Then I went to buy cereal. It seems like we go through a huge box of corn flakes in about 3-4 days, even though I haven’t been eating them. The cashier asked me if I was American and told me he thought I was French. I don’t know if he thought I looked foreign or if the loud hum of the air conditioner and freezer in the store made it sound like I had an accent.

One of my coworkers and I at my afternoon job have been getting PHP/MySQL lessons from another coworker, a CS major who just graduated like me and is working for Apple remotely this summer. We get homework assigned every week, which is invariably more interesting than studying for the GREs, but I try to spit my time equally.

By the way, this is entry number 2,003 in Toast. I’ve been blogging for about 7 years and 7 months. And it’s about that embarrassing to read what I posted when I was 14.

and the Ratel, or Honey Badger:

The honey badger reminded me of the bats that McComas worked with over the summer, Cynopterus brachyotis, which are also very cute:

P.S. I have also semi-recently cut my hair which you can see here.

We are trying out a new type of cat litter because our current kind makes my eyes and my nose burn. I didn’t notice until this summer because with three cats I have to clean the litter every other day. Also it has stopped clumping as well as it used to, probably because we have never completely cleared out old littler. We just kept piling new litter on.

Now we are trying out crystal litter which works by absorbing pee and odor. Apparently it can absorb 5x its weight in liquid. No more soggy clumps of litter to dig out! I can’t wait to clean the litter again. I really hope the cats don’t mind the crystals so we can change the other box over too, which for now has the old clay clump-style stuff.

I went with Mummy on a forest walk today. Her friend Jane from WES and Friends in Action organized it. It was through an area that will be partially demolished if the Intercounty Connector is built. I never knew much about the issue until today, and now of course I only know one side of it. It was a very beautiful area. Sometimes I forgot how calming a forest can be.

My new plans, since the job route appears to be a total, utter failure: seriously clean out the house. Now I know I have the time and I realized on Friday while I was stuck at work how much more I would enjoy cleaning and re-organizing the house over a million other activities. I think it will be therapeutic and I will feel much more comfortable once it is done. On Monday or some time next week I need to go into work with Mummy and get a Maryland ID.

The cats have completely warmed up to me now, as much as they are going to I think. Charlie has even been better with visitors. We have also gotten him to eat a bit more since he is looking underweight.

It is starting to feel lonely now that Maurie is working, Maddie is working and has class, and Katie is working and has Chris here too. I miss school a lot. One of the valuable things I learned at GWU was how much being around other people improved my mental health. By the end of the year if I felt anxiety or hopelessness coming on, I had learned to take a break and go up the hallway and spend some time with Eric. Usually, that would do the trick. At Brown I tried to do the same thing whenever possible. It was noticeable how much better I felt if I had a meal with a friend instead of by myself. At home I feel like I have much less control over this. I can’t just drop by to see anyone and it makes me feel uncomfortably disconnected (and also very dependant). I really, really wish Maya was back, and Ma and Papi too. I don’t know if the solution is to accept that I do not have much of a social life and learn to be more content by myself, or somehow branch out and avoid being alone whenever I have nothing particular to do like I managed at school.

I suppose I am also hoping that this inspires me to take more pictures next year at Brown. At GWU I took a miserable single roll of film. The first half was from the very beginning of the year before I had given up on the place and when I was still optimistic that I would be happy and have lots of friends and know enough people that I felt comfortable around to actually make a real yearbook. Didn’t happen. I took some at Brown but nothing compared to my high school yearbooks, probably because they are all digital to begin with and I don’t have the satisfaction of sorting picking up the photos from CVS like they are a present and sorting through them and cutting them and arranging them and sticking them in a black sketchbook.

I forgot to mention this yesterday but I started reading The Da Vinci Code again. I still can’t get over how badly it is written, but this time I read far enough in one sitting to get hooked. I like being in the middle of a book. It always gives me something else I could be doing, something to do, a purpose. The trouble with this book is that it is going way too fast. I did find some of Mummy’s old college books which will be dry and academic but perhaps interesting and should last a lot longer than junk-food-esqueDa Vinci.

Mummy has started to call Charlie “Zack” by mistake sometimes.

The day wasn’t completely unproductive though; I had a job interview this morning for a part time office assistant position. Half hoping I’ll get it and half hoping I won’t. If do end up working there it will be tricky while during the period when I am taking my class. I’ll need a car to get there at all efficiently from UMD. I would have to juggle time spent in class, time spent in transit, time spent at the job and time spent on homework. On the other hand, the money would be nice but most importantly I really need something productive to do this summer — anything. I can’t handle empty days. (Maddie, Maurie and Katie have all suddenly started working; Brittney is at still school and will have her internship in Virginia as soon as she gets back; Maya is still in Europe.)

The cats have warmed up to me. They still like Mummy better, but they approach me now and let me pet them. They will sit next to me on the sofa, and they hang out in my room when Mummy is here. I’m generally feeling less rejected by them. The only trouble now is that Charlie is so hard to photograph because his black fur sucks up all the light and it’s impossible to get a good shot of his face.

I still want to do my high school yearbook photo scanning project. Unfortunately I seemed to have corrupted our old HP ScanJet 5370c. It doesn’t want to play with Xsane at all right now. I get an I/O error which I think has to do with the scanner itself. My last resort is to plug it into the Windows desktop and see what happens. Otherwise…I’ll buy a new scanner? They have gotten so cheap now. Our ScanJet was ~$300, and I just searched NewEgg right now and found a Canon flatbed that is thinner for only $43 and supported by SANE.