babies of my cousins

Greg and Kathy had their baby yesterday! The baby is a girl named Savannah Grace, and she was overdue and large (over 9 pounds). Congrats to them. :)

Also (and I did not know this until today), Nick and Shannon are expecting a baby girl in January! My grandma feels blessed with great-grandkids.

new ferret gear

This past weekend, we got some new ferret gear. We had actually been thinking of buying a new ferret cage for a while, because we wanted a design that would be more compact (or more vertical) and easier to clean. We took our time and shopped around because these cages are expensive, but the amount of stuff that was accumulating under their old cage and the bugs that were enjoying it finally pushed us into action. The cage we ended up getting was this one (see below). It has four levels. The bottom level has their poop dish and a lot of fluffy stuff that they love to sleep and play in. The next level up has a hammock and a brown fleecy blanket. The next level up has their food and water, and a green blanket. The top level has their large hammock, a red floor cover, and a blue blanket. I was worried at first that they would have trouble getting to the different levels, but they seem to be getting the hang of it.

We also splurged and got a little pet fountain. This was also something we had been thinking of for a while. The ferrets have been quite busy with their fountain today, testing all the pieces for durability (by chewing on them) and digging all the water out onto the floor. They have also done a little drinking, like the cat in the picture. In general, they really love it. They like to stick their heads into the water and zoom around the dish. They can also pop the top off, so we had to tape it shut. Oh, and Rex can move it around too.

Bar and MPRE

The results are in:

Brian Sites, Esquire.

(pending approval in my character and fitness review and being sworn in)

Good idea, David.

These are the shoes! They are super comfy and cute.

Camera troubles

We seem to have lost our camera's battery charger. I have looked several times for it, we have cleaned large portions of our house, and it has still not popped up. It might have been thrown into a closet when Brian was doing his "guests are coming so I have to clean the house FAST" time. On a related note, I can only access about half of my clothes right now because random stuff from our house is piled on top of and in front of the rest. What we need to do is clean for real and throw a bunch of stuff away. Hopefully we will find our camera's battery charger soon so that we can take (and post) more pictures.

Teaching is going well. I am very busy making up new lectures every week, trying to decide what topics and sites are most important to discuss. This week we have been talking about art in the Upper Paleolithic, and next week we will discuss the relationship between Neanderthals and modern humans. Next week we will also have a guest speaker for 30 minutes on Thursday, so my lecture will be a little shorter that day.

I got these new brown shoes a couple weeks ago that I love because they are so comfortable and cute, so I have been wearing pants and skirts that match them for teaching. I may need to hem up some of my other pants so I can expand my teaching wardrobe.

Now it is 3:00, so I have to go teach. Bye!

Writing Changes

I've been struggling lately to develop a writing method and style that lends itself better to permanence. At work, I read, write, and analyze all day, but I often find myself doing several revisions of my work products before I reach something I remotely like. Sometimes, I return to the things I once thought were good and find I want to revise them again. It's somewhat frustrating and I hope to improve at getting it right the first time.

Recently, I did a good deal of work revising an article that is about to go to print (the Future Dangerousness Comment). I'd written it almost two years ago originally for a class, and I was shocked how much I needed to revise. I use "needed" because some of it I thought was written in a way I just wouldn't want to publish. I really think some of the sections just didn't flow, weren't organized well, or were unclear. After several revisions I feel much better about how it reads. Fortunately, by and large, I still agree with the substantive portions that I wrote originally, so I didn't really revise them. So maybe I wasn't stupid two years ago, but I sure needed some more work on writing well. Maybe I'll say the same two years from now.

Things here have been going pretty well. We've gotten the apartment/duplex/whatever we call it cleaned up a lot. We found a sectional couch we might buy for a reasonable price (read: under $1000). The ferets are getting lots of play time now that I moved my computer into their room (I seem to spend a lot of time on it). I also did some garden pruning two weekends ago and we went and started thinking of what else to do to clean it up this past weekend. Next weekend, we'll do major cleaning out of it and maybe even start planting new things. But we need to level the edge of the garden so it's flush with the driveway first.

Work lately has continued to be enjoyable, though I've had this one case that has been very hard to come up with a recommendation on. I've gone back and forth on it, revised it repeatedly, reread the materials repeatedly, and just struggled to sort out the logistics of it. I think I have identified the suggestion I'm going to give, but I tend to believe it will not attract a unanimous vote from the Court. I just hope they don't vote unanimously against my analysis, because then I'll just feel dumb. I'm continuously impressed by the amount of knowledge Justices must accumulate from hearing so many diverse types of cases.

Nothing else to report for now. Hope to see you all soon.

Heroes Season 1

At the end of last semester and the semester before it, I got very bogged down with school stuff and various other things. So I missed the final episodes (last couple) of LOST, Heroes, and Battlestar Galactica. Actually, for Battlestar, we finished the second season but didn't want to jump into Season 3 midway, so we were waiting for the DVDs to arrive. I don't usually buy DVDs anymore, but we did buy Heroes Season 1 by preorder. We watched the last few episodes in the past days, and today watched the season finale. I was very impressed. It's easily one of the best-written shows I've watched, and I hope they can maintain it into season two and beyond.

In any event, I don't imagine most of the readers of this Blog watch Heroes. But still, I loved the finale, and thought I'd share that here.

Ferret play time

The ferrets come out of their cage at least once per day to play. They like to run around, climb the furniture, jump on each other, and explore new objects in their space. Lately, the new object for them has been Brian's computer, which was moved into their room so he could do two of his favorite things at the same time (play on computer & play with ferrets).
Picture 1: Eve resting on the couch for a moment
Picture 2: Rex and Chewbacca in their cage (Chewbacca is yawning)
Picture 3: Brian supervising Rex and Brussels drinking out of a glass
Picture 4: Rex on their play structure (made for cats but fun for ferrets)