Back in Davis for one day to drop off C, buy groceries, and retrieve the plants in the bottom of our fridge. Then it's off to tour the RV parks of the South Coast. I'm going to bed.
The cat apparently missed us.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
Baby Roach Update
We've stopped kidding ourselves- there are definitely MHC loose in the lab. I totally failed to kill one in the half inch range today. Suckers are hard to crush.
SeNor C's found a pirate language filter for Facebook.
I told my boss that I'd definitely get out in the field today, I told myself that I'd totally finish my plant keying, and here I am updating. It's also how I got my taxes done. And read up of the romance of the three kingdoms. The kitchen's still a mess though.
Back from driving Highway 99- all of it, suckers. It's the first time I've done that to any highway longer than 45 miles. The billboards exhort readers to put their almonds in rubber boots "just in case" and to "insure the manure" out of their farm equipment. The other half are in Spanish- they inform the reader that social workers are on your side, that cigarettes will kill your children, that the pediatric wing of the local hospital accepts cash, that "Dulce et decorum est" for the parent to have the remote control, and that joining the military speeds the path to citizenship. Every other car has some sort of agricultural function. The whole thing is like the backstage of California proper- and I find that I'm more comfortable living in ignorance of how the play is done. Also, I couldn't find a grocery store.
I always thought of myself as the kind of girl who would go camping in new and strange places at the drop of a hat- a modern and independant woman held back by every single significant emotional commitment she has ever made. Anyways- that was a lie. I like hotels. I like security. I like sleeping with my legs stretched out. And I hate long drives by myself. The more you know.
Back from driving Highway 99- all of it, suckers. It's the first time I've done that to any highway longer than 45 miles. The billboards exhort readers to put their almonds in rubber boots "just in case" and to "insure the manure" out of their farm equipment. The other half are in Spanish- they inform the reader that social workers are on your side, that cigarettes will kill your children, that the pediatric wing of the local hospital accepts cash, that "Dulce et decorum est" for the parent to have the remote control, and that joining the military speeds the path to citizenship. Every other car has some sort of agricultural function. The whole thing is like the backstage of California proper- and I find that I'm more comfortable living in ignorance of how the play is done. Also, I couldn't find a grocery store.
I always thought of myself as the kind of girl who would go camping in new and strange places at the drop of a hat- a modern and independant woman held back by every single significant emotional commitment she has ever made. Anyways- that was a lie. I like hotels. I like security. I like sleeping with my legs stretched out. And I hate long drives by myself. The more you know.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Hiatus? What Hiatus?
So yeah, I've been not at all busy. It's putting off doing things that gets these posts written. However, the field season's gearing up- I'm going to be sleeping in my car somewhere in Bakersfield for the next week- and I'm putting off preparing. Wooo!
I thought I'd share some important things I've learned from Facebook.
1.) I should never ever have a conversation with my cousin Matt.
2.) If I have a concersation with my cousin Matt, I should avoid talking about my job, my career, my fiance, my home state, my hobbies, and my favorite foods.
3.) People did marry their high school boyfriends. My mistake.
4.) Apparently lots of reasonable contemporaries have already had children. I need a new excuse for why I'm putting it off.
5.) Those 25 things about me lists? Trouble.
6.) No matter how much you like one of those mini games, someone else will be waaaay more into it than you.
7.) Correlation is not causation.
8.) Suggesting a precariously married person friend their high school boyfriend is not necessarily a good idea.
9.) Some of those guys one would bump into hiding in the bushes in the middle of nowhere, flustered and confused? Not taking drugs. Awkward....
10.) When it turns out that the friend of a friend who endured a great deal of homophobia and abuse in his provincial school system went to your school, you should not tell his friend that no one knew he was gay, and everyone was mean to him because he was a douche.
Feel free to add your own.
I thought I'd share some important things I've learned from Facebook.
1.) I should never ever have a conversation with my cousin Matt.
2.) If I have a concersation with my cousin Matt, I should avoid talking about my job, my career, my fiance, my home state, my hobbies, and my favorite foods.
3.) People did marry their high school boyfriends. My mistake.
4.) Apparently lots of reasonable contemporaries have already had children. I need a new excuse for why I'm putting it off.
5.) Those 25 things about me lists? Trouble.
6.) No matter how much you like one of those mini games, someone else will be waaaay more into it than you.
7.) Correlation is not causation.
8.) Suggesting a precariously married person friend their high school boyfriend is not necessarily a good idea.
