John Nolan Drive has become the amazon

I'm wet.


Everything in the apartment is wet, and nothing will dry. I am convinced that everything in my life is becoming a huge, mildewy mess because Madison has inexplicably become the first rainforest in the midwest. Soon there will be snakes hanging in the trees and awesome frogs everywhere and maybe I will finally find that plant that you were supposed to get in the Amazon Trail.

If you can't tell, I'm getting tired of the rain.

I am also tired of the drain in the bathroon not draining, making things even wetter, the fact that I am too lazy to do what needs to be done, and that this paper needs to be written up so that Dr. Mentor can say that it is too late to be published because I am a dumbass.

So since it is so very gray and wet outside, this will be a very special limulus edition of things that I like right now:

1.Trader Joe's Buffalo Jerky

Don't judge me

Now, I am not a backpacker, wannabe cowboy, or any other jerky stereotype out there, but I like this stuff. Maybe a backstory is in order. I have hippie tendencies and would love to be a vegetarian or vegan sometimes. However, I was raised in a household where a meal was not a meal without meat, and sometimes I just crave it. When I had a little sit-down with myself I realized that I have little problem with eating meat. I have studied evolutionary biology long enough to be able to tell, through many different signs, that humans have evolved to have part of their diet come from animal protein, and that since evolution has been good to me, I don't necessarily need to fight the meat cravings, since many other members of the fine animals kingdom do the same. I know many say that we need to rise above our primal instincts and stop eating meat, but for me putting morality in my eating is making sure the animal has a good life. However, this does lead to interesting eating for a graduate student. Cruelty-free chicken is easy to find, and as long as a fish is caught wild its natural instincts haven't really been infringed upon. However, beef is an entirely different story. After many biology classes and reading The Omnivore's Dilemma (which I recommend wholeheartedly) I gave up corn-fed beef. However, grass-fed beef is hard to find and at wonderful places where you can find it (such as the Willy St. Co-Op it is MAD expensive. A maybe once every three weeks, or I've sold a kidney, or gave up yarn for 3 months kind or thing. So there is a hamburger every once in a while, but for other red meat cravings, there is the jerky. It is free-range, and damn, this is good stuff.

2.Yes to Carrots

Bad picture!

My hair is dry (unlike the apartment) and I only buy cruelty-free beauty products. This has been a problem in the past, and the roomie said last year that we should have been paid to test all of the stuff we tried to find the best one. Well sweet holy hand grenade, I finally found it. Yes to Carrots is an Israeli company which is only sold in Walgreens here (yeah, I don't know why either), and while I have only tried the shampoo, conditioner, and body butter, they are all fab-u-licious (thats right, they're so good I've veered off the english beaten path here). I have never had a conditioner work this well before since I stopped using Pantene. And best of all they help to support sustainable agriculture!

3.The Orton Park Festival

It is the only happy thing outside. If you're in the area, stop by! I hear there is a beer garden (that might be tomorrow...) in any case, I get live music in my living room! The boy and I are going to check it out in a bit.

4.My new sock.

Apparently mountain fires are very colourful

OK, so we all know I have the attention span of a fruitfly, but that is not what this is about. Right now I am working with exactly three colours, and I needed more than that. Many more. So I pawed through the stash and came up with this. Have I mentioned how much I love socks that rock? It is so... substantial. Even in the lightweight. Love, love love. This project made me feel better almost immediately.

5. The boy.

Here he is, trying to fix the internet for me and setting up the printer. Apparently we have IPV4 and 6, and appletalk, which means that we have a multi-something network. I have learned that he needs more techie friends. I appreciate him in his entirety. They will appreciate his computer genius-ness more. Of course, the local internet provider should send him a card, since if he didn't exist, my closet would most likely be filled with the pleading voices of the technicians that were sent over to fix the internet and eventually got snippy with me about my internet incompetence. That will show them. Where is their precious internet now?

I love him, and he still thinks that the fact that I can cook is amazing when he routinely makes machines do his bidding. I would be even more grumpy without him. He even said that one day I will be allowed to make him a sweater.

Peace out to all. The boy and I are going to explore the possibilities of beer across the street...