Last Saturday we drove up to the nearest big city, ( and did boring stuff. )

After a morning of shopping and delicious lunch, we decided we were tired and didn't really feel like touring a cavern. So we headed home. The dog probably would have been distraught if we'd stayed out all day anyway.

There are a surprising number of Asian restaurants in this little town. They're all small establishments and in general not much for atmosphere and decor, but at the three we've been to so far, the food was decent. This week, we have tried out another local Asian restaurant, registered myself and the dog for our respective medical care, picked up a few household items and looked without success for flypaper. We have a lot of flies in the house, but neither the supermarket nor the discount store sells flypaper; they only have sticky traps for mice, not flies, and roach poison and insecticide sprays. Does no one want the product anymore? We bought a spray, but I may cobble something together out of duct tape and cardboard.

We finally got a call from the truck driver carrying our worldly goods, who told us he expects to reach our house next Tuesday. Meanwhile, having little else to do, we both got sucked into a couple of Facebook games, in particular Mafia Wars. Time spent playing will likely taper off once we get into a real routine.

Mungo has now moved three times in a month: from our previous house to a hotel, to another hotel, to our current house. He has coped well, I think. He was very excited to be let loose in our back yard after spending two weeks in hotel rooms. He's taking a few more days to adjust to the house itself. We set up his portable crate in a corner of the living room and his mat next to it, and he spent most of his time there in his "safe place" for the first couple of days (we've been here for six days, five nights). One problem he has is that all the flooring is smooth, slick tile, and his feet have very little traction on it. Any time he tries to run indoors, he skids. We find this funny, but we plan to shop for an area rug later, at least for the living room. Meanwhile, it's impressive how much dog hair is on the floor in less than a week.

We're at the end of the street, and other houses' back yards border our yard in three directions. All three have dogs. In fact, I think every house on our street has a dog, although it's hard to tell. The fences are chain link, unlike the stone and cement fences at our last house, and the living room window is big, so Mungo can see what he considers his potential playmates. This means he's rather more agitated than he was in the last house. He still doesn't bark at other dogs, but he does whine and cry when he's indoors and becomes aware of interesting doggy goings-on outside.

There's an old baseball field down the road from our block that's been converted to a dog park, fenced all the way around. We've taken him there twice. Unfortunately, both times he got burrs in his feet after only a couple minutes. It doesn't seem like a good place for him to run around. Too bad; one thing I wished for at the last place was a large, fenced area to let him off leash. It is still too hot out to go walking except before 8 AM or after sunset, so the dog and I are not getting much exercise.

We were hoping to have our belongings by the end of this week, but when aristeros inquired this morning as to their status, he learned that they have not even left their current location and are still 1700 miles away. Apparently someone needed him to sign and send a form but never asked him for it, or some such nonsense. We're looking at another two weeks without our stuff. (Edit: Seems that was wrong information and our goods have left their origin after all. Isn't it great when people know what they're talking about? We should have our stuff within ten days at the latest, hopefully earlier.)

On the bright side, we're in our new house. We can now go shopping or out to eat without worrying about leaving the dog in the hotel room. We had our first home-cooked supper last night: a makeshift version of ma po tofu. We stocked the fridge, we bought a bed, and as of this afternoon, we have broadband. Also, there's a cool thrift store/consignment shop here, and we scored a wooden rocking chair for $40. We're trying to decide if it would be worthwhile to buy another piece of furniture.

Before we left the last place, I bought some yarn and crochet hooks for something to do (after my other yarn and hooks had been packed and removed), and last night I began an attempt at a throw blanket. I want to model it after Lucy's Neat Ripple Pattern described here, but I made a variation, and I'm having trouble figuring out how to fit the second row on top of the first. If I make progress I may post a picture.

We've reached Moonbase Charlie. The landscape is similar to the previous place... a tad less flat, more mountains on the horizon, more scrubby trees and bushes, but still pretty brown. The settlement itself, though, is much, much smaller. I haven't yet had the opportunity to look around, as the dog is not supposed to be left alone in the hotel room here, even if crated, but from what I saw on the drive in, it's clear that we won't have quite the level of amenities to which we've been accustomed.

However, aristeros checked with the housing management, and they do have a house available for us, complete with fenced yard, so we should be fairly comfortable here. We'll be able to move in later this week. Now that we've arrived, I'm getting excited about settling in.

