Cats

Cats are weird.

And if you think that you may vaguely remember this photo, that's possible. I might have used it before. I was too lazy to get out the camera just now (when I decided to blather about the cats) to take a new one, so I'm recycling.

That's Max on the left and Penny on the right. Or, Smack on the left and Lumpy on the right. They answer to either. Or at least I call them either. They don't seem to mind.

Because they're cats, some of you are saying. Don't let that fool you. Cats know their names; sometimes they just don't care that you're calling them, that's all.

Technically these are my father's cats because I can't have pets in my apartment, but since I'm here pretty much every weekend I'm considered part of the service crew as well. If Lumpy demands a shoulder ride around the house or Smack wants his belly rubbed at too freaking early in the morning, I'm the one on call.

It's funny how cats decide that different people are good for different things. Penny knows that I'm the one to go to for shoulder rides, and if she wants to sit with someone she'll sit beside my father but on me. She's only a part-time lap cat, I guess. And as far as Max goes, my father's the nighttime person and I'm the morning person. Max has his set rounds. He also knows that I can be suckered into filling his treat ball in the morning if it's empty, while the father figure generally can't be.

Hmmm. Let's sidetrack for a moment from the cats' general weirdness and talk about the treat ball (which, before anyone says anything about the use of too many treats, I should tell you that we fill with regular cat food. It's just a different cat food from what's in their dishes, so the cats think it's treats. Works for all of us). I said it was his treat ball because it originally was, but I suppose it's their ball now. You see, when we got the ball years ago Max figured it out pretty quickly. Bat the ball with your paw; food comes out. Penny, on the other hand... well, Penny's a bit... shall we say floaty? That'll work. Penny knew that there was food in the ball, she'd watch Max get it out, she'd snap up any of the leftovers on the floor... but she never really got the concept of the ball itself. "Come on, Penny. Hit the ball. Food will come out. You can do it." Her answer? Usually a blank stare and a meep. Well, later a maow. It took a while for her full voice to develop.

Anyway.

One day (years later. Literally years) Penny nudged the ball a tiny bit with her nose. She may have been trying to lick it or something, I don't know. Whatever she was aiming for, the ball moved and food came out.

It was Penny's eureka moment.

Now poor Max has to share his secret food stash. He still uses his paw and Penny still uses her nose, but they're both equally capable of getting food out of a plastic ball. A useful skill to have, don't you think?

I suppose I should take a pointless photo of Max and his ball, because he really does have finesse with the thing. And then you'd be able to see (getting back to weirdness) that he currently has no eyebrows.

I have no idea why. Something must have irritated his eyes and he overgroomed, maybe. All I know is that when I came here last weekend the cat had no hair above his eyes. None on the lids, either. It's starting to grow back now, but he looks pretty freaky.

Appropriate for the day, I suppose.

Happy Halloween, everyone. Stay away from weird cats.




Which, I suppose, would be all of them...

Out, damned song

What? It's Shakespeare.

Well, almost Shakespeare.

Oh, if you honestly don't know just google Macbeth Act V Scene I. And the only reason she wasn't damning a song is that she was too worried about murder to care about earworms.

And before I go any further, the photo is COMPLETELY pointless. Don't wear yourself out looking for hidden meanings.

I need to keep this short(ish) today because my wrist brace is completely buggering up my typing and I don't need to give the backspace key THAT much exercise. And why a wrist brace, Dee? Old injury that hurts sometimes, that's all. Compression helps, but it also means my wrist/hand balance is totally off at the moment. And, apparently, the heel of my hand keeps hitting that Windows button on the keyboard (does anyone ever really use that thing?) without my feeling it. I've found myself in places today that I never even knew existed, computerily speaking.

Anyway.

I'm a bad one for earworms because I have a combination of a pretty good musical memory and an irritatingly olf mind. Once my brain latches on to a tune it's really, really, really hard to get that tune to take a break. There are a couple of tricks that work a bit (Monty Python's Traffic Lights song being one of them, unfortunately. I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe because the musical brain can't tolerate it for too long?), but for the most part I tend to hang on to a song until something even more insistent (or is that persistent?) comes along.

