wow.

you know what kinda sucks? when you are biking in the dark and halfway home the batteries in your headlight go DEAD. DEAD DAMMIT. That sucked hind teat. Night-time bike rides are not fun in the best of time, going headlightless makes them even more a category of suck.

***

on a side note…wow again to my classes midterm grades. and that is not a good wow. *sigh* I think I must face up to one of two facts: a.) I’m a bad, bad teacher and I should not be paid to fuck up these peoples GPAs and mind or b.) these kids don’t give a fuck about biology 101 and are fucknuts who just want an A for showing up to class.

***

Working on my final (4th) draft of my research proposal. Working on finishing up little shit stuff prior to November when my boss hightails his hiney to Washington to chat it up with the bigwigs. He wants my data by then so he can show everyone what he did (I get a little annoyed by this biological fact…my boss can never set foot in the damn lab, and yet he is still getting credit for my data, now granted, he gets me the money and he proofs the data and he helps me…but still…bugger me, give me SOME credit. I’m a greedy guts!)

***

In still other news, the stray cat population is up to 4 regulars that I see cruising the parking lot and dumpster diving. We have the orange tabby tomcat – I’ll call him Morris. He’s older, looks awfully fleabitten and REALLY, REALLY wants to bang my kitties. They like to sit in the window and flirt with him. But they are like sorority girls and a nerdy guy – they just wanna torment him, they ain’t never going to give it up. He is also a big attention ho and will damn near climb up your legs to get on the snuggles. We also have a calico, heavy on the black and white, light on the orange. I’ve never seen her up close, she’s EXTREMELY shy. I’ll call her…ummm…Flit, I guess, for lack of a better term. Then yesterday I met the gray girl that I’d seen in passing several times. She’s primarily gray, with a white face, and paws and underparts. She has short hair, but is very fluffy/soft looking. Kinda like a dirty marshmallow. She’s also a big sweetie and really really wants to be someone’s baby. So I will dub her Baby (mostly because I can’t think of anything else). And finally, we have the one that I finally saw in almost light. Typically I only see her at night. She is all over black, not a speck of white that I could see on her. She gets the ever-creative name of Shadow.

*sigh*
On a deep down level, I know that I cannot take care of all the kitties in the world. Or even HELP them all….But I want to. I want to take in all four of these kitties and feed them and love them and find them homes. But I can’t. And sometimes, that makes me hurt. I hurt for them, half-starved and nearly dying for human attention. I hurt for the birds they kill…poor American Songbirds that feral cats kill by the millions each year. But mostly, I hurt because these are probably cast-off kitties. Thrown out, thrown away, gotten rid of…whether because of behaviour problems or because they were suddenly “inconvenient” or because people just think EVERYTHING IN THIS FUCKING WORLD IS DISPOSABLE.

And it makes me so angry. If you get an animal. You are responsible for it. Period. No provisos. No caveats. If you wish to get rid of it, FINE. You don’t throw it away. You find it a new home. You do NOT treat it like garbage. These are sweet, loving creatures that are NOT, I repeat NOT, native to these United States or anywhere else on this bedamned continent. Not only are they not on a species level evolved to deal with it – the wildlife is not capable of dealing with them either. They eat goodness knows how many baby birds and bunnies and other fuzzy wildlifes just to stay alive. Argh. If you get a pet. Get it spayed. Get it neutered. Don’t let it run wild outdoors terrorizing the natural fauna. And for goodness sake! They aren’t McDonald’s wrappers, they aren’t toys. They’re not trash!

*pant,pant*

okay. now that I’ve got myself all good and worked up…I think I’ll get some chocolate

drove on the windy twisty roads around my apartment tonight…watched the sunset and drove a little slow…enjoying the breeze and beautiful 70 degree fall weather…

i popped in the classical tapes (Ravel’s Bolero and Strauss’s Waltz’s) and they just didn’t seem right to listen to on the highway

so even though i could have gotten there quicker, i slowed down, took the scenic route and just looked out the window and savored this evening

holy shit.

the wedding was beautiful. and I was the chicken with my head cut off…oh wow…I’m tired.

but thank god it was wonderful.

tomorrow, I’m off again

yay wedding

Praying for hot hot pictures and an awesome awesome wedding

and for a rapid lab tomorrow, ye gods, and it’s a hard lab!

