Ponderings and Musings

Well here it is Friday and I am feeling particularly creative today. I don’t know if it’s because I have “lost myself” in my work for mist of the morning, if it’s because there sunshine filling the Jeep as I type or if I’m just looking at things in a better light, but lately I have been feeling particularly expressive and confident about it.

I am embracing my iPhone and working on a couple of informal photo projects. One of them involves the aforementioned iPhone and snapping a photo at the exact same spot in my morning commute everyday. I know, I’m driving and snapping photos at the same time, but I have a little ritual that involves a timer shot and placing the camera in a way so that it doesn’t impede the safety of my driving. I have dreams of showing the changes in the seasons when all is said and done and I think the resulting collage will be mildly interesting, even if it’s just interesting to me.

I also have another little project I would like to embark on and this one involves a little more input and time. I have always been fascinated with the way any given man shaves. Some might think it odd that such a mundane task could hold any interest to me but it does. I don’t know if it’s a hold over from when I was a kid and I used to watch my dad shave, but I find it interesting in the way some men spend great time and effort in achieving perfection through the task while others fly through it in an attempt to get it done as quickly as possible. Granted, I am most attracted to men with mustaches and beards, but capturing a man shaving in a photo is like taking a snapshot of them at their most basic level. It isn’t particularly sexual; I’m not looking to shoot shave porn or anything, but it can be rather sexy. I’m seeing the photos as having to be black and white and without a flash, since the mirror would go wild with that (I need to learn the best way to photograph in black and white). Each guy has their own way of shaving and to me that’s rather fascinating since we all use basically the same tools. Nevertheless, it’s something I would like to capture in photographs. I’ve seen some amazing “slice of life” photos over the past couple of years and I’d like to capture that “slice of life”. (Ha ha, a pun! Shave. Slice. Get it?)

There has also been talk about a small garden this year. Someday the snow will stop and there will be grass and decent weather and I would like to try growing a few vegetables. Earl is on board with something small and our friend Scott has shown an interest as well so I think we might try a few tomato plants, a stalk of corn, a pepper or two and maybe a sunflower. I didn’t spend nearly enough time outdoors last year and this year I refuse to fall victim to the same pattern. Besides, the best way to get to fried green tomatoes is to grow your own, so we might just have to do that. I hear gardening is good for the blood pressure too.

I should snap photos whilst driving.

The sunrise was absolutely beautiful this morning. The sky was filled with a wide variety of red hues. But as they say, “Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.”

The sun gave way to clouds and by the time I got home tonight we had a couple of inches of snow on the ground.

Ugh.

Someone please tell Mother Nature that it has been declared spring and she should start behaving accordingly. Just don’t give her Chiffon.

I am wearing the obligatory green today. The green clothing with the red beard is making me look like a leprechaun. I guess that’s what I should be striving for today.

Folks ask if I will be drinking green beer tonight. I don’t know why we think green beer is a good thing. For starters, there’s no way you’re going to be able to make any sort of proper Irish beer green. (I think it would only make a good bottle of Guinness more ‘murky’ looking, like algae in an old fish tank or something). Secondly, any beer that is so lite that it can be dyed green isn’t worth my time and lastly, I don’t drink.

I know, that betrays the Irish in my heritage.

I hear there was corned beef and cabbage in the office yesterday, but since that was my day off I didn’t get a chance to try it. Someone else brought some pulled pork BBQ which isn’t very Irish but was quite tasty. I like it when my co-workers show off their cooking skills. Everyone benefits.

In this neck of the woods, the day is evenly divided: sunrise was at 0710 and sunset is at 1910 EDT. This means that spring is close by. It’s currently 56 degrees fahrenheit as I write this. To celebrate, I won’t be drinking green beer but I will be walking the parking lot at work during my afternoon break. It’ll be an encore to the same walk I took during my morning break.

I’m catching up on email and other pressing things during my lunch hour today. Let’s see if I can sum up the last two days in a bulleted list:

– We still have a lot of snow and are expecting more tomorrow
– This is my weekend to work so I have tomorrow off
– I’ll probably be shoveling
– I wiped out two weeks worth of work when I tried out a new software package at work. It’s not worth the money they say it is
– The Jimmy is being fixed as we speak
– I love our Jeep
– Gas prices are scaring me
– I don’t care about Charlie Sheen and I fail to understand why he is more important that Libya, rising gas prices, world hunger, etc
– I’m in the mood to go somewhere warm
– I am remarkably centered and focused in this slightly chaotic time
– I wanted a beer but I didn’t have one because the one in the fridge is almost two years old. I’m saving it to water the mulch.

