Power Outage Today

The weird part about it was that the only place affected was our apartment complex; even the nearby mall and other shops were doing fine. So Y. and I went to the movies, did some errands, bought some candles, and hoped that not all the food in our fridge spoiled by the time power was restored. Just another weekend.

Textbooks for Rent, cont.

So I finally decided to rent my textbooks for the semester, giving in to temptations I had harbored a while back. The expensive ones, anyway: it didn't seem worth it to try to save money on comparatively cheap paperbacks that are also more likely to be worth keeping, to boot. One textbook (Paul Krugman's international economics textbook) is out of stock, unfortunately; maybe Half.com has it.

The Truth About Cats and Dogs

My former classmate Katherine Nehring, currently living in Benin, offers an intriguing theory:

Maybe that’s why cats are generally considered feminine, as opposed to masculine dogs – because it’s the females of one species and the males of the other that are prone to obtrusive and embarrassing displays of sexuality. While male cats may spray, for instance, I have yet to see them become enamored of anyone’s leg, and that’s a classic dog behavior. I won’t even get into the anatomical and existential questions posed by our female dachshund’s repeated attempts to impregnate our male cat, but the point stands.

There's definitely something to that -- although I would say that the differing standards of cleanliness for dogs and cats, combined with stereotypes of "dainty" women and "grungy" men, have something to do with it as well.