Pointless photo of the day:

And that's really about all I'm in the mood for today. See you in a couple or three, folks.

How does your garden grow?

Well, we've officially hit one of my favourite times of year. Not for the weather or the activities; for the harvest.

Peas, I mean.

Fresh peas right off the vine are one of my absolute favourite things in the world, and I'm happy to say that I'm finally able to raid my patch.

Incidentally, today's pointless photo is not of a pea vine. Just in case you were confused or anything.

For anyone out there who gardens and wonders how big a pea patch I plant, I'd say... oh, about a forty centimetre plot or so.

Yep. I live in an apartment. My garden's in pots.

I have four big pots, and an assortment of smaller planters that I use occasionally. This year (and probably for the next several) I seeded them rather than using bedding-out plants, because I was lucky enough to be given a whole whack of free seed packets. I think I mentioned that before.

When I planted in the spring I made one pot primarily vegetables, but for the others I threw a bunch of different semi-random things in to see what would decide to grow. I say semi-random because I did make an effort to try to use colours that somewhat complemented each other, but there wasn't exactly a huge amount of planning involved. I like a bit of randomness in my pots, really. I'm not a regimented gardener by any means.

Anyway, we've now hit the point where the early flowers are done, the late flowers are budding, and the peas are being eaten. Time for some garden evaluation, then. How does my garden grow?

Overall, not badly. I've got lots of green things doing what green things do, and when the cosmos blooms things will be really showy. The aforementioned peas are pretty healthy despite a pelting from a hailstorm a couple of weeks ago, and the mixed greens that are in the pot with them surprisingly haven't bolted yet. It's pretty hot on that balcony, and lettuce-y plants usually get scraggly in a hurry. I guess I'm using it fast enough this year to slow that down a little. I may even get one or two carrots out of that pot, but I never have much hope for carrots anyway. The conditions just aren't right.

In the flower world, the cosmos I mention above are going great guns, the nasturtiums and bachelor's buttons are in full bloom, the gypsophila's filling in the cracks nicely, and the coloured sunflowers should be amazing when it's their turn. There's some other stuff in there too, but you don't need an entire inventory.

Disappointments? Yeah, a couple. The germination on my scarlet runner beans was really awful, and that's really weird. They're usually one of my standbys. Same thing goes for the morning glories. One tiny little plant that doesn't seem to want to do anything, and I doubt very much that I'll see any flowers from it. Too bad. I usually look forward to them self-seeding, and the seed variety I had would've been pretty. Ah well. What can you do?

Hopefully, eat a few more peas when I get home. That'd be good.



Oh, and if anyone was curious as to how a noted pea lover can satisfy herself with just the harvest from a few plants in a pot, the answer is that she can't. That's why I make sure to have a good raid of my father's patch every time I go to visit him...

Or you could...

Today's photo has nothing to do with anything. You know, in case you were suddenly expecting the Meaning of Life or something.

----------

Yesterday, in a bid to find something to cook for supper that would add minimal extra heat to my apartment (yeah, yeah, we've heard that your apartment is hot, Dee. Moving right along...), I decided to make a dish that was one of my favourites as a kid. It's a pork and mushroom casserole, but we used to call it Pork and Stuff because you had your pork and then you had your stuff that the pork was cooked with. The stuff always went on your rice. That was the rule.

It's a family recipe, and a simple one. Judging from the ordinary and -- let's face it -- somewhat boring ingredients, I'd say it's probably from the fifties or so.

It occurred to me as I was bunging things together that years of cooking for myself and watching probably too much Food Network have made changes to my version of the casserole compared to what my mother used to cook. It's become very much an or you could type of thing, in that if someone asked me for the recipe I'd find myself writing down Mom's version, but with a lot of or you coulds as asides. So hey. Why don't I just make that a blog post, then? All right, sounds good:

Pork and Mushroom Casserole

Brown... erm... some bacon (oh, good start. How much is a some, then? Let's say two to four slices, diced. Depending on how much bacon you need in your life, that is) and remove it from the pan. Use the fat to cook one medium diced onion until clear. OR YOU COULD just leave both the bacon and the onion in the pan until they start to caramelise. I'm all for caramelisation here. More flavour; better colour.

