The mice are a HUGE problem right now, finally have a pest guy coming tomorrow, but in the meantime, I’m coming up with increasingly bizarre attempts to keep food available at all times to our low-appetite, extremely old cat but not feeding the mice.

Xan is EXTREMELY offended that I stole her eye boogers. This is somehow worse than me giving her pills every evening.

My oldest kid might be dragging me into following F1 racing. It’s basically Mario Kart and actually pretty entertaining. They even have steering wheels that look like game controllers!

Starling on the power line can’t decide if he’s a Coopers Hawk or a seagull tonight.

Paid a dude to help me clean out and reorganize my basement so the electricians and HVAC ppl can work next week. Filled a dumpster, but it’s sooooo open now down there! Lovely.

Too stoned to eat neatly

After seeing 3 separate people see my larkspur, do a double-take, and stop to rub and smell the leaves, I have concluded they look just enough like the flowery part of pot plants that people have to double check, just in case there’s free pot right on the way to the pot shop 1 block down.

@montanafreepress.org Any idea what’s going on with the anti-Reilly Neill flyer glut happening? They’re super over the top, and now I’m seeing youtube ads claiming that it’s a reverse-psychology thing because “they” (undefined) think she’s easiest to beat. Any clue who’s funding the PACs?

@beerbudsbigsky.bsky.social any idea what’s up with the anti-Reilly Neill flyer glut lately? And now I’m seeing YouTube ads declaring it a reverse-psychology ad buy because “they” (undefined) think she’s easiest to beat?

Oof, not loving that our elderly cat has starting daily vomiting. Previously that was a sign that she had missed her thyroid meds, but I know she’s been getting them right now. She also has chronic pancreatitis.

I get an exfoliating facial every couple months, and my esthetician said, “your skin is feeling great, but whoa you are carrying a lot of tension in your face.” Well, it has to go somewhere. It’s not like I can just not be tense. Have you looked at the world?

Date night! Going to see Sheep Detectives. (I normally avoid movies, but this one appealed to me!)

Highschool pops concert and the advanced choir is doing a 90s medley and I am torn between dying of old age and bopping along.

@faineg.bsky.social I'm putting together a methods paper on using drones for large-scale low-cost bathymetry generation in mountain rivers. Do you have any opinions on the journals Remote Sensing (by MDPI) or Drone Systems and Applications?

Literally none of my adulting tasks have gone right today. I am very close to curling up in bed and declaring myself toast, but my anxiety is riding so hard about my kids’ sliding grades that I can barely breathe. This kinda sucks.

Stop! I can’t vote for her any harder!

Ugh. child home from college has picked up/added to the germaphobe tendencies of my husband, and decided that any dish that goes in the sink is not “clean” until it has been run through the dishwasher. If it’s on the counter, it can be handwashed and declared “clean”, but the sink is full of plague?

Smug kitten has chased off Mama Squirrel from her basking spot. (They had a stare down from about 1’ apart, Mamá Squirrel decided to beg for peanuts from the fence instead of the stairs.)

The original loud-chewing wasp in the previous post isn’t the culprit (he flew off in a different direction) but at least one of them had decided our mudroom was a good nest location. I removed the beginnings of their nursery. No eggs yet.

Did you know you can hear wasps chewing? I thought I was going crazy until I finally spotted this guy on some old wood next to the porch.

Bee bathtime. (Probably because you sat in a droplet of sugar water instead of next to it, you goof!)

Playing Bee Hospital again. This is some species of native solitary bee, and they preferred sitting in the sugar water to drink. They also walked around on my finger for a while!

If I am a good, responsible grad student, I will go into the office tomorrow and keep working on building my current model domain in python. (I have a script running that has to identify the GridGen node number for each of the 300k centroid coordinates in my flow depth raster. It takes awhile.)

I have canvas access!

Planted the first tomato & pepper seedlings in the garden. Two weeks “early” according to average last freeze, but c’mon, the lows are already in the mid 40s, the high in the 70s. The weather’s just taunting me now.

