vines

For a while, in Minnesota, I lived with a bunch of landscapers. It had its ups and downs, like everything. The downs for this situation all involved mud and lines for the shower. The ups were the winners by far: people who knew about digging, and got free plants, and were sent home from work if it was too rainy so we could all go to the bar down the street together.

So, I was in charge of the houseplants, but my role in the yard was restricted to admiring things and eating the results.

Then all the landscapers moved away, and I was left to my own devices. Which in this case meant that for a year and a half no one touched anything in the garden, and then I suddenly decided it was time to Deal With The Yard, so I dug it all up. But didn't plant anything else; the main result of that was that I had a lot of cuts from thorny things and Trisha was irritated with me for leaving piles of debris scattered about the yard.

But one thing I did follow through with, and it was the planting and training of vines. I built an arch out of branches that were knocked down during thunderstorms, and planted morning glories and sweet peas all around them, and wove it into a beautiful green flowery gateway to our nice back yard.

When I moved away from St. Paul, I was forced to leave all my house plants AND all my vines behind, much to my dismay. But, finally, this summer I planted some more vines around the tiny "front yard" area of my house in DC and now all those vines are creeping greenly up things. So I have to spend a good 30 minutes per day now leaning against the fence, murmuring encouraging thoughts to the vines and making sure the little twisty ends are pointed in an acceptable direction.

Vines are smart! In a kind of a scary way. They don't totally seem like plants, or at least they seem very slightly more animate than they really should. I don't understand what kind of math is programmed into their DNA to make them twirl around until they find something, and then stick their little viney feet to it and crawl forwards, but it makes me nervous. So to stay on their good side I whisper sweet nothings and water them with plant food.

I imagine that as a result of this, when they make it all the way up my building and into my window, they will just sort of pat me gently on the head as they pass through, rather than trying to stick their fingers in my nose or knock over my paintbrushes or something.

especially what?

Lately my bedroom is a frightening pit of chaos. Some people would say that this is not a new or noteworthy state of affairs, and they would be kind of right. But not totally right, because when I say "frightening" and "chaos" I am using my own frame of reference, in which the baseline is more like "turmoil" and less like "lived-in". And even by these standards, my room's a little out of control.

My desk has: mail; modeling clay; syllabi from last year; a water bottle; vitamins; headphones; some other cords; a set of keys to my uncle's house.

My sewing table has: sewing machine; can of root beer; photo albums; box full of beads; large can of blue glitter; tube of Primary Magenta; sponge; box of thread.

My floor has: (indistinguishable jumble of things). The jumble includes a variety of iridescent and metallic fabric, from when I was making a disco outfit for a costume party. It includes a large pile of dirty clothes and a smaller pile of clean clothes. Two pairs of cowboy boots (one fancy, one everyday) are in there somewhere, and a scratching post for the cat, and a vacuum cleaner, and Alyssa's hair dryer, and a yoga ball.

There are many books (linguistics, murder mysteries, etc) on all of these surfaces, as well as piles of paper that I need to go through at some point. BIG piles of paper. That chore is #1 on my list of things to avoid doing. Procrastination for all!

My favorite way to while away the time when I'm bored (so often!) is to play a guessing game. This guessing game is not Twenty Questions, although it is similar. In my version, one person thinks of something, and then the other person guesses what it is. They don't ask questions about it; they guess. Then the first person thinks of a comparative adjective to describe the difference.

Here is an example, from when I was playing this game with two of my brothers one time.

Will: (thinks of something)
Matt: a fork
Will: bigger
Cecily: a plate
Will: more flexible
Matt: spaghetti
Will: less edible
Cecily: a helicopter
Will: less organized

...and so on.

in the end, the answer was "Matt's hair" And this is how I prefer to think of my room, and my general methods of housekeeping. Less organized than a helicopter. But really, who isn't? Helicopters are very organized things. So of COURSE I am less organized than one.

No, I don't have any plans to clean my room this weekend. Thanks for asking.

Education, thought control, dark sarcasm

Hello! It is time to go back to school again!

Yes, that means it is time for another round of staring and glaring contests with the people in the offices in the school. This time I am going to bring flowers to everyone and smile sweetly and do as I am told without complaining.

