Pointless... oh so pointless...

Sorry. I'm tired, I think I might be getting a cold, and my heat rack pizza lunch is making me want a nap.

The heat rack pizza was pretty good today, though. I must have caught them fairly fresh.

The pizza slices, that is.

And I didn't actually catch them. It was more of a point-at-and-pay-for situation.

I'm really tired. Seriously. Woke up this morning with a head full of snot (sounds like a country song) and I'm not sure I have the energy to care about my afternoon program.

Or blathering.

Anyone want to do my afternoon program?

Or blather?



Yeah, I thought so.

Ok, well, let's end with this then. Anyone who pays attention should know why. Anyone who doesn't? Just enjoy it.

Pointless... wait a sec. There's something in my teeth.

Carrot. Pieces of carrot from lunch.

It's kind of annoying.

Anyway...

This'll be short. It was a late lunch, and late lunches make me less likely to blather.

Something weird happened to me the other day, & I was going to mention it earlier but forgot. I ran out of plastic bags. Isn't that odd?

By plastic bags I mean plastic grocery bags, and like most people I've pretty much always had plenty around. I use them to take my garbage to the dumpster, and since I only take out a bag a week they tend to accumulate. The other day, though, I went to replace the bag under the sink and... I had no plastic bags.

Did you know that was even possible?

I've been getting much stricter about using my cloth bags when I shop, and obviously it's made a difference. Realising that I had no plastic bags was very much a yay me moment, because it meant I was practicing what I preach at work. Not that I'm terribly preachy, really, but we do try to get the whole small changes make a difference message out there. The fact that I had no plastic bags left in the apartment was a pretty clear illustration of concept.

But...

The fact that I had no plastic bags also meant that I had no way to take the garbage out. Outside of hauling an entire bin to the dumpster, of course. It may come to that, but at the moment I'm binless and bagless and it'll be pretty high on the irony meter if I have to go out and BUY plastic bags because I don't get plastic bags anymore when I BUY things.

Life is a very strange thing if you're in my brain.

And if you're in my brain you're probably a bit on the sore side because I have a slight headache just now.




Don't worry, though. After we're done typing we'll take some acetaminophen. You'll feel better soon.

Lunch?

Yes, I know that yesterday's post was about lunch (or lack of same). Today's different. Today I have a lunch, but I also have a lunch problem.

You see, I have a lunch, but I also have a program that goes from 11:30 to 1:30. What do I do? If I eat now I'll feel logy because I'm not really hungry, but if I don't eat now I'll be hungry later. However... if I wait and eat lunch after my program it'll be nearly 2 pm before I get to it, and by that time of the day (especially considering the fact that I usually leave by 4:30) there's not really much point in eating lunch even if you are hungry.

What to do, what to do.

If I don't eat my lunch it'll be ok in the fridge for a day. That would mean that I don't have to make a lunch tomorrow morning. That'd be all right.

But if I don't make a lunch tomorrow morning I'll be ready for work extra early (assuming we don't have a repeat of the spillage situation) and I won't know what to do with myself. And when I don't know what to do with myself I tend to get a little destructive.




Life shouldn't be this complicated, you know.

Of course, if I keep typing the whole thing will be decided for me because I won't have time to eat lunch before my program.

Kind of solves everything, really.




Ok then.

----------

Staying on the lunch front, I'm sure my two fans will be thrilled to know that for the second time in a row I fed the snakes and neither of them tried to eat the other.

Small victories are important.

And I think I've run out of stuff now.



Maybe I should have lunch.

Lunchless

Yep, lunchless. And it's making me cranky.

I wasn't planning to be lunchless, you see. I was going to bring my lunch just as I do nearly every day, even though the thought of bringing lunch is occasionally less than thrilling. I was, however, quite prepared to bring my lunch today.

That was before the disaster.

Ok, maybe not quite disaster, but it was bad timing. And annoying.

And it meant that I not only had to change my clothes, I had to rinse out the dirty ones (yes, THAT kind of disaster. Or annoyance) right away to prevent having to deal with the stains that no doubt would have been nicely set by the time I get home from work.

Thus, no lunch. And no jewellery. And a really bad hairdo, but that part doesn't matter so much since I'm currently wearing a hat anyway.

The hat was necessary to keep the bugs out of my hair.