Add one can of sliced mushrooms, drained but with liquid reserved. OR YOU COULD actually buy proper fresh mushrooms. I hardly ever use canned. What mushrooms? Whatever's your pleasure. Slice them and cook them down with the onions a bit. And the bacon, if it's still in the pan.

Set aside. OR YOU COULD just throw everything straight into the casserole dish. Saves washing an extra bowl.

Cut a pork tenderloin into medallions (don't forget to remove the silver skin. My mother never taught me that part), and then bread with flour. OR YOU COULD not bother with that last bit. The flour helps thicken things a little, yes, but if you bread the pork too thickly you just get flour goo in the finished product. If you're into breading, though, this would be a good place to add a little extra flavour. At the very least put a bit of pepper in with the breading.

Brown the pork in the remaining bacon fat. OR YOU COULD just put it directly in the casserole. I know that browning adds flavour to the meat, but since I caramelise my onions it's not that important.

Layer the ingredients in a casserole dish. OR YOU COULD just kind of stir things together . Doesn't make much difference in the way it cooks. Or looks, really.

Add the reserved liquid from the canned mushrooms. OR YOU COULD actually get something more from the frying pan by deglazing it instead of using... um... mushroom water. While the pan's still hot, pour in a bit of whatever liquid suits your fancy (stock, wine, just plain water, probably not milk...) and stir things around until the liquid's hot enough to pick up most of those nice caramelised leftovers. Add the liquid to your casserole.

Bake in a 325F over for 40 minutes (or a little longer if you took the lazy route of not browning your meat). OR YOU COULD just do the whole thing in the slow cooker instead, which is what I did last night. Remember the part about not wanting to heat up the apartment any more than necessary?

Serve with white rice. OR YOU COULD be a little less boring and try a different rice. Wild, basmati; they'd both work. Pilaf probably would too, for that matter. I used a mix of rices that I tend to think of as my hippy mix (partly because of where I buy it). Why not let the rice add more to the dish rather than just having it act as a base to hold the stuff?



Anyway, that's it. Pretty simple, not exactly ground-breaking, but decent comfort food. If you decide to try it, let me know if you find another or you could. I'm always game to play around.





If anyone besides me found themselves saying That's What She Said as a reflex just there? We probably need some help.

Lily love

My two fans know that I've made no secret of my love of pattern and symmetry. It's probably connected with the obsessive part of my OLF self, but noticing patterns pleases my brain. Especially, oddly enough considering what I just said, when what initially seems to be a simple pattern is broken up by chance or some factor unknown to the quick glance into something that appears to be much more random... and then, upon closer examination, turns out to be a more complex pattern rather than an accident.

Yeah, I like fractals. And Lichtenberg figures (although, obviously not the struck by lightning part. I wouldn't like that at all). And the branching patterns in leaves, in case the pointless photography found here hasn't made that terribly clear already.

You'll notice that I said that I love pattern and symmetry above. Patterns don't have to be symmetrical to attract my attention, but I'll admit that a good bit of apparent symmetry certainly catches my eye.

Apparent symmetry, yes. A lot of the symmetry that we think we see out there isn't. Case in point? Us. I've brought this up before, but our apparent symmetry (which really isn't symmetry at all. We're all lopsided, whether we want to see it or not) is only skin deep. A quick look at our internal workings is enough to show that the outside appearance is all ha ha fooled you. There's barely a damned thing symmetrical about us at all.

I'm so distracting myself from my point. Ah... good, then. I guess that means that things are headed back to normal on the blog for a bit. And, of course, that the blog won't turn into a pumpkin, which is exactly what will happen if it ever comes to a point.

Either that, or the second coming.

Um, anyway. I was headed to lilies, I think. Judging from the photos and the post title, at least.

I like lilies. Members of the lily family have always had an attraction for me, especially when it comes to drawing. The clean, bold lines, the simple symmetry...

Apparent simple symmetry...

See? I got myself back on track.

It's not nearly as simple as it looks, my friend. Six simple petals in a basic radial symmetry? No way. To begin with, three petals.

Yep.

Three petals, three sepals. If they weren't flower-coloured, you'd be able to tell a lot easier that those bottom three "petals" were actually the covers that were protecting the flower before it opened. The outside of the bud, as it were. In a lot of plants, the sepals are green and form sort of a ring at the base of the flower. Here, they become a part of things, colour and all. We call all the members -- petals and sepals -- tepals when that happens.

