Mixed grill

No, I didn't grill the apple. and no, it wasn't rotten. It was actually pretty good -- it just browned quickly because it was hot that day.

The post title, if you hadn't got it yet, just means that I have a few small things to talk about that have nothing to do with each other but are going to be served together anyway. A chacun son goût, as they say.

Well, as some say.

The French, mostly.

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First, then, I wanted to let you know that I'm not going to complain about working the late shift again because I'm not. I'm working a late meeting. Working late at all puts me in a bit of a mood no matter why I'm doing it, though. Probably goes back to working at some subway shop.  Late shifts there were brutal, and they generally only scheduled one person to close (I'd imagine that newer OH&S regs mean that they can't do that anymore. What a pity). Close the storefront, put all the food away, clean up everything... all by yourself. When you left depended on how much of a mess there was; not just from your shift, but from the whole day. It was just after university and I'd moved back in with my parents temporarily. After the first night that I didn't get in until two in the morning, they refused to let me drive myself home. Yep, I had to phone mommy and daddy for a ride, no matter how late it was, so that I wasn't walking down the alley to the parking lot alone. Thanks, both of you. I actually really appreciated that.

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Next, and probably should have been first, I have over a foot less hair than I did when I got up this morning. Yep, finally had it with the whole having to tie it back even at night thing. Erm, because otherwise it was so long that it would get caught under my armpits and wake me up when I rolled over. Seriously. So now I have a hairdo for the first time in well over two years. Possibly over three years. I can't really remember.

Speaking of remember, I'll have to remember how to use hair products again. And do something with my hair besides a ponytail (because I can't anymore. Yes, I really did get that much cut off). I always make myself a deal when I get my hair cut: it has to be down for at least two days. After two days it's usually driving me so bonkers that I have to pin it back, but two days starts... now.

Ok, maybe more like tomorrow morning.

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Last, I've (finally) finished up the 2% milk I had in the fridge. Good. I know that some of you are wondering why the finally and the good, but let me tell you, when you're not used to 2% it feels pretty much like you're drinking butterfat. I used to drink 2% as a kid, but then at some point -- I can't remember why now -- the doctor put me on skim instead.

And as soon as I said skim a lot of you went ewwww. I likely did at first too, but once you drink it for a while you find it way more refreshing and far less... coating, I guess. I genuinely like skim milk now. Dad usually buys 1% and obviously I'll drink that, but for myself it's skim all the way.

Until your neighbourhood grocery store decides to switch allegiances and suffers some unexpected supply shortages as a result. What do you do? Well, if you're me and you need milk for the meal you're making that night, you suck it up and buy the 2% that's about the only thing staring up at you from the milk aisle (I'm not counting the homo. And for those of you not Canadian, that's just short for homogenised whole milk. Doesn't stop the Americans from laughing at pictures of Canadian dairy sections, however. And don't get me started on Regina...).

The 2% is gone now.

Good.

Toys

Today's pointless photo almost sort of has something to do with anything (make your own English out of that statement). If you click on it you'll see a piece from an outdoor game board wedged in the crotch of an apple tree. The game board is well down the yard from the tree. I have no idea how the piece got to the tree. I doubt it would have been my nephews when they visited last year, because they would have had to've worked their way through quite a thicket of daylilies to get there. Maybe a crow or a magpie? I dunno, but it's kind of funny that I never noticed it until a couple of weeks ago.

Before I get on to toys proper, this video shows one of the easiest ways to make an office supply weapon. The bonus is, everything except for the pen is reusable so you're not even wasting anything. Well, time, I guess, but we all need stress relief now and then. I suppose I should have taken a picture of the one I made, but I'm too lazy to go get the camera just now.

Or joust now, which is what I typed. I guess I'm in a weapons mood.

Anyway, toys. As my two fans (and my nephews, for that matter) know, I have a lot of toys on my desk. Some I've been given, some I've bought on purpose to see what people play with, and some... oh, I don't even know why they're here. I'm a bit of a toy person, I think, because I'm a fidget. When I'm not actively doing something with my hands they're playing with something. One of my desk toys, maybe, a vegetable peeler that I forgot to take home, my jewellery, my hair; you get the idea. I was never good at the whole sitting quietly with my hands folded in my lap thing.

Do they still get little girls to do that? Stupidest thing ever to tell a child, as I recall. It just makes you want to fidget more.

