J.K. Rowling has finally confirmed what we always knew - Dumbledore is gay! YES!!!!
Back to work, and to squealing with glee.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Touching interspecies encounters.
Full disclosure bids me note that there's content similar to this in my LiveJournal. That aside, animal stories: There have been several lately, amidst other things. I should probably take them in chronological order.
On more predominantly bipedal fronts, I had a wonderful visit to Montreal last week and early this. I spent a lot of time, and had a lot of fun, hanging out with friends from my program and my house. It was wonderful to see all of them - everyone seems to have had a rejuvenating, low-stress summer, with plenty of good anecdotes and insights to swap. I'll avoid listing them here, for fear of this entry running miles and miles long, and just say that we had a great time running around the city and making the usual sorts of mischief. I will also say that as good a time as I had, the sense of it being a good-bye visit was a lot more emotionally wrenching than I had anticipated. I knew it would be a bit difficult, just as I know that between future vacations and a million different conferences, symposia, appointments, and professional liaisons, we'll probably be sick of the sight of each other before I'm much past thirty. (Just kidding - I heartily doubt we'll actually be sick of each other, but you take my point.) But for all that, I was struck by the sense of being somewhere I couldn't call home anymore. That's the first time in my life that's ever happened to me because of my own choices. I thought I was more or less inured to all those emotions - moving every few years for my dad's job when I was growing up, leaving a place to which I never had time to get attached to go to college (university), getting my bachelor's and having to leave my small, beloved college like everyone else since it was entirely undergraduate... I could have stayed in Montreal. I could have gotten my doctorate there and stayed with the people I know, with my friends, and had it been economically and academically feasible. And instead I've chosen to leave. I don't think I've chosen wrong; the reasons for my decision continue to ring true for me, and to outweigh the reasons for staying. Mais le cœur a ses raisons que la raîson ne connait pas..
That's enough of the melancholy nonsense for now, I suppose. No need to get more maudlin yet, or at greater length, and I need to get to the gym. As always, there's more to say, but that's what subsequent entries are for.
So last week, I was going out to run an errand with my mother. We were backing out of the garage when we saw that there was a lizard on the hood (the bonnet) of the car. It was a decent-sized garden one, maybe three or four inches from nose to tail's tip, mostly a medium-brown colour but with a light stripe down its back and a reddish-orange head. Rather cute, actually. Anyway, Mom, who was driving, backed up so that we'd be nearest the garden, and then I got out of the car. I picked up a chip of mulch and held it near the lizard, intending to use my hand to herd it onto the mulch and set it in the garden. It's best to avoid picking lizards up with your hand if you can, so that you don't accidentally hold them too hard and so that they don't flip out and wriggle or, more likely leap, away.
Needless to say, I had no such luck. The lizard would have nothing to do with the mulch chip, so I had to pick it up (gently). It would have none of that either. It promptly leapt from my fingers onto my forearm, and then onto my sternum. Initially it headed down my blouse and scurried around my bra a little bit before deciding that it wanted to go the other direction. So it ran up to my neck, where I halfway caught it before it leapt into my hair, which was tied back. It did some further scurrying around my head before I managed to catch it again (lizards can move faster than human fingers; that's the crux of the whole problem). This time, when it leapt, I was kneeling by the grass so that it landed in the garden and went about its lizard business. Throughout this whole process, my dad was watering the butterfly garden and laughing hysterically. It was great.
Needless to say, I had no such luck. The lizard would have nothing to do with the mulch chip, so I had to pick it up (gently). It would have none of that either. It promptly leapt from my fingers onto my forearm, and then onto my sternum. Initially it headed down my blouse and scurried around my bra a little bit before deciding that it wanted to go the other direction. So it ran up to my neck, where I halfway caught it before it leapt into my hair, which was tied back. It did some further scurrying around my head before I managed to catch it again (lizards can move faster than human fingers; that's the crux of the whole problem). This time, when it leapt, I was kneeling by the grass so that it landed in the garden and went about its lizard business. Throughout this whole process, my dad was watering the butterfly garden and laughing hysterically. It was great.
