November 2005 Archives

Yay

• Thanksgiving break is coming up.
• My dad and I bought Kory an iPod for his birthday (which is November 28th, but I gave it to him early) and he's been letting me take it to work on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And it works in my car!
• I actually decided to spend a little bit of money on myself, and I bought a PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene - Teflon) labret stem for my piercing. The only thing I've ever bought for my piercing in the 6 years that I've had it was a clear ball for it. But I like this stem a lot. It's clear, flexible, and you can cut it to any length you want.

• I won't get any vegan mashed potatoes this Thanksgiving.
• Kory's iPod has a lot of music on it that I can't stand, and those are exactly the songs it plays a lot on shuffle.
• A chemical compound used to make my PTFE labret stem is a "likely carcinogen".
• We have a $222 gas bill in November! And our upstairs barely gets any heat!
• I have my second Japanese exam today and I haven't studied as much as I should have.

The other day Kory had to go to a panel discussion for a print show at the University of Akron. I had never been there before, so I had no clue where I was going. We followed the directions google maps gave us, and I told Kory on the way there, "I know we are not going to get to that school using those directions. We will miss every single street on there and just happen to find our way there somehow." And that's exactly what happened. I was so worried about getting to the school on time that I didn't even bother to think about where to go once we actually got there. I pulled into the first parking lot I saw and luckily there was a car pulling out of a spot, so I parked there even though I wasn't supposed to since you need a pass. Oh, I should mention that this is at night when it is dark, freezing, and incredibly windy. So we get out of the car and Kory starts asking people where the "art building" is. NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE knew. We must have asked ten people where the art building was and we got either "I don't know," "Go to the student union and they can help you," or "It's definitely not over that way," referring to the direction where we were parked. After walking for about five minutes, trying to find this student union even though we didn't know where it was either, we finally found a campus map. And guess what? Obviously the art building is not called "The Art Building", so the map was useless. The next person we asked told us we wanted to go to E.J. Thomas Hall, so we got all excited and started heading towards where he pointed us. I knew E.J. Thomas hall sounded familiar, and I didn't think it was where we wanted to be. (You know, I heard it mentioned on the radio or something and why would something about fine arts be mentioned on the radio?) And I was right. We finally got there and it was for performing arts, not fine arts. By this point the panel discussion had already been going on for about 20 minutes, but Kory insisted that we still find this art building. Out of the blue, Kory suddenly remembers he has the postcard for the print exhibition (and at this point I want to hit him for not remembering this 30 minutes ago) and we find out the name of the building is "Folk Hall". So we start asking people where Folk Hall is and of course nobody knows. We finally found a girl who had a map with her, and we set off in the direction she told us to go. We walked around for a while and still couldn't find it, but we did find the student union and we got a map there. After about 10 minutes we finally found Folk Hall, way across a busy 4-lane street, not near any other campus buildings.

So, the total time it took us to find Folk Hall was 40+ MINUTES. We walked around that stupid campus for over 40 minutes in the freezing wind to go listen to people talk about printmaking for 15 minutes. I actually enjoyed listening to them and looking at the gallery, I just wish we would have been there on time. Enough about our actual purpose for being there.

When we left, we realized we didn't know exactly where the car was, seeing as how we had walked around in circles a million times trying to find Folk Hall. All we knew was that it was by some "polymer building" and some "law building" (luckily Kory had asked someone early on what the buildings we were near were). So we looked on the map, and guess where the polymer building was? That's right, all the way across the campus. Literally, Folk Hall is on one corner of the campus and the polymer building is the farthest building away from it. So we started walking, thinking we were headed in the right direction. But we weren't. Turns out that there are about three polymer buildings on campus. After walking around for about 15 minutes, I decided to let Kory's memory take over instead of trying to figure out which polymer building to start walking towards. Kory's sense of direction never fails, and I can't tell you how happy I was to finally step onto that gravel parking lot and see my ugly blue car sitting there. And without a ticket!

After we sat there and warmed up a bit, I started to drive back the exact way we came in, and we could not believe what we saw. FOLK HALL WAS RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET FROM WHERE WE WERE PARKED! I couldn't believe it! We almost died laughing! We had walked around the bitter cold of the night for more than an hour trying to find the stupid building and then my stupid car, and we were parked across from it the whole time! Completely ridiculous! I felt like I was in a movie or something. And remember the people who told us the art building wasn't in "that direction"? Well guess what, that's exactly the direction it was in!

