The Start of What Was

I left Boston on Saturday, and since I clearly have long since left this blog behind, I've started a new blog to chronicle my adventures in geoarchaeology. I have a camera of my own now, so expect the new entries to be more visually exciting. Unless I forget to actually use the camera, which by and all seems much more likely.

Another Island Getaway, or: It Rained a Lot, Again

I’ve blogged about Dublin before, and I’m not sure I really have anything new to say about the city itself. Again, it was raining when I arrived, but this time I totally knew where I was going and how to get there, so I got about 150% less wet. I also knew to buy a Dublin bus pass before leaving the airport, since the cost of a day pass for all city transportation is the same as the cost of the bus from the airport. The elderly woman with inexplicable three-tone hair who was single-handedly running the airport convenience store spent a few minutes looking for two day passes. Her search was somehow both deliberate and vague, and failed to produce results.
“I don’ have any more of those,” she decided. We stared at each other.
“Did you want one for each of you?” she continued, meaning Jesse and me.
“Yes, two passes. One for each.”
“Oh, dearie you’ll be wanting a Family Rambler Pass. Good for two adults and up to three children, all day!” The way the lady was peering around, as if to discover the up to three kids I had stashed behind me maybe, was a little startling, but price of the pass was less than the price of two airport shuttle tickets, so buying it was kind of like having Dublin Bus pay us to ride around all day. Jesse may not have realized the savings we were experiencing, as he was frozen with the same glassy-eyed, searching-for-the-nearest-exit look that had stricken him when the woman said the word “family.”

Anyway, we made it into Dublin and ate delicious things at many of the cafes I had been missing for more than a year. Here is one of them:
Another great thing about Ireland is that you literally cannot walk down a street without encountering kegs. Please note that these were all full. Awesome!
In Ireland sometimes they speak funny. Here is me, maybe at Trinity College, practicing the universal hand sign for “I have a tummyache.”
Jesse drew some of the buildings we saw, and then we saw a building that looked like Jesse might have drawn it. So I made him pose for this picture. Jesse: “I look like a tool.” Me: “shut up and hold the pen a little higher.”
Ireland is so green it kind of makes me zone out.
That was on the way to Galway, where we are now. Galway is much more pleasant this time around, probably because I am not lonely and terribly cold, because for this trip I brought another person and adequate rain-weather clothing. Also, Galway became much more interesting once I had developed the theory that all of the Irish giant-letter-making companies ceased manufacturing sign letters sometime in the past decade. Sometimes the original meaning wasn’t hard to guess at, as on the side of this building, which might be run by a distant relative:
Other times, the missing letters make words look Gaelic. Here is me looking up the Wests de Bu iness Cen e in Let’s Go. I think it might be an island? Like Inis Meain?
Here is the real Inis Meain (Inishmaan). How did we get this picture of the dock and the ferry if we were ON the ferry? It turns out, Jesse can FLY!!!
To get to the island, we took a ferry. Jesse, who likes to point out boats to me much as a three-year-old might, up to and including tugging at my sleeve until I actually turn my head toward the boats, was pretty psyched about the ferry ride.
The man at the helm warned us that if we stayed up top once the boat got up to speed, we would “get absolutely soaked.” I made my way into the passenger cabin, but the sea air tends to make Jesse a little reckless and more than a little drenched, as became evident when he joined me in the cabin about three minutes later.
On Inishmaan, I met the second-best cat ever.
I named her Mrs. Bitey, for reasons that would become clear about three seconds after this picture was taken.
Inishmaan is very cool and there are lots of walls. Inside the walls are lots of cool animals like cows and sheep, none of which Jesse would allow me to attempt making friends with. “They will probably bite you and it’s three hours until the ferry comes to takes us back to a place with a doctor,” he would say. Or, “those animals smell weird, and they look like they might have rolled in manure. Get back on your bike.”
Oh yeah, we rented bikes. Which just sort of emphasized the hilliness of the island, and the unfortunate state of the roads. Luckily, there are no bike thieves on the island (there are pretty close to no people on the island to begin with), because often we would have to just leave the bikes by the side of the road and run around among the walls and rocks.
At one point, we found the seacliffs on the southwest side of the island. They are in the middle of a slow but very one-sided battle with the Atlantic. I thought the view from here was really pretty fantastic...
Until we came to these:
Keep in mind that these cliffs are like, several thousand feet high, which would make this wave like a thousand feet as well:
Sometimes the cliffs were more stepped, which left lots of puddles and scum from the last high tide:
Obviously, we walked out onto one of these flats. I informed Jesse whenever I noticed another fossil in a rock, which was about every five to twenty seconds. Jesse pretended he couldn’t hear me because of the wind, but even he had to admit it was cool when I found a tiny trilobite. I didn’t take a picture of the trilobite, because I got distracted by a puddle which looked EXACTLY LIKE THE SHAPE OF IRELAND.
“OH MY GOD!” I yelled.
“WHAT! Are you falling off the cliff!?”
“NO, THIS PUDDLE LOOKS LIKE IRELAND.”
“.... No it doesn’t. You’re crazy. Do we have any more gummy worms?”
This conversation kind of continued in a similar vein for a while, until Jesse tried to “prove [me] wrong” by opening the Let’s Go book to the map of Ireland. Then the conversation ended, because Jesse didn’t want to talk about how I was TOTALLY CORRECT. Well, as correct as you could reasonably demand. I mean, it’s a puddle.