Second moment: I had a 6:45 a.m. flight out of the Burlington airport on Monday, so I was in the security screening line before six. (It was staffed, I might add, by the rudest initial screener I have ever witnessed, even accounting for the hour. And considering that I've had similarly scheduled flights out of Boston and New York, that's saying something.) The town of South Burlington, where it's located, is hardly an urban epicenter, any more than the airport is much beyond a pair of glorified landing strips, which is all it needs to be or should be. As I was standing there, listening to the ID/boarding pass-checking lady bitch out, in turn, an old lady with a cane, a later-middle-aged black South African couple travelling home for their son's funeral (they were ahead of me in the check-in line; the poor screener asked innocently), and a twenty-something couple with their two-month-old baby, when a bat flitted in. It wasn't acting odd or rabid (not surprising; only 0.5% of North American bats are); it was just flying around at the usual time for its pre-dawn insect meal and had gotten lost, and was clearly trying to find the exit. It circled around where I was standing a few times and was obviously trying to keep to open spaces and find bigger ones - i.e., looking for the exit. It flew the wrong way, into the concourse, a few times, and there were these occasional shrieks punctuating the low-level hum of early morning airport activity, and lots of people looking around and huddling up nervously. At which point I wanted to note aloud that it was a run-of-the-mill northern woodlands kind of bat, for crying out loud, not a rabid hyena. Fortunately, it eventually headed toward the exit and presumably winged its way home from there.
Third and most truly touching moment of interspecies bonding: Yesterday afternoon I was headed out of the house to run some errands at just the same time that Violet decided to go outside for her afternoon stroll and meditation time in the butterfly garden. (Mostly she likes the shade and butterflies; I've never seen her try to catch one.) She was sitting on the top of the steps leading to the driveway, contemplating her next move (stroll or nap?), just as I was closing the door behind me. I took a sip from my water bottle as I was locking up and promptly aspirated the mouthful instead of swallowing it. So my choke reflex did its job and activated in fine form, with the result that I was coughing hard enough to have my upper body convulse, hacking loudly and flailing my arms with exactly the amount of grace and restraint you would expect from me in that situation, which is to say none. It probably would have been a bit of spectacle if anyone had been watching me besides Violet. As it was, the noise was enough to cause her to turn her beautiful kitty head toward me and watch me with those wide blue eyes of hers, her expression utterly blank. I kept up with trying to clear my trachea for a few minutes, while she stared at me, motionless and completely detached. There wasn't anything I expected her to do, of course, but I found myself imagining her sitting there watching me in the throes of agony, idly half-wondering what the human was doing this time and which plant she should nap under. Also great.
On more predominantly bipedal fronts, I had a wonderful visit to Montreal last week and early this. I spent a lot of time, and had a lot of fun, hanging out with friends from my program and my house. It was wonderful to see all of them - everyone seems to have had a rejuvenating, low-stress summer, with plenty of good anecdotes and insights to swap. I'll avoid listing them here, for fear of this entry running miles and miles long, and just say that we had a great time running around the city and making the usual sorts of mischief. I will also say that as good a time as I had, the sense of it being a good-bye visit was a lot more emotionally wrenching than I had anticipated. I knew it would be a bit difficult, just as I know that between future vacations and a million different conferences, symposia, appointments, and professional liaisons, we'll probably be sick of the sight of each other before I'm much past thirty. (Just kidding - I heartily doubt we'll actually be sick of each other, but you take my point.) But for all that, I was struck by the sense of being somewhere I couldn't call home anymore. That's the first time in my life that's ever happened to me because of my own choices. I thought I was more or less inured to all those emotions - moving every few years for my dad's job when I was growing up, leaving a place to which I never had time to get attached to go to college (university), getting my bachelor's and having to leave my small, beloved college like everyone else since it was entirely undergraduate... I could have stayed in Montreal. I could have gotten my doctorate there and stayed with the people I know, with my friends, and had it been economically and academically feasible. And instead I've chosen to leave. I don't think I've chosen wrong; the reasons for my decision continue to ring true for me, and to outweigh the reasons for staying. Mais le cœur a ses raisons que la raîson ne connait pas..
That's enough of the melancholy nonsense for now, I suppose. No need to get more maudlin yet, or at greater length, and I need to get to the gym. As always, there's more to say, but that's what subsequent entries are for.
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Life in the swamp, and out of it
This won't be new to those of you who read my LiveJournal, because it's essentially a clone of an entry there. I'm thinking of maintaining that as a "clone" of content, just because. We'll see in time; the essential point for now is that there's no need to read both of them.
Second of all, life's been crazy lately. I'm in Florida with the family, trying to stay out of the sun and catch up on rest. I say "trying" because I'm running around madly trying to get ready for England - a million more things always seem to come up at the last minute. Fingers crossed and all that. In my free time, I've been going to the gym and getting caught up on my reading while I'm on the elliptical trainer. I haven't been so good at keeping up with the correspondence - I owe e-mail to everyone.
