Assorted random thoughts

And random roses. Obviously not a recent photo, but 'tis the season to start getting used to that. I don't mind fall, but I sure do mind how it always seems to lead to winter.

Anyway. Random thoughts. First, Random music. Or maybe not quite so random since Wheat knows why, but it's likely pretty random to my two fans.

Random news story. Sorry to any future two fans if the link becomes defunct. It's about Paris's new Bluecar program -- basically, electric cars available to be borrowed for short trips. You pick them up from self-service battery points and drop them off at other points. I'll be curious to see if it works. I know the bike system has, but cars? Seems another animal, somehow. And I just can't imagine it working at all here in Western Canada. We're too much of a car culture, unfortunately.

Random feelings about Blogger's new Dynamic Views option. I... dunno. I tried it out when it was still in Blogger Draft, and there's a reason that I never stuck with it. Sure, it's neat to be able to play with the way the blog looks, and it's nifty that my two fans could choose a different look if they wanted to. But... somehow it just doesn't feel bloggy enough to me, you know? It loses some of the personality... some of the weirdness I choose to put on the sidebar. And as far as the other blog goes, I just don't know if the whole idea works at all for the way I like to present things. I might play with it a bit on the weekend, if anyone pops by and wonders why things look weird, but I can't imagine sticking with it.

Random... oh, screw it. I may just as well post what's really on my mind so that I can get back to work. Today marks the twentieth anniversary of my first day here at the Nature Centre. I'm saying (well, typing) this very quietly because I don't really want anyone here to remember. The fact is, I haven't quite figured out how I feel about having worked here for twenty years. Or any place for twenty years, come to it. I mean, yes this is a good place to work (even my proclivity for inertia wouldn't last through twenty years in a horrible job) and I don't really have anything to say against it, but still. I'm forty-one. Twenty years is a pretty huge part of my life, and twenty years in the same job? Even if it's a good one? Is a looong time. And a looong time is something that I'm not exactly sure that I want to celebrate.

Not saying that I wouldn't casually remind this lot next week if I somehow change my mind about just letting the milestone pass, of course, but this is how I feel at the moment.

And with that random thought...

Later, folks.

Ok, so I forgot to blog

Seriously, I did. I got involved in some work stuff, and my head is full of snot (yep, tiredness and feeling blah have resolved themselves into my yearly fall cold... just in time for school programming to start in earnest next week), and then there was the dog in underpants...

Um, yeah. Let's just go back to I forgot to blog and not into my workplace is weird. At least, let's not do it today.

So what does that leave me? Not too much, I suppose. I'll give it a think for a moment.



*insert elevator music here*





Ok, here's a question. What age is too young for boys (or girls. This'll fit for girls too) to be using hair products? I had a boy in my morning program with a fauxhawk, and it kind of got me to wondering if it was really appropriate. I mean, it definitely looked kind of cute on him and no doubt he was emulating an older brother or maybe even his father, but the kid was five years old. Does a five-year-old really need to be gelling up?

I don't know.

It was harmless, I have to admit. Compared to what goes on with those beauty pageant moms who put false eyelashes and hairpieces on their three-year-olds, it was so far down on my personal scale of what the hell are you doing to your kid? that I'm not sure why I'm even mentioning it. It was a fun little hairdo on a five-year-old, that's all.

I guess... I guess it was maybe a little bit of wishing that kids in general wouldn't start to get concerned about how they look so early in life? Yeah, that could be. I can't help but think that children nowadays don't have enough time to be children, and thinking of a kindergarten kid already starting to worry about whether he looks ok (which, again, I don't think this particular kid was. It's just the example I have at hand) is a bit depressing to me.

Um, says the girl who had her ears pierced -- at her own request -- for the first time in Grade One...



Oh, and ladies? If you're considering getting your daughter's ears pierced before she's old enough to tell you that she wants pierced ears, just don't. Seeing pierced ears on a baby bothers me so very much. Even more than those ugly flowered hairbands that some people insist upon foisting on their kids. At least the hairbands can come off at nap time. Earrings? Not so much.

Ok. That ended up to be a post after all. Back to work for me, then. That and sneezing. Expect me to be sounding like I'm the only one who's ever had a cold in the next few days. I'm awfully good at that side of being sick.

As my two fans are very well aware.

