Trashcan squirrels (2 of 2): Trash disposal.

Like a week after that, I was taking out my trash to the traschcan in the back alley by my house, and when I opened up the lid and dropped my trash into the almost-empty can, I heard some rustling at the bottom of it and so I looked down, and down in the like six inches of trash at the bottom of the can, there was like this brief wave of fur that moved like a ripple briefly across the surface of the trash, before it disappeared deep down into it. And, I realized that it was also a squirrel, and then all of a sudden the damage to the edge of the lid where like a corner was gone suddenly made sense, that maybe it had been gnawed off by a squirrel so that squirrels could go get in there and get themselves some food. In restrospect, too, I wonder if the squirrel was trapped and I should have tipped over the can and freed it, but squirrels are good jumpers, and once I was gone it probably just leaped out through the hole in the corner of the lid and went on its way.

Trashcan squirrels (1 of 2): Mask disposal.

The other week in the college town that I now live in, I was walking back to my apartment from downtown after running an errand, and since my KN95 mask had now been reused for a brief second time, I went to tip open the lid of a trashcan set out by the curb, so that I could go throw my mask into it. But, as soon as I did that, there was a rush of a scribbling sound, and something kind of leaped out by my chest and dropped straight to the ground, and immediately as it started skittering off, I saw that it was a young reddish-brown squirrel, who must have been digging around at the edge of the mounded-up trash and then gotten frightened by me.

A small pleasure of late:

Writing (German) publishers in (shitty) (German) when I have trouble ordering books from their websites (e.g. no shipping to the U.S., an order mistake where a bookstore in Munich accidentally charged me again and sent me out a second copy of the same book, two weeks after I placed my original order and had already been billed once and been informed that a book had been sent out). I wonder what they think when they get those emails? I think my German is intelligible, but it must be odd for them... I'm not sure how many non-German customers they get, and then how many of the non-German customers try something like that. It's interesting, too, to think back to how I did endless basic German vocabulary building several years ago so I could more easily read scholarship, and now I have to all of a sudden shift from reading to language production.

Odd afternoon occurrence.

The other week, I was taking a mid-afternoon nap after my morning healthcare licensing class that I've been taking, and as I had my eyelids closed, suddenly against them I could see the rough outline of a looming gray-coated man coming through my front door, and I awoke with a start. It was like I was in the other room and saw him, and opened my eyes and was back in bed. . . .

Odd morning occurrence:

A few weeks ago, I woke up with Carly Simon's "Let the River Run" going through my head.

Smaller town life:

The other day I took a few minutes and rearranged the books in the Little Free Lending Library up the street from me, since it had gotten messy and you couldn't easily see what all the books were in there.

Puzzle dilemma.

So, last month I got a few cheap puzzles from a local resale shop that I had popped into to see if they had a nice small end table for my apartment (with the way my furniture fits in my new apartment, I really need a new end table for by my armchair). I had walked around the shop to look at stuff, and there they were, just up on a shelf, and I flashed back to what my one (skeptical) (Mexican) resthome ex-coworker had once told me, that resale shops are a great place to find puzzles. Anyhow, one of the puzzles is 1500 pieces, and the other one is 2 separate 1000 piece puzzles kept in separate bags in the same box, and for the one someone had put something like "3 MISSING PIECES" on top of the one box image, and something like "ALL PIECES HERE" on top of the other. Only, I did the 3 missing pieces puzzle first, and there actually turned out to be 4 missing pieces, and it also would have been helpful for me to know the image areas where the missing pieces were. I'm thinking I might change the missing pieces number on the box to 4, and also lightly circle in the area where the missing pieces are. Only, I have to finish the other puzzle first, to make sure that the additional missing piece didn't somehow end up in the other bag. No matter what, though, I'm going to take these puzzles back to the resale shop when I'm done with them, so they can resell them again and make more money.