man, i'm good

i baked a key-lime pie this afternoon, and i just ate a piece (after waiting the requisite 3-hour chill time). it's awesome. i should quit my day job and become a baker.
on the topic of good baking, i got a package from my biggest sister, with chocolate chip cookies. katy's good - they taste exactly like mom's! i'd say she fulfills the prerequisites for motherhood.

living the high life

well how-de-do. i am so covered in dog hair that my (black) pants look blonde.
i'm dogsitting for my boss's boss's boss ... which makes her sound way more high and mighty than she is. really, she's more of an equal with my boss, but somebody has to have the administrative title. anyway, she lives in Highland Park, very close to the Garden, in a cute little house with 2 dogs that I think are much too large for the house and yard. Song and Hadley are their names, and Hadley is a big baby (1 year 0ld) with obscene amounts of energy and a tendency to jump on you and chew you, and chew up any paper or food he comes across. really, he's kind of hellish. Song, on the other hand, is an old, laid back lady who is just ecstatic any time you tell her she's a good dog and is content to sit still and enjoy life. the house is adorable, with lots of dark-stained wood and floral art and botanical books. kind of the house i'd like to have in the future. this is my third day here. it's nice and quiet (except that the Metra tracks are about 100 meters behind her house - probably why it's affordable for someone working in the field of plant conservation - but the metra only passes once an hour) and there's nowhere i know to go up here, so i have time to read, watch tv, and relax.

i spent the past 2 days monitoring a plant called Cirsium hillii, Hill's Thistle, in a much more intense manner than I usually monitor a plant. Level 1 monitoring is what we usually do, where we count the plants, record the invasive plants and other threats to the population, and record the population's location and associated species. Level 2 monitoring, which is what I did yesterday and today, involves giving permanent metal tags to individual plants and then finding them again year after year so that we can measure their leaves and monitor their health to see if they die or succeed. This involves copious amounts of paperwork, so that we have exact coordinates along x and y axes (set up using rebar stakes as endpoints, so we can have the same axes every year) to use to relocate the tags and plants. Cirsium hillii does not flower very often, so the plants we were looking at were mostly rosettes, all less than 30 cm across, flat on the ground, many buried in other vegetation, so i spent two days on my hands and knees, getting poked by sharp thistle leaves in an effort to measure them. the ungrateful wretches.

so anyway, now my still-bum knee is very achy. actually, all of me is achy. two days of kneeling can do that. i tried to fix it last night by eating avocados and pineapple (not simultaneously - in sequence) and drinking half a bottle of chilled riesling. it didn't work. i'd better eat the other half of pineapple and drink the other half bottle of wine, to see if i have better results.

sunday: a day of no rest for the wicked

i left my house at 7:30 this morning, picked up an insane artist lady, and drove an hour north along the lake to the Illinois Beach State Park, where we spent the next 6 hours wandering around in a marshy, mosquito-infested field looking for some of the most beautiful pink flowers i have ever seen.Calopogon tuberosus, the grass-pink orchid. (taken by me, today)
Tough to spot when it's not in flower - its single leaf looks a hell of a lot like a blade of grass.
i've said it a thousand times already ... but again, i love my job.
we also saw many other ridiculously beautiful species of plants, and heard a couple dozen different species of birds sing, and i even saw a rotting beaver carcass simply crawling with maggots and bedecked with several beautiful butterflies.

then i drove home, showered (much needed! it was hot out!) and immediately left again to go to Tommy Nevin's irish pub, where i had heard there are irish seisuns every sunday. I was not disappointed! There were about 10 people playing when i got there. i walked in and sat down at the (not crowded - Sunday at 4 pm, after all) bar to get a pint. I sat there for about 5 minutes waiting, while the bartender helped people at the other end of the bar and generally ignored me. i was sitting next to an adorable old man drinking scotch on the rocks, and he started chatting to me, saying, i hope you weren't thirsty. finally, the bartender came over and i ordered my beer. when he brought it back, the old man insisted on paying for me, saying that i had to wait too long, so he'd pay for me.
then the bartender agreed with him, and bought my drink.
not too bad a way to start out the afternoon.
then the guy heading the seisun saw me at the bar with my bodhran and waved me over to the circle.
the music was great, and the people were great. many geriatrics, and a few 40-somethings. we played for an hour or so, and then this young (not even legal to drink) kid walks in with a bodhran. This is James, who has been playing with them for 3 years. He's a decent drummer, and has an angelic singing voice. he's also a good conversationalist, and a rock climber. we chat, and trade off on who gets to drum.
his drum is locally made, about 4 inches deep and with depth like a tympani. he also has a totally different style of drumming, so i personally think we could both play simultaneously without overpowering the other musicians. we'll see.
so then, during a break in the music, the guy running the seisun (who usually plays an accordion) stands up and announces to the room that it's tradition that when a guest or someone new joins them, he gets to play the tin whistle and the newbie has to accompany him. he then dives right into a fast (fast!)-paced reel, and plays for 5 minutes straight. he's a good whistle player! and i kept right up with him. we got a *big* round of applause afterward, and man, did it feel good.
this guy also played the "Star Wars" theme in traditional Irish style on the accordion (as a favor to the bartender) - it was remarkably good. and hilarious.

