something somethng New Year's

I think my father juuust may need a new flag...

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This will be my last blog post of the year, seeing as I'm not planning to be near a computer for the next few days and blogging by 3DS seems a little weird. I feel like I should have something to say to wrap up the year and bump on to the next one, but I really don't. I don't tend to get into the New Year's spirit much.

Gee, this is going to be an exciting post.

I guess I've just never gotten into the whole idea of seeing the year off with a bang somehow. It wasn't really done in my family when I was little, for starters. I may have watched the ball drop in New York on TV once or twice (recorded and played back later to suit the time zone, of course), but to be honest I'm not sure I even did that. They must be fantastic memories if I can't even recall them, don't you think? Tells me that there's not much to remember, at any rate.

Later on, my New Year's memories are mostly of sitting on someone else's couch trying to find something to watch on TV until they managed to make it home one way or another. Um, I mean that I did a lot of babysitting when I was a teenager, and New Year's Eve was always a big moneymaking day so I never thought about doing anything in the way of partying myself. So far, still so boring. Next life stage...

Well, I didn't do anything for New Year's Eve when I was in university either, because I'd always be home for the holidays. Couldn't go out with friends, Dee? Well, honestly? I don't know if I ever even thought about it.

Fast forward a little bit and you'll actually find me going out for New Year's Eve now and then. Shocking, I know. I've even gone to a midnight showing of Rocky Horror, believe it or not. Such a wild child. Still, it doesn't thrill me. It doesn't help that, depending on who I'm with and where I am, I'm often ready for the night to be done with long before the clock strikes twelve. I know that it makes me sound like more than a bit of a party pooper, but the fact is that between the noise, the drunks, and the unrealistic expectations (mine as well as the ones I always seem to feel around the room) I just find myself wishing for a bit of piece and quiet after a while.

Some of us live alone for a reason, yes.

Ah well. This year? I have a couple of possibilities that I haven't made up my mind about yet. A pretty huge part of me just wants to stay home and watch silly British sketch comedies on DVD, but apparently that's not the way things are supposed to be done. We'll see, I guess, but for the moment my vote's still for the cave.

At any rate, I'll be escaping the internet for at least a couple of days, so I'll say have a good time whatever your plans are, don't be the idiot who drinks and drives, and we'll see you in the new year.




Well, you'll see me.

Or at least my typing.

Or what's left after I type.

I can't see you, of course...






Um, Season's Greetings?

In progress

Just getting a start on this one, and that's exactly why you're not getting a blather from me.

I'll post an update on the other blog if it ends up to be worth looking at.

Back to the wood frog now. He looks so naked at the moment...



I get paid to do weird things. 

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Ok, edited later to say that the finished product (such as it is) is here. And can I also say that I have proof that I'm not an artist? No, really. The proof is that I find it very odd to be paid for sitting, listening to music, and doodling. If I was an artist, wouldn't I feel at least a little bit entitled to it?

Toys

Today's pointless photo is not, of course, of a toy. It's a pitchfork in the snow, which is different from a turkey in the straw. You know, in case you wondered.

Anyway.

It's been Christmas and gone, if you hadn't noticed, and while I know some of you are still on holidays I'm back at work. Which is ok, really. I like my job, and it's not like I had much for plans anyway. It does make it a little difficult to play with my toys, though.

Yes, toys.

It's been Christmas and gone, remember. Of course I have toys. One of the toys (which is sitting here quietly updating itself on the desk as I type. Toys are different from when I was a kid) is definitely a recognisably toy toy, but the other is in my bag waiting to be used for work if I choose to do that particular work today.

If I decide to do some drawing for program props, I mean.

Yep, thanks to the usual suspects (should I be calling them my dealers at this point? They certainly support a habit), I've made my annual pilgrimage and got some new art toys. Actually, if I'm going to be honest, it's not so much about the toys this time as it often is, because I had to legitimately replace a few things I'd run out of. I always try to leave a little wiggle room to spoil myself with something that's more of a whim, though, so I do have a toy.

Toy in this particular instance should be defined as something (a new medium, something more expensive than I'd usually buy, fancier paper than I need... that sort of thing) that ordinarily I'd have a pretty good argument with myself before getting, and more times than not would talk myself out of. When I'm working with a gift card, though -- and it doesn't matter where the gift card is meant to be spent -- I have a rule that since it's a gift I'm allowed to get something out of the ordinary.

I've got some good things, that way, actually. You people who are nice enough to give me gift cards can have surprisingly (and accidentally) good taste, you know.

Anyway.

Oh, I said that already. Sorry.

