No post of the weekend:

No time to post.

No actual topic even if I did have time to post.

No computer tomorrow.

No recent pointless photos.

No point to this, so...

No pumpkin-time for the blog yet.



No real way to end this...

Pointless photo of the day:

I did warn you that this week would be light on posting...

What's on your fingers today, Dee?

That's right, a ladybird.

Oh no, wait. The ladybirds are in my earlobes. That's ok, though. I only put them there to entertain the Grade One kids I'll be seeing this afternoon.

What's on my fingers are a couple of Black Hills Gold rings that belonged to my grandmother. I've talked about them (briefly) before. Leaf patterns. Leaves, ladybirds... I just thought I'd go with the whole Fall theme today, I suppose.

Hands up everyone who figured out even before the end of the post title that I don't have any blather today?

Yep.

Actually, I'm really only posting to say that posting will likely be pretty thin this week since I'm pretty busy with programs. And I skipped last weekend because I wasn't near a computer. One of these days I guess I'll have to figure out how to do this telepathically, but until then...

Well, at least you're getting a ladybird out of all this.



I suppose I could make mention of the fact that soon enough you won't be hearing pointless chatter about the rings I'm wearing today, because I won't be wearing rings. Rings + cold weather really don't work for Yours Urticarially, unfortunately.

And now I need to explain that, for those new to the program.

Did you know that some weird people in the world are allergic to the weather? Well, allergic isn't precisely the right word for it, but it's the easiest one for people to understand. I get what's called Cold-Induced Urticaria, which is a fancy way of saying that when it gets cold I get hives. Yes, really. If it's a mild reaction I just get an itchy rash, but if it's more serious I can swell up pretty badly and have my blood pressure go down.

That's as much fun as you can imagine.

Anyway, if you want to know more I'll leave you to google it for yourselves. All that's really important for the pseudosubject of this post is that since I never know when I might react badly enough to have my hands swell, it's just easiest to leave off wearing rings for the winter.

And it's a little depressing to think how soon it will be that the answer to what's on your hands today, Dee? will be nothing but hand lotion and gloves.

And with that happy thought, back to work for me. Again, sorry if there's not too much more to see here this week.

I have no idea what this post is going to be about

As I type this, I've got the memorial for Peter Lougheed streaming in the background. Oddly enough, that sort of thing doesn't lead easily to pointless blather.

The name won't mean much to the vast majority of my two fans, I know, but when I was growing up Peter Lougheed was the Premier. No, let me make that was THE Premier. We identified with him. We cheered him when he took on Trudeau. And, as much as he fought for provincial rights, he reminded us that it was important to be Canadian first.

Agree or disagree with his politics, you had to look at him as a great man.

And that's as much political talk as I'm willing to put in.

What else, then?

Well...

I made cookies last night. Does that count as a topic?

I haven't made cookies for a fair while, actually. I used to do it pretty regularly and take them in to work, but I got out of the habit when I had a coworker who did far more baking than I was ever in the mood for. I kind of let her do the goodie making, I suppose, and stopped doing any of it myself. She's since left us for another job, though, and for whatever reason I decided to buy cookie ingredients for the first time in ages when I got my groceries this week.

I got down to making them last night.

Which was ok, I guess, except for the part where my apartment was already nearly 30C when I started. It was definitely 30C when I finished. That sure didn't make sleeping all that easy. The things a person will sacrifice for cookies.

I made a new recipe, which I confess is a bad habit of mine. Or at least it's a bad habit to decide to try new recipes on my coworkers. I haven't killed anyone yet, however, so they tend to put up with it. This was a bit of a weird recipe, which is partly why I tried it. I make a decent shortbread, but I've never made a shortbread before where nearly half of the butter is switched for cream cheese.

That's right. I made cream cheese shortbread.

With crushed Skor bar pieces.

And the verdict? Definitely a recipe that gets better once it's cooled. I wasn't sure when I tried one fresh out of the oven. Still wasn't sure when I tried one as I was putting them away. They certainly benefited from being refrigerated overnight, though.

