Sidewinder

This is our garden Buddha, which my former co-worker Joanna gave me several years ago. He's been knocked around a bit and his head's been broken off and reattached -- all before we got him -- so I can never take a very good picture of him. He looks like a Buddha from the wrong side of the tracks. But Waterlogue hides his deficiencies nicely.

I suppose in the true spirit of Buddhism I should take him as he is, rather than hold him to my idea of how he should look.

Oga continues to improve. She got up this morning, went outside, explored the garden and came in for a treat. She seems almost normal, except for a sideways tilt of the head and a slightly drunken walk.

Her nystagmus -- the rapidly shifting eyes -- has subsided entirely. We cancelled her walk again today but we might let her go tomorrow if she seems up to it.

See what I mean? Dave called her "Sidewinder" this morning, which made me laugh. He's got a knack for coming up with the perfect nickname.

Remember the mermaid sticker? Well, here are some more stickers from a nearby pole, all across the street from the South Hampstead overground station. The bugs and bear are amusing, but that blue one intrigued me. It looks like the work of the same artist who did the mermaid, doesn't it?

And sure enough, when I looked up that artist's Instagram account, I found a matching image -- someone holding a bouquet of carnivorous flowers. The colors in mine are faded, as they were with the mermaid sticker, so you don't get the full effect of the blood dripping out of the plants' stems. But it's definitely the same picture.

Someone apparently generated stickers of work by this Korean artist, who goes by Kim Sanho, and plastered them on poles in that neighborhood. There are probably others. Don't worry, I won't photograph them all, but I do find the work interesting.

I had a pretty low-key day yesterday. I sat and read "Bleak House" at my desk during down times. I know my boss doesn't love it when I sit and read, but I argue that I'm modeling the behavior we're trying to instill in our students. And several of them did, in fact, ask me what I was reading. They probably thought it would be something hot and trendy! (That is my vibe.)