highlights of the last few days

1. Animal guessing game: super lucky cat. Among the first few questions: DOES IT RAISE A PAW. I don't know how I kept a straight face. This was the best thing that happened all week.

2. Awesome skeptical feedback on my proposal! I almost wish I hadn't made it all pretty first, but this way I got to have a "feeling really good about it" stage AND a "yay someone ripped into it where it needed ripping" stage, so it was actually good. (The NSF is back at work but is kinda telling us to fuck off while they regroup, which is fair.)

3. Watched BIG ASS SPIDER! with Wim. Exactly a ridiculous monster B-movie. Very pleased. Also, that was definitely 100% ironic racism, and it was still not okay, so, nice to have that experience for sure I guess.

4. Fun outing with some parents-out-law, to lunch and the lab and the university's phenomenal greenhouse. These things by themselves would've been enough, but our luck was in and the greenhouse manager was there. He opened the terrarium and fed the poison-dart frogs so they'd come up and be photographed, and we got to hang out with the praying mantis too.

5. As I told the cats earlier tonight, I do like doing things that are right, and taking the laundry down from the ceiling fan is pretty indisputably right.

6. I have passed a strange sort of milestone in axolotl ownership: Hachiko is currently in the fridge to recover from her chronic fungus problem. I'm VERY NERVOUS about this because it doesn't seem like the kind of thing one should do to a pet ever, but it's the standard of axolotl care if they're not getting better readily.

goodish things

1. Resting when sick is a good idea and feels relatively good. Also, it allows a person to play Long Live the Queen several times.

2. Going to the doctor is virtuous, and I got to see the RN I like. Not excited about taking a bunch of doxycycline, but looking forward to not having a horror show in my head and throat.

3. And I still got some work done, though I was too stupid to write. (I claim this word: I am in a literal semi-stupor.)

4. Hachiko-axolotl is totally fine at 4 degrees C, and shedding fungus like a tiny sluggish boss.

5. Set myself up a chore rota. Decided to my satisfaction (1) that it's still a rota even if it's one-dimensional and (2) that the trivial case of a rota would be one person doing the same thing every day. Mondays are now mending days, and I tightened buttonholes on the duvet cover with the red poppies.