out-cooled again

just when I think I might be kinda creative, someone comes along and completely destroys me. case in point, woman who crochets tree/log sweaters.


I am in awe. Check out more tree sweaters (and awesomely bizarre mounted crocheted deer heads) here. (Stephen, this is exactly what your fireplace needs!)

Really Large Body of Water

New life plan (early today I called it an "interim personal management strategy." yeesh. too much bureacracy in my life.):

"I'll eat when I am hungry, and I'll drink when I am dry. Get drunk whenever I'm ready, get sober by and by." (The River Driver) Especially when sung by adorable (though long-haired) boys in 4-part harmony.

As Brett pointed out, live music is great. Instant mood elevator. Especially when it's kick-ass music and combined with whiskey and good friends. So check out Great Big Sea, and go see them in your town. (but don't even try to get them to play a wedding. They'll say no.)

Who needs romance anyway?

Just goofy?

There is, I suspect, a fine line between goofy-weird and creepy-weird. I am comfortable with my goofy-weird status. I honestly hug trees, read about hydrology for fun, and eat plain raw tofu on a daily basis. Goofy-weird. But then there’s creepy-weird. And nothing says creepy-weird like taxidermy and basements. Last spring Katy, Stephen, and Tom found a fully intact dead mole. After keeping it in our office freezer next to the free bagels (shhh, don’t tell OSHA) for several months, Katy and I decided to hike up our skirts and do something about it. So we let it thaw, then we skinned it (we’re both bio/anatomy nerds), regrettably chucking the inside bits (we should have kept the skull), tanned its wee hide (easier than you’d think), and stretched it on a piece of cardboard to dry. Then, due to the, um, inappropriate nature of an animal skin in the workplace, I put it in an unused drawer of my desk for safe-keeping.

There were big plans for this mole skin, but, well, things change, people move to different states, other people become spastic, forgetful stress-cases, the world turns…So yesterday I consolidated offices and came face to face with the tanned skin of a mole that had been sitting in a drawer of my desk FOR SIX MONTHS. Say what I want about who I am and where I stand on the goofy- v. creepy-weird rubric, I am the kind of person who doesn’t mind (1) dealing with a dead animal, (2) thawing and skinning a found dead animal, then tanning it, and (3) KEEPING IT IN A DRAWER OF MY DESK.

But times must change and my new desk is much smaller, so I yet again found myself alone in a basement with a dead animal skin, a picture frame, and the uncomfortable realization that I wasn’t uncomfortable at all. Here is our handiwork. We don’t know the species, because, well, you need a fleshless skull for that. So it is just a mole. Framed, on the wall of the interns’ office.

Yeah...probably creepy.