Boy, this'll be quick

So here's the deal: I'm over my hours this week at work. I've already worked more than I was supposed to today, and I still have a program to do tomorrow.

And what does this have to do with the blog?

Well, now that I'm done what I had to get done today, I want to get out of here before someone finds something else for me to do. Sooo...

See you... um, tomorrow? Maybe, if I can sneak it in without making my short work day accidentally longer. Otherwise, catch you Monday.

Or whenever.






Bye now.

Ok. So.

I opened up the blog editor. I put the nerdstick in the USB port. I went to type a title for this post... and then I realised that I have no post. Somewhere along the line I forgot to even think of a think of a blather. So?

More jewellery box. I bet you're all thrilled.

I'd like to title this particular drawer Hellooo 80s, since it was so obvious that it hadn't been touched since then. Zipper pull necklace, plastic pearls (which, by the way, I'm keeping. If nothing else, they might end up in an art project at some point), neon plastic earrings, hoop earrings, assorted earrings of which I'd lost one but kept the other because mismatched was cool anyway, hologram watch, cat watch with "mouse" second hand, lobe pinchers...

Oh, hang on. I've got a closer picture of what I mean by lobe pinchers:

See? No piercing required. They're just held on by the shape of the back. Incredibly uncomfortable after a while for those of us who already have piercings, though. They kind of squeeze them in bad ways.

Oh, and that butterfly-looking thing is a scarf holder. Not that I was ever terribly into scarves, but my mother was so I've got a little bit of scarf hardware around and about.

I'm happy to say that much of this drawer has now been cleaned out. The pile of plastic earrings whose posts were too big to conveniently fit through a normal piercing? Gone. Ditto the broken and mismatched stuff. I kept the lobe pinchers just because they're weird, and like I said above I've kept the fake pearls as well.

And I really should get a battery for the hologram watch.

It's still pretty cool, you have to admit.



Goodbyyye 80s...

Nerd detector

Today's pointless photo is, of course, not a nerd detector. It's a wind spinner. I was just trying to save you folks another jewellery box photo for a day or so.

You're welcome.

I had to do some shopping for work this morning (and let me tell you, it's hard to be in an art/craft store when I'm not shopping for me. The art supplies calllll...), and because I knew that I was going to be making a few stops I decided to take my toy along with me.

Your toy, Dee?

Yep. My toy. Some of you may remember that my father spoiled me with a 3DS last Christmas. He was also the one who bought me a DSi for my 40th birthday. That was quite the experience for someone who'd never really been a gamer, but there are enough puzzle and logic-style games available that even this incredibly uncoordinated lefty found it entertaining. Well, when Nintendo reduced the price of the 3DS before Christmas, Dad decided that I may as well upgrade.

Let me tell you, that thing was completely misadvertised. I mean, sure. It makes sense to advertise the 3D aspect when you're trying to sell a machine with 3D capabilities, but if they'd concentrated more on the fact that this particular toy does sooo many more things than the DSi I think that their sales would have been much better initially. I benefited from the fact that they ended up dropping the price tag so I can't complain, but I'm just saying that the marketing department sort of dropped the ball there.

So what can it do? Oh, I'll just leave you to read what they have to say about it, although it amuses me a bit that they apparently haven't updated the page since the 3DS was released last year. For our purposes today, though, only two features really matter.

First off, and I actually find this sort of funny, it has a pedometer. The idea is that you're supposed to take the thing with you so that you can earn "coins" as you walk. The coins are used in certain games. The problem with this is that if I happen to be playing one of those games and don't feel like taking my toy for a walk, I'll just sit there and shake it for a while. Certainly not what they had in mind, I'm sure.

The other feature that's sort of connected with taking your toy with you everywhere you go is Streetpass. The 3DS, you see, has its own social life. If you take it with you and it senses another 3DS somewhere nearby, they exchange information. Mii characters, latest game played, that sort of thing. The next time you open it up you have little green indicator spots on the games or applications that have found new friends.

I just think of it as the nerd detector.

If I take the toy for a walk and find the green Streetpass light on when I get home, I know that I've found a nerd.

No offence to the nerds, naturally, since obviously I'm walking around being nerdy as well. Although in my defence, I don't take my toy out for a walk all that often.



