Day 2: Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice!

As people go, I am a little prone to insomnia. It being my final year of grad school, I haven't found it easy to do that thing where you stand horizontally with your eyes closed and hallucinate for a few hours. Tonight, adding to my problems initiating or maintaining sleep are the heavenly aromas of sodium hypochlorite wafting around my bedroom. Why does my boudoir reek of a public swimming pool you ask? Well, the age-old war between Liz and Nature still wages. Mainly owing to some interesting design ideas on the part of the folks at Haier, there’s a big gaping hole in the barrier between separating my personal space from the world and the rich diversity of creatures therein.


I was getting into bed when I was unnerved by an unexpected movement in my peripheral vision. It wasn’t so much an insect crawling up the wall, as it was a medium-sized dog with an exoskeleton. With no undergrad handy, I was alone in dealing with this distressing athropodan invasion, so I instinctively grabbed my copy of Poirot in the Orient and introduced the critter to the genus Homogenate. Unfortunately, the ex-insect was rather large, and had what I deemed to be a rather impressive fat body so merely flicking his remains into my trash can wasn’t going to cut it. Luckily, I come prepared; I have a box of latex gloves from the lab, and the store-brand answer to every Clorox product at my disposal. My little hexapodous friend is en route to a burial at sea and I can rest assured that everything he touched now bears no trace of his filthy nature-ness, that is when the smell of cleaning products dissipates enough for me to fall asleep!