my baby's in the white fluffy clouds

Rik and I went on an adventure today. The ostensible purpose for this adventure was to visit Smithville, IN, a town of maybe a thousand people around ten miles south of where I live in Bloomington. Why, you might ask, would I want to go to Smithville? Well, my favorite song by For Squirrels, one of my favorite bands, is called "Under Smithville" (link to song on YouTube with album cover as "video"), and I have no idea which Smithville it's about. [0] Since I started seeing signs for Smithville around where I lived I've been like "Oh my god I need to go under Smithville" but had never gotten around to it. Thus: To Smithville!

I looked it up online, and it's part of the Clear Creek Township, which has an amazing old but not old enough that it doesn't use javascript website with details about a commune in the township, the train that used to run there, and so on. I looked up a route to get to Smithville in general, confirmed there was a picture I could take a sign with, and then Rik and I purposefully got in the car without any directions and decided to see what we found. We first managed to get totally lost and find the end of a road to nowhere, and that was pretty fun, and then aftr some meandering through Bloomington's outskirts we made our way to Smithville and found a couple of churches labelled "Smithville" but no sign. We wandered around some more, and found the Baker's Junction Railroad Museum, [1] which seemed to be closed.

Then we found a school on the outskirts of Smithville, or possibly in it --- although the sign claimed it was Bloomington even though it was south of (thus, under) Smithville. It had a playground. So I laid down under it. (This is a reference to the lyrics from the song in question.) It turned out the playground also had a nature trail attached to it --- it was something like a mile or a mile and a half? Lots of really pretty vistas, butterflies that fluttered into the air with every step we took, fresh dew still on the grass... It was really nice, and not so long that the plant phobia really kicked in. Hooray! We also found the Smithville sign, and got pictures in front of it while people drove by and were like "Who in the hell does that?" Well, Rik and I do that, because we're awesome. Also I was staring into the sun so all of the pictures are terrible, but what can you do. [2]

Then we declared victory and went to the Owlery, a vegetarian restaurant in Bloomington, and had their coconut macadamia tofu, which is divine and nightshade free. There aren't a lot of things I can eat there, but the things I can eat are very tasty, and they're friendly and a reasonable price and almost everything on the menu is vegan or can be made vegan. Yaaaay!

In conclusion: An awesome adventure. And proof that I do actually do fun things sometimes!


[0] The band was from Florida, but most Google hits for "Smithville, FL" are either about some other state or examples that pick "Smithville, FL" as a fictional place. I'd like to imagine the latter is what they were thinking about in the song, but I really have no idea.

[1] Warning: Makes sounds if you don't disable JavaScript, and is incredibly baffling in a vaguely timecubey kind of way. I am simultaneously glad and sad that we did not get to see the museum; on the one hand oh my god this dude talks about shooting Communists and on the other hand he has bits of his website in favor of gender equity and marijuana legalization. All I can really tell is that he is intense and all of his opinions are turned up to 11. Or maybe 12.

[2] Also, this outfit is bossgoji 's fault. I am still figuring out if I like it or not! It's pretty awesome, but I can't decide if I'm comfortable looking quite this... feminine. Is that crazy? 

Maybe I'll try to do one of these "things that aren't class notes or tasklists" posts a week.