I know, who really cares if they're petals or not? Botanists. And anal-retentives, I guess. And people who like it when things aren't as simple as they first appear.

I like being surprised by nature.

Although I can't quite figure out the surprise of the flower in the bottom photo deciding to grow along the ground instead of standing upright. It's a healthy plant; just has a prostrate stem. Bend over by something early in the growing season, I suppose. Not that it matters.

Just like sepals and petals? Yeah, in the end I guess that's right. It's not going to change my interest in finding out that things aren't really as they might seem, though. There's too much of a cool factor in it for me.

And that makes me happy.





And now? Well, now that I have some new reference photos I should probably get off my lazy behind and... erm... back on my lazy behind and draw a lily. It has been pretty much sheer laziness lately, the lack of drawing. I get that way sometimes.

Kind of like with blogging. I'll try to do better this week.

Oh, for a brain to post with

I really wanted to make this a proper post. Really, I did. Things seem to be conspiring against me, though.

I'm tired, both physically and mentally. You might have gathered that there's been a little behind-the-scenes stress here (you know, from the lack of anything actually blatherific lately). Things are mostly ok at the moment, but still. Stressed is stressed, and it doesn't go away overnight.

So, there's that. But I thought I could pick some silly topic today and just type my way through it. That works, sometimes, to get me back on track. And then? Well, now we're under severe thunderstorm watch, and since my dad's UPS is old enough to be decidedly lacking in the battery part of backup battery, I'm a little leery to be typing away and just lose everything.

Ok, so it wouldn't be everything. Blogger's automatic save feature's kind of handy that way, but the whole thing's still more or less inhibiting the flow of nonsense.

I suppose I could tell you why I photoedited the bejeebers out of the poor begonia in today's pointless photo, but I really don't remember now. Bored, probably. Too many begonia pictures in a row that day.

So where does that leave me? Wanting lunch, I guess. Lunch and a nap, but knowing my brain and its aversion to sleep, lunch alone will probably have to do.



Let's give this another go later, ok? Or tomorrow, which also counts as later.

Ok, then.

Hiya

Not a great photo, I know, but I kind of liked the way the Mock Orange flowers were glowing.

Well, not literally glowing, obviously. That would indicate some bizarre form of radiation.

----------

Sorry for the unexpected absence from the blog (and sorry that I'm mostly going to continue it today by being in a non-wordy mood). It was a combination of taking a little time off from work and being fairly busy when I was here. The perils of blogging when you don't own a computer, I guess.

Like I said above, though, now that I actually have time to blog I'm not really in the blogging mood. I'd have plenty to talk about, but some of it's too depressing (death counts as depressing, right?), too work-related, or just too plain boring to bother with. At least in my current brain. And also in my current brain, I'm thinking that although I'm perfectly capable of writing a whole blog post about how bummed I was last night to be able to hear the fireworks but not see them (kiiinda like fireworks, me), it just doesn't seem worth the typing.

So there you go. I'll try for make-up blather in the next day or so, but for now I guess I'll just say see you later.

Meanwhile, at the workplace...

Hi.

Better mood today, or maybe I should say a more coherent one. There's still not a whole bunch of sleep going on in my life, but at least there was sleep. And a few hours in a row, even.

Yay me.

Hey, at this point even the small victories deserve a cheer.

----------

I just went walking in the rain, or at least in the mizzle. I enjoy the rain, which probably says to a whole bunch of you that I live in a place where it doesn't rain every day. You'd be right, and as a result I'm very fond of rain. That's not saying that I might not be fond of the rain even if I lived in a rainy place, of course, but I know very well that it would be much less of a novelty.

I went out to take a few photos for the work blog (and they'll be going up after, for those of my two fans who know where the work blog is. For those who don't... well, the pictures won't be all that interesting, but if you're desperate for directions just e-mail me via the address on the sidebar of the other blog) and stopped along the way to take a couple of shots for myself.

Those who've been reading this blog for a while probably know that I have a bit of a thing for leaves, but you may not know that leaves with raindrops = even better. I love raindrops on leaves. Not only does the waxy coating of a leaf make drops look extra... droppy? (is too a word. For today, at least), but the drops themselves each act as tiny magnifiers. If you look at a leaf through a droplet you're always going to see things that you wouldn't notice normally.

