Welcome back, ita! Kenya looks gorgeous.

Dana, that is wonderful news!

Yay for 2-bedroom apartments!

For some reason the fact the mistakes make a certain sense just makes them bug me more--it's not a pure misspelling or typo, but a misunderstanding of the metaphor.

The one that I don't actually know, and should look up, is "under way" or "under weigh." I thought it was from the Age of Sail, and was "under weigh" for a fully-laden ship, but I've seen both. So I don't use it.

Our living-with-other-people skills are still poor. Our bedroom is about 3 meters from the door that adjoins our landlord's daughter's bedroom. Actually, the door we can open and her bedroom door are at right angles to each other, but right next to each other. The doors don't stop much noise, but some. She has stopped closing her bedroom door, so if we open our adjoining door (which we have to in order to use the building elevator), we look right into her bedroom. I don't think she realized this until last night, when we could hear her and her boyfriend as if they were in our bedroom. We just ignored that, until the music started pounding, when my DH opened our door, looked into her bedroom, and asked her to close her door.

Poor girl nearly had a coronary.

Happy birthday Erika!

Happy Birthday, Erika!

Heh, serves her right, Raq.

Hippo Birdies, Erika!

I have to leave if I'm going to yoga in, um, 20 minutes. I guess I'd better work on that consciousness and 'getting dressed' thing, huh?

Happy Birthday Erika!

Happy Birthday, Erika!!

So, I've got to go to school to print out a bunch of reading, and I just don't want to! It does seem to be beautiful outside -- less humid!!! So maybe I can print out all the stuff and then go somewhere outside to read. That would be nice.

I don't wanna do work! Bah.

Happy Birthday, Erika.

Happy Birthday, Erika!

And Aimee, my thoughts are with your friend. That's so sad.

Happy Birthday Erika!!

ION, cat circus: [link]

There would also be a "tightrope" act. Two people held a pole horizontally while Belok, who is white, walked across it, with an intent manner. A black cat named Charlie did the same thing, but upside down, grasping the pole from underneath with his four legs. Motia, who is off-white, outdid them both. She made her way across the pole from underneath using only two legs. As the cats worked, Mr. Kuklachev clucked and cooed encouragingly, rewarding them with gentle strokes of his curved palm.

...

Mr. Kuklachev did an act which would become well known as "The Cat in the Pot." A cat would sit in a pot. He would take her out, and she would keep jumping back in again.

...

The younger Mr. Kuklachev said his father trains the cats not by rewarding them with treats, as one might train a dog, but "by long, good words, touching them."

The elder Mr. Kuklachev bridled at the idea of rewarding cats with food. "A cat is not a dog," he said. "If a cat doesn't want to do something, he will not do it."