So did my toy find any new nerd friends today? Apparently so, because it seems I have a new challenger on Mario Kart 7. Which, by the way, is the closest I get to any sort of action game, what with my reflexes and all. I'm fair to middling at it, which at my speed means I'm EFFING EXCELLENT.

Or at least I have fun, which after all is the point of the thing.

And I found a new nerd, so it's all good.





Back to the nature side of nerdy now.

It gets old, you know

We got more snow yesterday and into this morning. Oh, it'll easily be melted off the roads by time I go home, yes, but I'm really, really getting tired of clearing off my car in the morning. I'm so tired. Tired of waiting. Tired of waiting for you...

Well, ok. For spring. Tired of waiting for spring.

Just as an aside, I should tell you that normally I wear my flash drive on a lanyard around my neck. The past few days I've been wearing pendants instead (don't worry, this isn't going to be another jewellery post. We'll give you at least a day's rest on those, I think) so the flash drive's been in my pocket instead. And just now, when I went to grab the flash drive to find a pointless photo for today? I very nearly tried to plug my grandma's blue topaz (check yesterday's photo if you're desperate) into the USB port.

Old habits die hard, as they say.

It just occurred to me that I should have made that story longer. I haven't come up with a topic yet today, and the extra typing might have brought something to mind. Ah well.

I'll wrap it up quickly today, then, with a bit of information. We're having a provincial election here on April 23rd. That would be equivalent to a state election, for any of my two fans who are American. And when did we officially find out that we were having an election?

Yesterday.

That's right, less than a month's (official) campaigning before an election.

Would you like to know something else?

That's normal in Canada.



I think I can feel my American readers, who've been suffering through what seems like years of primaries and haven't even got to the actual presidential campaigning yet, staring at the screen in stunned disbelief.

Honestly, I don't know how you folks tolerate your system. There's never been a time when I've visited the States that there hasn't been political signage out on people's lawn for some election. Don't you burn out? And the attack ads. Geez, don't get me started on the attack ads. The little bit we get here drive me nuts. I'd never be able to survive yours. I've said it before here, but I'll say it again: the quickest way to make me NOT vote for you is to attack your opponent rather than telling me what your policies are. Prove to me that you can do the job, not that you think the other guy is a weenie (or incompetent or a crook or a communist or a terrorist or a -- gasp -- liberal or whatever the latest slur is). Anything not to do with how you'd do the job just gets tuned out. By me, anyway. And if I don't vote for people who run attack ads? In the States I guess I'd just never vote.

It may come to that here, unfortunately, but I hope it won't.

And don't worry about this blog turning all political in the next month. I hate politics. If anything completely effed up happens I might bring it up, but other than that this may well be the last mention of our rapid-fire election that you have here at the Home of Pointlessness.

And good thing, too.

Did I mention that I hate politics?

Pretty odd that I had an extant label for it, then. If you click it, you'll probably just find another blather with me telling you I hate politics. Maybe I'll try it after I post.

Posting... now.

The... jewels?

But first...

I realised this morning that I don't know how to operate my car's fog lamps. Huff the Car has fog lamps, all right, and I thought I might have to use them (turns out I didn't, but I didn't know that for sure when I left the apartment), but I've never turned them on. I don't even know the symbol for fog lamps.

I've never even turned the car's headlights on, for that matter. It does that by itself. I suppose I should look up how to do things manually in case I ever have to, though. Yeah, I probably should.

Never in a million years did I ever think I'd not know how to turn a car's lights on...

----------

Anyway. Jewels, or lack of same. The other week I ended up buying... wait a minute. That almost sounds accidental. I didn't accidentally buy anything. The other week I chose to buy a few pendants from the Rock and Gem show here at the nature centre. I don't usually buy things like that for myself, so I guess we can call it a treat. Getting the pendants (and trying in vain to find some suitable chains amongst my mutt of a stash. I'll probably ending up buying something to the purpose eventually, but what I have on them will do for now) reminded me that I have a photo inventory of my jewellery box that I was going to share with you at some point in lieu of other topics.

In lieu of other topics. I should have just used that as the name for the blog, really.

