Let's see if my writing improves under the influence...hehehe

In the yearly competition for the Saddest. Chinese. New Year's. Eve. Ever, a bunch of us went out for Chinese food at this place that cooks EVERYTHING with brown sauce (much like the Chinese restaurants we went ot in Alava, Spain). No yu sheng. No mahjong. No ten million aunties and uncles. Just random quarrels about whether or not to order the tilapia (mispronounced to the umpteen squillionth degree) and a tiff with the waitress about who could or could not drink wine at our table.

I have a new tutee for biology who knows everything and just wants a "study buddy" so now I'm getting paid to sit around with her for an hour and do, essentially, nothing. Milk and honey indeed. I need more jobs like that. Keep 'em coming, Peer Tutoring Center.

In other news, I am halfway caught up with Six Feet Under. And though it is not quite as good as The Sopranos, it is very enjoyable nonetheless, much more so than the garbage we are inundated with on network TV. (Yes, Dawson's Creek people, we're looking at you).

Prof Kort:

"If you get the chance you really should see Mr. Holland's Opus. It really demonstrates [C.S. Lewis'] dichotomy between the individuality of goodness and the homogeneity of evil. Of course, Mr. Holland comes to a very atypical end in the movie - he gets a concert played for him. Most good people don't even get a concert for them at the end - they just die."

Happy Chinese New Year!

Poetry:

1) A haiku

Yesterday it worked
Today it has broken down
Windows is like that

2) Shout-out

My name is Gato
I have metal joints
Beat me up
And earn 15 silver points

I spent the whole afternoon soldering wires together and inhaling lead fumes. I hear that's bad for you.

3) Fill in the blanks

There once was a man from Nepal
Whose _____ was incredibly small
His perpetual prayer
To the powers up there
Was ________________________

I swear that the pigeons hate me and I feel really bad having to deprive them of food. Presumably, it's part of my whole guilt complex, and the ever-present paranoia that immanent justice really has been built into the universe.

Contributions for the fill-in-the-blank poem should be sent via e-mail.

I lost my gloves, so it seems the dire predictions have come true. The screaming may now commence. In my defense though, I must say that they're really silly items of clothing. You have to take them off indoors, and there's really no sensible place to put them while you're fiddling around with other things. They're like umbrellas. You come in out of the rain, your umbrella is sopping wet, and there really isn't anything you can do with it except hang it on a chair or prop it up against something, and there you go, it's forgotten. They should make umbrellas/gloves with sensors and a device that you can put in your pocket that beeps when it's beyond a certain range of the thing you're trying not to lose. Or something...anything, I swear that the sole reason the umbrella industry is burgeoning is because our family keeps misplacing them, and if we lived in a temperate country, I would say the same of the people who make gloves.

Damn it.

So half of the world's computers go down today and I can't pay my credit card bills online. If I have to mail them a cheque I'm going to start losing hair, because that's going to require finding an envelope, a stamp and my cheque book. Is that "check" or "cheque"? Or are both of them OK?

Music:
Anything except those people who auditioned for American Idol and blew out the eardrums of half of America last week. And Good Charlotte. And Kelly Clarkson. Especially Kelly Clarkson.

Books:
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller (finally)

Food:
Lots of cheese

So re-reading that last post, it kind of sounds like we share a laundry basket, which we don't.

I have started on the pigeons, my job being to weigh them, feed them and give them water every day (to begin with, anyway). As you might imagine, the hardest part of the exercise is catching them. They put up one hell of a struggle, and sometimes end up flying around the room. Pigeons flying around the room, Dr. Buhusi tells me, is not good. He also tells me that the reason we keep the lab doors locked all the time is so that animal rights activists can't get in and let all the animals loose, like in the Rats of Nimh or something.

So either I suck at html or blogger is just not cooperating with me because that picture just won't show up.

Almost every time either Gab and I go to do laundry, we come back to our room and find one extra sock in our laundry basket that doesn't belong to us. Never two. Never a mismatched pair. One. Sock. Is there a conspiracy or something that I don't know about? Some secret society that goes around planting single, unmatched socks in other people's laundry baskets? Yesterday it was a red one with Hello Kitties on it, although I have, in the past, got stripes, Reebok (tm) and a baby booty.

Pic of the day:

BlogThis!