And yes, that makes sense if you work at a nature centre. Occasionally you do things that have the possible result of leaving bugs in your hair.

Unless you wear a hat, of course.

And none of this is helping with the lunch situation.

I'm in a bit of a pickle (mmm. Pickles), to be honest. I could go out and buy lunch once some of these other people are back from their lunch breaks. That'd give me a late (and likely junky) lunch, and it would make the afternoon seem shorter. And more useless.

On the other hand, if I just stick with the granola bar I stole from my emergency briefcase stash (no, I don't have an emergency briefcase. Just an emergency stash) and call that lunch, I could probably go home a little earlier than I normally do.

That'd be two days in a row.

That'd be ok.

I think starvation may be winning out over fast food, then. Just as well. There's only so much heat rack pizza a person should have in a month, and I've already made one stop there.

Guess I should stop typing and go back to work then. Lunchless work. And no one in the office to whinge to, since Wheat had a meeting.

A lunch meeting.






Mmm. Pickles.

Pointless photo of the day:

That might be it for the day, actually. I'm kind of tired and crabby, and even though I do have a few things to say I'm pretty sure they'll come out completely wrong in my current (as opposed to currant. Er... see pointless photo, which I upped the contrast on on purpose because it struck my fancy at the time) mood.

And that, boys and girls, is a perfect example of why no one missed me on the weekend. What's to miss when there's not much to see in the first place?

I'm going to go sit over there now.

Where?

In the grumpy corner, of course.





Go away.

Again from under the Maple tree

Ever had one of those days when you can't for the life of you think of what it was you were going to say?


Me, too.

I must vacuum

So you get these instead because, seriously, who wants to vacuum. Interesting colours, don't you think? And (never start a sentence with "and") interestinger is the fact this was taken in broad daylight but under our formidable Maple tree so the background non-colour also becomes notable. Yes, in my world, black can be a nifty colour... er, non-colour - oh you decide.

So Alberta is busy I understand from the last post. Looks like you're stuck with reading this, then. Well you're not stuck exactly but you do seem to be reading. Hmm. And it's so nice outside.

Why don't you all go out and play? How many times do I have to tell you that the sunshine is .... oh. Sorry.

For a minute there, I became somebody's mother.

Still. Run along now.

By the way, the wind did take the right-most tulip out of the frame .. and I did take another shot which was perfect, so of course used this one as we simply can't have perfect. Good character builder, you know.

You got a problem with that?

You got a problem?

Really?

Come a little closer and I'll give you a problem upside the head.

----------

Ok, yeah, it's been a bit of a day. Or a bit of an afternoon, more like. The morning was pretty good and all naturalist-y, though. I went out on the trail to check something and got completely sidetracked by the fact that the male Ruddy Ducks are displaying out on the pond, the Red-Winged Blackbirds (find your own links for the rest of this ramble) are fighting over nest sites, the Muskrats are foraging, the Coots are doing... cooty things...

Well, you never know with coots.

Yeah, it was a nice morning out on the lake. It's nice to get paid for watching the wildlife.

Unfortunately, you have to come back to the office and do office things (as opposed to the aforementioned cooty things) eventually.

Oh, I should explain before I get much further that I've been a little busy at our sister site for the past couple of mornings, so I was away from the computer and didn't really have the time to blather. Thanks to the Toronto office for taking over, although I'm not sure I ever bothered to explain to her exactly why she was.

I likely won't be around to manage a weekend blather at all, as well. Or one for the next weekend. Who says it's only the wildlife that's busy in spring?





Hey... maybe if I keep not blogging, my two fans will actually miss me.

Nah. That would imply that the blog is something other than pointless, and we all know that if that happens the blog will officially turn into a pumpkin.

Not that I have anything against pumpkins per se... although I can't admit to being terribly fond of orange.








This post has sort of lost its way somewhere along the line, hasn't it?

Ah well. Maybe I'll just let it continue on its dozy way and stop trying to type after it. Tomorrow may or may not happen (on the blog, I mean. I don't know about the rest of the world), Sunday probably won't, and I'd say something about missing me but I'm honestly not sure what bizarre form of warping in the spacetime continuum occurs when a blog turns into a pumpkin so I won't even go there.

Er...

Yeah. That.

Pat ... Pat, is that you?

You can tell it's going to be a weird day when .... the subject line and the photograph are just there, not explained & left for you to figure out. Oh I bet you can.

