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.

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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.