happy to be simmering in the weekend, away from a strange stressful week. i met with a realtor this week to talk about getting my house on the market. the distant, vague, still-unknown destination warps the knot-in-my-stomach reality of getting my place ready and dealing with having it on the market (the "fun" of having to keep it ready to show), possibly for months. we should find out this month if b gets into any PhD programs; if that doesn't happen, he is also applying for several jobs - mostly looking for international studies positions. he got a call from one school in LA this week. also was surprised to find a position open in san diego, as we hadn't really considered staying there an option before.
interesting BBC site
here - let's you see the sizes of events/disasters if they were overlaid on a map of a place you choose.
other glee from the week - the kepler telescope, which searches for planets orbiting other stars, has found over 1,000 possible planets. i also was delighted to happen across the report in Science News that ducks' penises grow longer when there is increased competition for mates. an evolutionary ecologist commented that ducks "are essentially engineering their own phallus in response to societal challenges." now, that's science!