Gosh I'm all tingly and can't wait to see what happens next in my day.

Yes, that's an exaggeration but it is damn early you know.

One of those

Oh I know what she's thinking. Any post that starts with a subject line like that generally has the Alberta contingent filling in the blanks because sometimes I take what I think are worthwhile shots of things that I can't quite put a name or even a species to.

Well ha and ha. Tis a red-winged blackbird. On a telephone pole. In a parking lot. Miles from marsh or any sort of ... well, damp land, as I can't really say wetland in this part of the city. Oh and I like the telephone pole. I'm just sayin'.

And may I say it most certainly has been damp land of late. Enough with the precipitation already but do leave it at these temperatures. Um, whomever is in charge.

Pointless photo of the day:

And that's all you're getting.
My head hurts.

Pointless. Yep, I predict pointless.

Ok, first off? There is nothing wrong with wearing blue striped socks and black suede slip-ons with capris. Absolutely nothing wrong.

All right?

So maybe there is something wrong with that. I don't care. Shut up.

I and my striped socks were doing the rounds of the local nurseries with my father yesterday, along with fully one half of Canada (the other half? Camping). He wanted perennials; I wanted NOTHING since I still haven't gotten around to cleaning out my planter boxes (and don't blame me for that. I like gardening, but I hate pigeons. It's become absolutely disheartening in the past couple of years that before I can go out and play in the dirt I have to deal with a winter's worth of what the crap machines leave behind. Takes some of the fun out of things. A lot of the fun out of things), but somehow I managed to come back with a dahlia anyway.

It's nice. And maybe it'll give me the final kick in the rear needed to do something about my balcony.

Or... it'll die in the pot before I do anything.

But probably not. I don't usually go in for plant abuse.

Anyway. The past few days of warm weather have certainly put spring into overdrive around here. The tulips are tulipping, the tree swallows are (NOT swallowing trees. Don't be silly) deciding whether to use one of the nest boxes in the yard, and the ladybird beetles will soon be having sex.

Yes, you read that right.

It'll be time once again to add to my collection of beetle porn. I like to take photos of ladybirds getting it on, you see.

What?

There is nothing wrong with taking pointless photos of beetles having sex. Absolutely nothing wrong.

All right?

So maybe there is something wrong with that. I don't care. Shut up.






Ok, now I'm confused. Didn't I already say all of that in another context?

All right, all right, so maybe I don't specifically aim to take photos of beetles having sex. If they happen to be having sex while I'm taking photos I'll snap away, but I don't really seek it out.

I do seek out the beetles, though.

And the spiders.

And a few other creepy crawly things.

For those not up on their history of pointless photography on the blog, I spend a lot of time trying to fool my autofocus camera into thinking that it can see small things that it doesn't think it should be able to. Plant parts. Weird details of buildings.

Invertebrates.

It's all just part of the game, really. Let's explode the camera's brain. And maybe while we're doing it we'll be lucky enough to come up with a perspective that my two fans weren't expecting.

It doesn't happen very often, but the beauty of digital photography is that you can just keep trying until the one time in three thousand that you capture something worth looking at.

This is all by way of warning you that with spring comes added weirdness in the pointless photographs that live on the blog.

I bet you can't wait.

----------

If anyone's wondering why you were treated to so many pointless photos today, it's because I'm about to do my usual long weekend trick of disappearing from the internet for a day and won't be posting tomorrow. The Toronto office is welcome to fill the space if she so desires, but if she doesn't you can go back to the top of the post and stare at my feet for a while.

That's assuming you aren't already gardening or camping, of course.

Later, all.

Pointless photo of the day:

Can't say I'm in the mood to blog today.


Er... so I won't.

Say it OR bother to blather, that is.

I need to go out and take some new photos anyway.

Line

I should make it clear that this photo was from last spring. I'll learn this weekend whether or not the deer have allowed my father to have any tulips this year.

I have a bit of a thing for tulips, lilies, and other flowers of that type. It's the lines, you see. Good, strong lines. Lines that let you play around with shading and all kinds of weird things if you happen to be drawing flowers.

I do that sometimes. In fact, I've really got to get off my lazy behind and start doing it again soon. We've got this thing coming up at work and... oh, more details as it gets closer and I start to panic about it. Let's just say for the moment that I really should start drawing again.