Anyway (third time's the charm), I should really get back to work. Which, depending on mood and how I decide to manage the frogs (yes, frogs), may include these things. Or not, since I brought some other things in as well. As I said, depending on mood.

Look at me, sounding all artsy and everything...

ANYWAY, I HAVE TO GET BACK TO WORK.

That was me yelling at me, if you wondered. Time to put away the toys now. That includes the blog...

NOTHING. Really, this time.

Yeah, I really have nothing today and I'm not going to blather on about cars for two days in a row. I would hope that I don't have enough material to blather on about cars for two days in a row, actually.

So... here's my father's deer playground, otherwise known as the back yard. One of the bushes towards the top is a Red-osier Dogwood, which is a particular browse favourite in the winter, so it usually gets plenty of visitors. Needless to say, it's stayed about waist-height for years because of that.

Anyway.

Yep, that really is it.

See you later, then.

NOTHING. Oh. Except cars, I guess.

I dunno, blog. I just seem to be blatherless today, I guess. Maybe it's the turkey hangover, or maybe it's the internal organising of the what-to-get-with-the-gift-card plan, but I've been sitting here for a while now and nothing's really popped into mind.

Guess I'll give you a car update? Sure, why not. As you can see, Huff (sigh. I have another named car. When will it ever end?) is well on its way to becoming the true successor of Dirty Moe. Dirty Huff doesn't exactly have the same ring to it, really, but I suppose that the dirty part is just a fact of life at this time of year.

I really should try to pick up the car wash habit this time around, though.

Other than that, things seem to be working out well with the Vibe. I'm starting to see why it has such a strong internet following. It's pretty versatile, and as far as the styling goes... well, I've had a chance to compare it to the Toyota Matrix a bit more (for those new to the program, the Vibe was basically a Matrix in Pontiac clothing), and I have to say that when I end up beside a Matrix in traffic it makes me happy to know that my Vibe could eat that Matrix for breakfast.

Oh, just kidding, Matrix people. Matrixes (Matrices?) look just fine. But you have to admit that the Pontiac styling was a little less family-car-ish, and that's good for those of us aren't doing the family car thing.

Anyway. One other car thing, since cars have unexpectedly led to words showing up on this post. I just want to say that I'm tired of noticing cars. I've probably already said that I'm tired of noticing cars. I still am, but somehow the act of driving a different car has made me curious about other cars and frankly? I'm getting sick of driving around and having a part of my brain go oooo! I wonder what that one's like inside when normally I couldn't give a flying fig about cars as long as the car I'm in is getting me safely to where I want to go.

Ah well. I'm sure the excitement will die down eventually.

Please let it die down eventually.

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One other other car thing, since looking at the pointless photo reminded me. The block heater cord. Ubiquitous in most of Canada, since it can get cold enough that your car will never start if you don't heat the engine block first. When I was in university, though, I found out for the first time that you can't assume that everyone has a block heater. We had a fellow on my floor in rez who'd driven his car up from California. We all knew he was in trouble at the first cold snap, when he came all excited about the fact that we had so many electric cars in Alberta (I should say that this was in the 80s. Electric cars in Alberta? Not exactly). We couldn't figure out right away what he was talking about until he mentioned all the cords he'd noticed in the parking lot. Then we explained to him that it was going to get cold enough that even his car would be complaining about it.

Poor guy. Such a shock. And an unexpected expense to him later, of course.





Gotta love this country sometimes.

And to all...

Oh, you just know that you're not going to get much of a post out of me today, right? I'm fed, I'm logy, I have toys to play with... 'nuff said, since most of my two fans are in the same position right about now.

I suppose I just thought that Penny (who, as usual, assumes that she's the Greatest Gift of All) and I should say Merry Christmas to anyone out there who's actually bothering to read this tonight. Same goes for tomorrow, too, in fact. Merry Christmas, and try not to get trampled at the Boxing Day sales.

I don't think I'll be bothering with any Boxing Day sales, personally, but if I did for some reason change my mind, I'm set.

Yes, there's a reason why my nattily-attired feet are in this post (or at least their pointless portrait is). Somebody knows why.

The rest of you?



Oh, you can just be jealous.

Good night, all.

Scribbling in books

This is a scribble. In a book.

Actually, it's more of a doodle, I'd say. It's on the back inside cover of a book.

More specifics? It's a doodle on the inside back cover of a small red moleskine that lives in my purse. You can see the edge of the back pocket if you look closely. I made this particular scribble (and the one on the front inside cover, which I'm not going to share with you) when I got this particular book, in order to wreck it right away. It was sort of an effort to keep myself from getting all perfectionist over it, which I otherwise probably would have done.

Should I be explaining what any of this has to do with anything?

It's the back cover of one of my sketchbooks.

