The last couple of the weeks of the year are always kind of strange. Nothing really happens during this period. Many businesses shut down between Christmas and New Year's Day, while others just seem to tread water. Maybe I look at it the way I do because I'm in an industry that truly shuts down during this time. This causes me to forget that a lot of people actually have to go to work this week.

As for me, I took Willow up to the California Academy of Sciences again, meeting an old friend, J, there - J had a museum membership, which meant we got in free. That was really nice of her. The museum was just as crowded as it was the last time Willow and I went, but that didn't stop us from having fun. Willow is small enough to squeeze her way to the front of the crowds in most situations, getting front row seats to watch strangely diurnal bats flutter around, and to watch penguin hijinks (just one out of the multitude of penguins seemed interested in entertaining visitors - the rest just stood up on the rocks and vibrated their hindquarters at us). We'd somehow managed to miss the penguins last time, along with the African hall and its taxidermied specimens. Checking out the African exhibit, we noticed that there was some subtle digital trickery in at least one of the backdrops behind the dioramas - what used to be static savannah had a little herd of elephants marching across it. Hi tech!

Later, I had the perfect mocha. Sometimes it's the little things that help us along the road of life.

Sunday, Willow and I buried my iguana in the garden at work, and Willow handled the process very well, helping dig the hole and pat the claylike soil down afterwards. We talked as we worked, and she seemed to have a pretty good handle on the whole dying thing.

I had figured the iguana would be dead when we went and checked. It had been getting steadily more decrepit over the last year, so it was kind of a blessing that it finally passed on. A quick bit of internet research (which, admittedly, isn't always reliable) showed that it had lived well past the usual expiring point for members of its species. The internet sources I found gave me a big range - anywhere between around 7 and 19 years for iguana life expectancy. My iguana died at 23. Now he will nourish the garden.