and now, after being home long enough to make dinner and upload my pictures from the day, i'm off to downtown to check out the post-day-pride-parade scene. pete wants to go, and is too afraid to go by himself - i guess he really doesn't want a boyfriend.

and all this while i'm in the middle of a really good book about cowboys, and all i want to do is read it - i keep grabbing time for a few pages here and there. it's called All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy. it's a good read.

so, more pretty pictures taken by yours truly will follow at a later time. too much to do, not enough time to do it.
i guess Nevins has sessions not only on Sundays, but Wednesdays as well! cool! i'm pretty psyched. i'll sleep well tonight - 5 hours bent over in the hot sun, followed by two hours drumming ...

saturday night at home?

so i went to the art fair. it was cool - there were a lot of pretty things there, although i felt guilty looking at all these artists' work with them sitting right there and then not buying anything. but then, my favorite piece had a price tag of $2000. it would be nice to have the kind of money that i could go to an art fair and actually buy the things i wanted.
then again i never want to be the kind of person who has an art collection.

anyway, now i'm at home watching Zoolander and reading a book about cowboys. it's 8 pm and i'm thinking about bed - i haven't been getting in bed early enough or sleeping well lately.

so pete has this theory, which apparently is true for him - if he is alone long enough, he'll get so lonely that he'll crack and make friends out of desperation.
i've realized that i'm not like that. if i'm alone long enough, i'll stop thinking i need to hang out with people. i've got so many books to read! and so many things i intended to do! so many craft projects, so much sleeping, so many cats to pet ...
maybe pete's other theory is right - that i'm going to end up as a crazy cat lady.

i guess that would be okay. as long as i had a garden too.

savanna restoration

I spent my Saturday morning at a place called Rollins Savanna, learning about how they restored the site from cornfields and cattle pasture to prairie and savanna - it's really a work in progress. I met the man of my dreams - the guy in charge of the restoration, who really understands about how ecosystems work and also knows an awful lot about the individual species that go into it. He's very honest about the mistakes they made at Rollins, and it's obvious that he works hard and is devoted to the site. He's also very deferential - by the end of the session, he was directing people's questions my way - i guess i can be sort of a loud mouth about ecology.

Now i'm off to the evanston art fair. I hope it doesn't rain on me!

Man vs. Wild!

My roommate just introduced me to a new tv show - Man vs Wild, wherein a 30-something former British Special Air Service guy gets dropped off in the middle of a different wilderness every week, with nothing but a knife and flint and steel, and the clothes on his back.
And a cameraman! they don't talk about the cameraman, or even acknowledge his existence, but he must be just as hardcore as 'Bear'!
That's right, Bear. Bear Grylls. (His real name is Edward or something).
Check him out: http://www.beargrylls.com/
and the page for his show: http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/manvswild/bio/bio.html
The episode i watched was Bear in Iceland. He snared a ptarmigan with a shoelace, tore its skin off, and roasted it over a fire. He slept in a moss shelter and found water in a volcanic cave.
All in all, it was pretty cool. And ridiculous.

believe it or not ...

oh yeah, and something that i just learned about last week ... who knew they existed?
this is a prairie crawfish. that's right - it lives in the middle of a prairie. i didn't see one until the day after it rained a lot, when the grass was still wet, and it's a mesic prairie, meaning it's not terribly dry. but still ... in my world, crawfish lived in streams.
i think he's kind of cute. pretty darn cool, at the very least.