And on we go.

I got an early start to my Sunday this weekend. I heard my iPhone vibrating a lot around 2:00 a.m.. This woke me up so I figured I better see what all the hullabaloo was about. It turns out work was having an issue with one of our servers connecting to a server at another facility and the midnight shift couldn’t do their job so I had to leap into action and get everything working again.

I had forgotten what it was like to get awoken in the middle of the night by a work related call. Once everything was working again I found it all quite humorous as I went back to bed.

Upon waking at a normal hour, we noted that the flood warning had been replaced by a winter storm warning. They are now predicting 12-15 inches of snow for us by Monday morning. It’s snowing steadily as I type. It doesn’t look too unpleasant, though it doesn’t really put me in a March mood.

Before Earl and Jamie headed out to get groceries, we went to a local diner for breakfast. I had greens and bacon (there’s a contradiction!), Earl had a “gut buster”, Scott had the “slop” and Jamie had the biscuits and gravy. We strive to eat healthy in these parts. We have taken a liking to the little diner around the corner again; our other favorite diner recently remodeled and it just doesn’t feel as welcoming as it once did. The remodeling brought smaller booths and a hurried pace. The diner around the corner, simply called “Sharyn’s Place”, is the type of place every small town needs.

I took this photo over my shoulder. Someday I’ll face the other way so you can see the other half.

I have the sniffles today. Actually, I have a sniffle that seems to be coming out of only my right nostril. I’m not surprised at this as this is the nostril that also likes to sprout hair the most, so in a way it makes sense.

The sniffle is visiting because last night I turned up the heat in the bedroom and accompanied this by turning the ceiling fan up to high. I have to have some sort of noise in the room when I’m sleeping or else I am kept awake by the ringing in my ears. Earl’s CPAP usually does the trick but since he was out of town on business the room was mostly quiet until 0430. That’s when our deaf cat (or talented cat, if it is selective hearing loss) decided to sing a tune in the basement studio. It was loud enough to be heard upstairs. There was no applause.

When I arrived at work this morning, one of the folks commented on how cold it was in the building and she went and hunted down the building manager who took the dreaded action of many: she turned up the heat. This disturbed whatever is living in the ceiling vents and ducts and they retaliated by firing off some sort of dust bomb with a mildly foul smelling gas accompaniment, because the sniffle ramped up to several sneezes and a watery eye.

But only on the hairy side. By the way, I do not have hair in my eye.

So now I am sitting in the car at lunch, brilliant sunshine coming through the windows but cold enough to make one declare, “my gosh is it January or March?” I have window cracked open enough to keep some fresh air moving and to give me the urge to pant like a dog and smile, waiting for someone to come out of the bank.

I think I digress.

Nevertheless, this cracked window apparently provided an exit for this sniffle because I am breathing better now that I am outside and the eye has gone from watery to twitchy. This is progress.

The hair still remains.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

So today is hump day and if all rumors come true, the day that the iPad 2 is to be announced. In honor of this duopoly of an event, I forgot both my iPad and my MacBook Pro today as I left for work. I also forgot my hat and gloves so let’s hope Mother Nature isn’t given a tub of Chiffon and subsequently becomes cranky because I’m living on the edge today.

I’m writing this blog entry on my iPhone. The experience isn’t awful but it isn’t stellar either. Please forgive any spelling or syntax errors that are unusually weird.

I have mentioned before that I believe in reincarnation and all of that and because of this, I believe in déjà vu. I believe that when one experiences that spidey sense it’s because we are on the path that we were meant to be on and that any recent decisions are making an impact on what lies ahead. Kind of like The Matrix but without the crappy sequels. I have been feeling a great surge of déjà vu today and it has put a smile on my face. I must be doing something right along the way. I find reassurance in this.

I started my second year at this job yesterday and I must admit that feels good. The longer hours can occasionally be a drag but I love what I do and I feel like I’m growing in the position so how can it be bad, right?

So we are now officially in the latter half of the week. I think that’s reason to smile too.

So instead of being a graphic holding a baseball bat with whirring motions next to me, I’ll just be a happy face to make others smile.

