Ah, the sound of silence. Down With Jesus is now Down With Downstairs and it really made for a less-than-sucky Monday. I still haven�t made goal yet, but really, am I trying? And that is all I�m going to say about work today. No, I swear! That is all the loan center news for today.

My weekend was pretty damn good. Saturday was spent running errands all over town, but it was nice to get stuff done. Saturday night we went to a party at Kate and Justin�s house and did shots of Absinthe smuggled in from Europe. Sadly, it did not contain wormwood, so no wacky hallucinations were had. Disappointing, but I managed to drown my sorrows in Kate�s seven-layer dip. The asbestos layer is really my favorite, with the ground glass layer a close second. I have no idea how she got those wall frogs to dance around the dish like that, but it was a cool effect. Oh, and in case you were wondering, Absinthe tastes like a cross between Listerine, licorice, and ass. And it burns. A lot.

On Sunday, Kenny and I went for a mountain bike ride and cleared the trails of approximately 8 bazillion spider webs. Yay. The trails hadn�t been ridden all week because of the endless rain, so it was fresh and webby just for us. There�s nothing more spaz-inducing than the feeling of riding face-first into a huge spider web. Gah. And also, where�s that spider? Gah!

The moisture and humidity has also helped create a mushroom boom! Pardon me while I geek out here, but mushrooms are so cool. Just riding along the trail we saw tons of different kinds: little spindly brown ones, barnacle-like ridged ones, huge scary bulbous ones, adorable Smurf-house white ones with spots, tiny neon orange ones, and on and on.

How do they appear so fast? They�re not plants, they just grow their fungus selves from spores, I guess. Crazy. I maintain that mushrooms are cool. Occasionally I�ll point out a really scary one and dare Kenny to eat it. Mmmm�risky.

The moisture and humidity has also caused a boom in dragonflies out at the loan center. The building is surrounded by woods and fields and apparently there�s enough standing water to birth up a passel of them. I love dragonflies, not only because they�re beautiful, but because they�re so freaking prehistoric. I saw one buzz by me and as my eyes followed it up, I saw tons and tons of them just flying around. So cool. The fools I work with probably don�t even notice.

I read up on them because I�m a geek, and damn, they really are prehistoric! Apparently it�s thought that they pre-date dinosaurs by over 100 million years, a fact that�s sure to irritate some creationists. Go dragonflies! Here�s a good dragonfly link, if you want to read up and be a geek like me.

Moving on from my nerd segue, on Sunday afternoon I went to see �Seabiscuit� with my mom. Man, it was good. I was a horse-loving kid and I still love a good horse story and this one was good. It wasn�t as in-depth as the book, but it was a fine adaptation; beautifully shot and narrated and perfectly cast. (Chris Cooper was especially good.) It was a classic sort of movie, the kind that rarely gets made anymore. I highly recommend it.

Meow. Meeoew. Meeerow.

(That was my cat The Fuzz. She�s standing on the edge of the chair arm and apparently has something to say. I just don�t know what it is.)

In other news, I�m almost finished reading forestdream�s suggestion from my reading challenge, �Prodigal Summer� by Barbara Kingsolver. It�s so good that I don�t want to finish it and I only have about four pages left. I think reading it is part of why I�ve been so hyper-aware of natural things lately, but really, I�ve always been fascinated by the things other people seem to take for granted or not even notice.

When I do finish it, I�ll have that book ennui that I always get, where I miss the old book and don�t want to start a new one, I just want the old one some more. I generally get over this pretty fast, but if I don�t have another good book on deck, I�m all grumpy and out-of-sorts until I do. Please tell me I�m not the only one who feels like this?

Okay, it�s my bedtime and I seem to be going nowhere with this entry. Hopefully I�ll return tomorrow with my usual dose of snark and smartassery. Okay, then.

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