There's a lot of fun to be had with more complex-looking flowers, of course. I'm a big fan of flowers in general. Strong lines simply strike a chord for me, that's all.

I think it started when I began to see things in a more abstract fashion. It's a little odd when you hit the point in your... oh, shall we say cultural maturity? Nah, that doesn't sound right. Far too uppity. Maybe I'll start that thought again and say that I never used to like abstracts in art -- I was always much more impressed by hyper-realism -- but somewhere along the line my brain figured out a way to appreciate the type of interpretation of the world that you can only find in abstracts.

Some abstracts.

I'm not ever going to manage to become a fan of painting three stripes on a canvas and then selling it for millions of dollars. Call me a philistine, but I have my limits on appreciation.

Anyway, I started this entry late and I really should get back to work. Let's cut things extra-short then and say that strong lines in flowers seem to give the brain scope to manoeuvre. For me, at least. I can't speak for anyone else.

Reading this back, apparently I can't even speak for myself today. I'll maybe try to give this topic a more thorough go on the weekend.

Pointless something

It's always something, isn't it?

This probably won't go well, by the way. I'm late because of a program, I'm not in the mood for my lunch because of the program (ok, that and the doughnut. Erm, and the bag of chips), and I have a bandage on my finger that's kind of screwing up my typing.

I could take the bandage off, I suppose, since I only put it on to keep the dirt out of a little cut while I did the program that made me late for my lunch (you remember the program? I mentioned it just a few sentences ago). If I took the bandage off I'd probably end up getting all kinds of leftover adhesive on my keyboard, though, so I'm a bit torn about the whole thing.

Is it worse to be annoyed by a bandage on your finger or by the fact that your finger keeps sticking to your keyboard?

I just don't know.

They're all speaking (varying degrees of) French at the next desk right now, by the way. It's somewhat bogglingly entertaining, and definitely distracting.

Like I needed help being distracted, really.




Come to think of it, I can't even remember if I started out with an actual topic now. The post title definitely isn't helping. Pointless something. So did I have a real something in mind, or was it the usual pointlessness?

I just don't know.




Hmmm. Deja vu.

I'm going now. And so is my finger.

And so is the bandage.

And the lunch? Is still in the fridge. Doesn't seem much point to it by this time of the day anyway.

The problem with wearing a hat...

... is that you're stuck with it for the rest of the day. And no, today's pointless photo is not of a hat.

I didn't have a photo of a hat.

Will you stop looking at the photo for a moment so that I can talk about hats?





Ok then.

I'm sitting here at the desk in my work-logo ball cap (and THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is why there is no photo of a hat. The hat has a logo on it. The logo identifies where I work. Now, I'm under no illusion that it would be difficult to figure out where I work -- Whomever knows that I've left enough clues about on the blog -- but if you're that desperate to know where I work then I think you should at least have to work for it yourself a little), and although it'll annoy the crap out of me I'll be wearing my work-logo ball cap for the rest of the day.

Otherwise?

Hat head.

Dun dun duuun...

All right, so there's not so much terribly wrong with a bit of hat head, but in my case hat head is hat head in the extreme. I have fine hair (there's lots of it, but it's fine), and putting on a hat has the effect of forcefully plastering my hair to the sides of my head in various abstract squiggles.

A very good look, and one often featured in the pages of Vogue I'm sure.

Anyway, once I put on a hat the hat stays. Especially if it's a ball cap.






I'm not so much into ball caps, but I'm even less into sunburns.

I found out accidentally on the weekend that my skin is not yet ready this season to go hatless in the sun. I was out for a couple of programs, the weather was mild, and I didn't really think anything of the fact that I'd spent a few hours out unprotected until I got home and looked at myself in the mirror.

More to the point, I looked at myself in the mirror and discovered a line of red, angry-looking scalp in amongst the brown (and, er, grey) hair.

Yep, idiot woman here managed to sunburn the PART IN HER HAIR. The rest of my skin was fine, but I sunburned my part.

Geez.

How long have I been doing this job, again?

Geez.




Oh, sorry. I said that already.

Ah well. I did remember the hat for this morning's program. That's undoubtedly a good thing even if it means that I'm stuck looking like a dweeb as I wear the hat indoors for the rest of the freaking day.

I'm almost prepared to put up with the hat head at this point, but not quite.




