rain rain go away

So, it will take us till Wednesday to complete all the paperwork for backing out of the house contract due to the inspection results. Then we can start looking again.

I am knitting slipper socks - a really easy pattern, using bulky yarn, 1 skein of yarn makes a pair. And that's a 100-gram skein (about 90 yards); if you were to get something like Wool-Ease, which is 108 yards, you could make really high leg parts, or deep cuffs, on them.

The upper east coast gets the dregs of a lot of tropical storms and hurricanes, raining hard enough that it's not fun to ride. Since we don't HAVE to be anywhere, we don't have to go out in the rain.

S wants to buy a new car nonetheless. I say let's find a house first, then see how much money we have...

I really should be cleaning rabbit and chinchilla cages. Back to knitting!!

magazines that have caught up to me

So I'm reading 4 issues of Science News in a row, which definitely scrambles the brain. Herewith what I consider the highlights:
1. It appears that for at least one species of fire ants, the males and females are actually separate species. How can this work, you ask? Males cannot, after all, reproduce themselves alone. Well, apparently the daughters are all clones of their mother, and the sons are clones of their father. How this is accomplished seems to be that when sperm arrive at the eggs, if it's a female sperm, it acts only as a catalyst, and the egg absorbs none of the sperm genes; all the sperm does is stimulate the egg to develop into a clone of the egg-layer. If the sperm is a male sperm, then it acts more like a virus: it enters the egg, tosses out the queen's genes, and the egg develops using only the male's genes, thus turning into a clone of the father. Is that weird, or what? (And shades of John Wyndham!!)
2. Ready to eat salad greens in bags contain a whole lot of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. I will cross-post this info to the rabbit communities.

book meme

gacked from avanta7 but I should have seen it earlier since it's a series I like! I like this result, too - in volume 6, which only recently came out in paperback, we find out quite a secret about Thomas and Harry.

I am Thomas Raith. I'm looking out for myself -- and don't you dare think otherwise. Sure, I might show up from time to time and help you out, but that's just because there's something in it for me. My family's a nest of vipers anyway, and they've all given into their inner demons. Not me -- though it's not for the demon's lack of trying. You'll never know about that struggle. All you see is my good looks and winning smile. And that's right where I want you to be.

Who are you? Take the quiz!