Since squirrel_magnet has already recounted the end of our adventure of visiting the Homewood House Museum on the Johns Hopkins campus, I won't repeat that part. I'll just mention that although the "Fur, Feathers, and Fins: Pets in Early Maryland" exhibit was small, it was interesting; we enjoyed it, and talking with the tour guides (and interrupting one of them leading a group, to explain more than she knew about *why* Franklin stoves are better than plain old fireplaces for heating a room, and threw in a bit about Rumsford to boot.) In the gift shop, we bought several CDs of colonial-era music. There's going to be an interesting concert of Renaissance music at the house next month that we'd like to attend. Must investigate bus travel, for pete's sake.

One of the problems with buying lots of books, in lots of unplanned trips to both new and used book stores, is that every once in a while one goes to look at the TBR (To Be Read) shelf, and there's something on there that neither of us recognizes, neither of us remembers buying, and neither of us can think of why we would buy it. Such is the case with Karen Harper's Dark Angel, which appears to be a sort of medical thriller/romance involving an evil pharmaceutical company stealing Amish babies. Completely silly plot right off the bat, and in the telling, it turns out to be one of those giant conspiracies where everybody turns out to be a bad guy, despite that fact that in real life you couldn't possibly have that large a conspiracy and keep it a secret for more than 10 minutes, nor that many psychopaths in one small town without someone noticing before now: the evil, formerly kindly, sheriff, and the evil, formerly kindly, veterinarian, and the evil, formerly kindly, wife of ____ and the evil, formerly jolly, best friend of ____ and the evil, formerly hardworking and serious, husband of _____ - you get the idea. And, apparently, it's part of a series, all involving the same small Ohio town, where the romances seem to all involve someone Amish falling in love with someone non-Amish and yet it works out happily ever after, somehow, every time. Just. Plain. Silly. I read the first two chapters or so, then the last two, and then skimmed a few pages from the middle, and it never looked realistic enough to tempt me back into reading the whole thing. When I want mystery, I want a faint semblance of realism, and when I want silly, I'll read fantasy that's intended as fantasy, thank you very much.

We cleaned bunny cages this afternoon, and everybody starts the new year off with assorted new chew toys. It's funny how different the tastes are of the various critters. Gizmo prefers plastic things he can pick up with his teeth and FLING; Fern prefers wooden things with lots of parts and a nut in the middle, or else woven grass or wicker to be shredded; Farfalle and Domino will ignore all of those in favor of shredding a large piece of cardboard down to its component molecules. They all like "Carrot Slims" treats, as do the piggles and chinnies, so there was happiness and munching all around afterwards, despite our ruining of their homes by cleaning them.

Honestly. If you had asked were there less likely people to wind up in a ranch house in the suburbs, with a swimming pool in the back yard, I would have told you no. But here we are. And it's not so bad at all. It's helped, of course, that we are maybe 7 minutes from the downtown of a big city - not so terribly suburban as where I grew up, which was Levittown, NY, which I left the minute I was able to and swore never to go back. Catonsville is way less suburb-y than that. Although this little ranch house is suspiciously similar in layout to a Levitt house... ("Little boxes, on the hillside, and they're all made of ticky-tacky...")

So we had the pool party yesterday. Part of the point of moving up here was to be closer to my family, and see more of them. And yesterday's party was family time! My youngest sister (who lives in PA) and her spouse and their 5 kids, my youngest brother (who lives right next to DC) and his spouse and their infant daughter, and one of my nephews who is staying with said brother for the summer - he returns to college next week, but he's been doing an internship in DC for the summer - and my dad and stepmother, who used to live in Maine but who just moved to DE this spring, so they're only 90 minutes away. At least, only 90 minutes when there's not an intense traffic jam on the Bay Bridge.

And a good time was had by all. Not only the kids, but several of the adults, spent a couple hours in the water. BIL Joe managed to do a running vault into the pool, over the 3.5 foot wall, which makes an impressive splash. My inflatable 4-foot long stegosaurus* was not as big a hit as I had hoped; the younger kids were scared of it. There were a couple of pool toys we never even got around to using. And the screen tent worked quite well for eating in, and the sweet corn was yummy, and the cobbler was a hit, as were the garlic portobello burgers - I'll go back to the supermarket and get the brand name of those, they were way good, and even the non-vegetarians liked them. (The salmon patties were not so popular; the leftover salmon mix will get turned into salmon loaf for tonight's supper.)

Now there is a certain amount of cleaning up to do. All in all, a success - when people don't leave till nearly 11 at night even though they have little kids and started talking about trying to get on the road before dark, one presumes they were enjoying themselves. Our house will never pass for normal, cluttered as it is with pets and books and musical instruments, and I worry some about whether my relatively normal family members, the ones who have furniture that doesn't have cat hair, and walls that aren't completely walled off by bookshelves, and dining tables that people can eat on rather than using it as the location for the laptop computers and the computer accessories, would find our house a bit too messy and fuzzy. But apparently we faked it well enough that no one was horrified.

