cockle spats in gunny sacks

1. Here, some flowers. (click on the black, enjoy.)

2. I had a whale of a time trying to accomplish much yesterday after about 11. I finished two of the three things I had intended to do, and passed them in successfully, and I went to a study meeting for Latin, but aside from that... ugh.
The really great part, though, was the invigilating. I had a nap at about 4 and set an alarm - it's hard enough not falling asleep invigilating when I haven't been up since the wee hours of the morning - but unfortunately the alarm didn't go off, and I woke up at 6:10, just late enough to miss the bus. So I bustled out the door, discovered that the world was covered in four or five inches of slush, and went to get a cab at King's Place, only to find none there, which is really weird. So I called a cab and stood around in the sleet watching people fishtail... until 7:10. Seriously. The cabby even though it was funny that I was late to invigilate an exam.
Once there, it wasn't too bad - Professor Hutton didn't mind much that I was late, the weather being what it was. The exam was brutal on the students, though. It's bad when no one in a two hundred person class has left after the first hour - even worse when more than half the class is still hanging in there at the two hour mark. People started leaving in droves at about 9:30 and Professor Hutton let two of us go; since I had work to do, they let me leave. Or try to. The last bus had gone at 9:25, so I had to call a cab again, and waited twenty minutes in the slush for it... and then some little bratty girl stole it. So I had to call another, and waited another half hour for it. By the time I got home I was pretty much done for the day.

3. A cockle spat seems to be an endangered form of shellfish, but you wouldn't be able to tell from this news story (via Fark):

RANTAU PANJANG: About RM67,200 worth of cockle spats in 84 gunny sacks, which were bound for Thailand, were seized by the authorities at Lalang Pepuyu here yesterday.

State anti-smuggling unit head Supt Mazlan Che Hamid said they stopped the lorry at a roadblock at 12.30am and, on inspection, found the gunny sacks.

The 26-year-old lorry driver, from Terengganu, was detained after he failed to produce any documents for the consignment, he said.

Mazlan said if the spats were smuggled into Thailand or China, they could fetch twice the market price compared with that in Malaysia. [...] Under the Fisheries Act 1985, it is an offence to import or export cockle spats.

Wikipedia didn't know what they were (except that they might have something to do with fashion), but Google had links pertaining to them:

• "Cockle spat are collected from natural spatfall areas..."
• "Infected specimens of juvenile cockles were also examined histologically..."
• "The previous year's cockle spat was excluded from the calculation of mean cockle size because cockle spat is generally too small to be eaten..."

The things that keep us entertained.

4. On the serious business side of things, I've got a line on what sounds like the perfect apartment for next year. It reportedly has high, old-fashioned ceilings and access to a laundry room, it's a one bedroom, it's $55 cheaper per month with heat included, it's practically on top of our favourite cafe, the main bus hub, the current NBCC offices, and the yarn store, and the address is awesome: 76 1/2 York. We tried to get it last year but missed out by half a hour; this year it's up for grabs as of July but we may be able to claim it by the end of this week. Here's hoping it's everything they say it is.

5. In other serious business areas, Sean has decided not to do the school thing this summer like he did last summer; after a while you just need a break from the class thing, and they aren't offering anything he wants or needs to take. So he's been applying around, and has interviewed in two places: Read's, our favourite cafe, and Bejewel, the upscale jewelry boutique owned and operated by the NBCC president of the board, Trudy - the position hadn't even been advertised yet, but Shasta gave us the tip and even called the floor manager (who does the interviewing) to talk up Sean a bit.
While the cafe is what one might consider an ideal student sort of job, the hours would be evenings and every weekend, which is the opposite of my schedule, the pay is minimum wage, and a large part of the job is kicking out the street punks, which isn't something he really wants to have to do. Bejewel, on the other hand, pays slightly more, offers sales training, is part of the family industry so to speak, is far more prestigious, opens high end retail doors... and it's a fabulous little shop. He actually has experience selling handcrafted jewelry at craft shows with his brother, too. And there's the possibility of getting to do grunt work in the studio, polishing silver and doing very basic jewelry making things, which he's pretty excited about. The only real drawback for him is that he'd have to buy a whole new wardrobe... and you just know he hates buying new clothes. ;)
Both jobs have been interviewed for, and there's hope for both; the Reads job is finishing interviewing and so on today, and Bejewel called him this morning for a second interview tomorrow. Nothing can really happen today, because he has two exams... right up to 10 pm. But that's the last of it, so he could be working as early as Thursday in a new job that absolutely, positively does not involve dishpits.