I'll get around to taking photos of the offending pendants later, I imagine, but for now, let's start on a trip through my lack of valuables. And I'm not kidding there. You know those commercials where they offer to buy your "unwanted" gold? Mine probably wouldn't amount to cab fare even at today's gold prices. A look at the jewellery can still provide a little bit of interest, though, don't you think? Always amusing to see what people acquire and what weird things they stash away. And since my jewellery case is sort of like archaeology in that you can go down by layers to find out things about the society of the time (or at least it was. To be honest, I used the picture-taking as an excuse to clean the thing out, finally, so not all of the junk that you'll find is still with me), you'll be seeing the jewellery habits of me since I was a teenager back in the dark, junky age of the 80s. And before that, even.

Ready, then? We're starting off slowly, since the stuff you're seeing above is not in the jewellery case but in assorted boxes beside the main box. Not necessarily the stuff that didn't make the main cut, however. Along with the cheap heart pendant, the goofy Christmas earrings, and the arm bands (for holding back too-long shirt sleeves. I don't really have a need of them now, but they're still around), are the crystal set I wore for my high school graduation, a Swarovski pendant my uncle bought me, a blue topaz pendant that belonged to my grandmother, and a set of freshwater pearls that my brother and I bought for my mother. Before she died, obviously. It would have been weird otherwise.

And why aren't they in the main box? Two reasons. I occasionally wear one or two of those things so I like to keep them where they're easier to find. Also, they wouldn't fit.

The also part is probably the biggest reason.

Coming up next? Well, we'll see. And I'm not planning to do this every day, just in case you were wondering if this was going to become the Blog Of Costume Jewels. It'll just depend on whether I have other thoughts for a particular post is all.



Isn't this exciting, boys and girls?





Yeah, I thought so too...

Grow, dammit

It's Seedy Sunday at work today, and the place is filled with local seed vendors, bee keepers, chickens... well, ok, just the one chicken. If you've never heard of Seedy Sundays, just think sustainability and local sources and you'll be on the right track.

It's cool. Lots to see and learn about.

It also frustrates the bejeebers out of me, to be honest. Not because of the event itself, but because it's March and around here that means NOT ENOUGH GROWING THINGS.

Things take a while to get going in the Great White North, in other words. The end of winter draaags on, and just when it seems like things are going to start blooming (and tree pollen allergy season's going to start, but that's a topic best left to when it actually starts) we get another snowstorm or a severe freeze. And, obviously, my annoyance builds.

To have tables full of seeds out there just makes me want to plant something, and there's no flipping point yet. I have a well-established gardening urge thanks to my mother and grandmother, and this time of year it becomes almost unbearable. It gets to the point some years that I attempt -- futilely yet again -- to start at least one flat of seedlings in my tiny apartment just so that I can feel like I've planted something. I always waste my time and effort when I do that because I don't have the right set-up at all, but it happens all the same.

Not this year, though. I'm going to keep myself from wrecking perfectly good seeds. Good plan, that, but it seems to have translated itself into a yearning to buy a lemon basil plant from one of today's vendors. Just to have, you understand. Lemon basil's tasty stuff...

Sigh. It really is a bit of a sickness. Next time I go into Dad's place you can bet I'll be prowling the yard looking for any instance of growth in the tulip and daffodil buds that  you've already seen on the blog. They're right next to the house, those plants; nothing else has had a chance to think about growing. Dad's yard is sheltered and holds the snow for a long time, so it can be an irksome place to be when you're desperately looking for any -- any -- sign that spring's a done deal and someday soon you'll be getting the garden (or in my case, balcony planters) in.

'Til then, though...



Any bets that I'll be going home with a lemon basil plant this afternoon?

Just quick

Busy day here at the moment, but I thought I'd better post something just to let you know that I'm still around.

I am, you know.

Still around, that is.

Hoping for better blogging luck this coming week, but I guess we'll see how that goes.

Tomeless

Well, the world's officially going to end. Today's pointless photo is not only not pointless, it's editorial.

It had to happen eventually.

And what brought on this chain of events? The announcement by Encyclopaedia Britannica that it won't be producing hard copy editions any longer. Not exactly staggering or surprising news, especially given that the most recent paper edition costs some $1400 (and there's still some left, if you're dying for them and have the room on your bookshelf), but a landmark nonetheless.

For me, especially.

I loved encyclopedias so much as a child. I have to say as a child, unfortunately, since the truth is that I haven't used one since school, but they were a pretty big part of my life for a long time so of course the news makes me miss them a bit.

