Bonjour, mes amis!

Hope you're all doing well. I am mostly doing well, although I am pretty shaken by my experience, not more than twenty minutes ago, of touching an electric fence.

EEEYAAAAAH!

was pretty much the sound I made. I'm pretty sure my heart stopped for the split second I received that shock.

Why did I touch this fence? Well, my parents grow sweetcorn in the garden every year, and this year we had one of our biggest, best, earliest crops ever. We were about ready to harvest it when some woodchucks or raccoons (we're not sure which) decided to EAT IT ALL. This has only happened to my parents one other time, about 25 years ago. My dad put up an electric fence that year but never had to again, until this year. He says he figures that the stories of this fence, passed down through generations of woodchucks, must have become too old or too entrenched in myth for the latest generation to take seriously.

Currently, my parents are in Seattle, which means it's my job to turn on the fence by plugging the extension cord that runs all the way from the garden, through our back entryway, and up some stairs into an outlet in our kitchen. I also have to go out to the garden, flashlight in hand (we only have the fence on at night) so that I can make sure no blades of grass or tomato leaves are touching the fence. (This must be done with the fence on so I can hear the fence sparking where grass is touching it. Most of the blades I can hear don't actually look like they're touching the wire.) The idea is that an electric fence is an open circuit, and when an unsuspecting woodchuck touches its cute little unsuspecting nose to the wire, it completes the circuit and receives one hell of a shock in the process. But if there are a bunch of plants touching the fence, they already have performed this function, so the woodchuck wouldn't get much of a shock and might not be terribly deterred.

So anyway, I was out there plucking little blades of grass that were touching the wire. But then I got to this tomato plant that had conveniently draped itself over the wire. The poor thing was all wilted, having been subjected to some fairly high amperage for who knows how long. I knew I'd have to be quick--I can only touch the plants, obviously, in the space between pulses, which doesn't give me much time. I'd been very successful with plants that were only touching the wire at one or two places, but this tomato plant was really draped over the wire. Stupidly, I thought if I was fast enough, I'd get the whole thing...but nope.

EEEYAAAAAH! That's some amperage! (Thank goodness it hasn't got much voltage...)

So that's probably the most exciting thing that's happened to me in the past several weeks, but there have been some less, shall we say, shocking things going on in my life as well. As I mentioned, my parents are in Seattle, visiting my sister and her husband (the very same couple I visited over spring break). They're gone for another five days or so, so I'm basically in charge of everything. I do the cooking, but at least I can make my siblings do some of the cleaning since they can't/won't (and most definitely don't) do their share of the cooking. It's all good, though--I probably wouldn't want to eat anything either of them had cooked, anyway.

The other night I hung out with my very close friend, Vanessa. She cooked dal, which was pretty good despite its having come from a box. (We figured any non-American prepared food had to be better than American prepared food.) The dal came with a free CD of Indian music--something with shehnai, which I'd never heard of, and the tabla, which I had. (The shehnai is a reed instrument.) Most of the music didn't make much sense to our Western ears until the tabla added a bit of rhythm. (Perhaps you guys already know that Indian music uses an entirely different scale system, not to mention rhythmic system?) After dinner, Vanessa and I watched Mamma Mia!, which we'd seen in theaters and loved for its cheesiness. Watching it in her living room made it seem even cheesier, and it was slightly more painful to watch (though we still enjoyed it). It's got that whole High School Musical type of thing going. Awful in oh-so-may ways, but somehow still enjoyable. Inexplicable, but true.

Anyway, I have to take the dog out, and then I'm going to bed. Wow, it's only midnight--I'll be quite the early bird getting up tomorrow!