Oh, nothing

I think it might just be a little too early in the day for me to have any blather (although, considering that I woke up at absolutelystupid o'clock this morning it really shouldn't be too early in MY day). Shame, that, because this is about the only blather time I have today and there likely won't be any blather at all tomorrow.

Ah yes. Quality blogging as usual.



Anyway. Here's some not-quite-daffodils-yet to hold you for the meantime. As for me, I'm going to try my best to make this foggy brain function, and then it's back down the highway.

One of these days someone's going to invent a teleporter, you know, and there won't be any more of this weekly back down the highway nonsense. And, of course, it'll happen juuust after I've died. Just to piss me off, you understand. Because the world is all about doing things just to piss me off...

Ok, not really. I'm tired, remember. I'm allowed to have a moment of believing that everything out there's a conspiracy.

To piss me off.





Hands up if you're tired of seeing the phrase piss me off already.

Yeah, me too. See you in a day or two.








I'll try not to be too pissed off then.

Editorial comments in the office

A little while ago I put my Canadian Edition magnetic poetry set up on one of the filing cabinets in the office (and when I say Canadian Edition, I mean Edition That Contains Words That Americans Think Canadians Like. It's hilarious. Think beer, mountie, toque...). Obviously, it's there to be played with. I wouldn't have put it there if I hadn't wanted people to mess around with it. Obviously.

Is it equally obvious from the bottom sentence you see in today's pointless photo that we're in the middle of an election? Or at least obvious that some of the people who work here have definite ideas about the current state of Canadian politics?

Well, I thought it was funny.

I really have nothing today, you know.

I'd talk about the big wedding, but to be honest I thought the lead-up to it -- especially on American television, since the whole thing had not even the slightest tangential bit of importance to Americans -- was absolutely ridiculous and it kind of soured any interest I might have had. They seem like a relatively normal couple, especially considering his family's position, and I wish them more success than most royal marriages have had in the last thirty years or so, but that's about as far as it went for me. Oh, except for the dress. I'll admit to being curious about the dress, but that ties in with my general interest in historical fashion anyway so it shouldn't really surprise my two fans.

I thought the dress was nice. Flattering. But I also find it a bit weird that I've sent what's likely a very fuzzy picture of it via my computer monitor and my clunky phone camera (my phone's getting on in years) to the Ontario office. She's in the middle of a massive power outage and didn't get to see any of the coverage, you see.

Did I?

A little, yes, but only because I woke up at my usual time of stupid o'clock and figured that I may just as well turn on the TV since I was up anyway. Didn't see the ceremony, but I did see them leaving the Abbey.

Aaand that's all I've got for the wedding, really. I should explain that I'm not anti-royal (would I be if they lived here instead of England? Not sure on that one), but I can't get into things like this the way the royalists do. And as far as the collectors? Oh, I so much don't get them that I'm not even going to explore that particular blather road.



Anyway. I need to get back to work. Looking at the available words on the filing cabinet, do you suppose I should add something about my car being like a hot maple canoe to the current display of nonsense?

Sounds like a plan to me.

A silly plan, but a plan nonetheless.

Plastic crap, and an update

I didn't take many photos last weekend, so this is from a week or two ago. Most of the snow is gone now, and I'm actually wearing street shoes instead of my winter mocs.

We're supposed to get more snow tonight.

Yep.

----------

I seem to be surrounded by plastic at the moment.

There's a reason for it, of course. I just received the order I'd placed to a scientific supply company for some replacement equipment for our school programs. Sampling equipment, I guess you could say. Bug boxes, magnifiers, petri dishes...

A whole lot of plastic crap.

Now, I'm not going to sit here and debate our need for plastic because the fact is that our world as it is at the moment couldn't begin to operate without plastics. No, what I want to know is why does my staff go through so much plastic crap?

I work at a nature centre. I wouldn't call myself a tree hugger by a long shot, but part of our responsibility is to try to teach people environmental stewardship and responsibility. And yet we're continually losing magnifiers and breaking bug boxes.

It's kind of boggling.





Ok, ok, I'll come clean here. The petri dishes I don't mind so much because they're disposable and we still manage to get through a year of pond studies on one sleeve of them (usually). The bug boxes I understand because it's hard to keep groups of excited Grade Twos from bashing them together so hard in their hunt for invertebrates that the bottom halves crack. It's the magnifiers, people. Why, why, why do my interpreters go through so many magnifiers?

We've gone through stand-up magnifiers (kind of like low-powered dissection scopes, for those of my two fans who've had the pleasure). We've gone through three-lens hand magnifiers, and then the individual lens when I broke apart the few remaining three-lens mounts to make sure the kids at least had single lenses to use. And now?

Well. this time around I've ordered cheaper (read: plastic crap) hand lenses so that I could afford a class set again. They're cheap, they're plastic, they'll scratch...

