Hey, lookit me! I'm old!

34 as of yesterday, to be precise. No secrets on this blog....

I like to think i share my birthday month with thousands of Brood X cicadas; not again til I'm 51, what a thought! Anyway, it was lovely, I bought some perennials for my yard, went to lunch with my mom, went to a baseball game with Karen and Andy, saw some fireworks, had a great time. Tonight I'll be going out with a few friends, including the now-infamous Rat Girl and Butterfly Woman. Tiptop in the loot department, got a bike helmet and a Camelbak, a David Sedaris book and a set of handkerchiefs. What more could a girl ask for?

Dep-itty Do Dah Day

Pictures can be found here. The before picture is me about a month ago, doing my monkey face. The after pictures are one wet, with gel still glimmering on my bonnie brown hair, and the other is after it's dried and gotten mucked around a bit. In the background of the latter is my hammock, which is right now the best thing I own. (Well, other than the bottle of Dep, of course.) I've had this hammock since I went to Brazil in 2000; I bought it because everyone there sleeps in hammocks all the time--at least in small villages in Amazonas, which is where we were. So, romantically, I thought I would use it to kick back on the boat we were in. Then I realized that all the hammock hooks on the boat were right over the sides; while our Amazonian boat dudes cheerfully swung their hammocks from these hooks each night, I was confident that any attempt to mount a hammock hung in this fashion would end with me dropping about 20 feet straight down into the dark waters of the Rio Negro, never to be seen again. Undaunted, I brought it home to my rental house whose yard contained.... One. Tree. You see the problem. So when I moved here I was all about the hammock again, plenty of large trees here. So large, in fact, that I would have had to drill a huge eyebolt into them to secure the hammock since there were no branches at the proper height. Once again, I failed--didn't want to drill, and didn't trust the hardware I might have used to secure it. Now, finally, Restoration Hardware has come to my rescue with a miracle product: Tree Straps. With no harm to either tree, I am now swinging blissfully outdoors in my authentic Amazonian hammock on a daily basis. It rules.

(By the way, MLE, this is your cue to say, "My god, Cathy, you haven't aged a day since college!" Since I don't think we've actually seen each other since 1991.... Or at least, don't say "My God, Cathy, what happened to you....")

Behold, the Power of Gel....

Pardon the lengthy pause. Just presume that had I been blogging in the last couple weeks, the posts would have been titled as follows: "It was hot at work today." "Why won't it rain? I hate watering plants. It was hot at work!" "I found a $100 bill in the street, so I'm probably going to die soon." and "Jesus, it's hot."

I'm pretty OCD about my hair. Actually, I'm pretty OCD about a lot of things, but that's another story. (At least I'm not OCD about watering the petunias on the trellises at work--wait, that's ANOTHER other story. Rewind. Hair.) My haircut hasn't changed substantially in quite some time, and I tend to obsess just a little about its length and shagginess level.... But the summer weather has conspired against me, as you can see in all those posts I didn't write; I finally decided it was time to get my hair cut short. Not super short, but a lot shorter than I usually do. It's sad how freaked I was at this prospect before I finally did it--would my ears show? Would they look stupid? Would >I< look stupid? Would people point and laugh? Rationally, of course I know no one except me gives a crap what my hair looks like, but irrationally it's right up there with, say, the Space Program and Oprah's Book Club. So I bit the bullet, got the cut, and you know, it looked just fine! And felt cool, which was key.