A few weeks ago I did get to spend some time in New York and visit my relatives in the area, as well as some old friends from my undergraduate days. That was really nice - everyone seems to be doing well, and the city wasn't even ungodly hot most of the time I was there. The Brooklyn Botanic Gardens were lovely, as they are for much of the year; the rose and water lily blooms were especially impressive. I also went to the Frick, where I'd never been before. It's a nice little collection, with some Vermeers and lovely medieval altarpieces, but I must say I got the impression that Frick gave his agent instructions simply to raid the studios of Gainsborough and Whistler. Whistler I adore, but I've always considered Gainsborough overrated as a portraitist, both on technical and expressive grounds. I suppose that makes me a philistine, but such is life.
I also went to the American Museum of Natural History, where I would never go ordinarily - looking at taxidermied animals is not my idea of fun (even if they were shot 100-150 years ago, Before Anyone Knew Better), and the dark lighting and boatloads of screaming children hardly add to the appeal. But they had two special exhibits I really wanted to see. The first was one on frogs - more than 200 live frogs were there in terrariums (terraria, properly), on loan from a reptile conservation centre. So many species - miniature golden frogs from China, huge American bullfrogs, poison dart frogs and mimics (more than in Montreal's Biodome, even), Vietnamese moss frogs (guess how they got their name), ornate horned frogs, and my personal favourite, the Mexican dumpy frog. It's far from dumpy-looking - it's a gorgeous, almost iridescent jade tone, with golden spots and - this is the best part - golden flecks in its eyes. Absolutely beautiful.
There was also an exhibit on mythical creatures, which runs through next January. What they've done is to divide a major wing of one floor into four sections: water, fire, air, and earth. They've got both papier-mache/fibreglass "life-size" creatures (dragons, sea monsters, unicorns, giant eagles) of their own creation and artifacts from cultures worldwide - engravings, prints, masks, amulets, costumes, totems, and other materials depicting all kinds of mer-people, dragons, sea monsters, giant birds and bird hybrids, flying horses, unicorns, you name it. There's a bit of rationalization in the tone - "When the Greeks wrote of Cyclopses, clearly they'd seen x fossil and were misinterpreting" - where it wasn't justified and more credit was due to imagination, but overall I was very impressed. There was another exhibit, co-sponsored by Tiffany's, on the geological and cultural history of gold. I went because it was three-for-two admission, but I was rather disappointed: it explored only a few historical/cultural periods, all in a very cursory fashion, and went with a lot of huge displays of mass-produced ingots and coins minted in the last 30 years. The bad lighting didn't help. On the positive side, at least I didn't have to pay to see it.
Closer to Florida-home, the butterfly garden is flourishing despite the heat, and there always seem to be a couple of swallowtails and yellow sulfurs flitting about, as well as metalmarks, various kinds of fritillaries, and the occasional hummingbird. Mom saw a bunny in the yard today, and one of the wrens has recently taken to hanging around one of the shrubs where the dogs like to bark and sniff for lizards. (They never catch any - the barking in advance tends to alert them.) I hope she finds a good spot to nest; she usually does. And a few evenings ago, Hops pointed out an owl on our evening walk. I hear them all the time, but it's hard to catch more than the occasional glimpse. But Buddha was intently sniffing something and refused to move, and I noticed that Hops, rather than getting antsy, was staring up at the top of a light post, and actually "pointing" (it's reflexive for [part-]labs and pointers). I followed his nose, and there was a barred owl, sitting in the light and watching us intently. I pointed it out to Dad, and we spent a few minutes just staring us. It stared back and watched us as we went on. Hops did feel compelled to bark at it at that point, probably to say hello (knowing Hops), and it flew off to a nearby tree. It was incredible. The evening walks are terrific, actually, if I remember to apply insect repellent - about a week ago, I was able to watch a bat dancing in the air on its bug-catching routine. It's a pity so many people dislike bats; vampire ones excepted, they are beautiful, beautiful creatures.
