The cheapest kitty litter here is made from toasted wheat grains. It works fine, save for the guilt of using grain as a repository for cat poop. I had to switch to the second cheapest brand instead.

It IS nice, actually.

I floated C some money soes he could eat until his mom came back from vacation or he got paid. (We are still nineteen financially.) He just sent me a check- he wrote "sometimes payback is nice" in the memo line.

It's sweet- but it's sweeter because I usually write something like "LARPing Competition: third place" or "Western Boa Competition" in the memo line. I also give him nicknames like "Cuddles" and "Bubble Butt". I feel only moderate guilt!

So talented!

I found another barrel of industrial waste in the forest today.

It's clearly been there for a while, and it doesn't have the MSDS conveniently displayed like the last one.

I told my boss, and he laughed and said, "Stop finding those. We've surveyed the area four times thus far- you're making everyone else look bad." I told him everyone else should walk as close to the road as possible without actually being on the road.

I think the sock zombie lady is right: "When certain things happen often, people privately wonder what it is you're doing so horribly wrong."

Oh, and my former "unpleasant grinding irritation" coworker got hired in my old position. (No bitterness, I was offered and graciously declined. Someone has to find these barrels.) While he was irksomely blithe and competent as a second in command, I'm now noting an increasingly restive and neurotic tone in his ever more frequent e-mails. Possibly because he has to resample sites marked with nothing but biodegradable flagging. (Oops.) Or because no one sent follow-up information to the federal and state agencies that allowed sampling, and future permits are being denied. Or because neither of us could key grasses worth a damn.

I'm torn between pleasant validation that my old job was hard, and fear that I've made someone else's job difficult. Oh, and pleasure that when I'm confused or find something cool, I'm encouraged to call my current boss and chatter. Prevent at least some of the preventable mistakes listed above. Hurrah!

The baby was very fine.

Important information for following anecdote: we call C's room "the Cage", short for Faraday cage.

On the drive back from the old west, I was attempting phone conversation with my beau. He said something which sounds ripped from the lyrics of a third rate emo band:

"You're in a shadow, I'm in my cage. There's no way we can even begin to talk to each other."

soon it will get its own tag.

It's a second post on country music!

There are a couple of songs out- in the pop country theme of "My wife, she is extremely hot". Did you know that on data night- after your wife has carefully groomed herself into socially accepted attractiveness- the ultimate compliment is to cancel your reservations and have lots of sex instead? Don't you understand ladies? Tonight, (as opposed to the other date nights) your physical artifice is so successful that there's no need to anesthetize your husband with a steak and some jack on the rocks before he'll consent to sleep with you.

I hate your face, ENTP: Wow. Just wow.

I hold that there are three kinds of 'gadget dudes'. There's the type who will spend a long weekend assembling a computer to their exact specifications from parts they obsessively purchased online. They'll also throw out a little bit of code to solve irksome little quirks in their lives. I'm not expected to be impressed, because what do I know about ones and zeros? I think of this as the INTJ version- but sometimes C will channel this, and it is hot.

There's the ISTJ version, which involves welding. Welding and trips to the dump. I'm expecting a laptop stand as a wedding present- one with a distinct steampunk sensibility, the ability to adjust to any height, and a coffee cup holder that keeps my beverage at my preferred temperature. Here, no one can comprehend what's going on, so asking how many office chairs gave their lives is a good conversation starter.

But then there's the ENTP. The Gadget Dude. The first person you know to own an ipad. (Idiosyncratic capitalization conventions can DIAF. Unless it's pH.) The one who has the best car. No, the best car. You couldn't possibly know more about [chosen subject] because ENTP is an expert on [chosen subject]. This implies the ENTP has spent 10,000 hours researching conspicuous consumerism and standing in lines.

C has a cousin- who is largely delightful- who asked us to smuggle an iphone out of the country for him. As I wasn't aware that such things were illegal I told the Apple store guy the truth, and this am no longer allowed in that Apple store. Also, when his sister tried on four days before her wedding and found that it would not fit, he offered to sell her some of the Amway style diet pills he pushes. Unasked. Because everyone should celebrate their love with a belly full of psyllium husks and speed. Why tailor when you can crash diet?

Today I found an empty Plan B pill package in an abandoned homestead site. An abandoned Chinese homestead site.