Should I just call it Post Title?

I'm tempted to sometimes, you know. I really am.

This is going to be a non-post, by the way. I'm really tired, my digestive system is decidedly not happy (partly a function of being so tired), and frankly? This would be nothing but a big pile o' whinge anyway so there's not much point.

See you whenever, then.

Working at work part two

Yeah, busy busy. Actually getting things accomplished, and doing a fair amount of singing and chair dancing to the internet radio besides since I'm the only one in the office. Erm, not that Wheat would object to the music being on since we often have music on in here. It's just that I try to keep the singing along to a minimum in that case. Seems only fair.

About the title, by the way: I don't want it to sound like I don't generally work at work. I do. It's just that I've been kind of extra involved in a project the past couple of days, so taking time to blather feels kind of silly.

Ah well.

Incidentally, if you ever find yourself in casual conversation saying something about "quick and dirty mounting" you should probably make it clear that you're talking about pictures.

And speaking of mounting I can smell that the laminator must be getting close to the right temperature so I should probably end here. We have to do laminating by smell these days since the Ready light on the machine burned out a few years ago. You get used to it pretty quickly, though. Ah, the smell of melting plastic.


Anyway. I really should go get started because I have a fair amount to do. Catch you in a couple of days, all.

Working at work

That's what I've been doing, all right. It was a surprisingly productive morning, all things considered.

And all of this means what, then?

No blather for the blog, since my head's been full of work blather instead. And I could blog the work blather, I suppose, but I just don't think that my two fans are all that into reading my thoughts on the Alberta Education Science Curriculum Grade Three Science Topic E: Animal Life Cycles Specific Learner Expectations.

Oh, and we probably have a cougar in the Sanctuary but Fish and Wildlife hasn't confirmed it yet.

That's all I have for today's edition of Working at Work, folks. Tune in tomorrow when I will probably be very frustrated about drawing Ground Squirrels.

Maybe I could make it a ferocious Ground Squirrel? Then I'd be able to give it double duty and use it for this week's Illustration Friday...

Um, ok. Maybe not.

Later, then.




Incidentally, I initially went into science partly so that I could avoid the family occupation of teacher. Apparently it's genetic, though, because I spend almost as much time wandering around the curriculum as I would have if I'd just surrendered and taken the Education degree instead. Ah well. Guess you can't fiddle with fate.

It tends to work better if you use a violin instead.

Sh...

No, today's title wasn't brought on by this week's blog silence, which was itself brought on by lack of sleep. You know what's fun? Take a woman who's a notorious insomniac and then screw with her hormones to make it even more impossible for her to sleep. Sometimes you suck, nature.

Aaanyway.

Today's post title comes to you courtesy of my speech impediment. My slight speech impediment, I should say, since I'm not planning to type a lengthy whinge about my crippling inability to talk. I talk for a living, for Whomever's sake. If I tried to tell you now that I couldn't, you'd be forgiven for thinking that I was absolutely full of it.

I do have a speech impediment, though. A slight one. My two fans may remember me mentioning it before, but I'm pretty sure that it's been a while. For those new to the program, then: S-H and I sometimes don't get along well.

When I was a kid, fish was fiss and dish was diss. Those terminal S-H words were a problem. At the start of a word things were fine, but apparently my brain had trouble getting itself around the fact that S-H was allowed to work at the end of a word, too. I don't remember having speech therapy (which isn't to say that I didn't. I don't remember most of my physiotherapy either, except for those stupid painful exercises that I had to do before bed. Oh, I remember those...), but I do remember being reminded that wiss was supposed to have a sh sound on the end.

Like most kids with a minor impediment, I mostly grew out of it. Nowadays I'll have a little trouble with S-H if I'm really tired, but generally you wouldn't know it was a problem if you talked to me on an average day.

Except.

You had to know that there was an except, right? I probably wouldn't be typing this if there wasn't an except. So here it is.

Except that all of you parents naming your kids Josh are driving me ever so slightly batty. Josh is hard, boys and girls. Especially if you have any S's in the first part of your last name. I really kind of hate saying Josh, and to be honest Joss Stone sort of bugs me too just because I always feel like I'm saying her name wrong even though I'm not.