The heat's a little much, of course, and on Tuesday I'm off to visit Montreal, with a possible side trip to Toronto. I'm looking forward to that, although I should get an edited copy of my thesis ready first. Before I do that, though, I should make good on my promise to provide pictures of my other animals, as they are in fact the loves of my life. That said, they're pretty photo-resistant, so I will simply provide links to images of breed representatives that are not a tenth as pretty. Violet, the love of my life, seems to be a flame-point Siamese who is far more beautiful than already-cute cats like these ones - these examples really don't do her justice, but she hates cameras. Zeke, as far as we can tell, to be a red Doberman, a far cuter version of this. He, too, has natural ears, although the vicious idiots who had him before our vet got him into the rescue league did dock his tail, which we certainly never would have done. The dear departed Freckles, when sleeping, looked astonishingly like this. He had a "tuxedo" coat and amber eyes, and liked to lick butter straight out of the tub. His predecessor, Cato, was a tall, fat, black-and-white short-hair with yellow-green eyes. He had a dull personality but a very good heart.
Second of all, life's been crazy lately. I'm in Florida with the family, trying to stay out of the sun and catch up on rest. I say "trying" because I'm running around madly trying to get ready for England - a million more things always seem to come up at the last minute. Fingers crossed and all that. In my free time, I've been going to the gym and getting caught up on my reading while I'm on the elliptical trainer. I haven't been so good at keeping up with the correspondence - I owe e-mail to everyone.
A few weeks ago I did get to spend some time in New York and visit my relatives in the area, as well as some old friends from my undergraduate days. That was really nice - everyone seems to be doing well, and the city wasn't even ungodly hot most of the time I was there. The Brooklyn Botanic Gardens were lovely, as they are for much of the year; the rose and water lily blooms were especially impressive. I also went to the Frick, where I'd never been before. It's a nice little collection, with some Vermeers and lovely medieval altarpieces, but I must say I got the impression that Frick gave his agent instructions simply to raid the studios of Gainsborough and Whistler. Whistler I adore, but I've always considered Gainsborough overrated as a portraitist, both on technical and expressive grounds. I suppose that makes me a philistine, but such is life.
I also went to the American Museum of Natural History, where I would never go ordinarily - looking at taxidermied animals is not my idea of fun (even if they were shot 100-150 years ago, Before Anyone Knew Better), and the dark lighting and boatloads of screaming children hardly add to the appeal. But they had two special exhibits I really wanted to see. The first was one on frogs - more than 200 live frogs were there in terrariums (terraria, properly), on loan from a reptile conservation centre. So many species - miniature golden frogs from China, huge American bullfrogs, poison dart frogs and mimics (more than in Montreal's Biodome, even), Vietnamese moss frogs (guess how they got their name), ornate horned frogs, and my personal favourite, the Mexican dumpy frog. It's far from dumpy-looking - it's a gorgeous, almost iridescent jade tone, with golden spots and - this is the best part - golden flecks in its eyes. Absolutely beautiful.
There was also an exhibit on mythical creatures, which runs through next January. What they've done is to divide a major wing of one floor into four sections: water, fire, air, and earth. They've got both papier-mache/fibreglass "life-size" creatures (dragons, sea monsters, unicorns, giant eagles) of their own creation and artifacts from cultures worldwide - engravings, prints, masks, amulets, costumes, totems, and other materials depicting all kinds of mer-people, dragons, sea monsters, giant birds and bird hybrids, flying horses, unicorns, you name it. There's a bit of rationalization in the tone - "When the Greeks wrote of Cyclopses, clearly they'd seen x fossil and were misinterpreting" - where it wasn't justified and more credit was due to imagination, but overall I was very impressed. There was another exhibit, co-sponsored by Tiffany's, on the geological and cultural history of gold. I went because it was three-for-two admission, but I was rather disappointed: it explored only a few historical/cultural periods, all in a very cursory fashion, and went with a lot of huge displays of mass-produced ingots and coins minted in the last 30 years. The bad lighting didn't help. On the positive side, at least I didn't have to pay to see it.
Closer to Florida-home, the butterfly garden is flourishing despite the heat, and there always seem to be a couple of swallowtails and yellow sulfurs flitting about, as well as metalmarks, various kinds of fritillaries, and the occasional hummingbird. Mom saw a bunny in the yard today, and one of the wrens has recently taken to hanging around one of the shrubs where the dogs like to bark and sniff for lizards. (They never catch any - the barking in advance tends to alert them.) I hope she finds a good spot to nest; she usually does. And a few evenings ago, Hops pointed out an owl on our evening walk. I hear them all the time, but it's hard to catch more than the occasional glimpse. But Buddha was intently sniffing something and refused to move, and I noticed that Hops, rather than getting antsy, was staring up at the top of a light post, and actually "pointing" (it's reflexive for [part-]labs and pointers). I followed his nose, and there was a barred owl, sitting in the light and watching us intently. I pointed it out to Dad, and we spent a few minutes just staring us. It stared back and watched us as we went on. Hops did feel compelled to bark at it at that point, probably to say hello (knowing Hops), and it flew off to a nearby tree. It was incredible. The evening walks are terrific, actually, if I remember to apply insect repellent - about a week ago, I was able to watch a bat dancing in the air on its bug-catching routine. It's a pity so many people dislike bats; vampire ones excepted, they are beautiful, beautiful creatures.