It probably won't come as much of a surprise hearing this from a myopic detail-oriented person who sometimes has trouble caring about the (literal) big picture, but I like seeing things that I wouldn't notice normally. I like a magnified view.

That reminds me: I once did a small, weird, abstractish dimensional piece that was an impression of a magnified leaf. Maybe I should post it on the other blog sometime. It's not like it would be the first weird thing there.

Anyway, as I so often say about this time in the post, I need to get back to work. Today's photos, for anyone interested, are of Silverberry (up top) and Saskatoon (not up top). Two edge plants; two edible fruits. Although I think you'd have to be pretty desperate to eat the Silverberry. The berries are, indeed, silver on the outside. They're green and mealy on the inside. Very appealing.

And with that, on to my second blog post of the day. Not bad for a bunch of pictures in the rain.





I like the rain, though. Did I mention?

fgh

Those of you who can sleep... well, I hate you.

Just mildly, and it's nothing personal, but I do rather hate you.

Just so you know.

The heat -- my apartment's running at about 30C these days -- has decided to combine with my usual insomnia in a big way, and I had to not be around for a few days.

I'd still not be around, to be honest, but I have a planetarium show to do this afternoon so there was no choice in the matter, even if I've hardly slept. This ought to be a real gong show, ladies and gentlemen, and if you happen to be in the area I might recommend coming to next month's show rather than watching me be incompetent for an hour this afternoon.

Just a suggestion.

The bee's nice, though, don't you think? It's La Bee En Rose, if anyone wondered. And my apologies to Edith Piaf, wherever she may be.

I should probably stop typing.



Yeah, that would probably be best.

Maybe I'm doing this wrong

But first, a couple of hints from the fifteen-year-old cat (who's perhaps not as heat tolerant anymore as he would have been as a younger Max) on how to deal with a heat wave:

On the left, we see use your favourite brass music stand as a pillow. On the right, sleep under the damp clothing. I'm not sure if either of these really work, but he seemed happy enough. And if anyone's wondering why my clothes were hanging inside on a day when they probably would have been dry in approximately fifteen minutes outside, I'll just say that my work uniforms are variations on brown cotton t-shirts. Drying them in the sun is pretty much akin to pouring bleach on them.

----------

I'm having a bit of a weepy day. No worries there; I'm a crier at the best of times, and some days it just seems like anything will set me off for no reason. Well, I suppose there might be a reason in the background at the moment, but let me just say there that it sucks knowing someone you like is hurting and leave it at that. Maybe we'll (me 'n alllll the voices) discuss it more fully at another time. It's not the main reason for the tears anyway. Mostly it's just one of those days, compounded by heat-caused tiredness. I did, however, sleep in the basement again last night, so maybe I've banked a little for the sleep I won't be getting when I'm back in my own apartment. And anyway, like I said I've always been a crier. No need to tell me that it's hormonal, because if that's the case I was born that way (well... technically I was, being a mammal and all. Or, really, I could have said being an organism and all).

Anyway, the current maudlin mood has probably made some of my usual morning internet reading hit me a little harder than it might otherwise. When I have the time -- if I'm here at my dad's or if I come in early enough to work to have time for personal internet business -- I have my daily places that I go, as everyone does. You can get an idea of some of the blogs I visit from the list on my profile (although some of those aren't very active), but there are other sites as well that I'll just keep to myself for now.

For whatever reason, the morning reading has combined into a general feeling that I'm doing this wrong.

Blogging, I mean.

I could be doing something with this blog, really. I could, I suppose, be trying to change peoples' minds, for one thing. I have beliefs and I have opinions, and for the most part they're kept very carefully from the blather. Of course some things get through because they're a part of who I am, and if I didn't have me on the blog it'd read like build-it-yourself furniture instructions. Still, I defy anyone to be able to tell where I stand on... well, just about anything from what's written here.

Is that the way it should be? Shouldn't I be trying to convince you why you should believe what I believe?