Ha ha!

I don't actually have any classes until Wednesday. Which is good because it gives me lots of time to run around campus signing things, drink coffee, and complain loudly and in very big signs to anyone who will listen.

Meanwhile, in other whining-related news, it keeps being over 100 around here. With all kinds of dewpoints and humidities that make it all worse. These Founding Fathers were not all that bright, building the capital in a swamp. If you ask me. Which no one really has done, yet, but preemptive action is the new black, so let's not get all bogged down in details.

Okay. I'm off to deal with school, books, and dirty looks. See you.

Missoula, Montana: A place, sort of.

All my favorite friends were in Missoula last weekend, doing all my favorite activities. Like drinking beer and floating on the river and eating meat. I am very sad that I was not there.

Here is another example of what Missoula is like:

Little kid: Hey, you want to come to my birthday party? It's all about hunting and killing and stuff.
TA: Um, I'll think about it.
Little kid: Listen, your mom isn't your boss anymore.

Sherwood Street
Missoula, Montana

via Overheard in the Office, Jun 26, 2007

The BBC wins again

The BBC website has the best headlines of anyone. They are even better than all the tabloids. At least the tabloids I've seen. Which isn't that many, I guess, really.

Anyway. Because the BBC is a Respectable News Source! And they STILL have these crazy headlines!

Examples:

Crisis at potato disease farm

Polygamous lesbians flee Sharia

Police force-feed 50 bananas to thief to expel stolen necklace (The headline was on the front page, linking to this article).

Also, the articles are pretty crazy, too. My favorite.

Weather. Yum!

Here's what I like: when the overnight low is 76 degrees.*

My favorite!

UPDATE: Tonight? 88! 88 is the low!


*by "like" I mean "don't like at all"

Grrrr...

I accidentally got into an internet fight last week (with someone I don't even know! Man, I fight with EVERYBODY these days). Here is the result:

(be careful! This funny cartoon involves unladylike language!)
d

NOTE: My roommate says he thinks it looks like the dinosaur is just throwing a violent tantrum. This is a fine interpretation, but I was intending for him to be walking along. Oh well.

Away for the Weekend

I'm going to my uncle's house in the mountains of Virginia.

Here is what I will be doing there:
-reading
-sleeping
-playing fetch with the cat
-drinking wine
-learning how to do multivariate analysis on phonological variation in sign language
-watching the Discovery Channel

I hope the Discovery Channel has that show about the orphaned baby walrus, because walruses are my latest favorite thing to learn about and that baby walrus was adorable.

see you next week!

Red Tape

*

I'm in a pretty cranky mood today.

For one thing, it's 98 degrees outside. For real. That is too hot.

For another thing, I'm once again involved in a lengthy and extremely dispiriting battle with Gallaudet officials. This time it's more or less with the Registrar's office. The story is long and it just keeps getting longer, and it is tedious and asinine and full of me being angry and other people being unhelpful. It's pretty much the same as all my other stories about trying to get anything accomplished at this school.

Why, yes, I would love some cheese to go with that. Thanks so much!

*via despair.com's DIY motivator generator

Cake of Patriotism

I had a great time last night. From the roof of Trim Zander's house, we could see 360 degrees worth of fireworks. It was intense. There were so many things being blown up!

In honor of the occasion I made a cake. The outside of the cake looked like this:



The inside of the cake looked like this:



I worked extremely hard on this project, and while the cake itself was not especially light or fluffy, the aesthetic outcome was satisfactory, and everyone likes chocolate frosting, so it was a winner.

Happy Birthday, Constitution Gods!

This is my first Independence Day in Our Nation's Fine Capital. So far, so good. I am still in my pajamas, so pretty soon I have to start looking for a red, white and blue outfit.




Last year I was being all fancy at the Ambassador's house for my Independence Day festivities. Nowadays, I have no Ambassador friends to hobnob with so I have to make do with all my fellow 20-something grad student type friends. None of them even know how to play bridge!

But I digress.(You might not think I could digress, since I wasn't actually talking about anything, but you would be wrong on both counts. I can digress in situations that would amaze you, and also I was talking about something. I was talking about Constitution City.)

