Kitten in a Bottle

lesson one: the albatross.

the royal albatross

albatrosses are near and dear to my heart. they are so cool. they are seabirds in the tubenose family, like petrels & fulmars. that means their noses are a variation on this:
this is a fulmar nose, i drew it as an example because it’s the most drastic

albatross beaks don’t have such a sharp “cut off” to the tube, it gradually melds into the rest of the beak. albatrosses also have their nasal tubes to the sides of the beak instead of together on top, but the idea is that they are super-sniffers, as opposed to most birds.

this is cool because it means they can smell really, really, really well. it was thought that tubenoses could smell schools of fish UNDER THE WATER! which would be cool but now they think that they just smell little tiny amounts of a chemical that floats to the top of the water above the school. which is still amazing, seeing as how they are soaring along way above the water surface and detect very small trace amounts of the chemical. anyways. albatrosses. they eat mostly krill, small fish, and squid (all things that travel in large groups or schools) but like most seabirds (think seagulls) they will eat basically anything they can get. some species dive over 30 feet underwater to catch swimming stuff.

also they are gigantic! the great albatross has a wingspan bigger than any bird living (11 feet!), even the condor. they need these giant wings because they spend most of their lives flying over the ocean. they only land to breed (more on that in a minute). unlike a lot of big seabirds, they have really strong legs. this lets them walk pretty well on land.

since they are flying at sea for months at a time, they have to be super efficient, or they’d run out of energy. so their wing muscles are evolved in a really cool way: when their wings are extended (gliding), they are RELAXED. this means that they expend the most energy of their entire flight in taking off and landing. when they are gliding around, they’re AT REST! how awesome is that. i will answer. totally awesome. they have a very long, narrow wing, good for gliding. since flapping sucks for them, they have to land in the ocean if there is no wind to keep them up, and that’s when they sleep.

royal albatrosses flyin’

ok so back to breeding. they live for a super long time, reach maturity slowly (not sexually mature until at least 5 yrs old), don’t have babies that often and take really good care of them when they do, which means they are a K selected species. R selected species are things that multiply rapidly and die quickly (think mice, weeds). some albatrosses can live up to over 50 years, and it’s commonly thought that they often live as old as 70!!! this means that when something causes a decrease in their population it is harder & takes longer for them to recover.

albatross baby - they only have one huge baby at a time, so a lot of effort and energy goes into raising it to adulthood

since they invest so much time in their young, they carefully choose a mate over the course of a few years with a really elaborate mating ritual/dance, and are pretty much monogamous. even after the giant ordeal of selecting a mate, from the time they lay the egg until the chick fledges takes over a year. so they don’t have babies every year. the incubation period of the egg is somewhere on the order of 75 days for the smaller species of albatross!!! that’s like 2 1/2 months here people! LONGER for the larger species!!! that’s the longest incubation period of any egg of any bird. a chicken egg only takes 21 days. once an albatross baby is born, one parent stays with it constantly until it can at least kind of fend for itself, which is another 3 weeks.

they make big colonies on islands like most seabirds do for breeding. interestingly all the islands they choose don’t have any native land mammals, which makes sense because there would be fewer predators to get them while they and their babies were vulnerable on the ground. unfortunately this means they have evolved no defenses against mammalian predators, so if an animal is introduced, they are screwed. in a famous & tragic case, mice actually attack & eat the chicks of one colony of albatrosses. they also always return to their native island to breed, which sucks if an island is not really suitable.

most albatross species are threatened or endangered, mostly due to habitat loss (introduced animals eat the babies), hunting for meat, bones, or feathers, fishing accidents (hooked on bait or underwater nets), pollution (eating trash) and all those other common things that our ocean birds are dying of. albatrosses have been considered lucky by sailors for a really long time, which is cool. if you want to learn about cultural stuff though you can do it on your own because humans don’t interest me that much.

here ends lesson one: the albatross.

