Stories of wildlife here.

The other week when I went to go get a haircut, the (middle-aged) (scruffily bearded) (but conscientiously masked) (dirty blonde) barber who told me that he used to take the busses around here back when he got a DUI said that once he looked out the window of his barber shop, and there were some beavers walking by, and the best he could figure, they came out of the creek across town and were going somewhere. I asked him if he ever saw eagles around here, and he said yes, but only out in the country.

My impressions of the students here...

...in the (flagship) (state university) college town that I now live in: There's so many luxury apartment buildings going up in the student part of town, but on the other hand, I've come across students doing Instacart as their job to make ends meet. So much inequality.

Language app levity (?).

The other week, I was texting my one professor friend who studies (modern) (Czech) literature about hate crimes and microaggressions, as I often do, and she was livid, as she often is. Then, I was studying my new language for potential EU citizenship on my one language app, and as one of their nonsense phrases to get you to learn vocabulary, they had the sentence, "The shape of their eyelids is the same as ours," in the language that I've been studying. So, I screenshotted it and texted it to her, and she was like - Um, how often do [people of that nationality] say that? Is it a common way of greeting people? - to which I replied - It's actually a self-effacing proverb; after you do something stupid, you compare yourself to Mongoloids and gypsies. - to which she responnded - Jesus christ - to which I replied that I was kidding. I got her for a moment!

Pleasant house feature:

When the sun is right, it casts light through the peephole on my front door, which for a short while goes all the way across my living room and leaves a round spot of light a noticeable bit bigger than a half dollar, that looks like a rainbow peace sign.

Squirrel madness.

Like a few weeks ago, I wake up and look out my window, and there's a medium-size white bag of trash strewn across my neighbor's porch with stuff spilling out, including a used paper plate that was dirty from take-out pizza that had blown like five or six feet over towards my back-alley cottage. And, I simply couldn't believe that the squirrels had dragged that all the way in from the alley, especially since the yard was covered with crusty snow, apart from a small path that I had shovelled in it. That night after class, then, I was just about to go outside and start cleaning it up, when I see my neighbor get home and go to do that, so I head out and go to talk to them. "Oh you don't have to do that for me," they were like, after talking for a while about how crazy the squirrels were around here. "It's my trash, that's not your responsibility." And, they then explained that they had never actually taken their trash out to the alley, but without thinking had set it outside on their porch for the night so it wouldn't stink up their house, but they had forgotten about the squirrels, and so they woke up to the mess but had to get to work.

Healthcare instructors (2 of 2): The other.

In my one healthcare licensing class, on the day when both the (African) instructor and the (older) (slightly crazy) (black) lady were working, the (African) instructor was demonstrating how to help a patient assist moving in bed. So, she bent over the demonstration dummy on the made-up demonstration bed and began play-acting our role out for us and was like, "Are you ready to move now, Ms. [last name of the other instructor]?". Also, another time she mentioned funeral homes, and how they appeared in her country only three-to-five years ago, and before then it was typical to bury at home, and people would leave the window open for the soul.

Healthcare instructors (1 of 2): The one.

So, in my one healthcare licensing class, the one main instructor is this one (older) (originally from the South) (aging) and (slightly crazy) (black) lady who always mentions her health conditions and her family problems and stuff she watches on TV, especially to make points about class material by relating it to stuff that she watches on TV. Like, she started discussing patients' possible mental health struggles, by talking about Robin Williams's suicide. "You know him," she was like, "He was a wild guy." And, once she kept talking about this celebrity "Sah-zhay" who recently died, and after like three minutes of this, one of my classmates way up towards the front of the room turned to the person sitting next to her and was like, quietly, "I think she means Bob Saget."