Back to normal
--whatever that is. Linda and Erd. left on Sunday, and as much as I hate to see them leave it's nice to have my life back. I guess I was socially exhausted because yesterday afternoon I lay on the couch with the dogs and watched pointless TV for hours. And hours. Saturday I watched a John Cusack film called Ice Harvest, and I started watching The Constant Gardner, but since I knew how things were going to go with it I quit less than half way through. Last night I watched a film called Elephant on HBO. I remember hearing about it a while ago, hearing it was a very disturbing film. It's about 2 high school students who go to their high school and shoot a bunch of people. It was made after Columbine and seems to have been modeled on the actual event a whole lot. It was tragic to see, and I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone. Lots of camera following high school students walk through the halls--like, watching one student walk for about 10 minutes (from behind) through the whole building. This was setting the tone, I guess, but it dragged on that's for sure.

And now I'm back in my cubicle, getting ready to write a long document on procedures for handling lost items. Ohmygod we've been working on this for weeks and I already wrote one set of procedures, but we had a meeting last week and the director made a bunch of changes and instructed me to re-write the whole thing. I've put it off successfully so far but Friday she asked me how it was coming along. "Fine," I smiled. Yeah, fine, my notes are buried somewhere on my desk and this morning's task is to dig them out and try to make sense of them. The document will no doubt be severely edited.

We had our first snow on Saturday, just a little for the effect and it didn't stick to the ground except in the higher mountains. Yesterday we had little round balls of ice that are called something different than hail (technically) but that didn't last long. Mostly yesterday was just a cloudy and pretty cold day. I should have been outside doing things on Saturday, when it was 50 and not too bad, but I'm afraid my mental state precludes anything like that. I did put seed on the bird feeder platform, having seen a chickadee poking around on it the other day. No takers so far, though.

I've started my annual Mouse Massacre and have been battling with one very clever mouse. I caught one, then set a trap every night for about 5 nights. Each morning the peanut butter was licked off and the trap was empty and clean and untripped. Finally last night I'd had it so I set a trap line of 3 traps, across the kitchen counter and ending on the stove. SUCCESS! First I saw a clean empty trap, got my dander up, then I looked absent mindedly at the stove and YUCKA PUCKA there were 2 beady eyes staring at me from the mouse who got SLAMMED in the trap. At least he was dead, very dead. I like this king of trap because it kills them instantly. This time I threw the body in my burn barrel instead of the woods so Tess can't get it. She followed me to the barrel, nose in the air sniffing at the little corpse. Funny dog.

Tess The Bog Dog got a ride home from the bog on Saturday from a woman who said she was trying to teach her grandchildren (who were in the car) "to do nice things." I thanked her profusely and pretended it was the first time Tess had ever run off to the bog. As she got back in the car I heard her tell the kids "See? She was very happy that we did such a good thing." I like to think that Tess and I are improving the world in some small way, this time by example. Chances, meanwhile, shows no interest in improving society or even being part of it very much. Mostly she's interested in what she can scrounge for when I'm out of the house. This weekend it was freeze-dried brine shrimp I'd bought as a special treat for the fish. Blech.

I got 2 new fish. One of the tetras got its tail stuck in the filter and died so I decided to get 2 leopard danios. They're very pretty and zip around the tank, but they have these really long, flowing fins and tails that (I think) look stoopid.

This weekend was pretty much the last of the season as far as company goes. Fred is still in camp and is hosting Ken and me for Weds. night dinner, but this will be his swan song. I still have to close up the boat house and put my kayak away, then shut off the power at camp. I'm not sure why I keep putting it off. I suspect laziness and depression are the reasons, nothing deeper than that, like refusing to end the season blahblahblah. Just inertia.

And on to lost items.