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

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

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

Yep.  It's pretty odd.

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

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

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

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

Because every cat needs a pillow.





'Night, Max.

'Night, nonsense.

This may not be good

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

And why do they have to have such annoying music?

Um, anyway.

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

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

Have I already said anyway?

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

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

Sigh.

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

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

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






Bugger.

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

And in the meantime?



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

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

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

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

For a migraine.

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

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

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

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

This is getting old.





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

And if my head actually works.

My head hurts

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

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

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

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

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

Around eight o'clock I heard a noise.

A big noise.

A motor noise.

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

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

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





Great.

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

Pounding.

Great.




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

And tomorrow?

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

This one's over now, though.

Stupid morning. Stupid head.

Ok, I've got nothing

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

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

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

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

I hate being a worrier.

It serves no purpose.

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

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




Ah well.

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

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



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

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

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

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





To worry, no doubt.

Quick pointless photo of the day:

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

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

I'll try to have something for you tomorrow.

Stationery envy

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

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

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

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

Yeah, I was a weird kid.

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




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