I saw this maple leaf a couple of days ago and thought it was really nifty that it was actually lavender underneath. I thought about tying it into some sort of theme about something that I started doing and stopped doing and started again, but I've got nothing.
I was working from home again today and I happened to glance out the window and noticed just how beautiful I thought it was. The sky was a such a deep blue and the contrasting cirrus clouds painted intense streaks of white through it. The trees were lit in such a way that flattered their weather-battered limbs.
In the past few weeks, I've been fortunate enough to be able to observe and photograph some nifty natural phenomena. Just as I was leaving the American Tobacco Campus, after a meeting, I saw a luna moth (Actias luna) lying on the ground. I've only seen maybe two or three in my life, since they aren't very common here, but this is the closest look I've ever had at one. Unfortunately, since it was blowing around a bit, I think it was a little past its prime, but it was still beautiful.
I also observed some mushrooms on the Academic Quad of Duke's West Campus.
This is what mushrooms in the same patch looked like the next day. I have no idea what kind they were. I've just discovered that trying to identify mushrooms based on photographs on the web is highly difficult for the completely inexperienced. They might be Chlorophyllum molybdites and they might not.
I'm conducting an experiment. Can and will teeny ants get out of my new Black & Decker hand vacuum? It's shaped quite differently, so it's possible that they can't. They easily got out of my previous one, but spiders were too lazy. I had a bag of birdseed in the garage that was full of ants and they seem to have decided to visit my less than immaculate kitchen floor. I guess I haven't been swiffering often enough. Given the fact that I can't remember the last time I swiffered might also be some indication as well.
It feels as if I've been neglecting my blog, but I guess it really hasn't been that long since I posted. I spent much of the end of last week and the weekend working with SE and SM on an internal CIT April Fool's newsletter. That was just a tremendous amount of fun and I have even more of an appreciation for GoogleDocs, because it handled three people's working on the same document beautifully. I also had to work on DFMA minutes and other secretarial duties, which were not nearly as enjoyable.
Speaking of beautiful things. The spring flowers around here have been stunning. Even more daffodils have bloomed in my yard, thanks again to a regular reader and our neighbor/landscaper. Other flowers bloomed about a week early, so there was much more of an overlap of the redbuds, dogwoods and wisteria. My commute, primarily on Highway 70, has just been bursting with light purple and white. Since we've had a decent amount of rain, just about every dogwood is gorgeous and full of blooms. Unfortunately, a cold front is coming through tonight and, if the weather people are correct, I'm going to have to appreciate brown blossoms instead. I hope they're wrong. Many of the trees have their leaves out, too, and I'm afraid they're going to get zapped.
Recently, I've had lots of good dinners and lunches with parents and friends: DS, AE, NP and JH (serendipitous). In the evenings, I've been busy working on collecting gift certificates to use as CIT Showcase door prizes. so I've been going out to eat even more than usual. Since I want to finish this post and still get some sleep tonight, I'm not going to go into detail this time.
What else? I met two lovely cats last night. I really miss being around cats. I was photographed by the paparazzi yesterday. I went to the Duke Computer Science picnic on Saturday and had a good time.
We have a lot of pollen here and it's everywhere. We breathe it, live it and photograph it. Fortunately, I'm not terribly allergic to most of it, so I think it can be pretty.
Well, it looks as if I may have solved my ant problem.
