Why do I keep saving banana slugs?

Second one in two weeks! This little guy was precariously sluggin' along the path from Kerr Hall to Kresge while I walked home from Female Physiology, and he near fell prey to painfully oblivious shoes many times before I could rush quick enough to trap him between the caution tape of my legs and help him up onto my arm for a short and slimy journey to wooded safety.

Goin' home

The free wi-fi on the 17 didn't work on the way there so this wasn't posted as planned, but now we're winding our way back to Santa Cruz with functional internet, winding our way to sleepy bed after our public transportation adventure and I'm sure Pup's glad for that--he's the crankiest traveler.

Slow With Horns/Run For Your Life

Life moves in the strangest cycles--like the laziest days and days of nothing much to do but lay languidly on too-small sofas while Pup cooks salmon for the first time without his mom and take lethargic bike rides to nowhere in particular to eat up long days of waning sunlight, then suddenly everything happens at once.

That was yesterday. Cue torrential rain and and a lot of running around, soaking wet jeans and too scared to carry my laptop the short walk to work. Locked early morning in the lab creating a spectral profile for allura red dye in commercial mouthwash and, not wanting to swim back to the apartment for the short hour before heading off to the greenhouse, cozy time in the Science Library and good, too, because our never-done-this-before lab T.A. and weird wording in our lab manual made me skip over needing to have measured the inner diameter of the cuvette, so I could easily run between lab and heatered-armchair all while understanding Beer's Law a little better than I expected to. Greenhouse at noon then, somehow serendipitously, treading the flood waters on the roof of another science building three and a half hours later, at another greenhouse holed up with delightfully dorky botanical researchers, sitting in front of a microscope drawing clover calyxes with ballpoint pen on notebook paper because maybe the paper that's published on clover taxonomy needs my illustrative powers and if not that maybe I can work in the lab doing data entry on tiny, crunchy bits of dried out plants while claiming some sort of stake in the Plant Sciences department because I'm always talking about the future the future I can't wait to get to the future, right? Straight away to work running through calf-deep puddles to see Pup on the balcony quickly because Tuesdays are usually reserved for between-class naps but not when waves of rain are carrying me all over campus. And if work felt like the end of my day--and it did, coming home to peacefully prepare vegetable curry and sit on the couch for more Chemistry--it wasn't.

Because Monday's botched first rain was rectified with a more organized run on Tuesday, and one which Pup and I accepted as correct despite the crazy rain of all day not carrying on to the 10:10 start of festivities and not cold enough to stop me from running around campus in nothing but rain boots last night and jumping into the OPERS pool surprisingly warm with churning bodies doing backflips and walking tightropes on buoys singing land of the free, home of the brave, we even ran through Wiesel and I got to high-five the girls that live in the room that I ran naked out of last year. An hour of running up and down hills screaming and flailing and laughing so out of breath all the way to drumming and dancing and finally back home for a shower and collapsing in bed and I don't know that I even had a chance to rest all day until then. Waking up with sore legs which is either a testament to my work-out or my out-of-shape, sore toes as a testament to next year I'll wear tennis shoes, and sore back and belly as a testament to how funny life is learning about the menstrual cycle one day and bed-ridden exhausted from it the next. So grateful for slow day today; despite the Cambrian Explosion in Biology I took my sweet time slugly across campus to a short Chemistry review section for the impending midterm, let out early to flop over the side of the couch with Pup's proud-of special-tea before turning in very early for a rest and a recharge. Slow day tomorrow, and slow train home on Friday because I don't think I was built to go here to here to here running around so quickly, I'd rather sit sunk into seats and have locomotion move me so my legs can take a break and my mind can do all the work because for right now I'm studying but this weekend holds pumpkin patches, wild things, art shows in cemeteries, and determining numbers of molecules with familiar stoichiometry. And the slow cycle starts again.

Weekly statistics

322 Cambodia slides, done, in about 23 hours and our first produce box:

half a pound of red plums

one and a half pounds of valencia oranges

two pounds of gala apples

one pound of baby bok choy

one bunch of arugula

one pound of sweet peppers

one two-pound acorn squash

one head of romaine lettuce

one bunch of parsley

two pounds of yellow onions

two pounds of russet potatoes

Now, ending a long week with a stocked fridge, a fixed sink and socket and heater, scheming Halloween costumes, finally lying on the couch with a goodnight bowl of cereal and a Dexter season two marathon before drifting off to sleep.

Put the "cation" in "education"

I always feel like I have to add some sort of disclaimer when I start to go on and on about Chemistry, because I liked it (and Mr. VanMuyden) enough in high school to take on an unheard of sixth period my senior year to work in the little room just to the right of the classroom, in gloves and goggles, sifting shelves for solids and calculating molarities, putting "acid to water like you ought'er" and almost getting knocked out by some potent HCl once after pouring it out before remembering to turn on the fume hood. Yeah, I like it. I still like it. I'm just anticipating being done with it, maybe wishing I got a couple other assignments in my other class so I wasn't constantly immersed in Chemistry. I have very little homework for my two Biology classes--an open-book, online quiz here, a trip to the greenhouse there--but in my last quarter of Chemistry ever, professor Bogo is making quite sure that he squeezes the last bits of potential energy out of me before I can make it to the ornithology, paleontology, botany, and mycology classes of my dreams (once I tackle two more quarters of Biology, two quarters of Physics, and one of Biostatistics, of course). What I mean to say is that, as I sat in the Humanities lecture hall today being lectured on reaction rates and sitting pen to open planner making my weekly to-do list, the homework section read "chem lab report," "chem prelab," "chem homework," and the "chem practice test" for the "CHEM 1C MIDTERM" I have penned in big block letters on Friday, October 16.

So that to-do list is what I have to do today after I get out of work at four, where the smell of slide cleaner has become less pungent but where it seems like someone has left the heater on because it has been eighty degrees in this little room for the past two days and no amount of open windows, doors, or oscillating fans has brought the temperature down any. Upon entering today, I quickly stripped off cardigan, scarf, leggings, socks, and threw my hair up off my sweaty neck before doing anything else. And I'm still at it with the Cambodia slides, but I'll be thinking of Chemistry, and not that, soon enough.

Meanwhile, trying to figure out how to change the address that automatically pops up when I start typing "Google"--I'd prefer to leave google.ca in Canada along with the fact that I couldn't watch any shows online while I was up there which made the long days even longer. Not like the Netflix (and the second season of Dexter, which we started last night) that we have streaming from the Xbox Pup brought, and the whole other game world inside of it that Pup just texted me from to say that's he's currently doing very well at Halo, just thought I'd like to know.

Maniac chops rye

Although there was grocery shopping and cooking last night, this is what's been occupying our whole weekend. Season one in a little more than twenty-four hours, and we just can't stop.

Four days, fifteen hours, two hundred scans

Getting back into the routine of work, the routine of school, is headache-y sprayed with photo emulsion cleaner. Right now, I'm facing down a massive box of Cambodia slides and it's slow going--13.3333 images an hour. Glad for the weekend, and no work on Fridays. Dreaming about homemade chicken satay and peanut sauce, grocery shopping as an ends to that mean, hopefully a bike ride to the Natural History Museum and if I just happen to pack a blanket, a nap on the beach might be in order. Long day, could definitely use that sleep right now!