The doodle is a branching pattern, which is the sort of thing that tends to come back again and again in my olf brain. I've probably mentioned that before, if anyone wants to take a dive into the archives. I'm a patternish person, really.

There's one very unusual thing about this book, you know. Or you don't know until I tell you, so I guess I should just do that already.

The weird thing?

It's almost full.

In fact, I have three moleskines on the go right now which are each almost full, and that is weirdness in itself.

Hmmm. Spellcheck is telling me that there's something I should elaborate on before I continue this extremely exciting blather, so just a sec.

There. Moleskine. And fingertips, which one should always include when scanning the cover of a moleskine. They're much less blurry in real life, though, the fingertips. You're also seeing the ribbon bookmark and the elastic closure, which come standard on moleskines.

Hang on, again. Rather than me explaining all of this: moleskines. To be honest, I resisted these things for a long time. A sketchbook is a sketchbook is a sketchbook, right? And when a company advertises its "legendary" notebooks you have to know that it's all hype, naturally. However, I hated the boring paper in my field sketchbook so much that I finally got to that what the hell, let's try a moleskine point. And? Now I have three. Four, if you count my agenda book as well. But for the purposes of this conversation, three moleskines.

That are almost full, to take me back to my original point. Me, filling sketchbooks? Definitely out of character.

I tend to be the poster child for Short Attention Span, you see. I'm notorious for starting books, deciding that there's either something wrong with them (ahem, boring field notebook) or with what I've done in them (thus the intentional cover-defacing of our present subject at hand. Or in front of hand, in that silly scan), and then just leaving them in a corner somewhere. The fact that I seem to be developing even a little bit of a habit of using a sketchbook is head-scratching to me.

I'm not exactly filling them at record pace, I should probably say.

The current example's been on the go for about a year, which considering that it's a small one (my other two are a larger sketchbook and a large-version watercolour book) means yooooouuu draaaaaw slooooowly, Dee.

Well, I don't, so much. I just fill slowly, that's all.

And like I said before, the fact that Ms. Look! A bird! is managing to fill sketchbooks at all is something to wonder at. Nice to know that I can stick to a few things in life, anyway.





Let's hope that I don't decide the same thing about painting walnut shells, though. I'm hoping that there's only so much of that sort of thing a person can maintain an interest in...

[/especially pointless blather]

'Twas the Friday before Christmas...

... and all through the nature centre...

Well, most of the staff is already on holidays, so other than a really screwed up morning which I'm not going to elaborate on (it's all kind of boring unless you're directly involved) it's kind of quiet here.

So.

Today's pointless photo? Taken two or three weeks ago, but appropriate today because it's currently 3C out there. That's PLUS three. Kind of weird for this time of year, but if anyone in charge of the weather happens to be reading this I'd just like to say that I DON'T MIND. I mean, I really don't mind, ok?

I also really don't have much to blog about. I had leftover Chinese food just now... but I can't believe that anyone wants to hear about lunch. Or leftovers. There's lots of leftovers from the Christmas lunch yesterday, though, so if you happen to be in the neighbourhood help yourself.

I could tell you what I did last night, but what I did last night was paint some walnut shells with cheap tempera paint. And why did I do that? To see what it looked like. I painted one in white gouache, too, to see what it looked like matte. If I like the way they look when I get back to my place I'll maybe paint designs on them. And why? I dunno. They were there.

And what are my holiday plans, then? I don't really have any. I'll go in to Dad's for the weekend, and then I'll be working after that.





I'm the most boring person in the universe, aren't I?

Ah well. I guess I'll leave you with the annual nod to the NORAD tracking system, which, frankly, just makes me feel old. Why, when I was your age, you kids, we tracked Santa on the RADIO, not on some highfalutin' computer-thingamabob or smartphone.

Should I say here that we usually listened to the Santa tracking in the car while on the way to the local mental hospital to look at the decorated trees on the grounds, or would you find that a little bit too weird?








I should have stopped typing while I was still the most boring person in the universe, really. Happy end of the work week, everyone.

Oh yeah, the blogging thing

Sorry, I was busy with something. And before that I was busy with something else. And before that, I had Chinese food. And yesterday I was out at a school. And the day before that I was on my arse in a parking lot.

TMI? Yeah, probably. The point is, I'm a little distracted just at the moment, so I'm afraid you'll just have to make do with these squirrel tracks in lieu of an actual post.

It could be worse. I could be telling you about parking lot arse...

Guess I'm that old

But first, and by request: One doofy Christmas hat.

What? You thought you were going to get to see my doofy face, too?

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I've been doing my usual internet fiddling around here this morning, and again as usual it's led to me not bothering to think of a blather topic. Old familiar tune, right? Then I read about Vaclav Havel's death.