And probably just to tick me off the staff won't lose a single one of them this year.

Gah.




Sorry, I always get a little bit on edge as we gear up to spring busy season. This probably isn't the last you'll hear about it.

But I hope at least that it'll be the last plastic crap order I have to make for a while.

----------

All right, now here's the update part. It's my hole-y shoulder, which I haven't been talking about because I know that no one really wants to hear the gory details. Today, here at work, I took the bandage off of my shoulder because I was itchy.

I was itchy, and I figured I may as well take off the bandage anyway because IT'S FINALLY SEALED UP. Yes, I no longer have a gaping hole in my shoulder, boys and girls. It took its own blessed time to get to this point, but I think that finally -- finally -- I'll be able to go on with my life without worrying what simple things like showering are going to do to increase my chances of reinfection.

Yay.

It's no fun having a hole in your shoulder, you know.

Oh, and to anyone wondering why my hole-less shoulder even had a bandage on it, well... I was just worried about my clothes rubbing on it.

I guess we'll find out tonight whether I need to go back to the bandages.

I really hope I don't.

I'm not terribly fond of them, after all of this.




Um, yeah. You needed to know that. Back to work for me, now. I need to unwrap all of the plastic crap.

Kinda busy

Yep.

Today's pointless photo? Last spring, since the Early Blue Violets weren't quite open enough to take a proper picture on the weekend.

Later, all.

Fifty things

I know that I said it'd be violets for today's pointless photo, but they weren't quite open yet so instead here's some of the crocusses that are.

Now, today's blather. First off (well, second off, since the flowers were first), I have yet another sinus headache today so you just know that's going to colour everything I blather. I'm tired of whinging about this cold, though, so in the spirit of avoiding that we (me 'n alllll the voices) are going to do another list. Haven't done this for quite a while, I guess, so for those of you who haven't had the pleasure, here's how it goes. Fifty things. I have to make myself think of things. Sometimes it's positive, sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's themed, sometimes it's not. Today? Well, since my head's in a snot fog I think we'll just go with a very simple fifty things that make me happy. And for those of you who have had the pleasure: yes, I expect that at least a few of these will be repeats from previous goes at this. After all, there are only so many things that make me happy.

Here we go, then. In no particular order except the way in which they pop into my head, fifty things that make me happy:

1. This
2. Malted milk eggs
3. Lilies
4. Mandolins
5. Purple
6. Carbon pencils
7. Cheese
8. Vanilla
9. Mozart
10. Cats. For the most part. Max in the middle of the night? Occasionally.
11. Alstroemeria
12. Comparative anatomy
13. Jumping spiders
14. Actually learning things from TV. Yeah, I'm one of those annoying educational television types.
15. Historical fashion
16. Limes
17. Books
18. Logic puzzles. Not saying that I'm any good at them, mind...
19. Chickadees
20. Tulips
21. Deer. Except when they eat the tulips.
22. The smell of play-doh
23. Interesting paper
24. Patterns
25. Absurdity
26. Singing
27. Sixties pop
28. Seeing people enjoy learning. Especially about the natural world.
29. Pizza
30. Dry humour
31. Houseplants
32. Good design
33. Chocolate
34. Putting worcestershire sauce and dry mustard in with my scrambled eggs. Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.
35. Knowing that I have something to contribute.
36. Watching talented people do what they do well.
37. The blues. The music, I mean. Not having the blues.
38. Making up alternate lyrics to songs. Blame my father for that one, I think.
39. This. Especially the piano bass line. One of the best ever.
40. Carnations
41. Pigma microns
42. Doodling. Guess I should have said that before mentioning the art supplies.
43. Baking cookies
44. Looking at things in a slightly different way.
45. Old-school jazz. They kind of lose me in the Sixties.
46. Listening
47. Yarrow
48. Saskatoons, especially in a pie.
49. Social history
50. This. 'Nough said.

Well. That wasn't so bad. Good thing I wasn't aiming for a theme, though. It would have been heavy on the flowers and food.

Anyway. I think that about does it for me on this Easter Sunday (and that's the only mention of that you're going to get here today). I expect to be away from the computer tomorrow, so we'll see you in a day or two.





Oh, and if anyone was wondering, I did manage to get out to vote at the advance poll yesterday. I even managed to vote for something that wasn't None of the Above.

Yay me.

Bud

That's what today's pointless photo is, all right. A bud. A bud from the Wayfarer bush (Viburnum lantana, for anyone who wants to look it up. I guess I'm not in a linky mood today) in the back yard, which is always one of the first things to try to leaf out.

I wonder if it's as desperate for things to get going as I am.

I always get a bit horticulturally restless this time of year. Everything's looking scabby and old as it finally peeks out from under the snow, and I just so want something green out there. It used to be that I helped myself out a bit by trying to get a few things started for the balcony in a seeder flat, but I just don't have the set-up (or the room) for that to work out well in the apartment so I've stopped trying. Yeah, even I can eventually figure out when something's a complete exercise in futility.