Right now? Well, I'd be happy to get rid of the Souling Song any time soon. Seems an odd choice, I know... to anyone who doesn't watch Letterman. You see, Sting performed his version of the song the other night (which was probably completely boggling to his North American audience -- most of whom would have never heard of soul cakes -- even though the song itself is very appropriate for this time of year), and while it was very pleasant and well put together it does NOT NEED TO STILL BE IN MY HEAD.

Just saying.

Geez, there have been a lot of parentheses in this post.





I need to sing about traffic lights for a while now, ok?

Ok.

Now the funny thing is...

... that when I haven't really had the chance to blog for a while I sort of forget that I have a blog.

This ought to be good, then. What to talk about?

Well, I suppose I could mention that since I haven't taken too many depressing autumn photos (or even non-depressing autumn photos) you're going to have to put up with some of the stuff that's been sitting on my nerdstick for a while. I thought today's web might be at least a little Halloween appropriate, though. Or at least that's going to be my excuse.

Hmmm. Kind of slow so far, don't you think? What else, then?

I could, I guess, tell you that the crud has attacked the office to the point where the first words I heard when I came in this morning were "don't touch anything! We just disinfected your desk". That sounds promising, yes? Yep, a good part of the staff is off being generally infectious. And when I protested that I'd already had the crud (for a whole fricking month, if you remember), Wheat gave his opinion that this particular crud is a different crud.

Great. Just great. It doesn't help that I spent yesterday morning doing programs at a school, aka The Home of All Things Viral. Well, maybe not videos. But you see where I'm going here. Send a person who seems to catch every damned thing going around to a school -- where EVERYTHING goes around -- and it's not too hard to predict the results.

Sigh.

I felt like I should be bathing in hand sanitizer by the time I got back.

Speaking of which (hand sanitizer, not bathing in hand sanitizer), it's definitely proliferating around here. Part of that's a general OH&S flu season precaution, but part of it is, I'm sure, the general media fascination with OMG WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE IF WE COUGH/SNEEZE/TOUCH ANYONE/TOUCH OUR MOUTHS/TOUCH ANYTHING stories. Not that I'm against precautions. I think you'll find that I mentioned just above that I seem to have caught pretty much everything going around this year, and I'd be very happy to have that stop. It's just... there comes a point, doesn't there? There comes a point where you just have to trust that your immune system will do it's best to keep you going.

And also, more worryingly, there comes a point where fatigue sets in and people stop listening to warnings and then stop taking precautions altogether.

There's only so many times a person can cry wolf, you know.

And do I think we're hearing too much wolf right now? Oh, I don't know. I'd make a joke about it just being coyotes or foxes, but coyotes definitely don't work in that particular punchline at the moment.

And how freaky was that? Poor girl.

Anyway, back to work now.




And, hopefully, back to more regular posting.

Be vewy vewy quiet...

Yep. The blog IS being vewy quiet. And will probably continue to be for another day or so. Try not to miss me too much.

Ah, headache

The pointless photo is of the trees outside my apartment at night.

Oh yeah, and the moon's in there somewhere too.

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There are many things that my mother left me, some good and some bad.

In the bad file would be her neck.

Well, not literally her neck, of course. That'd be weird. She did, however, leave me the genetic capability of carrying on the family bad neck, and I can't say that I'm especially grateful for it.

I had a bit of an off-night overall, and unfortunately that off-night must have led to sleeping in a bad position. The result, as was obvious as soon as I tried to get up, is that I'm not turning terribly well to one side at the moment.

Yay, stupid neck.

It's annoying not being able to move your head properly, of course, but that's not the worst part about the neck thing. The problem is that over the course of the day gravity starts to get a hand in and compresses things in the wrong position, and that leads to headaches.

Like I need more headaches in my life.

Anyway, I guess this all decides what I'll be doing for the rest of the day. The drive back home will be uncomfortable but manageable, and then I'll just sprawl out on the bed and try not to move in the wrong fashion. Oh, and hope that when I go to sleep tonight things decide to shift in a good direction rather than a worse direction.

It's always a bit of a crap shoot when the neck's not happy.

There must be something out there in silly video land to make me a little more happy, right? Let's see what I can come up with...

Ok, how about this? You have to follow it with this, though, or it won't make as much sense.

Going now.

WHAT POST???

And how pointless is this photo?