Well, the next thing I knew, the trickle of change led to a rivulet of styling gel. Two friends, who we'll refer to here as Rat Girl and Butterfly Woman (sort of to protect their identities, but mostly because it makes them sound like really lame superheroes) took me to Target, stood me in front of the hair products section, and forced me to select gel.
ME: How about this one? It says "Sports" on it!
BW: No.
ME: How about this one? It's in a cool shaped bottle!
RG: No! Be serious.
ME: Hey, this one is purple! Can I--
BOTH OF THEM: NO.
Eventually, the proper gel was selected--in an odd coincidence with previous posts, the one I chose was orange--and we went back to RG's house to sculpt me out. I have a powerful aversion to anything that reminds me of those horrible makeover slumber parties in 7th grade where they'd pick the one girl who didn't wear makeup (me) and hold her down while they "fixed her up." But I trust the dynamic duo, stifled the tiny flame of internal panic, and let them do my hair. It was fun. Admittedly I look kind of like the dudes from "Grease," in the Go Greased Lightnin' number... But I kinda like it. It's worth 2 extra minutes in the morning and a glob of orange non-sport "Dep" gel. So we'll see how long it lasts.

Gardens, 911.

I know a lot of people have been asking themselves, "So what's wrong with Cathy? She hasn't injured herself or released a dangerous animal at the zoo in months!" I know, it's disappointing. I made up for it Friday, though, by self-inflicting an injury messy enough to require an accident report and a trip to the first aid office. Jane's first question: Was there an animal involved? No. Now that I'm working full time in the Gardens, I seldom have those rich opportunities to fall into animal enclosures that last summer afforded me. Mundanely, I caught my finger in the door to West Receiving, removing a small circle of skin and causing me to bleed profusely. I thought I'd actually broken it, because it hurt like a...well, it hurt a whole lot. I stumbled back through the door, gripping my finger with my other hand, tears mingling with the sweat on my face (it was plenty hot here Friday, and I'd been out planting red, white, and blue petunias for the holiday weekend. Curse you, patriotic spirit of the 4th!) Anyway, so my coworker, Susan, is one of the nicest people I've ever worked with. She's a Christian, and disapproves of obscenity, so I try very hard when I'm around her to curb my natural tendencies toward profane utterance. I drop into a chair, blood dripping from my hand, teeth clenched, and Susan is going, "You look like you're going to faint! Are you OK? I'll call security. We'll take you to Summit (the occupational health clinic) right away and get it x-rayed!" I didn't want to tell her that the reason I looked so agonized was not just the extreme pain in my hand, or the sight of blood--I don't faint--but because I was trying so hard to supress the torrent of obscenity which would, under other circumstances, have been flooding from my lips.

All's well, though, no x-ray needed, just bandages and antibiotic ointment. Maybe next time I'll have a butterfly related injury for you all.... but this time, just a door.

Supersize THIS....

I'm never eating fast food again. Seriously. In the space of two weeks I've gone completely off it. This is a result of an impulse buy at Borders, and having gone to see a movie for the first time since Return of the King came out in December. This is going to be hard.... But honest to god! Yeesh.

I picked up Fast Food Nation when I was shopping for father's day presents at Borders. This was a testament to the power of product placement; it was right on the corner of a gondola en route to the cashwrap, faced out in a bulk stack, with a bright colored cover. I didn't plan to buy anything for myself on the way in; on the way out, I was a tool. So I bought it (though I see by my link above that I could have bought it for $8 less used on Amazon....damn) and have been horribly entranced by its sordid tales of the history of fast food culture and the deplorable state of the meatpacking industry in America. While there is a certain amount of sensationalism in its tone, and a lot of bashing of "Republicans in Congress" as if a) they were a homogenous entity, and b) Democrats weren't also responsible for the passage of much of the harmful legislation he details, it's still a frightening, fascinating book. All I can say is, read it. Give it to your friends when you're done with it. And then go out and buy some fresh produce and a new cookbook.

"Supersize Me", if you haven't heard of it, is a documentary film by a guy who went on an All-McDonalds diet for 30 days, in order to disprove the company's assertion that there is no direct link between eating their food and ill health. Of course we all know that fast food isn't great for you, but many Americans still eat it 4-5 times a week. Eating McDonalds 21 times a week for 4 weeks is excessive (some would say nuts, including the filmmaker's vegan girlfriend) but it does demonstrate a very clear link between the food and overall health. He gains 20 lbs. His liver begins to malfunction. His sex drive drops. His moods swing. It's excessive, but hey--so is America.

