Catchup
After learning that I wasn't going to be leaving Madison on Monday, I had a nice evening hanging out with my friend Stephanie, who graciously let me stay at her place that night; then Tuesday morning I used her Net connection to start getting caught up on email and such. I pretty quickly decided that there was no way I'd have a big enough block of uninterrupted time that day to do work for my day job, so I made it a vacation day.
Got to have a nice lunch with Karen and Jeremiah at Café Mariah (another restaurant a little beyond the edge of the WisCon restaurant map), then Karen kindly drove me to the airport.
The flight home was uneventful. Picked up a brachiosaurus stuffie for Kam at the Chicago airport (from the museum store, next to the dinosaur skeleton). Kam picked me up at the San José airport; we went back to my place and I had some dinner; then Kam noted that some of the Burning Man folks were practicing firespinning that night in San José
Part of me wanted nothing more than to relax at home and not go anywhere, but on the other hand, watching people twirl balls of flame around their heads seemed somehow like a fitting end to the WisCon adventure. So we went. It was fabulous—our friend Gerry is getting good at it, and there was another guy there who was (to my untrained eye) extremely good. I took some low-quality video of Gerry, which I may post at some point if I can edit it down to a reasonable size, but I don't want to get your hopes up—the video doesn't nearly do justice to how it looks or sounds live.
(Side note: I actually brought Kam's practice poi with me to WisCon, and thought about bringing them to the parties one night, but a few minutes of practice in my room convinced me that I wasn't good enough yet to teach people how to use 'em. Maybe next year.)
Today I worked at home. I took the opportunity to take my car into the shop (the Check Engine light is still on, and it's not at any special number of miles so I'm pretty sure it's not an indicator that it needs major-milestone service) and to arrange a termite-treatment appointment for my apartment.
Part of the reason we'd picked this particular termite company is that they had a non-toxic termite-zapping method, using microwaves (I've also heard about a method that involves freezing the bugs), but they've since decided that microwaves aren't effective enough, so now they use Termidor and borate foam. The former is an insecticide, which makes me a bit reluctant to use it, but it's apparently a relatively low-toxicity one, and used in small quantities; the website says that the "active ingredient, fipronil, is used extensively on food crops around the world and as the leading product for flea and tick control on dogs and cats since 1995." The borate foam is non-toxic, but less effective. Also, the guy described the borate as like coating the bugs in glass—they're immediately aware that they're being killed, so they don't spread the stuff to other termites as well—whereas Termidor is subtler and the bugs don't notice it for a while. I'd kinda like to make the termites' deaths as painless as possible, and I'm not sure how to balance environmental responsibility with effectiveness. Advice welcome.
'Kay, that's all for tonight.