Yeah, I know. It's been a pretty inconsistent week for the blather. I've got a feeling that this post will continue the trend.

It's not that I don't have thoughts, you know. I do. They're just on the weird side today, that's all.

For example?

Well, how about "American" cheese? I honestly felt like I could write an entire post about processed cheese and how boggling it is to me that a country which is capable of making some decent cheeses chooses to name FAKE cheese after itself. Not that I'm a total snob about processed cheese -- it definitely has its place in my life -- but if the best you can do is name pseudocheese after your country I do have some questions.

Like... why do Americans insist on calling back bacon Canadian bacon when we Canadians don't?

Yep, this line of thought could have easily become a whole post. Could have, except that I've already posted it.

See? Even my pointless thoughts go around in circles.

So what does that leave me? Not a helluva lot, to be honest. And my usual pointless game site was down this morning so I ended up playing Plants vs Zombies instead (no, I'm not going to link to it. You're all just as handy with the google thing as I am, I'd imagine) and... I think I may have game brain now.

And I need to think of something to doodle that fits the word fast, apparently. Seeing as there's nothing fast about me and my doodles, this may be more of a challenge than someone with game brain can handle.

Ah well.

I need to go put stuff in the dryer now. Catch you later.

[/lame nonsense]

But I don't like it...

This is the time of year where normally I'd be posting photos of autumn colour (you know, leaves. And other stuff that perhaps isn't leaves. No, most likely leaves) in a futile attempt to prove that looking forward to winter isn't depressing me. HOWEVER. This year's early freeze caught most of the plants by surprise, and as a result most of the leaves that are still on the trees are nothing but brown.

I refuse to post a bunch of photos of brown leaves.

She says, after posting a photo of brown leaves. That's different, though. They were from last year, if I remember right.

No, really. That does too make it different.

----------

Yesterday found me manning a booth for the Centre a couple of hours. Normally I don't mind that too much, but there were two problems I had to deal with this time around. The first was that I'd had very little sleep (explains yesterday's non-post, don't you think?) which made it hard to look terribly enthusiastic about the place I was supposed to be representing. Although I did try. The second? Was the clowns.

I hate clowns.

Ok, I don't actually hate clowns, but I really don't like them much. And when I'm tired I tend to get a bit whiny about the things that I don't like. I'm reasonably sure that these particular clowns sensed that in me, because they pretty much left me alone. I hear from my coworkers who also did shifts at the booth that they were pestered by the clowns, but the clowns hardly even tried with me.

Smart move, clowns. I don't like clowns.

There are other things I don't like, of course.

Things like the banging and thumping that the apartment's heating system makes when they turn the radiators back on for the season. That's great.

I also don't like Twitter much. I think it's kind of annoying and trivial. Not that I'm not annoying and trivial too, but at least I know that the vast majority of my annoying and trivial isn't at all interesting to the public at large so I keep it to myself. I figure that my two fans get plenty of annoying and trivial right here on the blog.

Let's see... what else?

Well, I don't like green peppers. Or politics. Or pigeons. And if you're thinking that one of these things is not like the other things, then you're right. The green peppers really didn't belong with the pigeons or politics.

This is all kind of negative today, don't you think? I should probably do something about that. On the old blog I once posted a list of... I guess it was about fifty or so things that I liked. No theme to them or anything; it was just things that I liked. Don't bother looking for it, by the way. I deleted it when I changed the old blog into Doodle Central.

I should probably do another one of those lists.

But not right now.






I like this, though.

And I like that this became an actual post when I wasn't really intending it to...

Nothing

Yeah, I've got nothing. As was probably made evident by the fact that I haven't bothered to post for a couple of days.

So... photo, I guess. Sunflower becomes bird feeder. And, um, bird toilet as well.

Yep.

I'm going to stop typing now, ok?

Wild wild life

Sorry (well, not really) for the post title. My two fans should know by now that just about everything in life is a song cue for me.

Um, anyway. Now that we've had our Talking Heads break, let's talk about the photos. That's right, today we're going to TALK about the photos even if it means that the blog turns into a pumpkin.

They're a bit fuzzy because they're zoomed shots, but you should still be able to tell that the top one shows a squirrel coming out of my father's squirrel feeder, and the second one is the same squirrel just before he started swearing at me.