So what's the alternative?

Generally, I'll prowl around my father's yard with the camera looking to ambush anything that looks as though it isn't actually dead. Thus today's bud, yesterday's crocusses, and whatever else I might find today if I go out instead of trying to figure out what the heck I'm going to do with this week's Illustration Friday prompt. I'll also be keeping a close eye on the trails at work when I do my programs, trying to find a hint of anything that appears to be springy.

I need green. Really, really need green.

I'm almost to the point of withdrawal, I'm telling you.

Ah well. The sad thing is that, as much as I want green, my personal list of hey, it's spring consists of A) my first flowering something, B) my first spider, and C) oh frigging great. The poplar trees are trying to kill me.

Parts A and B have been accomplished, as my two fans read yesterday. Part C, otherwise known as allergy season for me, will be starting very, very soon.

It's just completely not fair that I spend so much time looking forward to spring and then spend about a month of it feeling absolutely miserable, you know.






Ah well. Again. With any luck tomorrow's pointless photo will feature Early Blue Violets, since it looked like they were juuust about ready to open yesterday. As for the rest of the day, I'm thinking: sinus headache (yes, still enjoying my cold. Thanks for asking), find something bicycle-ish to draw that doesn't involve drawing an actual bicycle, and... oh yeah. Go vote. I haven't been talking about the election because it's really not my thing to get into politics, but it's the advance poll this weekend. I'm fully intending to act like a responsible adult even though I honestly could take the whole lot of them and toss them in the bin without a second thought and be done with it.

Um, yay me, then?

Yeah, I guess.

Ok, she grudgingly admits...

... that spring may, in fact, actually be thinking of arriving in Alberta.

Today's photo? Taken today. And they aren't even plastic flowers. Also spotted this afternoon were a Mourning Cloak (they hibernate, which is how they can be out so early), and my first spider of the season. Both of the latter were too quick for the camera, but the crocusses couldn't escape so easily.

And I'm afraid that the spring update is all I have for the blather today. I'm having a really annoying headache, and if I kept typing it would just start to sound like a big giant whiiiiiiiiiiiiine.

None of us need that.

Well, maybe I do. But I'll be nice and keep it to myself.




You're welcome.

Fuzzy

No, not my bakelite radio -- it's dusty rather than fuzzy. I was meaning my brain.

Fuzzy.

How the heck can someone be so tired and yet still manage to have such a cruddy night's sleep? I'm beginning to think that I'm uniquely talented in that area.

I also have nooooo blather today. Seriously. I'm not even going to bother trying.

Better luck on the weekend, I guess.

I had something. I really did.

But I'm kind of busy with work things, so it'll have to wait. And probably be forgotten, since that's what usually happens.

In regards to the work things, by the way, I now know far more about Ground Squirrel testicles than I ever really thought I would.

Um... note that it's Ground Squirrel testicles, not ground-up squirrel testicles. That would be another thing altogether. And, apparently, at certain times of the year an extremely small meal.

Aaanyway. Back to squirrels for me, and a big ol' nothing for the blather.

Oh, and today's photo? Taken at my father's place about a week and a half ago. The tulips have probably all frozen off by now. This has been a WONderful spring so far, you know.




Later, all.

Cats in my ears

No, the pointless photo is not of cats. Or my ears. But I bet you got that.

And this will probably be short because I have work to do and yes, I still feel like seven kinds of crud.

Anyway.

I have cats in my ears today. Or at least in the holes in my ears. That's a bit unusual for me and my general laziness when I'm getting ready for work, but there you go.

Um, this needs more explaining, I suppose. Some of my two fans know the story already, so they'll just have to bear with me. For the rest of you...

I have two piercings in each earlobe. Never really wanted to -- I'd had my first ones for years before I ever got the second -- but one of my friends in high school had been royally chicken about getting her ears pierced and begged me to go with her. Not just to hold her hand, no; so that I could go first and if I flinched too much she wouldn't do it at all. Well, I didn't flinch, and for my pains (literally) I ended up with an extra couple of holes to fill every day. Not a big deal for a friend, I suppose, and since it was the eighties I certainly wasn't the only one out there with multiple ear piercings.

Also, since it was the eighties, it led to an awful lot of weird earrings in my life.

I still have most of them, and if I ever get around to the jewellery case cleaning I threatened a while ago you'll probably get to see some of them here. In picture form, at least. I don't think I'll be physically putting junk jewellery on the blog.

For some time I was pretty enthusiastic about theming my earrings. Sometimes colour themes, sometimes animal themes, sometimes stone themes... you get the idea. Then, when I was about seventeen or so, I spent a bit (or a lot, which is what it felt like at the time) of babysitting money on some gold, heart-shaped studs that were joined together by chains. It was a perfect way to deal with double piercings when I was in a hurry, because I only had to look for the one "pair" in the morning.

