Thanksgiving wind-down

Well we had fun down at my sister Susie and Sal's on Thanksgiving, with my folks and Nick and Maria, her boyfriend Mark, and with Leslie's son Christopher (now living in Duluth) -- and Christopher's girlfriend Jamie (sp?) was inaugurated into the family festivities.

After much eating and game-playing we got back home and crashed in bed, next day I went to work and Kris and Mirs stayed home, NONE of us went shopping on Black Friday -- we don't have to energy or the killer instinct to face that battle.

Today, sadly, our pet caterpillar died. We picked up this little fellow a few weeks ago crawling across the driveway. He had a small injury that appeared to have prevented him from ever getting to the cocoon stage so we set him up all nice and comfy in Mira's bug cage and fed him lettuce and stuff.

And in the process we learned some things. Namely, that if you feed a caterpillar lots of lettuce, he gets big and fat and poops a lot. We had to clean the cage weekly -- for a single bug. Also, we learned this particular caterpillar was a species of cutworm -- in other words, a pest. So he liked the food we fed him -- and pest or no, he was a member of the family by this time so we weren't going to exterminate him now. But, bug lifespans being what they are, after a couple weeks happily munching and pooping around his little cage, he finally gave up the ghost today, at what I'm sure was an extremely old age for his species (despite being trapped in the larval lifestage) as it is almost December.

The comet is gone It got bigger and fainter, increasingly diffuse until it appeared to engulf Alpha Perseii and now with the full moon big and bright in the sky it is pretty well invisible. That was fun while it lasted, a very unique event being a bright tailless comet high in the night sky.