Weblog 275
May 22, 2011~ 12:00 am
Though it rained and soaked us in this region all week long, we had one GORGEOUS day on Saturday when the sun came out and stayed there.
Yes, that's my house behind the big green bushes on a day just like Saturday. (Yellow too. A 'sun house'!) I grabbed a small window of time on a day with no rain and vacuumed the back porch indoor/outdoor carpeting while it wasn't sodden, and probably picked up a POUND of cast-off sunflower seed shells from the feeder I keep on the railing. That went 'bye-byes'... it's simply too sloppy to keep out there. (Besides, the pigeons found it late last week, and the prospect of a back porch knee deep in pigeon-poop was just too unsavory to comtemplate.) Instead, I bought five suet cakes for this week. The little cheepers will just have to be satisfied with that.
Due to my honey's ongoing bout of shingles, we shelved the movie for this week. It's too hard to lay on the couch on TOP of those blisters and pain, and be anywhere near comfortable.
On Friday at work, we had a DELIGHTFUL all-day encounter with mallard ducks! Since the relentless, day-in, day-out downpours, a rather large area of our grassy section beneath the oak trees has filled up, grass poking out, looking for all the world like a small pond, and gliding on it on Friday morning, was a pair of ducks, paddling happily, male and female.
(I didn't have my camera with me- darn!-but they looked just like that.) The male, with an iridescent blue-green neck, and his mate, a speckled brown female. They'd loll on the grass, beaks tucked under a wing and sleep, or they'd sally forth casually-- walking slowly on the grass, then plop back down in their 'pool' and dig into the mud for critters to eat. We loved watching them!
I hope they're back on Monday, because it sure adds color and enjoyment to the workday. I even wrote a poem about them.
Browsing around, I found an intriguing site that I want to share that opens a portal into the past. It seems a fella bought a Kodachrome slide viewer at a flea market, and it came complete with a bunch of old family slide photos from the '50's. Looking through these 'found pictures' I felt a sweep of warm nostalgia in the styles, the look of the automobiles, the fashions of the time-- and it took me back to life in that decade, a place locked inside my memories. Click on the rabbit-earred television below
and pay a visit to a wonderful blog. It tugs at my heartstrings and opens doors that had been gently shut though easily opened again.
When you're through looking through that, cast your eye on the The World BEARD Championships and be amazed. LOL!!!
Man!! What zany styles and shapes!I I love it! (I think if I were a male I'd most definitely have a mustache and beard. It would be like being a magician, or some silent film star, with so many ways to disguise and decorate the face.) All it takes is daring.... and plenty of mustache wax.
Back to rain now for all of this week. I'm getting used to the smell of mildew..... (but at least there are flowers coming along out there.) Have a good week, all.
May 25, 2011~ 7:00 pm
Blogger is f*cked again! LOL!!! I've been trying to post in here for 2 days and could not log in. Not even with a proxy. Found another way, but man o man...... it's so damn exhausting to work this way. I wish those programmers would leave 'well enough', alone.
So..... with the vacillation of 'on/off' nonsense, combined with the weather crap, I find my
have been rather piebald as well. (Moods are funny things. They are oceans inside of us, with their own tides.) BTW, that wonderful graphic was a Hasbro game from 2000. Never got to play it, but I'll bet it was fun.
Mood is influenced by health, by events outside of us and events close to us, what we eat and hear and read. (Ah! There's the rub!)
Currently I'm reading a dark, dark but brilliant book..... possibly the most brutally honest, perfectly crafted I've ever read, yet it takes its toll. It's a 2005 novel that was just made into a movie- (and yes, I'm SO GLAD I read the book first) staring Tilda Swinton, of 'Orlando' and 'Michael Clayton' fame, who will be PERFECT as the lead
in "We Need To Talk About Kevin". If there is such a thing as 'perfect casting'-- this is surely it. The main character is a self-made career woman of Armenian/American descent who marries the fella of her dreams, only to finally give birth to a nightmare. Let me tell you, 'Kevin' is the stuff of true horror. He's an opaque, calculating, almost demon child who grows into a teenage cypher who finally murders some hand-picked classmates and the only teacher who was 'on to him', but saw promise nevertheless, in an (all too common) high school massacre.
To read this is to be inside his head--- and inside the head of his uncommonly astute, self-analyzing mother who, after the tragedy, spends all her days trying to solve the puzzle of what happened. What went wrong? Who's 'fault' is Kevin anyway? She spares no one-- flays herself alive, and to read this book is to roll naked over broken glass. It casts a dark spell, this one, and I am totally inside of it. I am in awe of its author, Lionel Shriver. (Oh, yes, 'Lionel' is a woman. Born Margaret Ann, but renamed herself.) Somehow, that all fits.
I have only 20 pages to go and torturous as it was, I am loathe to finish it and call it quits-- that's how entirely I have been absorbed by the story.