Oh, and if you're young enough to not know much about him, the CBC's write-up (Associated Press, really, but I found it on the CBC) is a pretty good summary.

I remember watching the events in Czechoslovakia unfolding. I remember being amazed that this man and his associates were able to accomplish such incredible things peacefully (and I still can't believe that he was never given the Nobel. If they give it to him posthumously I'd consider it almost a crime, especially considering some of the other people who've since been given the so-called Peace Prize). I remember the power of his words.

And then I remember that when all of this was going on, a large portion of my two fans weren't even born yet.

Selfishly, that caused almost as big a lump in my throat. I say selfishly, because I'm about to leave reflections on Vaclav Havel and his legacy to those far better qualified and start blathering about meeeeeee.

When I was in high school, one of our major units in Social Studies was an examination of the Soviet Union. Hands up if you remember the Soviet Union? Well, I didn't study it as history when I was in school. Perestroika was just getting rolling as I entered university. Words like glasnost were bandied around with mix of disbelief and confusion (seriously. We weren't exactly brought up to trust what the Russians were up to, even here in Canada). We watched people climb on top of the Berlin Wall and it was like we'd entered an entirely different world than we'd been trained for, somehow. It was as exhilarating as watching our troops go to Iraq (for what's sometimes now called the FIRST Iraq war, which it certainly wasn't) was scary.

And so many of you weren't even alive when all of this was going on.

Guess I'm that old.

That's boggling to me, because I don't feel old. I'm not old. The world just moves that fast these days, that's all.

When I was growing up, we had a next-door neighbour who was born close to the turn of the century (LAST century. Sigh.). My mother would sometimes say things like, "imagine all of the changes she's been through. The world's a completely different place now than it was when she was born." True enough, yes, but politically and technologically I think I've seen more changes in the last twenty years than she could have imagined in eighty. I won't bother to enumerate them -- you all know what I'm talking about -- but seriously. If I was able to take one of today's twenty-year-olds back to my childhood, that person would be in disbelief at how "primitive" things were.

Forty-some years ago.

Man, that's just sad.





You kids get off of my lawn, now.

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Now, question time. And hi, Ces. Thanks for all your comments! I look forward to seeing your work every week for IF. Let's see what I can answer...

• Shortness, right? I'm 5'2". Not tiny, really, but not tall enough to be easily mistaken for a boy. And, of course, there's that whole matter of the having-breasts thing.
• Yep, I never put a Follower gadget on this blog even though I did on the other one. No particular reason why, I suppose. Maybe just that I already had enough toys on the sidebar, or maybe that my ego couldn't handle waiting to see if anyone actually followed me. Probably more likely the latter, since this place is (as advertised) pretty pointless.
• And yes, I do have a slight problem with Micron addiction, although I've managed to limit myself to a set of sepias and a set of blacks. Only because I have a set of Prismacolor Premiers in my purse, though.

 I guess that's enough typing for now, especially since my stomach's telling me that it's lunch time already dammit. Should I mention that this whole time I've been listening to songs from Hugh Laurie's album that I probably should have asked for for Christmas since I don't seem to have gotten around to buying it yet? Want my verdict, such as it is? Good music, good band, great introduction to New Orleans blues for those who are curious... but Former Singing Teacher hopes that he learned to loosen up on his vocals a bit when he was touring with this stuff. He tends to be juuust a little tight, and that can lead to problems later. I'm sure he's figured it out by now, though. I'll be curious to hear the difference on the promised second album.

Yeah, I used to do that

Today's pointless photo is not, in fact, pointless. Weird mood, I guess.

A friend of mine decided a while ago to start taking piano lessons again. She already plays, but she wanted to sharpen her skills a bit. We were talking the other day as we were stuffing envelopes (remember paper cut day a couple of posts ago?), and she mentioned that she was thinking of maybe doing a Broadway piece next. I have a bunch of that stuff around from when I used to teach singing, so I told her I'd have a look and see if any of the arrangements suited piano without vocalist.

I've barely started going through music yet, but inevitably it's reminded me a lot of past performances. Performances of some of my students, yes, but mostly my own. I've moved away from it at the moment, but I used to perform quite a bit; both as a child and an adult. I was in choirs and competitions when I was a kid, and later went back to competing as an adult. Don't get me wrong -- this wasn't the big time. Small town stuff, not the Met. Still, when you become known as a singer in a small town, you tend to get asked to do a fair number of events. So, in the spirit of we haven't had a link-filled post for a while and courtesy of what I could find on YouKnow here's a few of the things I've warbled for pay. And, of course, not-pay, which is far more frequent. None of these clips are of me, naturally, but if any of my two fans actually want to get a handle on what I might sound like (and if so, why?), I'll tell you that I'm a lyric mezzo. Oh, and while I'm definitely no Ella Fitzgerald, I'm also not one of those people who sounds like an opera singer when she sings jazz. It's not too hard for me to drop the training (so to speak) if I want to. Ok, here goes:

Oiseaux, si tous les ans. Not too much to say about this one, except that Mozart's art songs are more singable than people usually expect them to be. This is a nice little concert piece.