We never had Encyclopaedia Britannica in the house when I was growing up because it was considered pretty expensive even then (and they did, after all, have to be replaced periodically as knowledge progressed), but it was a regular recourse for me in the library as soon as I was old enough to understand most of the big words. At home we had a Collier's set (or, rather, my parents did, since I would have been approximately one year old when they got it and I'm sure that they weren't counting on having a prodigy), and then later on a World Book Encyclopedia. They were geared more to kids, the World Books, and there was a pretty good chance that if you visited our house for any length of time when I was between about... oh, let's say eight and fifteen... that you'd find me at some point sitting cross-legged on the floor with some random volume open on my lap. Sometimes it was because I specifically needed to find out something, but more often it would be because I just wanted to learn something. Anything. And since the World Book was fairly well cross-referenced, learning anything about something would usually lead me to learning something about something else that I hadn't been planning to learn about, and so on and so on and so on.

Yep. I was that much of a nerd even then.

I loved hard copy encyclopedias. I love the pages, the pictures... I even loved the feel of the weight of the things. But will I miss them?

No, of course not.

Like most everyone else these days (and as not-so-subtly hinted at in the photo. See? I said it was editorial) I find it much more convenient and quick to look for things online. I don't think that I would bother with a non-electronic encyclopedia even if I found one for five dollars in a thrift store. It would be too much of a bother to store, even if I might get some nostalgic pleasure out of flipping through the pages. The plain fact is that old-fashioned encyclopedias are just too non-portable for the way we work these days.

Amazingly enough, even in this bookish house I couldn't find an encyclopedia to take a picture of this morning. The old ones are long gone. What you're looking at in the picture is part of the dictionary from the old Collier's edition we had. It was saved, I guess, because it takes a little longer for dictionaries to be out of date (although even that's less and less true now. Doesn't stop me from loving dictionaries, though. Someday we're going to have to talk about my ridiculous dictionary collection. You heard me -- I have a collection of dictionaries. They're on different subjects, naturally, but... oh wait. I'm distracting myself, and that could so easily be another post that I'd best not waste it).

If you click on the photo, it should be obvious why I chose the page that I did. When I decide to be on point, you better believe that you poor people get beat over the head with it.



That sounds painful, actually. I'd better head back to the pointlessness. Less chance of injury.





The pointlessness, by the way, will be vanishing again for a couple of days. I don't think that I'll be near a computer tomorrow, and my Monday looks to be so busy that there won't be a point in even trying pointlessness. The rest of the week should be a little better than last week, though.

Maybe.

No promises, at this point.

Or pointless, as it were.



And now you know why I don't write encyclopedias...

Oh geez, blogging.

Not going so well this week, is it?

Ah well, we all have our moments. And as I've said here before on the blog, I should never, ever think that I can leave blogging until later, because later is always past it. Past my blogging window, I mean. I'll think that I can get to the blog after such-and-such, and then when after such-and-such comes what little blogbrain I have has shut itself up for the night.

Ah well, as I typed just a couple of sentences ago.

I need to go do a few things before bed now, but I do at least want credit for the fact that this is a NEW POINTLESS PHOTO, and that I managed to find some spring for it. The coming of spring on the calendar is always a bit of a joke here in Alberta, since we all know that we're in for at least three more snowstorms before spring even thinks of showing its head, but at least the daffodils give it the ol' college try.

Incidentally, the Canada Geese arrived a few days ago. Silly birds. Every year they arrive when all the water is still frozen, and every year they stand on the ponds and rivers looking completely indignant about the lack of thawing that we've managed to do for them. Every year, birds. Every year.

As you can tell, I'm a little lacking in sympathy.

And with that... hey. This almost managed to turn into a post after all. Maybe there's hope for this place.



Or at least this lax blogger.





One can hope, anyway.

Pointless photo... is it Of The Week, at this point?

And no, we don't have buds yet. We have snow. Buds will be coming someday, though. I firmly believe that...

Anyway. I took a break. And then I was working away from the office. And now I'm back, but I don't really have anything to contribute to the interwebs today.

So, photo.

I'll try for a real post tomorrow.

A question

And it'll have to be a quick one, which is sort of unfortunate since I won't be around a computer for the next days, which means this lame post will stay at the top of the page for far too long.

Anyway.

Oh, and my apologies to those of my two fans who happen to not be Canadian  for this one, ok?