On that happy note, I'm off to Chicago for the Taste. I plan to gorge myself on all foods not fast; it's worth the 3 hour drive.

ZOOBILATION:(n.) the act of zoobilating; to zoobilate

There is nothing like seeing nearly 4000 people in formalwear drinking heavily at your place of employment. I know, coz I've seen it. This year I volunteered to be on the cleanup crew for the zoo's big fundraising event. The deal was, I got to empty trash for 6 hours, and in exchange I got a T-shirt, twice my usual wage per hour, and free food. Big deal, you say, free food--but Zoobiliation isn't the premiere black-tie event in this city for nothin'! Every high-end restaurant in Indy has a booth there serving Taste-of-Chicago style portions of classy food, included in the ticket price along with all the alcohol you can consume. Naturally, on the clock as I was, the latter was not an option; but the former nearly killed me. Filet mignon, shrimp, oysters, beef tenderloin, fried chicken, key lime pie, strawberries dipped in a fountain of chocolate.... All admittedly consumed on the run while emptying trash, but still! The Hungry Tiger would have been proud of me. I'd been warned that the job would be horrible, smelly, dirty, and with the chance of unpleasant surprises (like the crew last year who stumbled upon a couple engaged in, shall we say, consentual activities near the goat petting yard. Appropriately, this area of our zoo is called "Encounters.") Instead, it was the best food I've had in ages; I got to scope out the rich and famous of our fair city, saw some lovely (and not so lovely) formal dresses and tuxedoes crowding the pathways of the zoo, and got to see what a real fundraising event is like. Lord knows I'll never be able to afford a ticket to something like this! But man.... what a party.

No fun.

This is a short one, and it's not pleasant. A good pal of mine's mom died suddenly of a heart attack this week. Her funeral was today. Like a lot of people, I think of heart attacks as primarily a men's health problem; but that's not true at all. It's a leading cause of death for women, and the symptoms of a heart attack are in many ways different for women than for men. This can lead to a slow or missed diagnosis when the symptoms begin. So go to this site now, and read up on it. You owe it to yourself to be informed, both for yourself and for the women you know and care about. Also, I know I don't have many friends who smoke. But if you do--knock it off. Seriously. Do whatever it takes you to stop, because honest to god no one deserves to get a phone call like this. Not your friends, not your family. We read about the slow painful deaths, like lung cancer and emphysema; but smoking can kill you quickly too, and it's every bit as horrible for those left behind. Think about it.

Wide World of Shorts...er, Sports.

It's raceday at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway: the Indy 500, Indianapolis' secular Mardi Gras. I have almost no interest in car racing, as it happens, despite growing up here. A certain amount of "race fever" is unavoidable if you live in Indy.... I learned my color names in kindergarten from the assorted race flags (though darned if I remember what they mean--there's a blue one with an orange stripe, what the heck IS that?) If you live anywhere on the west side of Indy you can hear the cars running on race day; it's like a distant hive of angry bees, or a spaceship warming up for takeoff. It's been going on all day today, since the weather has been poor (but not bad enough to call it off) they've been running under a red or yellow flag for a good part of the afternoon which means they're running "slow" and it's taking hours longer than it ordinarily would. I turned on the radio a bit ago to hear what's up and they were only on Lap 130 (out of 200)... so they may overlap with the Pacer game tonight, which is unfortunate.