Some cookies are like that.

And if I make them again? Oh, and I've been encouraged to make them again, so I guess they went over ok. If I make them again, I think I might add another Skor bar or two. And I'd certainly add a touch more vanilla. The recipe didn't even call for vanilla, but cookies without vanilla don't exist in my world so I put some in anyway. It worked.

And the recipe? Hmm. This is entirely off the top of my head, so use at your own risk:

Cream together 1 1/2 cups sugar, 1 brick (250 g, I think they are) cream cheese, and 1 1/3 cups (ish. I might have been closer to 1 1/2 cups) butter. Not margarine. If you use margarine, don't tell me that it's shortbread.

Beat in two eggs, one at a time. AND VANILLA. Maybe a teaspoon and a half or so, depending on your taste.

In a separate bowl mix together 4 cups flour, 1 1/2 tsp baking powder, and 1/2 tsp salt. Ad gradually to the sugar mixture.

Mix in 4 - 6 bars of crushed Skor candy bars. I used four because I was substituting in for plain toffee chips, but I think I'd use a bit more.

Cool in the fridge for at least an hour.

Preheat oven to 350F. Roll dough into 2 - 3 cm balls and place 4 cm apart on lightly greased cookie sheets. Press with fork. Bake for... well, the recipe calls for ten minutes, but in my apartment oven it was more like fourteen. Go by how done you like your shortbread, I guess.

Cool on sheet for five minutes, then remove to cooling rack and cool completely.

I generally like to refrigerate my shortbread so I couldn't tell you what the shelf life of this stuff might be, but I can tell you that you should get about 6 dozen cookies in a batch. If you'd sooner do these as thumbprint cookies and fill them with ganache, maybe use a bit less Skor bar or it might be too rich.



And hey. A post. Back to work now, though. Too much typing here as it is.

Alan the pumpkin

I currently have a green pumpkin sitting on the table in my apartment. Its name is Alan (I must have been very, very tired when I texted that to Wheat).

Alan's the one on the far left in this photo, which is dangerously not pointless. Or at least not too pointless. I've always said that this blog would turn into a pumpkin if that ever happened...

I have no idea what I'm going to do with Alan.

I have Alan because I did some pumpkin flower pollinating while I was housesitting at Dad's place in the summer, and I'm pretty sure that Alan was the result of one of those manipulations. Oh, for more on that, check this old post from the other blog. I'm not in the mood to repeat the story. Ignore the horrible doodle, though... or more to the point, the horrible scan. Anyway, Alan probably owes its life to me, so to speak, so when Dad cut the pumpkins because of a frost risk last weekend, I took Alan home with me.

I have no idea what I'm going to do with Alan. Did I mention?

I also have no idea how long a green pumpkin can last in a fairly warm apartment before it starts to turn into a stinky mess. What do you suppose my chances are that this thing'll orange up and last all the way to Halloween? I'm not averse to making a jack o'lantern, but I suspect that I may be parting ways with Alan long before that happens. It's over a month, after all. I have it sitting on a towel in my fruit basket so that I can (well, at least I hope I can) avoid the rotten bottom problem of sitting on a hard flat surface (the pumpkin, that is. Not me), but still. A month. Does anyone out there really think that Alan can go a whole month?

Ah well, we'll see. And in the meantime, I've got Alan for company, I suppose. I know it doesn't look especially big in the photo, but put it on a smallish table in a small apartment, and it becomes sort of unavoidable.

I haven't started talking to it.



Yet.

I have no idea what I'm going to do with Alan...

Pointless photo of the day:

And that'll do it for me. My head's just not in it at the moment.

Later, then.

Patience, grasshopper

Ok, I'll confess that I've never even seen an episode of the program that today's post title comes from. My excuse is that I was a bit too young to care at the time. That, and we only had three channels (four, if you count the French one). Still, it's interesting that the phrase lives on, don't you think?

