How many cookies are too many? 3.9 billion are too many.

I wasn't about let poor november go with only one blog post, so lonely. And its kinda misleading because many interesting events transpired. I had thanksgiving dinner with an assortment of friends and dogs. including two genuine americans. but everyone is happy to eat delicious food, right? DogS because I dogsat for my friends 2 dogs, and it happened to fall on thanksgiving. Drool all around! We had all the usual stuff except we all forgot the cranberry sauce! Audrey came to stay for a week before heading off to far-flung reaches of Europe. We did lots of joyous activities like watching X-files, wandering around, craft!, putting up christmas decorations, watching more x-files, and making about 3.9 billion gingerbread cookies. I still have about 15.65 cookies left, I got sick of them mid-cookie so there's a good 2/3 of it still. There was alot going on in crayfish world too, I went and gathered lots of crays for my behavior experiments. Now the river is flooded, it is massive! I didn't take any picture tho, as it was dark. it gets dark at 4:30pm. It makes me SAD. well, not REALLY s.a.d. just sad. darkness can be beautiful though.

photo from backyard, that's the tree the squirrel uses.

Pie had a great month, because Audrey came and stayed for a whole week, then her dog friends Amber and Crocus came and spent the night, and people came over for thanksgiving and touched her. She also got a new 'nest' bed, which she is totally into (literally). If she had a bumper sticker it would say I Heart my Nest Bed.

Speaking of bumper stickers, no one here has any! or, they are extremely rare. extremely. so, I have decided to put lots of them on my car! please send me your ideas! So far I have one that says 'my other car is my feet' and I plan to get one that says 'horray for cyclists' which i will position in the cyclist-reading-friendly area of Carl, the rear left.

Big excitement in slug-world! All the eggs Takumi layed (after eating his partner) have hatched. There are at least 13 tiny baby slugs now. so cute. so gross.

one last note, on BBC radio 4 this morning they had a story about voice-recognition technology. They had a program that could pronounce whatever you asked it to, in someone else's voice. They used a phrase like: "I believe that humans and fish can live together in peace"and used George Bush's voice. It was amazing. It really sounded like GW felt that fish and humans could live in peace. the world loves an optimist.

fin

Happy Spider has all his legs!

I finally got a photo of my bathroom pet, the spider. He looks hungry for pill bugs! unlike the other spider I found when I moved in, this one has all his legs. I named him but have since forgotten the name.


Today I went for a nice stroll and found some horses! What a lovely horse. The pie enjoyed eating their dung. disgusting.


I ended up near the Meanwood Valley Urban Farm, so I went in and looked at the chickens. There are about 200 hens, and no roosters. They used to have roosters, but they would guard the door (top left in photo) so some chickens had to stay inside, and others couldn't get in. And they fought and any blood is bad blood since its open to the public.


Tasha's favorites were the rabbits.


One of the rabbits looked like David Bowie (from movie Labyrinth). I think Tasha is still dreaming of him. and his little, delicious friends.

Visiting a crime scene

Today I went for a walk on the canal path only to find it blocked by police! I thought - body in the canal - obviously, but couldn't see anything. Here's the article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_yorkshire/7077995.stm

One point seems wrong, I doubt the body was found "on Cockshott Lane" (yes that's its real name folks!) because:
1. its a fairly busy road, the body probably would have been found before 10:30 assuming death occurred saturday night, and c'mon, who gets murdered on Sunday morning? all the troublemakers are still in bed...
and
2. I walked along the road, and found no police, the police were surrounding an area further down the canal.

so MAYBE he was pushed off the road bridge INTO the canal, where he slowly, slowly floated downstream overnight! Only to be found by some poor old man walking his dog no doubt! WAH!

In other canal path news, an elderly man was pushed into the canal by some boys, and later helped out by a "Canadian man" believed to be a Leeds Uni employee..........hmmmmm the canal savior identity remains unknown.

Pumpkin Pie

Friend Audrey visited. After dark we commenced filing.


After lamenting that I couldn't drink out of the Erlenmeyer flask, Audrey suggests I try some of the glassware awaiting recycling. Mmmmm orange soy juice sauce....


We went to York and to Betty's Tea Room, the fancy tea-specialist restaurant thingy that everyone tells me I have to go to while I am in England. We had tiny sandwiches, scones (WITH RAISINS! NO!), and 'mini cake selection'. It was good but overly sweet. The tea was the best part. That's what she said.

Then we carved pumpkins:


Here's the pumpkin pie:

nothing important happened today

Today work was shut down early because of broken fire alarms. So I went for a walk around campus. What did I see? I saw a pretty oak tree, being natural and seasonal amidst the unchanging angular buildings:


I saw a strange door leading into a big mound of earth, with a glass pyramid on top:

What does it lead to? I don't know. Tasha was very interested in the light over the door:



And earlier this week she did something weird with her feet:

Over the hills and far away, the tiny little village of Cray

Big excitement in the Dales this weekend. Saturday I went up to do my water chemistry sampling (Wait, its Saturday?! not again!) and I got passed by THREE ambulances. I saw a paraglider on top of a hill where one ambulance was coming from, so assumed it was a paraglider accident. But no. A car crash further up the road. A chopper came too. I could see the scene down in the valley. I think no one was seriously hurt, the ambulances didn't drive off, and no one was (pork) choppered out. After sampling I hiked to the interestingly-named hamlet of Cray. I had tried before but didn't want to be out when.....darkness falls... This time I arrived and found it consisted of a pub, a parking lot, and a farmhouse. There was a small stream with probably no crays. On the way back Piemaster pursued rabbits.

"Detour" actually really scary!

Perhaps best known for its comedic elements (i.e. Scully singing 'Jeremiah was a Bullfrog'), the season five x-files episode Detour is actually very scary. Especially when watched alone, and in the dark. "NO! DON'T GET SEPARATED IN THE WOODS! AAAAAHHHHH!" Thank goodness I had not seen it before we played 'what just brushed my shin' in the woods at night as kids, or I might have seriously injured myself trying to escape the elusive beings of the forest.