Warmth

Your breathing quickens, maybe the music is at fault. You’ve dozed off, having just scolded me for talking about your cat in a less than friendly manner. Your arm over me is comforting, I may even sleep this way. Love is warm, but its also humid.

Plan for reducing graffiti in the library bathroom

Here’s my plan for reducing graffiti in the library bathroom. Initially I thought dry erase boards would be good, but its not much of an improvement upon the chalkboards they have at L&C law school. My plan involves stereotypes and literature, or something close to it.

  • Bolt magazine rack to inside door of bathroom stall
  • make generalizations about the types of graffiti and the people who write them and select magazines based on those generalizations
  • put copies of Guns & Ammo, Adbusters, Christianity Today, Thrasher, The Source and Cosmopolitan (catch-all).
  • Impose time limit for bathrooms

Blogs for Geographers

Early geographers spent a good deal of their time traveling and writing about their experiences. One prolific explorer and author, Idrisi, chronicled his 75,000 miles of travels. Imagine how helpful blogging would have been for him. A nice content management system, a laptop, and a satellite modem would have been a good way to report from the field. Some of his descriptions were the first to reach the the new world, including detailed depictions of cities like Mogadishu.

Fleas?

Michelle was sitting on the couch the other day when a flea jumped onto her hand, then onto her shirt, then onto the couch, then it disappeared. We’ve seen a couple of fleas since, and gave both animals their flea medicine a week early to help combat an infestation. So far we’ve not seen enough to warrant real concern, but I assure you, Tigger will be sold on Ebay if we have to bomb the house. If anyone is looking for a 14 year old tabby/siamese mix that has a tendency to throw up on the furniture, vocalize loudly at 3am, and look pissed all the time, start thinking about how much you’d be willing to pay for him… :)

Guitarists

Need to fill a couple pages of your magazine? Put the names of guitarists into a hat and draw them out, and put them into a list in the order they come out. The list may not reflect any real order, but at least the pages will be full, and the “letters to the editor” section will have some interesting responses. What a crock.

laser eyes

Yesterday Michelle and I drove north to Redmond for a cousin’s wedding, then back again afterwards. It was a nice wedding and wonderful reception. However, Barley was at home alone, so we up and left sometime after the cake cutting. On the way back we stopped in Tacoma to visit Chris, and ended up eating Thai your mom pizza under the watch of a grizzly bear’s skeleton.

We left Tacoma about 11:30 p.m. The rain, having been absent for 3 months, decided to make up for lost time with a rather untimely downpour. Very few cars, lame wiper blades, and night driving aren’t fun, and by the time we pulled in to Portland around 2:30, my retinas were burning. Focusing on the wet road and holding the car steady as it drifted over the occasional puddle of water, the laser beams coming from my eyes and the stiff grip on the wheel quickly took their toll. Sleep seems to have repaired all the damage, but I fear there may be burn marks on the windshield where my gaze seared the glass. Hopefully it didn’t rain on the reception.

Out of the woodwork

While on our morning walk, Barley and I started noticing kids congregating at a house down on the corner. As we walked by the second time, there were roughly 15 kids, all dressed up with loaded bags and lunches waiting for the bus. School has just started, and the kids in the neighborhood are coming out of the woodwork. I had no idea there were so many in the area, all hidden away during the summer. Kind of sad that they weren’t outside playing, or riding their bikes around or something remotely kid-like.

Camping, Labor Day

This weekend was another of our biannual first floor camping trips. Scott has been designated with the chore of finding a place the the fewest people complain about getting to. I think he’s done a fine job, especially given the strain our group can put on a small area. We camped at Ipsut Creek on the Carbon River just a bit NW of Mount Rainier. It was a nice place, and was quite fun. Michelle, Sarah, the dogs, and I only stayed one night, which felt a little weird, but had the advantage of allowing her to do school work, and I home work (work at/on/around the home). I’ll be interested to see other people’s pictures of the campout. Its such a departure from what I grew up with. It was …. memorable.