Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I recently mentioned that there didn't seem to be any cicadas in my part of Baltimore (though they're plentiful in some other parts of town and in Catonsville). I found it odd that I hadn't heard cicadasong at home. But I forgot to mention that a few days after I wrote that, I came home to find one clinging to my front door. Just the one, no others in sight.

Returning from Thrir Venstri Foetr rehearsal last night, while I was unloading the car I saw a cicada walking up Lombard Street. Making its way along the curb, actually. Heading west, if anyone's curious.

I still don't hear them unless I drive a short distance.

Speaking of cicadas, two songs written by members of The Homespun Ceilidh Band about cicadas are available on The Washington Post's MP3 site: "Cicada Gourmet", by Trix Whitehall (one of our drummers), and "Cicadazzzz" (currently the #1 download there), by Peat & Barley (that's the Post page for them -- their official site is here), both of whom are also members of HCB.

I think the plan is to put back the tunes each of these songs replaced sometime after cicada season, so grab them now.

(BTW, another member of The Homespun Ceilidh band has been assimilated by the LiveJournal collective. [waves hello to fidhle])

My phone is out of prepaid airtime, so anyone trying to reach me by phone will have difficulty doing so for a while (I'm not sure when I'll next be able to spare any money for a Verizon Wireless phone card).

Perrine is being taken to the vet to be spayed on Thursday. Since she was in heat when the friends who offered to take her (since I have trouble being functional that early in the morning (I'm up now because of insomnia, not early waking)), we postponed the operation until that estrus was expected to have ended. (It costs more if she's in heat.) Sure enough, at the start of the weekend she seemed to finish the cycle, just in time, I thought, for going under the knife this week.

She was out of heat for three days, was acting pre-estrual late Sunday, and now she's squirming and calling and hoping my foot will magically sprout a cat-sized penis again. (Er ... she's hoping again, not that my foot has ever sprouted a feline phallus in the past. It's probably safest if I make that distinction explicit, knowing my friends.) Oy vey. What timing she has. Are cats supposed to cycle that fast?

Recently I griped that we'd gone straight into summer, bypassing spring, in Baltimore this year. This week it finally feels springlike. So we do get spring, we just get the seasons interleaved instead of in their proper sequence.

I know there was something else I'd made a mental note to mention here, but I guess the adhesive failed and there's a wee yellow Post-It lodged between two lobes of my brain where it fell. I'll find it when I'm eighty and not be able to read my mental handwriting, I bet.

"The normally-configured vaginal hymen is among the body's more law-abiding bits. It causes few medical problems and is the victim of few diseases. No one has ever suffered from cancer of the hymen, scoliosis of the hymen, or hymen dystrophy. If it weren't for the social significance we attach to it, there would be little incentive for us to know anything about the hymen at all." -- misia, 2004-01-19