Willow 'tit-Willow. One of the choirs I belonged to as a kid occasionally put on Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. These were somewhat abridged versions for kids, but most of the music was still there. Sadly, the shortage of boys in choirs being what it often is, I ended up playing a male character every single time. The one time I was supposed to have a female role (Ruth, in Pirates of Penzance) we had to cancel that year's performance. Figures. Anyway, in the Mikado I was playing KoKo the Lord High Executioner, and sang the song you see here. We ended up performing this as part of a youth drama festival at one point, and after we were done I hurried backstage to change and take off my make-up so I could watch the next group. As I sat down the woman next to me turned and stared rather rudely. I thought maybe I'd missed some of the make-up or something, when I heard her turn to her companion and say, "my god. It was a girl." Yay for my acting skills, I guess, but kind of depressing for a teenager's low self-esteem. I should add at this point that I'm pretty short and by no stretch of anyone's imagination look much like a boy...

The Saga of Jenny. Man, this is a fun song to perform. I'm linking to Gertrude Lawrence here because she originated the part on Broadway, but I sing it a little lower so I don't sound too shrieky.

Ständchen. A nice bit of Schubert, and obviously pretty well known so I don't need to add my two cents about it. It's what's pictured in today's not-pointless photo, by the way. And if you happen to click on the photo and notice some weird handwriting, that's my scribble and my IPA transcription, yep. I don't have even the slightest bit of German, so I tend to need the help. And yes, smarty pants here did take a linguistics course in university and can really read that odd-looking script. Or could. I probably could stand a review at this point.

I'm Beginning to See the Light. A couple of years after I finished my degree I got a call from my old singing teacher, who needed some help with (read: was looking for someone to take over, but I didn't know that at the time) her choir. She also got me back into solo work, and somehow or other managed to talk me into a return to the local music festival I'd grown up competing in. The festival had recently decided to adopt the Provincial music syllabus to make it easier for local winners to go on to Provincials if they wanted to, and that meant that there were way more competition categories than there used to be. I took advantage of it and sang jazz instead of classical. Complete with a partial verse of scat, I might add, which was something when you consider that no one had ever sung jazz at that festival before. From my vantage point on stage that night, it was kind of funny. There were my mother and one of my former accompanists looking like they were really enjoying it, the adjudicator and secretary looking as happy as their positions allowed them, and the rest of the audience... looking confused. What? This isn't Brahms. This isn't a hymn. What on earth is this music doing here?

I won, by the way. First time I'd ever won a solo competition. Thanks, Duke.

And finally, by way of celebrating the season:

Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow. Sort of an odd thing to link to the King's Singers here since the arrangement I use is much more loose and jazzy, but whatever. It gives you the tune if nothing else.

Anyway. There you have it. And if you're looking for a singer for your next Christmas party, call my non-existent agent... who would tell you that I'm still doing my best to lay off the singing at the moment until my throat can recover from the world's longest cold (seriously. It's been nearly a month now, and that's how it's been for everyone else around here as well. At least I know it's not just me, I guess).

Next week maybe we'll talk carols, if I can mange that without becoming too much of a nerd. Honestly, I'm weird about carols.





Of course, it's not like I'm not weird about other things too.

Doofy hat

Today's pointless photo isn't of a doofy hat. You know, just in case anyone was confused.

I sometimes forget, when I'm out and about around this time of year, that if people smile at me it's probably not out of a spirit of 'tis the season or anything like that. No, they're probably just confused at the doofy hat on my head. That I generally forget that I'm wearing, it should go without saying.

See, here's the thing. I knit a little. Or I should say, I knit but I don't have the attention span to knit anything that takes more than a few days. I've made one afghan, true, but the only reason that happened is that it was done up in one-foot squares of different pattern stitches, then sewn up into sort of a quilt thing when all the squares were done. I'd never have lasted if I'd had to do the whole thing in a single pattern. So what do you knit when you don't have the patience to knit anything bigger than, say, a couple of skeins' worth?

Doofy hats.

Winter hats. Toques, as we'd call them here in Canada.

I've made myself more than a few toques over the year. Some of them qualify as almost normal.