For a while I wore them only when I was in a hurry. Then I wore them a little more often in university because they were less fussy to worry about in the lab. Then I started this job.

And went back to themed earrings.

What? I was teaching nature to children. It was nice to have ladybirds or geese or frogs or whatever in my ears.

For a while.

And then I started wearing the chained studs again. And again. And again. And pretty much everyday since then.

It's a habit, obviously, and it's also become a complete default.

But today? It started with putting the silver ring on. Then I put my on university ring because it goes better with the silver ring than my gold rings do. Then I realised that if I was wearing silver-coloured rings and a silver-coloured watch, it might look a little lazy to put in my gold earrings...

See, this is what happens when I actually stop to think about what I wear.

I ended up wearing pewter cat earrings to work. Cat earrings that look like they're hanging onto my ears by their claws, naturally, because what would be the point of wearing normal cat earrings to work?



Are there normal cat earrings, really?

Oh, and if anyone's being even semi-interested in this nonsense, the cats are accompanied by silver-coloured moon studs that are basically acting as placeholders because I couldn't decide what would go well with the cats.




I think that this is possibly one of the most pointless blathers I've ever typed, you know. Yay me and the headful of snot.

And with that, back to work now. Catch you later.

Headful of snot

No, not the pointless photo. It's just... random stuff.

So, yeah. My last two days have been nothing but sinus headache and coughing. And how was your weekend?

Sigh. This is going to be one of those posts that shouldn't even really be bothered with, I can already tell. I'm tired, I'm whiny, I have a late program tonight, and yet again I'll be leading a nature walk in snow. There was more snow on the weekend, yes. I mean, granted that I'd very much prefer snow over deadly tornadoes (sorry for my petty whingeyness to those in the States who are dealing with the aftermath of those storms), but geez. Enough already. It's the middle of April.

Past it, even.

And tonight I'm stuck trying to help some cubs with a badge that pretty much requires things that aren't snow. Identify six flowers? Sorry, no flowers. Identify six birds? There's no open water on the lakes for the waterfowl to land on yet. Insects? Sorry, no. Unless you count the mealworm tank. I just gave them some more bran, so I guess we could go digging for beetles...

Have I sighed already?

Damn.

Ah well. After this I'll go home and wrap up in the quilt again. And probably (hopefully) fall asleep while I'm trying to watch my Monday evening recordings on the dvr.

And then wake up tomorrow with another headful of snot and try to get myself functional enough to get to work before noon.




Gee. Sounds like fun.

Anyone want to do a nature walk for me tonight?







Damn.

Words and stuff

Sorry for the lack of enthusiasm in the title. As I said earlier, I've managed to get a start on my yearly spring cold, and the energy level isn't where I might like it to be.

I do have a topic in mind for today's post, at least, but considering that I'm at work you should excuse me if I don't quite get to all of it. I'll give it a go, though.

So, the subject of today's pointlessly black and white photo (I was bored) is, as my two fans know, Max. Max would likely be referred to by some of my two fans as a mog. The rest of my two fans would be left wondering what a mog even is, I'd imagine.

Yep, it's the old saw about two countries (England and the US, if I need to be clearer for those of my two fans who are from neither one) being separated by a common language.

I'm realising as I get older just how much unconscious translating I do from US English to British English, and vice versa. I find it kind of bizarre just how many British terms seem to have to be explained to American television audiences. Sometimes I think that American broadcasters don't give their viewers enough credit for having at least a base amount of intelligence (and I think that to a certain extent that's true. People aren't nearly as stupid as they seem to be treated on -- or by -- TV), but then I'll see phrases or idioms that are second nature to me needing to be spelled out to people on internet forums that I frequent (ok, lurk on) and I'll realise that things aren't always as common sense as all that.

And I'll remind myself yet again that I'm a little weird.

I'm in an odd personal position, I suppose. I come from a family that's got a very strong UK background (except for my paternal grandfather, that is. And really, doesn't everyone need some good, solid Ukrainian to keep them grounded?). I have a paternal grandmother and a maternal grandfather who both came straight from England, and while I didn't know my grandfather his influence on his family was strong enough that his youngest daughter was teased for having an English accent when she started school. So obviously some of the feeling for British English is something I just grew up with and probably didn't even realise.

It's definitely affected the way I phrase things, if not my accent. I didn't know that about myself until I started performing in interpretive skits at a local campground as part of my job here. At one point my partner was from the Maritimes, and his accent always became heavier when he performed. One of the plays we did had him playing an Easterner and me playing an Albertan, and after the shows people would often remark that it was obvious that he was from the coast but they wondered where I really grow up. Um... forty minutes away from here?

Yeah, I guess I don't speak Standard Albertan even though I am one.