Or if I didn't want to go the full philosophical route (whether philosophy of religion, or politics, or life, or whatever else), shouldn't I pick a cause? I work at a nature centre -- shouldn't this blog be a voice for what's wrong on the planet (or, more accurately, what's wrong with the way we're treating it)? Despite what you see here, I'm capable of writing well, and writing persuasively. Shouldn't I be using that for something?

It seems a waste, really.

But.

But but but but...

That's not me, I don't think.

I'm not The Voice. Of anything. I don't want to be Jeanne d'Arc or Cassandra (and they each came to such good ends anyway, didn't they?). I made a comment on Linda Hensley's blog recently about being scattered rather than passionate, and that's a problem if you're wanting to focus your blogging on some cause or other. I don't want to be heard, or at least not in that way. In my job, I teach. I give information to help make choices; I don't tell you what choice to make. I guess that's a reflection of how I live my life as well. And how I blog.

Having said that, does anyone besides me find it odd that I do far more teaching on my so-called arts blog than I do on this one?

As to my beliefs, it's hard for me to get past the feeling that they're none of your business in the end. I use Whomever (somewhat facetiously, admittedly) here rather than Allah or Jesus or Krishna or, well, Whomever, for a reason. I have no need or desire for you to pigeonhole me. Yes, my thoughts are clouded by my beliefs. That's unavoidable. But by not sharing those beliefs with you, I'm preventing what I post here from being further clouded by your prejudices.

I think, anyway.

As far as politics go, at least that's an area where there's nothing to think about (as far as blogging goes). I'm one of the most apolitical people you'll find in the world when it comes to party politics. Yes, I have ideas as to policy, because I believe (ah, belief. Back to that then, eh) that I have a responsibility to be informed as a citizen. When it comes to the whole your party is evil just because it's not my party thing, though, you've completely lost my interest.

And incidentally, and certainly no offense meant to those of my two fans who are Americans, to a non-partisan Canadian the current American situation seems pretty much nuts.





Hmm. Reading back what I've just typed (and believe me, I've been typing off the top of my head) it looks like I've completely talked myself out of any semblance of relevance.

Well, that's convenient. Forget about stream of consciousness helping you to know your own mind. Apparently all it takes is stream of blather. I guess that, in the end, this place is what it is because that's what I apparently want it to be. Besides, if I was trying to make this place mean something I'd have to start making sense allllllllllllllllllllll the time.

That doesn't sound like any fun at all.





Ok then. Glad I got that settled. And without any more tears, even. Bonus.

----------











One last thing: a quick car pet update. On the left, the car pet of the last week or so, which since the photo seems to have disappeared. I hope for its sake it disappeared right off the car, since I would have felt a little sad for it having to make a second trip down the highway. On the right, though, is proof that my car doesn't like to be petless for terribly long. Not the greatest picture of the actual spider, but get a load of the reflection in the mirror. When I checked it last night it was in the process of making a (very futile) web whose scaffolding stretched from the top of the door frame all the way to the ground. Not very car friendly, but it'll find that out soon enough...

The cat says...

... it's hot.

Or meow, if you're more of a See 'n Say type of person, I guess. Although this cat at the moment would sound more like meh.

Kind of like me, really.

There have been an awful lot of words on the blog this week. My two fans know that the blather tends to go through two phases (and come to think of it, you'd only have to look back at the last month or so of archives to see them in action): hardly any words and way too many words. Hardly any can be because of work or personal things; way too many just means I need a brake job.

I think I'll have a brake job today.

Or maybe it's just that I'm not in the mood for it at the moment. That could be. At the moment, by the way, I'm sitting in my father's basement so I'm not overly hot. There's no kitchen in the basement, though, so eventually I'll have to go upstairs to find lunch.

And be hot.

Like the cat.

Yaaay...



sigh

----------

One thing: yesterday's trip down the highway seems to have stunned the heck out of the car's pet spider (Huh. Imagine that.). She's still alive, but no new web this morning. We'll see if a couple of days off makes a difference there. It'd be sort of sad if it does, in a way, because it'd be a shame if she recovered just in time to be thwacked by the return trip.

----------

One other thing, and only because it's stunned the heck out of me: I'm down to the last three pages in my watercolour moleskine. That's bizarre for two reasons. First, I never seem to finish sketchbooks, and second... watercolour? Really? I don't paint. How the heck did I get to the end of a watercolour sketchbook?

Life's unexplained mysteries...

