Friday, February 18, 2011

Dream Interpretation

Urgh and double Urgh is the how I feel about this semester.

Anyway, today I had a dream that sort of highlights one of the issues I've been having lately, that being the rats in my care.

Unlike the young rats I had before that were nervous but quickly acclimated to human contact, these rats are adult and want nothing to do with me. They freak out if I try to pick them up, freak out of I try to put them into a ball, and generally behave as if I am the enemy, with a single exception, and she still doesn't like being handled all that much.

After getting bit by two of them and then developing a pleasant rash (which is already going away) I pretty much gave up on trying to give them handling time.

On top of this these rats are extremely rambunctious with each other, but only between midnight and 5AM. They seem to enjoy body slamming each other all around the cage, which is constantly waking me up. On top of this two of them like gnawing on the cage bars, which makes this extremely loud grating noise. Last night I had to get up something like three times and give them a stare down so I could go back to sleep.

So the only thing I can remember about my dream tonight was wrangling around a bunch of baby rats that varied in size from as small as a grain of rice to about the size of a hazelnut. They were so small that the bars of the cage meant nothing to them and they were skittering around desks and I had to use pieces of paper to corral them back like they were insects. And then I picked up the mom and she apologized to me.

Usually dreams come and go rather quickly, but apparently I was very focused on getting all these baby rats, because the scene felt like it lasted around 10 minutes.

Le sigh. I have to admit I am looking forward to when I can bring these rats back, but their prospects for adoption are not all that good (at least for three of them).

Friday, February 4, 2011

I'll Take Care of it Later

There's a large stain on the passenger seat of my car from a coke bottle that froze, broke the tin, melted, or exploded (considering the shape of the stain) and then froze again. I'm not quite sure what to do about that beyond curse loudly and rue the moment I forgot to take the can out of the car.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

You know you're too busy when

So today was a ridiculous day that started at 6AM and shows no sign of stopping. I'm finally back from some late night errands and having my dinner at 10:15pm, so I'm figuring that I'll put down a rundown to enshrine this day for all time and also wind down before getting back to work.

So this was my day.

6:00AM Get up. Usually I wake up, tell myself, "COME ON YOU CAN DO IT" and then sleep for four more hours. This time my subconscious was apparently aware that if I did not get up I was in big trouble because crawling out of bed was relatively effortless.

The first thing I do is shoot out an e-mail to change an appointment because I had said yes to a few too many things and created for myself an impossible schedule. So that pretty much set the tone for the day.

I work a little on two assignments until my roommate has taken her shower and gone off to brave the fridged cold. The cat comes in, as usual, tries to get into my closet to eat the rat grass in there, as usual, and then I go to take a shower. I usually shoo Rufus out of my room when I'm not there, because the first few days I was at the apartment he decided he was going to advertise his displeasure at the world by peeing on people's things, but today I thought, hey, he hasn't done that in -months-.

Well, he didn't pee on anything, thank God, but he did manage to puke up his breakfast on my blanket. So "Put blanket in washer" is added to my to do list.

My breakfast consists of a staling bagel, which is really not that bad. I shoot of the first two assignments and start on the third until around 10:15, which is when my first appointment comes up.

Early last fall I had talked to my advisor about possible interning opportunistic and she had mentioned the Murie Center. It's an historical site about 500 miles north of Denver that needs an archivist to go up and organize their holdings. After saying I was very interested, the subject was put on the back burner as I dealt with school and work and looked for other, more official internship targets.

Well, a few days ago I was contacted about the Center again, and had a very nice phone conversation with the man who was doing the work in getting the project off the ground. The details of the internship are pretty much exactly what I wanted: a big but manageable project that needs someone to go in and set things up into a proper archive. Whoever gets the job will be extremely autonomous and basically in charge of the archives for the time they are there. It was really hard for me not to just flat out say "Oh my god this is so fucking AWESOME" but that was basically what I was thinking for the entire interview. Nothing is final yet, and I have applied to other places, but by April I'll know what I'm doing with my summer, and if it's working at the Murie Archives I am going to be PSYCHED.

So immediately after I finish that call I throw my blanket in the wash, try to work on my third assignment some more because it's due today (in something like 4 hours now) and then rush off to the appointment I postponed.

