My uterus woke me up at 4:30 this morning to talk about how excited it was to be expelling its old lining. It's a new start! it said, I'll feel fresh and sparkly - like all this cleaning you've been doing!

It's really unfortunate that my uterus only speaks to me in Painful Crampish. I'm quite tired today.

• I'm thinking of getting a nice USB headset and doing all my telephonage via Skype, which will (in theory) route in and out of real phones for a fraction of the cost of a proper phone line (mobile or otherwise). If anyone knows of a compelling reason to do otherwise, speak now, or speak later, or keep meaning to speak but put it off until eventually you get hit by a bus and I cry tears of sadness!
• After my exceptionally pleasant experience with Caltech's hybrid frat-coop-dorm Houses, I felt almost non-estranged from the concept of sororities in general. But now I'm living on Frat Row, during Rush Week; every three hours or so, the house across the street bursts out cheering:
  

  Something something cutest girls
  Something something we wear pearls
  Look how we charmingly abbreviate the names of Greek letters! Rah!

  And, y'know, I'm sure it's all harmless fun once you get past the creepy stereotypes embedded in the lyrics, but I just can't imagine myself chanting like that and then taking myself seriously ever again. People! They're so different sometimes, what's that all about, eh?

Things house spiders don't eat, but should:

• their dead
• their old webs
• more pantry moths

Things house spiders do eat, but shouldn't:

• the fuck if I know what they eat
• a lot of them seem to have starved to death in corners

Anyway, half of my worldly possessions and I are safely ensconced in my new home, though I can't unpack until after room bids, which are in two weeks. Two! Weeks! I'm sick of living out of a suitcase. On the other hand, I would also hate living forever in my temporary room, which has teal-and-purple walls lovingly bemuraled with R.E.M. lyrics and glow-in-the-dark stars.

My car is intact, too, though still leaking oil from the dashboard whenever the engine gets too hot and/or I go over a good bump. First order of business is to figure out a temporary parking permit, second order is to sell the damn car before said permit expires.

Just discovered over here that it would take a marathon drinking session of about 300 cans of Coca-Cola Classic to kill me outright [this educational service giving me such life-changing information was found by way of Jennifer Garrett, by the by].

(Of course, at this time of the year [based on prior experience], it takes quite a few less than that before the kidneys start to seize up on me, but I'll try to take the gentle hint regardless, thanks anyhoo...)

Oh great randomizer: will I ever get my house all clean and empty, and make it up to Berkeley? Or will spend so much time blogging that I'll miss orientation?

1. The Covering: Tear the House Down, The Fables (from Tear the House Down)
2. The Crossing: Folding Chair, Actionslacks (from The Scene's Out of Sight)
3. The Crown: Sulerne Flyver, Suleskær (from Over Havet)
4. The Root: Sleepy Maggie, Ashley MacIsaac (from Hi How Are You Today?)
5. The Past: Hva' Fanden Er Det For En Tid At Komme Pe?, MC Einar (from Arh Dér!)
6. The Future: Fanfaari, Värttinä (from Seleniko)
7. The Questioner: The Galtree Rangers/The Gneevgullia Reel/Paddy Kelly's, Mary Bergin (from Feadóga Stáin 2)
8. The House: Liberty / St. Anne's Reel, Tony Elman (from Swinging On A Gate)
9. The Inside: The Sound Of Taransay, The Tannahill Weavers (from Capernaum)
10. The Outcome: Shoo Fly Pie, Acoustic Mayhem (from their self-titled debut)

Here's the key, as explained by famous mystic physicist Sean Carroll.

The Covering is so apt as to almost make me believe in this stuff, were it not for the fact that I hit the "randomize" button more than once. The all-seeing all-knowing iTunes repeatedly chides me for being lazy with the Crossing and Root; I can't understand all of the Past, but it contains some harsh language about what time it is. Although the Outcome is promising, I should get off my duff and clean some more.

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists - No title has ever been more cunningly concieved, more able to bypass all my many miserlinesses and leap into my ownership before I can blink. And quite right, too! Pirates! And scientists!

The book itself, once you get beyond the excitement of the mere fact of its existence, aspires to (and mostly attains) merely a predictable sort of wackiness. There are pirates, they say "arr!" while they talk about ham, then they hijack the Beagle and save Charles Darwin's brother from a caricatured bad guy. There are passing mentions of zombie pirates, and sharks and bears. It's probably better to read it aloud in a bar (drunkenly, natch) than to read it on a plane, sober, surrounded by people who Don't Really Get the Appeal of Pirates.

Grizzly Man - this might have made a great one-hour television special (with commercials), but it was a piss-poor feature-length documentary. The movie focuses on the life and death, but mostly the death, of Timothy Treadwell, an environmental activist who spent his summers living with the grizzly bears of Alaska and was eventually eaten by one. A variety of thematic issues (was he some kind of bear shaman, or just crazy? what did the bears think? etc) came very close to being developed, but just when you thought the director had made up his mind to stick to a topic, whoosh! In comes a clip of someone talking about how awful it is to be eaten by a bear (answer: pretty awful). No story arc, lots of bland eulogizing, not nearly enough wildlife shots.

March of the Penguins - by contrast, this is everything a nature documentary should be. It has a well-defined story complete with beginning, middle, and end, interspersed with endearing shots of baby penguins. The baby penguins stand up, and fall down, and make chirrupy noises while flapping their fuzzy wings - aww! I can't say that I actually learned much about penguins, but when the thermometer reads 68°C*, spending your afternoon in an air-conditioned movie theater watching adorable fluffy things parade across majestic icy landscapes is well worth $9.
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Sigh. Didn't we just have an election? With a billion ballot initiatives? Why can't a populace ever get some peace and quiet that isn't interrupted by the thundering of plebiscites?

But for all you Californians who just looove democracy, here's a very nice analysis of Proposition 74.

As we clean, we've been putting out unwanted items in the yard, with a sign that says "free stuff". Most people who come by are from craigslist or freecycle, but my street also gets a reasonable amount of foot traffic. By far, the people most excited by the unexpected treasures are kids; lots of happy cries of "whoa! free stuff!" have been drifting through the window.

None of the stuff is kid-oriented (adult clothes! a toaster!) so they're inevitably disappointed - but still, given how I acquired much of this stuff from similar giveaways (and dumpsters) just because it was free - maybe I'm not a miser after all. Maybe I'm just childlike.