Anyway (again), I have a whole 'nother subset of toys that appear a little more grown up. On the surface at least. I was playing with them last night, but to a purpose. Yeah, anyone who's been reading this blather for any length of time can guess that I'm talking about art supplies. This time of year I get an almost unbearable desire to go to the art store. It's all those back to school ads, you see. I love stationery, and have since I was a kid. Yep, weird and I know it. It's just that having all those fresh new pencils and pens and binders and glue (I, um, come from the generation of rubber cement, remember. Rubber cement was fun) was always such a good time.

Hey, I already said weird. Shut up, world.

Anyway (the third), as I got past school and had a sadly-admitted lower need for stationery, I transferred the urge to art supplies instead. Art supplies? Definitely fun. And it used to be that I'd always find myself cruising the art stores -- heck, even the department stores -- in late August looking for something to play with.

Not this year.

Sigh.

I don't need anything right now.

Sorry, I'll speak up. I will grudgingly acknowledge that I don't really need anything just at the moment. I can always make an excuse for paper, yes, and I could replace some cheap brushes with one or two better ones, but I can't honestly admit that it needs to happen right now.

No promises about a month from now.

Ah well, I'm sure I can find another toy to satisfy me in the meantime, even if it's something silly like Kinder Surprise.

A girl's got to get her fidget out somehow, after all.



Oh, and I'll post last night's effort on the other blog after this. It was for work, so I guess it wasn't really playing.





It was playing.

Your annual Emmys blah

But first, today's sunflower companion. That's a harvestman. When I was a kid we called them daddy longlegs, but I've since found out that there's an actual spider called a daddy longlegs. To keep from getting the two confused I've tried to use the term harvestman for the non-spider one.

This is why scientific names are better (or at least less confusing) than common ones, but I doubt we'll all be speaking pseudolatin anytime soon.

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Ok, the Emmys. First, a confession. I sort of watched the Emmys. They were on, and I occasionally paid a little bit of attention, but I was also doing other things. With that caveat, then, here's my summary:

Blah.

They were blah. Seth Meyers? Nice but kind of blah. Production values? Ok, but sort of blah. Fashions? Honestly, mostly blah. There were one or two wtfs, as there always is, and maybe a couple of standouts (although it's always entertaining to go to the internet fashion lists the next day and see one person's wtf be the next person's ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!!! I don't think even differing opinion could have saved Lena Dunham, though), but mostly it was indifferent. Gentlemen, I will say that it was nice to see so many bow ties. I say this every awards show, but if you wear a straight tie with evening dress, it's not making a fashion statement. It's wearing a shiny suit with an inappropriate tie, is all.

I do have a couple of non-blah comments, of course. To the bulleted list, then.

• Weird Al's thing was awful. And that's coming form someone who likes Weird Al a lot.
• In a three-hour-long awards show, please can we cut the improv? Ricky Gervais, no one cares about your no-win monologue. Jimmy Kimmel? We get it. Matthew McConaughey is a movie person. There may have been funny bits, but fer Whomever's sake get on with it.
• Academy? Watch some new frigging (well, not literally frigging. Unless you want to, I suppose) television, already. Three consecutive wins, five consecutive wins, eighth nomination... all of this indicates that voters just choose names that they recognise instead of trying to figure out who the new people are and seeing if they're any good. Sad, really.
• This will probably surprise people, but I thought that the Robin Williams tribute was... inappropriate. Yes, he was beloved. Yes, his death was a recent shock. But singling one person out in the In Memoriam is always uncomfortable. To me, at least. The business lost some really big names this year. They were also beloved, and I'm sure that their families would have appreciated more than a picture. Do it for one person, do it for all... or don't do it AT all, I figure.

Anyway, I need to get back to work now. And this was actually a post for a change. Congratulations, me.



Next time maybe wear a bow tie?

Pointless I don't know. Something.

Doesn't it look kind of like they're grieving?

Well, maybe you have to use your imagination.





Like, really, really hard...

Yeah, I have nothing. At least this is almost sort of a post, though. Anyone sick of my periodic disappearances yet?



I didn't think so. Ah well. Enjoy the picture, if nothing else.

Pointless photo theme of the week:

 This was going to be a post, but Dad's hamster-driven computer is taking intermittent coffee breaks this morning. Rather than lose a lengthy (if pointless) blather, then, I'll just introduce this week's theme. It's All Sunflowers, All The Time, folks.

Or at least until the pictures run out.

Read this as: there's not too much going on in the garden so I took sunflower shots.

Today? Bee. Top one, arrival. Bottom one, getting down to business.

Tomorrow?

I'm guessing something to do with a sunflower. And maybe an actual blather, depending on how busy work is. For now, though, just enjoy the bee.