The demonic eyes are just because of the camera flash... although I have to admit that I likes me some demonic red squirrels.

I bought the feeder for my father last year. The idea is that the squirrel goes into the hole, then into the jar for the peanuts. Red squirrels are generally pretty good at robbing bird feeders, so a purpose-built feeder really shouldn't be a problem for the squirrels to figure out.

Well, my father put up the feeder last November. And it sat. And sat. And sat. And finally this squirrel figured it out.

About two months ago.

Yep.

No one ever claimed that squirrels were especially smart.

I had another wildlife encounter in my father's yard this morning, but no pictures this time because it was raining a bit so I didn't take the camera with me. About... oh, I guess nine o'clock or so I looked out the bedroom window as I was folding my bed up and noticed a mule deer coming into the garden for breakfast. The menu today, if you're interested (or even if you're not) was sunflower seeds from the old seed heads, then leftover apples from one of the trees, then a combo of Mountain Ash (that'd be Rowan for those of you across the pond) berries and leaves, then a quick check of the bird feeder to see if anything interesting was spilled, and then... well, she moved to a part of the yard that I couldn't get a good look at through the window so I went outside to see what she was up to. Yes, that's right. I went to talk to the deer.

It's not that weird. Mulies don't spook too easily, and since it was a single doe it wasn't likely that she'd do anything but stare at me. Which is exactly what she did.

She'd been chewing on the dead sweet pea vines, which kind of surprised me. There's still enough green leaves in the yard that survived the freeze that I didn't think dried-up sweet peas would have much appeal.

At any rate, she let me get close enough that I could see she was in pretty good condition before she ambled off (yes, ambled. I told you that mulies don't spook easily), and then I went back inside to dry off.






Erm... the end, I guess. This story didn't really have a moral or anything.

Feel free to add one in the comments if you're so inclined.





Edited to add that maybe I shouldn't have linked to the Talking Heads video. Things have since become a Talking Heads fest around here. Ah well. Could be worse. Much, much worse. In the mean time, I'm an ordinary guy BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE...

Bang

As usual, the pointless photo is pointless. There's no hidden meaning. Don't even bother trying to figure it out.

----------

I'm a pretty noise-intolerant person. Sudden noises, I mean (although general noise mostly annoys me too). It's one of the reasons that I don't sleep well (just one of the reasons, though. There are others. Sadly. Otherwise I could cure the whole thing with a good set of ear plugs), it's probably one of the reasons that I've never wanted children, and it's definitely one of the reasons that I enjoy my own company.

I can usually guess when I'm about to make a sudden noise. Other people? Not so much.

I have the nerves of a cat when it comes to sudden noises, and have had for my entire life as far as I know. I can remember being totally freaked out by noises, to the point of wanting to run from the room if I knew a loud noise might possibly happen.

Which is why I could never understand the joys of KerPlunk.

You remember KerPlunk (or Kerplunk or Ker-Plunk or, even worse, Ker-Plunk!... as though it's something to be happy about)? That evil game where you have to keep pulling sticks out and watching the marbles shift until you just KNOW that there's going to be the horrible sound of marbles falling any minute but you don't know for sure when? Yeah, that's fun.

In a something-just-exploded-in-the-microwave kind of way.

I've played plenty of games of KerPlunk in my day. It was what you did when you were a kid back then. Everybody seemed to want to play KerPlunk so I'd generally end up playing KerPlunk too, but honestly? I think I enjoyed putting the sticks into the cylinder more than anything. It was almost fun to try to weave the things through to make a proper, challenging thicket... but then, inevitably, someone would want to actually play with the damned thing. And there I'd be, faced with the anticipation of a sound that I just knew was going to hurt my brain, but not knowing exactly when I'd end up jumping to the ceiling.

KerPlunk was torture, but there was a worse thing in the game department. That's the main reason for this post, by the way. I spent a good part of my morning trying to remember the name of the thing (kind of like you'd try to remember the name of the kid who'd always get off the teeter-totter juuust when you were at the very top), and I finally did.

It was Bang Box.

Bang Box. The game where you'd blow up a balloon, put it under a cardboard cover, and then take turns hammering plastic nails into the thing until there was no more room for the balloon to wiggle and it would suddenly POP!

DOES THAT SOUND LIKE FUN???