yay internet

so now i have wireless. hooray for technology. i got a wireless router (graduation present from Bridget), because my ethernet is nonfunctional on this computer (my laptop). after consulting bridget and dave, i decided it would be more economical to buy a wireless router than fix the ethernet. plus it's cooler. now i can be on the internet with no cables anywhere in my house.
the downside? i wasn't smart or cool enough to set up my own router. i tried. i gave it a good go, but the technology kicked my patootie repeatedly. so i called in the tech support - i called up Pete, Mr. Internet himself, to ask for guidance. he said, "okay, i can try to talk you through this over the phone, or i can come over and have it done in 10 minutes."
i decided that, for efficiency and sanity's sake, i'd swallow my pride and let him do it. and he wasn't lying. i didn't see what he did differently from me - i think that technology is just the same as animals - it recognizes an authoritative touch.
so, however i got it, i've got it. now, i guess, i owe Pete one. i made him a couple of margaritas to help the work go more smoothly, but i think he still wins.
then he impressed me by showing me his phone, which he managed to hack so that it has free internet. he's the biggest nerd i know. all that work just so he can check his email on his phone. and then he took me out to meet people. he's determined that i need to make friends. he's right, after all.
i really enjoyed the guys i met, but most of the girls seemed dumb as posts. nice, but not much under the hood.

all that's left now is to decide what to do with my friday night. maybe sleep - i'm going to learn about savanna restoration tomorrow morning, and i have to drive an hour to do it.
then orchid monitoring on Sunday - not a real weekend, after all, but a vacation day in the bank all the same.

it's actually kind of cold out - what a nice change. sleeping under blankets, what a treat! maybe i'll have a cup of hot tea - now *there's* something i haven't wanted in a while ....

i love my job

today i got to hang out in the woods with a crazy lady. she is so cool - an artist and all that connotates. and on friday i got to hang out on the prairie with an author. and all the time i get to learn crazy stuff about beautiful and adorable plants.
and i'm getting paid to do it.
is it luck? or what?

info dump after a long silence

so, life's been busy so i haven't been blogging. plus my internet doesn't work on this computer at home ...

i'm sitting in a coffeeshop 2 or 3 blocks from my place, doing all of the internet-y things that i've been storing up for the last few days and enjoying the air conditioning (it's about 90 degrees and 90% humidity here, and has been for 3 days or so).

so here are a few pictures of my new home:

the living room, only showing half of it (the other half is currently full of my roommate's brother's stuff ... he's moving out tomorrow)...
the dining room, which gets lovely evening light...



one of my fuzzy roommates, Olie.

He is incredibly friendly and in need of attention at all times. He spends the hot part of the day sleeping under my bed, and is always lying outside my door when I open it in the morning. He is the reason why i have an extra blanket on my bed - to catch the cat hair and keep it out of my pillows. His sister Peaches is much more difficult to photograph - she moves more quickly and is quite shy. She is prone to adorable bouts of insanity when she attacks anything she pleases and chews (gently) on it. Both of them are great at attacking you with all four paws and no claws.

I don't have a nice photo of my bedroom yet. I've been hanging pictures slowly, so it's finally getting to look like a place where I live. It's going to change soon, though, as Eric, the former inhabitant, still has some of his things there. I am going to lose a desk and gain some more closet space after tomorrow. I have a picture that I want to frame, and I mean to ask Emily for advice on that, as she is actually a professional.
I have realized i really need to cool it on the spending of money, at least for a little while - I haven't been holding still long enough to figure out the balance between income and outgo yet, and i haven't been worrying too much because so many of the things i bought recently were one-time, get-my-house-set-up purchases. I think i need to declare myself done with those and start only buying food and other necessities.

Anyway ... life in Evanston. It's good. It's better than in Roger's Park. The people here are cool, and the atmosphere is fun. There is a street fair a block from my house this weekend - called Custer's Last Stand, because one of the streets involved is Custer. I hung out there yesterday, and it was very cool- lots of artists and artisans (so many jewelry salesfolk!) and musicians of all kinds, plus greasy carnival food and lots of shiny Lincoln cars (Lincoln is the big sponsor, apparently). I made it to an Irish music session at the Celtic Knot on Tuesday, but I didn't play - i just went to case the joint. They already have 2 bodhran players - one of whom is really good, and his drum looks like it's made by the guy in Texas who makes the drums for Donnchadh of Danu. I plan to go again on Tuesday and this time be bold enough to talk to the guy. After I am done here, I am going over to Tommy Nevin's which is another Irish pub about 3 blocks farther north from this coffee shop. Apparently they have seisuns on Sundays, but I can't find anywhere that tells me when, so I figure i will just go ask. I was in in there on Friday night, with my friend Pete, but I didn't get a chance to grill the bartender about the music scene (the place was packed, as Saturday was Northwestern's graduation). I am hoping this session is easy to break into. I'm still trying to think of other pasttimes I might have or might enjoy that would allow me to meet some more people my own age - I know that bars are not the place to meet people, and I think Irish music tends to have more old people involved. And i don't want to rely on my roommate. Many of her friends are through her church, and they are very nice people, but, while I have a healthy respect for Jesus, i don't have the kind of consuming love for him that most of these church folks have. They do things like go on missions and go to conferences and try to change the world through Jesus' love.