We also saw some other things north of Galway, like cute towns and a desolate lakeshore dock and lots of wet countryside and an old castle with a stream around two sides of it and many of the walls still intact. I demonstrated the ability of the castle defenders to locate and aim at attackers.
And I enjoyed a few seconds of sunlight when some clouds briefly dropped the ball in terms of covering the sun.
Jesse drew a picture of the castle, and I watched some water striders float around on the moat, and resisted the urge to climb on the walls in locations where signs expressly prohibited it. Then I took pictures of Jesse. This is a picture of him asking me to stop taking pictures of him.
On the road to the castle, I made another friend, somehow without getting bitten on the face.
And that’s pretty much it, so far. Anything else I’ve done was either while still severely jet-lagged, or is too boring to blog. In conclusion, here is a picture of a graveyard in Connemara.

10 Reasons My Morning Was Neither Absurd Nor Inefficient (fiction)

1. Cat did not knock over my untasted, much-needed coffee all over kitchen floor, himself, and my socks.

2. Was easily able to locate belt.

3. Cat did not impede kitchen-floor-cleaning process by attempting to lick up spilled coffee.

4. Did not feel compelled to spend ten minutes researching lethal doses of caffeine in cats and calculating amount of caffeine in coffee slick in kitchen.

5. T was not experiencing delays due to an earlier, disabled train.

6. Train that finally arrived did not have one car that was not in operation, thus filling all other cars 1/6 more full.

7. Train did not experience mechanical delays of its own between Harvard and Central.

8. No medical emergency halted the train at Kendall, the station right before Charles/Mass. General Hospital, for 20 minutes.

9. Sweaty man did not while away the medical delay by whistling, thus taking the very real risk that I might medically delay him.

10. I didn’t decide to get out of the subway and opt for the astonishingly long walk to work from Kendall, three minutes before the train started running again.

Triumph des Katzens

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done,
But we with a chuckle replied
That “maybe it couldn’t” but we would be some
Who wouldn't say so till we’d tried.

My cat doesn’t use a litterbox anymore. My cat uses the toilet.

Credit goes to Adrienne for even thinking of this as an option; while I was still vaguely looking through “free cat to good home” ads on Craigslist, she had found this website and suggested we use the process it describes to try to toilet train our yet unknown kitty.

The most common response to our proud claims that our cat would soon use the toilet was “I thought that only happened in movies.” This was often followed closely with “…like, Meet the Parents. Will the cat be able to flush?”

No, the cat doesn’t flush. We probably could have taught him, but if you combine the warnings people give about cats not knowing when enough is enough, flushing-wise, with our cat’s strange fascination with moving water, you can see how this might not be the wisest idea.

Anyway, it was a somewhat longer process than we’d anticipated: about three months of explaining to visitors why the litterbox was balanced on top of the toilet, or why a metal bowl of litter (and later, water) was in the toilet bowl. There were …incidents… and there were minor triumphs and disasters, and sometimes it was pretty gross. Sometimes I had to stay home on a Friday night and watch to make sure the cat didn’t try to scout out a new bathroom location, and occasionally overnight guests would back awkwardly out of the bathroom in the morning, toothbrush dangling precariously from their mouth, to report that the cat had just jumped up onto the toilet and begun to use it and they weren’t entirely sure that it was polite to stick around for the duration.

For the record, Icky doesn’t seem to care at all whether someone’s watching him, which looks promising in terms of getting photographic evidence of his new talent.

So yeah. My cat is pretty much the cleverest. And I will never have to clean a litterbox again.

Hottest Day In The World

Yesterday, I wrote this imaginary email:

Dear Residents of Ellery St. Apt. 3, On the Occasion of Katherine's Day Off and Attempted Afternoon Nap:

Congratulations on the purchase your new positive-gravity boots. No seriously, congratulations.

Love,
Katherine

P.S. That was clever of you to attach the boots to your furniture before rearranging it.

Then, I realized that the horrible thumping/scraping sounds had represented someone moving in or out; there was a van in front of the house, and a door propped open, and futons all over the sidewalk. Okay.

Tonight, I had the occasion to think the following thoughts:

Good lord, who rings the doorbell for that long of a time? Maybe it’s an emergency?

