This is the wall just outside the door to my building. The sunlight hitting it caught my attention, so I went inside and got my camera. I took the first photo while standing right next to the wall, looking down it. I’ve never been that close to it before, so I’d never noticed that there was a small piece of burned wood stuck in the mortar. Weird!
I’m definitely planting more of these next year, and in different colors, too. For one, I’ve proven that they are impossible to kill. Second, they are prolific bloomers. Just the three stalks I planted have maybe 50 flowers on them. Third, the blooms last quite awhile.
A new construction crane appeared last week, at the big dig behind Business/SPEA. It has a red and white flag on top, which I assume means it’s a sovereign nation.
The view is of the northwest sky, so the pink band in the top photo is the Belt of Venus, not the sunrise. The bottom photo was taken about 20 minutes later, after the sun had risen.
And that’s about all I saw of the sky today. I spent almost the whole day up in the stacks, pulling books for the Google Books Library Project[1], and there aren’t any windows up there. There’s not much in the way of air conditioning, either. It was hot and stuffy and dusty and pretty much the opposite of enjoyable. But it’s a neat project, so I’m glad that I get to help out with it.
It also means that I was finally able to justify buying an iPod. I have resisted, because I hate the evil Apple empire even more than I hate the evil MS empire. Resistance, however, is futile. Or something. It should be here on Tuesday, so hopefully I won’t have to do another marathon book pulling session sans music. I think my brain might turn to pudding if I did.
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1. I once had a raging asshole tell me that library workers want to make it difficult for the public to access information. If I live forever, I don’t think I’ll ever understand how the hell anyone could come to that conclusion. It’s pretty much the polar opposite of everything that libraries and library workers at every strata strive for. We want our patrons to find the information they need as quickly and easily as possible. That’s why libraries are participating in things like the Google Books Library Project. Duh.
It stormed this morning. I waited until it pretty much over before driving across town. I should have taken my camera with me, because the sky was stunning–bands of high clouds to the west, with muted sunrise colors reflecting off them, and lower down, scudding grey clouds, and to the east, the back side of the storm front, with its wall of grey behind giant, fluffy white cumulonimbus.
The sun is out now, but the flowers are still dripping with raindrops.
All of these photos were from the IU Press building (that’s press as in books, not press as in newspapers).
I have been sneezing like crazy today. Something evil is blooming, probably ragweed. It’s just about the right time for it to start attacking people. Ugh. I ended up taking a Zyrtec, which A) doesn’t seem to be helping, and B) makes me stupid and tired, andalsotoo C) keeps me from sleeping. Good times!
Door and window at the side of the IU Press building.
The trash dumpster the IU Press building.
I’m sitting for a friend’s cat. The route I take to her house goes past the IU Press building. Every day, I’m struck by how the large screens in the windows flash green in the sunlight, and how the color contrasts with the brickwork. It’s really quite lovely.
Harriet went to the vet last week. She was due for her rabies vaccine, and I wanted to talk to the vet about her allergies and her butt lump (it’s started bugging her). Harriet was Very Good. No surprise, because she has always been good at the vet, no matter what horrible things they do to her. The new vet, after doing a fine needle aspiration of the lump, pronounced her “tough as nails.” Miss Brown may be melodramatic, but she’s also made of stern stuff.
On the allergy front, the vet recommended 50mg of Benadryl 3x/day (dogs require a much higher dose than we do). I’ve given her Benadryl in the past, but only 25mg once or twice a day. A higher dose does seem to be helping. I’m also trying a different food, because the vet agreed that Harriet’s allergies are largely food-related (if they were environmental, they’d go away or at least decrease in winter). So I picked up a bag of venison and sweet potato kibble and a few cans of the same formula, for treats. I figured that she’s never had venison, so she’s less likely to react to it. She’s had sweet potato, but the other limited ingredient foods at the pet supply shop both had potato in them, and she’s had that, too.
Aside from the food change, we’re going to keep her on Benadryl for three weeks. If that doesn’t work, the vet mentioned trying Zyrtec. We also talked about prednisone, which I’m really leery of. It would likely help with the allergies as well as hopefully shrink the tumor, but it’s magical tumor-shrinking powers are finite. That’s an avenue I don’t want to go down unless and until it’s absolutely necessary. My feeling is that, if the tumor truly needs to be dealt with, I want it removed. The vet was concerned about removal, though, because 1) Miss Brown ain’t got no fat on her butt, and 2) she is a 9 year old Boxer. She’s reluctant to put a Boxer of that age under unless it’s really, truly necessary. I agree, but I think it might be really, truly necessary.
So at this point, we’re waiting to see if lessening Harriet’s allergies will lessen the tumor’s irritation factor, and 2) for test results. The vet looked at the slide and saw a few cells she wasn’t comfortable with identifying, so she was going to have a colleague look at it. If her colleague can’t identify them, they’ll send it out. I’m going to call back on Monday, but the vet said to assume that no news was good news, so that’s what I’m doing.
I guess this is the kind of crap you go through when you own a Boxer. They are notoriously allergic, lumpy dogs. Thankfully, Harriet seems to have avoided the heart problems common in the breed (murmurs, SAS, and cardiomyopathy). Her teeth are beautiful, she’s not showing any signs of arthritis, no hip dysplasia, and she doesn’t suffer from any of the breathing problems that brachycephalic breeds sometimes experience.
In the meantime, Harriet is off all forms of people food, including her beloved peanut butter. Woe is Harriet!
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1. Assuming anything shows up one way or the other. My understanding is that FNAC is not necessarily a good diagnostic tool for determining that a fatty tumor is, indeed, just a fatty tumor. And it’s probably a moot point, anyway, since my opinion is that the stupid lump needs to be removed, regardless.
red paper boat 