The Dumb Friends League ended up with an influx of rodents, so I offered to foster a few. Asimov and Darwin had already been gone a week and I figured I could take a few more animals in. By the time I could find time to get over there there were only rats left, which I didn't mind at all, but these rats were not babies who needed to be acclimated to human contact. They were adult rats who had been overbred and needed to be held for a few weeks to ensure that none of them were pregnant before adoption. So I ended up with four adult female rats. None of them have names yet and none of them are really all that used to human contact. They nibble and then bite, but not hard, and will absolutely not sit still in my hand.

I was given the penthouse suite of rat cages to keep them in. This thing has three levels and a stand alone wheel. It barely fits on my dresser. It also took me a while to set up, since I kept putting the ramps on the wrong side of the cage. I lined the bottom with a generous helping of newspaper and nesting stuff, and then let the girls have at it. At first they did the usual rat exploration thing, and then one of them started ripping up the newspaper at the bottom of the cage and dragging it into the rathouse. I had shredded two pages of newspaper just for that purpose, but it was being ignored as this little tan rat was systematically destroying all the lining. OK, fine.

So I get them their food and try to attach the water bottle before realizing that I have no straps and will have to go back to the shelter. No problem, it's already 1:30 and I'm hungry so I'll grab some Wendy's on the way because I don't feel like cooking. What I really wanted to do was sneak in grocery time too, but I had a paper due in a few hours that I hadn't gotten far on.

I grab my food, grab the straps, drive back home, get my blanket, put in a real load of laundry, eat my lunch, and try to write 8 pages in one hour while I am still doing the research necessary. 3:50PM gets here and I'm only 5 out of 8 pages done and now have to decide if I want to get points off for a late paper or a shitty paper. I choose late paper and drive off to class. I had broken down and gotten a parking permit, because it is simply too cold for me to walk to school, and I sense that it will be that way for the rest of the semester, but the parking rules are a little draconian and I couldn't actually find a lot I was allowed to park in (also, I hate 4PM classes. UGH.) so I ended up parking on the street anyway. Basically, if this permit does not earn me its money back I will be super annoyed.

I get to class a little late, again, and spend a good amount of time chiding myself inwardly. At this point I also realize that my laundry is still in the dryer and it will be five hours before I have a chance to get it out. oops.

Class goes well, and then I drive off and get gas and those groceries I was planning on picking up earlier in the day. My toes almost freeze off simply as I wait for my tank to fill up. (Stupid gas prices) Seriously. Every time I think that it has finally gotten COLD it gets a little colder. My face was going stiff and if I had not worn knee length socks I'm pretty sure my legs would have been entirely numb. I am congratulating myself for having to foresight to buy some boots, because they're about to get a lot of use. It also took me a bit to open the gas tank because there was a solid layer of ice that needed to be broken through to open the hatch.

Anyway, I get my gas, start to seriously worry about frostbite of the toes and decide it's time to find some long johns or something, and then went next door to get my groceries, including a pack of gizzards and hearts. They're dirt cheap and super delicious, but I managed to actually burn soup as I was making them last time (apparently when you put the stove on high heat the water disappeared faster. Who knew!) I also burned a pot that my roommate had inherited from her grandmother. I was, as you might expect, very sorry, and also got a little gun shy of gizzards.

But gizzard soup is go good. And so cheap, so I got another pack and will be trying again, this time on low heat and with a timer to keep me from spazzing so I don't burn down the apartment. I am giving my mom agida right now. I know. <3

So I come home, get my laundry, put away my groceries, make a quick supper, check on the rats, and see that they have managed to put every last scrap of newspaper and filling and grass into their little hut, so that they can barely fit in there themselves and cleaning the bottom is going to be a pain in the but. I compliment them on their sick nest building skills, refill their empty food bowl, and then finally sit down to have my supper.

And now that I've typed this up it's midnight and I need to finish that overdue paper. Tomorrow is work at 8PM, the commute is about 30 minutes on a good day, an hour in this weather because the chances that I25 will be clogged with some sort of accident are 99%, so it's a 6AM morning for me again.

Phew. Thank goodness not all days are like this one.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Awesome Archival!

This blog combines two of my loves, historical material and fine menswear!

I love old catalogs.