RIP Woolly

I am in the midst of an emotional crisis. Not ten minutes ago, my mother called me away from my biotechnology research to pull a woolly caterpillar off of her front herb garden, it was eating a leaf on some plant. Then she told me to flush it. Of course I argued ("Can't I just take it down the street to someone else's yard???"). I mean, for goodness sakes, it's a baby...butterfly? moth? something with wings. But I lost that argument, and very solemnly walked to the bathroom with both my sisters following me. There was a slight pause when Woolly fell off the leaf I I had him on and I had to try to pry him off the carpet, but we ended up in front of the toilet. I closed my eyes and dropped him in the toilet and flushed before I had a chance to pull him out again. Then my baby sister looked at me like I had just killed her puppy. She started crying, I started crying, and then I ended up moping at the kitchen table, trying not to get tears on the biotech article I had to request from a Russian scientist. I don't like killing anything, even ants (I cried sometime last year because I had to wash ants down the drain), and especially not fuzzy little caterpillars that don't hurt anything but my mother's plants. That little guy had potential to become something beautiful and beneficial. If only he'd had a chance to grow up. I'll prolly have nightmares tonight.

So pushing Woolly out of my head, I should explain why I haven't written in three days (just in case some of you people were about to call the police because you just knew that some horror had befallen me since I showed no signs of life). I have excuses! The first, I wouldn't let myself write on here until I finished my English summer paper. And I never finished. I got off to a great start with some amazing writing. Then I went two pages over the limit and realized I hadn't written about what I was supposed to write about yet. The next day...I don't have an excuse for that. I just forgot maybe. Or actually, I was watching Law & Order CI until like 1 am. But yesterday, I finally joined one of the most prestigious of networking sites and stayed up late reconnecting with a dude I haven't talked to since the fourth day of 6th grade and just doing some general browsing. It's amazing how many friends I haven't talked to in ages. Actually. That's most of my friends. I keep in touch with like two on a regular basis. Hmm. I wasn't aware of my failures in that department until now. Maybe I should fix that.

The most interesting thing to happen lately is the article I mentioned earlier. For the past few days I've been researching the topic of my senior project desperately to find three sources, as the summer biotechnology assignment requires. The problem is, nobody's done research on my topic before, so there's nothing in existence that I could use for my assignment. Then I found one article that looked hopeful. Oh I was excited! And then I saw...that I could only read the abstract. I tried every science database I could find through my library and school and then I tried back ways into other databases to no avail. I'd all but given up when my mom suggested emailing the author. But they don't list email addresses in the abstract. So I had to go search for the author's place of employment, which turned out to be a small firm in St. Petersburg, Russia with the simplest website ever and one listed email address for all seven of the scientists. So I wrote to that email, got upset when I realized it was the middle of the night there, and gave up on my homework. But then, imagine my joy when, the very next morning I found a reply, with an attachment! A nice (and I imagine as good-looking and young) scientist with a cool name sent me the article with his best wishes. It turned out to be immensely helpful. Now all I have to do is find two more. If anybody has info on extraction of the acids from Boswellia serrata, then I would be eternally grateful. Might even give you a hug.

♥ j.j.