So that tape idea?

It didn't work. The electrical tape I got is not sticky enough to catch the bugs - I chased one onto a piece of tape I'd laid sticky side up and it just kept walking. I guess at Christmas I will have to bring some duct tape back if there are still bugs. Which I'm sure there will be. I actually emailed Angela (the lady at UIC in charge of international exchange) and told her to warn the people who are applying for next year that there are an unseemly amount of bugs that will not go away. She emailed me back with a couple links to websites about ways to kill them, because apparently most of them are resistant to pesticides and won't eat poisoned food... Except I have no idea where I would buy some of the ingredients in America, much less in Japan. I'm heartened by the fact I saw a big jumping spider in my room today, maybe he (or she) will pounce on and eat the bugs.

I am getting tired of bagels. I have eaten four in the last two days, which really isn't very many - I had a bagel for breakfast and lunch on Sunday and Monday - I forget what I ate on Sunday for dinner, but it was probably some of the rolls we got, and today I totally deviated - I had two steamed buns and a packet of corn soup. Tomorrow it's back to my bagel and banana diet - which is something I ate at home a lot. Both bagels and bananas are portable, because neither squishes too easily, particularly if the banana is on the top of your bag.

I was walking home from econ with Emily and Scott and said that I wished I had some lox to go with my bagels and cream cheese and she had no idea what lox were - apparently they just say they are eating bagels with smoked salmon, rather than bagels and lox. Which got me wondering about the etemology of the word lox. I suspected it was derived from Yiddish, and the dictionary has just confirmed it - the Yiddish word is laks, from the Middle High German lahs. I think she wasn't sure she heard me right because she asked me to repeat it about four times before I figured out she didn't know one of the words, not that she couldn't hear me. Sometimes I have no idea what she is talking about, so it's a nice reversal to be the one using an odd word.

Tomorrow I'm going to wash my sheets and some clothes. Hopefully it will be sunny enough that they dry in one day, otherwise I guess tomorrow night I will just be sleeping in my sleeping bag without the benefit of the cozy flannel.