my sleep schedule is so f’ed up it’s craziness. i stay up until around 3, then sleep until 2:30. on thursday, i got home from school, took a nap at 4…. and then VB woke me up at 2 am to feed me a burrito on his way to bed. i studied for a couple hours, and then fell back asleep until i had to get up at 7:30.

this is doing great for adjusting me to being back at school. just great.
especially since i’m taking 5 classes this quarter.
bio 448 - marine algal ecology
bio 356 - foundations in ecology
bio 425 - advanced plant physiology and development
chem 224 - organic chemistry
engl 242 - 19th Century and the Fantastic

believe it or not, every single one of these classes, not just the lit class, is reading intensive. the ecology class has a ton of work, including “reading questions” that are worksheets with detailed questions on the reading, weekly field exercises, and an ongoing independent project throughout the quarter. i struggled with ochem last quarter, and was pathetically relieved at the grade i got. i need to spend more time on it this quarter. the lit class assigns about 30 pages of a 19th century novel (think hawthorne, melville, here) per night, with a huge paper due in the middle of the quarter that’s 50% of the grade. the plant phys class requires daily observation of a growing plant in the greenhouse (with a group of 3, but still). so far the algal ecology class looks like the least work, but dang if the book for that class isn’t totally incomprehensible. i’m fairly familiar with algae, but it’s a grad-level book, written in the most boring, technical way. i can hardly get through the first ten pages. i think i’ll be skimming.

classes are from 9:30-2:20 (or 2:50) every day, with an hour commute each way and a scant half hour break on Wed. and Thurs. My bus drops me off on Pacific under the pedestrian bridge across from Hitchcock at about 9:20 and my first class is in Thompson at 9:30. Can anyone say “walk really freaking fast?” then at 10:30, my next class is back in Hitchcock! Can anyone say “walk really freaking fast while muttering expletives?” Maybe when it gets drier I’ll start bringing my scooter. Even though it’s a pain in the ass to bring on the bus.

SORRY FOR THE LONG WORRIED/COMPLAININ’ RAMBLINS. BUT NOT REALLY.

if any of you have not seen married to the sea you should do it immediately. if you don’t like it you should get your brain checked because seriously there is something way wrong with you. like, i don’t even know if i’d like someone who didn’t like at least MOST of the comics on there. come on.

also the dogblog. go look at that too.

VB and HILDY are doing FINE. hildy recently had an interesting development. she really enjoys sitting in empty satsuma orange boxes. and it is hilarious and we can’t bring ourselves to throw them out. so our apartment currently looks like an orange warehouse. kind of.

also coffee ice cream is delicious

also THE PEOPLE UPSTAIRS MOVED OUT! anyone who has ever been over here knows that those people seriously have something wrong with them. they would yell and stomp and run and wrestle and whatever at odd hours. they used to drop stuff onto our front doorstep all the time from their balcony. kids’ toys, trash, cigarrette butts, sunglasses, drill bits, and one time a weed pipe! also when we got back on christmas there was a broken beer bottle on our front porch! dude, what the heck! i left them a note to clean it up, and they did.

but now they are gone.

goodbye

We went mushroom hunting up in the Cascades yesterday. We found mostly False Morels (Verpa bohemica), with some Half-Free Morels (Morchella semilibera) and 12 awesome true Morels. We also tromped around a lot and found a lot of poop and stinging nettles and threw some big old rocks into a river.

I (ME!) found a couple of oyster mushrooms! Those were the only other kind of delicious mushrooms we found, though we found a ton of other mushrooms, none of them were edible (or at least worth bothering about). We also saw a bunch of clown millipedes. They contain and secrete cyanide, and they smell like almonds!

Here are lots of pictures. There are only a couple with actual mushrooms in them, because during actual mushroom picking time, I needed both hands.

