* One small bit of good news in the ugly old world: the missing Thai boys' soccer team found alive. They went caving, things went a little wrong (apparently they got lost) but now they're undergoing some medical treatment down in the cave (I am guessing for dehydration and lack-of-food) and hopefully they'll get them all out okay.
I dunno. As much as I hate the hype of "breaking news" tv, I tend to love stories like this - I also followed the one with the Chilean (? IIRC) miners who got trapped and had to be rescued. Because it shows that people can work together, and can do good.
I guess it was Thai naval forces who have the "get" on finding the kids here.
And I admit it: the photos of the families, smiling broadly (and one woman doing what looks like the "namaste" gesture) after they found out the boys were found and alive made me tear up a little.
Again: I really hope they all get out safely, this isn't over yet, but at least a little good news for a Monday.
* Another bit of good news on my campus: our budget is doing better, and we were informed today that the university will now pay "our" share of the payment into the OTRS (which is about $1750 a year for me). So, starting in August, my take-home pay will be a bit more, even though I don't get an on-paper pay raise. This actually seemed the most equitable way to give some money back to people in that it benefits staff as well as faculty, and it's not one of those things where the people making the most either get the most, or wind up getting nothing, because they already "make the most."
Again: I really like the current university president we have, I think he makes some wise choices, and I think we weathered the cuts of 2016 better than we might have.
* I also realized today (checking on things) that my "July" pay already hit my account. (The university does this; I had forgotten). I don't actually get PAID for June and July....they split my existing pay into 12 pay periods. I used to get 10 paychecks and have 10 pay periods, which was fine when I was teaching summers (and had summer pay) but a year or more ago I made a clerical error on the contract renewal (we get them every year, it's kind of a formality for tenured faculty, but they still want us to sign to renew) and went to 12 pay periods, and when you do that, you can't go back.
But that's okay. Especially with not teaching summers any more.
I will say I'm going to have to do another infusion into my savings account to keep me from being tempted to BUY ALL THE THINGS given that my checking account looks quite flush now. (And I've paid my one big and non-negotiable bill of the summer - auto insurance). But yeah, this has to keep me through July and August now, because I don't have another paycheck until the end of August.
* That said, maybe that tells me it's OK to look into getting the gutter replaced instead of trying to seal the rusty bit instead. Bonus: I could get one with that mesh or whatever on the top so it doesn't accumulate leaves and trash in it. I'll have to ask around to see if there's a recommended gutter company.
(Though I'd rather buy stuffed animals with that money than a new gutter. Still, you have to be a grown-up sometimes)
* I'm almost done with the Paddington's Garden shawl; I have about three rows left but they are the LONGEST rows because this is a shawl that started from the small end. I think next up will be to finish the "simple" socks on the needles (they are next-closest to done), and then Heartthrob, and then maybe the goofy multidirectional scarf....And I want to finish the Augusta cardigan this summer as well.
* I need to do a bit more piano practice and then get back over to work, but an episode of "Ollie and Moon" just started on The Channel That Used To Be Sprout. This is a Canadian (or at least, much of the funding and people working on it are) cartoon. Yes, it's apparently aimed at preschoolers but it's freaking adorable - Ollie and Moon are globetrotting cats. I can't tell for sure if they are brother and sister, or just friends, or even boyfriend and girlfriend, but the character designs are cute and the stories are kind of just simple and nice, and there are little tidbits about the different countries they visit (and little life lessons: like in the last episode, Ollie was too self-conscious to dance at Carneval, but when he put on a parrot mask, he could pretend to be someone else and he wasn't so inhibited).
Another Canadian-made cartoon that I liked (and apparently only ran for 2 seasons or so, sometimes I can catch re-runs on Qubo when they run it) was Scaredy Squirrel, which was more of a joke-based (and not meant to be educational) cartoon.
I don't know if my love of cartoons (especially ones aimed at small children) marks me as a Bear of Very Little Brain/unsophisticated person or just someone who desperately craves a break from what I often perceive as the unrelenting horribleness of the wider world. (I do think of something Jane and Michael Stern said in "Square Meals" about "nursery food" - that they contended that people who were 'highly emotionally developed' retained a taste for things like cinnamon toast and hot chocolate and macaroni and cheese because they were sensitive, and needed those things to help blunt the rough edges of the world....)
* I started reading "This Green and Growing Land" today (inbetween chapters of ecology) and am finding it more enjoyable and more to my taste than the previous policy-and-law type book. This one is a history of the environmental movement in the US, and they start with Ben Franklin, who had some remarkably modern attitudes towards avoiding pollution and the like. (And one of the reasons he invented the Franklin stove was to cut down on wood use but also to try to reduce smoke production).
Also, apparently he was the first person to use the old "You don't miss your water 'til your well's run dry" aphorisim (but worded differently, and not used metaphorically in the way the old R and B tune used it); the author used that Poor Richard saying as the epigraph for the first chapter of the book.
It's also more smoothly written and less jargony, in the sense that the previous book had a lot of philosophical/sociological jargon that at times got stuck in my craw a little. And I got a bit of a Humpty Dumpty sense about the language in places*. And perhaps this book is more hopeful? I think that's what frustrates me so much about some environmental writing; it's an endless parade of bad news, and, given the actual improvements we've seen since the 1950s, it seems that all doom and gloom is a bit excessive.
(* "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.")
* Someone on ITFF shared this and it's too wonderful not to link: Periodic Table Haiku. Mouse over the element you're interested in and it will show you the haiku. Well, except for 119, which, in the words of Tom Lehrer, "hasn't been DISCAAAAWVERED!"
Two thoughts:
1. Our hanging periodic tables (in the labs and such) are so old that they don't have names for something like 112-118, and the upper numbers there may also just be "conjectural" on those charts.
2. I'd have written a different haiku for carbon. The given one talks about it as a "diamond decked diva" but I'd do something more like:
Backbone of all life
Four bonds, double or single;
Versatile atom.
I don't know if that says something about my career focus (as a biologist, and I do teach a little basic biochemistry in the intro class so I go over the importance of carbon) or the fact that personality-wise, I get a little annoyed with the flashy diva types because I tend to be working in the background, and typically working kind of hard.
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