If you're brave enough, if you're a person can look at the truth of this country, this culture... the myth of parenthood and what it supposedly brings us.... the nature of motherhood and the old nature/nuture conundrum, I encourage you to brave it. It's one hell of a read.
May 26, 2011~ 4:15 am
For the past 3 days I've had difficulties with my alarm clock(s). Tuesday I slept in a half hour, yesterday, an hour....(no worries. I always get up an hour BEFORE I absolutely have to start getting ready for work) ...but that meant no coffee, no re-entry decompression, etc, so I stumbled into work like- (in the words of Abraham Lincoln) -'a duck that's been struck on the head'.
Figuring it was my alarm clock that wasn't working properly, last evening I replaced the battery and tried setting my 'Pirates of the Caribbean' clock as a back-up. Then I dug out an old travel alarm clock and rustled up a battery for that one by going through junk drawers in the house, so with THREE clocks set (my main one with the face turned away from me on the nightstand so the alarm area was unobstructed) -I relied on the Pirate clock and the travel alarm to see the time as I continued reading before lights out.
Well at some point I rolled over in the dark and pressed the 'PROJECT TIME' button on the Pirate clock, and saw a red digital '4:30 AM' on the wall. (Half hour later again!)
I scrambled up, checked all clocks, wondering why the main one hadn't sounded since I checked it so well before I turned its face away the night before, and discovered THAT ONE read not 4:30, but 3:30 am! (And IT was the correct time!. Yes, I'd mis-programmed the two digital ones.) LOL!!! Up an hour EARLIER today, but it's better than late and groggy.
I see that BLOGGER still has serious, serious problems....
and is 'broken'. I've been a frequent checker in their 'Something Is Broken' forum, reading the latest disasters for folks trying to get in and stay in, but it's UNBELIEVABLY up to over 300 comments in that one thread alone. (It was 160 something as I was leaving work yesterday, so it doubled over-night and continues to have nearly nil support or input from Blogger/Google staff.)
How'd I get in? you may ask.......having an almost 13 year old original computer, old operating system, old Firefox browser..... let's just say I've learned to be 'creative'. I tunnel in via North Dakota, the dark side of the moon and work dangerous voodoo to be here. Have to. Humpty's crashing, and all the king's horses and all the king's men seem to be clueless.
***
(Return To Weekly Archives)
Though it rained and soaked us in this region all week long, we had one GORGEOUS day on Saturday when the sun came out and stayed there.
Yes, that's my house behind the big green bushes on a day just like Saturday. (Yellow too. A 'sun house'!) I grabbed a small window of time on a day with no rain and vacuumed the back porch indoor/outdoor carpeting while it wasn't sodden, and probably picked up a POUND of cast-off sunflower seed shells from the feeder I keep on the railing. That went 'bye-byes'... it's simply too sloppy to keep out there. (Besides, the pigeons found it late last week, and the prospect of a back porch knee deep in pigeon-poop was just too unsavory to comtemplate.) Instead, I bought five suet cakes for this week. The little cheepers will just have to be satisfied with that.
Due to my honey's ongoing bout of shingles, we shelved the movie for this week. It's too hard to lay on the couch on TOP of those blisters and pain, and be anywhere near comfortable.
On Friday at work, we had a DELIGHTFUL all-day encounter with mallard ducks! Since the relentless, day-in, day-out downpours, a rather large area of our grassy section beneath the oak trees has filled up, grass poking out, looking for all the world like a small pond, and gliding on it on Friday morning, was a pair of ducks, paddling happily, male and female.
(I didn't have my camera with me- darn!-but they looked just like that.) The male, with an iridescent blue-green neck, and his mate, a speckled brown female. They'd loll on the grass, beaks tucked under a wing and sleep, or they'd sally forth casually-- walking slowly on the grass, then plop back down in their 'pool' and dig into the mud for critters to eat. We loved watching them!
I hope they're back on Monday, because it sure adds color and enjoyment to the workday. I even wrote a poem about them.
Unexpected The flatiron of hard morning fog fails to sever me from joy. I saw a mallard and his mate floating in a puddle from the recent rains, deep as my soul can jubilate. The world constructs such wonders out of mist.
Browsing around, I found an intriguing site that I want to share that opens a portal into the past. It seems a fella bought a Kodachrome slide viewer at a flea market, and it came complete with a bunch of old family slide photos from the '50's. Looking through these 'found pictures' I felt a sweep of warm nostalgia in the styles, the look of the automobiles, the fashions of the time-- and it took me back to life in that decade, a place locked inside my memories. Click on the rabbit-earred television below
and pay a visit to a wonderful blog. It tugs at my heartstrings and opens doors that had been gently shut though easily opened again.
When you're through looking through that, cast your eye on the The World BEARD Championships and be amazed. LOL!!!