Add to the family thing the fact that I'm a very longtime fan of British sketch comedy and certain British authors, and you've got someone who can merrily follow along with most things that come from either side of the pond.

People from both sides of the pond, however, probably scratch their heads at my apparently schizophrenic approach to spelling, and I have just one thing to say about that:

I'm Canadian.

Yes, welcome to Canada, where we never really felt the need to shake off the oppressive British influence but we also have a big, noisy neighbour to the south that likes to do things differently. What to do in that case? Well, borrow from both. It's what leads to such mongrel (moggie? Is spelling canine or feline?) signs as Tire Centre, for example, which no true Canadian would ever think twice about. It also leads to interesting debates during school spelling tests, and to every individual coming to his or her own conclusion about how things are actually spelled. You'll notice that I favour (ha! Favour) a fair amount of British spellings, but there are plenty of other Canadians out there who go the other direction. That's ok. For those of us who go the extra-letter route it's partly just upbringing and, frankly (well, in my case, I'll admit), a way of at least slightly distinguishing ourselves from the Americans. We're not saying that the Americans are doing things wrong; we're just saying that Canadians and Americans are different things.

A strange way to do it? Maybe, but this can sometimes be a strange country.

Anyway, this will no doubt come up again when I have more time to blather because I have a long-standing fascination with language. For now, though, back to work. Oh, and I'll be missing from the internet for the next couple of days. Hope for me that the rest will give me time to get past the worst of this cold, because overall I'm not in such a bad mood and I'd really like to be a bit (or a lot) less moany about things.

See you after the weekend, all.

Pointless oh geez I don't know of the day:

It's snowing. We may get twenty centimetres today. You just know that it's put me in a mood.

Also, my maybe-a-cold is now definitely-a-cold. Um, yay? Or, you know, not.

None of this has me at all in blather mode, naturally.

I will say, however, that there's been one thing that made me smile this week. The creeks are flooding. Should I explain?

I live in a city that has a river and two small creeks flowing through it. Normally they depress me a little. Not because I have anything against flowing water; it's because I wish they flowed more. Unfortunately, one of the things I've learned while doing historical research for programs at our sister site is how much and how quickly we've managed to completely emasculate our rivers and streams. There's been settlement here for less than a hundred and fifty years, and in that time we've managed to take our riparian habitats from yearly, scouring ice jams and challenging floods (which, while they might be challenging to us, are very important to the maintenance of the ecosystem) to, in the case of the creeks, barely a trickle for most of the year. It's sad, really.

Every once in a while, though, if conditions in the spring are just right, the creeks decide to remind us just what the creeks are capable of being. And it's fantastic. It's fantastic to see the natural cleansing of the courses, and since it's mostly parkland that gets flooded when it happens, there's not really much to the human cost side of the event.

And dammit, even if there was a human cost side of things, I still find it impressive to see what water can do. I know that there are plenty of people out there who are currently dealing with very serious flooding who would very emphatically disagree with me (and fair enough, if you're in danger of losing your home or, knock wood, your life), but there have been a couple of times in my life when I've been involved in dealing with floods (once, very memorably, when I ended up being the default person in charge at work and had to try to coordinate the preparations) and I have to say that even when I was worried that things might be wiped out or at the very least damaged I still had to respect the sheer power of the water.

Ok, maybe I am a little weird. But nature fascinates me even when (especially when) it's not all fluffy bunnies and bambi.

Or bandaid, which is what I first typed.

Shows what's on my mind, I guess. Would anyone out there like a Hole In Shoulder update, since I've made the accidental aside? Things are healing up decently, which is why I haven't been mentioning it lately, but my skin is becoming absolutely and completely ratched by the weeks of wearing bandages. You never know how much NOT fun bandages can be until you have to put them on every damned day after every damned day. Hopefully not much longer now, though.




Um. I've completely distracted myself now. Ah well, time to get back to work anyway, I suppose.

And try not to pout too much at all the brand new white stuff out there.

I just want to go back to bed

Yeah. Haven't exactly been feeling myself for the past couple of days. My body can't quite make up its mind as to whether it's lack of sleep (of which there hasn't been much, but that's not unusual), the start of my regular spring cold, or the start of my regular spring allergies.

I don't think it's the allergies one because the trees haven't really had a chance to get started yet, but I could be wrong on that.

Anyway, I'm feeling kind of lousy but not entirely sick (if that makes any sort of sense), I'm reeeally tired, and I kind of want to go home.

And, of course, I have nothing for the blather. The pointless photo is of real, growing strawberry plants and was taken over the weekend, however, so that's a little cheerier than things have been in my where-the-hell-is-spring brain for a while.

We're having a snowstorm tomorrow, though.

Seriously.




Sigh. I'm just going to stop typing now, all right?

Ok, all right...

Fine, then. I'll admit it. Things are actually melting out there. Today's pointless photos feature my father's back yard last weekend, and my father's back yard this weekend.

