People do the darndest things . . .

I hear the most interesting news stories from the NPR show, "Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me" including this story:

Santa Barbara County sheriff's deputies come across a bizarre encounter at La Purisima Mission in Lompoc. Around midnight they found a 69-year-old Huntington beach man naked and covered in oats. Deputies say the man had covered himself in olive oil, rolled around in oats and allowed the horses at the mission to lick him clean. He apparently told deputies this has always been a fantasy of his and drove up from the Los Angeles area to play it out. Alfred Thomas Steven was cited and released for trespassing, animal cruelty and sexually assaulting an animal.

You can see the entire sheriff's report at The Smoking Gun.

I'm trying to figure out what the key element of the man's fantasy was here -- was he mostly into being licked by horses, and the oats were just the vehicle (with olive oil to make them stick properly), or was it the whole experience of being oiled, oated, and horse-licked? Hard to say, really, as the human mind is very inventive.

Paint whimsies

I'm painting various rooms in the house. . .

I just finished painting one of the bathrooms with the colored primer for a paint named "Startling Orange." This is an understatement. This room glows -- and it's in the basement! The paint should be called "Screaming Orange" or "Day-Glo Orange" or "Radioactive Orange" or "For God's Sake, Don't Look Directly At It Orange." It makes the art studio, with it's bright yellow walls, look understated. Of course, that said, I really like this color. But in deference to Q and any guests with adult, sophisticated color tastes, I will be covering it with a somewhat less intense glaze color, named "Citrus Blast." We'll see what it looks like after that.

The kitchen gives us no end of trouble in choosing colors, since any paint color has to coordinate with a beige cabinet finish that we don't like much, pinky-beige floor tiles, and black speckled countertops. So far, we've gone through five different paint colors. The winner seems to be "Soft Pumpkin."

The basement stairway now has beautiful two-toned peach walls/ceiling, an additional light fixture, elegantly finished stairs, and looks infinitely better than it used to. We've named it the "Peach Pit." I can't wait to put up some tiles and pictures to finish the effect.

I love color!

Hot weather

In cold climes (like upstate NY), the weather report in the winter includes an estimate of the length of time it will take exposed flesh to freeze. Presumably, if this time is short enough, one knows not to take the mittens off for any reason.

We've finally received the heat wave from the Midwest, and I wonder -- should they include an estimate of the length of time it would take for exposed flesh to fry?

It's really my fault for choosing today to attack the weeds in the front garden. Three hours of weeding, even in the late afternoon/early evening, was very warm indeed. Although, frankly, the mosquitoes bothered me much more than the heat.

I'm excited to be back on the internet! My computer developed an allergy to the internet, but Q was finally able to fix it. Yippee! I feel alive again! ;)

Cow poetry

I hadn't heard of this, but it was posted on one of the listservs I'm on. Apparently, a few years ago, a performance art piece was constructed to have cows create poetry.

Banks, a 22-year-old student at Purchase College, painted single words (from "a" to "existential") on the flanks of about 60 cows near his upstate New York home, then let them wander around to see if they could compose poetry. So Holsteins and Jerseys named Elsie and Maggie came up with phrases like "eccentric art," "performance as cow environment" and Banks' own favorite, "organic conceptual art as poetry." One animal seemed especially inspired -- with "away" written on her side, she broke loose from the herd for a while.

There's something about this that struck me as very amusing.

New garden statuary

While on vacation on the Eastern shore of Maryland, Q & I got new garden statuary, which was delivered yesterday. This statue/birdbath is in our front garden, and holds the remnants of last night's rain. She looks beautiful, peaceful, and sad.

Sparkly sparkly sparkly

I have been working (on and off) for some months now on a beaded necklace for my friend and dance teacher/mentor, Artemis. She is a fiery Turkish-style dancer, and she comes alive in red, so I hunted up all of my red beads, bought more (and more), and hand-beaded a necklace for her. It's finally finished! I can't wait to give it to her when I see her on Friday.

I started with a base of Timtex (stiff stabilizer) and covered it with stretch velvet. Then I sewed on Swarovski crystals in a random pattern and sewed on delicas (tiny beads) around each one. The fringe is silverlined ruby glass beads, Swarovski crystal bicones, and Czech glass butterflies (red with an AB coating), tipped with gold Swarovski crystals. Then I sewed two beaded strands with these same types of beads to link the necklace in the back. Finally, a lining was sewed on the inside, to cover all the stitching.

[Later thought] Oh, and I'd welcome any suggestions for a name/title for this piece -- I'm at a loss at the moment.

[Still later] I've named it "Turkish Fire" -- thanks for all the suggestions!

Help! Flooded basement!

Well, that rain that seemed so cool last night BROKE down our basement door and filled the entire basement with muddy water. It looks like the place was completely tossed. We have to clean everything up and assess the damage (and there looks to be damaged goods).

If anyone has time today to stop by our house and help with the cleanup, we would greatly appreciate it. It's a big messy job, and we could use the help.

Hoping you all weathered the storm better than we did!

Happiness

Things that make me happy:

• Rabbits in the back yard, including a baby bunny!
  
• Watching the third season of News Radio -- that show cracks me up. Speaking of funny, the seagulls in Finding Nemo -- Mine, mine, mine -- had me ROtFLMAO.
  
• New music set for my restaurant gig -- yay for new sets!
  
• Spending oodles of time with my sweetie.
  
• Being able to eat fresh vegetables from my garden -- yummy fresh peas and lettuce, and the most delicious strawberries I have ever eaten. And soon there will be tomatoes and zucchini, and blackberries and raspberries -- but I think the birds and rabbits will eat all the blueberries.
  
• Pretty painted walls -- the master bathroom is now an intense teal with lavender trim, and the basement bathroom will soon be orange. Other paint colors soon to come: Peach for the basement stairwell and green for the solarium. Whee!
  
• Carrot cake muffins -- new recipe, came out well, brought them to Habiba's Ghawazee workshop where the dancers ate them with glee. But there are still some left for me and Q -- yay!

There are many more, but that will do for today. I am listening to the rain, which is very cool, and I should go practice my new set some more. But shhhhh...Q is napping.

National Hairball Day

Well, I missed it this year, but what do you get for someone for National Hairball Awareness Day -- a trichobezoar?

Crammed full of knowledge

What I learned this semester:

• Having students complete comprehensive self-tests for each chapter of the textbook vastly increases the likelihood of them reading the textbook before class and improves the quality of class discussions.
  
• Writing a comprehensive self-test for each chapter is a useful review of the material in the textbook.
  
• Writing a comprehensive self-test for every chapter of a textbook takes a LOT of time.
  
• Grading self-tests which involve 50-150 questions each week, even with much of the process automated, takes a LOT of time.
  
• I don't have a lot of extra time.
  
• At this point in my life, I am unable or unwilling to lose significant amounts of sleep on a regular basis.
  
• My superpowers do not include the ability to find or create pockets of extra time.

Conclusion: Taking on tasks which require enormous expenditures of time without commensurate reduction in other time commitments, even when the choice serves valuable goals, leaves one very stressed and tired.

But hey, ask me anything about STDs or paraphilias or sexual dysfunction -- really, anything -- and I can probably answer it, as long as it's in this textbook! ;)

Back to work.