Animals at work

One of the greatest things about where I work is the animal company. Our office has five cats that live there full time. They are valuable co-workers who remind us when we need to tidy our desks (by barfing all over important papers) and when to take a break (by kicking our mouse off the desk).


Jared is my best pal at the office. I think he must know about my affinity for big white cats. He is the most insistent office cat - if you ignore him he will jump into your lap, or tap you on the shoulder. His favorite spot is sleeping between my keyboard and my monitor. This leaves my keyboard full of white fur, and on more than one instance it has interrupted screen sharing sessions with Blackbaud. I also think it's the greatest thing ever.

Another perk of having such an animal friendly office space is that I can bring Locksley to work whenever I need (or feel like). Locksley's opinion of being at work fluctuates. For the most part he has an excellent time visiting people in their cubes, running away from the cats (especially Jared), playing with the other office dogs, and looking for cat toys to play with (despite having a zillion of toys from home around).

Exhibit Design

A couple of excellent bits of exhibit design from the National Museum of Natural History. I've got slews more - maybe an album later?

Moss

I love moss.

This photography reminds me why:

New and Old

I thought I'd share a new obsession and an old one.

NEW!
NOTCOT.com
You've got to admit it when someone has good taste. NOTCOT's got it. How have I determined that NOTCOT has superior aesthetic tastes? Because they like the same stuff I like. Specifically, Octopuses, Fernworks, and Sebastian Beuscher. Just to name a few!

OLD!
My love of nudibranchs. I stumbled over this gallery with TONS of cute and cartoonish nudibranch photos. Adorable.
I wonder how difficult it would be to have pet nudibranchs? Maybe I'll have to settle for a land-slug.

JUST PLAIN AWESOME!
A Young Mad Scientist's First Alphabet Blocks.

RAMPION!!

I have a confession.
When I was a little kid I would go into the fridge and eat plain iceberg lettuce from the crisper drawer.
Since there is nothing delicious about plain lettuce, you might wonder why.

You may blame Rapunzel directly.

There was some cartoon I saw about Rapunzel and, true to the original story, rampion is what got the whole story started. You see, the mother of the unborn Rapunzel had a craving for Rampion and begged her husband to steal some from a witch's garden. The witch didn't appreciate that, and got a baby out of the deal. Or something like that.

The Rampion depicted looked like lettuce to me. So there's the correlation.

As a grown up, I want to grow Rampion (not eat lettuce, or steal from witches). Apparently it's pretty rare, so I've been reading up. I was interested to find out this about the medicinal uses of the plant:

'Some affirme that the decoction of the roots are good for all inflammation of the mouth and almonds of the throte and other diseases happening in the mouth and throte, as the other Throte warts.'
- Gerard

I have no idea what Throat Warts are. But the notion that this plant has something to do with the throat is amusing to me, since I have a crazy throat. Foreshadowing!