I guess what I'm saying, then, is if you're thinking of naming your boy (or girl, I suppose, if you're into that sort of thing) Josh, then please... oh, what the hell. Do it anyway. It's not like most of the Joshes in the world are ever going to hear me struggle with their name, right?

Sigh.




I'll just be over here in the corner for a bit, ok? Probably practicing S-H...

Happifying the cat

Today's pointless photo is not of the cat. Just so you know.

I'm going to try to keep this on the short side, since I've managed to waste the morning and I need to get a few things done. Like lunch. I need to get lunch done for sure.

----------

As my two fans know, Max is the world's neediest cat. One of the world's neediest cat's favourite things to do is be pampered in bed. By me, at least. He tends to just sleep when he's with Dad (or at least that's what Dad says), but when he comes to visit me he's usually expecting a round of having his belly rubbed. Which is fine if I'm already awake, of course, but when he decides he's in the mood at three in the morning I'm not especially pleased. But I mostly put up with it, because it's the routine.

Or at least it was the routine. It hasn't been for a couple of months now.

You see, I did something almost unforgivable to the cat this summer. I took to sleeping in another room when at Dad's place. And that's not all. I was doing it in a SLEEPING BAG.

I know, how dare I?

The thing is, my apartment can be unbearably hot in the summer (and sometimes in the winter as well, but that's another post altogether). This summer I figured that I may as well take advantage of my father's cool basement to get at least a couple of decent nights' sleep each week. Makes sense, right? Well, what totally screwed up the cat was that I was too lazy to actually make the bed in the downstairs room, so I just hauled out my old sleeping bag and used that instead. It was nice, really. Kind of cocoony.

But.

But the cat hated it. He didn't have his usual access, you understand. It was harder to wake me up. And if I happened to be awake already, he still didn't have any bedclothes to flop around on while getting into belly-rubbing position. He tried once or twice, early on, but by the end of the summer he'd pretty much given up on me. He'd come and visit when I first went to bed, but once he'd realise it was the sleeping bag yet again, he'd just go away.

Last night was different though. Things have cooled off enough that I made up my own bed upstairs and slept in that. I was curious about how Max would react to the change of venue, naturally.

He was ecstatic.

He was on the bed before I was in it. He purred twice as loud as he usually does -- and this is a loud-purring cat to begin with. He was properly fondled. I was sure I'd be pestered all night.

Much to my surprise, he didn't. He had his attention when I went to bed, and then when Dad went to bed he went off with him. And -- and this was the fantastic part -- he didn't come back at three in the morning. Or four. I think it was sometime after five, and he went away when I ignored him. When he came back the second time I was properly awake, so we had our happy cat time then.

I do believe the cat missed me, boys and girls.






I suppose I missed him too.

A bit.



This didn't end up to be short, did it? Ah well, maybe next time.

My weird workplace

I just interrupted a meeting. Slightly.

There wasn't any choice, because the thing I needed was in the room. And I couldn't wait, because I needed that particular thing right away so that I could show it to a group.

The meeting group pretty much ignored me when I came in to pick the thing up, but I have to admit that I caused a slight disturbance when I brought it back. I guess in retrospect it might have been a good idea to put it back in the bucket I'd used to transport it with rather than carrying it back barehanded.

They just weren't quite expecting to see the salamander, you see.

I suppose I should have thought of that, but I didn't. It's just not terribly odd around here to find someone walking around with a salamander.

This place is admittedly a bit weird, as far as workplaces go. Random salamander transport aside, things seem to happen here that you just don't expect to happen in an office setting. And it is an office setting, believe me. I'm sitting in a fairly standard office right now (if you ignore the fact that everything that usually sits on the floor is currently on the desks because the floor is still wet from Wednesday's carpet cleaning. Guess they believed in giving things a gooooood soaking). Desk, computer, phone, books, bunny suicide calendar, plastic glow-in-the-dark skeleton, foam disc shooters...

Ok, so it's a casual office setting.

I once took a series of office photos for the blog. I'm thinking that it might be just about time to do that again. It's been a while, and a few things have changed. Besides, I have a few new two fans (erm... that completely didn't work, did it?) who haven't seen the workplace yet, and who knows? They might actually be interested.

I'll wait until the floor dries, though.