Finally got a moving date. We move on Monday, June 29... or possibly on the next day, since the hotel where we intend to go did not have a room that accomodates pets available for Monday evening. Once we're out of the house, we'll spend our last few days here in a hotel, too. Housing does not do move-out inspections on weekends, so we'll have our inspection the previous Thursday, a week from today. That means we have to have the rest of the furniture out (i.e. our bed and the borrowed couch) and the carpets cleaned next Wednesday.

There's not really much to pack anymore, but there's a little: folding chairs and such. And we still need to sweep & mop the floor and clean the kitchen counters. And I'll be away this weekend for a friend's wedding. All of a sudden, I realize how little time we have left to say goodbye to the friends we've made here and to take care of the remaining little errands I thought we'd have a couple of weeks left to do.

There are some things we'll miss about this place, but it will be interesting to see the next place, and we're both looking forward to regaining our own furniture and cookware!

A beagle and a basset hound live next door to us, and, as hounds do, they like to bay. We're used to hearing them. I've thought more than once that Mungo might have fun running around with them if we were friendlier with our neighbors (not that there's any trouble, we simply don't interact much). Well, this evening I took Mungo out for a rare evening walk, and as we were coming home, my hands full with leash, three days' worth of mail, and a package, we met my neighbor coming out his front door with his two hounds. They barked. Mungo retreated, tail tucked. He continued to avoid the hounds to the extent the leash permitted and did not respond positively to their advances for the whole three or four minutes I spent chatting with their owner. Oh well, so much for that idea.

I was a little surprised, because usually when we're out walking and he sees a dog, he pulls toward it. However, if he actually gets close enough to meet the other dog, and it greets him excitedly and enthusiastically, he usually withdraws a bit. Yesterday I brought him with me to the house of a friend who has two dogs. He was scared to meet them, but after five minutes running loose in the back yard together, he looked much happier, and he seemed to enjoy the afternoon of playing as much as I did talking with my friend. I know more socialization with both other dogs and people would be good for him.

We're hanging on to our sit/down/stand/stay/come training, just barely. Between aristeros and myself, we generally practice with the dog once on most days. He comes in from outside more readily to aristeros than to me, now, even though I was the one who took him to class. I've been lax.

We were tipped off to a cheap chew toy: the crushed water bottle. At first, Mungo paid little attention to a crushed Aquafina bottle unless it had food in it. The first evening we gave him a bottle with a piece of cooked chicken inside, he chewed on it for hours; we let him keep it overnight. The bottle was utterly mangled, and the chicken was mashed to a pulp. Now he's had enough fun with bottles that he went after the empty one I had set on the window sill to use for watering my plants. Aquafina bottles, with their ecologically-friendly, reduced-plastic design, do run the risk of being torn open, although I don't think he's quite managed it yet &mdash it just looks as if he might. Gatorade bottles are sturdier.

Lesson learned: a cheap container of thin plastic, such as grocery stores use to package sliced melon, will melt when it comes in contact with boiling water. I tried to make Jell-O in it. The result was a puddle of gelatin on the kitchen counter.

I am slightly more inclined to cook than I have been, now that we have so little equipment to cook with. I should borrow some dishes.

Hello. It's June now. Hot enough outside to feel like June.

When nothing is going on, it's very easy to park myself in front of the computer and websurf all day long. Doesn't help that today's tasks are ones that are done via the computer. I did at least walk the dog for an hour this morning.

It's nearly half past two in the afternoon and high time I ate lunch.

(cross-posted to urban_nature)
Last week, on returning from dinner out, we found a big hunting spider in the garage, next to the door to the house.

( spider #1 )

Two days later, I found a big hunting spider in the bathroom closet. My husband thought it was the same spider, but I thought the one in the garage was bigger.

( spider #2 )

At the end of the day, I trapped spider #2 in a cup and put it in the back yard. The dog followed eagerly, but I don't think he caught it.

The reasonably sized photos are linked to Flickr, where you can see huge versions for full detail.

Yeah... we're not leaving this moonbase quite so soon as we thought, and not for the destinations we thought. We're camping out in the house, sans most furniture/clothing/cookware, for maybe an extra month. Then we move to another desert location. At least we'll be together. And we have our mattress, and some borrowed things, and I really haven't been cooking lately anyway.

