Beautiful Sight: Workman's vest.

The other month after I woke up to the sound of circular saws from the neighboring lot, I went to my dining room window and looked out to see what was happening.

Of the 4 (Mexican? Mexican-American?) workers in bright neon work vests on the front lot, one had an image of Our Lady of Guadaloupe taped on the back of his.

Odd dream of pill-chewing.

I'm driving through a rocky-ish mountain pass and am chewing some crushed up pills and have them tucked away and bulging out my lower lip, and suddenly I don't know why I'm taking more than the recommended one pill a day, or why I'm chewing them since they're so bitter and I should just go ahead and swallow them.

Unpleasant occurrence:

Like a month ago, after 2 12+ hour days in a row at work, I finally have a day off and try to sleep in a bit, and the builders show up at the house next door and use a buzzsaw from like 7am till well after noon.

They hadn't been there for months, and then they show up on my one day off.

Nice gesture from a colleague:

The Chinese teacher at the art school gave me a red envelope for good luck for Chinese New Year that had a small golden ram ornament inside, which I ended up putting up on my doorframe just inside my apartment's main door.

Every time I leave my apartment, I see the bright red and think of good luck, and how nice that was of her to give me that gift since I don't know her all that well.

They had some at her local Citibank branch and she thought they were fantastic, so she took a lot to give to people, she said.

Insights into Ayn Rand's sex life.

Two tidbits from my art school class:

1) I raised the issue of whether her husband was into cuckolding since her younger disciple remembers that Ayn Rand had said that her husband found her sexual arrangement with the younger disciple "sexually invigorating", and a student immediately piped up, "But that's not plausible, he became an alcoholic, that's probably more a reflection of how she *wanted* him to perceive the situation."

2) A student asked whether Ayn Rand's desire to know younger men's sex lives was actually an expression of her masochism, since it made her think about other women when she longed to be with them.

Mouse problem redux.

I get home one Sunday from errands and then the grocery store, and after I put my bags down and kick the heat on and stand in the archway between my living room and dining room replying to a few texts, out runs a mouse, coming from behind me from somewhere in the living room and passing by me to my left and disappearing somewhere out into the shadows of the living room.

I called my landlord and my parents to try to figure out what to do since the peanut butter traps weren't working, and my mom suggested that since they liked the rice from the rice bags on the counter so much, that I sprinkle some rice near the traps.

I did that, and when I get home the other night, 2 of the traps have the rice piles still in front of them, and a 3rd has the pile eaten away but the trap is still unsprung since the mouse never went on to go after the peanut butter next to the rice pile.

So, I sprung the trap and scraped off the peanut butter (putting it in the sink, even I'm not that much of an environmentalist where I'm going to eat it!), and then sprinkled rice grains so they stuck on top of the residual peanut butter and re-set the trap.

Great sight the other day when I left work downtown at 9pm:

As I walk to the subway station, I look up at the tallest building in the city, and there towards the top third immediately to the right in the night sky and above the rest of the skyline is the quarter-full moon.