• So far, new housemate is awesome, and there's ample space in the house so I don't feel trod upon but there's someone else to talk to periodically. That's basically ideal. (Also, I think his alarm is going off at... 11 AM. Damn, crazy nightshifted people. (edited to add: I think he turned it off and went back to sleep. :P )) A mutual friend of ours is considering taking the remaining room --- I'm trying not to get too excited but it would basically be perfect. 
• This weekend featured great conversations with people I hold dear, which is always excellent. It may even feature more, although I expect today to be mostly homework with a side of housework; I spent more time yesterday on social than I had initially budgeted.
• I tried to run errands this morning, but stores aren't open at 9 AM on a Sunday. I guess everyone else is either hung over or at church. Well, I wanna buy some stuff! Come on, people! (In particular I am out of soy sauce and do not wish to pay Bloomingfoods prices when I could just go to the Asian grocery. I wil stop by on my way home from class in the next couple of days, I guess.)
• My Pokédex is now at 441; if I have time this evening I will be making a list of everything I need, and how I can go about getting it. I'll probably post that here just in case any of you are curious. I guess when I hit 493, I... stop? Or I could do a Nuzlocke run (you can read the rules here since Nuzlocke.com is down right now) which for those of you unfamiliar with pokemon is basically like doing a NetHack conduct run, which as you may know I have some history with. I'm still proud of that NetHack game. Orrrrr... has anyone heard anything about whether the new Final Fantasy for the DS is any good? (Old-style RPGs seem to be really good for my sanity in small to middling doses. I don't ask questions, I do the things that make me not lose my shit.)
• Spent last Thursday night and Friday in Ohio for work, and worked like 18 hours or something while I was there; have to do it again this week but with more hours (probably like 22-24). On the plus side that means anyone who calls me on Wednesday can kindly fuck off speak to another representative. And I should be able to get ahead on homework this week which will be awesome.
• Leaves are starting to change, and I should probably buy a rake. Potentially dumb question: Do homeowners rake and dispose of all of their leaves, rather than letting them degrade into the soil, for appearance reasons? Or is there a good reason to make them go away? Also uh I should figure out how to go about being an adult who has a fireplace. This is not a skill I have ever learned. I can start a fire --- I did go to MIT after all --- but I'm not good at things like "keeping it contained in a fireplace" or "having it go out without the use of fire extinguishers. (I even managed "starting a charcoal grill without lighter fluid because furries are not prepared for things" a couple of months ago, although we didn't really get it to meat-cooking heat until someone brought lighter fluid. By that point I had eaten, go team vegan.)
• I should also buy a snow shovel, so that I don't get caught without one when everyone else is trying to buy one. I do have an electric snowblower, but something that's not terribly effective.
• I think for the time being "not drinking" has changed from "I don't seem to be doing this anymore" to a rule; I dunno if it will stick or not. I'm pretty sure this is the opposite of what one is supposed to do in grad school, but so is having a tech job, and so is owning a house, so whatever.
• A coworker got me listening to Kate Miller-Heidke, who has less bass in her music than is usually my preference but an amazing voice and a great sense of timing. Here's a link to one of her songs I'm fond of --- sorry for the boring video but I couldn't find a non-live version. As a side benefit, having iTunes do the Genius thing with her is finding stuff I had forgotten about but really like (is "Little Boots" your fault, Rik?). I have no idea how said coworker can like Miller-Heidke so much and hate Kate Bush, though.
• Speaking of music, have you all heard the new Of Montreal album? I found it much easier to get into than Skeletal Lamping (or even Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse) but a little more heavy-handed or less nuanced or something? The tracks with Janelle Monae are particularly enjoyable, and I should track down some of her stuff. I have not been listening to it non-stop to try to get it like I did with the two albums previously mentioned, but it was hardly a waste of $5.

If you've been following Eredien's journal, you'll know that she spent a bunch of time in the last two days with medical service providers. The bad news is that last night, from 1 AM to around 6:30 AM, she spent a bunch more time with medical service providers, this time in the local hospital, being treated for a pretty serious ear infection. The good news is that she's hopefully on the road to recovery, on a number of powerful antibiotics, and at least as importantly, the infection has not spread to her mastoids. The mastoid, for those of you who didn't have five hours to google this on your cell phones last night, is this mostly-hollow space in the bones of your skull that is connected to your middle ear, and if it gets infected --- this is rare but happens in something like 1/50000 otitis media infections if I remember correctly --- it's bad with bad sauce. Like, bad bad bad. I was too nervous to really sleep while sitting up with her in the hotel waiting because that was all the doctors' going theory and was very happy when the CT scan results came back clear. It was still the right choice to go into the hospital, because I think the aggressive dosing of IV antibiotics yesterday afternoon and middle-of-night is a big part of why her mastoids remain uninfected --- the infection was definitely trying to spread and succeeding before aggressive intervention.

In a hilarious comedy of errors, when we got back from the hospital, CVS had a database infrastructure program, so I had to stay up until 7:45, bike there, get her drugs, and bring them back, and wake her up for long enough to put in SUPER EARDROPS. I've finally woken up; she's still asleep and will probably spend much of the next day in bed. Tomorrow or Tuesday we'll be taking her to an ENT specialist for followup. Other than that, we'll be taking it easy; while it's unfortunate that this happened on a weekend that we had some social plans, it's fortunate that it happened on a weekend where I could actually just drop everything to help her without it affecting work. (Obviously I would have done it anyway, but if we'd spent three workdays on this instead of three weekend days, the work that would have piled up would have been ohmyzomg.) I'm not sure when she'll be awake and responding to things but I think it's making her really happy to be reminded that people care.