'Cause that's all there is, you see.

Bye.

Something

O spider I see in the vanity sink,
they say that you've been there two days.
I think you should probably find your way out
or someone will flush you away.

I 'spose if the sides are too steep for escape
You're likely in need of some help.
Yeah, I'll grab a cup and then scoot you up top,
but next time please do this yourself.

 NO, I HAVE NOT LOST MY MIND. It's just Bad Poetry Day. And apparently copyrighted for profit, according to that link. Kinda figures, doesn't it? And yes, I wrote a poem about a spider (which I really did save this morning, to no one's surprise who's ever read this blog. It was a European House Spider. How sad is it that I knew the scientific name without even looking it up? Anyway, I let it go so that it could keep eating things in the basement. Incidentally, I do understand if people are creeped out by this particular species. Long legs, very scurry-y... they're harmless, though. Um -- what was I saying before I started on this?) and accompanied it with picture of fish. It wouldn't have been pointless otherwise, would it?

Just for fun, I put a modified version of the first line of my bad poem through this poetry generator a few times and got this:

Spider in the bathroom sink
While I sit all alone singin the blues........
though i never knew what was in the flue.
Grey souls, Grey shoes I've even got grey blues.

Deep, man. Deep.

I actually have been a bit of a poetry writer over the years, but this is the first one I've written in I don't know how long. It's like most of my hobbies, really. I'll go totally gangbusters on something (poetry, knitting, needlework, I-bet-some-of-you-are-expecting-me-to-say-doodling-but-I've-never-really-given-that-up) for a while -- sometimes years -- and then completely drop it for sometimes years. I'm pretty cyclical, though. Hobbies never seem to totally go away, and the return is easily triggered. Say a person (ok, me) hasn't knitted for a while, and then notices that the homemade dish cloth is getting ratty. Well, you take out the cotton yarn and the needles and you whip up a quick dish cloth. Then you think about the fact that you haven't made a new toque for a while and get out the patterns. Then you find yourself frequenting the yarn aisle looking for something that would do for a fuzzy but not too fuzzy throw...

And then you get tired of knitting and remember that you probably still have some embossing paper hanging around here somewhere.

I'm a natural born dabbler, I guess. It's good for my job, though. I can do a little bit of a lot of things, and when you're trying to think of programming ideas that can be handy.

Anyway, lunch time now. If you're at all interested in my poems from back when I was regularly writing (some good, some ok, some definitely a good fit for Bad Poetry Day) there's a few at this link from the other blog. And just for fun, here's a last word from the poetry generator. First line's mine. The rest? The universe, I suppose:

Cows, cows
End this charade now, disguise not your battered soul.
I see her now!!!! 
The shock of never rips through my soul.

Pointless photo of the yet another evening shift:

It's an insect. On a house. Because sometimes you just gotta be an insect on a house.

Or should that be sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug? Ah well, whichever.

So, yeah. Covering another evening shift. The short staffing this summer has made things interesting, and not in a good way. It's not that there's anything wrong with the evening shift; it's just that I'm not used to working it. It seems wrong in my brain. Like it's past my bedtime or something.

Ah well.

Again.

I don't really have anything. Again. What I do have is a desk full of slightly weird things. I stopped at a grocery store on the way here to pick up some lunch? dinner? why isn't there a brunch word for mid-afternoon, anyway? Where was I? Oh yeah. I stopped at a store and kind of got distracted. The plan was lupper (or whatever) and maybe a snack. What I ended up with was peaches, mixed nuts, the aforementioned meal-thingy, chocolate toffees, tic tacs, and lychees.


Well, you certainly can't resist the lychees when they're right at the front door, can you?

Or maybe you can, but I can't.

I remember the first time that I had lychees fairly vividly, actually. It was when they were pretty much new to mainstream grocery stores here, and obviously the one I was in wasn't having any luck getting most people to try the weird-looking things. I mean, at the time if your typical Alberta WASP had heard of lychees at all, they were something you got in a can filled with overly-sweet syrup. This store was so desperate to move the non-moving produce that they'd stationed a poor teenaged staffer at the lychees, offering samples and showing people how to peel them. I had one. It was good. I bought some. And I've kept buying them.

Sometimes marketing works all too well. But at least lychees are mostly good for you.

I think.

Isn't everything in the produce section good for you?



Ah well. Again. Back to work for me. And probably some lychees, because that mesh bag ain't staying closed all night, I can tell you.





I'm pretty sure that everything in the produce section is good for you...