Car pet

I don't have a current photo of a spider on my nerdstick.

Ah well. Have a rose, instead.

A spider would have been more to the point, really, but at least this way the blog's been saved from turning into a pumpkin once again.

Anyone wondering what's up with the spider thing yet? Probably not my two fans, who already know about my arachnophilia. They won't know this particular reference, though, because it's recent.

My car has a pet, you see.

A pet spider.

I don't know its name, since it's the car's pet and not mine, but the car does in fact have a pet spider. She's kind of petite and cute, actually.

She, Dee? Yes, she. And I'm kind of getting tired of both asking and answering my own questions, thank you very much. Most spiders are pretty easy to sex. Just look at the pedipalps (those little leg-looking things right beside the jaws). Long thin pedipalps generally mean a female, while clubbed pedipalps indicate a male. Females often have larger, rounder abdomens as well, but it's way easier to tell by the pedipalps. And now you know.

Anyway.

I first noticed the car's pet spider a week or so, I guess. There was a beautiful little web on the driver's side mirror when I went to work. Obviously the drive to work pretty much did in the web, and I thought possibly the spider also.

No sir.

The web was in a slightly different place when I went back out to the car that afternoon. And, sadly, destroyed again by the time we got home.

She's since been making a progress around the whole car, probably trying to find a place where natural disasters don't seem to happen twice a day. Currently she's trying out the rear passenger door-handle well. Twice daily destruction there, too, but this time she's being a little more stubborn about her positioning. Incidentally, can you imagine what that twice-daily commute must be like to a tiny creature whose whole life depends on feeling the vibrations in a web? If she had enough brain to think (which I doubt very much that she has), she might be wondering what god was trying so violently to take its vengeance on her.

One day I'd got in the car and driven off, oddly enough not thinking of the spider passenger. I was a fair way down the road before I noticed that the poor silly thing had been on the windshield when I drove off. If you've ever wondered how a spider deals with suddenly being in a wind tunnel with no shelter (and who hasn't?), I now know that the procedure is legs in, anchor down, and hope for the best.

It must have worked, because my car still has a pet spider.

I wonder what its name is? Other than Orb Weaver, that is.



The car's name, for anyone who might have missed my very exciting post about the futility of car naming a few month's back, is Huff. I'll leave you to think about that one.

Stupid people

Today's pointless photo is obviously not of stupid people. It's a crane fly. Sometimes I like them better than people.

They don't live long enough to be stupid.

----------

Ok, the above and the title of today's post makes me sound like I'm in a bad mood, and really I'm not. I'm just slightly annoyed by something, and maybe the title of today's post should be more like Stupid overly-cheery people on morning television who slightly annoy me. That seemed a bit too long, though, so you've got what you've got.

The... oh, let's abbreviate it because it really is too long... SOCPOMTWSAM who are currently annoying me are annoying me (have we got enough annoying yet?) because of the weather. And before I start my complaint, let me state outright that yes, I know. The heat wave that we're about to enter here wouldn't seem like much of anything to people in Ontario and Quebec, let alone all of the people down in the States who've been through all of this recent weather hell (and without power to boot). I know that. I also know that we don't get the humidity here in Alberta that can make a heat wave a literal killer. I realise that this is going to sound very wah wah wah to those of you living with all of that, so let me just state again that I KNOW.

Still, a heat wave is a heat wave, and this week it's our turn.

We're in for at least a week in the low 30s (and for any of my two fans who are American and haven't caught up with the metric system, if I remember right that's about 90F? And I'll repeat again, YES, I KNOW. But when you live in a place that's more renowned for -30C than +30C, it seems awfully bloody hot). And the morning news show anchors? Well, towards the end of the week their attitude about it was just really starting to tick me off.

And to anyone who knows me in person, yes, you should be reading tick me off as piss me off. I wasn't sure how people would feel about that, though.

Anyway. to anyone on a morning news show (that might possibly be on, say, CTV Edmonton. Or not. Who's to know for sure?): a week in the 30s is NOTHING to rejoice about.