But that's not what I came here to talk about! In an effort to make my blog more hip and relevant to today's blognews junkies, I'm pointing out a crucial news item I read yesterday. It's not about our horribly screwed up government, or Kerry's military service, or Bush's tie this time....in keeping with today's theme, it's about sports. At the French Open this week, Russian tennis star Marat Safin pulled down his shorts and flashed a moon to celebrate making a difficult shot against his opponent. ("Safin Cheeky in 5-Set Win", Chicago Tribune May 29) He got penalized a point for this, and was furious that match officials saw something wrong with him dropping his drawers. The best part in this article was this quote:
SAFIN: I felt like it was a great point for me. I felt like pulling my pants down. What's bad about it?"
Yeah--everytime I have a personal triumph, my first impulse is to pull MY pants down. I used to do it all the time in fencing. I think I saw Ron Artest moon the Detroit bench in the playoff game Friday night. My friend Jeremy, a labor lawyer, always moons the courtroom after a particularly incisive cross-examination. (At least, I bet he does. He probably thinks about it.)

Up til now, I'd have said that professional tennis interested me even less than car racing.... but now that I know there's shorts-dropping action at the French Open, I'm going to be a fan for life.

It's not the heat, it's the stupidity.

I know, I haven't blogged in a while. The reason isn't particularly exciting; it's that, frankly, working outdoors in 85 degree heat and 80% humidity utterly exhausts me. Call me feeble and old... but every day for the last two weeks I've come home and basically fallen over. I've only had one day off since I got back from N.O., and I don't even remember what I did with it. I think I slept.

So what's to blog about? I could blog about the basketball playoffs--it's that time of year again, and my team (the Indiana Pacers) are in the conference finals. But that pretty much says it all about that, I'm rabidly watching TV when I should be cleaning my house, working in my yard, or gaming. I could blog more about work--like i said, it's drippingly hot. In the last two weeks I've developed a handsome tan, which stops just above my elbows and below my neck. I've also developed tons of bruises and the Death-Of-A-Thousand-Tiny-Cuts on my forearms from weeding in the Sun Garden. I could blog about my new hobby of trying to learn to identify bird songs; I have a CD, but it's like learning a new language. Well, a language where all the phrases mean things like "Hello! I'm a cardinal! Hello! I'm a cardinal!" Conversational, no. Interesting, yes. Going outside now is kind of amazing, i'?s like there's this background soundtrack that I'd never really paid attention to before and now I'm discovering it's this intricate web of signals between birds I didn't even know existed. There's a kingfisher hanging out on the canal lately, and I find it amazing that I know where he is even though I hardly ever see him. Yeah, OK, I'm easily amazed.

I had thought I'd blog about blogging this week, but this post is already getting longer than I'd anticipated without me ever actually having talked about anything, so I'll save that for the weekend.

Nawlins Rocks...

I got to spend 4+ days in New Orleans last week, leaving behind the daily grind of lawnmowing which had dominated both my life and my last two posts. I remember New Orleans as being a fabulous city from a brief visit 12 years ago; needless to say, Big Easy didn?t let me down on my return.

I thought about following Jane's post-trip model by scoring the major elements of my trip on a scale of A - F.... but I hate to be a copycat. Instead, I'll just pick out a few bits and pieces of things I noticed while I was there.

The Pigeons of Jackson Square. Jackson Square is known for its psychics and palmists and buskers. For my money, though, the scariest thing in Jackson Square are the pigeons. They're not like ordinary pigeons.... they're kind of greasy and vaguely scrofulous-looking. If a bum that looked like those pigeons came up to you, you'd give him five bucks just to leave you alone.
(Incidentally, I did not opt to have my fortune read. There were an awful lot of psychics there at little tables, and no one seemed to be doing good business when I passed by; I was afraid things might get ugly if I actually selected one psychic over another:
ME: What do you see?
PSYCHIC: I see....I see the large peroxided man three tables down breaking your kneecaps after you leave my table....
ME: Uh oh.
I did, however, pay $1 to a guy whose sandwich board read "I tell jokes for money." He did. It wasn?t a great joke, but hell, it was only $1. Maybe for $5 I could have gotten the one about the priest, the rabbi, and the insurance salesman.)

