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Lightning Bugs

June 15, 2005 by charlsiekate

I had a whole interesting post about lightning bugs and all the fun things I learned about lightning bugs tonight and all the lightning bugs I saw tonight, but I deleted it by accident and can’t get it back.  It was much more intelligent that this post.  But I guess it is summer time, and who wants intelligent?

The only intelligent quote I want to use is this one from the MSU entomology website–

Lightning bugs are true wonders of nature. The light they emit is a cold light.
  Put your hand close to an incandescent light bulb and feel the large amount
  of heat it emits. Light bulbs convert electrical energy into light and heat.
  Only about 10% of the electrical energy is converted to light energy. The rest
  is heat energy. By contrast, the lightning bug combines a chemical called luciferin
  with oxygen and an enzyme to produce light in specially adapted cells in the
  tail section of their abdomen. Over 95% of the chemical energy is converted
  to light.

(95%!!!!  That is crazy!  Can you imagine if we could get 25% of electrical energy converted to light energy?  Wouldn’t that be awesome!!  Lightning bugs are so resourceful!  I think I am about 15% efficient with about 85% of my energy being released as heat – and this is on a good day.  But then again, I’m so hot.  I can’t turn it off.  Maybe efficiency isn’t everything – otherwise I’m in trouble). 

Okay, back to the unintelligent stuff that is actually interesting, most of which I picked up in childhood and didn’t read on the internet –

Lightning bugs are easy to catch; they aren’t too quick and they light up in the darkness so you can find them. 

Once you catch them – if you smash them on your arm, or your shirt, or whatever, where ever you smash them will glow for a short period of time (this is really fun).   

Don’t start feeling bad for the lightning bug, lightning bugs feed on earthworms , snails and slugs, and sometimes a group of them will attack a prey together.  ALSO – some lightning bug females will lure lightning bug males of other species, and eat them.  According to the MSU website –

Females of some species mimic the codes of other
  lightning bugs to lure a hormone-primed male to his death.      (men are so stupid!)

But I guess you could feel kind of bad, because apparently the female lightning bugs don’t fly around really, they hang out on plants and on the ground, and the ones that you catch are probably all male.  But think about it this way – they were probably going to be eaten anyway. 

So, go outside, catch a lightning bug, and smash him on your friend and watch your friend glow. 

We really used to do this as children, which I guess is kind of gross.

Other Fun Gross, Stupid, Mean Things we used to do to  Bugs as children in the summertime:

1.    We also used to catch bumble bees and flies in plastic bags and put them in the freezer – after about 15 minutes the bug would be half way dead – and you could tie a piece of dental floss to the bug’s leg, and then the bug would come back to life, and you would have a bumble bee  or fly on a leash.

Or, if you were really hateful and mean, you could also snip part of one of the wings of the bee or fly, and then you would have a bee or fly on a string that flew around in circles.  This was always good for a laugh. 

You have to be patient enough to catch the little suckers in the first place, but after that it is hilarious.   Susan says this is really hateful – that too much thought and preparation go into this mean practice for it to be acceptable – that it sounds like something you would do in middle school when everyone is really mean.  I pretty sure middle school was about the time we did this sort of thing. 

2.  You all know what happens when you put salt on a slug.  I was never very into the whole slug thing.  It always kind of grossed me out.  This doesn’t mean I was above it, I always participated, but I never really liked it.   I mean, who wants an exploding slug on the driveway?

3.  But  I did kind of like to try to catch ants and things on fire with a  magnifying glass.  This is harder than it sounds, but also a lot more fun than it sounds.   

Yawn.  I’ll update this tomorrow if I can think of any more fun bug activities.  I really hate moths  – so I refuse to talk about caterpillars and stuff like that, but I’ll think.  I really don’t like bugs in general, but I do like lightning bugs and carpenter bees.

Posted in outside | 2 Comments »

Bad habits

June 15, 2005 by charlsiekate

I have picked up a new bad habit.  I have been very good about not sitting on my feet, although I am sitting on them right now, and I have been very good about flossing my teeth and my toes and my fingers are both painted, and other than the fact that I desperately need to have some clothes dry cleaned, I am learning how to be an adult. 

But I have suffered a serious setback this week.

You know how all court houses have metal detectors and stuff?  And because of this, law firms use plastic paper clips?  They look kind of like triangles, and they come in an assortment of colors and sizes- here is what they look like this –
ClipsWell.  I like to chew on these little paper clips.  They are much more fun to chew on than metal paper clips.  And somehow I believe this is probably comes in somewhere along the lines of highly unprofessional and vaguely unsanitary.  I have a neon yellow one in my mouth right now. 

Sigh. 

Posted in ridiculousness | 3 Comments »

How to Be Good

June 14, 2005 by charlsiekate

I have been reading Nick Hornby’s novel – How to Be Good.   I like it, I bought it in the airport on the way to Dallas. 

This is my favorite quote from the book so far –

"Tomorrow maybe I’ll try and find a phone number for the organization that provides counseling for people who have been brainwashed by cults; I’m sure that depression of this kind is an entirely normal consequence of having your whole reason for living taken away from you."