Still way too much snow for this time of year, as you can see, but there are real bare patches now.

Maybe spring will be here before July, I dunno.





I'm not counting on it, though. I'm too much of an Albertan for that.

----------

For some reason I seem to have developed a bit of a grump in the last hour or so, and I have no idea why. Nothing's happened (so far...) that should have put me in that position. I had a decent night's sleep, which has completely confused my brain, but I can't imagine that sleeping would be enough to make a person -- even this person -- grumpy.

And yet here I am, just in the mood to become royally peeved should the slightest reason present itself. I guess I'd better work on doing away with that before I have to go out and face humanity.

Must be time for some music, then.

Music's such a big part of my life that it's weird that I don't talk about it here more. I suppose it's because I tend to assume that it's a big part of everyone's life, although I hear that there a few bizarre people out there who don't seem think that way.

Hard for me to understand that, really.

I've said this before, but I always have a song in my head. Always. I live my life by an internal soundtrack. I've been told by one or two people (the Ontario office among them) that they'd go mad if there was always a song playing on their brain radios, but for me it's very much the opposite. The times in my life when there hasn't been music have been the very, very bad times. I get worried about myself if things go quiet. And, generally, justifiably so. It's like having my own personal mental health warning system, as weird as that probably sounds.

Music can go so far in changing a day, too. Quite often I'll have the sixties stuff blaring away on the internet radio when I'm down here at my father's computer on a weekend morning (especially if I'm drawing, which may explain a certain lack of focus in my doodles), and it'll keep me (literally) humming along for the rest of the day. Or, to give a more specific example, yesterday I was listening to a sample track from a new album that really made me smile. The music wasn't groundbreaking by any stretch of the imagination; it was pleasant, well arranged, and well produced, but not exactly earth-shattering. But it was happy. Or it made me happy, at any rate, and since we're talking about me here that must mean it was a decent song. And it very simply made the day better.

Who could find anything wrong with that?

Now, I'm not saying that everyone in the world has to be an absolute melomane, of course. I don't expect everyone to be fanatical about music, just like I don't expect everyone to like every kind of music. I certainly don't. But if there isn't some part of some kind of music that gives you at least a little bit of a lift... well... I suppose I'd think that your life was pretty darned empty. And I'd feel sorry for you. And I'd completely not understand you. And you'd probably scare me more than a little.

Now, some of my two fans might say right about now that I'm forgetting that there's a whole group of people out there -- people who are deaf, that is -- who can't enjoy music. To that I'd say seriously? Have you ever been to a dance at a school for the deaf? I have. There's music. It's really, really loud so that everyone can feel the beat. It's a different, almost more visceral way of enjoying music, yes, but it's still enjoyment. I stand by my opinion.

Anyway. Since even typing about enjoying music seems to have me a little less likely to be heading to the trash can, I guess I'd better go find the real thing. And to start everyone off on the right foot in that particular search, here's the fellow in the trash can his own self.




Sunny day, everyone.

Ring ring

Yesterday my father and I paid a visit to the town trade fair, where we bought beef jerky.

Not usually why a person goes to a trade fair, I suppose. But the beef jerky samples were good, so we bought some.

I also bought a five dollar silver ring, which you can see on my chapped little hand in today's somewhat foreshortened pointless photo. Incidentally, even for a lefty like me it's stupidly hard to take a picture left-handed with today's digital cameras. Didn't quite realise until now just how much I'd got used to taking shots with my right hand. I guess that makes two things I'm better at right-handed, then. The other? Mousing. I suck at using the mouse with my left hand.

Just as an aside, the nifty solar watch was a gift a number of years ago. If anyone's in the market for one, I highly recommend them. This one's been pretty slick even with my banging it about everywhere.


And as another aside, I totally don't have a thumb.


And as yet another aside, that second aside was completely not true.

Anyway, rings. I'd sort of wanted a new pinkie ring for a while now, but I honestly couldn't tell you why. I'm kind of weird about rings. I'll go months at a time without even wearing rings, especially in the winter (kind of comes with the whole cold rash territory. Ring + swollen finger never works out very well), and then one day I'll suddenly find myself in the daily ring habit again.

And as still another aside, the geers out there should notice that this particular ring is NOT on my dominant hand. Wouldn't want to be accused of being an engineer impostor. Not that anyone who knows anything about the iron ring would be fooled by this non-faceted cheap silver special for a moment, of course. But just saying. Oh, and for any of my two fans who aren't Canadian and are completely confused by the reference, look here.

So what rings do I wear when I actually feel like wearing a ring? It depends. I have a few. I still occasionally wear my U of A ring (I'd show you that and the other rings I'm about to mention, but they're at home. Like I said, ring-wearing is an on and off thing for me), probably because I went for the crest and whatever non-precious silver metal the company was offering (can't remember what it was called now) rather than gold and the cheap fake birthstone. Makes it look more wearable than my high school ring, which is gold and the cheap fake birthstone. Except for the birthstone part. My birthstone's not expensive and I was ticked that they wanted so much money for a fake stone, so I went with mother-of-pearl instead on that one.