File this entire post under things you didn't really need to know, I guess. Of course, we could always file the entire blog under things you didn't really need to know.

What can I say? The place got its name for a reason.

My nose is running

Yes, thanks for that rather unnecessary and completely disgusting information, Dee.

It was the noodles, you see.

I was too lazy (and a bit too sleepless, unfortunately) to pack a lunch today, so I resorted to insta-rice-noodles-in-a-box-with-pseudo-Thai-spice-fake-style-food. They're not really too spicy, but they're juuust hot enough that my sinuses are attempting to drain.

Actually? That's not really a bad thing.

I'm just not sure why I felt the need to tell my two fans all about it, that's all.

----------

So, the particular form of insomnia we (me and alllll of the voices) seem to be enjoying this week is the one where I get to sleep all right but then decide to be awake a few hours later. And then an hour or so after that. And then... oh, but I imagine you're getting the picture by now.

It's an ever-so-slightly fuzzy picture if you happen to be in my brain.

It also leads to one of two blather situations. Either I do nothing but blather, or I find it hard to blather at all.

And which are we stuck with at the moment? Well, see yesterday's post. Or Saturday's. Apparently I'm letting the pictures say a thousand words right now.

Erm... except right now, that is. Right now I'm trying to force myself to blather, and you can see how useless the results seem to be.




Ah well. Can't say I didn't attempt, at least.

----------

One last thing, and this is directed at the t.v. club: Wheat has promised to pick up wine gums on his way back from lunch.

Hands up all who are expecting Wheat to pick up wine gums?

Really?

I would have thought you people would have a little more faith in him.

Pointless photo of the day:

That's all you're getting. I'm tired.

Blah blah blah t.v. club blah blah blah... yep, by now you should be able to fill in the blanks yourselves, I'm thinking.

See you tomorrow.

Lazy Sunday brain

... and so this is all you get for today.

We've found a new place for the dogs to frolic and this new place has a pretty nifty river for the pups to swim but I was concerned that you, gentle readers, were feeling that your very steps were being dogged (yes, I kill me) ... so they were here; they're just not here.

If you get right into the photo, you can smell the damp spring earth around the river; hear the red-winged blackbird off to the left and hear the water rushing past the rocks.

Really. Ain't that what it's at least somewhat about.

Pointless photo and that's all you're getting from me of the day:

My head hurts

I'm blogging a bit earlier than usual today because otherwise it might not get done, but as you can see from the post title (you do read the titles, right?) I'm in headache mode and I'm not sure anything worth reading will make it into the blather.

Not that that's any different from any other day, but whatever.

It's been kind of a rough week on the body. I've had a couple of bad allergic reactions (well, not bad as in get-the-epi-pen. Just bad as in I-really-don't-feel-well. Didn't want anyone to worry unnecessarily there), and it's messed with my system enough that today I woke up with an extremely unhappy head.

This is going to make this afternoon's program a real treat, but it's not like I've never made an ass of myself in front of a group of people while secretly having a headache before.

Secretly to them, I mean. I know you people already know that I have a headache, because I just told you.

Anyway.

Much to my shock and amazement I've been able to get a few things done this morning already, and I may even get a few more things accomplished before the brain conks out completely.

I'm expecting the conking out part to happen approximately twenty-seven minutes past one this afternoon, when I'm approximately twenty-seven minutes into my Grade One program.

Yeah, this ought to be good.

----------

Blogging may or may not happen this weekend because I've got other stuff on the go. If you find yourself going into withdrawal you'll just have to wake up the Toronto office I guess. Or, you know, find something else to do.

Urgh.

Should I say something snotty about the Toronto office's failure to blog yesterday?

Nah.

I don't have to be a five-year-old ALL of the time. Just some of it.

----------

Today's pointless photo illustrates my father's attempt to save at least some of the tulips from the local deer population. Will it work? I'm betting no, but there's no harm in trying.

----------

Today's post title illustrates that I should have skipped the onion rings.






Sorry. Should I be explaining that?

I stopped for a fast-food lunch today, which is something I don't normally do. I'd been craving this particular hamburger for a while, though, and since I was on that side of town anyway and the weather's crappy I thought it'd be a good excuse to hop on the Fat and Sodium Express.

And yes, crappy weather counts as an excuse to have a burger.

