Yes, it is once again V-day, or as I learned to call it in high school- S.A.D. (Single's awareness day.)
Fruit bat got me some valentine's day chocolate, so I got her some at the last minute last night... >.<;
Getting up this morning, I had one real goal. Pancakes. Every year on valentines day we have pancakes in my family- pancakes cut in the shape of hearts. I got to the cafeteria just in time, and grabbed a couple of plain pancakes. It took some doing with a fork- but I managed to cut them into the shapes of hearts before actually working on eating them.
Since I'd gotten up for breakfast I had a lot of time to kill before I had to leave for church- so I went online to my home church's page and got started on one of my pastor's sermons. It felt like a slice of home to hear a familiar voice.
Church itself was pretty good- the pastor told us the story of Saint Valentine- which I had never heard.
Apparently, Valentine was a priest in the Roman empire, particularly noted for encouraging young people to get married and serve Christ together in a partnership. At this period of time though, Rome was getting ready for a war, and hadn't been having much luck in recruiting new soldiers- older men didn't want to leave their wives, and younger men wanted to get married. So the emperor made a decree that there were to be no new marriages. Valentine opposed this, and continued to marry people in secret- eventually he was discovered and imprisoned. The emperor went to meet with him, and was so impressed by Valentine that he offered to pardon the man and absolve him of his crimes, if he would only renounce his Christian faith and become a pagan minister of the Roman deities. Valentine refused, and was executed some few days after.
Before the execution however, his guard had discerned that Valentine was a wise man, and had been bringing his daughter, Julia, to learn from him. The day of his execution, Valentine gave a letter to Julia, thanking her for having been such a good student, and signed, "Your Valentine."
I thought it was interesting anyway.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
It wasn't a cat
Really, it wasn't. I'm sort of just throwing this out here, since I haven't posted in forever, so expect this to be fairly rambling in nature. (As if any of my other posts AREN'T rambling.)
I'm sure you know this, but Fruit Bat catches cats on campus (alliteration for the win!) and gets them spayed/neutered before re-releasing them. Well, last night, she set out her trap once again, and we managed to convince ourselves to leave it out all night.
She often worries that someone will find and steal the trap- as she's had it happen before. I haven't had it happen before, and can't imagine what someone would want with it, so I don't worry so much. The result of leaving overnight though, was that we needed to check on it this morning and put it away.
In the trap, was not a cat, as rarely happens. It was not even empty, as OFTEN happens. It was full, of the only marsupial native to North America.
Yeah. We caught a possum.
There are two which hang around this area that we've seen for sure, a big one and a little one. (Thus we automatically assume that the large one is the mother and the smaller one the infant.) Fortunately for us, we'd caught the smaller of the two. The tricky part was letting it out- opossums have a heck of a lot of teeth, and are carriers of rabies.
Needless to say, neither of us wanted to get bit. Unfortunately, once Fruit Bat got the trap door open, the kooky critter didn't want to leave. Oh, it was definitely scared and upset- it kept growling and hissing at Fruit Bat, but leaving the cage seemed like a bad idea.
So, we made it a non-option. We weren't going to be late for class. It WAS going to get out. We found a stick and wedged it so that the trap door wouldn't close, then Fruit Bat upended the cage. It took some shaking- the darn thing had wound it's tail through the bars to avoid being forced out, but she finally got it out of the cage. Shortly after, it disappeared into the bushes.
Such fun times- at 7:30 in the morning.
On other notes of this already out of tune post, Fruit Bat's fallen prey to the same inclination I got around this time last year, and has purchased some dirt and a pot- though it's a hanging pot, as the fate of my pot last year was to be tipped over off of the paltry windowsill (none of the seeds I planted so much as sprouted after that.) It's a decent sized pot, and its distance from the window lets me hope that any sprouts we acquire will be unable to plaster themselves against the glass- and therefore die at the first hint of cold weather. Yes, that's what happened to my sprouts last year.
We have quite a few things planted in this pot though, and I can only imagine the battle that will ensue in this soil. First off, FB's reason for getting the pot is that she's had a horseradish-bulb for a while now and was starting to worry that it was going to die if she didn't plant it. Secondly, there's my ill-fated balsam of yesteryear. I'm trying not to hope, but I so want to see flowers that I helped grow.
My family is a little strange- both of my grandmothers had wonderful green thumbs, but my mother is lucky to manage to keep her plants alive. I'm afraid that this will be the case with me as well... I must do research on hardy plants!
The third thing in the pot (besides the dirt) is Lavender, which Fruit Bat grows from time to time. We only planted it last night, so it'll be about a week before I can expect anything to happen.
*frets*
I'm sure you know this, but Fruit Bat catches cats on campus (alliteration for the win!) and gets them spayed/neutered before re-releasing them. Well, last night, she set out her trap once again, and we managed to convince ourselves to leave it out all night.
She often worries that someone will find and steal the trap- as she's had it happen before. I haven't had it happen before, and can't imagine what someone would want with it, so I don't worry so much. The result of leaving overnight though, was that we needed to check on it this morning and put it away.
In the trap, was not a cat, as rarely happens. It was not even empty, as OFTEN happens. It was full, of the only marsupial native to North America.
Yeah. We caught a possum.
There are two which hang around this area that we've seen for sure, a big one and a little one. (Thus we automatically assume that the large one is the mother and the smaller one the infant.) Fortunately for us, we'd caught the smaller of the two. The tricky part was letting it out- opossums have a heck of a lot of teeth, and are carriers of rabies.
Needless to say, neither of us wanted to get bit. Unfortunately, once Fruit Bat got the trap door open, the kooky critter didn't want to leave. Oh, it was definitely scared and upset- it kept growling and hissing at Fruit Bat, but leaving the cage seemed like a bad idea.
So, we made it a non-option. We weren't going to be late for class. It WAS going to get out. We found a stick and wedged it so that the trap door wouldn't close, then Fruit Bat upended the cage. It took some shaking- the darn thing had wound it's tail through the bars to avoid being forced out, but she finally got it out of the cage. Shortly after, it disappeared into the bushes.
Such fun times- at 7:30 in the morning.
On other notes of this already out of tune post, Fruit Bat's fallen prey to the same inclination I got around this time last year, and has purchased some dirt and a pot- though it's a hanging pot, as the fate of my pot last year was to be tipped over off of the paltry windowsill (none of the seeds I planted so much as sprouted after that.) It's a decent sized pot, and its distance from the window lets me hope that any sprouts we acquire will be unable to plaster themselves against the glass- and therefore die at the first hint of cold weather. Yes, that's what happened to my sprouts last year.
We have quite a few things planted in this pot though, and I can only imagine the battle that will ensue in this soil. First off, FB's reason for getting the pot is that she's had a horseradish-bulb for a while now and was starting to worry that it was going to die if she didn't plant it. Secondly, there's my ill-fated balsam of yesteryear. I'm trying not to hope, but I so want to see flowers that I helped grow.
My family is a little strange- both of my grandmothers had wonderful green thumbs, but my mother is lucky to manage to keep her plants alive. I'm afraid that this will be the case with me as well... I must do research on hardy plants!
The third thing in the pot (besides the dirt) is Lavender, which Fruit Bat grows from time to time. We only planted it last night, so it'll be about a week before I can expect anything to happen.
*frets*
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