Spring...

 Not the best shots because I took them quickly (stupid woman didn't put on a coat), but I just wanted to prove that spring is trying.

Very trying.

These will probably be covered in snow by the end of the day.

It would have been nice if the crocuses were actually open before then, but what can you do?

Whine and complain if you're me, I guess. But with good reason.

South and north of us they're already in the thick of things, and there are highway warnings out. Around 0C is just such a bad temperature to get this. Things are going to be turning to ice by the afternoon, and it's looking like I might be stuck here at my dad's place for an extra night. No worries on that, though; I don't have to work until the afternoon, and my philosophy of winter (sigh. Winter, still) driving is that if you don't have to, don't. There are enough idiots out there already, so why join the idiot crowd?

Anyway, none of this puts me in much of a blather mood, so this is all you're getting. I'll try for an actual topic tomorrow, but since the mood will probably just be bleaker don't expect much then either.

I'm just going to go have lunch now. And sulk, most likely.

Stupid spring, did I mention?

Kinda busy

Kinda busy not sleeping.

Yeah, it's been a heckuva week for finding out what silly garbage is on television at three in the morning.

Ah well. Eventually I'll get some real sleep. Either that or my brain will fall out.

Not sure I'd notice the difference at this point.

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I'm also kinda busy with work just now, so I'll have to make this short. See that dripping water? Or that puddle of water that doesn't look like it's actively dripping, I guess I should say. It was dripping from the upper floor of our birding deck here at work.

Dripping water.

Dripping, melting snow.

That's what spring's supposed to be like, last I heard. Why, then, are we expecting still more snow this weekend? I mean, it's not supposed to be like the blast that Ontario's getting (I feel for you, folks), but it's the end of freaking April and the snow should go away.

Apparently spring's giving the entire country a miss this year, and I, for one, am tired of it.

Of course, I'm just tired generally, but dammit spring. Give winter a kick in the butt already.



I want more melting things. And sleep. And lunch, but that last is my own fault for not bringing any.

And now I want to stop typing, so I will. That at least I can control.

Squirrel!

Yep.

I haven't even seen that movie, so I don't really have much more to say about that.

Actually, I don't really have time to say much more. I've been kind of busy with this work stuff, and now I need to get busy with the lunch stuff or I won't get any before I have to do the interview stuff.

You're probably gathering by now that it's just as well that I don't have time to blather anyway.

I feel like I'm cheating my two fans a bit, though, so since I won't be near a computer this weekend (blame our latest upcoming storm for the fact that I've decided not to go in to my father's place. I'd get there ok, but I'm not sure about getting back) why don't we end this post with a little bit of entertainment courtesy of the (as of yesterday, sadly) late, great Jonathan Winters? It's too bad that most of the people my age will only remember him for that nonsensical role on Mork and Mindy. We'd be much better off knowing him for the nonsensical role of Jonathan Winters.

That's it from me, then. See you next week.

I really have nothing to say

No, really. I'm kind of dragging today, and I'm on the second straight day of a headache (I think it's the current weather system. Air pressure messes with my head sometimes). It's not that I'm in a bad mood; just not a blathery one.

Plus, see this leaf bud? See how much it wants to start getting things done? Well, we're expecting another storm this weekend so it'll have to wait yet again.

I'm starting to get the feeling that we're going to give spring a miss and head straight into fall this year. And it seems to be that way across most of the country for some reason this year, doesn't it? I mean, I know I've been complaining about our Alberta weather, but a look at the national forecasts tells me that we're not exactly isolated in this garbage. I suppose what I'm saying is that I'll allow everybody to complain at the moment. It's all right by me.

Anyway, this is going to have to do it for today. Stay tuned for day four of the weather headache, followed by the snow mould congestion, followed, most likely, by the poplar pollen kill-me-nows.

Why is it that I want spring, again?

Pointless photo of the busy day:

I had a meeting this morning. I have another one in an hour or so. I have things to do in the meantime.

It's Blogging Gets Short Shrift Day, everyone.



Later, then.

Something about cameras or something

Look, boys and girls -- it's fun with shutter speeds! And melting, which certainly isn't occurring at the moment.

Oh, that's bound to put me in a bad mood. Let's start again.