The burger wasn't really the problem in the end. It was the onion rings that had me regretting my noon choice. I didn't need the onion rings, and I shouldn't have ordered the onion rings.

Not that there was any wrong with the onion rings per se, you understand. It's just that when it comes to onion rings I should always remember that I'm better off sharing an order with someone else. A few onion rings make me happy. A lot of onion rings... well, see post title. On my way out of the restaurant I realised that I could have got the same effect by eating the parking lot gravel, and it would have been cheaper.

Except for the part where it wasn't a gravel parking lot. Never mind. I think you get the point.

Onion rings and I have always had a bit of a strange relationship. When I was a kid I liked the taste of onion rings but I couldn't stand the texture of the slimey bits of onion that lurked inside.

Yeah, I get a little weird about textures.

Anyway, the way I used to solve that problem was by pulling the long, snakey onion pieces out of the rings and throwing them away.

I know, I know. All that's left after that is onion-flavoured deep-fried batter. It was the part I liked, so it was the part I ate.

I don't do it anymore, in case you wondered.

I bet you're all relieved to hear that, too.





That's it for today. I've got other things that need doing.

Like digesting that parking lot gravel.

Pointless... oooh. It's like deja vu all over again.

I was just about to type pointless photo of the day and then mutter something about not having anything or not having time or whatever.

Then I remembered that I've already done that a few times this month.

And then I remembered that there hasn't actually been much month yet, and that maybe it's a little early in the career of this version of the blog to be starting each and every post with pointless photo of the day.

None of this has helped me come up with anything to blather about, though.

I've really got nothing.

Nothing about nothing.






Nothing about Yogi Berra, even.

Google it yourself if you didn't get where that fits in with anything.






Should I stop typing now, do you think?

I do.




Let's go with that thought, then.

Pointless photo of the day:

That'll have to be it. I'm tired and I'm kind of busy anyway.

Oh, and you can insert something snotty about the t.v. club here if you want to. I'm sure you all know the drill by now.

Pointless photo of the day:

I'm thinking that this might be it for today. The pollen's apparently getting the better of me to the point where my (admittedly low-grade) headache is making me a little grumpy.

Not cranky, no. It's not bad enough for cranky. More a sort of mildly annoyed.






I could talk about today's photo, I suppose. Or at least identify it somewhat. That would make it slightly less pointless, but it would provide a little bit of blather at least.

It's a leaf bud from one of my father's lilac bushes. There are lilacs around two sides of the yard, and they're trimmed fairly tall. Sort of a living fence, I guess.

I like lilacs, but if you want to be my friend please don't bring me a lilac bouquet. The flowers look so much better left on the plant, and I think the smell is a bit too strong to be indoors anyway.

Not many people seem to agree with me on that, I know. I cringe when I open the door at the workplace and notice the joy of the year's first bundle of lilac flowers gracing the front counter. A person "notices" it by nose first, of course, and since most of my coworkers don't seem to mind being overpowered by essence of shrub I generally don't say anything.

I'm just thankful that the flowers live on the front counter and that I don't hang out there much, that's all.

Anyway.

To make up for a somewhat bland post I'll give you a two-fer on the pointless photos. This one's Prairie Crocus, aka Pasque Flower. I'll likely post a shot with open flowers tomorrow, but today you're getting this one because I liked the way it showed the fuzziness of the leaf shoots and flower.

And, as a bonus, these particular flowers aren't likely to show up stinkily on the front counter at work.




Later, all.

Grows on you, doesn't it?

Er, not the pointless photo. Or the bergenia, for that matter.

At least I hope bergenia doesn't grow on you. That'd be a problem.

----------

This will, I hope, be short. I have other things to do yet this morning. Here we go:

Want to know something odd? One of my absolute favourite songs (and it has been for a long time) is Feelin' Alright. Um, ok. So that part's not odd. The odd part is that the version I like is Joe Cocker's cover rather than Traffic's original (although I like that too, actually).

Not quite getting why that's odd yet? Can't say I'm surprised, really. I'm having a little trouble with focussing today.

The odd comes in more when you consider that I never particularly liked Joe Cocker. He seemed hard to watch and even harder to listen to. In fact, I'm pretty sure that if it hadn't been for Artie Butler's amazing piano work on the track sucking me in I probably never would have given it a second thought. Not exactly my kind of music at the time.