Here goes:

I've asked this before, but it needs to be asked again because I really don't get it. Coffee drinkers out there (of which I'm not one, so I doubly don't get it), can you please tell me what form of crack Tim Hortons must be putting in their beverages?

It's got to be something like that, right? Nothing else would explain the fact that every time I drive past the Tims down the hill from my place -- no matter what time of day -- there's a line-up for the drive-through that goes all the way out to the road.

As I said, I don't get it. I don't get the coffee bit in the first place because to me the stuff tastes vile (and I'm not talking about Tims coffee there; just coffee in general). I don't get buying coffee by the cup rather than just making it yourself (yes, I'm cheap). And I don't get why this one particular company has so much become the Canadian THING.

The long drive-through queue I just described? Not just at my neighbourhood Tims, no. Pretty much every Tim Hortons known to this country, it seems.

And yes, I know that it's currently Roll Up The Rim time and all that, but the line-ups don't stop just because the contest does.




Erm, sorry. I just noticed that today's completely unseasonal and pointless flower looks like it's heiling Hitler. I didn't see that in the thumbnail...

Ah well. I guess if people want to pay too much for a beverage that I don't want, it doesn't really affect me in the end. It's just a puzzlement, is all.

And with that (and I have no real idea what brought Yul Brynner into the whole thing), I'll leave you to your weekend and me to mine. See you in a few days, and don't forget to change your clocks.

My new favourite thing

Photo credit: A 3D "Electrical Tree", or Lichtenberg figure inside a 1.5" cube of Polymethyl Methacrylate (PMMA). Created by Bert Hickman, Stoneridge Engineering, http://www.teslamania.com using a 3 MeV electron accelerator.

 This is my new favourite thing. Well, maybe not this exact particular one, but this and its companions are my new favourite things.


It's a Lichtenberg figure, and until today I never knew that such a thing existed. Amazing, really, for someone as pattern-obsessed as I can be. I've since learned a fair bit about them, but rather than me muddling about trying to explain it I'll let the experts over at Captured Lightning (who made the figure in the picture) tell you what it's all about. Go ahead, check it out. Just try to remember to hit your back button after, ok?






Ok, at least some of you are probably back by now. Pretty cool stuff, huh.


I want one.


I may want one badly enough to actually do something about it, now that I know the price of the smaller ones. Not nearly as expensive as I thought they'd be. And I'm such a sucker for fractals. I mean, what could be better for a pattern freak than a pattern that reiterates nearly infinitely, right?


Now for the weird part. I found out about Lichtenberg figures from a post on Fail Blog, of all places. They posted a photo taken from this blog of a Lichtenberg scar on a person who'd been struck by lightning. That's right, folks. If you're hit by lightning, you too could be wearing a fractal tree on your skin. Apparently, Lichtenberg figures also sometimes appear on ground that's been lightning-stuck.

Amazing.

Also amazing that I'd never heard of them before, as I said. I'm usually all over this kind of stuff.






And I want one, did I mention?

Just saying. 

Another flower

Because flowers aren't snow.

And I don't have any new photos at the moment. or, rather, I do... but they're still on the camera. They're likely to stay there for a while, too, since I really shouldn't be mucking about with that sort of trivial nonsense at work, and I don't know if I'll make it into my Dad's place this weekend.

The photos aren't of snow anyway. I've had enough of snow.

We got a fair bit the other day (which is fanTAStic, especially this time of year) and it's messed things up enough that at least one of the surrounding counties cancelled their school busses today to avoid the impassable rural roads.

March is a stupid month to have snow days in, if you ask me. Of course, I don't imagine that the students are complaining.

This snow plus the inanity of my apartment's management company also means that I'll be taking a cab to work tomorrow morning, which sucks. Let me set out the picture here so that you can all be snitty with me: The management company doesn't really believe in snow removal. Ordinarily we'll go an entire winter without having our parking lots cleared, because naturally we can all just beat things down with our tires, right? So with every freeze and thaw things become more of an ice rink (seriously. I often have to wear my ice cleats just to get to my car in the morning), and when everything melts in the spring all the water runs into the divots created by the cars, and we have seasonal lakes to park in. This happens every year, and I know I've whinged about it here on the blog before so I'll just leave that part for now.