9.) Some of those guys one would bump into hiding in the bushes in the middle of nowhere, flustered and confused? Not taking drugs. Awkward....
10.) When it turns out that the friend of a friend who endured a great deal of homophobia and abuse in his provincial school system went to your school, you should not tell his friend that no one knew he was gay, and everyone was mean to him because he was a douche.
Feel free to add your own.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Wombat Den
It seems like half my posts now concern the damn Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches. What else can I say? I've developed a worrying addiction to Freecell? It's still not raining because the world is ending? I'm limping along in work with a slowly dying computer- breaking down like a man who worked hard all his life or an old car- system after system going down, nearly impossible to fix anything, and more and more elaborate workarounds seeming rational. The latest to go was the CD drive- I took it into the IT guys and they took it for 36 hours, deleted all the malware that they dismissed in the past, and handed it back with admonitions to not download anything iffy. I knew the Microsoft Online Office stuff was dodgy. Immediately thereafter, I hauled it back to them again so they could fish the files they'd hidden back into view and reestablish my user account. But guess what isn't fixed? Guess who still needs a CD drive? I don't have a firewire port, and the only CD drive around requires one, but maybe... Really dull. Let me tell you about vermin.
The cockroaches are doing fine. I usually post the sensational side of the story, so I should note that we are unsure of the source of all the baby roaches in the lab- possibly it is just a local infestation. However, we do have confirmed MHC young present in the enclosure, happy and growing swiftly.
There's a weekly seminar on Ecology; today's lecture did not include the large fuzzy things that get funding and everyone was chatting about supporting non-charismatic microfauna. Of course the roaches were brought up as an example, and of course I said that they were very charismatic when they were not stealing my food. The man I was chatting with winced and said that the idea of them crawling under his skin would forever make them not charismatic. I nodded, and then asked if he took a lot of meth.
That's a conversational Claymore mine if there ever was one. It makes sense! Roaches under the skin is a common delusion of meth users! I was just concerned! But really, what was I thinking? What if he'd said yes? Oh man, what if he is a meth user? His teeth are pretty good... What if he saw me checking his teeth and complexion? What's it like when you mention a harmless quirk, and then your conversational partner starts examining you for signs of drug abuse?
So yeah, critical banter failure. Sad.
In further notes, Pandora.com has forever ruined a song that was a great favorite of mine: Wombat Den. It's about a wombat defending its den against an interloper- or possibly a sexual partner. The ambiguity of this relationship and the creepy wombat mating behavior really made it stand out from the other generic pop/rock songs. Yeah, that song? Won't Back Down, Tom Petty. Thanks, internet.
The cockroaches are doing fine. I usually post the sensational side of the story, so I should note that we are unsure of the source of all the baby roaches in the lab- possibly it is just a local infestation. However, we do have confirmed MHC young present in the enclosure, happy and growing swiftly.
There's a weekly seminar on Ecology; today's lecture did not include the large fuzzy things that get funding and everyone was chatting about supporting non-charismatic microfauna. Of course the roaches were brought up as an example, and of course I said that they were very charismatic when they were not stealing my food. The man I was chatting with winced and said that the idea of them crawling under his skin would forever make them not charismatic. I nodded, and then asked if he took a lot of meth.
That's a conversational Claymore mine if there ever was one. It makes sense! Roaches under the skin is a common delusion of meth users! I was just concerned! But really, what was I thinking? What if he'd said yes? Oh man, what if he is a meth user? His teeth are pretty good... What if he saw me checking his teeth and complexion? What's it like when you mention a harmless quirk, and then your conversational partner starts examining you for signs of drug abuse?
So yeah, critical banter failure. Sad.
In further notes, Pandora.com has forever ruined a song that was a great favorite of mine: Wombat Den. It's about a wombat defending its den against an interloper- or possibly a sexual partner. The ambiguity of this relationship and the creepy wombat mating behavior really made it stand out from the other generic pop/rock songs. Yeah, that song? Won't Back Down, Tom Petty. Thanks, internet.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Learning from the mistakes at Valejo.
We all know BJ, right? Seven feet tall, good at hitting things with sticks and designing unselfconcious steampunk-style armaments, and the kind of soft spoken that makes everyone pretty careful about irritating him. Anyways, he's taking eskrima, because he needed to find a way to become even more intimidating to other dudes.
