Free Weed

 

Time for a True Story: I was down on Library Mall some time ago when some students handed me a red plastic cup full of dirt, and they said that if I watered it, I'd get flowers. I did water it faithfully, and it grew and had some little white flowers.

Know what this is? It's American Black Nightshade, aka a weed. And I can prove it's a weed, because yesterday when I came into my office, it had shriveled up like I hadn't watered it in weeks. I debated about throwing it away, since it's a WEED and all, but I felt bad for it and watered it. And you know it's a weed because within twenty minutes it looked like this. No plant you would actually want to grow would recover so completely when just a few minutes earlier it was all desiccated and already looking dead. The real question is why did these agricultural club students want to promote themselves by giving me a cup full of WEEDS?

Speaking of weed, at our weekly department meeting this morning, the chair was saying that as she cleaned out her old office in preparation for moving back into it from the chair office, she found a really old bus schedule for Route E from when all the bus routes had letters. Then they went to numbers, and now they have either, or both, like my route the D2. I said I remembered that, and one day these two young guys who were clearly stoned had grabbed a bunch of the schedules and were making words with them, and one guy said, "Dude, I spelled Jamaica!" Later I mentioned that last week was my eighth anniversary in the department, and two of the others were reminiscing about taking a walk on one's first day where they got baked, meaning it was hot out, but another coworker said, "You got baked?" and I said, "Did you make words out of bus schedules?"

Speaking of buses, the other day Travalon and I saw a car with a license plate that said "1 Big D," and I was surprised because it was a family-type car and not a sports car like you'd expect from someone bragging about his size on his license plate, and then we saw the Big Bendy B Bus, but I accidentally called it the Big D Bus. Now before the shuttle I always took the D bus (technically the D2, since there's also a D1 bus), and it had never struck me as dirty before, but somehow the Big D Bus sounds dirty.

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Famous Hat

Charlie and the Mystery Train

 

I forgot to post some photos yesterday, of flowers in our neighborhood that Travalon took with his good camera right before we left for Illinois on Saturday. Here's a picture with a bunch of them in it.

Here is a close-up of the sweet peas.

Here is a close-up of a flower called a Jerusalem Cross.

Speaking of Jerusalem Crosses, I am heartbroken that both those and Celtic Crosses are apparently now symbols used by white supremacists. I love both symbols and associate them with ancient churches, the Eastern one and the Celtic one, but I'd hate to be wearing one and have people think I look down on nonwhite people. How did this happen? How can we take them back for normal people?

Today I worked on campus and did more training. Travalon sent me a text saying, "I'm getting Charlie," and for a brief moment I thought he meant he was getting another rabbit just like my old Charlie, but I opened the text and saw this photo:

Charlie is a weighted stuffed animal, a little dog made by the same people who made Frankie the Cat. I had been telling Travalon that he should check Charlie out, and today he went to the bookstore, saw him, and bought him. These Hugimals are really amazing, so cute and so cuddly, and yet you can get a workout just by lifting them. 

On the way to the room where we were training today, I saw this office door:

Yay! And what's with the depiction of three goat-like creatures? Is this person a Capricorn too? Yay!

Seabird is on vacation all week, so I asked Hardingfele if she wanted to walk at lunch, and she said yes, but just as I got to her building she sent a text that never mind, she had a meeting in a few minutes. We did walk on my afternoon break. Then I was trying to test out printing to a machine I never use, and I tried to print the first page of a document, but it printed the whole thing! Fortunately it printed it double-sided, which I definitely did not want to do, so that only wasted half as much paper. Also fortunately, I couldn't figure out how to print in color, so I didn't waste all that colored ink. I said I had no idea what I'd done wrong, so the chair suggested I print Page One of a two-page document, and of course that worked. I also got it to print in color. Supposedly this printer can also fold the letters, so my next big adventure is figuring out how to do that.

Travalon picked me up after work, and we were stopped by a train, so we expected that we would see it going over the bridge as we drove down Troy Drive, and then alongside us as we drove down Westport Road, but there was no sign of it. It was going at a very poky pace, but still, it should have gone by our house at some point, and it never did. Travalon checked, and there isn't a place where the track splits between where it stopped us and our house, so where did it go? It just... vanished. Our best guess is it backed up again, as some trains do. Nothing like blocking traffic twice as long at rush hour.

We needed to get home on time so we could get to the Night Mares women's softball game at Warner Park. It was Canada Day (everywhere, but that was their theme tonight), so they sang the Canadian National Anthem before ours, and they sold poutine. At first you could only get poutine if you had preordered it, so I had a cheeseburger, but just after the Beer Batter was struck out and we got two-for-one beer, they announced that poutine was for sale, so we got some and I had a bit of it after the cheeseburger. What a healthy day at the ballpark... not. Good thing my former neighbor gave me fresh peaches so I had some plant matter to eat! The Night Mares were slightly ahead of the Mankato Habaneros, 4-2, but at the top of the 7th the Habaneros had loaded the bases with only one out so it wasn't looking good. Then the pitcher struck out the next batter, and the one after that hit a pop fly that a fielder easily caught, so the Night Mares won! The women's hockey team from the university was also there signing autographs, so I went to get a photo of them autographed, and one said their sharpies were drying up, probably due to the humidity. I said, "Isn't it due to all the autographs you've had to sign?" and they said, "Sure, we'll go with that." Sad that such an incredible team isn't more of a draw, since they are national champions this year - they even had their trophy with them. Still, a lot of people of both genders were wearing Night Mares gear, so maybe women's sports are finally catching on. I think they're just as exciting myself.

Famous Hat