Thursday, May 24, 2007

Of Mice and Me

photo by Steve Jurvetson

I'm tired and my eyes are itchy. Damn cats.

Yesterday a friend came over to play with photos and as we were hanging up the film to dry I noticed the orange one was growling at the white one and holding a mouse in his mouth. The mouse looked dead, so as long as the cats didn't damage each other fighting over it I wasn't too worried. But when the orange one dropped the mouse it suddenly looked a lot less dead. I have a lot of junk in the basement and a lot of low furniture. It is NOT a good place for a cat to play with his food.

Our indoor cats are not such fabulous mousers. I'm a better mouser than they are - I found it at least twice as often as they did. Whenever we got them to notice the mouse they kept chasing it somewhere they couldn't get to it, then going back to the last place they found it to check if it had magically reappeared there. Eventually I got tired of moving furniture and left them to it, hoping they would somehow figure it out on their own.

Just before bed I chased the white one upstairs, but I couldn't find the orange one. I don't like letting them get outside, but I didn't want him trapped out their either so I left one window open. About 1am I heard the clatter of him coming into the house, so I turned on the light to grab him and take him upstairs - and he had another mouse in his mouth. It didn't stay there for long. He didn't keep track of this one either.

By 1:30 I was again tired of moving furniture, so I shut the windows (bah! I love my night breezes) and left him to dispose of them properly. I doubt he did, but it made for an exciting night with him jumping up at me, purring, and me checking whether I had a mouse corpse on my pillow. And I'm still having an allergic thing with the cat rubbing himself on my face at night.

Monday, May 14, 2007

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

O Happy Day

Viola: Most excellent accomplish'd lady, the heavens rain odors on you!
Sir Andrew: That youth's a rare courtier—'rain odors,' well.
Viola: My matter hath no voice, lady, but to your own most pregnant and vouchsafed ear.
Sir Andrew: 'Odors,' 'pregnant,' and 'vouchsafed'; I'll get 'em all three all ready.

I had a long day today sorting old letters from sycophantic society ladies as I tried to clean out our conference room so it could be used for conferencing tomorrow - I didn't eat lunch and I missed my train going home, which wasn't a great beginning. But the heavens are raining odors today - the air is thick with moisture and the grass is fragrant and the lilacs are blooming. I need to walk home under the tall trees more often instead of just counting broken bottles along the factory route.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

April 2007 Reading List

I'm realizing that I may not have much time for free reading after I start grad school this summer, so I'm trying to fit everything I can think of into one last burst. This month my "bedside stack" includes:

Fiction:
√ Crown Duel (2-IN-1)
by Sherwood Smith

Diana Tregarde Investigates (3-IN-1) -
by Mercedes Lackey

√ (4/13) Fairest
by Gail Carson Levine

History of the adventures of Joseph Andrews and of his friend Mr. Abraham Adams; and, An apology for the life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews
by Henry Fielding ; edited by Douglas Brooks-Davies

√ The Invention of Hugo Cabret
by Brian Selznick

(4/14) Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
by Susanna Clarke

√ Princess Academy, √ Goose Girl, √ Enna Burning, and √ River Secrets
by Shannon Hale

√ The Sherwood Ring
by Elizabeth Marie Pope

(4/25) Tempting Fate by Esther Friesner
Wintersmith -
by Terry Pratchett

Non-Fiction:
√ Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide
by Henry Jenkins

Curry : a tale of cooks and conquerors
by Lizzie Collingham

Female chauvinist pigs: women and the rise of raunch culture
by Ariel Levy

Knowledge deficit: closing the shocking education gap for American children
by E.D. Hirsch, Jr.

Irving Penn: a career in photography
edited by Colin Westerbeck; with contributions by Rosamond Bernier

Photographic facts and formulas
by E.J. Wall and Franklin I. Jordan

Reading matters: what the research reveals about reading, libraries, and community
by Catherine Sheldrick Ross, Lynne (E.F.) McKechnie, and Paulette M. Rothbauer

√ (4/22-4/26) Something from the oven: reinventing dinner in 1950's America
by Laura Shapiro

√ (4/15-4/17 ) There goes the neighborhood: racial, ethnic, and class tensions in four Chicago neighborhoods and their meaning for America -
by William Julius Wilson and Richard P. Taub.

The trouble with diversity: how we learned to love identity and ignore inequality
by Walter Benn Michaels

Other books I just bought but I've read before:

The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls by Brumberg, Joan

Deadly Persuasion: Why Women And Girls Must Fight The Addictive Power Of Advertising
by Jean Kilbourne

Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls
by Mary Pipher

also: several silly romance novels & advice books from the thrift store