writing envelopes

i have begun to lose sense of what day it is, because every day just feels like everyday. two days ago i visited the body worlds exhibition. the last time they came was six years ago; i remember the exhibits were quite scary to me then. but now they're just preserved bodies, for people to look at. the horse and giraffe were gigantic, and they make us ponder our methods of survival.

then yesterday i had my first carrot cake, from coffee bean. the cream cheese frosting reminded me of the red velvet cake we ate at food for thought once.

today i was packing my room, and i dug out the crystals i grew a few years ago.
there's one copper(II) sulphate, which is supposed to be entirely blue but has some whitish bits because it has slowly been dehydrated over the years. (anhydrous copper sulphate is white!) anyhow, the shape of this crystal is triclinic, which isn't a very nice shape.

i like the other two crystals more. they are octahedral, and they're violet. (they just look black because they're very big. if you looked at a small crystal of this chemical through light, it'll let some light through and you'll see it as a deep violet, like a very dark amethyst.) the chemical is chrome alum, or potassium chromium double sulphate.
i like this photo. when u enlarge it and look closely, you can see the strings inside the crystal. those were the previous strings used to hang the crystal in the solution. they got embedded as the crystal grew, and sometimes they would break, so a new string was used, and then that would also get embedded over time...

now the rain outside sounds like the opening of 流泪眼望流泪眼.