Where was I going with this, again? Oh, right. Nowhere much. I can say, though, that I kind of forget how weird things are around here until something like a salamander sighting reminds me. I've said before that I can't quite figure out why I don't talk about work more in the blather, but I think the key is (or at least might be) that I've been here long enough that what seems strange to the casual observer is just part of a normal work day to me. So maybe I need someone to cue me every once in a while? You know, with a simple question or something like that. So, Dee, what exactly were you doing wandering around with the salamander? or Hey, Dee, why shouldn't I swallow the seeds from rose hips? or Dee, exactly how many dead things are sitting on your desk today?

There are answers to all of those questions, folks.

Mostly weird ones, but I'm beginning to think that it's just the way things go around here.

J'Adorn

Does anyone actually get tired of the pointless photos having nothing to do with the daily blather on this blog. I do, sometimes. I was thinking that maybe I should work a bit harder at theme-ing my pictures this winter when there aren't flowers to takes shots of. And then I remembered that doing that would make the photos non-pointless. And then I worried that the blog would turn into a pumpkin. And then my brain started hurting, so I decided to stop thinking about it altogether. And so I started thinking about my jewellery.

That's right, jewellery.

I'm not a terribly jewellery-heavy person, really. I have a bit, of course; most women accumulate at least a little costume jewellery over their lifetimes (and yes, I know that some men do, too. I have opinions about men and their jewellery, though. Maybe I'll save that for another post) and I'm no different. I also have an uncle who seems to like buying his niece jewellery now and then, so because of him I've ended up with a few more pieces than I might have otherwise.

I rarely wear them.

It's not that I don't like them. I do. He has decent taste. It's just... well, let's face it. I work at a nature centre. My usual daily costume is a uniform t-shirt (and, erm, trousers, naturally. I'd have hoped you'd assume that, however). I spend a fair amount of time outside. It would look odd if I showed up here all gauded up, don't you think?

That's not to say that I'm completely unadorned. I usually wear earrings. Heart-shaped gold earrings joined together with a chain so that I don't have to look for two pairs for my double-piercings first thing in the morning. I've had them since I was a teenager. They're the ultimate in lazy. I also occasionally wear a ring or two. Today it's the cheap silver pinkie ring I bought at my hometown's trade show a few months ago. I'm pretty sure I blogged about it at the time, if you're interested in my cheap silver pinkie ring.

Yep. That's the state of the jewellery today. Not even a chain, since I generally wear my nerdstick on a lanyard and a chain would just tangle the works up.

I'm getting jewellery boring, really.

I've been thinking (for a while, really. I'm sure if you go back to last winter's posts you'll find that I was thinking of it then) that I should go through my jewellery box sometime. Reorganise, polish... maybe get reinterested in some of the things that I haven't worn for a while. It might be nice to not be boring for a change, don't you think? And there's always the bonus of laughing at the hideous 80s stuff that I know is still lurking in there. Might be worth a blog photo essay, even.

Ah, we'll see.

In the meantime?




Well, maybe I'll work my way up to putting my nerdstick on my keyring instead and putting on a chain or a necklace someday. I know it's a stretch, but I could probably handle it if I reeeally tried...

Sotto voce

I'm being vewy vewy quiet just now. No, not hunting wabbits; just very scratchy after a morning spend yelling over the wind to try to make myself heard during this morning's pond study. I'm not especially wanting to lose my voice this early in the programming season, so quiet it is at the moment.

Headachy it is too at the moment, but that, unfortunately, is just a continuation of the past couple of days. My neck's been giving me some grief again, which is a little depressing since it'd been not too bad for the past few months.

Anyway.

I'm sure you'd all like to hear about my new cable box, right?

I have a new cable box.

I had to have a new cable box.

The company I'm with has decided to go entirely digital, so cable box it was.

Now, to be fair, they did offer the cable boxes and installations for free. I, however, had to go the not-free route because I'm a pretty heavy pvr user and my old unit (I think I was probably one of the first people in this city to have a pvr, so I do mean old unit) wouldn't have worked properly with the blasted cable box. So what does one do but bite the bullet, pay the *special discounted price* for the brand-new two-tuner pvr, and grumble under her breath about the stupid cable company anyway?

I actually do that last part quite a lot, but that's kind of beside the point.

The spiffy new cable box was installed yesterday. It... works. Well, what else is a person going to say about a cable box? It works, it does what it's supposed to, it'll show up in my credit card bill in a week or so. End of story, right?

