Ants.

My apartment really has an ants problem around the sink; already this winter when it's gotten warmer out, some days there's like 2-5 ants crawling around by the edge of the counter to the left of the sink and sometimes further, and one particularly bad day I woke up and had to kill honestly like 15-20 of them that were all over.

I noticed that by the leftmost edge of the counter by the sink that there's some fresh caulking, but it's been pulled away, maybe because of the house settling over the winter, and it's in the area where there's nothing else but it's where the ants seem to be coming from, and once, too, I saw an ant actually going into that little crevice.

So, I'm going to have to contact my landlord about caulking that up.

Oddly, in my healthcare licensing class before I ended, I heard two students talking about how they have ants in their houses, too, so a part of me wonders if it's the area, or climate change.

On law and its adversarialism.

When stuff gets legal, it gets really unpleasant really fast, when you try to protect yourself.

In my one healthcare class, the one instructor had some different class gaps that created risks where I needed to formalize stuff in writing, and like right away I could see that their lawyers were ghostwriting emails for her -- the stuff had some different exculpating factual distortions, and omitted some crucial context, and since you can't let stuff like that stand, you have to respond right away and point it out, lest they twist the paper trail and pretend stuff didn't happen and even maybe tip all of the legal liability onto you.

Only, once you do that, you become a threat, all because of the situation that *they* created.

Then, they try to explain away your response by saying that you're overreacting, try to put you in your place to delegitimize your concerns, etc.

Just what a f*cking mess...  I hate situations like that, but once they go there, you have to do what you have to do, it's all about protecting yourself.

Years ago I had read that law courts tend to black vs. white presentations of situations because of the adversarial nature of the courtroom (I think this was an aside about Greco-Roman rhetorical training and how that informed ancient historiography, which isn't as nuanced as historians' work now)...  

Anyhoo, that **really** is true.  You martial your forces and state your case, and acknowledge and push back where needed.

"You're really cutting a swath there, honey," my mother was like.  "I don't think they were ready for you."

Looking forward to a schedule.

I can't wait until I pass my state exam and get a job and finally have a regular work situation again, with a lesser and less stressful commute than I had in the city.

It'll be so nice to chill out and have all of these days stretch out predictably in front of me, like I haven't had for a bit.

And, unlike the city had been getting, I won't need as much recovery time to re-center myself on my days off, in between when I have to work.

Research conceit (2 of 2): Bigger plaque.

So, with my one ancient language research, I think that every researcher ever f*cked up this kind of major thing about how the writing system worked from a very early stage, and that that basic misunderstanding led to all of these crazy theories to explain away different stuff linguistically that actually doesn't really exist, since the different word forms people are trying to explain away with the crazy theories are actually misinterpretations of the writing system, and once you understand that, the forms become relatively more normal and a lot more unproblematic.

Though, right now this is just a hunch, and I'm acquiring the volumes of texts that I need to read through intensively over the next 1-2 years, to try to figure out exactly exactly what is happening with the writing system, since my hunch also is that this one little quirk produced like 2-3 other writing system quirks that all got collectively misinterpreted in scholarship over like the past 200 years.

Anyhow, if this pans out, I don't care how much it costs, but I'm going to get a big f*cking imitation metal plaque like they do for academic historic sites like they do for the science ones with engineering and nuclear power and different shit like that all over the big state campus near me, and I'm going to write up my discovery and cement that f*cker in on the back alley near my cottage without even telling my landlord what I'm doing, so it's just there as some local landmark that people will notice whenever they walk by using the alley.

I mean, if I'm right, by then I'll have done the work, so I might as well get some recognition for it, even if I have to do it myself.

Addendum.

 (I knew something was probably off with my formatting the past few months, and I just realized what... It must have been annoying as f*ck to read big block paragraphs that weren't having the linebreaks that I was putting in, but it's too much time to go back and get them right...  Chalk that up, it was what it was.)

Research conceit (1 of 2): Plaque.

It's kind of ridiculous that I found this research niche on this one ancient language, and that my one paper that I just announced corrected every scholar in that area ever, though they haven't quite noticed it yet (one specialist I know already got back to me by email when I told him about my upcoming talk, and he's very excited and intrigued). 

Anyhow, maybe this summer I'm going to get around to getting a small plaque made for besides the door by my back cottage - 

[ADJECTIVE FORM OF THE DISCIPLINARY AREA] 

RESEARCH INSTITUTE 

OF 

[TOWN NAME], [STATE NAME] 

- since if I'm going ahead and doing it, I might as well get some recognition for it. 

I mean, here I am, this freelancer who just works from their kitchen table a lot, sitting and thinking and breaking big shit, it's all kind of ridiculous.

Unfortunate phrase.

On like the last day or two of my one healthcare licensing class, I popped into the restroom after we were dismissed, and so I walked out behind the other students, who were already getting into their cars by the time that I was passing the parking lot area. And, the one (awesome) (big-boned) (pretty black) student had her hood open to check on something in the engine area. "Hey, do you need any help?", I was like, from the sidewalk area that went right by where her car was parked. "No, I'm good," she was like, "I can always n*gger-rig it," and at that she stood up from under the hood and flashed me this great big smile.