Short Takes, With Amaryllis

-- Our kitchen-window amaryllis plants are just about ready to burst into bloom. Well, two of them, anyway. A third is still dormant, and a fourth has a small green bud coming up from the base (photo below).

-- Remember the Wayward Biology Textbook from the school library? Well, yesterday that same girl had the nerve to try to check out a textbook again. I said no. We told her to borrow one from a friend. I actually got quite indignant (inwardly) that she even asked, though why I had such an emotional response I can't say. I'm taking that job way too seriously.

-- As I think I've mentioned before, Dave and I are watching "House of Cards" on Netflix. We like it, but I must admit I struggle to figure out some of what's going on. The subplot involving the computer hacker and the newspaper editor was never very clear to me. I feel like my grandmother, who used to say 35 years ago that she didn't understand modern TV shows. At the time my brother and I thought that was hilarious, but now I sympathize!

-- Did you all hear about the Attack Cat of Portland, Oregon? That cat was angry.

-- Finally, I was sorry to hear about the death of one of my former colleagues at a central Florida newspaper where I started my career. I distinctly remember a story he wrote about a street crime near the town of Lake Wales, in eastern Polk County. He quoted a woman who had been standing in her yard "scalding the hair off a possum and preparing the meat for dinner" when gunshots were fired nearby. (Here is the AP version of the story, which ran in a nearby newspaper.) My friends and I laughed about that detail for years.