Well, until quarter after twelve last night that's what I thought.

Something woke me up at quarter after twelve. I'm not sure what. All I really knew at the time was that the room seemed way too bright for quarter after twelve.

That's when I noticed that the television was on. The box was recording a late-night program, and there was the tv blaring away and me wondering what on earth for. Did Mr Installation Man couple the two units? Is the stupid thing going to turn on my television every time it turns itself on? Well, bloody hell, then.

I manually turned off the tv, then got to thinking that all I'd really done was put the two things out of sync. So what happens when the box turns itself off? Television on? Am I going to be annoyed by this game Every. Single. Night?

It wasn't until I woke up the next day that I realised that...

wait for it...

There was nothing wrong with the system. Nothing wrong with the box; nothing wrong with the tv. Something wrong with the operator, who'd turned off the box when she went to bed but hadn't remembered to turn off the television because it now goes straight to black when the cable box is off. The television was on the whole time, so of course it started making noise when the box turned itself on to record.

And yes, I'm an idiot.



An idiot who now has digital cable on a ten-year-old television, so I guess that's... something?

It's something, all right.

This is going to be a non-post

And almost was, accidentally. It's going to be a dangerous thing for me that the publish button in Blogger's new editor is right next to the post title box. Right where the enter button is in some applications...

Anyway. I apologise for what probably won't be a worth-reading post, because frankly the day is getting to me more than I wanted it to. And since I don't want to talk about where I was when or even really talk about it at all, it's kind of left in me in the position of what else do I talk about, then?

I'm not sure.

It seems a little juvenile to talk about the owie on my finger (slicing a frozen bun while holding it in your hand = stupid. End of story) or the fact that the occasionally-spastic muscle in my left eyelid has been dancing about for days now and is really getting annoying. I mean, who cares, right? Of course, if it wasn't for stuff like that this blog wouldn't exist in the first place. It's called pointless for a reason, after all.

'Scuse me. Need to change the song on the internet radio. Karen Carpenter had an undeniably good voice, but man was the music saccharine.





Ok, where was I? Oh, right. Not much of anywhere.

Well, I could bring up the good news story of the day, for those of my two fans who aren't in Canada. Have you ever heard of someone abducting a young boy, keeping him for a few days, and then returning him? Seriously. It happened. At this point I'm not even going to worry about whether there's something fishy behind the whole thing. I'm just glad to hear that at least one of the world's crappy stories isn't quite as crappy as it could have been.

I so need to get in a better mood. Bet you couldn't see that, though.

Ah well. I'll work on it for tomorrow. And for those looking for actual content in the blather, stay tuned until Wednesday, when I'll be able to tell you alllll about the wonders of enforced digital cable.

I'm sure you can tell how thrilled I am about that one.

This is the part where I'm supposed to have thought of something for the blog, right?

To be honest, I've been too busy fooling around on the internet to have bothered. I'm kind of feeling the weekend brain thing happening here today. Probably means that this afternoon's doodling session won't go so well either, but I guess we'll see.

So... what to do in lieu of an actual topic? We could have a rather odd cat photo instead, I guess.

Yep.  It's pretty odd.

If you too would like to have a rather odd cat photo, all you need is a camera in your hand, a cat on your shoulder, and a somewhat dirty mirror with a pattern on it. Yeah, those black lines came with the mirror.

If you want the addition of the white line going through everything, you're going to have to use mirror tiles instead of a single mirror. That way the join between them can catch the flash and make the cat look like it's on a space odyssey.

And that's all there is to it. Simple, really.

And if your cat for some reason doesn't want to look like it's on a space odyssey, just give it a pillow.

Because every cat needs a pillow.





'Night, Max.

'Night, nonsense.

This may not be good

Don't worry -- this won't be another round of whinge. I'm feeling better today than I have for the past couple. Although... if I did want to complain I think I'd have a good deal to say about my cable company's customer service. Nothing out of the ordinary... which is unfortunate, when you think of it. Oh, and a piece of advice? Always remember not to call a call centre with a cell phone, even if you don't have a land line anymore. Find some other way to do it at all costs. That's at least twenty minutes of my air time that I'll never see again.

And why do they have to have such annoying music?

Um, anyway.