In the department of random, when we were driving to the hospital at 1 AM, a car drove past us with a bunch of college kids singing and dancing in it. I kinda waved, like "Hi oh my god I hate everything," and one of them put on cat ears and leaned out the window at us. I grabbed a pair of cat ears off of the dash [0] and put them on and waved again. They all started cheering. This gave me the energy I needed to deal with the ^&%(^%*&^%* hospital.



[0] Of course I have a pair of cat ears on the dashboard of my car. (I tagged this "cat hat" as my general tag for "ridiculous things that happen as a result of cat ears"; it was actually my snow leopard headband.)

Woke up this morning after having a dream that I had only brought phantom objects with me to Indiana and I had to fly back to Boston today as soon as possible, rent a new truck, load it up with my real possessions, and drive it to Indiana, since the lease at the old place expires today. I woke up ready to buy a last-minute flight, thought for thirty seconds, and realized that was astoundingly stupid. :) We had a couple of delays (as Eredien accidentally injured herself working on a bookshelf yesterday and we lost a few hours to urgent care and no longer have two people who can lift things) but my goal was "everything more or less in the place we will want it by June 1st and everything unpacked and mostly set up by June 15th," and I think we can still meet that. laura47  gets here tonight and can help me with the rest of the shelves, and Wednesday most of the new furniture shows up and we can build it and unpack board games, video game stuff, and kitchen dry goods into it. That will mostly leave us with books [0], art, and the occasional "oh god why do we even own this object." So that's pretty exciting.

I've pretty much settled into a rhythm with regard to work for my job, which is good; working from home all the time is a little weird, but I was already used to doing it in multiple-day stretches and I just need to be less nervous about randomly calling coworkers the way I would otherwise have randomly walked up to them at the office. This is especially true after the Nokia acquisition as for a variety of reasons that are both boring and probably secret it's much harder to catch people on the company messaging system than it used to be. But luckily everyone has this shiny new phone that I can call them on! So work is working, and I'm not sure how much of it I will keep doing once school starts, but definitely some, and I think I'll actually have fun with that most of the time. Having two major things to play off of each other, like jobwork/schoolwork, is a very good mechanism for getting more stuff done if you are me. Lucky for me, I am!

The presence of an actual yard continues to be amazing. Right now I can see a squirrel having a conniption, a rabbit eating my weeds, a blue jay who wants to be where the squirrel is having the conniption, a mourning dove, and there was a yellow-bellied woodpecker until just a minute ago. Selene is largely disinterested, but Oolong will sit by the window with me and just watch for an extended period of time, occasionally making "I want that!" noises. Oddly, she has no interest in the woodchuck, which I finally got a half-decent picture of with my cameraphone. Maybe it's too big? It may actually be bigger than her. It is probably unwilling to have me sit around and measure it, though, so I will have to content myself with the guess. [1]

We've made a couple of friends and a couple of acquaintances through themthose friends --- it was awesome to know one of them pretty well before we even got here --- and that's really cool. Once we're a little more set up, I think we're going to start branching out, meeting up with some of the other people we've talked to briefly or heard we should interact with, see the city a little bit more. It's a great 45-minute walk to the other edge of campus, maybe an hour if you walk slow, and I finally found the boxes of bike stuff, so I have a helmet and bike shoes again, so basically I have mega-mobility. Things are pretty quiet here in the summer, but that's OK, there seems to still be critical mass around.

We've been cooking pretty much all our meals which I am very excited about. Lots of rice cooker and bread machine usage --- yesterday I used some dough Eredien made to make a delicious vegan pizza,  which was quite fun. A bit of Craigslist searching may just have solved a couple of our remaining furniture problems --- I'll find out when Eredien's out of the shower and we can talk about them. Moving into a completely empty house and turning it into the house you want to be living in is expensive and time-consuming. I can't tell if I feel weirder about spending this much money or about having this much money to spend. I'm currently figuring that once I'm not full-time, I won't be buying much except food and airfare, so I should spend the money now.

[0] We have approximately 50 cubic feet of books. They still look small in the room where they're stacked. This is because that room is like 22x16 or something utterly ridiculous like that.

[1] We're probably going to have to remove it, because it's digging its home right up against our foundation and most of the research I've done suggests that's potentially very bad sauce. One of the things on the tasklist for the next two weeks is to find a removal person who will do a harmless trap and release; we could probably drive it out of our yard with things like chili pepper and mothballs but it would then go to a neighbor's yard and potentially meet a worse fate there. :\