Some of them are doofy.

My Christmas ones are, by the very fact that they're Christmas ones, extremely doofy. Any time you knit something out of the sparkly red, green, and white Christmas yarn with the intention of wearing it, you are guaranteed to look like a doofus.

I guess I don't care. I like my doofy Christmas toques.

The one I have with me today isn't extremely doofy, it's true. In fact, if I wear the one I made from the same pattern but in non-Christmas yarn, no one gives it much thought. Wear the same thing in sparkly red, green, and white, though, and you get a lot of nice hat.

Some people might even genuinely mean that, I think.

Where the Christmas doofiness really shines, though, is in my stocking cap. It's a true, long-enough-that-the-pom-pom-hits-me-in-the-butt stocking cap, boys and girls. In sparkly red, green, and white. It's a sight, that's for sure. And I love it.

Truth be known, I thought stocking caps were kind of stupid even as I started knitting my first one (that's right, folks; I have not one but two ridiculous stocking caps). I think I only knit it because the pattern was there and I needed practice knitting in the round. The first time I wore it was a revelation, however. I found out that stocking caps... exist for a reason. Seriously. When you're cold you can wrap them around like a scarf. If you're feeling goofy (as opposed to doofy) you can tie decorative knots in them. Stocking caps? Fantastic. So I knit another one with the Christmas yarn. Christmas stocking caps?

Kinda doofy.

But I don't care.

I haven't worn my stocking cap this year because it hasn't been cold enough, but if we do get a cold day or two before New Years you better believe I'll be proudly drawing even more smiles (and stares, with the stocking cap. It's a given). Maybe I'll even take a photo.



Do you think that the world can take me in all of my true doofitude?

I guess we'll just have to see.

Hazard

I need to do my OH&S hazard assessment for work.

I've been putting it off.

I probably should have done it last week, but I wasn't in any particular hurry.

It's due tomorrow, so I need to get it done.

In fact, I'll probably do it after I'm done blathering here, even though I'm not looking forward to it.

And why the delay, Dee?

Oh... it's just because I'm too often the hazard part of the assessment.

Yeah.

I'm a wee bit stereotypical lefty accident-prone, I'm afraid. It's not usually anything serious (although I did once give myself a minor concussion by running into a tree. Long story, but the tree and I both lived), but if I had to make a list of all the stupid little work accidents I've had over the years, our OH&S officer would probably decide that I'm not safe to be let out of the house. Not without a foam rubber suit, at least.

For example?

I just finished helping to stuff envelopes for a mail out. Gave myself a paper cut on my thumb. Put on a bandage just to be doubly sure that I didn't bleed on anything. Grabbed the next envelope. Gave myself a paper cut. ON THE SAME THUMB.

My one-time forum nickname was Gimpy the Wonder Klutz for a reason, boys and girls.

I once turned our planetarium projector into a biohazard when I was making a repair. Didn't noticed I'd pinched myself badly enough to open the skin... until after I'd had the pinched finger pretty much all over the (literally) bloody thing. Had to wipe it all down with alcohol after. That was a fun incident report.

Needless to say, it's not fun to do a hazard assessment when the biggest hazard seems to be you doing pretty much anything.

Ah well. I'm a left-hander in a right-handed world, and I have the scars to prove it.

And now I suppose I should go think of all the possible ways around here that I could make more, right?




Or left, whichever works.

Excuse me while I try to NOT make myself bleed, now.

Pointless photo of the day:

That's it. Other stuff to do now...

I got rhythm...

... I got music. I got...

nothing for a blog post...

Yep. I can already tell that I'm just not in the mood today. No reason for it; I've just got that feeling that there's no point in forcing anything because it'll end up totally lame.

Hey, at least I'm honest.

Enjoy the weird picture, then. See you tomorrow.

Or whenever.

Pointless photo of the day:

Fresh laundry. Now with extra cat.

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I suppose it's not a terrible surprise that I ended up with a degree in zoology, considering that I grew up with animals. We always had pets. Furry pets. Cats, dogs, gerbils (way too many gerbils. Nasty cannibalistic things, gerbils, when there gets to be a few too many of them), guinea pigs, monkeys...

Yeah, we had monkeys when I was very little. I remember a bit about them, like the bamboo cage in the kitchen, and having one on a leash in the back yard. I also remember an old film reel my dad took of one of them that would wait on top of a dining room chair for the chihuahua to pass underneath so that he could leap onto the dog, grab his collar, and ride him around the house. That particular monkey's name was Charlie Brown. The dog? Snoopy, of course.

Poor dog had such a monkey on his back.