God, I hated Bang Box.

I think it may have scarred me for life, actually.






I'm going back to my quiet little corner of the internet to try not to think of the scary noises anymore. If you're wanting something more to look at, though, Sam's Toybox has some pretty cool vintage games. IF you can get past the colour scheme...

Something about bloody birthdays, I guess

Today's pointless photo is of apple blossoms. Hey, remember apple blossoms? How the h-e-double-hockey-sticks did it get so close to November so quickly?

----------

So. This afternoon on my way to my father's place I decided it was time to stop putting off the task of paying the Alberta government sixty-five dollars for the pleasure of a really bad photograph.

Yep. Time to renew the driver's licence again, which should tell you A) that I have a birthday coming up reasonably soon, and B) that it's one of those birthdays that ends in a multiple of five.

I'm so freaking thrilled that I can't even express it.

Now, normally I really couldn't give a rat's bum about my birthday. It was always more my mother's thing than mine to make a fuss over birthdays, and really? Rightly so. Birthdays should mean more to mothers than to their children. After all, mothers are the ones who do all the work (and believe me, I was -- in fun -- reminded every birthday about how much work it was. Something about being two weeks overdue, being induced on my father's birthday, but then being too stubborn to share a birthday with him, if I recall the list correctly). Mothers should be allowed to celebrate, if that's what they want. As for the children... well, I don't feel like I had much to do with the whole being born thing so why should I act like it was some sort of accomplishment on my part?

Everybody's born, right?

I suppose this all sounds a bit sour grape-ish, but it's not meant to. I honestly just don't have the need to make my birthday a big deal, that's all.

The birthday's conspiring against me this year, though.

You see, it could be considered a big one. Biggish. It doesn't really feel big, but it's a significant enough number that it draws attention. Makes people feel like you should celebrate it somehow. There's been murmurings to that effect, anyway.

Now here's the kicker.

The one year that She Who Doesn't Bother With Birthdays might actually be talked into celebrating at least a little... she's about to become She Who's At A Conference On Her Birthday.

Seriously. I'm going to be at a conference for work.

Bloody birthdays, anyway.

In a normal year this wouldn't have even bothered me, but just because this one's a supposed milestone I suddenly feel cheated. I'm rapidly hitting full-on five-year-old in the strength of my poutitude, let me tell you.

And I'm sooo not five anymore.

And my driver's licence photo was REALLY REALLY BAD...






Bloody birthdays. Who'd have 'em?

Sometimes you really should try to work at work...

And that's exactly what I'm doing at the moment. Well, will be as soon as I post this.

I'll try to find blather time tonight, maybe.

Pointless photo of the day:

I said I'd try to blather today.

I don't really have any blather.

May I be excused?




Of course I can. It's my blog, after all.

I'll try for the weekend, then.

Lack of blather of the day:

Yeah, sorry for the non-posting that's been happening. My schedule's kind of weird this week. I'll see what I can do tomorrow.

smnrgl

Sorry. I'm so lacking in inspiration that I couldn't even think of a post title.

Well, ok. What can I blather about before I have to go start punching holes in cat food cans? Um, empty cat food cans, that would be. And why would I have to punch holes in empty cat food cans? Oh, because certain people need to realise that when they book programs that involve making bird feeders from recycled material there has to be enough of the recycled material for all twenty-five kids in the group to work with. Cat food cans was all I could think of on relatively short notice. And if you think I'm happy at the prospect of punching holes in twenty-five or more cat food cans, you'd... not exactly be right.

Anyway. That still leaves me blatherless.

I suppose I could tell you the story of today's photo, such as it is. I came upstairs yesterday (keep in mind that I'm currently at the father figure's house) to find this spider in a plastic container. Assuming that it hadn't delivered itself to me that way, I asked my father about it. He told me that he'd found her (yes, it's a she) scooting along the ground the other day and decided to save her for his arachnophilic daughter. Then he forgot the container outside, and we've since had winter show up (I've mentioned that, I think). When he remembered it yesterday he figured the spider had frozen to death but brought her in anyway so that I could see it.

By the time I noticed the container the very-much-not-dead spider was not looking too thrilled to be living in plastic.

So, what to do with a very-much-not-dead spider in a plastic container when the temperature is below freezing? Take her picture, of course, and then put her outside.