For some reason I thought this was really funny. 

I’m exhausted. 

Posted in Books | 1 Comment »

Something old, something new….

June 13, 2005 by charlsiekate

I have decided to just go ahead and make a new category for weddings.  Because weddings will be consuming my life for the next month, and I can see many more weddings cropping up in the next year or so. 

This past weekend I went to Dallas for the wedding of Catherine Anne, who was in my pledge class and who I studied abroad with in college.  She was a beautiful, happy, relaxed bride, and the wedding was tons of fun.  My favorite part was the champagne bar, where you could get fruit juice, fresh fruit, candy, etc of your choice in your champagne.  It was excellent.  The other highlight of the weekend for me was the dessert at the rehersal dinner, which was creme brulee in a milk chocolate shell.  I’m serious when I say I am going to have dreams about for years.  It was better than meeting a cute boy. 

In addition to watching Catherine Anne walk down the aisle, I got to spend some quality time with some old friends, like Neiman Marcus and Maggie (no, really, I did get to hang out with a lot of people I haven’t seen in a long time and I wish I saw everyone more often).

I stayed with my love Kallie, who I met in Greece last summer and who I absolutely adore.  I haven’t seen her since Greece, but I have high hopes of her one day making her home somewhere in the metro atlanta area where I can watch her become a high power attorney and we can go to expensive lunches.  She is going to be a 3L at UT in Austin and is working in Dallas for the summer.  Kallie was the source of the best story of the weekend I think.  Kallie is splitting her summer with two firms in Dallas, and had a dinner Saturday night at one of the partner’s houses (they actually call them shareholders, not partners, but regardless).  So Kallie came to the reception after the dinner, even though she doesn’t know Catherine Anne, or anyone else involved, Catherine Anne told me to bring her, and I really wanted Kallie to get to meet my other friends.  Well, by the time Kallie gets to the reception, we have been drinking champagne for a while, and I introduce Kallie to Catherine Anne’s brother Michael, who just graduated from medical school.  Somehow I neglect to tell Kallie that Michael is Catherine Anne’s brother, and here is how the conversation went (by the way, Kallie did get to meet Catherine Anne before this happened, she really wasn’t crashing the wedding):

M:  So what are you doing in Dallas?
K:  Well, I’m clerking for two law firms, I just finished my second year.
M: Really?  What firms are you working for?
K:  Firm W for the first half and then Firm H & L for the second half, I’m rotating in the business part, contracts, real estate, that sort of thing. 
M:  Oh, well, my dad is a partner at H & L, actually, he is one of the founding partners, he works in real estate – venture capital.
K:  Really?  I love that sort of thing, who is your father, what is his last name?
M:  Well, he is the father of the bride.
K:  Oh, right, yes. 

(eventually it is all sorted out and Michael introduced Kallie to his dad, who I know and think is great, and it all ends up being hilarious and Catherine Anne’s dad promised to get Kallie a project). 

Catherine Anne’s wedding was the first of my June weddings, and from here on out I have a wedding every weekend for the next month except the weekend of the 4th of July.  So counting this last weekend, five weeks, four weddings; Dallas, Sea Island, Augusta, and Athens.  I am heading down to Saint Simon’s on Thursday of this week for the Sea Island wedding, and I am looking forward to laying on the beach.  I haven’t been to the beach since Spring Break, in contrast to  last summer when I spent seven weeks on the beach in Greece. 

But work has been terribly interesting this morning, give me a little while and I will get back to you on that topic.

Posted in Weddings | 4 Comments »

Somewhere, over the rainbow….

June 8, 2005 by charlsiekate

I am happy to inform y’all that I am making a conscious effort to act
like a grown up today.  I got to work before 9 am, and I am just
now putting my socks on, I am making a conscious effort not to sit on my feet,
and I am drinking decaf coffee. 

I have already order the gift for the wedding I am attending this
weekend, and I have no pressing obligations that I am failing to do by
writing this post. 

After sending a sob email from yesterday (I apologize to those of you who received it, I have basketcase tendencies sometimes, but just a little EDD), I went to run in the rain,
where I ran into bambi and a bunch of other deer.  Bambi was on
the wrong side of the path from the adult deer, and I was on the
path.  I respectfully backed up, having heard it is a bad idea to
get in between a wild animal mother and child, and even though bambi was
too afraid to cross the path (even after I gave him some space), mama deer was not, and they were reunited
on the wrong side of the path in the trees that were planted all neatly
in a row and looked very pretty with the sun shining down and the rain
dripping off the branches.  Because, yes, it was raining.
The devil was beating his wife the whole of my run, or at least two
minutes into it, and stopping two minutes before I did.  There is something I enjoy about the oppression of humidity and heat, I know, it is sick, and I can promise 95% of the general population would have deemed the conditions under which I ran yesterday as  MISERABLE, but I have to say, as a whole, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The upside to running in the rain is that at the end of my run I got to
see an entire half of a rainbow, from one side of the sky to the other,
stretched across the horizon.  Then I walked
around and picked a big magnolia flower for my adoptive summer mom,
stretched out my calf muscle that I pulled while I was running, and
drove home. 