You'll notice above that I said furry pets. We never had anything that wasn't furry as a pet here. No birds at all (I'm not sure, but I think that might have been because my grandmother always had birds. Maybe it turned my father off a little). No reptiles either, although having reptiles as pets wasn't very common around here when I was a kid so it probably would have seemed pretty weird anyway.

I didn't find out that I liked snakes until I started working at the nature centre, actually. I remember being asked in the interview if I had experience with snakes, and having only just finished university the previous spring I had to be honest and say only dead ones.

Good ol' zoology degrees. You get to know a lot of dead everything.





Um, yeah. Live snakes turned out to be pretty cool, though. More personality than I would have thought they had. I'm not sure if I'd want the bother (and dead-mouse-defrosting) of having one as a pet, though.

I don't technically have any pets at all at the moment, although I do think of the cats as mine as well as Dad's (and, more importantly as all cat owners know, the cats obviously think of me as theirs). I live in a pet-free apartment building (supposedly pet-free. There seems to be an awful lot of "pretend" dogs about for pet-free) and my apartment's pretty small, so it would be a bit difficult to have a pet even if I wanted to.

Do I want to? Well like I said before, I grew up with animals. Sometimes I think it would be nice to have something around if I could.

So what would it be, then?

I dunno.

Probably not a dog. Don't get me wrong -- I like dogs. What I don't like is needy, and dogs have that in spades. Sure, it might be rewarding to come home after work and have some dog wagging at the door waiting for me, but there comes a point with dogs where I always feel like saying CAN'T YOU FIND SOMETHING ELSE TO DO???. Maybe it's just that our last dog was neurotic, I don't know, but if you look back through the archives at any time I house-sat for Dad while she was still around, you'll find me just about going bats by the end of the week. All that constant what are we going to do now and what are we going to do now and what are we going to do now...

Yep. There's more than one reason that I don't have kids.

I don't think I'd have a salamander or a frog as a pet either, even though they're about fifty billion times less needy than dogs. Why not, then? Simple. Crickets. I hate crickets, and I deal with them enough at work. They stink. And as careful as you are with them, there's always going to be one or two that manage to escape. And then? Singing. Gah. Look, I know that there are plenty of people out there who really like the sound of crickets singing, and if crickets are singing outside that's just ducky. When they're insistently singing from a random corner of a room and you can't find them? Not exactly soothing.

Let's face it -- anyone who knows me knows that I would end up with cats. Nothing wrong with that; I'm good with cats. I like to think that I get cats, and cats generally get the fact that it's ok to have attention for a little while and then go do something else. I know that dog people don't care much for the independent streak in cats, but that's all right for me. I like my alone time, as any one of the people I dated seriously back in the day can tell you (oh, but that's really another story for another time. Really really for another time). Cats are like boyfriends who work on the oil patch. Just when you're getting sick of them they go away for a while.

Ok, I'm laughing at myself for that last one. Sounds like I need to rent a pet rather than own one, doesn't it?

The big problem with cats (besides litter boxes, I suppose) is that I'm allergic to them. Might be an issue, yes? Oh, not so much. Like I said, I grew up with cats. I also tend to acclimatise to cats that I'm around regularly. Allergies wouldn't stop me from getting a cat.

If I were going to get a cat.

Which I'm not, in the foreseeable future.




Guess I'll have to keep borrowing Dad's cats, then. Oh, and for anyone concerned about my allergies after seeing the shot of Penny on the laundry, don't worry.

It was Dad's laundry.

Home work

If any of my two fans missed me yesterday, I was working at home. Well, even if any of my two fans didn't miss me I was still working at home, so there you go. I stayed home to try to give myself a boot to the youknow in regards to a project that's been waiting to be finished since last spring. Not terribly time-sensitive, I guess you could say, but it still needed to be done.

Today's pointless photo shows what working at home looks like, or at least what it looked like yesterday. Yep, I was sprawled out on my cheap, needs-to-be-replaced comforter (the white stains? Gesso. Let's just say that art happens on the bed a bit too frequently) pretending that I can draw ground squirrels. I might put the scans on the other blog after I'm done here since I've been a little lazy about posting there this past while, but if I do and you decide to go check them out just keep in mind that things were supposed to be on the kid-friendly, slightly cartoonish but still recognisable side.

And also remember that I suck at ground squirrels. Plants are much more fun.

Anyway. For the art supply nerds amongst you, you're seeing Koh-i-noor Hardtmuth woodless graphite pencils, which it's completely ridiculous for someone of my level to use but I love the feel of; Pigma Microns (in sepia), still very much my pen of choice even though I've tried plenty of others by now; and... yeah, good old-fashioned Laurentiens. I've thought about getting some better quality pencil crayons, yes, but the fact is that I do so little with crayons that it doesn't seem right to spend the money, somehow. Not that similar logic stopped me from buying the woodless graphite pencils, you'll notice. Maybe I should rethink it the next time I'm in the mood for a new toy? We'll see.

