This Journal is Dead

Who amongst us can claim they have seen a fuzzy red moth that emerged from a cocoon found almost a year ago (presumed dead) with a seven inch wingspan? On Monday such a burly, beefy looking monster appeared in one of the Natural Environment Unit offices and caused quite a stir. This cocoon was found in Tennessee last Labor Day weekend and was identified as a cecropia moth by our resident enthusiasts. When it failed to emerge this spring it was written off as dead and its cocoon set up on a shelf. When Chris walked in on Monday, the cocoon was on the floor and the giant moth was flexing and drying its wings in his white paper recycling box.

This moth was muscular! It rippled its wings up and down its back and really put on a show. It was like the Arnold of moths. It behaved quite well, what with the growing crowd that could have spooked the moth, until another Chris jokingly proclaimed his desire to eat the moth in his best Bear Grylls voice. Once the moth learned of his desire for "protein and vit-a-min C" it began to fumble against the window with all its strength. Now mind you, it couldn't fly yet, but damned if it could beat the tar out of its wings in an attempt to be free. It was very, very sad to watch the fruitless struggle.

We debated setting the moth into the wild so it would stop hurting itself and have a chance at life. A quick visit to wikipedia confirmed that the moth is a vegetarian and eats the same trees that are found in our front lawn. We took a dozen pictures of her (we identified the sex, which was a goofy process nonetheless) and planned our strategy to prevent birds from swooping in and stealing our baby.

Where is this moth now, after all of our excitement and discussions? She is in a plastic bag in the office freezer. She has been in that bag since Monday and will probably remain there until the end of the week. *sigh* She's dead, Jim.

The same wikipedia entry that detailed her eating habits also said that the moth's lifespan was only 7-10 days. If all of the other moths emerged in the spring then we concluded all of her friends must be dead. She would be hunting in vain for someone to mate with, only to die alone. I guess that's an appropriate fate for a moth that took a damn year to leave the cocoon, a life that ends in a few hours. Because of their scientific desire to preserve the body, she will now die on top of a tub of Edy's ice cream. We never even named her.

A typical lazy weekend:

A few weekends ago (heh, been a while since my last update indeed), the days seemed like a montage of movies. Allan and I watched two movies in their entirety, one in the Greenville Carmike (HAWTNESS) and the other in my apartment on my laptop. The rest were just movies that we caught most of/some of/ a glimpse of on TV.

Complete Movies:
1408, School of Rock

Parts of Movies:
Someone Like You, Saving Silverman, Showgirls, Roadhouse, National Treasure, Mission Impossible, Dodgeball, Unbreakable

1408 was indeed creepy, but it still wasn't a terribly frightening film. I think it would have been better if it had avoided the "it was all a dream" teaser, but since I don't want to ruin the movie for anyone else I will just say it turned out to be ok. School of Rock was viewed specifically for Allan who managed to tolerate it quite nicely.

The first two partial movies are films that neither of us recognized but still had catchy ensemble casts. Since we really had nothing better to run in the background as we ate breakfast/got ready in the afternoon, we were sucked into both Someone Like You and Saving Silverman, though we never finished either of them. You can't deny the intense attraction both of us felt to watching a dickish drunken Hugh Jackman or a crazed R. Lee Emery jump out of a mail truck that he was driving with a loaded machine gun only to be hit by the car behind his vehicle...respectively. Showgirls was so terrible that it was good, especially if you like to giggle at digitally added bikinis and Trey from Sex and the City with a terrible, terrible hairdo. Heh heh, Schooner. Roadhouse was also so-bad-it's-good, National Treasure and Mission Impossible filled my John Voight quota for the month, Dodgeball is classic, and Unbreakable took too freakin' long. Perhaps it's just because I find Bruce Willis so dull and boring. His quota is more than filled.

Plans change so quickly:

The weekend before last, Allan was supposed to come visit me in Cary bright and early so we could go to Liz's garage sale. He overslept. Once I was able to awaken him by phone and get him on the road, I decided to fill up the time waiting for him with a little cleaning. It was then that I discovered Gatsby had decided the last small pile of college items awaiting organization would make a mighty fine substitute for a litter box. I guess he was just too lazy to actually use the appropriate receptacle. Either that, or he just really wanted to urinate on my Prada dust bag. the bag, a lamp, some random things like magnets and a place setting went down to be scrubbed, along with the entire rug they were sitting upon. Allan waited outside of the house for almost ten minutes as my mother and I worked to clean since neither of us could hear the doorbell over the vacuum and the door was locked. *sigh* We never made it to the garage sale.

I am an old fart:

This past weekend I went to Greenville in order to a) confirm that the cell phoneless Allan was indeed alive, b) see two of my old roommates and some other friends in town, and c) move the last bit of junk out of my room and into my car to putter back to Cary. Allan is alive, I ended up spending a night at Dr. Unk's and 519 with Jenna, Megan, Ashleigh, Katie, and Lauren, and my room is empty except for my sheets, curtains, and TV.

Despite that success, I am old. We are all old. One of the new guys who has already moved into the apartment threw himself a 21st birthday party this weekend. The girls wanted to come see the apartment in it's new masculine glory, which was just fine with me. What they found was a "I'M 21 BITCHES" sign on the wall where our art used to hang and a keg packed with ice in their bathtub. Needless to say, the amount of underage (read: high school) people there cut our visit pretty short. It's amazing the difference one year makes to your desire to drink everclear and orange soda from a cooler next to a beer pong table in your old (carpeted) living room.

Doh, I didn't realize it had been so long since my last public entry. Get with it, Briznatchy.

Work is work. There is nothing to report, other than filing, copying, logging, expense checks and a fire drill. Yesterday I held a photocopy of a check for over $12,000,000. I wonder what it must feel like to hold the real thing, especially one in my name!

Allan and I traveled to Ft. Macon last weekend because any sort of new stimulus seems to really help boost my mood. I hadn't been there since 8th grade and the Civil War rifle demonstration was just as loud as I remembered. Allan hated walking on the beach (I mean really hated it) but I am glad I could talk him into a few minutes of strolling. I am an obsessive beach comber, convinced that everything I find will have an awesome use at some point. Considering all of the body parts I had to sift through, there must have been a crab vs. sandfiddler massacre that was never publicized. Damn conservative media, highlighting the newest missing white girl and ignoring the plight of crabs and fiddlers on our beaches.

I discovered a four story antique/vintage shop in downtown Raleigh. It's marvelous. They have heaps of furniture, records, art, and an entire floor of vintage clothing and accessories. One kicky pair of shoes I tried on actually fit and were only priced at $8. I want the sofas and tables too, but I have nowhere to arrange them. To bring a depressing twist of modernity to my find, I added the store as a friend on myspace. It almost sucks the joy out of the experience, but at least I'll be reminded that they are there.

I posted pictures of my handmade postcards on facebook. They were pretty fun to put together and clearly demonstrate my obsession with highlighters. I guess my skills in cutting and pasting have also come into use in the real world. No, honestly, I used to cut up images of celebrities I adored and make them into a collage in a giant notebook I am sure I still own. The pictures had to fit together perfectly on each page and none could overlap. No pictures could be trimmed to force their placement. I therefore had an overflowing bag of pictures waiting for their turn to fit into the mold. And I wonder why I never majored in Geometry, lol...

PS: The celebrities in that book are amazingly indicative of my personality. I don't think there is a single male, except on the X-Files pages. Girl Power, rar rar.