Oh, and before I continue on to my actual topic, I should admit that I rather like today's pointless photo. Gotta love that patterning.

----------

On the other hand, I hate painting.

All right, maybe hate is a bit of a strong word. It'd be more accurate to say that I find painting frustrating, I guess.

Part of it is that I have the brush skills of a five-year-old, true, but I think I've developed enough of an eye that I could probably get past that fact long enough to develop some actual brush skills at some point. I could, that is, if it wasn't for the WAITING.

Yeah, that's right. I can't handle waiting for paint to dry. Short attention span, remember?

I play around in watercolours and acrylics occasionally. That, and kids' tempera paints when I'm in a silly mood. I probably have a lot more fun with the temperas, to be honest, because I just can't take them seriously. Go ahead, Dee. Make a mess. That's what they're there for.

Anyway, I do dabble in painting occasionally, and I'm almost always guaranteed to get frustrated with it because just when it seems like I've got an idea of where I'd like to take a painting I end up waiting. Waiting for a wash or a base layer to dry. Waiting for light colours to dry so that I can add some darks on top of them. Waiting for everything to dry so that I can peel off masking fluid and see what the effect is.

Erm... yeah, I'll admit that masking fluid is one thing I like about painting. Masking fluid is fun. It kind of reminds me of playing with rubber cement in school. Our glue stick kids today don't know what they're missing there, really. Imagine how much more fun they'd have with a bottle and a brush. Yes, messy as heck, but still. Rolling perfect glue balls off the desk? Good luck doing that with a stick, boys and girls.



Sorry. Distracted myself there. And, as you've probably noticed, that's more or less my problem with painting. My attention span's waaay too short for painting. I've had more than one time that, by the time I've let something dry for a few hours (or sometimes even minutes, sadly), I've moved on to something else. Lost interest. Taken out my pens or my pencils again.

The funny thing is, given the right circumstances I can muck about with smudging pencil marks for hours at a time. It's because I don't have to leave off. If I have an idea, I can use it right away.

That keeps me interested. Painting doesn't always do that.

Maybe I'll have to try playing around with some wet paper effects sometime. You know, the kind of thing when you're doing everything quickly on wet paper. Five minute painting instead of bothering with layering.

I might be able to pay attention long enough for that.





Believe it or not, all of this is by way of saying that I have a partially completed painting at the moment that, if I don't totally screw it up in the next phase, may actually do for the staff show I've been muttering about. I did the wash last night, figured that it was pretty much buggered, and set it aside. This morning, though, it looked ok enough to bother adding in the next layer. Next layer after that? Well, I'm switching to pens so at least there'll be a higher comfort level. It may just work, folks. And even if it doesn't, at least I'm doing something. That's a lot more useful that worrying that I'm not doing anything, so I'm happy.

Ish.

It wouldn't do to be too happy, of course. Forget about the blog turning into a pumpkin; happiness might just make it completely disappear...

Drawing a blank

Today's wasp? No reason, just like most of the photos here. I suspect that this shot contains a hidden spider somewhere, though, because the wasp sure wasn't moving much at the time.

Aaanyway. Today's post title is a twofer, since I'm drawing a blank on what I should blather about AND I'm also drawing a blank on drawing in general. As I mentioned here, the idea of doing something for the staff art show always seems to freeze me right up.

Not thrilled about that, by the way, because it seems to be keeping me from getting other art stuff done as well. Boo, self-consciousness.

Part of the problem, I suppose, is that knowing that my stuff might be on display changes how I approach it. I always think of myself as doodling for just me, with incidental blog posts just a byproduct of the doodling. Add public display into the mix, though, and all of a sudden I find myself thinking oh shit. This has to be good. And since I have a major problem with thinking of any of the doodles as ever being good... well, yeah. There you go.

Incidentally, I find the whole thing much less of an ordeal when I'm doing things for brochures or display work. Not sure on the reason for that, really, but I think it might have something to do with the fact that I tend to use those pieces more as clip art than art art. Who cares if a picture of a tree for a pamphlet looks like art, as long as it looks like a tree?