Speaking of birthstones, my other two regular (well, as regular as I get with them) rings are both topaz, which is my birthstone. One of them is the natural orange colour, and one of them is that blue that you get when the stone's been irradiated. They both belonged to my maternal grandmother, and were given to me when she died. Kind of convenient that we we both born in the same month, I guess.

I have a few other rings kicking around, but they don't normally come out of my really-should-be-sorted-through jewellery case...

Hey. That gives me an idea. I really should sort through the jewellery case, yes. Well, maybe it's blatherable? Maybe I should document the contents of a case that's more or less a time capsule since it's so generally ignored? It'd give me something different to go on about, at least.

Yeah, this might happen.





Ack. Just totally lost where I was going initially with the ring thing. Ah well, time to go change laundry loads, then.

And try not to lose the new ring in the process, I suppose.

Type at you tomorrow.

And how are you today, Dee?

Oh, passable, I suppose. Enough sleep happened that I'm feeling more functional, but it'll still take a while to catch up. If I ever do before the next round hits, of course.

It's also obvious from today's pointless photo that it'll be a while before any sort of gardening happens around here, but at least things are melting. It definitely improves the mood.

The weird thing, though, is that because the melt is happening so late the days seem out of proportion. We're getting way too much sunlight to still have this much snow, and it's honestly a little disorienting. Ah well, everything will no doubt catch up eventually, and then I'll be complaining about my springtime allergies instead...

No surprise there. If you don't hear (or, erm, read) me complaining about something it probably means that I'm some form of dead.

Anyway.

I just had to answer a phone call about chickadees (what? I had to work at work? It happens sometimes), so I've kind of lost my train of thought. Not that I had much of one to begin with, but now it's gone right on to the next station.

Chickadees, by the way, are some of my favourite birds. You know, just in case you wondered. They have regional accents, did you know? Around here the territorial call has three notes (we call it "cheeseburger"), but to the east it becomes more of a "fee-bee". I found that out when I worked with a fellow from Ontario one year. He was sort of sniggering -- in a nice way, though -- when I told a group of kids that the chickadees say cheeseburger... until he heard it for himself.

And, um, there's yer nature note for the day, I guess. I really should get back to actual work now. If you want more chickadee info, you can try here. If you don't, well, I suppose you can do something else.

Later, all.

Too tired to blather

It's been a really bad couple of days for sleep for Yours Fuzzily, and I'm afraid that I can't even find the mood to fake a blather.

Sorry about that.

I will say, though, that you know that things are going badly when you decide at about 2:30 am that it's time to give up pretending and just do some sudoku and eat breakfast cereal. You know it's especially bad when you decide to eat 2:30 am cereal and you're not even really a cereal fan...

Just saying.

And done typing.

Oh, today's photo? Just proof that things were melting last weekend. They still are, even, but last weekend was when I took the picture.

I so don't have anything

Well, I do have a program in an hour or so, but that's not going to help the blather any.

I have a headache, too, but if I tried to make that the topic of the day, it'd be a very short post. I have a headache. The end.

I also, as you can see, have a photo of the alley behind my father's house. I like to take pictures of bubbles under ice.

I have no clue why.

I have a feeling that I'm going to stop typing very soon, though.

What do you say that we go with that feeling?

Stupid blog tricks

Well, as you can see I used up my blogging time today by playing with the template. Will I keep the look you're seeing right now?

...

Eh... I don't know. We'll see if it grows on me. The font nazis will probably be happy to see that Papyrus is gone from the title, anyway. For the moment. Not promising that I won't stick it back in just to annoy them, though.

Anyway, as I was saying above, template-fiddling pretty much used up any blather time I might have planned, so you're mostly going to get the photos today. And you do have to have the photos today, because I actually took some new ones yesterday. I even found a slight bit of spring, as you can see to the left. Those are honest-to-goodness daffodil shoots trying to prove to me that eventually there will be flowers in the yard, and not just the nerdstick leftovers from last year that my two fans have been suffering through lately.

However.

In all fairness, I have to say that these particular daffodils grow right under the vent for the dryer, so the warm air creates an artificial balminess that can be more than a little misleading. This photo is what it looks like right beside the daffodil shoots:

Yeah. Spring's going to take us a while yet, I'm thinking.

Time for me to go find some lunch now. If anyone has any comments about the new template, let me know. I may or may not take them under consideration, but I'll be interested to know if any of them mirror my own ideas.

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Oh, and if anyone's wondering, I did manage to get my taxes done last night. Score one for adulthood, I guess.

Pointless memo to myself:

Singing and shredded coconut do NOT mix.