That last part sounds kind of cruel, doesn't it?

With a bit of luck it might not be. I put her down in some leaf litter for shelter, and she did manage to get down deeper into it before the air temperature slowed her down completely. She might make it through to our thaw that's supposed to be coming next week (which, honestly? I'll believe it when I see it).

In the end she'll die before winter anyway. She's a Jewelled Araneus, and if she hasn't already laid her eggs for overwintering she's getting pretty darn late for it.

Had to give her a chance, at least.

Later that same day I found a Wolf Spider in the downstairs bathroom. Didn't take its picture, though.






And yes, I do realise that no one cares. I do, though. And after all, it is my blog.

My house, my rules, as they say.

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Just in case I'm not around the computer tomorrow, I'll say happy Thanksgiving to everyone now. Here's hoping that your turkey/ham/tofu surprise is everything you'd hoped it would be...

Pointless photo of the day:

Boy, I have no idea what this post is going to be about. I do have an idea, however, that today's photo isn't recent. If it was, everything in it would be covered in snow...

Yeah. I've made enough snotty comments about the weather lately. I'll try to give it a rest. Incidentally, the only reason I took today's photo is that I thought it was odd that the waterlily flower decided to grow up through the cattails. Each flower to its own, I guess.

So. Post. I don't know. I got a bit of a late start to the day, and I think it's upset the balance somewhat. I haven't even got the laundry in the dryer, and usually that's happened an hour ago. I also just noticed that I've somehow got grease on my favourite schlumpy sweatshirt (and everybody knows the value of a favourite schlumpy sweatshirt) but of course I didn't notice it until after the last load was on its final rinse. I refuse to start another load just for a favourite schlumpy sweatshirt, though, so I suppose we'll just have to hope that soap-in-the-sink is enough to keep things from becoming permanent.

Anyway.

Where was I?

Oh right. Nowhere.

There's got to be something...

Well, ok. Quick question. Is it wrong to wish that the person whose computer you borrow every weekend (for free, mind) had better equipment? I don't mean the computer. There's nothing wrong with the computer. The printer? I have issues. And, now that I think about it, not really with the printer. With the toner, I think it is. This thing is the patchiest laser printer you've ever seen, but I'm pretty sure that a new cartridge would help out a lot.

It wouldn't magically turn the thing into a printer/scanner, but it would help.

It's the whole doodling thing, you see. I doodle, and I post the doodles (such as they are) on the other blog. No, you don't have to go check it out. Anyway, sometimes when I doodle I need reference photos, but since I can't print out a usable photo on this printer (yes, I'd even settle for a usable black and white photo) I end up doodling AT the computer. Not a great idea when I'm doodling in watercolour, as I plan to be doing today. If I ever get my behind in gear.

And then there comes posting the doodles. If I'm at work I can just scan things, but around here my only recourse is my autofocus camera. Now, don't get me wrong. I like my camera a lot... for taking silly blog-fodder photos outside. Taking a picture of a doodle is something different, especially since I usually can't be bothered using my tripod or setting up some proper lights. The photos end up giving the general idea of the doodles, but the camera's flash isn't strong enough to prevent darkened edges and the colour can often be beyond correcting with the very basic software that I'm using.

Ah well.

I did mention the part about borrowing the computer for free?





Yeah.

I need to go put stuff in the dryer now (finally). Later, all.

Fact about me:

Sushi makes me happy.

Sushi also prevents me from blogging on my lunch hour, since I was at a sushi restaurant rather than at the computer. I might try to sit down and blather something tonight, but in case I don't... just know that sushi makes me happy.

Even if the weather doesn't.

Oh, I'm so not in the mood

For what?

Pretty much anything.

Weather? Still sucks, to the point where I didn't really even want to go outside today. Throat? Full of phlegm (and what a lovely word that is). Aaaaand... I just had to take a break from sharpening pencils because our only sharpener (full-sized sharpener, I mean) has no swivel knob anymore and I was getting bad enough blisters that I had to go put on one of my leather gloves to try to save at least a little bit of skin.

Yeah, happy.

But at least we may FINALLY get a new pencil sharpener...

Maybe I should fill in an incident report.

