Because this sits right in front of the biology building, I walk past it several times a week.
It's strange: I've never met Youn Ja even though she lives and works just a few miles away from our house, and Dave used to work with her husband (who is also a computer programmer and whom I have met).
(That strange, false karass-ish type of thing happens to me occasionally.
It once happened with the poet Joy Harjo. Years ago, I went to a Joy Harjo & Poetic Justice concert. I had loved Joy Harjo's poetry for years and owned several books by her. The day after the concert, I went into work (I was working in a restaurant at the time) and told one of my coworkers about it, and he said, "Oh, I know Joy Harjo. She eats here all the time." Turns out she often came in the mornings to have breakfast with her sister, the drummer in the band. When I mentioned this story to my niece's mother, she said, "Oh, I work for Joy Harjo's sister." Not only was Joy Harjo's sister the drummer in the band, she is also a Harvard-educated lawyer who worked in a local law firm. That week in therapy, I told my therapist about this strange run of coincidences and she said, "Oh, that's funny because this office used to be Joy Harjo's office!"
And still, I've never actually met Joy Harjo.)
Anyway, this is the biology building at dusk:
I only got this picture because I spent a long day on campus today. Dave dropped me off a little after eight in the morning and picked me up a little after seven in the evening.
What did I do all day? Well, I'm glad you asked. Today I measured and recorded the height, number of leaves, and largest leaf measurement of each and every little tobacco plant, all eighty-five of them. After that little two hour exercise, I went to the bookstore and purchased a dissecting kit and two boxes of legal envelopes. The I went and weighed out sixty-three envelopes on a scale that is accurate to 0.0001 places. Then I went and had lunch. After lunch, I went to class and learned about bryophytes. Then I went to lab where I wanted to kill my lab TA and didn't because I have an inhuman amount of self-restraint apparently. After lab, I was joined by the other members in my group, Tom and Aja ("It's actually pronounced Ah-JA not Asia.") and we chopped up our poor little plants in order to mimic the effects of insect herbivores.
Then I walked across campus and studied for an hour and a half in the student union building.
And on the way back, I took a few pictures.
(Ah, you're wondering why I wanted to kill my lab TA and didn't, aren't you? I just think he's very smart and very useless. His laziness is not malicious, true, but it is very trying. I have to bite my tongue so much around him that I'm surprised I don't spray out little flecks of blood when I talk to him. Dave asked me if I ever try to joke around with the guy and I had to admit that I can't let myself because I don't like him. If I try to joke around with someone I don't like, it comes out sounding hateful. I know that, so I try to keep everything on as even a keel as possible because I know that the grade it saves may be my own.)
After Dave picked me up, we decided to stop by the studio. There was a soda firing this week at the studio and Dave had a bunch of stuff in the kiln. It was a good firing; he got some gorgeous stuff out of it. I'll take some pics and show them off soon.
(I didn't get anything out of the kiln because I didn't put anything into the kiln. I don't soda fire out of long habit. The firings tend to be hard on pieces and the failure rate can be as much as 50% or more. When I'm handbuilding, losing 50% of my pieces is unacceptable because I put days or even weeks worth of time into a given piece and to lose half my work to the vagaries of the kiln is not my idea of a good time.)
After that, we went grocery shopping (!) then we came home and assembled and ate a really nice dinner of cheese and bread and tomato salad and apples and ice cream.
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