The time being when I was in my early teens.

And what was my kind of music at the time? Oh, I'm not sure I want to tell you. Let's just say that, like a fair number of teenagers, it took a while for my tastes to move beyond basic pop music. I did have a bit of a thing for Billy Joel, though. I prefer to think of that as the highlight of my teen listening, but you can think whatever you want to. It's not like it's going to change my teenage self anyway.

My current self, speaking musically at least, is a fair bit different. Eclectic is a fair word. You'll find me listening to jazz, blues, rock, big band, classical... well, it's probably quicker to list what I don't listen to, but since I don't want any of my two fans to take umbrage if I happen to not like something that they really enjoy I don't think I'll bother with it.

So what happened to expand the horizons? Lots of things, really. Growing up, moving into university rez and being exposed to different music, becoming more willing to give different things a try, gaining experience performing in different styles; that sort of thing. I think the biggest catalyst was simply time, however.

Time to hear things.

Time to listen.

Time to figure out the merits of music that maybe didn't strike a chord (no pun intended) initially. Time to allow things to become familiar.

There's a good feeling in the familiar, you know. It's one of the reasons we tend to sing along with the radio when an old favourite comes on. It gives you a sense of place, comfort, or even belonging. The music sits right once you've given yourself a chance to get to know it.

And you'd be surprised what kinds of things can grow on you if you give them a chance.

How else can I explain the fact that my Essential Joe Cocker disc (google it yourself if you're interested. I've linked enough in the past couple of days) is so frequently in the the CD player these days?

Yep. It's pretty amazing what giving something a chance can do, all right.







I had to find a way to end the blather with an all right because, as much as I like the song I mentioned above, having to type alright is awfully hard on my OLF soul. The things I do for you people.

And so much for a short post...

LinkS of the day:

Guess which part of this website I like best. Go on, guess.

I'm not going to tell you, so you may as well guess.

Oh, and I really think that those folks should get together with these guys. Match made in heaven, no?

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Ah, what the heck. I was going to actually type something here, but now I'm all in linky mood. Let's have another.
And another.

Ok, hang on a sec. I just need to go change the post title slightly...

Aaand we're good.

So... here.
And here.

Er... no theme, in case you were wondering.

Let's have another, though.
And another.
And another, of course.

Are we on a roll, or what?

More links!
I demand more links!
Liiinks!!!

That last one was quite a lot of links, really.

I'm getting a little bit of weird fatigue at this point, you know.

So what else?

Oh, how about this?





And honestly, if that isn't enough to entertain you by now I just don't care.

Have a good rest-of-Friday.

Pointless photo of the day:

The Toronto office will no doubt be telling me I'm late posting.

Yeah, yeah, whatever. Occasionally I have to work, you know.

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Ok... to be fair, work this morning wasn't too work-y. I was out on the trails with a coworker, and even though that's part of the job (it is, after all, a nature centre. We all have to go outside sometime) it never really feels like it. Going for a walk, checking out how spring is coming along, listening to the birds, watching the butterflies (yes, there were butterflies. Mourning Cloaks, in fact), not breathing...

Oh yes. I bet you thought I'd forgotten to complain about allergy season. Well OF COURSE NOT. It's always fun to go up the trail panting and wheezing because the poplar trees are secretly trying to strangle you. Everyone should try it now and again.

[/bitchery]

Anyway, it was a nice morning (gorgeous, if you consider that just a day or two ago they were predicting it would be 2C and wet snow) and nice to get away from the desk. Breathing is, after all, overrated.

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Today's pointless photo (and I suppose I should have mentioned this earlier) is not of the walk today. It was taken a while ago, in fact. It was "proof" that the mule deer are gradually taking over my father's yard. The reason I didn't post it earlier is that a while after I took this photo the mule deer showed up in person.

Oh, come on. You remember.

Anyway, those shots made me decide that a simple print (and a guest role for my left foot) wasn't all that exciting.

So why use it now?

No idea.

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And finally, an update on yesterday's update. I got home yesterday to find the bathroom in shambles yet again, but with one major difference: the walls -- ALL of the walls -- had a fresh coat of paint on them. Not just patch-filling, no. Could it be that the management has actually hired a contractor who knows how to do something other than a half-assed job? Shock! Amazement!

They're still on notice, though.

I'm not letting them off the hook that easily.