Food. I'm known, in some small circles, as The Hungry Tiger due to my ability to pretty much eat at any time. I'm nearly always hungry. Naturally, this means New Orleans is a baaaad place to be. I ate so much excellent food, it's a wonder I was able to fit into my Conferencewear (tm) by the time of my presentation.

Fishies. The very first thing I did Wednesday--literally, I dropped my bag at the hotel and started walking--was go to the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas. Pricy, yes, but worth every penny. It was amazing, one of the best facilities I've been to--and I've been to quite a few aquariums in my day. Hell, I worked in one until very recently! Our seahorses are nice, we've got more of them, but AoA's setting for theirs is exquisite. Man. Wow.

The Morial Convention Center.Jesus, that thing is huge. And I thought Javitts was big! Naturally, my conference was on the way far end of it, entailing a hell of a lot of walking in somewhat restrictive shoes. I doubt this did anything to mitigate the food mentioned above, though.

Chillin' in the French Quarter. Despite the Morial's vastness, I made my escape from the conference on a regular basis. I hit the Cafe du Monde. I found a magic and oddities shop called "Sideshow," which is owned by Elizabeth Anderson, wife of Harry Anderson of "Night Court" and SNL fame. I prowled around the voodoo shops and bought a tiny, worried-looking little matchstick poppet. Best of all, I hooked up with Marguerite, who I hadn't seen in about 5 years; she showed me around, took me out for good food and great music, and I had a blast. Overall, an excellent week. And now, back to the land of John Deere and 12-12-12 fertilizer.

FIRST BLOOD, PART DEUX

Yeah, it's a little like being Rambo... only with a lawnmower. And with my shirt on.

I started my seasonal gig at WRG yesterday, and I'm already bleeding. Now, you might think that my injury potential has declined this year since I'm not actually working in or near the animal enclosures--WRG has no penguins. However, it does have rosebushes. The Gardens consist of two main parts; a Conservatory, which houses the butterfly show I worked at in March and April, and a series of outdoor gardens over about 3 acres of ground. The tour de force (from a marketing standpoint) is the "Wedding Garden" which is, of course, designed to be rented out for weddings. It's a large swath of green turf lawn, bordered by crushed limestone paths on one side and a brick walk covered by a trellis on the other. Framing the edges of the garden are those typical wedding plants, the rosebushes. One of my new duties is to mow the wedding garden, in perfect stripes and along the edges... which is where the blood part comes in. Just a few scratches, of course, but still. A peculiar thing, as my coworker pointed out, is that people like to sit and watch you mow the wedding garden. I'm not sure why this is--do they wish THEY were mowing the wedding garden? Are they fantasizing that their own lawns might someday look like this ode to turf? Or are they just glad to see someone else sweating behind a mower? Either way, sure enough, once i got started, a family of three just sat on one of the benches watching me mow. Point being, of course, that this seriously curtailed the stream of profanity that might otherwise have resulted from my encounter with the rosebushes. Just as well, a cussing gardener doesn't reflect well on the Gardens or the Zoo. Still, though.... %$#@&!

The First Cut Is the Deepest....

I like mowing my lawn. (Before you ask—no. I would not like mowing your lawn. Anything I'm about to say here applies to my lawn, and my lawn only.)

Ahem. I like mowing my lawn. Today I got home from work a bit early; the sun was shining; I was eating an ice cream cone; and I thought to myself, I'd like to mow the lawn! Admittedly, the urge to mow probably had something to do with the fact that I've got two 10-12 page papers due in the next two days.... But still, I hadn't mowed yet this spring, so it was a positive impulse and I felt I should act on it.