Much to my surprise and delight, fireworks are legal in this town. I kind of thought anything even remotely dangerous was frowned upon around here because what if the Presidential Motorcade happens by your house and he gets an ash on the windshield? Now you'll have to go to prison! But, it seems that patriotism in the form of explosives trumps any concern about danger (also in the form of explosives) so there are fireworks stands all over the place. I bought some yesterday on my way home from school, and will be exploding them this evening from Trim Zander's 4th of July party.

I am excited because it's been a while since I had any fireworks to explode. Last year I was in Rwanda, so no fireworks stands were available to me. The year before that I was in Minneapolis and watched the city display from the roof of a parking garage. The year before THAT I have absolutely no recollection of where I was or what I did, so it must not have been very fun or exciting. Either that or it was extremely fun and exciting and involved a lot of alcohol.

So. Have fun out there! Don't blow yourselves up.

The martians are coming!

d
Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

oh, the humanity

Woman coming in from outside:It's really human out there.
Man:Yeah -- it's not the heat, it's the humanity that will get you every time.

It's true, the humanity is usually far more annoying to me than the weather.

You know what helps both? A nice cold beer!


via Overheard in the Office, Jun 27, 2007

I Spy

Well, my brother (among others) really did say something to Our Dear Leader. They said it in a letter format, and very politely too. Good job, Scholars!

My brother also said something directly to old GW about "having more respect for human rights", to which he apparently got no response at all.

Yesterday we (me and the brother, not me and GW) went to the Spy Museum. It was fun. Or it had its moments at least. I was really cranky because of the deathly heat, already, and then I became even crankier because of the dumbness of their "accommodations". I asked if they had captioning on their video things, to make sure they had it turned on, and instead the front desk guy gave me a little device to wear on a (very fetching) lanyard around my neck. I asked him how it worked and he was vague. "Just wear it, you'll see."

Well, I didn't see. Nothing happened. The first room where we all got shepherded in had some video and some audio going on, and when I asked the staff person THERE what was up, she seemed taken aback, and went to ask someone else. After that, we were sent into another room to watch a movie and the doors were locked behind us. Again, no captioning. I fought my way out of the theater and was told to "sit closer to the screen".

That seemed to work okay (apparently the screen needed to be able to sense my presence via the little lanyard device), although I was annoyed because it meant I was not sitting with my brother, and why didn't someone explain it ahead of time?

But after that, my proximity to the screens made no difference. And after that, there was no way out of the museum and no staff member in sight. I seriously went all the way through it to the end and back, looking for someone because maybe I am just doing something wrong with this little device item. Maybe it needs a new battery. That's fine, I will accept a replacement, I will just ask some friendly museum worker to assist me with this issue.

Or I would have, but there was NO ONE to ask. I have never seen a museum with so little supervision.

There were a LOT of videos and audio things. A few of them had transcripts hanging on nearby pegs, but not anything like all of them, and by halfway through I was so focused on being upset about access that I sort of quit paying attention anyway.

Which was too bad for me because there was a lot of good stuff to look at. WWII army jackets with cameras hidden in the buttonholes and 19th-century revolvers hidden on jeweled rings. Nice.

One especially great item, I thought, was a big ornamental decoration that a bunch of schoolchildren in the USSR presented to the US Ambassador in the days of the cold war. And it had a bug in it! Those crafty Soviet schoolchildren. I wish the Presidential Scholars would have hidden a practical joke or something in the Oval Office, just to keep old George on his toes.

Anyway, at the end of the museum I went and complained for awhile and got apologized to and was given comp tickets and a promise that next time it will be better. So we shall see. Who wants to go to the Spy Museum with me?

more google searching

1. comical disability breakfast invites
2. mustachio bashio august 7,2005
3. what is Ms. Whitworth's least favorite thing?
4. nightlife tblisi
5. dancing stick person
6. cowgirl congress new pictures
7. criteria for a shenanigan

I am particularly intrigued by numbers 1, 3, and 6. Anyone who was the searcher behind these searches, please tell me your story.

P. S. I currently have three least favorite things: Grasshoppers, mushrooms, and the Student Accounts Office. Not necessarily in that or any other order.