(Eskrima is the art of hitting people with two tiny sticks. Like all martial arts that sound stupid and have survived, it's brutal. It's how the Pilipinos took down Magellan. He had guns, they had sticks. It was not a fair fight. Here's a video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-Oz1aPolTA&feature=related . It looks like high spped slap fighting to me too)
It's a small class at the Recreation Center- usually there are only three people, and two of them were otherwise occupied that day. BJ and his instructor were sparring, his instructor lost a stick, BJ pressed the advantage, and the instructor grabbed his arm and threw him to the ground. Then he pinned both of BJ's shoulders and started hitting him in the face- lightly, because it was practice. BJ was trying shoulder rolls and knee kicks to get free- and the instructor started advising him on other options- options that did not work because the instructor is so very good at eskrima.
Anyways, this is when a girl walked past a supposedly empty classroom and saw one guy pinning another man to the floor, mocking his attempts to get free and beating his face with sticks. She screamed, and then offered to call the police. That ended the sparring pretty quickly.
(Eskrima is the art of hitting people with two tiny sticks. Like all martial arts that sound stupid and have survived, it's brutal. It's how the Pilipinos took down Magellan. He had guns, they had sticks. It was not a fair fight. Here's a video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
It's a small class at the Recreation Center- usually there are only three people, and two of them were otherwise occupied that day. BJ and his instructor were sparring, his instructor lost a stick, BJ pressed the advantage, and the instructor grabbed his arm and threw him to the ground. Then he pinned both of BJ's shoulders and started hitting him in the face- lightly, because it was practice. BJ was trying shoulder rolls and knee kicks to get free- and the instructor started advising him on other options- options that did not work because the instructor is so very good at eskrima.
Anyways, this is when a girl walked past a supposedly empty classroom and saw one guy pinning another man to the floor, mocking his attempts to get free and beating his face with sticks. She screamed, and then offered to call the police. That ended the sparring pretty quickly.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Killer Dreams
Did I mention that I went home last weekend, and baked cookies and cupcakes for Obama? My mom had a migraine, it was awesome.
There's a story about my grandmother- how she had blood clots in her legs and was instructed not to move, lest they travel to her heart and kill her. She crawled down to the basement on her hands and knees to make sure my mother was doing laundry correctly. My mother was 17. Aha, we laugh at my grandmother, her need for control so strong she'd face deep discomfort and death before a pink undershirt.
Apparently that sort of psychosis requires more than one generation to work itself out of your family, because my mother would not let her mid-twenties daughter bake things from mixes. When this infirmity strikes me, I hope I display my lack of faith in underlings, not children.
Okay, so two weeks ago I led a group of people in pretending to be elves while wearing my evil daystar sunglasses and letting beta blockers dissolve under my tongue. Migraines do not really lead to rational thought. I can cut her some slack.
Also, my brother had a plastic baggie full of grayish herbs on his desk. I picked it up, turned it over, and said
"What is this, mugwort?" He nodded (It totally was just mugwort. It's not a code for anything else. It's in the Asteraceae- nothing fun ever came out of that family.)
"You've done the thing where you smoke it and get crazy dreams then?" he asked.
"I have never heard of such a thing. That sounds very unpleasant."
"Well then, how'd you know what it was?" There was a beat... "Oh yeah... Botanist..."
There's a story about my grandmother- how she had blood clots in her legs and was instructed not to move, lest they travel to her heart and kill her. She crawled down to the basement on her hands and knees to make sure my mother was doing laundry correctly. My mother was 17. Aha, we laugh at my grandmother, her need for control so strong she'd face deep discomfort and death before a pink undershirt.
Apparently that sort of psychosis requires more than one generation to work itself out of your family, because my mother would not let her mid-twenties daughter bake things from mixes. When this infirmity strikes me, I hope I display my lack of faith in underlings, not children.
Okay, so two weeks ago I led a group of people in pretending to be elves while wearing my evil daystar sunglasses and letting beta blockers dissolve under my tongue. Migraines do not really lead to rational thought. I can cut her some slack.
Also, my brother had a plastic baggie full of grayish herbs on his desk. I picked it up, turned it over, and said
"What is this, mugwort?" He nodded (It totally was just mugwort. It's not a code for anything else. It's in the Asteraceae- nothing fun ever came out of that family.)
"You've done the thing where you smoke it and get crazy dreams then?" he asked.
"I have never heard of such a thing. That sounds very unpleasant."
"Well then, how'd you know what it was?" There was a beat... "Oh yeah... Botanist..."
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