When I say lawn, by the way, I mean "lawn" in the loosest sense of the word. My lawn is made up of 25% shady fescue grass, 40% violets and ground ivy, 5% dandelions, 20% undesireable grass, 9% peculiar unidentified weeds, and 1% lovely little wildflowers which I feel guilty if I accidentally mow over them. Trillium, solomon's seal, virginia bluebell, spiderwort—all tiny, colorful blobs of guilt. So mowing can be kind of an adventure. After mowing for fun and profit last summer at the Zoo, I got accustomed to perfectly green, thick turf; mowed it in different striped patterns each week, just like the guys on the baseball fields, all of it very mathematically precise, neat, and trim. My yard, on the other hand, cannot be mowed in stripes because of the profusion of large trees. The patterns are marred by my occasional swerves around the trillium. And "perfectly green" and "thick" are not words we'd use to describe the fescue/violet/weed mixture. Still, when all's said and done, and it's all evenly cut and smelling nice and looking sharp with little dots of violet still showing here and there.... Ahhhh. Does a body good! Papers, schmapers...

some might say...

Some might say it’s odd that i get along with my ex’s current Significant Other. Frankly, I find it a little odd myself... There are times when i find it very difficult to be around the two of them together. But then there are also times like Saturday night, when I took Ex and the C.S.O. out to the bars to celebrate CSO’s 21st birthday:

(in my driveway, preparing to leave)
EX: Cathy, you should show (CSO) the ‘Stang!

ME: Err...sure, if you’d like to see it..... (opens garage to reveal bright red 1965 Mustang v-6 Coupe, driven only on special occasions.)

CSO: Oh. My. God.

ME: (shyly) You like it?

CSO: If there’s ever any errands I could run for you, in this car, like if you wanted coffee or something and you didn’t have time to go get it yourself...

EX: You’d be her bitch?

CSO: I would SO be your coffee bitch.

Seriously, how can I dislike her? She’d be my coffee bitch. Hee hee hee....

The Right Loses Ground...

Right brain that is--though it's been a bad week for the political right as well. While I didn't actually watch the president's press conference, I did read the transcript (scary) and saw a photo of his tie (even scarier. who dressed him? it's like the secret identity hypno-tie from The Tick...) I swear, sometimes I almost think the conspiracy theorists have it right--else how does someone who is so bad at thinking on his feet get to be the leader of the most powerful nation in the world? Whether you love him or hate him, that Q and A sure didn't make him look good.

I'm sorry, what were we talking about? Oh yeah, my brain. After a look at the bank balance--dismal!--and a ride to and from work yesterday on the old bike with the new cushy non-orange seat, I've decided to stick to what I know for a while yet. At least til I know if I've got a new job. Second interview Monday, at long last. I'm in financial crisis mode at the moment not just because my cash inflow is poor, but because I'm going to a conference in early May and have been unable to secure funding assistance from either my school or from the Association of Midwest Museums, to whom I applied for a scholarship back in February. So I may be eating the $250 in registration fees and $300+ in airfare myself. Plus health insurance, plus mortgage...makes May an ugly month for me... So no new bike for me yet. I'll be lucky if I can afford a shellacked carrot.*

*see previous comments field. sheesh! my response to your suggestions is finally posted....

Wheels'n'Deals

It begins to look as if, one way or another, I’ll be working in White River State Park for at least part of the summer. I can get there by bike in 45 minutes, entirely on scenic bike paths; so I’ve begun to think about biking to work. (Never mind that, if I’m working at the zoo again this summer, the odds of my feeling like biking home after pushing a lawnmower for 8 hours in Indiana heat and humidity are approximately zilch. I’ve never generated so much sweat in my life.... First purchase for Gardens work this summer will be a water bottle with a belt-hook. Second will be a pair of steel-toe tennis shoes, hopefully made with more comfort in mind than my trusty-yet-painful Wolverines from last year. But I digress.)