On the subject of missions and God's love - i am reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, and boy, do I recommend it. She is one of my favorite authors - I recently read Animal Dreams, which is another excellent book, and Prodigal Summer is one of my all-time top 5 books. Poisonwoods Bible is a long and intense book - it has carried me through a week of lengthy train rides and a few evenings at home, and I am still just half-way through. It's very difficult to put it down - i rode the El for 4 hours yesterday, reading it, and it felt more like half an hour. She is such a versatile writer that I can't get tired of her writing. I really miss the cornell library right now - I still haven't gotten my Evanston library card, and I want to get her other books. Maybe I'll check the used book store for more - that's where i got both Animal Dreams and Poisonwood Bible (they were in the front window, which means they cost a dollar apiece - the local used book store is awesome. the guy who works there is surly in a wonderful way, and covered with tattoos).

I'm checking my email while I'm writing this, and I was just looking at an email from my friend Matt Perkins, one of the CU engineering school's Golden Boys of environmentalism - he's in Beijing, trying to save the world : http://cornellsun.com/greenolympics can offer a window onto what he's doing. It's pretty fascinating!

the other thing i started this weekend:
last summer, i got it into my head that i wanted to make a bunch of my old clothes into a quilt. i had all these shirts that were stained, hole-y, or otherwise not really wearable, but they had a lot of sentimental value (i know it's hard for some of you to believe that Old Stone-face knows what sentiment is, but apparently i'm not as shallow as you think). so anyway, instead of giving my crappy clothes to charity, i tore them up and said, now i will learn to sew. then nothing happened. i found other things to do and forgot. i just carried this bag of rags every time i moved.
i finally pulled it out the other night and started sewing - hand-sewing. janni thinks i'm crazy. i think it doesn't matter, because it's not the destination, it's the ride. i don't care if it doesn't turn out as a quilt. we'll see how it turns out, and i'll have fun while i'm doing it. i think a little hand-sewing could be a good way to pass the time on public transit - when i read, i don't take advantage of the good people-watching opportunity.

anyway. updates will be posted as life goes on. I've been getting a few phone calls from folks - keep 'em coming! I love hearing from people I know and love! and i don't have the presence of mind or the predisposition to make lots of phone calls.

this is the plant i spent all day looking for:

Oenothera perennis, or small sundrops. the average height of the plant was about 3 inches - they're bitty! i am sun-full, sweaty, and gritty, and it was so much fun. i can't wait to get home and crack open a beer
... although i'll have to go to the store or bar, as i have no beers at home.
despite that, life is *good*!

i think it worked

i love my new apartment. it is beautiful, the cats are awesome, and my roommate is my friend already. i moved everything on Saturday and then spent the evening down in the city with friends! at their film festival - Student Films Across America - if it comes to a city near you, you should see it because the movies are good but attendance is not (i think that Chicago is a tough city to attract a crowd in, though - too much going on, like the Blues Festival this weekend).
Then i went to church with my roommate (Emily) on Sunday morning. She goes to this crazy liberal Mennonite church a couple of blocks from our place, where everyone loves Jesus and sings and dances to show their love. It was a long emotional service, and the pastor gave a great sermon that was down-to-earth and surprisingly unreligious (i guess in his former life he was a computer programmer, so he's very worldly). then i got to join my roommate and her church friends at a picnic on the beach - they were all very happy, environmentalist, laid-back people, and it was great to get to know some folks in the same life situation that i'm in.

all in all, it was a full weekend - quite tiring, what with all the hauling up and down stairs, and praising jesus and whatnot.

now i'm back at work, learning about fire regimes on prairies. what a fantastic job!