A few things:

• When you go to a huge campus that you've never been to, get a map beforehand and make sure you know what building you're looking for! I can't believe I was so unprepared.
• Wear scarves when it's cold!
• The University of Akron is a huge campus and we only found ONE campus map posted outside. That's ridiculous.
• Here is the campus map. Folk Hall is the red building on the bottom left. I hope I never have to walk around that campus again.
• We told the lady running the gallery that none of the students knew where the "art building" was and her response was, "That's sad! Very, very sad!" And now they're going to put up a big rotating neon sculpture in front of it for us so we can find it next time.
• I would tell you to go see the print show since it's really good, but I wouldn't want to be blamed if you got lost too.

A couple weeks ago I changed the location of Joe's cage from next to my desk to as far away from it as possible. Well, not really. But at least far enough away that he can't poop on it. His cage stood next to the desk for almost four months and he didn't poop on it once, and then all of a sudden he started doing it all the time. Since I moved his cage he's been a completely different bird. I'm still trying to figure out whether he likes the new location or not. It seems like he doesn't like it so much, but that he's ok with the changes he's made because of it. If that makes any sense. So here are some ways that he's changed:

He used to spend ALL his time in or on his cage and would be really freaked out whenever you took him away from it. Now he spends probably 75% of his time away from his cage, either: sitting on the computer chair, snuggled up next to some dirty socks and a rug under the bed, sitting on my (or Kory's) shoulder while I'm on the computer, or even snuggled under the covers with me (or Kory). The only time he's in/on his cage is when he's sleeping at night, eating, or early in the morning before anyone gets up. The obsession with sitting on the computer chair? I'm not really sure why there is one, the cockatiels love sitting on it too. I think one of the reasons Joe likes it is because all three track lights are pointing down on it, so he can preen himself in the "sun" even though it's 9:00 pm.

The reason he can spend 75% of his time away from his cage is because he FLIES now. If you remember before, I mentioned that Dr.Krupka said his left wing was very stiff and that he probably wouldn't be able to fly ever again....not very true anymore! I was very shocked the first time I walked up the stairs and saw silly Joe sitting on the computer chair preening himself, ten feet away from his cage. So yes, he now flies to wherever he wants to be. He's pretty good at it too, he has no problem landing on the back of the chair even if you're sitting in it or landing on your shoulder as you're walking through the room. You can tell that his left wing is still stiff because when he wants to get your attention he'll squawk and raise his wings into the air, and his right wing always goes up higher than his left. It's cute. Sometimes he raises his wings when he poops (along with the little move-back-and-squat)and it's the funniest thing ever.

Joe is also much more affectionate now, as you can see in that picture. He'll just sit on your shoulder and nuzzle against you and clean your hair. He'll fly down onto the bed and do the same thing. This is a photo of what is called the "Telephone Joe". You just bend your head down so it's resting on his back and then cover his head with your hand and he will just fall asleep. His general rule seems to be, "If you're not preening me, I'm going to pick at every little mole, freckle and hair I can find on you until you do." So this "telephone" situation seems to work well for me. I rub his neck like that for like five minutes and then I can usually just stop and he'll lay there until I move my hand.

So my conclusion is that I don't think Joe likes the new cage location as much as the old, and because of this he had to start flying to get to where he wanted to be, and since that place happened to be the computer chair (most of the time), he was forced to start liking us since we spend so much time there.

Since the weather was so nice again, Kory and I decided to go out to Triangle Lake Bog today. It has a lot of the same plant species that Kent Bog does, but it also has a lot of pitcher plants and poison sumac. Also, Kent Bog is a closed bog, but Triangle Lake Bog is an open bog (here is the kettle lake).

Here is my Flickr set for Triangle Lake Bog.

Kory and I decided we would finally visit the Tom S. Cooperrider - Kent Bog. We've lived right here in town with it for almost three years now and have never stopped in to see it before. We just happened to go at the perfect time too, Tom Cooperrider had just arrived there himself to show his neighbor the tamaracks in their fall color. Gordon Vars was there also, and he talked to us about the bog, and about development issues that are going around nearby that could potentially harm it. We signed a paper saying that we are "Friends of Kent Bog", and now we're on the mailing list so we'll hopefully be able to be active in showing our support for it (going to city council meetings and such).

Anyway, bogs are extremely cool places, and unfortunately there are not many left around here. Kent Bog and Triangle Lake Bog are two that are right in this area. The Kent Bog has the largest population of tamaracks this far south, which is very cool. So if you're in the area, you should go out to Kent Bog and enjoy it.

Here are some photos I took today while we were out there. I'm excited to go back out this spring and take pictures when everything comes back alive!

There are also a few more up over on Flickr.