Anyway, so thoughts of biking naturally lead to the thought of buying a new bike. My old bike is a black Schwinn “World” 10-speed, purchased in 1984 for my fourteenth birthday present. It was one of those defining childhood moments--a grownup bike, and I got to pick it out myself at Mac’s Broad Ripple Bicycle Shop. I test drove it. I may have even kicked the tires. It was a big deal; it was my first taste of transportational freedom. I still have a very clear memory of my first trip to the McDonalds at 96th and Meridian, independent of parental conveyance.... so the thought of buying a new bike brings a tear to my eye. But nostalgia aside, the seat is harder than a rock and bruises the hell out of my butt. So I went to the bike store to look around, and the two halves of my brain discussed our options.

RIGHT BRAIN: We should get a new bike!

LEFT BRAIN: We should carefully examine our options, read up on different brands, do some web research, and--

RIGHT BRAIN: I like this one!

LEFT BRAIN: Wait--

RIGHT BRAIN: It’s orange!

LEFT BRAIN: Think for a minute. You want to spend $350, which I remind you we don’t actually have, on a Trek Adventure 4000, just because it’s orange.

RIGHT BRAIN: It’s orange! And shiny! We should buy it.

LEFT BRAIN: That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.

RIGHT BRAIN: You said that when we bought the iMac, too.

LEFT BRAIN: Sigh....True ‘dat.

In the end, I bought a new cushy seat for the Schwinn for $25 instead. But....mmm....orange Trek Adventure 4000....mmmm.....It could happen.

STOMP. STOMP. STOMP.

With the success of the previous quiz, I decided I'd better try Ravenblack's other offerings before moving on with the blog. Check me out:

I am Kong. Strong and passionate, I tend to be misunderstood, sometimes even feared. I don't want to fight, I don't want to cause trouble, all I ask is a little love, and a little peace. If I don't get what I want, I get angry, and throw barrels and flaming oil at whatever's stopping me. What Pre-1985 Video Game Character Are You?

I am a Fedora. The hat of the adventurous, I am spontaneous and active, perhaps sometimes a little foolishly. Regardless, I always come out alright. What Sort of Hat Are You?

I am the sonnet, never quickly thrilled; Not prone to overstated gushing praise Nor yet to seething rants and anger, filled With overstretched opinions to rephrase; But on the other hand, not fond of fools, And thus, not fond of people, on the whole; And holding to the sound and useful rules, Not those that seek unjustified control. I'm balanced, measured, sensible (at least, I think I am, and usually I'm right); And when more ostentatious types have ceased, I'm still around, and doing, still, alright. In short, I'm calm and rational and stable - Or, well, I am, as much as I am able. What Poetry Form Are You?

This very well may be the best quiz site ever. (Oh, and my backups were tomato, "Jet-Pack Man," whoever that was, a transparent visor, and a haiku.)

Mmmm.....Beefy.....

I swear, these quizzes just get stranger and stranger.

I taste like Beef. I taste like beef. I'm probably made of beef. You are what you eat, they say, and if the title didn't mean something else, I would be a beefeater. I think red meat is good for you. Puts hair on your chest. What Flavour Are You?

What can I say? I'm what's for dinner.

*Insert Tortured Artist Here*

When I have schoolwork due, art suffers. (Obviously, if I were an actual art student, I wouldn't be having this problem. Or maybe I would, and it would be even more emotionally devastating.) The real problem is, since people are actually PAYING me for the stuff I paint--in some cases, pre-paying me--there's a whole level of guilt associated with not painting in addition to the general frustration of spending my time poring over financial statements instead of happily dabbing tiny dots of paint onto little lead soldiers. They say you have to suffer for art... Reading financial statements is suffering.... Therefore, doing my homework makes me a better artist! Or, not.

