Usually my crows are sleek, beautiful, gleaming, silent creatures that physically intimidate me when they suddenly, abruptly choose to enter my space. Their physical presence so near to my body gives me a kind of evolutionary startle response, the way my human brain tells me to jump back from an unexpected snake even though I like snakes and don't mind handling them. I'm saying all of this about their mystique and presence only to laugh about how utterly fucking ridiculous they all looked today in the rain. Big floof'd up scraggly drenched banditos, begging for a little chicken!

Tonight I'm cooking pasta e ceci, an ancient Roman dish that was actually mentioned by Horace, but has persisted into today's Italian cuisine. I'm going to melt an anchovy in it to be more authentically Roman, and add tomatoes and a little kale, which surely the Romans didn't have. I imagine Romans also did not drink Botanist martinis with bright green olives as they were cooking it either, but the closest any of my actual ancestors got to Rome was likely "barbarian slave sex novelty" so it's probably fine. 

My cheap-ass amazon plant lights came today, so I set up my tomato seeds in a violent purple corner of my "office" and now from the street, my house looks like it has a very sketchy grow operation running out of it. I read something I really liked, which is that I need to keep my lights on them 8-10 hours a day, but shouldn't do 24/7 because plants actually do "sleep." (Or at least they need a dark cycle, and it seems like the cycle nutrients or rest from growing during that period.) I really like that so much.