Spirit Squirrel!!

(from Greg:) BC (British Columbia, not Before Christ), there's occasionally a sighting of  a 'spirit bear', a black bear that's all white.  Not to be confused with a polar bear, which is often seen w/ a Coke can during the Winter Olympics on TV, a spirit bear is a very rare sight (I've seen one picture) and a personal sighting is quite a spiritual event for most people (and perhaps quite frightful, as its typically 1000's of miles from the nearest post-bear-mauling emergency room).

 Yesterday on my morning bike ride, I saw the slightly-less-famous-but-no-less-spiritual Spirit Squirrel.  It wasn't albino (its eyes were black) and it wasn't any sort of Polar Squirrel (no Coke can that I could see) so it was definitely a Spirit Squirrel.  Unfortunately, I was in a rush to get to work so I could ferry some fellow students back to get some portraits taken, but I did receive a Holy Tail Swish that filled my day with peace and serenity (which was quite helpful while navigating the Bostonian streets with a 15 passenger van).

In other rodent news, I saw a little field mouse in our kitchen last night.  Ironically for a couple that constantly refers to each other as "Mouse", we're not too keen with "cohabitating with a REAL mouse", in Louise's words.   Before heading to sleep, I put out a non-lethal trap laced with peanut butter and wheat crackers.  Its a similar design to what worked in my home growing up - the mouse nibbles on the food, which triggers the trap door to slam shut and the mouse awaits its fate (which for us will probably mean releasing it into the retirement community across the street - they could use the excitement).  This morning, the trap was empty so I put it in the garage (I had seen another mouse, perhaps the same one, there when we moved in).   Unfortunately, Chippy (our neighborly chipmunk) was too tempted by the treats and got caught during the day!   We let Chippy out with our apologies and will try to catch the non-human Mouse again tonight.  Wish us luck!!

Back at school (we've moved on to non-rodent things now), I'm finally done w/ the Math review course that has eaten up most of my time so far.  I got a 'B', which is quite good enough for me, especially considering its been over 14 years since I've seen a lot of this stuff!  Now there's a little more time to focus on setting up the rest of the house and learning some of the other courses that I'll presumably be seeing more of in my remaining time here.

Sounds like Kai is awake now so we're off to get a new bank account and hang oot.  Aloha!!