And I watch The Empire Strikes Back last night, and Yoda made me want to cry because I miss Jim Henson and it is painfully obviously what is missing from the new Muppets now that he is gone, and obviously, what is missing from the computerized Yoda.

Posted in Thoughts | 3 Comments »

When the swing and the treehouse give up

June 7, 2005 by charlsiekate

My mom called me with some sad news the other day.  One of the enormous hackberry trees in our backyard finally fell down.  According to the tree people, hackberry trees are not suppose to grow as large as ours have, and this is dangerous because hackberrys do not have deep roots, and having a large tree with shallow roots leads to trouble.  We have (or had) 4 or 5 enormous hackberrys all in a bunch inthe far back part of our yard, and they are the focal point of the entire yard, and very pretty.  Mama has been meaning to have them taken down for years. 

This particular tree is on the edge of the bunch, on the left side if you have your back to the house. It had been leaning for years, and in recent months had started to sink.  The sinking was easy to measure, due to the remenants of an old swing still hanging from one of the branches.  All that is left of the old swing is a thick rope, with a loop at the bottom, and a knot about a foot above the top of the loop.  In the past six months the loop has settled into the leaves on the ground. 

Mama is always worried that one of the trees is going to fall on one of us, or even worse, fall on one of the dogs – particularly Bella. 

But in the end it didn’t fall on any of the members of the family.  It fell on a piece of our past.  It fell on the tree house.  Our tree house has actually outlived the other treehouses I grew up in, the Allen’s amazing treehouse fell years ago, and the Nalley’s treehouse also collapsed a while back (although, I think they have both been repaired).  And our treehouse wasn’t suspended in a tree, it was basically a treehouse built from the ground up with a tree growing in the middle of it.  It was actually converted into a dog house/tree house about ten years ago, but the dogs never liked it much and it wasn’t used for that purpose for very long.  Our treehouse was built around a carolina cherry tree, and I have always loved the way carolina cherry trees smell when you break a branch and smell the wood. 

I haven’t been out there very often in the past ten years, but it still made me happy that I could go back there if I wanted.  I’m not at home, so I don’t know the extent of the damage, and maybe it is easier that way.  The last time I did go up there I laughed at the spray paint graffii and the carvings of initials into the wood. 

Oh well, things change.  But that doesn’t mean I have to like it when they do. 

Posted in Thoughts | Leave a Comment »

Happy 6/6!!!

June 6, 2005 by charlsiekate

I love dates that repeat.  Like 5/5 – which is my mom’s birthday, and 8/8 which is emily’s birthday, and 10/10, which is my birthday!!!

And today is 6/6!  A year from now it will be 06/06/06!!!!  Which is the day I anticipate the world ending.  6/6/6.    

Kinda scary, huh?

Not as scary as the fact that I’ll be 30 on 10/10/10.

(p.s. the sun is shining for the first time in about a year.  Which makes me smile.  Even though it is suppose to rain the rest of the week.  I might tell y’all about my weekend later, if I feel like it.  It was awesome, for anyone who was wondering). 

Posted in ridiculousness | 1 Comment »

Bumper Stickers

June 3, 2005 by charlsiekate

I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said,  DON’T GET TO CLOSE, I’M NOT THAT KIND OF CAR. 

My friend Robert was volunteering at an orphanage, helping to fix up the place, not actually playing with the children,  and while painting the walls of a bathroom saw a bumper sticker that said, PROUD PARENT OF AN ACCELERATED READER. 

Posted in ridiculousness | 2 Comments »

Law Firms

June 3, 2005 by charlsiekate

Being a girl in a law firm is funny.  Because there are definitely more males than females in the legal world. 

My dad’s roommate from college and law school told me one time right after I got into law school that I needed to make sure I didn’t try to be one of those mean woman attorneys who tries to act like a man.  I’m still not sure what he was talking about, but I think it was probably the only time anyone has ever warned me not to act like a man. 

But I really like hearing about other girl’s experiences in the legal world.  Especially girls that aren’t working for BigLaw in Big Cities, because smaller cities seem to have the best stories (cute girls with good greats are treated like royalty as summer associates at BigLaw, from what I have heard).   I love what Lauren, who is in Savannah this summer,  has to say about being the token girl amongst boys with wives and babies. 

I’ll keep you posted if I run across any more funny stories of girls in law firms. 

Posted in Work | Leave a Comment »

One of my Bestest of Friends….

June 2, 2005 by charlsiekate

I don’t know what my problem is, or why it has taken me so long to do this, but I need to introduce everyone to my adorable friend Jennifer, and her blog, Without Further Ado, www.jenniferlbrown.blogspot.com. 

I have been pressuring Jennifer for months to make her blog public, because she is a spectacular writer, and I think the world should get to read her high quality work product. 

Jennifer lives in Washington, D.C. with Emily, and she works as a copy editor at an ad agency. 

Please go leave Jennifer lots of comments and love, she deserves it. 

I love you Brownie!!!!!

Posted in Favorite People | 1 Comment »

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