Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Many things did not happen today. I did get my ISP account reactivated, but I didn't make it to Bowie to see the relatives who are visiting from overseas, I did not get any more of my post-Pennsic laundry done, I did not wash dishes, I did not make some insurance-related phone calls, and I didn't get any farther writing up how Pennsic went. I did see a brief but intense lightning storm with mercifully moderate rain (so none of it came through the leaky roof), and get a migraine.

Perrine, on the other hand, had a productive day. She caught a mousie.

But first, some catching up... ( Perrine at Anniemal's house )

I did notice that she paid a lot more attention to me when we got back to Baltimore than she had in Virginia -- not following me around from room to room as she had done when she first adopted me, but definitely showing a lot more interest in my whereabouts, and coming to me for strokes and scritches a lot. I got the impression that she misses having the other critters and more humans around, but I'm not entirely certain. ( More cat-behaviour observations )

Anyhow, on to today:

Now cats will occasionally just decide some corner looks interesting, or want to see behind something, but one can tell when they're actually after something. I didn't know whether it was a lost toy, an insect, a mouse, or a hallucination, but I noticed that she was very interested in the crack between the head of the bed and the wall, and the small space between the bookcase next to the bed and the wall. So I pulled the mattresses down a little so she could stand on the box springs, and I moved the bookcase a little out from the corner, and she stayed Extremely Interested in that corner, darting from one end of the bookcase to the other. Her tail quivered, and spent a lot of time sticking straight behind her, and her ears were so far forward you'd think they were trying to crawl off her head. In short, every hair in her coat was flashing, "HUNTING IN PROGRESS". At that point I hadn't heard anything, and I certainly couldn't see anything, so I just trusted that there was some sort of prey nearby and hoped she'd get whatever it was. I was thinking insect, due to the lack of sounds.

Nope, no insect. A wee little mousie, a young 'un. She nabbed it by sticking a paw into a space where her body couldn't fit, and a moment later it was in her mouth.

( Perrine and I disagree about what to do with the mouse... )

I did praise her and offer her a kitty-treat. But she was so distracted trying to figure out where it had gone that I'm not sure she knew what I was praising her for.

So anyhow, Perrine had a productive day even if I did not, and she's being affectionate. Not curling up against my arm to sleep, alas, but she does come to get stroked and petted a bit before going to her usual spot in the hall between the two bedrooms when I go to bed.

I love my cat. She's a sweet cat. Well, she's sweet to humans anyhow. Not so much to other pets or vermin.

Huh. No wonder she was so skinny when I found her despite being a hunter, if she hasn't realize the furry, squirmy toys are food!

In other news, it was a kind of exciting day in Baltimore. I heard a helicopter hovering, which is something the police chopper almost never does, so I looked out my window and saw a television news bird stopped in the air about a block away. I went to a telly and flipped to that station, and caught something about a police-involved motor-vehicle accident. It turns out there were two near here, about an hour apart. From the direction of the helicopter, I think it was looking at the second, less severe one. (The other involved having to cut the officer out of the police car. If I heard right when I caught a fragment of the report, that one was caused by the other vehicle running a red light and ramming the cruiser in the intersection. I don't know what caused the second accident.) And when I caught a little of the late night news, I saw that a lightning bolt from the thunderstorm -- which had unusually high amounts of lighting -- had set fire to the Sheppard-Pratt mental hospital up in Towson.

Here's hoping the next few days are a lot less eventful for everyone around here. Except the mice. The mice can have lots of scary excitement at Perrine's paws.

And now it's time for the next dose of my migraine meds, the first dose not having quite done the trick.

I've noticed that at least one journal style available in LiveJournal makes it impossible for me to post comments. I can get to the Post Comment page and type in my comment, but there's no submit button! I haven't taken the source apart yet, but I suspect that it's doing some funky JavaScript thing instead of just coding the form in HTML the way the other styles do. (I surf with JavaScript turned off.) Thing is, I can't leave a comment on those users' journals telling them I can't leave comments...

I guess I need to go through the LJ styles available to figure out which one those folks are using, and complain to LJ support about the problem, since the only thing the individual users can probably do is change styles entirely, right? What would be better would be to fix the style for everyone.

"Usually it was a case of bears being bears and humans being stupid." -- Iaroslava Ivanovna (of Caer Edgemere)