Sandy holds out a non-edible one that just looks cool
VB holds up a False Morel… yes, they do look like gross deformed penises.
Mathias is laughing because Ed is doing some weird dance or swatting a bug or something
Mathias is yelling something at Sandy while she eats a Newton… probably “MOMDAD!”
Eating lunch and coffee at the car
Sandy humps toward Ed
Ed notices
Ed discovers a bent tree
Sandy is Snow White in an enchanted forest glade
Everyone explores the enchanted forest glade
We found a really cool mushroom
Ed investigates
It turns out it’s probably poisonous, so we give it to people who can appreciate it
Ed ran up there with little thought about how to get down
Some really pretty areas, with good views
Sandy rocks out
Shy little Sandy
VB finds a giant calf’s brain mushroom. Non-edible.

Also guess what! Yesterday I accidentally left Hildy’s training pan out of the toilet, and when VB went into the bathroom, he saw that she had gone poop in the toilet without the pan!!! We widened the hole so that now there is basically no ledge at all. We didn’t want to remove the pan totally just yet because she was still putting one hind foot in for poop and both hind feet in the pan for pee. But when VB came home for lunch like an hour ago, we spied on her going pee and she had all four feet on the seat, with her little kitty butt hanging out over the hole! 100% perfectly!

LOOK’S LIKE WE’RE IN THE HOME STRETCH HERE, FOLKS!

Keep up to date on Hildy’s toilet training progress by reading her livejournal! There are some pictures there of her going, too, if you want to see.

I was thinking about Cassie and how much I like her and all the funnest of times we have had together. Everyone in the history of the world loves Cassie. I have never met anyone that was so willing to share so much of herself with everyone. She is brave and not shy and pretty awesome at everything she does except maybe sucking milkshake through a straw, because that is really hard.

This is also one of the only documented pictures of Fat Fat Fatty Fat Fry-Liker, the fatty squirrel at the Japanese Garden in downtown Olympia. Many people claim to have seen this elusive squirrel, but there is no other proof of his existence. This squirrel loves french fries more than life.

Cassie, if you want me to take these pics down, I will, I guess.

BUT I LOVE THEM.

Thanks for being such an awesome friend.

Teaching our kitten to use the toilet. Enough people were curious about this that I started her a livejournal, readable here:
http://hildystoilet.livejournal.com.

I have a Neopets guide site that I run. Well, I run two, but one of them is in conjunction with my cousin. Since we each pay for one of the sites but write content for both, we agreed that we could co-own both of them.

I knew only basic HTML and no CSS when I started, but I was determined to make my own original layout and navigation system. So… I read some tutorials and decided to try until I succeeded. After weeks of pain and torment, with occasional triumphs (just often enough to keep me going), I finally succeeded!

kadoatie.org is the result! I am extremely proud of it. I get hundreds of visitors a day, and it only “went public” about a week ago! Today I put up a “Neopets Cereal review” that is very popular.

snowickle.org is the other site, a Neopets news and graphics site. It gets about 550 unique hits per day.

This three-day weekend is Sakura-Con, the gigantic anime convention. I am going as Yomiko Readman from the anime Read or Die. I highly recommend it, it gets an A+.

VB and I are doing well up here in Redmond. We’ve been playing Xbox 360 and DS. Mostly he plays the 360… I played Kameo, but there just aren’t any exciting games out for it besides Kameo that I’m really interested in. He’s been playing Burnout a lot, and I got him Quake about a month ago and he really likes that. Geometry Wars and other Xbox Live Arcade games are really fun, so we’ve been playing those.

I’ve been playing Animal Crossing DS and Mario Kart DS. This is finals week, so not so much lately. Tomorrow is my Chem 160 final. Yesterday I had my Calculus II final, which means that now I AM DONE WITH CALCULUS FOR GOOD! NO MORE! NO MORE I SAY!

Next quarter is Sociology (BS “cultural” requirement), calculus-based phsyics (I spoke too soon T_T) and statistics (to finish up my maths requirement).

We were swimming and laughing and splashing, about 50 yards from shore, just floating along. Three friends and me, in the middle of summer, in our swimsuits, though Brian had his shirt on, and Alice had shorts. It was a bright, golden summer day, like from a 70’s movie, where the characters are having just the greatest of times, goofing around on a picture-perfect lake.

