(no subject)

maellenkleth has challenged me identify and write about ten things around me of a color of her choice - and she has chosen ecru. (Ask me if you would like your own color.) And here I am, in the Annex (aka The Computer Lab, or The Secret Clubhouse, which is largely bereft of unbleached cloth...

1. Though our walls, are in fact, a faded, weathered cream, having become indeed ecru. It's an odd little room - brick and wood beam on two sides (but four walls, there being a cut in), wall board on two.

2. And there is a rather amazing selection of ventillation equipment descending from the ceiling for a room so small, some of which has been wrapped in soft insulation, all of which has been painted to match the walls.

3. Though my favorite feature, bar none, is my clover window. It is right over my desk, and gives me a lovely view of... well, the ivy crawling up Millis Hall, mostly. And for a while a nest two doves were building. It's also the only window in the room and the wonderful curved and jointed molding is also ecru.

4. Of course, it wasn't always the only window in the room. This is an old building - I think of my mentor, Dr. Ammirati, who at one point moved his lab back to an older building on campus because, he said, if he were going to come to the university every day, he wanted something properly neogothic. The stairs are made of wood, and they creak. A lot. There is evidence of multiple remodels, and the kind of odd rabbit's warren look they leave in their wakes (really, that explains a lot about my beloved little room). And a broad window, with an arched top, that used to look out over a ledge that would be wonderful for feeding birds or growing plants has been closed up and painted over as well.

5. Kendrick's lunch bag, one of his grocery bags, is a classic unbleached cotton. All of his are. As are a few of mine, but mine are all at home, as I took lunch with today's seminar speaker. (I wrote up until about here yesterday, and then went off to seminar...) When we go to the store, we both have a pile of cloth bags with long straps. All of his match. None of mine do. The same can be said for our pottery. Kendrick has started buying from the same potters who made mine, but while each of my placesettings is different, his match.

6. It is usually called the comfy chair. It is a big poofy recliner made out of some kind of pale immitation leather, and the agreed place that one can go to take naps in the lab. In fact, this rarely happens. Some people like it, and I have carefully set up a power strip at the far side of my desk so that people working there aren't constantly sking me to plug in their laptops are well supplied. My back hates it. (Though sometimes I'll use it for supported sarvangasana, and my back likes that very much.)

7. My tea cup. A bit ago I picked up a travel matcha set. This is the cup, a small raku style cup. It was described as "white" but it is in fact a cream glaze over stoneware on the outside, a sometimes pink or yellow tinted cream on the inside, and a grey rim. Right now there are also faint smudges and spots of green.

8. I also have a tea mug, which is if anything a more proper ecru in its uncolored regions - and hand turned, with a lovely handle, and a picture of Artemis carved into one side, and a stag on the other.

9. My keyboard, and someone's (Kendrick's?) optical mouse. 'Nuff said.

10. Much of the background for the matted print above my desk is more or less the same color of the walls. In the forground is a small white haired girl with wings and aviator goggles, protecting herself from the rain with an Amanita muscaria (it's not the most convincing A. muscaria, I'm afraid) and dumping salt from a cannister under her arm onto various slugs along her path.