So, this morning I looked at the shoes I've been wearing for the past year and a half or so (winter not included, which I guess means that I've been wearing them for about five to eight months) and realised that it was time to introduce them to the dumpster on my way to work. Beyond salvageable, these were, but I got my money out of them so I'm not holding a grudge. Giving up on the shoes meant I needed something work-suitable to wear today, though, so I had a quick look through the old stock to see what I had lying around (now, bear in mind that I have a perfectly good new pair still sitting in their box waiting for shoe-dumpster day. No point in getting them out yet if there's something else usable, I figure. Better to save them for next season if at all possible).

I suppose I should explain here that because of my wonked-up ankle I have to be pretty careful with what shoes I wear on a daily basis. When I find a shoe model that doesn't cause me complete grief, I tend to stick with it. The shoes in the box are the same model -- but different colour -- as the shoes that are now bidding their fond farewell.

Have I already said anyway?

I found the previous iteration of the same shoes still sitting on my shoe rack, so I took them out to have a look. Pretty decent shape, really. Obviously worn a bit, but I couldn't quite figure out why I'd put them away in the first place. I put them on, grabbed my stuff, headed down to the parking lot, threw out my old shoes... and by the time I got to the car I remembered why the shoes I'd been wearing had been banished in the first place.

I go through periods where my ankle is really being a pain (literally) and I have to wear one of my braces every day. I hate ankle braces with a passion, but sometimes you just can't deny that you need the extra support. But ankle braces just aren't very good for shoes, unfortunately. Depending on the type of brace and the type of shoe, the brace can change the shape of the shoe enough that it doesn't feel right to wear the shoe without the brace. And that, my friends, must have been what happened to this particular pair of shoes, judging from the way my left foot has been sliding around today.

Sigh.

They're not lace-ups, so I can't adjust them.

I'm stuck with them for at least the weekend now, since I'm planning to go straight to my father's place from work.

Bracing against a shoe for a weekend might irritate my ankle to the point where I need to wear a brace for a while...






Bugger.

Ah well. At least if I have to wear a brace I now know that I have the shoes for it. I don't think I'll throw them out, but when I get home I'm going to put a big THESE ARE YOUR BRACE SHOES sticker on them before I put them away again.

And in the meantime?



Oh, I'll likely be complaining about the whole thing. It's one of my true talents, after all.

Pointless I don't feel like it of the day:

Today's Bachelor's Button has NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING. Just so you know.

I'm trying hard not to sound terribly whingy, folks, but I'm in a bit of a bad head space today. Well, no. Not a bad head space. A bad head. I told you yesterday about the two-day headache? Currently a three-day headache with a slight intermission yesterday afternoon.

For a migraine.

Seriously. I stopped at the corner grocery on my way home and suddenly noticed my eyesight going funny. Classic migraine aura for me.

I haven't had one of those godawful things in years, and let me tell you now that I didn't miss them.

Anyway, I managed to get myself home before it hit full-on. Write off pretty much the rest of last night, as you can imagine.

Today? Migraine hangover with a background of the same headache I've been dealing with for too damned long now.

This is getting old.





Aaanyway. This obviously isn't going to become a post, so I think I'll quick before it gets completely pathetic. Maybe next time I'll tell you about my balcony magpie if you remind me to.

And if my head actually works.

My head hurts

Gee. Bet you haven't heard that from me in a while.

Oh, and it's not the cosmos' fault (the flower, I mean. It might be the Cosmos' -- in the larger sense -- fault, for all I know, but I'm certainly not blaming the flower). It's supposed to be that colour, by the way. It's not just bleached out.

I'm on day two of this particular headache, which usually means that my neck is involved. I'm mobile at the moment, but all it would take is a crooked sleep and I'll be hooped.

Yay? Not really. Thanks for giving me the family bad neck, mom. I enjoy it very much.

So having established that I have a headache, let me now tell you how my morning started. I woke up (way too early, as usual). I groggily watched my recorded late-night stuff. I attempted to get ready for work. I decided that I should lie down for a little longer to give myself a fighting chance of taking the edge off of the headache before I left for the office.

Around eight o'clock I heard a noise.

A big noise.

A motor noise.

A noise too loud and too close to be coming from the loading dock of the hotel that my apartment building is next to.