The heat's a little much, of course, and on Tuesday I'm off to visit Montreal, with a possible side trip to Toronto. I'm looking forward to that, although I should get an edited copy of my thesis ready first. Before I do that, though, I should make good on my promise to provide pictures of my other animals, as they are in fact the loves of my life. That said, they're pretty photo-resistant, so I will simply provide links to images of breed representatives that are not a tenth as pretty. Violet, the love of my life, seems to be a flame-point Siamese who is far more beautiful than already-cute cats like these ones - these examples really don't do her justice, but she hates cameras. Zeke, as far as we can tell, to be a red Doberman, a far cuter version of this. He, too, has natural ears, although the vicious idiots who had him before our vet got him into the rescue league did dock his tail, which we certainly never would have done. The dear departed Freckles, when sleeping, looked astonishingly like this. He had a "tuxedo" coat and amber eyes, and liked to lick butter straight out of the tub. His predecessor, Cato, was a tall, fat, black-and-white short-hair with yellow-green eyes. He had a dull personality but a very good heart.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
First post
This is my first post, so there isn't going to be much to it! I'll probably be using this baby either to replace or to mirror my LiveJournal, for the simple reason that it makes life easier by making it harder. Or something.
So, briefly: I am in Florida at the moment, anticipating going off to England to start my Ph.D. in a month. I spent a week in New York recently, visiting relatives and friends, and had a wonderful time. I'm off to Canada for a visit next week, and need to get ready for that - catching up on e-mail, nailing down details, etc. In the mean time, I've been spending time with my family, going to the gym obsessively, hanging out with my cat and dogs, and doing leisure reading. And, as always, wasting huge amounts of time.
To that end, I thought I should include a picture of two of the dogs, for those of you who don't know them. We used to have two dogs and two cats, but then the senior cat went to chase mousies in the sky, and Dad found a stray dog. Anyway, here are Hops and Buddha. Hops is a boxer/black lab mix with a bit of pointer thrown in - you can't see it in this picture, but he's got speckled paws. Buddha came to us with the name, having resembled a classical Chinese Buddha statue in his puppyhood. He is now quite conceivably the yappiest dog in existence, and incredibly hyper and spoiled. But we love him.
Zeke, the rescue-league Doberman, clearly needs a photographic presence on this blog. So too does Violet, the love of my life. She's a Siamese mix - white coat, orange tips. She is the best cat in the universe. But she hates being photographed. There should also be one of Freckles, her dear departed brother, who was a great fluffy orange thing. (They weren't biologically related.) I should work on that...
So, briefly: I am in Florida at the moment, anticipating going off to England to start my Ph.D. in a month. I spent a week in New York recently, visiting relatives and friends, and had a wonderful time. I'm off to Canada for a visit next week, and need to get ready for that - catching up on e-mail, nailing down details, etc. In the mean time, I've been spending time with my family, going to the gym obsessively, hanging out with my cat and dogs, and doing leisure reading. And, as always, wasting huge amounts of time.
To that end, I thought I should include a picture of two of the dogs, for those of you who don't know them. We used to have two dogs and two cats, but then the senior cat went to chase mousies in the sky, and Dad found a stray dog. Anyway, here are Hops and Buddha. Hops is a boxer/black lab mix with a bit of pointer thrown in - you can't see it in this picture, but he's got speckled paws. Buddha came to us with the name, having resembled a classical Chinese Buddha statue in his puppyhood. He is now quite conceivably the yappiest dog in existence, and incredibly hyper and spoiled. But we love him.
Zeke, the rescue-league Doberman, clearly needs a photographic presence on this blog. So too does Violet, the love of my life. She's a Siamese mix - white coat, orange tips. She is the best cat in the universe. But she hates being photographed. There should also be one of Freckles, her dear departed brother, who was a great fluffy orange thing. (They weren't biologically related.) I should work on that...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)