Up ahead, an old log floated by at what seemed an unusual speed for a placid lake. Nick swam up to check it out, and yelled, startled. “Guys, there’s a current up here!”

“A current? That’s impossible, it’s a lake! Quit screwing around,” Alice called back as we swam to catch up. As we drew nearer, we began to feel it, too. An insistent tugging, pulling us to the left. At first, we were having fun with it, but we soon realized we couldn’t escape it. We were all strong swimmers, but the black water was running too quickly for us to swim against it, or even swim to the side to escape it. After an initial panic, we realized we could see where the current was taking us– to a small inlet with a stream. We figured we would just let it take us to shore, and then we could easily walk back to the beach where we’d left our towels. It struck me as strange that a current was running toward a stream, as it would on a mountaintop or dam-created pool, instead of away, as it would on a normal lake with a stream feeding into it. I decided to think more about that later, as we got close to shore.
(more…)

We got her from an animal shelter in Tacoma. She was a stray, then she was in foster care, then at about 6 weeks she went into the shelter. At 8 weeks, I got her. She’s beautiful and crazy and silly and cuddly and sweet. And I love her so much. She is keeping me company while VB is in Australia. He’s gone until the 31st, so I’m pretty lonely. If I thought any of you would drive all the way up here to Redmond, I’d have another video game party.

Anyway, here are the pictures.

I stayed up all night last night for the first time in ages. I used to do it all the time in high school. Once a week, at least. I’d forgotten what it was like. The feeling of an extra-long day. The detached feeling you get in the early hours before dawn. When you become not-quite-yourself, and really good at things that require concentration. Like games or writing or drawing. I unlocked and beat cups on Mario Kart DS last night/this morning that I had utterly failed to come close to previously.

I’d forgotten what that first sight of grey light feels like, the realization that it’s getting light out, it’s really tomorrow, and the sick fluttery kind of excited horrified feeling that goes with it.

It’s okay for sometimes, but I like sleep way too much.

Our fish, Fishtank, is probably emo. He sits and mopes around on the bottom of the bowl all day. I bet he listens to emo bands like Something Corporate, and then cries. He probably writes poetry about the futility of existence, and how no one understands him. Like this:

Swimming languidly
In the black hole of my life
No one understands
What it is to be so aqualine
When I get so solitary
Hear me sigh
Tip me over and pour
..me
…out

Haha, Fishtank. Stop being such an emo kid.

P.S. I am personally proud of myself for the wordplay on “aquiline.” It’s all about the wordplay.

Three separate hawks. Not redtails, I don’t think. Maybe Cooper’s.
They were sitting on 3 nearly-consecutive street lights on State Route 520 heading west toward I-405.
All staring toward the just-risen sun, wings folded, pale breasts facing the light.
I wondered if I was the only one that could see them. Am I the only driver so early in the morning that looks around, let alone up? Quite possibly.

What were they looking at? Was it nothing, simply a moment’s respite before the urban and suburban day slammed in to shutter them in their treetop refuges? Is the exhaust and rumble and reflected light from the windshields of thousands of cars too much for them, even from a thermal hundreds of feet in the air? It must look so incomprehensible from up there. A river of streaming specks, each going somewhere Very Important, but not so important when seen from so high. Not important at all to them. What’s important is what’s going on in that field. A twitch of a tail, a rustle of grass.

Or were they staring intently at something I couldn’t see at all from my boyfriend’s Honda? Or something I wouldn’t be able to see at all? Were they heralding the coming of some great goddess of theirs? A falcon-goddess? I imagined her, spreading huge wings bigger than clouds and flying in from the east, hawks and eagles and kestrels and osprey on street lights and telephone poles and tall treetops all over the Northwest, all facing the dawn. And last night they prepared their offerings to her of shrews and mice and litte rabbits. And she would come to each hawk separately all day, because hawks don’t like other hawks, and give them her blessing and then continue east in the morning.