Anyway, I'm completely not in the mood to blather. Even with the world's weirdest blended channel playing on the internet radio. I'm not even in the mood to chair dance, which is saying something.

Guess I should get back to sharpening pencils.

Or watching the snow.





Yeah. Neither sounds like much fun.

Bloody weather

So, as I was using my sleeve to wipe the snow off of my car because I'm too damned stubborn to get out the snow brush this early in the season...

NO, I AM NOT KIDDING.

There was about a centimetre of snow on the car when I left for work. Not so much on the ground, as you can see from the pointless photo (hot off the camera this time) (and yes, those are my footprints. And no, my feet aren't on backwards. Although it would explain a lot if they were), but that's only because the ground's still fairly warm. Believe me, it's doing its best to build up out there.

Bloody weather.

Oh, wait. Let's make it bloody weather. And yes, I've probably linked to that clip before. I don't care. It just naturally comes to mind every time I use the phrase bloody weather, that's all.

And since I'm in Alberta, the phrase tends to get used a bit.

This place is nuts when it comes to weather. I mean, sure. We don't have to worry about hurricanes/tropical storms (it'd be weird if we did, since it would probably mean that BC had disappeared) or lake effect snow or most of those other fun, wet things that much of this country has to put up with. We just have to deal with not knowing what the hell to ever expect.

Yay us.

About a week and a half ago it was 35C. Today? Let me just check the weather page... Well, they're guessing 5C. Currently 1C.

And snowing, did I mention?

Gah.

In case you haven't guessed, not a happy camper.





Anyway, so what else? Well, I wasn't in the office on Monday so I didn't get a chance to blog, I was in the office but was busy with programs on Tuesday so I didn't get a chance to blog, and today? Cranky, obviously. Bet you're thrilled that I got the chance to blog.

On the cold front (cold front? Augh. No more weather), I'm still drippy and coughing but I feel a lot less zombified than I have been doing, so I suppose that counts as a good thing.

However, it is snowing.

DID I MENTION?








Bloody weather.

And now?

Well, I slept a bit better, which always helps. Head's still not right, of course, but it didn't feel like an absolutely insurmountable task to get things moving this morning, which has to be a good thing. Hey, I'm trying to be positive here... which is definitely a change from the last few days.

I'm also being stared at by fish and drinking Chinese herbs.

The fish are because my father's started bringing in his pond fish from outside (in case anyone's wondered, the recent pointless photos on the blog are definitely not recent photos. There's certainly nothing flowering out there at the moment, and I haven't been able to bring myself to start taking pictures of dead things yet). He has a few more to find that he's probably going to have to drain the pond a bit for, but so far the ones that have made it in seem to be doing ok. I could have taken a photo of them, I suppose, but I guess I was more in the mood for the sweet peas.

And the herb thing? Given to me by a friend at work when it was obvious that this stupid cold is taking its time resolving itself. I was a little nervous about using them until I had a chance to look them up (remember, boys and girls: herbal medicine is still medicine. Things can interact with other things in ways that are NOT GOOD. Do your research...), but thankfully the few English words on the packet were enough for me to find out what I'd be drinking. It's all good. I'm not expecting any kind of miraculous cure here -- a cold is still a cold, after all -- but I wouldn't say no to a little relief.

As far as anything else... well, obviously I haven't been in any sort of mood to think of anything in the blather world that might have entertainment value. I think we should all just be thankful that I'm typing in complete, non-whingey sentences today.

Mostly non-whingey, anyway.

Type at you later. I'm off to look at the Illustration Friday posts now. Mine? Um, definitely not my favourite of all time, but at least I did something. Check the other blog if you're desperate to see it.

So.

I took yesterday off. From the world. Didn't even make it down the highway in to my father's place.

I'm not sure that it helped.

Sorry for the complete lack of blather this week. It was a busy work week, I've been dealing with this stupid cold (still, yes. Today we've moved on to my head hurts. Who knows whether that's a good thing or a bad thing), and you reeeally don't want me sharing my thoughts at the moment.

Tomorrow? Maybe. No promises.

And in a fit of beat-my-head-on-the-desk irony, Illustration Friday's word this week is... germs.

Yeah, germs.

Really don't know if I want to go there in this frame of mind...

Photo goes here...

Lack of blather goes here.