Next part: Even this management company can't manage to ignore the massive amounts of snow making life difficult in the parking lot at the moment, so they've decided to clear it. On the rare occasions that this happens we're told to find somewhere else to park all day (since they apparently can't tell their contractor exactly when to come. Contractor's fault, probably, so there's one little thing I won't blame on the management company. See? I can be fair). Or we're threatened with tag-and-tow if we don't find somewhere else to park, rather. No big deal, since I'm generally at work during the clearing time.

I don't work at night, though.

Which makes it a pain in the youknow that they've scheduled the lot clearing for overnight. I should mention that I've been living there for nearly twenty years (sigh. It hurts even just to type that) and they've NEVER done a nighttime clearing. And now, somehow, they expect everyone to find spots to park on the (uncleared, snow-filled) street all night. Like that'll happen.

I should mention here that this doesn't affect just my building. Oh no. They're doing all the lots in three-building complex at once, so three buildings' worth of people will be trying -- and failing --to find parking on the street.

Me? I'm leaving my car at work. I've been offered a ride home this afternoon (THANK YOU!), but tomorrow morning it's cab or walk, since the city busses don't run to the Nature Centre.

How stupid is that, by the way? I work at a nature centre and I don't even have the option of doing the save-the-planet thing by taking mass transit to work.



Aaanyway. The car's having a sleepover at work, the cab company gets my business tomorrow, and that bloody parking lot better be cleared by the time I drive the car home again.





AND STOP SNOWING, ALREADY.

Sheesh.

Oh, and if you thought this was complaining, just wait until you hear about the next few days. We're supposed to be well above 0C, so all that snow will be looking for a place to melt to. I anticipate a lot of discussion about windshield washer fluid and ineffectual wipers....

Pointless photo of the day:

It's snowing today.

We'll probably get 20 cm or so in all.

I don't want to put snow on the blog just now, so I'm not going to rush out and take a picture.

Thus: flowers.

Remember flowers?

I wish I was looking at flowers right now through the office window, instead of snow.





Yep. I officially have nothing. It was one of those "working at work" kind of mornings, and I didn't get a chance to think of anything to blather about. Except snow, but... flowers, right?





stupid snow

And speaking of collections...

Sorry for the slightly wonky picture. I've got to start taking photos of things that aren't above my head height.

Today's collection from this collection-filled house that I grew up in is unusual in that I'd keep it. More than that, actually. If there was any room at all in my tiny apartment they'd be at my place on display. And possibly even being used.

It's not because they're particularly valuable. I'd imagine that they're not, but to be honest I really don't even know.

This is one of those cases where it's the associations that are important. These were my grandmother's cups. Some of them, anyway. These are the ones she gave to me and my mother when she moved out of her house. I think my aunt has the rest. Oh, and they're not all Grandma's, I guess I should say. The Old Country Roses stuff was my mother's, and the Lavender Rose is my pattern. I hate my pattern, so it's probably a good thing that I never settled down and found the need to buy (or be gifted) china. And why do I hate it? Long story that I've probably already told here (and if I haven't I should sometime. Whomever knows that I'm usually hurting for topics), but the short version is that I was talked into something that I didn't really want as a teenager.

Overall I'm not the type of person who gives a flying rat's bum about china anyway, but these cups are kind of special. They're not a set; just an assortment of cups. I have no idea where they came from. I'd expect that they were collected piece by piece as a not-terribly-rich family could afford them. There's not a one of them that matches.

Maybe that's one of the reasons I like them. They don't match. They're just random pieces of china that someone (presumably my grandmother) liked. And kept. And used.

The cups made regular appearances at every supper we had at Grandma's. We'd have supper, we'd have dessert, and then the cups would come out and we'd have tea. It was nothing out of the ordinary. I'm not going to tell you about special family rituals here or anything. We'd just have tea after supper, was all.

As a kid it made me feel a bit grown-up, I suppose. Choosing which cup I wanted (another reason why I like the fact that they don't match) and then being served out tea with everyone else. I'm not sure I liked the taste especially, but I certainly drank it.

Just as an aside, the tea was always Orange Pekoe (Red Rose, generally), and never served with cream or sugar. Mom's family apparently just didn't do cream or sugar, so they never thought of putting it out. Now, as an adult? I never buy Orange Pekoe (I prefer Darjeeling, although it isn't the easiest thing to find these days without going to an actual tea shop), and I almost always have my tea with sugar. I don't think I had my first cup of tea with sugar until university, come to think of it. It stuck, though...