The fake cheeriness about the "beautiful" weekend coming up totally ignores the truth about what a weekend in the 30s really means. It means crankiness. It means people with short tempers. It means a lot of unpleasantness at whatever festival it is that's happening in your city this week (Edmonton has a lot of summer festivals. I've been to about one of them). It might be fine for anyone sitting in a pool or a lake for the time that they're sitting in the pool or lake, but for anyone like me in a small, south-facing apartment with no cross-ventilation that's going to be at least 100 Bazillion Degrees Celsius by the end of the week, the whole thing is decidedly not a thing to be overly cheery about.

Incidentally, I normally find the overly-cheery thing a bit amusing in the morning. Do these morning news people (and I'm talking in general now) really like each other that much? Maybe they actually are that buddy-buddy in real life, but I like to think that behind the scenes they're really keying each others' cars or secretly gluing someone's desk drawers shut.

But that's just me.

And anyway, this silly weather has kind of screwed up my work day, so that likely explains part of the annoyance. My work week changes to Mondays and Tuesdays off in the summer so that I can be out on the Sanctuary trails doing the whole naturalist thing and interacting with visitors. Not sure what I'll do on a day when anyone in his or her right mind is stretched out in the shade with a cold beer (or lemonade, if that's more your thing). I might just end up sketching, since I have my moleskine here (I sometimes do a bit of field sketching) and I have a work-idea that could also be an Illustration-Friday-idea. We'll see. In the meantime, lunch.

Which is another sandwich.

I hope it's not a trend.

Sandwich

Today's pointless photo is not of a sandwich.

You know, in case you didn't get that on your own.

Which I'm sure you did.

The insect in question is, however, having lunch. Or supper. I can't remember what time I took the picture.

ANYWAY.

I had a sandwich for lunch today. This is interesting (no, really) for three reasons: 1. It means that my digestive system is behaving again. Enough for a sandwich, at least; 2. When I bring lunches (part-time job, remember. I don't always bring lunches) they're often just leftovers because I have trouble getting motivated to make actual lunches in the morning; and 3. I'm not really that much of a sandwich fan.

I should clarify that, I guess. First off, I got more than a bit turned off by lunch-kit sandwiches during my school days, to the point where my mother started letting me take cheese and crackers or whatever wasn't a sandwich but still mostly counted as a meal. Fast forward a few years, and you'll find me working in a sub shop (should I say the name of the chain?) for a few months after university. I was working here at the time, too, but it was only casual hours so I needed something else. Three months at the Subway shop twenty years ago was enough to ensure that I've never been back since. Granted, that was partly because of their food handling processes at the time (have they changed? No idea. I haven't been back), but it was mostly due to complete sandwich fatigue.

For a while, the only sandwiches I could do were hot ones. You know -- beef dip, turkey melt; stuff like that. I never made sandwiches at home... unless you're counting hamburgers and hot dogs as sandwiches, of course. I made those, but then they also fall under the hot sandwich category so it still fits.

So what changed?

Well, I still prefer hot sandwiches, but I'll pick up cold ones at the grocery store if I haven't had time to make one myself. If someone offers me a sandwich I won't stick up my nose.

That wasn't an answer, Dee. What changed?

It's going to sound weird, but I sort of discovered condiments. In the same way that Columbus discovered America, I mean. The condiments were already there, but I found out that I could make use of them.

It turns out that one of the reasons I got so sick of school sandwiches was that my mom's sandwiches (and, later, mine, since I was only doing what I was taught) were kind of boring. She was a decent cook otherwise, but somehow she didn't believe in sandwich enhancement. A roast beef sandwich was just that. Roast beef on buttered bread. Maybe iceberg lettuce along with that, but nothing else. It was an adventure for me when I tried adding pepper. Mayo? No such thing in the house. I don't know why she was like that, but she was.

And I didn't know any better, of course. Eating a sandwich at, say, a deli, was sort of weird and unpleasant because there was all of this extra stuff there. Stuff that I didn't know what to do with.

In case you wondered, I also use to scrape the extra stuff off of my hamburgers. Ketchup mustard only, please.

I've figured out along the way, though,  that the stuff can be agreeable.

Yay me. What amazing growth.





So, yeah. Sandwiches = not entirely undesirable, I've had a proper lunch for the first time in days, and I need to get back to work. The end.

Geez, these have been long posts lately.

What's in my ears today

Yes, this is a pointless photo of the side of my head. Taken with my 3DS, since I feel a bit odd using the work camera for silliness like this. And don't you love how artfully I'm backlit?