Following in family tradition, my middle teen child is now a moderator in a large forum. I oper’d back on Morpheus & modded on IRC. My husband was deep in bbcs, and my oldest started a 20k person minecraft discord. I should have known this day would come.

One of our questions is “did blocking off the neighborhood cats from sheltering under our porch lead to a rise in basement mouse population?” Or are these two things just coincidence? It was also a *very* mild winter.

Now I’m sitting in the kitchen, trying to decide if I hear regular fridge noises or if the under-fridge mouse took refuge in the machinery. I’m slightly traumatized from the last time that happened ~10yrs ago. Decomposing mouse behind a grate.

Found two of the gaps the mice were using to get from the basement to the kitchen. Stuffed with steel wool for the moment. I made sure all the basement pantry stuff was mouse proofed so I’m not surprised that they’re suddenly showing up more in the kitchen.

@catsofyore.bsky.social a bot posted this piece this morning, so I went and found the gallery. Alas, already sold. “Grandma’s Cat“ by Alison Friend (2023)

Gaaaah mouse behind the stove. Ran back into the wall, through a straight up Tom & Jerry style mouse hole. Tomorrow I need to get some steel wool and make sure all the basement pantry items are in crates with lids.

Bee tongue! (Playing bee hospital for this bumble that got trapped in our mudroom and was too exhausted to fly.)

Wooo, passed the drone pilot certification exam. This is part of my “Make Claire hireable after she graduates“ plan.

I spent today studying for my drone pilot certification test. Got an 80% on the practice test, so should be good. Still gonna study more for the weather & regulation sections, because those are my weakest areas.

I won a gorgeous set of maps from the Montana State Library at the map nerd conference (Montana Assoc of Geographic Info Professionals)

Scheduled the test to get my Part 107 drone pilot certification. Feels like a workable path to employment post-PhD since government science isn't an option right now (ever again?)

I’d like to recommend Abus’s combination cable lock for holding up against a set of bolt cutters sometime in the last week!

The latest Walter Reed rumors made us realize we aren’t ready for when It Happens. Quick liquor store jaunt to remedy that. Now, no matter when It Happens, we can party in the street in style.

Mules on campus! (Yes, they’re pettable!)

Prepping this lecture for tomorrow is taking *way* longer than I thought it would. Boo hiss.

Instagram showed me Greek Gigantes and now I have focaccia rising and giant lima beans cooking in the instant pot. I have been influenced!

I kept hearing a redtail hawk but couldn’t find it. I eventually found the starling sitting on a power pole running though its repertoire.

Feeling very nostalgic for the days when we could file a 1040EZ…

@clairewillett.bsky.social was it you who posted the free tax filing website? What was it? My kid needs a filing option now that DirectFile went Poof!

@clairewillett.bsky.social my mom also passed from ALS! (this is a very shitty club to be a part of…) She died back in 1997 though, very young. She was only 43.

In the Saga Of Elderly Cat, Xan’s appetite has been meh, so she got an extra vet trip yesterday. Bloodwork shows mild pancreatitis and that her heart is working harder than it should. She is 20 and generally content, so we’re going to try some low steroids and check back in 2 weeks.

From There I Ruined It, a version of Toto's Africa but the lyrics are a listing of every country in Africa. They should teach this in American middle schools, not even joking. [kottke.org]

The starlings are back. On the one hand, I kinda love their sass. On the other, it means I have to switch out all my feeders because otherwise they swarm and drive off every other bird

United Healthcare has been such a dick to so many providers that it’s getting a little dire here without a plethora of providers to choose from. there’s now no in-network ENT in 100 miles. One of the two hospitals is out (the one with the cardiac unit and the maternity unit…)

I am doing a test print with the very first roll of @protopasta.bsky.social I’ve ever bought. (Nebula gold dust) I AM VERY EXCITED.