All's well in butterfly-land. I'd add more links for cool pictures, but I'm still recovering from the firestorm of commentary on my last ones. We've got African butterflies now, from Kipepeo Project in Nairobi. ("Kipepeo" means "butterfly" in Swahili. That's your educational moment for today, thank you for your attention.) They're very cool, though I'm fairly sure that 90% of the patrons I've talked to weren't suitably impressed by the presence of Kenyan butterflies. They're all too busy trying to photograph the Blue Morphos. Taking a good photo of a Morpho is only slightly easier than taking a good photograph of the Invisible Man; when they're flying they're very fast and very erratic, and when they land they close their wings and the blue vanishes. So people run back and forth across the conservatory, pointing their cameras, pressing the button, looking at the digital replay screen and going "Dammit!" and starting over. I took my own camera to work Wednesday, to see what I could get, and even I couldn't get a nice Morpho picture over the course of 8 hours. Did get some other nice ones though, which I might post over on my website if people are interested...

Had my first interview with the Eiteljorg yesterday, but I think public posting any details would be verbotten; I'll just say, it went fine, second interviews are in a week and we'll see if I get called back. I'm also considering applying at Starbucks, I hear they give staff a free pound of coffee per month!

More Mythinformation...

I'm sad to report that the old saw, "Butterflies Are Free," is untrue. They are not, in fact, free; I know this, because I've seen the invoices.

I've been a Butterfly Keeper at White River Gardens for two weeks now, and frankly it's kind of dull. Butterflies don't really need a whole lotta keeping. When a new shipment of chrysalises comes in, we take a pvc rod and a glue gun, and hot glue their little asses to the rod (which understandably sometimes causes them to wriggle suddenly, which causes me to drop them, which occasionally causes them to squash. I don't enjoy gluing duty much; the combination of guilt and seared fingertips from the hot glue makes the whole process somewhat unappealing.) I do like the part where we let them out of the hatching chamber after their wings are dry, and I like working in the Conservatory, which is warm, humid, and increasingly filled with colorful Lepidopterae. Which Lepidopterae, you ask? Lots of Zebra Longwings, some Saphos, some Julias, Postmen, Malachites, Owls, and everyone's favorites, the Blue Morphos. And lots of others that I don't have the patience to search for links for. Anyway, it's a fun job. Except for the occasional squashing.

The Little Engine That Couldn't....

Yep, once again I had to go for the Indy Zoo mandatory employee drug test, and just like last year, it was utter, complete torture for me, both mental and physical. "Matter over Mind" isn't easy for me, when I'm in a stainless steel bathroom holding a plastic cup with a built-in thermometer while a nurse stands outside the door saying brightly, "How we doing in there?" We're not. Doing. Anything. God....

So not much to report, other than the fact that school is picking up steam and about to kick me in the butt. I spent last week working a temp gig at the Eiteljorg Museum of Native Americans and Western Art, and next week I start my long-term temp gig at the White River Gardens, a part of the Indianapolis Zoo, where I worked last summer. I've been idly paying attention to the democratic primary, but it all seems rather pointless since by the time Indiana's time rolls around everything is decided. This is one of two things about our election system that utterly defy logic, to me. One is that the primaries are so spread out; it would make much more sense to me for the candidates to campaign nationwide, have some debates, and then all the primaries are held on the same day, just like the general election. (Kerry still probably would have won, but still... I'm still pissed that I wasn't able to cast a meaningful vote for McCain, because the momentum had turned Bush's way long before our primary thanks to his dirty campaign tactics.) The other thing that buffaloes me is why electoral votes are cast in a bloc, in every state except I think Maine... Why are the electors not required to cast a vote that reflects the majority of voters' choice within their electoral district (or whatever it's called?) This strikes me as a complete reversal of the whole point of the electoral system, and I can see no reason why it should work the way it does. Certain areas of Indiana tend to vote more liberally (central and northwestern) but since those areas are outnumbered by the more conservative areas, my votes for moderate to liberal presidential candidates have never "counted" for anything. I know lots of folks who say "why should I vote? Indiana always goes Republican," and there's no good answer for it.

And as long as I'm being all political-chatty, if you haven't read my friend Jeremy's post on the legal definition of marriage, go take a gander. He does an excellent job refuting those folks who say that "marriage" should be an immutable legal term.