***

Today was the first midterm for my Bio101 course. Which was not funness let me tell you. Proctoring a 700 person lecture hall is difficult enough, but finding 5 problematic questions (i.e. no correct answer, typos in the questions…all kinds of fun stuff).

Blech.

That will make the lab tomorrow longer let me tell you, ‘cuz you know what, they are ALLLLLL going to bitch about those questions. They grub for 0.5 points. Lord only knows how much they’ll grub for 10 points.

Not that I should talk really, I guess. I would do the same. I just don’t like having to be on the wrong end of it. It’s easier to complain about something than it is to be complained TO.

***

My legs. They feel like noodles. 12 miles on a bike. Yeah. Twice as far as I usually go. In theory good to be done, but yeesh. OW!

yargh

made it all the way to work (3 miles) on my bike

and then realized that I had NOOOOOO keys

turned around biked home and then biked back to work for a total of 9 miles

and a waste of almost an hour

yuck

and I am now very sweaty.

So.

I bought the Matrix Reloaded. And NAIR. And some present wrapping materials. As well as some Clorox Ready Mop pads ( I love my clorox ready mop, oh yes i do! ). And some mirror hangy thingies.

That was my exciting night at Target.

And I think that will be my most exciting night this week, until I head off to my friend’s wedding…I will get to be hot then.

Do you ever have mornings where you wake up, look in the mirror and think…. “DAMN! I am bloody sexy!” I had one of those the other day, but not for any particular reason. I was even wearing some pretty non-hot clothes…but hey, whatever. I’ll take random hotness.

Oh such a cute baby! The third link (and the picture in my profile) that’s my big niece Darcy making the face that I taught her this weekend. Damn. She is also cute. I think my family has cute stuck in their genes.

http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b3ce32b3127cce805d8668e33f0000001610

http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b3ce32b3127cce805d808e62ea0000001610

http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b3ce32b3127cce805d801e627a0000001610

http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b3ce32b3127cce805d9cc062aa0000001610

my niece is all kinds of beautiful

i got more apples to eat

my cats missed me while I was gone and so proceeded to yank pieces of carpet off their little kitty tower and scatter them about the apartment to demonstrate their passion for me

do you look both ways before you cross a one way street? I do, and I don’t know why, I think this is one time where I can actually blame my mother and have it be true.

ah

Thursday is impending.

And I!. I!. !I! will be taking off early (as soon as lab is done), biking home, throwing my shit in the car and getting the hell out of Dodge…er Columbus. I will be going home. Indiana and parent’s house will always be “home” I think…at least until I get a place that’s more…mine than any apartment can be. I do long for a place that is MINE, one that I can paint and love and just have. But I digress.

At home, I have my nieces! Yay for two…a brand new baby to hold and snuggle and change (can’t feed her, I don’t have the udders for it). And the “grown-up” baby, who is almost a year and a half old now. I like my sister’s kids. I like baby time and it prevents me from having to make any. Also at home, will be my grandparents who I haven’t seen for more than 7 years. It is pushing up onto 8 years now. I wonder how the time will have aged them and changed me. I wonder if I’ll have anything to say to them. If nothing else, we can play cards.

Cards are an institution in my family. I sometimes think, that if you put two Ketcham’s in a room and give us a deck of cards, we’d invent our own damn games. We play Pinochle and Hand’n'Foot when we have enough time and people. We play Tonk and 99 for nickles and we play Tick when we have company who doesn’t know how to play the other card games. We play Cribbage and Michigan Rummy when we can’t think of anything else….

This is not to say that we don’t play other games. But cards….that is where the lifeblood of my family is, I think. If nothing else, give us cards and we’ll play together. We might yell at each other while we play, but you know, I think that adds something to the mix. We’re not afraid to say anything while we play…it tends to be a bit intimidating to outsiders I think. We have a couple of friend who play with us. My dear friend Amy who turns down dates with hot boys to play Hand’n'Foot for example. That always amuses me to no end.

Cards. It is where I learned to drink. How I learned that sometimes, you just have to get loud and aggressive (hence, I think, the alpha female post below). How I learned that you can yell at people and not always be mad or mean or even anything except enjoying yourself. How I learned competition and poker faces and so many other things….

if you need a good laugh

go here