And why is this here?

Weird mood.

Tends to happen when I get some sleep.

And yes, there will be no bricks thrown at my head today. Thank you to those who were willing to perform that service, though.

I suppose that the weirdest thing about this particular silliness is that there is absolutely nothing noteworthy about the jewellery you see. Blue-something-or-other stones (they were a gift, and I can't remember what they are. I'm mostly wearing them because they go not too badly with my grandma's blue topaz pendant and ring. Which, for some reason, you don't see in this picture of my ear...) in a silver setting so in need of polishing that it looks antiqued, amethyst studs that don't go with anything else I'm wearing but for some reason were in the same jewellery box cubby that the blue things were, and a silver wire cuff that I got back in university.

Yep, my ears lead an exciting life.

So does my blog, apparently.

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I have a new favourite thing. I haven't tried it yet, but the video instructions alone have made it my new favourite thing. I'm not sure if I should share it with you (oh, I probably will),  but the reason I'm mentioning it here is that it's a simple, fairly nerdy thing but everyone around here that I've shown the video to thinks it's a pretty neat thing too.

I love days when my nerdity is vindicated.

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Ok, one more thing in this mixed bag of a post. Hey, I missed a few days. I'm allowed to have some bottled-up thoughts.

The music's on in the office today. Wheat's on holidays, and it's not unusual for me to have the internet radio on when I've got the place to myself. Not that Wheat would object to the music, really; it's just that this way I don't have to make sure that my choices suit both of us. Today it's a combo of blues, adult alternative, and sixties pop, which has sort of been my go-to for the last few weeks. It gives me a fair amount to sing along with.

Yes, sing along. I sing along with the radio, and not subtly. I chair dance, as well. Also not subtly, although I think it's probably a little bit impossible to chair dance subtly.

I like to sing. I sing to myself like other people mumble. Erm, also not subtly on that one, as I've been told. Not obnoxiously, but maybe a touch louder than a lot of people would. I mean, we're not talking concert volume here -- just enough that people can easily tell what song is currently in my head when I walk down the hallway.

I think that more people should do that, actually. Don't you think that the world would be a better place if we all carried around a slight public hint of our life soundtrack with us?

Well...

Maybe it would depend on the soundtrack, I guess. And it might get a little old after a while.




It'd be amusing as heck for a little bit, though.

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That's going to be it, especially since the largest part of my lunch hour has been taken up by this nonsense. I'll stop typing now, then.

Bye.





Oh, you really thought that I was going to forget? Nah. Here it is: my new favourite thing.

Just don't put your eye out, ok?

Sleeeeep...

Did I use this photo before? I can't remember.

I can't remember, because I need sleep.

Sigh.

I haven't had enough sleep in the past two days to even make it worth mentioning. Oh, a person probably nods off a bit, of course, but for the most part it's felt like two straight nights of lying there not sleeping.

I gave up around two o'clock this time (otherwise known as Stupid in the Morning) and turned on the dvr instead of frustrating myself further.

I, um, watched My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding. Two episodes. I'm tired -- I'm not in a position to make good decisions.

Which doesn't really explain what it was doing on my dvr in the first place, I guess. Hey, I'm an insomniac. I'm often not in a position to make good decisions. Which might, in fact, explain why there's so freaking much Gordon Ramsey on my recording list...

Aaanyway. I'm not sure how this has evolved into a discussion of my late night viewing habits, but there you go. I also like to watch the Home Shopping Channel and laugh at the hyperbolic descriptions of butt-ugly silver jewellery with low-quality stones.

It passes the time.

While I'm not sleeping.

The problem is (I mean, besides the fact that I'm not sleeping) that I have trouble making myself eat when I haven't been sleeping. Bit of a touchy stomach. And the not eating, in turn, aggravates another digestive issue I deal with, and... yeah. Sleepless, upset gut, and probably a little hypoglycemic.

I'm a lot of fun today.

I'm about to post this nonsense now. Then I will eat an orange, and possibly a granola bar if my stomach says it's all right with that. Tonight, I will make a proper meal.



AND THEN SLEEP.

And if I don't sleep tonight, I'll be using this space tomorrow to ask someone to hit me with a brick.

Just so you know.