Ah well. I'll do something or I won't do something. And since my father is busy with a Legion thing today, I have the whole afternoon to do something.

Arty-something, hopefully.





But more likely playing stupid flash games on the computer...

----------

My two fans know that I normally avoid a lot of current events blather, but I do have one thing I'd like to say about the current violence in the Middle East. Most of the media outlets are referring to protests and riots in the "Muslim world," and I suppose that's accurate enough. I just wish, given the wave of anti-Muslim feeling, especially in the US, since 9/11, that it could be made clearer that this is a small group of people within the so-called Muslim world and that majority of people who follow Islamic beliefs aren't condoning the violence at all. We don't need to give the intolerant idiots on this side of the planet any more excuses to build up their own irrational hatred, and I'm sort of afraid that we'll see that happen.

Gah. I love humanity sometimes, you know?

Pointless photo...

Yeah, I know.

To be honest, I'm just way too tired to be even trying this at the moment. Another bad night, which is so much not unusual these days that I don't quite know why I mentioned it.

Better luck on the weekend, maybe.

Pointless photo and that's all you're getting yet again of the day:

No excuse today, really. I'm just not in the mood to force a blather, so I don't think I'll bother.





Gee, I'm good at this blogging thing.

And now I'm done typing.

 ----------

Edited a while later to say: does it tell you anything about my workplace that we've named the new photocopier Darth Konica because it looks sort of like it came from the Death Star?

I'm serious, by the way.

And now I'm done typing for sure this time.

Pointless Photo and that's all I have time for of the day:

So there you go. Should probably have time for something tomorrow.

Maybe.

We'll see.

Drawrings

Today's pointless photo is not of a drawring (they belong on the other blog, anyway). It's of a pumpkin. The blog isn't turning into one yet, though, since I don't really have a point today.

No, the reason for the title has nothing to do with the photo, as is generally the case. Oh, and for anyone young enough to not get the reason for the extra R in drawrings (I mean, besides the idea of an exaggerated English accent), ask your parents about Mike Myers in the bathtub. And after that, ask them about Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings, which was was a short, animated kids' show when I was, oddly enough, a kid. There's an episode here, for anyone who's never seen it. Or for those who have, even. That's the British version, though; ours was narrated by Ernie Coombs.

For you non-Canadians amongst my two fans, just google Mr Dressup. And then feel sorry for yourselves that you didn't get to grow up watching him. He was great.

Aaanyway.

The reason that drawing is on the brain -- and, incidentally, one of the reasons that things on the other blog have been pretty slow lately -- is that we have another staff show coming up, and as usual the thought of that has completely blocked me up. It's worse this year, because we're apparently having a theme. It doesn't help that the theme is pretty broad (autumn/October), really. It just means that I'm blocked AND I don't really have the option of bunging some random thing in a frame at the last moment, which is probably what I'd do otherwise.

This is what happens when someone who is resolutely not an artist is told to have something ready to display, you know. I have enough trouble with the fact that I've been putting my own line drawings on our promotional stuff at work lately, and those were done specifically with that purpose in mind.

Sigh. I hate bringing attention to myself. Yes, I know that it's a weird thing for an interpreter to say, but that's the fun of being a shy person in a fairly public job.

And if you're wondering why a shy person ends up in this sort of job in the first place, well, we all have our ways of compensating. Mine is having the ability to make a complete ass of myself in front of five hundred people as long as none of them really know me, then having difficulty making myself phone my own friends later.

Yes, I know it's weird. But I'd be willing to bet that it sounds familiar to at least a few of you out there.

Anyway. Again. If anyone out there has suggestions of things that you've seen on the other blog that might be worth showing (or might be a decent base to create something worth showing, in the case of sketchbook stuff), or some sort of topic that I could start with, just let me know.

Otherwise? Well, it's pretty easy for me to predict a month-long dry spell starting riiight about... now.