• First, an urgent one (for those of you who share certain political opinions with me and live in the US): from the page with a form on it to send your representatives email at Human Rights Campaign: "The Senate will hold hearings on marriage on September 4. These hearings were called by Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) to determine whether laws in the U.S. are currently sufficient to prohibit same-sex couples from being able to legally marry, or whether additional measures are needed (such as a constitutional amendment like the one being considered in the House of Representatives). Tell your Senators today to oppose any attempt to amend the Constitution on the issue of civil marriage for same-sex couples." (If folks want me to explain my view on this matter in detail, I will, but I won't go further into it in a link-sausage post except to quote Mark Amidon, who wrote, "Every time I hear the phrase 'defense of marriage', I ask exactly how my marriage is being defended by excluding homosexuals from marrying. I have yet to hear a decent explanation." And yes, that's also in the queue to be a quote-of-the-day at some point.)
• I've been doing something like this in my DayRunner when I encounter an unfamiliar single-malt, so that I can later remember what I liked or disliked about different kinds of Scotch, but here's Whisky Master, a PalmOS application for drinkers who've gone more high-tech than my bulky paper brain. It's basically just a database for keeping track of your observations (and, of course, preferences), but it also allows you to beam your notes to other Whisky Master users. Dunno how many of y'all will actually use this, but I thought the fact that it exists was amusing enough to note. (And yeah, if I had a PDA just might spring for a copy. Why not?) Ooh, looking a little closer, I see they also make one called Beer Master. Though my beer preferences are pretty easy to keep track of.
• An article on Other Magazine's web page (which is, by the way, a syndicated feed in LiveJournal) about a pair of studies about the "cross-race effect" which makes people less likely to be able to clearly identify strangers of another "race" than strangers of their own "race". One study looked at kindergartners and noted that their results were similar to other age groups. The other study presents responses to "racially ambiguous" faces.
• I learned a new word (literally new -- it was coined in 1995) thanks to tinyrevolution ... Cisgender is the opposite of transgender, "i.e. having a gender identity or gender role that society considers appropriate for one's sex."
• Government scientists in 1955, researching how Britain would cope with a nuclear attack drew up secret plans to sell meat from animals injected with radioactive substances in laboratory tests. "Documents released at the National Archives in Kew, south-west London, show scientists in 1955 wanted to find the level of radioactivity needed to make livestock unfit for consumption. [...] Dr Hamish Robertson, the scientist in charge of the project, wrote to the Joint Committee on Biological Problems of Nuclear Physics to say the cost of the experiments would be 'prohibitive' unless the subjects, in particular lambs, were sold on the retail market. [...] The documents did not state whether the scheme was put into action. [...] no immediate record yesterday of what happened to the livestock in any experiment." (Thanks to Fred for the link.)
• I know this will please at least one of my friends with a "geek fetish": "15 Geniuses All In Their Skivvies!", the swimsuit issue of Mental Floss magazine. Albert Einstein is on the cover. "The magazine features a dozen figures from the arts, culture, science and politics -- from the Beatles to Albert Einstein to Mao Zedong -- and accompanies photos of them in swimwear with a variety of fascinating facts about their lives and influences." (Another link from Fred)
• Slender threads tie 19 to terror (Toronto Star), in which it's demonstrated that the US doesn't hold a monopoly on absurd xenophobic paranoia regarding "potential terrorists". The reasons for the arrests were things like, "Some knew people 'that have access' to perfectly legal nuclear gauges 'commonly used in construction'" and "One of the 19 once shared an apartment with a man (not arrested) who was once offered a job by a relief foundation allegedly linked to terrorism." Sheesh! "In short, most of the 19 students arrested were young male slobs who didn't study very hard, who had unspecified 'connections' to a country in which some people are radicals, who knew some people who worked in construction and who knew others who did stupid things, like try to walk on the beach at 4 a.m. in April. They could have been almost anyone at any Canadian university." The biggie was a flight student who was considered suspicious because his flight plan took him over a nuclear power plant just like every other flight student in Toronto. The lead sentence really sums it up: "Future generations will look back at the post-Sept. 11 era as a time in which we all went nuts." (One more link from Fred.)
• Two species of nonnative carp have been jumping into boats in Missouri, injuring occupants and damaging the watercraft. (Thanks to Interrobang for the link.) "A state fisheries biologist motoring near Columbia had a filling knocked out of his tooth by a high-flying fish that struck him on the side of the head. Another state biologist in the St. Charles area was seriously hurt when he was hit by a giant carp." The imported species escaped from private fish hatcheries during floods over the past decade. "'The sound of a propeller under water makes these fish go crazy,' Todd said. 'The fish don't jump if you're sitting there without the motor on, but the higher the RPMs, the greater the noise, the higher these fish jump.' ( And then Interrobang had to pass along the associated puns... )
• Did I get around to posting this one yet? Swimmers Don't Slow Down In Substance Twice As Thick As Water: "University of Minnesota professor Ed Cussler has long wanted to know whether swimming in a substance thicker than water would slow someone down or allow them to swim faster. With that in mind, Cussler coaxed 19 people, including some members of the university's varsity swim team, to swim in water mixed with guar -- a food thickener. [...] The chemical engineering professor reasoned that the increased drag from the body might be countered, or even surpassed, by the hands' ability to push harder against the increased resistance."
• And finally, a really cool story about axiomaxiom's Lucky Buddha Belly (thanks to errorist). This is one of those posts you just have to go read, about playing Pai-Gow poker and suddenly becoming the room's good luck charm: "She looks at me while the dealer shuffles. Suddenly her hand is on my tummy. 'Buddha belly! Rub for luck!' I'm too astonished to move. This septuagenarian is fondling my stomach. She then bets $200 and wins big. 'Everybody, lucky Buddha Belly!' she says, raking in her chips. Excited voices tangle the air with half a dozen Asian languages. A strange hand wraps around me and pets my abdomen. The same hand drops $800 on the table, and wins five times that." And that's not the funniest bit.