New Capybara

 

Travalon went to the zoo today, and they have a new capybara! Yay! The old one died a few months ago.

Today I had to take the bus straight home from work, and the bus website recommended the D2 instead of the B. That was fine with me, because it comes to a much closer stop, and also I wouldn't have to cross the street when I got off of it. The D2 goes to the airport, so I settled in for a long ride... but it went basically the same route as the old 28 that used to get me to my car in the old days. Confusingly enough, there is still a 28 bus, and it goes north, but not far enough north for my purposes. Now I'm wondering why I couldn't take the D2 to work as well, since it would drop me off much closer than the B bus does. Oddly, the website says I have to take the B bus to campus, yet I could see the D2 bus picking people up not far from where I parked. I would have to cross a street to catch it, but that seems worth it for the blocks of distance it would shave off once I got to campus.

Speaking of campus, it's kind of embarrassing that our university is becoming known for disasters. Not one, but two very recent bad news stories have made national news: a pier collapsed at the Union because too many students were on it; and a girl was attacked, raped, and beaten by some rando. The first story is more dramatic than serious; nobody was badly hurt, although one person did go to the hospital for what turned out to be minor injuries. The second story is far scarier, but now they have caught the guy. He was pulled over earlier in the evening, so they had the cop's body cam footage to match up with the footage from security cameras in the area of the attack. One creepy detail is that someone arrived on the scene, attracted by the commotion, and the perpetrator pretended to be someone who had just come across the girl himself, but then he took off before police arrived. The girl had life-threatening injuries (judging by the charges against the guy, he strangled her), but now they say that she will survive. I certainly hope she makes a full recovery! And I am so relieved that they caught him! His bail is set at a million dollars - frankly, I'm surprised that they would even consider bail. Lock him up and throw away the key!

Famous Hat

Fire in the 'Hood!

This morning I was having a bad time: I couldn't find my sunglasses, and I broke a beautiful goblet. Then a terrible thing happened that put my problems in perspective - there was a huge fire in the apartment complex just across the marsh from us! Fortunately, nobody was hurt, but the building is a total loss. One of our neighbors took a video of the flames.

We heard so many firetrucks coming! They came from at least four jurisdictions.

The neighbor I always walk with has an excellent view of the building from her loft, and she invited me up to see it. I made a short video of the firefighters pouring water on the flames.

On our lunch break we took a walk to see the damage, and it was bad.

The firefighters must hate our neighborhood! As my regular readers undoubtedly recall, our downstairs neighbor almost burned our building down on Christmas Day, but fortunately they were able to stop that fire. (I am eternally grateful!) And a few years ago, another apartment building across the street burned down completely, but they quickly rebuilt it. That one was caused by lint in a dryer vent, ours was caused by a fireplace with Christmas decorations on it, and the one today was apparently caused by "smoking materials," which I presume means someone was careless with a cigarette. (Although Travalon pointed out that it could have been marijuana smoking paraphernalia...) I feel very bad for the other, non-smoking people who may have lost everything because of one person's carelessness. That's the downside of attached housing.

Famous Hat

Awkward Moments with Toque McToque

My office mate Toque (rhymes with puke, not coke) said I should write about her day today. It is her second-to-last day, and she keeps having awkward moments. In one of them, a faculty member she does not much care for stopped by to say goodbye, and she said, "You could hear the crickets chirping in the distance! It's not like we had a hugging relationship, or even a hand-shaking one, so it was like, 'Bye.' 'Bye.'"

Then she lost the faculty candidate she was supposed to guide from interview to interview. To be fair, this was not her fault; one of his interviewers intercepted him after lunch and said, "Come on up to my office right now," without informing Toque. You can imagine her panic when she thought, "Oh no! I've lost the faculty candidate!" Still, what could they do if she had, fire her? I mean, she's already quitting. (True story: I once worked with a girl who gave her two weeks' notice and then was so obnoxious that they actually CANNED her two days into her last two weeks!)

I thought it was really amusing that Toque McToque put up a little sign saying how she would miss us all, and thanks for the lovely parting gifts, since the sign was festooned with cute little smiling flowers. I said, "That is SO not you, Toque McToque," and that got me thinking... What people like Toque need to show their true feelings are cute little natural disaster signs. So now I present to you: Famous Hat's Adorable Warning Signs! Though of course you can totally tell from my superior artistic abilities what these are supposed to be, I will provide a handy guide anyway. From left to right, top row: tornado, thunderstorm, blizzard. Bottom row: flood (or classier "deluge"), tsunami, poison. (It was supposed to be famine, but I couldn't think of how to draw "famine.") I think these are such cute, cuddly depictions of hazards that they would surely stop motorists from proceeding any further to their death.


Famous Hat