attempt 2

so, i am half in one apartment and half in the other. i started moving things up to Evanston tonight, in with my new gal Emily. I am already in love with her cats. I will move the rest tomorrow morning - I will see how well a single girl can move a mattress ... apparently she's got a busy day, and i want to get going, and be independent and all that. i think i can do it, with enough sweat and determination.
I climbed 27 flights of stairs tonight, moving half my stuff - both apartments are on the 3rd floor. a good quad workout.
i'm excited, and not scared. i will take lots of pictures in tomorrow's morning light of my new home. i already feel confident that i will be able to call it home - not like this place, which feels more like a hotel. big closets, small heart.

it's also time to post this picture:

which is from a couple of weeks ago when i shaved my legs. this is the halfway point, one hairy beast and one sleek beauty.
i had to do it - i felt like i needed to blend in a little more, and not be pegged as a crazy hippie country girl.
it's also, incidentally, a little cooler.

too much waiting! call me, lady, call me!
can't sleep til i know more!
not enough sleeping ... too much stress ....
but i'm not an undergrad anymore ... what the heck?!

life changes

sooo .... i think i found a place to live. i mean, i know i found at least one place. i can either live with a 57-year-old artist lady, or hopefully with a 26-year-old art-store-manager lady. the first has already offered me the spot, but i haven't told her yes yet, because i went to look at this other place last night - it is a little more expensive, a little farther north, much bigger, and the girl who lives there is amazing. the apartment felt like home from the first moment i walked in - she has 2 cats! and lots of houseplants, and the place has so many windows! but on top of that, she is a very calm, pensive person who really listens! when you talk. we talked for an hour and a half, about the apartment, about ourselves and our qualities as roommates, and about life in general. we were both shocked when we realized how late it had gotten. i left after we both said we felt good about each other, and she asked for a night to think (pray!) about it (we had already talked religion, and she told me about her church, so it didn't seem that weird that she wanted to pray about it). i am really hoping that she gets back to me saying i can move in - the old artist lady would also be a fine roommate, but her place is smaller, there are kids upstairs from her, and she does a lot of talking ... it is obvious from the way that she presents herself in conversation that she has no doubts about her self-importance.
we will see, i guess.
i'm off to a new area of prairie today ... so much fieldwork! so little sleep! argh ...
there are supposed to be wild thunderstorms this evening/tonight ... i hope they hold off until i'm off the prairie, or life could get a lot more exciting (or a lot shorter).

hard work

I spent the day on the prairie, on my knees in the mud looking for a plant that wasn't there. it was actually a lot of fun. i'm doing it again tomorrow.
Currently, my internet is nonfunctional in my home. I'm sitting in the coffeeshop on the corner, where there is free wireless. no internet makes it hard to find a new home online.
I looked at another apartment this afternoon, this one a two-bedroom currently occupied by an older lady artist who is really cool, and her terrier who is amazing. I hope she picks me. I hope I find out soon.
I still haven't told my roommate I'm moving out. I only saw him once since I decided, and we only talked long enough for him to tell me about dumping his woman.
I think that I am missing the Irish seisun for another week. It started an hour ago, and I have too much to do. I am stressing myself out with this moving thing, and not sleeping enough - i have to leave the house at 6 am on the days when I work on the prairie, as Midewin Nat'l Tallgrass Prairie is about an hour and a half drive away - when traffic is sane (which is rare). I wish i could do the not-sleeping thing better.
wish me luck.

big day

so, i'm trying to move. i emailed a bunch of craigslist offers, had an appointment with The Apartment People and learned a lot about renting in Evanston from a wonderful woman named Melody, and visited an absolutely adorable and wonderful apartment on Main St. (which, despite the name, is not the main drag). And right this minute, I got turned down by one of the other offers - apparently I wasn't fast enough (wow, 2 hours means a lot - i wonder if the other apt is already gone, too ...)
anyway ... i'm nervous, but i really feel like i'm making the right decision. i haven't had a chance to talk to the roommate - he was home when i got in, but when i asked him about his weekend, he said, it was fun, except for the part where i broke up with my girlfriend ...
so i didn't feel as though it was the opportune moment to tell him i wanted to move out.
sometimes life is just awkward. but i still really feel confident in my effort to move - i'd like to live someplace where i want to walk outside my house at night, because there's somewhere cool to walk besides the train station, instead of having it be scary, and i'd like to live closer than 45 minutes' commute to work. it's not like i go downtown often anyway, so there's no point in living within the city.
okay, to bed, to bed - i have to be up at 5 to head to the prairie!

home

i don't remember feeling homesick my freshman year of college. or at any other time in my life, in fact. i guess i've never been in a new place and been the only new one. i've only been away from home for two weeks and i'm ready to be done. of course, i don't even know what counts as home - there's not anything left in Ithaca for me to go home to, and I know there's nothing for me to do in Melrose. I guess home is just wherever I'm loved, and here definitely isn't home.
i guess there's not much i can do about that.


