Ok, so things are getting a little out of hand at my apartment. It’s pretty dirty/dusty/cluttered here. I kind of want to just put it off until the end of the semester (May 16), but I don’t think this can wait:

Seriously, that’s pretty ridiculous. Guess I better go get some quarters!

While in Florida over spring break (It was a last-minute thing; I had an emergency of the wintry kind), I puppy-sat for my friend D’s new Lab. Or maybe he’s a Golden Retriever. I dunno. Is there a difference, really?

Anyway, while Jake the Puppy wasn’t being a terror, he was really, really cute:

Today’s post, if I could figure out how to do it, would contain an audio file rather than a photo. There is a car alarm that has been going off. for. hours. Kinda puts a dent in the reading/writing/working I had planned for today!

I asked C if he owns a baseball bat, because if the alarm’s already going off, what’s it matter if I gently tap the car with said bat? I think the business owners along the street would cheer me!

Here’s a pretty photo of a quiet space, instead:

Social Circle, GA. Obviously not taken recently — look at the gas prices!

When C moved in, he brought a scale with him. Guess who uses it more than he does?

I have a half-sized radiator in my bathroom — that’s what you see on the left. It isn’t nearly as cruddy as it seems; there’s just about 80 or so years of layered paint on the thing. My apartment is so well-insulated that this has been the only heat on in the place for about a month!

So, I found this recipe for making beads from salt, flour and water. Looks surprisingly familiar, right? I’m pretty sure we did this some other time, but I just can’t figure out when. I froze half the bead dough because it got really tedious rolling the beads up. Then, after two hours in the oven, ta-da! I feel like they’re not much to look at right now. I’m thinking of painting them white with a green paint effect. Plus I think adding a coat of varnish like the paper-mache beads will make them look good. This is definitely an experiment to see if I like them.

They smelled good baking, though.

Other bead ideas I want to try: beads from plastic bottles and fimo beads. I’m also trying to devise a pattern to make round beads out of the magazine beads. I hate those weird, oblong ones.

… is the most exciting part of today (odd that I actually am drinking, right?). I binged on salsa con queso (yum!) and tortilla chips when I got home from work, waiting to cook dinner until after Josh went running. I don’t know what it is about 5:30 that makes me so hungry. It’s times like that that make me wonder if I should take up smoking again! Anyway, vegetarian chili it is. Delicious, though John would tell us it needs hobenaro or thai dragon peppers from his garden or some such nonsense.

And speaking of John, check out the picture he took that Mom e-mailed me today:

I know you’re freezing your face off in Chicago, but there’s something about walking by myself in snow at night that makes the world seem still and hushed. Or watching falling snow out a window. I am a lover of snow, just like you are the opposite. I guess there’s something to be said for 300+ sunny days a year, though. I need to learn to appreciate that. I know I am a city dweller at heart, but there’s something about being home — with millions of less people than there, and where three cars a day is busy — that makes me happy. This picture made me wistful for that today.

I met Ray Bradbury last night. He’s my literary hero.

Look! The internets has provided a bunch of fun stuff:

How to make paper-mache beads from A Storybook Life (doesn’t that name just about make you gag? )

Rakka from Suspect and Fugitive makes arts from perishable goods every day.

Desiree Palmen creates amazing art, using chameleons as inspiration.

Aaaaand this lolcat makes me giggle. What? You know you love them. Also, I have been getting Stewie stoned out of his little kitty mind on the ‘nip. The first time he encountered it, he was all, “What IS this magical substance… ooh, time for a nap.”

I got about five hours of sleep today b/c I stayed up working farrrrrr too late, and then went straight back to the laptop to do some more work. There was an exciting break to go to the Post Office (which is underneath the local co-op, next to a liquor shop, for some reason. I know that sometimes the PO makes me want to drink) and Borders, but all I got was some stamps out of the deal. Now I’m back to the computer, pretending to write a paper that’s due tomorrow.

Rather than take a shot of my laptop, decided to post a blurry picture (sorry for all the fuzzy pics lately; I seem to have forgotten how to focus my camera) of my living room, taken from the kitchen doorway. The black lump on the back of the couch is Stewie. The place is considerably more cluttered now that I live with a boy. Not cluttered with cats, though. Just Harley books and stuff.

Or something. My grampa used to tell me that “whiskey is good for what ails ye,” and dude lived to be 91. Just sayin.’ But I don’t know how to make whiskey, so here’s a shot of chicken soup. It was damned tasty.