Oh, and if anyone was wondering about the rest of the pencil crayons that should have been in the empty box you see in the picture, they were on the floor. Some of them are getting a little short to be able to find in the easel set-up, so I usually just dump them out when I use them. Can you tell that I live alone, folks?

You should be able to tell that I was working instead of just doodling because you can see my phone in the middle of the mess. I needed to stay in touch while I was working. Working, yes. Not texting the Ontario office about the fact that I suck at ground squirrels.

Ok, well, maybe a little of that.

Ah well. There you have it. I don't always do the art thing on the bed, by the way. It was just easier to have my resources close at hand this time around. And it was closer to the television. And I didn't have to bother with cleaning the mess off of my table...



Hey. All these things are important considerations when you're spending the day sucking at ground squirrels, you know.

Things I didn't plan to be doing today

Or, more accurately, thing I didn't plan to be doing today. And that thing is?

Cleaning out my fridge.

Yep.

Didn't feel like getting groceries yesterday, so I just picked up something for supper. Well, I must have had a moment of prescience or something, because when I got home my fridge was cool rather than cold, and the freezer? Dripping.

Sigh.

Good thing I was fairly bare-cupboard, I guess, but it was still rather depressing to have to throw out a grocery bag's worth of limp, thawed stuff this morning.

The good news? I'm a renter, so it's the landlord's problem to fix this.

The bad news? This is the same landlord that took three months -- THREE MONTHS -- to bring in an electrician to replace the broken light switch in my bathroom. I don't hold out a lot of hope, which is why I haven't quite got around to calling the office yet. I'll do it after I type this, of course, but in the meantime?

Well, does anyone out there have any suggestions or living in the nineteenth century?

Did I sigh already?



Yeah, I did.

Ah well, this deserves another one.





Sigh.

Lack of Christmas Carols

But first... OCD much, Dee?

These peels aren't posed. I peeled them that way and put them down without thinking. It was only after I looked at the pile (and these were the teeny tiny mandarins, if you're wondering why there's four peels. I love mandarins, but four regular-sized ones at once is a lot even for me) that I realised that the world deserved a photo of just how habit-bound I am even when it comes to oranges. I always peel them the same way, I get a little miffed if the peel doesn't come off in one go, and obviously I'm a trifle... decorative when I stack the peels.

Sad, really.

Anyway.

My two fans will be shocked to hear that there are no Christmas carols at my house so far this year. No CDs out, no books out, and as far as possible no carols in my head, either.

If you're new to the program, you'll have no idea how shocking this really is. You see, I love Christmas carols. I collect Christmas carols. I have scads of unusual or hard-to-find carols, both to play and to listen to, and I generally have to force myself to wait until December first before I start singing Christmas carols. I figure it's only fair, the December thing. If I didn't have it in place, I'd be driving everyone around me nuts with off-season Christmas carols. I'm usually scalp-deep in carols by now, if you hadn't quite picked up on that.

Not this year.

I'm doing everything I can to avoid it.

And why?





I STILL HAVE NO VOICE.

That's right, still. Well, there's a squeaky little pathetic excuse for a voice that I can almost use to communicate with, yes, but for the most part there's not a voice. And definitely no voice to sing with.

I can't even begin express to you how frustrating that is.

At this point it's fatigue from all the coughing that's been happening these past couple of weeks and I know that all I need to do is rest things to make sure that I don't cause myself permanent damage, but really? No voice at the one time of year when it's permissible to sing along with the vapid tunes in the department stores? No voice when I could be blasting away through my New Oxford Book of Carols at some hoary old thing or other than 99% of North America has never even heard of (I, um, have a bit of a thing for early carols)? No voice when it's Christmas carol season?

Is not fair.

Not fair at all.

And it's equally not fair that I have to work so hard at keeping the tunes out of my head, since I have such a habit of singing along to my internal voices.

It's pretty hard to make it a truly silent night in my brain, boys and girls.

Silent night.

Stille nacht


heilige nacht
Alles schlaft; einsam wacht...



Bugger. This ain't gonna be easy...

Quick pointless photo:

Mostly just by way of letting my two fans know that I'm still around. This blasted cold (which, hello? Still no voice. That's nearly two weeks with no proper voice) migrated to my sinuses and caused me a couple of days of not being able to leave the bed much. Needless to say, I missed a bit of work.

Also needless to say, I need to get back to work now.

I'll try for something more tomorrow, assuming that I can make it into work two days in a row.