The Laursonian Institute

The Laursonian Institute

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Busywork

Good grief it’s been a busy day!

Another one of those getting chores done types, but they do leave you feeling like a tidying superhero.  I got our papers organized, and got Comcast to agree they sent me a silly bill for an account that’s closed.  Made breakfast, lunch, and dinner (triple play!), paid rent, tidied up the living room a bit, and finally took care of those bread crusts we’d been petrifying and turned them into gallons of croutons.

We also managed to kick up some neighborhood controversy today, because the arborists came to cut down our silly palm tree.  The Lawyers were thinking the palm tree had reached the end of its usefulness in life, as it was now taller than our house and thus provided only a view of the craggy trunk bit.  It also harbored a lot of screamy birds (not that this relates to it’s cut-down-ability) and was filling our lawn with palm tree seedlings.  I don’t really mind one way or the other about it, since it’s not my house to begin with, but it will be nice to be able to plant some more garden-like elements in that space, and to pretty up the fence and front yard at eye-level.  I do hope the birds don’t miss it too much.  I just about jumped out of my skin when they took it down for-really.  I assumed they were going to cut it down in hunks and take it away like that, but instead they just hacked it off at the base and felled it between our house and our neighbors.  For a minute I thought we were having an earthquake, it really shook the whole house.  Can’t imagine what it’s like losing a tree like that in a storm or something.

Anyway, we certainly felt like the bad guys around here.  The neighbor next door gave Lewis some grief about it, including about how we should have used it to put up an owl box… (standard answer: “well, we’re not the landlords”).  And our neighborhood busybody (and resident eight year old) was aghast we’d do anything that rash.  He saved us a couple seeds, one of which he has probably already planted, in case we change our minds.   He also mumbled something to Francie when she came over about having cut down a native plant… which of course isn’t true.  But really… he’s eight.  Sorry about the tree, Nate.

Tomorrow is our very first day of graduate student orientation activities!  All this week is pretty light stuff since it’s run by the graduate student body whatever and isn’t official university or department stuff.  Serious stuff starts next week with my manditory day-long TA trainings and the hopefully informative department introduction.  And I’m finally starting to get nervous!