Since there's so little stuff around, Mungo can't get into much mischief, but this morning we found that during the night he had collected three rolls of packing tape and hoarded them in his crate. The most used-up roll bore definite signs of having been chewed.

We had a pleasantly busy Memorial Day weekend. Saturday afternoon we brought the dog for a puppy playdate. The dogs romped while the humans chatted.

On Sunday, we went with other friends to visit some rock formations about 45 min. east of town. The shape of the rocks is such that there's water in there most of the year, making the place something of an oasis, and they have prehistoric pictographs on them as well as graffiti from the 19th and 20th centuries. The area has natural beauty anyway, but the cultural additions make it even more interesting. Then, for lunch, we went to a steakhouse we'd been told about since we arrived in this city, which has its own on-site petting zoo.

Monday we watched the new Terminator movie, which was mostly about chase scenes and fight scenes — good entertainment. (Sam Worthington is better looking than Christian Bale, IMO. However, if he's playing an American character, he needs to maintain an American accent; or, what's probably easier, the writers should make his character Australian, since it's a new character anyway!) The cyborg premise is handled poorly towards the end, but somehow I found less to pick at in this movie than in Star Trek. Later in the afternoon, we attended a barbecue, although I enjoyed the baked potatoes and bread pudding more than the meat.

The dog is snoring in his Port-A-Crate. Snoring animals amuse me greatly. :)

It's been four weeks since I potted up my seedlings. I regret to report that they are dead, except for one zinnia which will probably expire by the time we clear out of this house. I put them by the front door. Temperatures have maxed in the 90°s F most days; during the first week or two that the plants were out there, we had a few days nearing 100°. I guess watering twice a week or so wasn't enough. Actually, I didn't even try to save them once I noticed they were dying. Because they are outdoors out of my sight and I was preoccupied with school and packing, they haven't been much on my mind. I was thinking I'd give away the pots of plants to friends here, but instead I guess I'll be taking the pots of soil with me.

Now that I'm done with school, I've had the time and inclination (if grudging) to walk the dog in the mornings again, and I've noticed more insect activity than a couple months ago: grasshoppers and large ants. The other night when aristeros and I returned from going out to eat, we discovered a great big hunting spider by the doorframe inside the garage. He took a picture of it, but I don't know where he put the camera; perhaps I'll post the photo later.

Yesterday was the four-month anniversary of our adoption of Mungo. The neat thing about this length of time is that now he has been with us just about as long as he was in the custody of the Humane Society.

He has adapted pretty well. ( Read more... )

Last night we went out to see the new Star Trek movie with a couple of friends. I was entertained and enjoyed the movie, but I didn't think it was a great movie. I liked Generations better. I think that was the last Star Trek movie I watched. To be fair, I've hardly seen any of the original series or the movies with the original cast. I've seen some The Next Generation episodes and a few of Deep Space Nine, and that's all.

One complaint I have is that I don't like the Bettie Page-style bangs on Spock... but checking Google Image Search, I guess he's always had that kind of hair cut. I also thought that Kirk was, on the whole, a rather unsympathetic character. Sulu was cool, though.

Spoilerish complaints, in the order in which I think of them:

( complaints )

Someone else's user icon reminded me about this Flash game:
Die Anstalt — Psychiatric Clinic for Abused Cuddly Toys
The link actually takes you to the website of the toy company that makes these plush toys. The Flash game provides a bit of backstory about the toys.

I played this game a few years ago, and I found it pretty engaging for a casual web browser-based game. The premise is that the toys are mentally ill due to abuse by previous owners, and your job is to be their therapist and cure them. Here's a review of the game.

aristeros has been playing Bioshock lately. It's set in an underwater city whose inhabitants have discovered a way to make different kinds of super-powered mutations, such as shooting fire or lighting from their hands, or freezing their opponents in ice, or teleporting across the room, etc. Even though the place is at the bottom of the ocean, it's supposed to be entirely self-contained, and you never leave the city. All the opponents you face are mutant humans of different kinds, not sharks or squids or lobsters.

He commented that all the mutations seemed to be for fighting: he didn't see much practical, everyday benefit from being able to shoot lighting from your hands. I was thinking that if I lived underwater and could mutate however I wanted, I'd grow some gills and flippers and go outside!

