Yard by yard, life is hard.

Inch by inch, life's a sinch.

A wise woman once told me that phrase--she heard it from a guy with a Boston accent on the Appalachian Trail. I've got a lot of stuff going on right now--just keeping up with classwork, studying, trying to teach undergrads about birds, grading notebooks, data entry, writing, reading way too many scientific papers...

You get the point. It just seems like things keep piling up but I'm not completing anything. I must say though, fostering kittens, believe it or not, seems to be keeping me much saner than I was last semester. And last semester was actually a breeze compared to this one.

I must clear the names of two wonderful kitties that I trash talked in my last blog. Sabre and Arrow are great kitties, they just needed some time to adjust to their new surroundings. They get along well, and are showing their adorable little personalities. They sleep together in the living room, rather than in my bed. But when I wake up and call Sabre in from my bed he comes in to cheerfully great me with meows and cuddles. And when I'm working in the living room in the evenings Arrow likes to play fetch. He grabs a mousy toy, gives it to me, I toss it across the room, he plays with it for a bit, and promptly brings it back to me on the futon. We did this for a couple of hours last night. The game usually ends when hes panting and worn out. They were not adopted this weekend, so I plan on updating their info on petfinder.com, and will try again next weekend.

I'm starting to get the travel itch again--or maybe just eager for the semester to move along quickly. I'm excited to see my parents who will be visiting at the end of October, and hopefully Kristin after her stint in Alabama. Its been almost 9 months since I've seen my parents, but I'm pretty sure they are coming to see the Aggies football team, and just using me as an excuse. :-p And they are dragging me along to a game. I can hear when they get a touchdown from my apartment--its rather frightening, I'm not sure I want to be in the stands when that happens. I'll also be traveling home for the first time in almost a year--Christmas! I booked my flight today, and will spend almost 3 weeks at home. I hope to see some college friends that I haven't seen over the break.

I know this is planning ahead, but as I said, I'm getting the travel bug again. Amber's field site is in Puerto Rico, and I'd love to go visit her for spring break. Last year my advisor strongly discouraged travel over spring break--and I ended up working--so I'm going to book a fight asap. Ha. I just hope Amber will really let me come--I'd love to be her tech for a few days and see all the cool birdies she gets to play with. I mean, work with.

Oh yeah, my finger. It has a cast now. The whole ordeal involved 2 hours in a doctors office--a hand specialist--and needles, stretching, and a cast. I get to go through it again each week until my finger is in the correct place (straight), and then I get a cast for 6 months. And it IS torn tendon, like google and I determined, and the good doctor in Truckee was a moron. No surgery and therapy though, so I guess thats good. The cast is just rather annoying, and the entire process seems drawn out.

That's all for now. Back to studying the philosophy of science. Ugh. Just shoot me.