i'm thinking of moving. i started looking for an apartment in Evanston today, for a variety of reasons. It would be closer to work, the community there is a better fit for my personality and background, and odds are I wouldn't see so many people get arrested within a block of my building. And if I work it right, i might even be able to live with people who are a little more available as friends.
i know this isn't the most reasonable course of action, but it feels right - i have to at least look and see if there might be something better. not that this is bad - my apartment is beautiful, i live a block from the beach, my roommate is sane, employed, and kind, and i have easy access to public transit and shopping. but i can get most of these things in any number of living situations, and after two weeks i still feel like a guest in this apartment. i don't feel at home enough to start hanging anything up on the walls - my roll of posters is sitting in the closet, and the one thing i bothered to frame is leaning against the wall in a corner. i never feel inspired enough to go out except to walk the beach and watch happy families with their little kids and dogs.
anyway. we'll see what happens. it will all work out in the end, regardless of what happens.

if all else fails ...

well, i reinforced my self-esteem tonight. i sat outside and read a book until about 8, when i just got intensely hungry, and then i decided to let my tummy guide me. i'd bought some asparagus at the evanston farmers' market yesterday, so i decided cream sauce was the way to go (i think i was craving some protein ...) so i whipped up some cream sauce, boiled some linguine, and steamed my asparagus, and wow, i *can* cook. it might have just been hunger, but that was some damn good dinner. local asparagus and organic, happy-cow, rennet-free raw cheddar and whole-wheat pasta ... mm, tastes like hippies.
anyhow. i think i had some good training in the kitchen. if all else fails, i could still make a good housewife. oh yeah, and i cleaned my apartment this morning, too.
i still need to get good at sewing, though.
... i guess housewifery also requires someone to wife to ... whatever.

using my saturday

i took an adventure up to evanston this morning - running some errands and then wandering around the streets on the phone with mom and dad, idly looking for someplace (i had forgotten to look at the map before i left, but it wasn't an urgent mission), and i came across the evanston farmer's market, which was cute. i ran a few more errands on the way home, and made friends with the nice indian man in the health food/hippie food store. now i'm cleaning like a fiend. i might head back out on my bike, because the used book store wasn't open when i went past it this morning, and there are books in the window i want to buy.
but maybe i'll just sit on the beach until it starts to rain, and then take a nap.
nap, nap, nap. i do like those.

tragedy strikes

so, when i started working here, the big glass doors at the entrance to my building had just been decorated with big white dots, about 3 inches diameter, and an occasional white silhouette of a bird. the dots were to warn birds that there was glass there, as apparently there had been some deaths.
well, apparently these dots weren't up to par for aesthetics for some people. 'they're ugly' 'they look ridiculous'
i thought, well, if it's preventing death, then whatever. they're pretty unoffensive, just white and sort of blocking the view. they also probably save the cleaning people some time, because that's one less glass door they have to polish twice a day (there seem to be a lot of glass doors, and a lot of donor tours for which they must be spotless).
apparently aesthetics won out. they cleaned the dots off the doors the day before yesterday.
today, as i walked up to the door, i noticed a sparrow lying on the ground. dead. not just dead - i could see where it had run into the spotless glass because its beak was stuck to the glass with its own blood and tissue.
i can't handle the selfishness of people. and i can't help but worry a little that at some point, i'll be going at top speed, maybe on my bike, maybe in my car, maybe just on foot, and i'll run smack into a big invisible wall and display my brains for everyone to see, from both sides.
i bet next time i go out that door the bird brain will be polished off and its tiny life forgotten.

out on the town

just got home from a fun night - i went to a bar to the southwest of me tonight, to catch a stand-up show (for free - always a good choice). it turned out that i have good instincts for my own - most of the comedians were Irish-American Catholics, and had the requisite cynical humor, which i understand and appreciate. it was slightly awkward because i was pretty much the only one who hadn't seen most of these guys perform before, but it was still fun. the trip also required a nice long train ride, which i really enjoyed. a lot of the trip is through people's backyards (because obviously you're not going to build your place facing the tracks), and it's interesting to peek into people's lives like that. the bar was also in another big Spanish-speaking enclave. many of the stores were only labeled in Spanish. i can be another ad for mom's students: "i wish i had kept speaking spanish after high school - it would have been useful"