That's all.







cough

Creaky

It's been a trying few days, I have to admit. My neck's not been quite right which leads to headaches (but, knock wood, so far hasn't lead to immobility so at least it's not totally out), something's shifted in my screwed-up knee and it's letting me know with the occasional shooting pain juuust in case I'm not paying attention, and my shoulder hole, which had been healing nicely (and which, you'll notice, I hadn't been giving you regular updates on. You're welcome), suddenly became inflamed yesterday. That gave me a little worry, as you can imagine. I think it's ok now, though. Looks like things just got blocked up a bit is all. It's draining again now and the redness has gone down, but I'll be keeping a pretty close eye on it nonetheless.

All this has me feeling decidedly off-warranty, as you can imagine.

It also makes it a little hard to come here and blather like an idiot. All these creaks just make me feel a little too much... with the world, I guess you could say. Don't get me wrong -- I know that there are an awful lot of people out there who have it far, far worse than I ever will and (for a change) I don't mean to turn this place into a giant whingefest. I'm just in an aw, geez. Really? sort of mindset, I guess; wondering what ache the body will come up with next.

Yeah, yeah. Welcome to your forties, Dee.

The problem is, other than the aches and pains I'm not really feeling the forties thing. I don't act like I thought someone in their forties was supposed to act. If I'd dye the grey hair I probably wouldn't look like I was in my forties. I don't think like... well, wait on that one. How the hell is someone in her forties supposed to think, anyway? I must think like I'm in my forties, because I am in my forties.

Or something.




Ok, I've figured out where this line of blather is coming from. I forgot that we're heading to the one time of year when I really do feel like I'm in my forties. Yesterday I met one of our new hires for the summer season who had come in a few weeks early to start getting to know the place (not the usual practice, but good for her).

She's young.

They're always young.

I was young when I was that age and in that job.

The thing is, they're always young. Every year they're young, but every year I'm increasingly not so. It normally only bothers me for a week or so at the beginning of May, when the seasonal staff starts and we're all still getting to know each other. Oh, and when I've just newly seen the birth dates on their paperwork, of course. You were born when? 1991? How can you have been born in 1991 and be old enough to hold a job? Oh, right. 1991 was twenty years ago.

Sigh.

1991 was also the year I convocated from university...

Feeling even creakier now, thanks a bunch.

Anyway, as I was saying before I depressed myself by thinking about dates, the whole thing normally only bothers me for that first week until we get to know each other a bit, but until I get past that first week I feel about as old as I ever feel in my life.

And I'm not supposed to be feeling that way until we actually make it to May, you know. Stupid creaky me.





Ah well, I'll get over it. Probably by doing my taxes this afternoon, which WON'T MAKE ME FEEL OLD AT ALL.

Sigh.

Again.

I'm going to hobble on over to the washing machine and change loads now, ok?





Ok then.

I've lost it

The post I was going to make, I mean. I had an idea for one at some point in the day, but work's just been too darned distracting on the blogging today and I've lost it. Silly work. What are you doing making me think about work instead of blather?

Good thing I like my job, or I might be a bit miffed.

If the blog were my priority. Which, and I think this is probably obvious, it isn't.


Anyway. What to blather about in lieu of an actual blather?

Hmm.

How about...

Daisy. Yeah, I have a brief something I could do with Daisy, even if it does bring the photo dangerously close to having a point and therefore causing the blog to turn into a pumpkin.

----------

Back when I was a lot younger and still assumed that I'd have a family of my own (more because that's what people do than because I ever remember wanting one for myself) I got into a discussion with my mother and aunt about baby names. I can't really recall why, at this point; probably someone's recent birth announcement set things off. At any rate, we were talking names, and I was asked what I'd name my hypothetical children. To be honest, it was something I'd never put any thought into. I'm not sure that I came up with anything for a boy -- I might have, but this was a while ago now -- but after thinking about it for a moment or two I told them that I'd give a girl the middle name of Daisy.

The response wasn't exactly encouraging.

I had a reason for it, though. Daisy's a pretty enough (if old-fashioned) name, I thought, and as a middle name it would go with a lot of different first names. Besides, it was a family name on both sides for me. It was a first name a couple of generations back in my mother's family, and it was one of my paternal grandmother's middle names. Perfect, right? Honour the past, give a child a sense of family, and name her after a nice flower.

My mother wasn't convinced (or maybe she was just surprised I'd come up with something like that), but I'd like to think that I might have gone ahead with it had I grown up to be a completely different person than I turned out to be and settled down with the ol' husband and 2.5 kids.

Is it still 2.5 kids? I always kind of felt sorry for that half a kid. Old joke, I know, but it's all I've got at the moment.





And with that, I think I'll call it a blather. I hope that everyone noticed the lack of April Foolery here on the blog. I thought about it, to be honest, but then I realised that a lame attempt is about twenty times worse than no attempt at all.

You're welcome, internet.