as indicated by the large arrows. Smaller arrows indicate the ocean currents. As expected, the oceanographers fell in love with the duckies.


When asked how a rubber ducky can survive eleven years of ocean-traveling, the company that makes them made a comment about how the duckies were made to endure the bathtime of two-year-olds which, apparently, will inflict the same amount of strain as ocean salinity levels coupled with Atlantic ocean storms coupled with being frozen in the artic circle for up to five years.

Ah the hardy ducks. Just imagine the sight: thousands of rubber duckies bobbing up and down in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

Recap: Count downs, yet again

Yesterday was a very productive day. I congratulated myself and made a cup of tea.

Today is a counter point to yesterday. There are, at this point, no more items on the immediate to-do list. My job today as charged by my parents is, strictly, to "take some time and think if you'll need anything else for Davis." When my parents tell me to "take some time and think" I will, inevitably, sit down and think. The result usually involves a headache and more lists (speaking of which, I've quite a number of THOSE already). Then the list will lead to more tea which will lead to more thinking and therefore more tea and...the cycle will go on until I recall that there's a life outside of tea and list-making and I wander off to do something else. Usually also involving paper.

Currently nine cacti have sprouted under my care, though more will be coming. According to the manual some of the seeds are timed so that they take a year to germinate. Quite a test of patience there. The spiders have made their entry into the household and I flattened two while reading the other day (they crawled over my book, I was trying to read, and ergo-). The battle against the wasps had been fought and won, and the ants haven't tried anything funny...yet. (When 10% of the biomass are them, you're bound to be a little wary.)

Off to do more thinking then.

Also, "ladies, please come and pick up your gents".