Today's post title is because I didn't know what I was going to blather about until I had a look at what was on my nerdstick. I'd forgotten that the other week when I was in at my father's place I'd taken a few shots just playing around with camera settings. "Something" is my usual placeholder title until I figure out a topic, and I guess was just too lazy to delete it today.

Sad when it comes to that.

Anyway, one of the reasons I'm getting more than frustrated at this protracted winter is that I'm dying to get out and play with the new (ish. Am I still allowed to call it new at this point?) camera, and because I'm me I kinda need growing things to do that. I need leaves. Flowers. Spiders. My two fans know my usual suspects.

I just need life, not snow. I'm the same way with my doodles. I have such a hard time getting interested in things that aren't organic, and with my short attention span it's hard to keep focused if I'm not at least a little interested.

That's going to make things a bit, well, interesting in my work life in the next few weeks, but you'll no doubt hear more about that as the time comes so I'll leave it for now.

Anyway (again), I've got to the point with the camera where I'm ready to start playing with different functions and settings, and the season is dragging me down because of that. Since it's been quite a while since I've used an SLR I spent the first few weeks almost entirely on automatic while I tried to remember how to hold the thing. Then I started trying to do my own focusing. Then I got frustrated. Then I refocused the eyepiece. Then I got less frustrated.

Funny how hard it is to focus a camera when you've got the eyepiece on the wrong diopter...

Anyway (the third), I'm ready to start tinkering. Playing with settings. Framing pictures instead of just taking snapshots. Making mistakes (one of the true joys of digital photography. No, I'm serious. Delete makes me happy). Taking freaking photographs.

And today I wouldn't even be able to take a picture of running meltwater.

GAH.

Stupid lack of spring.

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I don't know whether I'm trying to move things along or just making sure that I have absolutely no photos to post here, but when I uploaded today's pointlessness I also deleted almost all of my leftover, unused-as-of-yet pictures of last year's flowers. There you go, spring. Ball's in your court. Get yer arse in gear or this'll be one empty blog.

Yeah, that'll show you all right.

Sigh.

Stretching my boundaries

I'm trying to like green peppers. Really I am.

I don't, though. I find them massively overpowering to just about any other food that they're with, with one of the sole exceptions being ginger beef (and I think that's only because there's so much else going on in that particular dish).

I don't understand liking green pepper. Why do people ever like a food that takes over so much? Where's the balance? And where, for that matter, is the point to stuffed peppers? Here, I made you something. It's a green pepper that I've gone to the trouble of stuffing with a bunch of other things that you're really not going to care about because all that you're going to taste is green pepper.

Oh yeah. Sign me up right now. The closest I'll ever come to a stuffed pepper is the lame painting you see above, and you'll notice that I didn't even bother to "stuff" that pepper because it would have been a lot of fuss for nothing.

I don't like green pepper, and I don't like it to the point where, as a child, I could tell just from the smell of a perfectly harmless non-green-pepper pizza if the guy at the pizza place had made an evil green pepper pizza before that one. Yep, green pepper's so powerful that simply having that green pepper smell on your hands infects the next pizza.

I'm trying to like the blasted stuff, though.

Trying.

And why?

Because it's in EVERYTHING. If you start checking labels, you'll find that green pepper is one of the most insidious ingredients in commercial cooking. And I can't tell you how many times I've watched a cooking show and gotten interested enough in a recipe to maybe consider looking it up afterwards, only to have the TV personality betray me by dumping in a bunch of the green stuff.

Sigh. It's almost enough to put a person off cooking.

And pizza.

What I'm trying to say is that I forgot to check the label the last time I bought pizza sauce because I was in a hurry and they were out of my usual brand. I got it home, opened up the jar... and smelled GREEN PEPPER.

Damn you, green pepper.

Now I either have to throw out a jar of what should have been harmless pizza sauce, or learn to like green pepper.





I'm trying to like green pepper.

Yes, I'm that cheap. Or that p.o'd, whichever way you'd like to look at it.



Damn you, green pepper.

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So what gives, Dee? You disappear for a week again, and then come back and not only write a silly post about a harmless food, but illustrate it with a picture of a fairly bad watercolour that you did years ago?

Yep.

You see, the problem is that I'm currently looking out the window at a beautiful winter day. And then I'm looking at the calendar and it says spring. It's depressing enough to take the blather out of anyone, really. You can't blame me for that.

Sigh.



Damn you, Alberta weather...