Chapter 1637: Wherein Dee needlessly talks about pickles

While posting a photo of mountain ash berries. As you do.

So. Pickles. And why pickles? Because I so much don't want to talk about what's been going on in my life (or, more properly, someone else's life as I said yesterday) that I've decided to blather about one of the most inconsequential and pointless topics I could think of.

Thus, pickles. I like pickles. I had a pickle for breakfast today. Well, not just a pickle, of course. I was having cheese and crackers and decided to add a pickle just for the heck of it.

I like pickles, but I'm the first to admit that I'm a little fussy about them. My regular resort as far as pickles go at the moment is kosher-style (actual kosher would be fine too, naturally, but they aren't all that easy to find around here) baby dill cucumber pickles. The baby part is a must. I don't care for mushy pickles, and in a processed pickle (as opposed to a fresh pickle, I mean) it's almost impossible to get non-mushy in anything bigger than a baby dill. I like my pickles dilly and sour and garlicky, and I want to see actual pieces of that garlic in the brine.

Notice that I'm not telling you a favourite company name, here. I'm not about to start advertising pickles, and anyway I've had decent pickles that fulfill the above requirements from several different companies.

What I don't like? Bread and butter pickles. Gherkins, except for a couple of recipes I have where that specific taste is necessary. Hey, I don't even particularly like hamburger relish. Not a sweet pickle person at all, me.

And non-cucumber pickles? I'm of two minds about them, and I'll tell you why. I grew up on my grandmother's pickles. She pickled cucumbers, as you'd expect, but she also pickled things like carrots and onions. I was used to the cucumber pickles. Had them all the time. I was a bit of a fussy eater, though, so I nener really tried any of the other pickles. My mother never would have given me the onions in the first place, because I was (admittedly) weird about onions. It was the texture, you see. I was fine with fried onions. I could handle finely diced onions in sauces and things. Big chunks of cooked onion just really felt wrong. If we ordered onion rings, I would pull out the onion part and just eat the batter. I liked the taste, but not the feel. Raw onions? Forget it. If a burger came with raw onions, I wouldn't eat it until every last vestige was removed from my sight.

I'm, um, better about that now. And anyway, back to the pickles.

I'm sure my mom just didn't think it was worth the fight to have me eat pickled onions, so I never have. Never in my life. I have, however, had a pickled carrot. ONE pickled carrot, well over thirty years ago. It was so much not what I expected (hey, I couldn't even tell you whether it was good) that I never tried one after that. Carrots just weren't supposed to be like that. It freaked me out.

Don't even get me started on pickled cauliflower. The carrot did it for me as a kid.

Now? I honestly don't know what I'd think of those non-cucumber pickles. Even if I wanted to try some I don't really have the avenue anymore. They're not exactly common on store shelves. Ok, well, pickled onions are, but I'm not sure I'd go out of my way for them. Seems silly to buy a jar of onion pickles without having the slightest clue whether you'd even eat them. As for other pickled vegetables, I know I could go down to the farmers' markets and probably have my choice if I was curious, but I so rarely make it to the markets even for the stuff that I know I like that the idea of making a special pickle trip is fairly ridiculous.

As is this post.

I think I'll go have lunch now. Maybe a grilled cheese and leftover pork roast sandwich.





With a pickle, of course.

Pointless photo of the evening:

Yeah, that'll be it for tonight. The past couple of days have been a little non-bloggable. And, erm, not for the usual reasons, if anyone was concerned. Just being a friend to someone who's going through a hell of a time, and that's really all I'm comfortable with saying about that.

You've probably notice that I rarely blog about the truly serious things. If I did, I likely wouldn't still be blogging after all of these years.

Or at least this place wouldn't be pointless.

And then it would turn into a pumpkin.

No one really wants that, right?





Later, all.

More sleep weirdness

I probably could just re-title this blog Sleep Weirdness and have done with it, yeah.