Now, let me set the scene a bit before I get up to check the noise. The apartment's balcony door (which also happens to be its only window) is wide open because we're having a late season heat wave and my south-facing apartment is veeery warm. I'm also in a ratty tank top and -- erm -- not so ratty underwear. Same reason. I get up to see what all the noise is about and find...

Two men in a construction lift right outside my third-floor window.





Great.

Then the swearing started. Not from me, although it might have been appropriate. No, it was from the workmen who had just realised they'd set up the lift for the wrong balcony. They were supposed to be one apartment over and one floor up, as I found out from the massive pounding that started a few minutes later.

Pounding.

Great.




Anyway, longish story slightly shorter, my headache and I decided that we may just as well go into work at the usual time after all.

And tomorrow?

Well, I guess I'll wait and see if I'm moving at all before I promise a more interesting post.

This one's over now, though.

Stupid morning. Stupid head.

Ok, I've got nothing

Well actually... I've got troubles (whoa whoa), I've got worries (whoa whoa)...

Sorry. It just came to mind when I started typing.

The fact is, though, that I am worried about something, and -- as my two fans know -- that usually means I either pump up the blather ten-fold to keep from thinking about it or I tend to clam up completely. I seem to be heading for the second option today, I guess.

I should make it clear that I'm not worried about something earth-shattering (although it might end up costing me a bit of money). Don't be worried about me worrying; I'm just built that way. Call it an artifact of being an olf, if you like. I still worry about things from grade school, for pity's sake. This will be ok no matter how it turns out (and if it turns out that something has to be done, I promise it will make its way into the blather), but until it turns out my brain won't be able to let go of it.

I hate being a worrier.

It serves no purpose.

And what's frustrating is that I know full well that it serves no purpose, but as much as I'd like to stop it I just simply can't. I've never been able to. I can't go with the flow.

Sometimes I feel like I can't even find the flow.




Ah well.

If I'm going to be honest, I'm slightly less worried about what I'm currently worried about than I was a couple of days ago because I'm fully aware that I have a safety net, but still. Things. Why do they happen, eh?

And with all the things that happen whether I worry about them or not, and all the things that don't seem to happen even when I do worry about them, why on earth do I continually seem to find more things to worry about?



And why am I such an obsessive little freak, anyway?

Um... that was for any of you who are new to the program and might not realise what an olf actually is. Blame the Ontario office for that one, by the way. She christened me olf yeeears ago. Personally, I'm not sure if having a label made it better or worse.

Ah well, as someone once said a few paragraphs up. If a person's going to worry, she may as well have some classic music to worry by. Shall we end this nonsense with something like that, then? Let's see... Ok, this'll do nicely.

See you in a day or two, folks. Long weekend here, and I'm taking a bit of time to myself.





To worry, no doubt.

Quick pointless photo of the day:

Another one from the balcony. Kind of weird, I know, but I liked it anyway.

That'll do it for me today. It was a work-y morning, I haven't had time to think about anything for the blog, I have more stuff to get done yet (and since I'm part-time, not as much day to get it done in as I'd like), and I just get the feeling that this isn't a random-typing-will-lead-me-to-a-topic sort of afternoon.

I'll try to have something for you tomorrow.

Stationery envy

The photo? Just assorted weirdness that's been going on in the balcony planters.

I'm going to try to keep this short today because sleep hasn't been going at all well. And that, as anyone who's visited this place knows, leads to an awful lot of backspacing and not very much sense.

So. Having said that, let me just add that I am so completely in full-on stationery envy mode at the moment. All the back to school ads definitely have me wanting to lay in school supplies, which is awkward and not at all necessary since I'm not going back to school.

I loved buying new school supplies, though. Couldn't have cared much about school clothes, but stationery? New, undestroyed school supplies? Were absolute heaven.

Yeah, I was a weird kid.

Since I'm also a weird adult, this is the time of year that I have to work especially hard at keeping myself away from art stores. You see, logically I know that I don't need school supplies, but over the years my brain has transferred the need for school supplies to the want for new art things. What things? Doesn't matter. Something new and undestroyed, of course, and something probably too expensive. I used to give into it almost every fall, but in the past few back-to-schools I've actually managed to keep the MUST BUY ART SUPPLIES voice in my head down to a dull pleading.




Wish me luck this year. And happy back to school, all you lucky new-stationery-toting students...