Man!! What zany styles and shapes!I I love it! (I think if I were a male I'd most definitely have a mustache and beard. It would be like being a magician, or some silent film star, with so many ways to disguise and decorate the face.) All it takes is daring.... and plenty of mustache wax.
Back to rain now for all of this week. I'm getting used to the smell of mildew..... (but at least there are flowers coming along out there.) Have a good week, all.
May 25, 2011~ 7:00 pm
Blogger is f*cked again! LOL!!! I've been trying to post in here for 2 days and could not log in. Not even with a proxy. Found another way, but man o man...... it's so damn exhausting to work this way. I wish those programmers would leave 'well enough', alone.
So..... with the vacillation of 'on/off' nonsense, combined with the weather crap, I find my
have been rather piebald as well. (Moods are funny things. They are oceans inside of us, with their own tides.) BTW, that wonderful graphic was a Hasbro game from 2000. Never got to play it, but I'll bet it was fun.
Mood is influenced by health, by events outside of us and events close to us, what we eat and hear and read. (Ah! There's the rub!)
Currently I'm reading a dark, dark but brilliant book..... possibly the most brutally honest, perfectly crafted I've ever read, yet it takes its toll. It's a 2005 novel that was just made into a movie- (and yes, I'm SO GLAD I read the book first) staring Tilda Swinton, of 'Orlando' and 'Michael Clayton' fame, who will be PERFECT as the lead
in "We Need To Talk About Kevin". If there is such a thing as 'perfect casting'-- this is surely it. The main character is a self-made career woman of Armenian/American descent who marries the fella of her dreams, only to finally give birth to a nightmare. Let me tell you, 'Kevin' is the stuff of true horror. He's an opaque, calculating, almost demon child who grows into a teenage cypher who finally murders some hand-picked classmates and the only teacher who was 'on to him', but saw promise nevertheless, in an (all too common) high school massacre.
To read this is to be inside his head--- and inside the head of his uncommonly astute, self-analyzing mother who, after the tragedy, spends all her days trying to solve the puzzle of what happened. What went wrong? Who's 'fault' is Kevin anyway? She spares no one-- flays herself alive, and to read this book is to roll naked over broken glass. It casts a dark spell, this one, and I am totally inside of it. I am in awe of its author, Lionel Shriver. (Oh, yes, 'Lionel' is a woman. Born Margaret Ann, but renamed herself.) Somehow, that all fits.
I have only 20 pages to go and torturous as it was, I am loathe to finish it and call it quits-- that's how entirely I have been absorbed by the story.
If you're brave enough, if you're a person can look at the truth of this country, this culture... the myth of parenthood and what it supposedly brings us.... the nature of motherhood and the old nature/nuture conundrum, I encourage you to brave it. It's one hell of a read.
May 26, 2011~ 4:15 am
For the past 3 days I've had difficulties with my alarm clock(s). Tuesday I slept in a half hour, yesterday, an hour....(no worries. I always get up an hour BEFORE I absolutely have to start getting ready for work) ...but that meant no coffee, no re-entry decompression, etc, so I stumbled into work like- (in the words of Abraham Lincoln) -'a duck that's been struck on the head'.
Figuring it was my alarm clock that wasn't working properly, last evening I replaced the battery and tried setting my 'Pirates of the Caribbean' clock as a back-up. Then I dug out an old travel alarm clock and rustled up a battery for that one by going through junk drawers in the house, so with THREE clocks set (my main one with the face turned away from me on the nightstand so the alarm area was unobstructed) -I relied on the Pirate clock and the travel alarm to see the time as I continued reading before lights out.
Well at some point I rolled over in the dark and pressed the 'PROJECT TIME' button on the Pirate clock, and saw a red digital '4:30 AM' on the wall. (Half hour later again!)
I scrambled up, checked all clocks, wondering why the main one hadn't sounded since I checked it so well before I turned its face away the night before, and discovered THAT ONE read not 4:30, but 3:30 am! (And IT was the correct time!. Yes, I'd mis-programmed the two digital ones.) LOL!!! Up an hour EARLIER today, but it's better than late and groggy.
I see that BLOGGER still has serious, serious problems....
and is 'broken'. I've been a frequent checker in their 'Something Is Broken' forum, reading the latest disasters for folks trying to get in and stay in, but it's UNBELIEVABLY up to over 300 comments in that one thread alone. (It was 160 something as I was leaving work yesterday, so it doubled over-night and continues to have nearly nil support or input from Blogger/Google staff.)
How'd I get in? you may ask.......having an almost 13 year old original computer, old operating system, old Firefox browser..... let's just say I've learned to be 'creative'. I tunnel in via North Dakota, the dark side of the moon and work dangerous voodoo to be here. Have to. Humpty's crashing, and all the king's horses and all the king's men seem to be clueless.
(Return To Weekly Archives)
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