No, that looks like the guy from upstairs. Wait, your name is Damien? I totally thought it was Elliot. I can’t admit that though, because I just gave you a funny look when you said you thought I was Adrienne.

Yeah, bummer that you locked yourself out. You DO know there’s not like, a secret staircase between my apartment and yours though, right? And I don’t have spare keys to your door, so I really don’t see why you’re telling me this story about the locking-out…

Wait, what? You— you got a ladder. From the girls on the 1^st floor. Good for you? Oh, you want to— oh are you serious. Sure, sure I think it’s a clever idea, climbing up to your porch from mine. Cool, yeah bring up the ladder. You realize I am not going to help you or in any way attempt to interfere should you start to dangle off any part of the house? All right then.

Oh, you’re coming back with the ladder? Yeah, no I’m not going to wait by the door. No, you can ring the bell again when you’re back; I’m actually in the middle of scratching the cat’s head, and OW he’s going to keep biting me until I get back to that.

…[10 minutes go by]…

I know that ring; yes, hi. What? It’s still Katherine. No, that makes sense that you wouldn’t remember my name from that first time we met… or from 10 minutes ago. Or remember me pointing to my name, written on the door, when you suggested hopefully that I was in fact Adrienne. OW, ow. No, that didn’t really hurt when you hit my leg with the ladder. No, I’m fine. The porch? Is in the same location that it is in your apartment. Yeah, through the kitchen. Thank you, I also think our kitchen looks nice. Yes, I would expect that it does look like yours. That’s a pretty big ladder; do you want me to hold it while you climb? Are you sure? Oops, stay here, Icky. No, Icky, it’s like 400° outside, stay here. Fine, I’ll hold you. Wow, he pulled himself up onto his porch really quickly for such a big guy. He didn’t pull the ladder after him, though. Huh.

Oh. I definitely know that doorbell ring. Hi again! Yeah, you know the way. Please be careful of the— yeah, I can see how that would be unwieldy. OW. OUCH. Icky, seriously? You intently watch me vacuum all the time, but you’re terrified of a ladder? It’s inanimate! Well, not now, I guess. Now it’s careening between various walls and pieces of furniture in our house. OW THAT HURT A LOT! No not the ladder this time; the cat is freaking out, while located in the vicinity of my shoulder and neck.

At least the scratches on my collarbone are all parallel. I’ll just hold my hand on them to discourage bleeding while I say goodbye to Damien/Elliot. Or… not. I guess it is kind of old-fashioned to say thank you and goodbye after a neighbor has helped you break into your own apartment.

Well, Icky. Looks like it’s just you and me then. Ow.

A Day in the Life of Icky

My company is pretty good to its employees, so I am sitting at home today, July 3^rd, because the Fourth of July falls on a Tuesday this year and the higher-ups rightly assumed that a four-day weekend would be a hugely popular option.

I thought maybe it would be interesting to see what my cat does during the day on weekdays, since the last time I was around on a Monday my movement was limited to lying on the couch and occasionally rolling over to throw up in a bucket. Sorry, that was gross. The point is, I didn’t keep tabs on Icky that day.

(The cat, by the way, is now called Icky, which is short for Icarus. Yes, he does try and often fail to jump to unattainably high parts of the apartment; no, there are no wax wings involved. Moving on.)

So far, this is what Icky does during the day, after the usual routine of biting Katherine’s feet/elbows when she attempts to ignore her alarm clock, investigating as she makes coffee, and following her as she gets ready for work:

1. wander a little, scoping out likely nap locations.
2. nap.
3. sit up, look around, nap.
4. get up, move over about 4 feet, nap.
5. pace the hallway for about 5 minutes, lick paw, fall asleep before finishing bath.
6. hear noise. is it an enemy!? defeat possible enemy by getting much comfier and napping.
7. remember having made a to-do list—accordingly, find a shirt Katherine left on the ground, curl up on said shirt, shed. today’s goal accomplished!
8. nap.
9. ALERT! WHAT IS HAPPENING!? oh, someone is scratching behind ears. permission to proceed with sleeping.
10. nap, as adorably as possible.

I don’t know why we thought the cat’s day might be somehow fascinating.

Summer in the City

It’s summer in boston, all but officially, now. After a sopping May and breezily cool early June, the sun is finally exerting itself, alternating shiny-hot days with muggy-hot preambles to isolated T-storms; scattered T-storms; liberal sprinklings of T-storms.

It’s summer, and schools are out so kids have more time to help out on the farm during these peak growing months. Harvard Square has shifted its focus from late-night hungry undergrads to university-memorabilia-hungry summer school students and khakier-than-ever throngs of tourists eager to swallow specious legends about large campus buildings and thoroughly defiled statues.