Anyway, this time around it was sleep at unusual times. I was in the middle of what I thought was going to be yet another of my mostly-sleepless nights. I was watching Letterman, which for us comes on at 12:35 am. I remember listening to the band (and wondering why they didn't just stay gone. Not that I find them offensive or anything; only bland). It was about 1:35ish, I'd say.

Then it was ten to nine.

Yes, that's right. 8:50 am.

Apparently my brain decided that it might be a better idea after all to get some sleep. Yay, right? Well, except for one thing.

I'm generally at work by nine.

Ah well. One quick text to Wheat saying that I'd be there eventually, one rather lame attempt to get my sorry butt in gear (where does that phrase even come from, anyway? Did butts ever really have gears? I'd think that'd be painful), and I did make it in a little after ten. Pretty much completely disoriented, yes, but I made it.

Which, incidentally, is why this blather is going to be short. I need to get back to work.

I wonder if this little escapade means that I'm in for another sleep change. It was after a bad bout of insomnia years ago that my stupid brain decided to fix things by switching me from being a nightowl to a morning person, after all (boo on that decision, by the way. I used to love my nights). Maybe stupid brain is finally considering sleeping like a normal human being.

I'd be all right with that.

Back to work now.

Pointless photo of the day:

Yep. got nothing.

I tried to have something, but between the meeting I was in this morning, some discussion about upcoming major renovations and how badly they'll screw up programming (more on that as we get closer to it), and the fact that our septic system is out again (kind of a worry for someone with a complainy gut... not to mention the fact that the visitors just looove coming in and seeing bathrooms out of order signs) I just haven't got the brain to be blathery.

So... High Bush-cranberries, in case anyone wondered.

The end.

See you tomorrow, probably.

Here I am...

And here's an apple.

Um, the end?

Ok, sorry for the unexpected disappearance. I'd tell you what happened, but you'd just start to wonder if I should be allowed to use things like chairs and scissors.

Scissors weren't involved, by the way. Chairs, on the other hand...

Oh, I'll leave it to your imagination. Suffice to say that I had a pretty strange last week, and I currently have an interesting limp.

And let's move on.

My sleep's been a little erratic the past few days (not unusual for me, I think my two fans will already know), and it's led to a couple of weird things. Like dreams, for instance. Now, of course I know that I dream anyway, but I very rarely remember my dreams. I've mentioned this before, but I think it's sort of a self-protection thing from back when I used to have freakishly scary dreams as a kid. The brain finally got to the point where it said fine. You're going to insist on doing that to yourself? Then I'll just turn off the memory function until you smarten up.

Or something like that, anyway. The point is that to this day I find it a bit odd when I wake up remembering a dream.

I did this morning, though. And it was a doozy.

You know those prescription "sleep aids" (as they euphemistically call them in the commercials) that occasionally have the side effect of sleep walking or even sleep driving? Well, I'm not on any of those, but last night I had such a vivid dream of sleep driving that I was almost certain that my car wouldn't be there this morning when I went down to the parking lot. It was only a dream, though. Either that or I'm an amazingly good sleep driver, even to the point of parking the exact same way that I did when I drove the car last.

Realistic dreams always kind of freak me out, though. Have you ever had the one where you dream that your alarm goes off (and that should really tip me off that it's a dream right there. Since my brain decided to be up at stupid o'clock I almost never need to use an alarm these days) and you go through a very mundane work day only to have your REAL alarm go off? And then you didn't even get to do anything fun in the dream like accidentally show up naked?

Erm... just me, then? Oh, all right.

Anyway, I should get back to actual, non-dream work. Or at least I'm assuming that it's not a dream. And since I really need to not be breaking into pseudophilosophy just at the moment, we're going to roll with the assumption, ok?

Ok.

One last and completely unrelated thing, though. This is kind of intriguing. What names would you decide on for those colours? I'm not sure I'm creative enough, really. Wouldn't they have got bored awfully quickly with answers like blue. Lighter blue. Darker blue. Even darker blue...

And I wouldn't even get to accidentally show up naked...