Two topics on the slate today for your visual consumption: a spot on my snail and my research proposal. It would be really cool if I could mix the two of them, but I&#039m not sure how to do so in the short amount of time I&#039m taking to write this post. If you come up with fun connections, feel free to write them down and post them. Who knows if I&#039ll read them? I&#039m feeling very cynical today.

First item of my own interest: Cthulu has a funny spot on his back. Now, for those three or four of you who have been reading this page for some time and for the one or two of you who actually pay attention and can retain details from within these mad ramblings, I mentioned a few times quite a while back that my snail is rather fuzzy. He&#039s fuzzy not because of hair or fur, but because he has algae growing all down his shelled back. It&#039s dark green and it&#039s kind of out of control like an 80s hair band, but it&#039s not hurting him.

…

Quick aside, I just looked down at him and he&#039s hugging a rock. His shell is on his side and he&#039s out of it, and he just picked up a piece of gravel about the size of a breath mint, and he&#039s holding it up all wrapped around it. I mentioned it to Heather and she said that maybe it&#039s his girlfriend, like a blow-up doll. Sometimes I have to wonder about both of my office mates. Crazy.

At any rate, back to his shell. I noticed sometime last week that there appeared to be a white patch on his back, like some of the algae had scraped off. I didn&#039t care because it&#039s not like he needs all that fuzz on his back anyway. Today, however, I noticed that it was bigger and perfectly round. In fact, it looked like one of those little hole protectors that you put on notebook paper which goes in a binder to keep the holes from tearing out. I asked Brad (our resident farmer and animal lover) about it, and he suggested I pull him out and wipe at it with a paper towel. I did so, and the circle is completely round, the middle algae coming off without much effort. What the heck would cause a perfectly round patch of algae to come off? Freaky. I carried him to Brad&#039s office and was stopped by everyone on the way there so they could ask, &#034What is that?&#034 or &#034Is that chocolate?&#034 because his shell is so dark it&#039s almost black outside of the tent. I put Shorty back in his tank after a few minutes, and I&#039m keeping an eye on him hence catching him making out with a rock. He&#039s hiding in the corner now behind his plant. I think he knows he was spotted. Spotted, heh. Funny.

Second item on the bill: Thesis proposal final draft! I think that I&#039m done with the proposal as of this afternoon. I just sent it out with the final revision which was to change this:

connasse < con &#039cunt&#039

to this:

connasse < con &#039vagina (vlg.); idiot&#039 (cf. English cunt)

so that everyone&#039s happy with the way vulgarities are handled. Yippee. So I sent it out to my committee who will sign off on it, get the dean to sign off on it, then get it over to the College of Graduate Studies who will hopefully sign off on it quickly. I don&#039t know what to do at this point beyond just doing research and maybe start writing it soon. Loads of fun. I can&#039t wait to get my spreadsheets and corpus all figured out. I think that with what time I have left this afternoon, I&#039m going to watch the snail and read articles. Hoohah! Tentacles and theses. Sounds like a winning afternoon to me.