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Wheels of the bus

Today's fail: I was gazing out the window as the bus drove up Mount Vernon Avenue, looking at all there is to see on a not-quite-autumn afternoon, and forgot to pull the cord to signal the driver for my stop. In my defense: a baby ballet class was just letting out and the sidewalk was filled with moms, those gigantic yuppie-baby strollers, dogs, and angelic three-year-olds in pink leotards. I didn't even notice how far along the bus was until we were passing my stop.

Today's win: The next stop is actually no further from my house than my usual stop and the walk is a bit shadier too.

Light games

I took a walk around sundown. The light was about gone, so I didn't take my camera. The light there was would probably not have played well with the camera anyway.

Wild clouds in the sky blew around and bounced what was left of the sunlight all over. Lurid pink light, greenish grays, and blues. Nothing had a shadow except right below.

Pink things were pinker. I am pink anyway and was wearing a fuschia shirt. Lurid!

The grass was greener than green, sort of a glowing, radiating, somebody went a little too far with the saturation slider, ultra-green.

I mostly walked around staring at the grass and thinking, "Wow. Green. That is really green, that is." (It was a long day. I was tired. I'd spent the day writing "No, dummy! Get a clue already!" in the nicest, most professional sort of way, which can be much more wearing than you'd think.)

Then it began to rain a little.

Then I saw a giant squash vine taking over a yard. These end of summer gardens are going a little nuts with the squash. In this particular garden, the giant variegated (the leaves were dark green with a symmetrical lighter green pattern, very fractal) squash vine had taken over an entire bed. It was climbing into a crape myrtle and lurching over a picket fence, probably in an effort to snare parked cars. Even end of summer squash vines are not quite fast enough to catch anything moving, and it's a good thing too, or the neighborhood gardens would be filled with struggling dogs and babies in strollers getting raised aloft as the vines phototrope into the sky.

So I stopped and stared at the very, very green vine twining its way up the very green and very pink crape myrtle.

Then it started to rain a little more and the light got less interesting. Time to go home!

A day without cats?

I don't think so.

Monte Alban doesn't think so either.

It is too bad, but I am actually cat-less in Alexandria. It's the Internet cats that keep me going during the weeks.

My cats live down in Richmond where they tolerate Oz, sometimes even to the extent of not leaving the room when he walks in (only Monte does that. Sparky just lies there and yawns). In return, he feeds them (juicy food with gravy every day) and cleans up after them.

The cats make up for my absence on the weekends. Weekends seem to be prime barfing time, so I get to clean up cat effluvia too, both fresh and the stuff Oz doesn't notice. My lap must be available for sitting on demand. I may be called upon to pet an eating cat in the wee hours. I will be called upon to brush cats while standing in an uncomfortable position (I was given a reprieve and allowed to sit and brush when I had that stress fracture in my foot, but that's over now). If we are in the house, we will be meowed at incessantly for no less than two hours prior to kitty dinner time. It's a concentrated cat experience.

Take it from one who knows. A day without cats is not a good idea, because you'll have to make up for it one way or another.

Listen closer

I've really missed my regular dose of Japanese news. I watch a little when I'm home on the weekends, but the daily weird I got from NHK news broadcasts is not quite made up for by my workplace, most days, anyway.

One evening at home, some months ago, I had the NHK news on (News at Noon, which means it was 11:00 pm EST). I wasn't really paying attention, but gradually the repetition of certain words, all in the same story which just went on and on, got my attention: arrested, arrested, suspect, public drunkenness (not actually a crime in Japan, certainly not anything unusual), losing endorsements (harsh, I thought, for generally accepted behavior), appearances cancelled (followed by a list of really wholesome sounding events and TV shows), arrested, drunk, Shibuya, SMAP, …

What? Ageing boy band, drunk in public? Tell me more!

I finally started paying attention. The newsreader let out a flood of unfamiliar words (obviously this public drunkenness was a little more involved, perhaps even esoteric, shall we say, than the usual variety), the images were fairly standard perp in police minivan footage captured at every high profile arrest, and I recognized one of the annoying SMAP guys. He does a lot of voiceovers in nature documentaries and makes guest appearances on all the holiday variety shows and quiz shows. I don't know his name. Oz thinks of him as "Oh, that NHK whore. He needs a good punch in the face."

"What did he do?" I ask the television.

Finally, the newsreader switches back to more garden variety vocabulary. "In a statement, [annoying SMAP guy] said, 'I have no idea how I ended up naked in that park.'"

"Oh." Well, that explains it. I can see how public drunkenness, in a park in Shibuya, and naked could get you bumped right off the family variety hour.

Squirrel crash

Last fall I heard on NPR that their was an acorn crash throughout the eastern United States (this was discussed elsewhere at the time). I did notice that, compared to the year before, there weren't as many acorns lying under the oak tree by my apartment entrance and I was almost never startled by the crack of an acorn landing on the tin roof over my doorway (not actually a bad thing—acorns are loud). I also noticed that the osage orange tree a few blocks down only gave up a couple measly hedgeapples all season instead of the more normal 10-15 a day smashed in the road.

Where it really showed though, was in the squirrels. Del Ray's squirrels are (or were) really assertive. And plentiful. Unlike Richmond squirrels, which coyly scamper up tree trunks and peep out at passersby, or Boston squirrels which waddle along behind you and demand popcorn (fattest squirrels I've ever seen, the size of cats), Del Ray squirrels would sit in the middle of the sidewalk and play chicken with you as you walked up, and were just generally maddening. One day my landlady would smooth out the mulch in her flowerbeds and by the next morning the mulch would be full of divots from squirrel activity.

I figured that the acorn shortage would take care of some of that, and I was right. The squirrel population thinned considerably. My aunt in Pennsylvania noticed it too. Usually taking her fox terriers for a walk was an adventure in staying vertical because the dogs were always dashing off after squirrels. Not a problem this year. And my landlady's flowerbeds were relatively undisturbed (at least until her giant puppy got to them).

I've noticed much less squirrel attitude in Del Ray too … up until a few weeks ago when the acorns started dropping. The squirrels who survived the Great Acorn Famine of '08 are getting pretty damn cocky already. Sitting on the chain link fences and watching me with their beady little eyes as I walk by, instead of running away like prey animals are supposed to.

I would have thought that the survivor squirrels would have been the members of the gene pool with the best capacity for laying on and retaining fat, breaking into birdfeeders, and remembering where the goodies are buried. I was wrong. Another neighborhood resident enlightened me when she told me about how she dropped peanuts out her window every week to attract squirrels for the entertainment of her (indoor) cat. I told her, "You've upset natural selection! You've gone and selected for the bold squirrels!"

So things are pretty much back to normal, squirrel-wise.

Resilient little buggers.

Sign of the times

In the first year that I lived in Alexandria (2007-2008), three home decor places opened in a three block stretch of the commercial street near my apartment.

Bad timing, no?

Two were new, one went into a small space, one into quite a large space. The third place moved from a location several blocks down the same street.

The place which moved, the space is now empty and for lease.

The small new place hasn't run through its capital yet and is still open.

The large new place is gone. The space is now occupied by a tarot card place.

There is only so much market for rugs, lamps, and ceramic roosters, after all, but everyone wants to know what the future holds.