Stress and Flowers

Last week was one of the busiest of this semester. The biggest thing was that I had the GRE on Saturday. So, between studying for my Audiology exam and trying to cover some extra hours at work, I tried to prepare for the GRE. There was a nice surprise on Friday, when my family sent me a fall bouquet.

Saturday morning I decided to order an omlette from the greasy diner down the road. I asked them for one without meat and without mushrooms, but neither of these was completely honored. There were two chunks of ham and tons of mushrooms to pick out. I cut up a melon and took that along for a quick healthy lunch.

As I got on the road to the testing center in Sioux Falls, I found that three trucks were trying to transport plane parts using our on-ramp. Nothing was moving. I thought I would be late. Hilarity ensued as I thought, "Hey, I'll go south for a bit, find an overpass, and change directions." However, the next overpass is about 15 miles down the road. By the time I illegally turned around in an 'only authorized maintenance vehicle' driveway, the planes were long gone.

I was shaking when I finally found the testing center. I was on my game though, and in the analytical writing section, I wrote about art from the Chinese Cultural Revolution and "BodyWorld." For the latter, I wrote that the popularity of the exhibit "reveals society's fascination with the macabre." I'll have to wait for the writing scores, but the verbal and quantatative are given immediately. I improved my score by 25% over 5 years ago. Yeah! Take that, 5 Years Ago Me!!

After that, I went shopping. I found Lambic Framboise (Belgian raspberry beer) at World Market and bought all they had except one bottle. I got a few bath things and essentials. I wanted to take myself out for good Chinese food, but none of the restaurants looked so delicious.

That was my week. Thanks for reading!
- 吴碧芙

Kavi the Flirt

When Kavi is happy, he holds his wings a little away from his body, purrs, talks, and knocks his bead against things. Although this vid is not as interesting, Kavi is so cute. I never see Roscoe doing head bobs. He prefers hopping and screeching in Kavi's ears, but I think those are signs that he's feeling good.


My friend taught me how to knit on Saturday. I learned knit and pearl, pulled it out a few times, and finally decided to make a ribbed scarf. It's about 6 inches long by now. She taught me English knit, but I'll probably switch to Continental because of crochet interference. Knitting is magic to me because I don't yet completely understand how all of these motions end up making a piece that looks like this:


We had "drunken knitting" at a pizza place last night. The lack of Fat Tire discouraged me from actually drinking beer, but everyone was amazed that I'm such a quick study.

-吴碧芙

Martha Mags

I decided to make some magnets today, mostly a repair and improvement mission. I saw these on Martha (on one of the few times I watched the show) a few years ago. I made some of them then, but I didn't use a strong glue, so they were a little fragile. I got some E6000 glue this time, which I'm hoping will work better.


It involves gluing a paper circle to a flat gem and then gluing a strong magnet to the paper. The result is a high-profile, highly adorable and personalized magnet. I used some scrapbooking paper, which I got with my aunt. Heavy-ish paper works well because the glue might soak through the regular stuff. For these, I actually don't know if the magnets are strong enough to handle the weight of the gems, or if the glue is strong enough to hold everything together. If this works, you may be finding a set of these in your Christmas stocking.


This is Homecoming weekend. I have to work on Saturday, but it should be busy and fun. People keep telling me that it's going to be crazy, and that I shouldn't try to go grocery shopping this weekend. Having lived in IC and China, I have my doubts that I'll be overwhelmed by the amount of people, but I might be surprised.

-吴碧芙

All signs point to normal...

I go to McDonald's every other Monday morning (...for the past three weeks). Today I ordered the wrong thing: a McGriddle instead of a biscuit. I ended up getting a plain biscuit to replace the McGriddle portion. Who makes a breakfast sandwich out of two pancakes with some kind of syrup-like sugary substance baked into them? Not that a biscuit is any better, but at least it's not sugary.

Today in my Intro. class, we did audiometry, otoscopy, and tympanography on each other. I got a nice little tidy printout of my tympanogram.


Tympanography measures, through air pressure, the flexibility of the ear drum. The ear drum will not move as much if you have fluid in your middle ear or if you have other middle ear problems. I don't know how to read them, but basically, they shouldn't look flat. I think the point was to try it out and know what it feels like, not to really learn how to do it.

My hearing on the audiometer showed sensorineural hearing loss, but there were a number of factors that made the test invalid, like noise in the room and possible misplacement of bone conduction thingies.

Note on the Oct. 3rd vid: Kavi (on our right) is saying "Kavi" and doing the dog call whistle. He does a little of "The Iowa Fight Song" at the very end. Roscoe (on our left) is doing the wolf-whistle almost the whole time.

-吴碧芙

Kavi Sings

Today I had a paper due and an exam. After that I did a file review for homework in another class. All these tasks meant that I didn't get home until 5:00 pm today. When I was in China, I tried to try something new every day. Life in any new place, where you don't know many people and you don't know all the good places, can get a little boring and depressing. My something new today was to go check out the fitness center, which is located in this cute little stadium they have here. I got a good EFX workout while reading Bitch. The fitness center is free to students, and everyone knows how much I love my EFX.

When I came back, I needed a shower. Since I had noticed that Kavi's voice seems to get better with moist air, I let the birds sit on the counter, but they eventually flew up and perched on the curtain rod.

Kavi's voice goes in and out, sometimes he sounds like he has something stuck in his throat and can only make popping peep noises. Other times, his voice is low and scratchy. Occasionally, he says, "Hi Kavi," in his usual high and pure chirpy voice. Since he's been with me, he hasn't done any whistling, presumeably because he can't, or it hurts his throat. I whistle his favorite songs to him anyway.

When I got out of the shower, I heard the old chirpy voice say, "Hi Kavi...I love you...Pretty Birdy...Kavi whistle...C'mon." He started whistling, just like he used to, and I ran to get a quick vid. Kavi is on the right side of the picture. You can hear Kavi saying his name, making kissing noises, and whistling the Iowa Fight Song toward the end of the vid. Roscoe is also whistling, which is strange for him, as he usually screeches or makes vocal calls. I haven't been this excited since baby Bucket used the litter box.


This video is also available on YouTube under "Kavi Sings" for the blogospherely challenged.

-吴碧芙