Last week, after leaving a Goth event, Nora and I found ourselves in a pizza shop late at night. This is also how we had our first "date" and so she composed this extemporaneous haiku for the occasion:
We, the two of us
eating pizza late at night,
now and before.
When I was thinking of how sick I am of school work and imagined what I would do with some time off, I laughed when I realized the irony of my fantasy: lounging about while reading books or catching up on some writing! Of course, I'd actually be able to enjoy what I read and not have to cram a book a day, and I could step away from the computer when my hands were starting to hurt.
For the past week my ficus has been dropping leaves like mad. It never did this before and we were hoping it might be Autumn in the new apartment. Then I noticed that it has these brown spots. They're very much like those that my older aloes sometimes get, and which I never identified. But they were never a matter of death for my aloe.
The spots are easily flicked off with a thumbnail. I don't see any live critters crawling around, but could this be a scale bug? Or is it simply dried sap from something else, such as over watering?
I feel genuinely sorry for those Americans stuck in Afghanistan and Iraq:
Suicides among American servicemen in Iraq are running at up to three times the usual rate, the army has revealed. . . . Most have happened after May 1 when "major combat operations" were declared over. . . . But when the US pulled out in 1975 it had lost 60,000 troops and according to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American equivalent of the British Legion, 180,000 Vietnam veterans have since committed suicide. - US army suicides in Iraq three times the usual rate.
This place; what am I?
The chill autumn air
lies on a bed of water
The Halloween Critical Mass Ride through Manhattan and over to Queens was fabulous. Riding through the broad avenues with a few hundred other bicyclists is surreal: the lights of Times Square, the view from the Queensborough Bridge, and screaming and ringing our bells as we rocket through the pick-up loop of the Penn Station terminal. The mood was positive, only fools still ran serious errands: Critical Mass, the Halloween Parade, and the Messenger Race all in one night! Most folks were out celebrating, and clapped and cheered as costumed crazies pedaled past.
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