The T, in its best days convenient but vaguely sketchy, has begun its transformation to tremoric miasma. Sweat makes its triumphant return. The view off the Longfellow Bridge tempts the unthinkable idea: maybe it would be cooler if I jumped in the Charles.

The weather and I are still in a sort of honeymoon period: brief, scattered showers come along break the humidity every few days, and my Danish skin has yet to feel the full effects of the sun’s blistering wrath. And soon, hopefully, we will know enough about the sun to tame it and bend it to our will. It’ll be nice if science can trump weather in this case, because, as I learned in my meterology class, science says that raindrop formation is exceedingly unlikely. Ella and my office-mate Mary Kate would tend to disagree with science in this case; they’ve both missed baseball games when astronomically small odds collided to form raindrops right over Fenway Park.

Felinity

This, by the way, is my cat:

This is my cat, again:

My cat and I are similar in many ways. Mostly, this is not so surprising; various people at many stages in my life have described me as “cat-like” or “somewhat feline.” I think these comments were usually brought on by my stretching a lot.

So, some of what I have in common with the cat may be a function of my catlike-ness, but some is definitely also due to my cat’s personality.

We both:

frequently sneeze.

were born with a healthy mistrust for water, which we are currently at some stage of overcoming.

like to climb up on things; sometimes can’t get down.

are convinced of the presence of something small and swift, moving just out of our field of vision.

tend to fall asleep in random places.

test what new things are through biting.

are interested in my knitting projects.

think we are entitled to drink out of the water glass on my nighstand.

fall off of things, then pretend we didn’t want to be up there anyway.

stretch.

sometimes think my sweaters might be plotting something insidious.

are irritated to be woken up by the thumping bass of the guy upstairs’ sound system as it noticeably vibrates the wall, floor, and bed.

enjoy chicken.

are fascinated by that bundle of feathers on the end of a string, and think we can catch it.

are intrigued by, but are often also a little frightened of, the outside world.

could not ignore that cardboard scratching post even a little bit more.

I may not be neat, but I am clean.

This entry is mainly, if not entirely, for the benefit of my mother, who has already heard—a few times at this point—that hard-to-utter phrase, “Mom, remember [that thing] you taught me [so many] years ago? That I used to complain about all the time? Well… you were right.”

I somehow don’t think she’ll mind hearing it again.

There are several things that my mother once taught or told me, that I really wish she had also told my roommate’s boyfriend, who pretty much lives in our apartment now. I didn’t used to think that these were things a person could only find out from my mom, in fact, I thought some of them were universal, but in this assumption I am apparently dead wrong.

I have spent a lot of time recently thinking of how I would teach these lessons if I were this guy’s mom. One thing I might say is: “putting peanut-butter-coated knives in the dishwasher results not in clean knives, but in knives and other dishes encased in a peanut-butter enamel—but it is understandable that you don’t know this, because you have never, to my knowledge, unloaded the dishwasher during the day while we’re all at work and you’re busy watching our cable TV and creating new generations of goo-covered knives.”

I might also suggest: “the towel that you carry with you into our bathroom before your shower, and wear out of the bathroom after the shower? Yes, that towel. You may use it to dry yourself off; no need to wander the bathroom, leaving puddles of water in your wake and spraying drops onto the mirror and toilet seat and into the cat litterbox, where they will clump with the litter to make small clusters too small to be caught by the litter scoop, but big enough to annoy the cat. Making proper use (or really, any use at all) of your towel will also allow the bathroom rugs to return to their normal state, which you’ll be surprised to find is not one of ever-drenched squelchiness. This will in turn allow us to avoid the situations in which I hang up said rugs to aid in their attempt to get from ‘soaked’ to only ‘very damp’ before your next shower, and then you ask me why it looks like ‘someone tore up the bathroom’ because ‘the rugs are all askew.’ ”

And: “speaking of the bathroom, if you are going to use my toothpaste consistently, it would be nice if you put it back in the place where you found it. Alternatively, maybe you could use your girlfriend’s toothpaste, which looks nothing like mine.”

Also: “the other three of us living here also tend to eat occasionally; it might not be safe to assume that a food item—or several—on a shelf that does not otherwise hold any of your girlfriend’s groceries in fact is—or are—hers. This is especially true of meat items, seeing as how your girlfriend is a vegetarian.”

At times, I wish I could have my mom call this guy up for a little refresher course in basic living techniques. Other times, I consider actually trying to mention these things to him in person, but my roommate, who shares my fairly low threshold for grossness and dirtiness in the apartment, has not noticeably attempted to effect a change in his ways, which makes me think she has tried and failed in the past.

Incidentally, I would have included “squeeze out the sponge after using it so it doesn’t fester with mildew,” but I have had to accept that this is fairly esoteric knowledge, based on the constant oozing wetness of the sponge in the kitchen at my office.