Dear Holmes, Rest in Peace

I write out rest in peace above because, well, I feel like RIP just doesn't capture the beauty of the concept. The acronym means "to cut or tear apart in a rough or vigorous manner" (dictionary.com). That just doesn't capture the mood of "rest in peace," though it does capture another side of death, just not the well-wishing part.

Anywho, Sherlock Holmes was my parakeet. When I woke up yesterday morning, he was no longer with us. After initial shock, tears, texting my boss I would be late for work, and a day feeling distracted by thoughts of "what did I miss?" all I can think is that I was responsible for this tiny creature, and I failed.

Needless to say, I won't be leaving my cat with my parents for the week that I stay with my sister and brother-in-law. I am feeling particularly paranoid, so cat needs to be with me. I will be back to waking her up every time she falls alseep because she sleeps so soundly and looks dead sometimes. I did that all the time in grad school. I was paranoid that my cat would die because I was too busy to really pay attention to her, so I would shake her awake in a panic.

With bird gone, I'm wondering, is there something wrong with my apartment that I should be worried about? Is he the canary in the mine? Or was I feeding him too much? Parakeets are prone to obesity and little birdy heart attacks. Was something wrong with the most recent millet spray I gave him as a treat?

And as much as I am sad that my bird who was happily tweeting the night before was not alive the next day, I am also worried about cat. Who will keep her company all day while I am at work? That clever little bird loved tormenting the cat. He'd hop down to the bottom of the cage where she can just barely reach, and then he'd hop away. They both really seemed to enjoy having the other around, which is good because I really worried about the impact of getting a cat on my parakeet, but he definitely seemed happier with her in the picture.

Now I have to worry about her being lonely, but I think it's time to ditch the giant bird cage, which is hard to move from place to place, and it's time to just have cat since she is a good road-trip buddy and can travel with me much better without a bird in the car. No more birds.

Enough melancholy. It's laundry and baking time. I mean, I just conquered all of those dishes I was dreading cleaning up all week. I need to make more.

Cat-ness...Keeping Me Chipper

I am tired, not because I'm doing anything particularly tiring, but because I have so many things I need to get done.

I have like 30 projects I either need to wrap up or write instructions for so that my replacement at CPW will not be at a loss for what's going on. I really want to leave my boss and the future web temp in a best case scenario situation.

I also need to pack. Keep applying for jobs. Donate some stuff. Do the dishes--they just keep looming there in the sink, and I'm barely making a dent in them when I try.

I put in my notice for tutoring today. I feel bad leaving those lovely ladies behind. I hope someone awesome comes forth to fill my shoes, or better yet, some bigger ones.

With all this load, there is nothing like a soft furry cat to curl up next to at night. I love my cat!

Electrofishing...Zap, zap..FISH!!!

So I ditched the office on Friday to go electrofishing with the aquatic research section at work. Then I went out again on Saturday because I am nuts like that.

Essentially, electrofishing involves rigging boats each with a positive charge on the front and a negative charge on the back. Then you place two people with nets on long poles at the front of each boats and as fish are stunned by the electric current, they scoop them up and put them in a tub on the boat.

After a half mile or so, the boats pull over to give the netters a break from hauling in fish, and the haul is processed. You measure, weigh, tag, and record the fish so that the population and community distribution can be estimated.

We were really hoping to see a pikeminnow, but no such luck. I was lucky enough to catch a few razorback suckers and one bonytail chub. Those are endangered fish by the way.

For my part, I was a netter on river right the first day and river center the second day. I also did the record keeping when we stopped to process a haul. Day two we had an extra small crew, so I also did some of the fin clipping to mark fish we'd captured so that we knew that we'd already captured them if we caught them again later.

My back and arms have been sooooooo sore from netting and hauling in fish. It was, however, one of the coolest things I have ever done in my life. It was awesome, and I got to see a bonytail chub up close and personal. Absolutely amazing.