My dreams this morning concerned getting back in touch with a few college friends (who in my dream I thought I knew from high school, but no, I met them in college) and singing with them John Rutter's Gloria, specifically the third movement. Listening to it now.

I like Saturday mornings.

Ever since I noticed that the commissary carries oxtails, I've thought about cooking kare-kare, a stew that I enjoyed at my aunt & uncle's house. This week I finally tried it.

As usual when I'm attempting a dish for the first time, I searched for recipes on the Internet. I looked at somewhere around half a dozen recipes. They all had these ingredients in common: oxtails, bok choy, long beans, eggplant, and peanut butter. I'm accustomed to tripe also being an ingredient, but it didn't come up as often as I expected — which is fine with me, I won't touch organ meats. Also, the stew is traditionally thickened with powdered roasted rice, but I was surprised to see how many recipes omitted this. My uncle uses crisp rice cereal (e.g. Rice Krispies) pulverized either in a food processor or by hand in a plastic bag. Here's a little background information on kare-kare, with a recipe.

And here's the recipe I chose to work from. Developed by a Filipino-American man, it has a simplified list of ingredients and, most importantly, does not involve simmering the oxtails on the stove for a long time. Instead, they go into a slow cooker. I ♥ my slow cooker.

( Here is how it went. )

aristeros is away until Friday for work. I basically had a big cookie and a cup of iced coffee for lunch, in between class #2 and class #3. Came home from school, ate a string cheese stick, and spent almost the entire afternoon and evening reviewing my old wedding bookmarks and organizing them into posts on the old wedding blog, so I can then delete the bookmarks with a clear conscience. Funny to think a year has passed... right now, it feels like longer.

I wasn't hungry at supper time; I fed the dog and made myself a smoothie. Now that it's time for bed, I'm finally beginning to feel hungry (plus crummy in general, probably because I've barely eaten all day), and I haven't done my accounting homework due tomorrow. Maybe I can squeeze it in before class.

Poor doggy seems a little depressed today. We've been neglecting him lately compared with how we used to behave in his first month, and besides that, he's missing one playmate this week. I did run around in the back yard with him for a few minutes tonight.

I finally potted the seedlings and repotted the ficus. The peat pellets had dried out a bit, and my cilantro was rather limp. Smelled yummy, though. I hope the plants keep growing. I'm pleased to see that my Christmas cactus with white flowers is getting ready to bloom. I purchased it and another with hot pink flowers back in January because they had so many buds on them, but as soon as I brought them home, all the buds fell off.

Well. We have a date for our belongings to be packed up and loaded onto a truck (happens to be during final exams week), we have a date for housing to inspect our house and see that it is empty and reasonably clean, and aristeros has scheduled his last day of work here. We're not leaving until three weeks after our household goods leave, but I suppose in the meantime we'll make do with an air mattress and a junky old frying pan, and stay in a hotel for the final few days. A hotel that accepts dogs.

Step by step, the concept of leaving Moonbase Bravo is becoming a genuine plan, and then a reality. I'm looking forward somewhat to leaving this dry and dusty place, but I dread the hassle and stress of moving. I'll be happy to spend more time with my parents and brother, but sad to be separated from my husband. Finishing the semester will be a relief — as far as my motivation goes, I almost feel done with school already — but I'm concerned about when and how I'll actually complete my degree.

Ah well. We'll see how it all turns out in time.

Today I visited my economics teacher to clarify a couple of ideas in preparation for my exam tomorrow. My economics teacher is a doctoral student and does not have his own office. Instead, he has a cubicle in a room he shares with all the other doctoral students in the business school.^*

A list of the grad students' names and scheduled office hours was posted outside the door to the room. Glancing at it, I noticed that the great majority of the names sounded as if they did not originate from western Europe.

"Looks like most of your colleagues are from other countries," I commented to my teacher, who happens to be a foreign national himself.

"Yes," he answered with a slight smile, "Americans don't like to do PhDs."

Hmm. That's a somewhat worrisome conclusion to draw. Does the United States produce a disproportionately low number of PhD students relative to other countries? Could it be that PhD students from other countries prefer to study in the U.S. rather than in their countries of origin?

- -
*Note: Lecturers rate an office, but grad students do not. The teacher I had for Priniciples of Accounting was a lecturer last summer. She had her own office. Last fall, while she taught Individual Income Tax, she became a doctoral student. Her office was taken away from her, and she had to share the common room.