And the fuzzy parts were a hit, too. My 3-year-old and 5-year-old nieces were not scared of the critters (the way a recent 5-year-old visitor was), and enjoyed feeding them carrots and rose hips and dried cranberries. The 12-year-old got to hold the chinchillas and help me give them their evening dust bath. (If you have never seen a chinchilla take a dust bath, you are missing one of the funnier things around!) My sister got a big kick out of the part of my stuffed animal collection that consists of Giant Microbes (see the link at right; every science geek should own some!) - she still has a pretty huge part of her stuffed animal collection, too.

We didn't get around to looking at my whole kaleidoscope collection (one of the few things in the house that isn't a bookshelf is the curio cabinet full of kaleidoscopes, some made by yours truly) but my 9-year-old nephew expressed an interest, so that's for next time. I had given him a cheapo kaleidoscope kit last year, and he may be interested in learning more about building kaleidoscopes from scratch.

Anyway, when I finally kick the bucket, there will be people who look back and say "remember that great party we had at ____'s house?" which is the best kind of immortality.

*The stegosaurus was purchased over 20 years ago, I think from The Nature Store, and I have no idea whether they're still available.

Chili was our oldest chin; he was 14. Average lifespan for a chin varies depending on who you believe, but the most common range is 12-15, so he was in there. We knew it was coming; for the last several weeks, he had been losing weight and sleeping more, although he had still enthusiastically been grabbing his dried cranberry in the evening. But 2 evenings ago, he wasn't even interested in a cranberry or dried apricot bit; he just sipped some water. So we knew that was it. He died peacefully in his sleep last night.

Chili had the biggest ears of any chinchilla I know, and that's saying something! He liked to sleep with his head sticking out of their wooden hidey-hut, and he looked just like a gargoyle with giant wings. (The grey color helps that effect.) He was a very active chin, and during floor time he would be everywhere, especially if there was an opportunity to tease a rabbit by leaping right over the rabbit's head. His cage-mate, Chippy, is fatter, and was a little slower when they were both younger, but Chili had slowed down a bit, and these past couple of years, it usually only took 20 minutes or so of concerted effort by two people to herd him back into his cage.

We never took very many pictures of the chins - it's difficult, since they rarely sit still except when they are asleep in their cage inside their little wooden den. The icon I have here shows Chili (light grey) and Chippy (dark grey) in a rare moment of sleeping outside their den.

Since we recently got Darwin and Lamarck, Chippy won't be all alone; while they're not in the same cage, they are right next to him, for him to crab at and tell them what's what. We'll see how he does without a cage-mate before deciding whether to get another one. There will never be a "replacement" for Chili, of course; he was one of a kind.

They are here, and getting acclimated!
First is Buster, who will be renamed. She's a smallish lop, around mini-lop size, and is about a year and a half old. She's khaki colored with slight smudges that shade toward black. She was spayed a week ago and is recovering well.
Then is the bunny formerly known as Jackie, whose name is probably going to be Domino. Now, on the intake papers, Jackie is described as an "English lop, brown" - in point of fact, he's a Dutch, black and white. Clearly, the people who gave him up really didn't care. Here's a site that has good pictures of English lops: http://www.rabbitandcavydirectory.com/Breed_Gallery/English_Lop.htm
Now here's a site that has pictures of Dutch buns; the first one looks just like Jackie/Domino. http://www.gotpetsonline.com/pictures/gallery/small-animals/all-by-photo/dutch-rabbits/
Note also that Dutch rabbits are between 2 and 4 pounds; English lops are 10 pounds or more. Gosh, they're so much alike, I can understand not being able to tell the difference.

Anyway, pictures of Domino and ?Buttercup? will be up soon, not to mention Dexter.

Dexter's left eyebrow whiskers are white and his right eyebrow whiskers are black. Both sets of cheek whiskers are white. This gives him a sort of raised-eyebrow look!
Pictures should be forthcoming soon.

Science fiction, mostly. I've posted some reviews on Amazon.com, and if you'd care to go look at them, and maybe push a few buttons rating the reviews, I certainly wouldn't mind.
Warring States by Susan Matthews - part of a series, best read in sequence; a strange but intricate universe.
Homeward Bound by Harry Turtledove - although this one is related to his seemingly interminable series stuff, it can be read on its own, and it's a better book than the main series ones.

Also the usual rounds of magazines, and I'm re-reading most of Bill Crider's mystery series - there's three of them, all set in small-town Texas, two featuring university professors and one featuring a sheriff.

Dexter is here, but so far is mostly hiding in places where we can't really get pictures of anything but a black blob - under a chair, at the moment. He was very calm on the ride home! He and Pickle are about 8 feet apart, both resting but keeping a wary gaze on each other.

Boots really is an idiot, even as guinea pigs go. Almost all guinea pigs are absent-minded enough that if they drop a carrot while they're eating it, they'll forget it's there, and go wandering off to steal a different carrot out of another piggie's mouth, because they have no idea where the carrot they just had, has gone to. Boots is worse than that. In mid-chew, he'll forget he has a bite of carrot in his mouth, stop chewing, and look around, and then suddenly, several seconds later, something will startle him, he'll notice he has carrot in his mouth, and go back to chewing that mouthful. Sometimes it takes him several tries to remember to finish and swallow. Sheeeeeee. Good thing he's cute.

( Recent reading )

( brief medical update )