kittyquest

Today I reserved the Zipcar for the day and drove Vera and Hana to an animal shelter to pick out a pet cat.

This is Kennedy, the dignified seven-year-old they chose:



But the one I liked was Lola (below). I guess I just have a soft spot for Siamese mixed cats.



I think Kennedy's a very lucky cat.

truly impressive

I was out of my room for half an hour to do laundry this morning, and I left the window open to get some fresh air.

I came back and there was a big hole chewed in my window screen, and the remains of a bag of Pepperridge Farm dark chocolate chip pecan cookies were scattered across my floor.

I knew our squirrels were aggressive, but I had no idea they were so quick about it.

home again, home again, jiggety jig

I'm back from Cambridge, sadly. It was really great to see everyone and visit all the old places. Seeing my Harvard mentors also helped me get more motivated about my writing and my general exams. I just wish I had stayed longer and was still there. But Kedim, unfinished drafts of papers, and my stacks and stacks of reading impatiently await.

It is really weird sitting here in Firestone doing the reading for next week's history of the book class, which is in the main a very dry account of early modern pornography. Amazing how academics can take even a naturally fascinating topic and refashion it into something gossipy, brittle, and dull.

nota bene

Princeton e-mail service is offline till this evening because of a system upgrade, so don't be surprised if I don't respond to email immediately...

I am currently in Cambridge, MA, so you can reach me on my mobile phone (now fully recovered from its unfortunate trip through the washer) if need be:

(617) 413-4191

But be patient--if I'm in a reading room in Widener Library when you call, it may take me a little while to scurry off to a place where I'm allowed to talk on a mobile phone!

self-portrait with bird

the simple pleasures

thanks Leo!

the harmony of the planets

Supposedly this was the harmony of the planets on the day I was born--not too dissonant, I think.

You can also visit Christopher Arthur's website to download your own copy of his cosmic harmony software, and use it to figure out your own planetary music. (This is what you get when you cross a computer programmer with an interest in Kepler and a big ol' database of information from NASA...)

you can sit a bird on your shoulder, but...

...you can't keep her from pooping on you.

took long enough?

Finally got around to relearning enough HTML to fix up the website. Let me know how you like it.

By the way, if anyone knows what the HTML code for "don't underline this piece of text" is, please do let me know. I don't really like the way it underlines all the hyperlinks, but I have no idea how to make it not do that.

FAQ

People keep asking "So how big is your bird? She looks so big in the pictures!"



So here's a photo with a little more perspective. The picture in the frame behind her is 5" x 7"...



She's really not that big.

dreaming

Last night I dreamed that one of my friends asked me to marry him, and we just impulsively ran off and got married--there was a lot of worrying in the dream leading up to the elopement, but the ceremony itself was pretty painless--and then we started to plan all the wonderful fun things we could do in our new life together, starting with a wedding reception in a room with a tremendous wooden floor and all of our dancing friends (he's a Powers-trained dancer too).

It was kind of sad waking up.

No, not kind of sad. Really sad.

it works! well...mostly

My cell phone (the one I put through the wash) is miraculously functional.

I replaced the battery, which solved the every-2-second restarting problem. Now the only things wrong with it are that the speaker in the handset doesn't work (if I use an earphone, that's not a problem), and one of the non-essential buttons (that I really don't use at all) doesn't work.

I can't believe it works!