Anyway. After yesterday's post I had a look around the house and realised that I could probably post for a month about the collections in this place. I guess that's what happens when you stay in the same house for so long. Things build up. I'm thinking that Collections In My Dad's House might end up being a semi-regular theme here on the blog, so I hope that you're not already bored. And if any of my two fans happen to collect some of the things I talk about, don't be afraid to drop me a line. I imagine most of this stuff is available for purchase, since I think my Dad has about as much attachment to it as I do (that is, not terribly much). For now, though, I'm thinking that I really could use a cup of tea.

Maybe I should use the china for a change.

The non-collector

What you see in the not-quite-pointless photo to the left is a fan. Excuse the weird angle and the dust; it's high up on the wall in my room here at my father's place, as it has been for years. it was from the China Pavilion at Expo 86 (we took a class trip out to Vancouver for Expo. It was a lot of fun, and the first trip I'd ever taken without my parents. I... brought home a fan. So adventurous, me). It shares the wall with a few other cheap fans that I've picked up from various places.

It was part of a fan collection that never really happened.

Thank goodness.

You see, I used to collect things -- the important word there being used to. I don't anymore and I have no desire to, but back in the day I had collections of buttons (pin-on badges, more properly, but we always called them buttons around here), stuffed animals, the aforementioned fans, books, porcelain dolls...

I wish they'd go away now.

The problem with being a reformed collector is that when you decide you've had enough of collecting the collections don't just disappear. They stay around to clutter your life until you finally get so frustrated that you either start collecting again or just get rid of the whole shooting match.

For years I've been leaning towards the latter. Doing something about it, even.

The stuffed animals went first. I donated a lot to a couple of preschool programs, and most of the rest to a charity drop-box. The maybe half-dozen that are left have specific meanings to me, so for the moment they're not going anywhere. Do you think I'd really give up my first teddy bear, even though I don't remember it and it has no face because I apparently chewed the leather nose off when I was teething? Not yet, anyway. It's enough that the rest are keepsakes rather than a mindless collection, especially because they don't take up the wads of space that they used to.

The buttons are on a bulletin board in my room here. They don't take up much space either, which is why they're still around (same for the fans, really. They're just decorating the place). If anyone out there knows someone who collects badges and might like a free box-load of them, let me know. I'd be happy to send them along, and they wouldn't be missed.

The books were a bit harder, because they're of value to me for their contents rather than just their sheer numbers. For a long time it was almost sacrilege to me to willingly part with a book. That changed about ten years ago, though. I got fed up with the way my one-room apartment looked more like my one-room library, and I actually sorted out a whole bunch of them and threw them in the same charity drop-box that received the stuffed animals. It felt... surprisingly good. I wasn't expecting it to, but it was nice to have the space back.

For more books. I need to sort again. To be fair, though, even the casual book buyer tends to accumulate things over the space of ten years, right?

Which brings us to the pickle of the porcelain dolls. I have lots of dolls, and I totally blame my mother for it. Mom was, unfortunately, massively into collecting. Bells, in her case. And brass objects. And when, as a teenager, I decided to spend what was probably too much money on a porcelain doll dressed in a kimono (I'd been admiring it for a while), she latched onto the possibilities of a new collection. I have probably over thirty dolls, and I think I bought four of them myself. She used to give me dolls for birthdays, Christmas... yeah, lots of dolls.

I'm tired of the dolls.

Some of them I'm fond of and would likely keep, yes, but most of them need to find new homes.

How do I do that? Some of them are worth a little money, so I should really sell them rather than give them away. I'm not too anxious about becoming an ebay seller at this point in my life, and something like kijiji means that I would have to put up with people calling me about bloody dolls at the worst times. I guess I want to see the dolls go without actually having to be involved? Yeah, I suppose.

Auction, maybe. I could just take them to auction.

Ah well. I'm not likely to do anything at all with them in the near future, since I'm not tripping over them every day. I'm open to suggestions, though. For the dolls and the buttons. And, for that matter, Mom's bell collection...





You know, I've mentioned before that as I get older I get less and less connected to my "stuff", and that's really true. If you'd told the teenager who bought that fan at Expo that one day she'd be wishing she had less stuff, though, she would have wondered if you were trying to teach her some sort of Wonderful-Life-type lesson. Funny how things change, isn't it?

