Blog

The days have cooled down a bit, no more peaking above 100F. I’m enjoying being able to keep my blinds open while I work in the daytime. Once it becomes consistent days of being above 100F, then the blinds have to be closed at all times.

One of my quarantine purchases has been getting a bicycle trainer. It attaches to the rear tire and transforms my bicycle into a stationary bicycle, perfect for indoor exercise. With quarantine approaching 2 months, it’s about time I stopped using that as my excuse for not exercising. Please excuse my messy apartment…

With a bike trainer, you can adjust the resistance at the back. I usually cycle with my bike on higher gears and a bit of resistance, which means after 30 minutes I’m sweaty and ready to get off the bike. The best part of exercising is that I feel I have earned my meals. Or at least that’s what I tell myself to convince myself that exercising is important.

SONG OF THE DAY

I was digging through my music library recently and pretty much rediscovered Beirut. I first heard of Beirut about 8 years ago, when my friend sent me songs and we would listen to them together. He’s a postdoc now at NIST. I look forward to visiting him in Colorado in the future and we can listen to Beirut together again. Here’s one of my favorite tracks by Beirut:

There has been a request for baby hedgehog update photos. The people want MOAR HEDGE. Here’s the glamor shots:

This one is tough to photograph! She is very jittery when out in the open, and immediately begins to look for a place to hide. I hope she mellows a bit as she ages! But when she’s snug in her sack I can poke her and pet her and pull on her legs and she’s cool with all of it.

Here is an outtake:

(Note – the red on her rear end is dog nail polish, left over from being in a litter with lots of babies, which the breeder marked to tell them apart)

And here’s some iPhone pics from a day in the life:

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Another update is that I made that fleece lining for the kiddie pool, because the paper bedding was terrible. The fleece is nice and washable, but she keeps it clean and uses the litter. It is of course star themed.

She takes dust baths in the litter all the time, and it is beyond adorable. Apologies for the darkness and poor quality of this video, but if I turn on the light she spooks and stops, and I had to try to record it.

I have a night vision camera on it’s way to me, so stay tuned for some night time spying videos on what hedgies do all night.

---

The song of the day is an earworm that has been flying around a subset of this group for weeks now (ever since we did a Eurovision night…). I’ll forget about it for days then someone will say “I have SKIBIDI in my head” and then it takes over my head. There is some debate amongst us as to which video is the superior version, but I can’t get enough of the ridiculous walk/dance in this one. If you stay tuned the other version just may show up as song of the day in the near future.

So, for your viewing pleasure, I now give you, SKIBIDI. You’re welcome.

You probably didn’t notice this post in your feed reader on Sunday. However, I urge you not to worry about timestamps. Time no longer has any meaning, after all.

Even though Eurovision 2020 is canceled, you may still watch the entrants yourself. A couple of them are even worth sharing as songs of the day. (I’d put them all in one post, but I’m saving them for when all other sources of Songs of the Day are tapped out.)

The Song of the Day is, or perhaps was, Think About Things by Daði Freyr (a.k.a Daði & Gagnamagnið).

I give you a baby Javelina with the zoomies. You’re welcome.

Admittedly, it’s a mild case. But also the itchies. Wikipedia claims that the collective noun for Peccaries is “Squadron”. I’m going with it.

Inspired by the grace and majesty of the Javelina, I give you Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Band”, performed by the U.S. Marine Band.

It’s been a week since I last blogged, and I’ve got an update on last week’s COVID-19 antibody test! The good news is: blood tests indicate I’ve successfully avoided getting sick. The bad news is, I’m therefore still at risk.

Several other eXtreme Wavefront Control Lab students got tested and they had no evidence of recent infection, either. I suppose we are the study’s eXtreme Wavefront control group.

---

I have been encouraged to include a cute cat picture, as these are always popular with our readers. I have included a photograph of Mr. Alexander the Great expressing what I believe is called “a total mood”.

---

On an unrelated note, I was reading through the group chat with my extended family today and saw a link to QuiltedNorthern.com. It was touted as a resource for obtaining TP in These Uncertain Times. Upon their site, it reads:

Now is the time to take comfort in one another and in the fact that we are working tirelessly to provide you with the comfort of Quilted Northern^® toilet paper.

Really makes you think, doesn’t it?

---

Your song of the day: “Mask, Glove, Soap, Scrubs” by Todrick Hall off “Quarantine Queen”. Todrick has been making spectacularly involved YouTube parodies since I was in high school (at least). The below video is a re-write of one of his own songs that really puts the ‘house’ in ‘house music’.