I’m sorry, I got sucked into a vortex last night

I was up late, working on various things, when a stray link wandered across my photoreceptor array, and like a fool I clicked on it. I ended up on seafood YouTube. This is like porn to a west-coastie living deep in the center of the continent, so my eyes glazed over and I started to drool and I was probably looking a bit Homer-esque, I had to watch it all. A sample:

I eventually staggered off to bed, hungry. There is a dearth of exotic seafood here in Minnesota.

Maybe it’s just me, but Pacific seafood looks so much better than Atlantic. It’s also the size — Dungeness vs. blue crab, or geoduck vs. those tiny little clams that are mostly shell. Why bother? I’ve eaten most of the crustaceans and molluscs he brought out, but I’m not so enthusiastic about urchin roe, and what was that weird thing he called a razor clam? I’ve never encountered that thin strange beast. It’s apparently the Atlantic jackknife clam, Ensis leei, but I grew up digging the Pacific razor clam, Siliqua patula, which again is bigger than those reedy little Atlantic specimens.

I was also getting into the casually brutal way he dismantles crustaceans.

Anyway, now I’m hungry and tired, and I have a lot of work to do. I’m tempted to dart off to MSP tonight — flights are cheap I hear — and ruin my health and mental state further by bingeing at a Seattle seafood bar.

Not really. I’m not leaving my house for a while.

I’m totally losing it

This cat. This cat is killing me. She’s usually pretty good — I got up this morning, gave her a little time, fed her her wet food (she’s very eager for her twice daily serving of wet food, but she also has a bowl of dry food always available), and then she trotted into my office to jump up on the windowsill and demand that I open the blinds, which I did. She curled up there to watch the world go by.

Then the retching began.

I jumped up to shoo her out of my carpeted office. If she throws up on the kitchen tile, it’s an easy cleanup…but on carpet, oh god no. She jumped down and ran off, and I hear that awful “huck, huck, eeewcchh” noise from under the futon. So I slide the futon away, and what do I see? A lovecraftian nightmare.

Apparently, for the last few months, she has been crawling under the futon when I’m not around and vomiting everywhere. There were slimy fresh puddles and caked dried piles. There was filth and cat hair clinging to everything. I’d show you a photo, but you might react as I did: I actually screamed. I started weeping. It’s all just too much.

Now I’ve got to scrub the most revolting floor I’ve ever seen today, and further, I’ve got to move all the furniture in the house to see if she has other treasure troves.

At least it clarifies one thing: I will never ever adopt another cat. It might be because this monster outlives me, but there is no way I’ll ever be persuaded to take responsibility for another mammal. Repugnant, sneaky, nasty creatures. Spiders are a much more dignified and elegant gentleman’s companion.

Tighten your belts!

I knew this would be coming. We just got an email from our university asking us to respond to a suggestion to temporarily reduce faculty salaries. So, at the same time we’re expected to work even harder to maintain our commitments, we’re also asked to take a pay cut.

We must be thoughtful, fair, and equitable as we consider financial strategies, and we believe that a temporary reduction in the compensation for faculty must be considered. The FCC [Faculty Consultative Committee] is mindful of the extensive workloads and expectations put on faculty, and that many of us are stretched thin by our obligations and our own financial circumstances, but we are also mindful of those whose employment is threatened. We also support including in the proposal a sliding scale, reflecting the diverse circumstances of different categories of faculty, which is consistent with the requirement that any temporary reduction be “allocated to faculty in accordance with a mathematical formula or similar device.”

OK, I’m willing to accept a pay cut in order to prevent the university from simply firing any of my colleagues (which is partly a selfish decision on my part, because losing anyone would mean I’d have to work harder). I’m missing some information here, though.

  • What “mathematical formula”? That sounds sciencey, but a mathematical formula could be anything. Be specific.
  • I notice that all of the cuts are to faculty pay. I’d be much more supportive if the administration led by example and told us first what kind of salary reduction they’re taking right now.

Interestingly, they also note in their letter that the cuts only apply to non-union faculty. Do we now have an incentive to unionize, finally? If I were a member of a union that similarly agreed to temporary pay reductions, at least I’d be satisfied that I was represented by people who were making choices to benefit me and my peers. As it is, our watchdogs for our self-interests are…the administration.

Spider game!

We’re getting desperate. The American Arachnological Society sent me an email from Gordana Grbic containing a spider game to play at home! In Serbian! I was so excited that I had to try it. Here are the rules:

Hello everyone
I hope you are OK, and negative on this virus… and I hope you will stay that way… :)

We made a little spider game video (roll and draw a spider), that I would like to share with our community. I think it would bring some fun in our houses.

This game is best to play in 3, but it could be more or less participants. Every participant has to have its own table. With every roll of dice you can draw one body part. You roll the dice one by one. The goal of the game is to draw 4 complete spiders faster than others. See the video.
The table is in Serbian language, but that is not a problem, since you all know the body parts of the spider. However, here is a translation:
1. glava-grudi = cephalothorax
2. stomak = abdomen
3. pedipalpi = pedipalps
4. helicere = chelicerae
5. noge = legs
6. slobodan izbor = free choice

The table you can find at web site of Spiders of Serbia at this link http://www.paukovisrbije.com/index.php/download/igre-za-decu .

If you think that this email will help, please share it with other members of AAS. and of course, correct my English before sharing :).

Link to a video about the game: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=692905371450199

Wait. It’s a competitive game? I need a partner? The cat refused. I even told her she could learn a little Serbian playing it, but she still turned me down, saying she already knew Serbian and was always talking to me in that language anyway.

Maybe you’ll have better luck finding a partner. Slobodan izbor!

Urgent note to the warden

You win. I’m cracking. Don’t you know solitary confinement is a cruel punishment?

I confess to everything. I robbed that bank. I’ll tell you where I hid the money. I’ll rat out my confederates. Just let me out to the general population again. I’ll never commit another crime, cross my heart and hope to die. I’m going mad in here!

I gotta say, though, the worst trick you pulled was assigning that sadistic brute to be the prison guard. She doesn’t talk, she only makes meaningless yowling sounds, and she occasionally runs through my cell and knocks everything over. I need to get out of here.