I wish I'd brought back more than just a fan from Expo...

Pointless question of the day:

How do you suppose Blue Oyster Cult feels about the fact that a whole generation of us think of Don't Fear the Reaper as More Cowbell?

It was on the radio yesterday as I was driving home from work, and even though I know the song well my first thought was still MORE COWBELL!!!

Wheat says that they'd probably just be happy to still have some social relevance.

That could be true.

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I've just turned on the music since I'm alone in the office. It's probably kind of silly to turn it on when I'm leaving in about a half an hour, but I needed to wake my brain up after spending the morning reading through programming material and it seemed like the way to go.

I don't want to imply that I'm only allowed music when Wheat's not here, which I suppose the above sort of sounded like. Wheat's as into music as I am, so it's not generally a problem. I find, though, that I usually only turn on music when he's here if I'm doing something that specifically requires music to keep the short attention span in line. Something repetitive with my hands, or something like that. Otherwise I keep the music off mostly to keep myself from singing. It's bad enough sharing an office with someone who's constantly (if silently) singing along with the voices in her head, I figure, without putting up with her singing along out loud to the internet radio.

And it happens.

It happens without me even realising it, really. Music's my usual form of muttering to myself.

Hands up if you've already figured out that I've got nothing today? Really? That quickly? I'm that predictable then, I suppose.

Right now Eddie Vedder's singing You've Got to Hide Your Love Away on my current mix. I'm not sure how I feel about that. It's not unpleasant, but it's not the Beatles.

Ah, and here's the Beatles. They must have known that I missed them.





Hands up if you think I should stop typing before this just becomes a list of What's Playing Now?

Yeah, me too.

Later, all.



All two of my two fans.

Special Bonus Post!!!

Yes, that deserves exclamation points. You don't often get a bonus post now, do you?

Watch this.

No, really. Watch it. It's awesome. And, in an odd way, reminds me somewhat of my job on Stupid Phone Question days. We seem to have those on a regular basis. Maybe it's the moon phases or something...

Eggs

Today's pointless photo is not of an egg. It's a creepy fish head.

Not a roly-poly one, though.

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I don't have a lot to say today because I actually brought something to eat for a change and therefore spent my lunch hour having lunch (novel concept). I did, however, have something I wanted to say about eggs.

I guess I'm a little fussy about how I like my eggs. Not too fussy, really, but when I watch Food Network and see people gushing about being served whatever with a "lightly poached" (in my world, "mostly raw") egg on top and how it's so great to mix the MOSTLY RAW yolk in with the whatever... yeah, kind of squicks me.

First off, do people really like the texture of poached eggs? I think it's possibly the worst way to ever cook an egg, but apparently I'm in the minority. I've never poached an egg, because when I was a kid and my mother served poached eggs for breakfast it seemed like a peculiar form of punishment rather than a meal. Like I said, it's a texture thing. Especially with the white. I'll admit that to me the egg white is really only there to make you appreciate the yolk more, and to have that white poached?

Ick.

So how do you like your eggs, then, Dee? Well, if boiled, hard. I'm no three-minute egg person, for sure. Not so hard that it'll bounce, but not soft by a long shot.

If fried? Over easy. And if there's a tiiiny bit of runniness to the yolk -- even though that still means raw -- I'll live. Only a tiny bit, though. And I prefer it made in a non-stick pan, because I don't like them greasy.

Get a feeling it would be hard to do breakfast with me at a diner?

As far as scrambled... well, I make good scrambled eggs. I'm not even going to say if I do say so myself, because I know I make good scrambled eggs. The secret? Add stuff. Ham, if it's available, cheese always, milk of course, and (AND HERE'S MY BIG SECRET!!!) dry mustard and worcestershire sauce.

Yeah, that's right. My scrambled eggs are the best because they're first cousins with a Welsh Rarebit.

And don't knock it 'til you've tried it. It's reeeally good, even though the worcestershire sauce tends to give everything a bit of a weird colour.

It's easy to get over.





And it's not mostly raw.

And now I have to get back to work. I hope everyone noticed the complete lack of egg puns in this post. It was almost physically painful to omit them, but I just proved to myself that I can do it if I have to.

I'm that strong.

Because I eat my eggs.

As long as they're not mostly raw.

Or poached.



Ick.