Life is good.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

I am really starting to fear for American society. Over the past decade or so it’s become rather chic to have an IQ that in yesteryear would have been described as “a dull normal.” I’m reminded of the movie “Idiocracy”, where one of the folks from the future tells the time traveler that he has to stop that “fag talk” or people will beat him up. The time traveler is speaking in our everyday version of American English. He opts to use complete sentences and everything.

I recently watched a video where a woman said, “fruits and vegetables are miraculous because you can grow them. If you put seeds in the ground, fruits and vegetables will grow right there.” The tone of surprise in her voice indicated that she had never comprehended this before in her, and this is only an estimate, 20 to 25 years on the planet. This was something that she had just learned and she wanted to share.

One has to look no further than the battleground we call “The American Highway” to see examples of the downfall of our society. What was once the thrilling adventure of driving your merry Oldsmobile has turned into a ride through insanity much like the boat ride in the Chocolate Factory (chicken head notwithstanding). When did the concept of “Right on Red” become such a scary idea? Earl constantly reminds me that turning right on red is an option, it is not against the law to pass on that option and that no one is obligated to turn right on red. Okay, I get that, I guess, but when did it become such a scary venture to make a right hand turn in your vehicle when no other vehicles are headed towards your intended path of travel? I have been trying to find a trend in which drivers get scared about this whole right on red thing and I think it has something to do with the “right turn only” sign, the one with the big arrow pointing to the right and the word “ONLY” underneath it. For some reason, folks seem to think that this means that they can only turn right when the light is green.

Right on red works like a stop sign, except with a nifty light instead of a dull, bland, metal sign. You approach the intersection, come to a stop as directed and then, if everything is clear, you proceed in your intended direction of travel, which should be to the right, since you’re making a right on red. It’s not difficult. If you can’t navigate that, you should be in the institution counting widgets and looking forward to the day that you can be rewarded with using double digit numbers.

Don’t even get me started with the bozo that’s printing up bumper stickers that say “I CHOOSE NOT TO TURN RIGHT ON RED”. I’ll have to print up a bumper sticker that says “I CHOOSE TO REWARD YOUR IDIOCY BY NOT THROWING A MALLET THROUGH YOUR WINDSHIELD.”

Another sign of Creeping Idiocy is the need to mark every, single, stinking hazard with some sort of icon. There is a picture of a man and a snowblower near the chute on our snowblower. Said man is reaching towards the illustrated blades. There are lively marks around said graphic to indicate a whirring motion and that it wouldn’t be a good idea.

What sort of moron just sticks their hands into blades that are moving so fast that they need lively marks to illustrate their whirring? Why can’t it say “DANGER! DEATH MAY HAPPEN IF YOU STICK A BODY PART IN THERE” instead of having this graphic with lively marks indicating the whirring? If someone sticks their hand in their and loses their hand in the process then good, the law of survival of the fittest has won and if the idiot survives, he can spread the word about the dangers of things that whirr. Don’t insult my intelligence by having a stupid graphic on there indicating a very obvious danger. I deserve to be maimed if I can’t figure that out.

It’s like the woman who dumped hot coffee on her crotch and then sued McDonalds so that now every cup has to say “CONTENTS MAY BE HOT” on them and the temperature of coffee has to be lowered enough to not burn the ve-jay-jay. Perhaps balancing a cup of coffee, smoking a cigarette, talking on the phone and shifting the car is not a good idea while you’re trying to drive. You don’t deserve to reproduce you whack job and the universe was speaking to you. Perhaps you should listen.

The other day Earl ordered a cheeseburger. The woman asked if he wanted cheese with that.

A month or so ago I made a cash deposit with a bank teller at the local bank. She told me I could do all of my banking online. When I asked where I would put the cash if I did this particular transaction online, she didn’t have an answer, but she then repeated that all banking transactions can be done online. Her voice didn’t get too robotic but her stare became alarming confused. She just followed the sheep and baa-ed what she was suppose to baa.

I’m thankful to be only visiting this planet.

I’m taking an early lunch today because of my work schedule. For some reason, perhaps the fact that it’s Monday, I just couldn’t bring myself to go through the Dunkin’ Donuts drive thru and get a large unsweetened iced-tea like I usually do. I don’t know if it’s because I didn’t want to stomach the taste of the tea that often seems like it’s been run through coffee grinds or because I’m trying to feel outside of a rut, but I decided to get wild and crazy and go through the drive thru of the newly renovated McDonalds.

“May I have a large, UNSWEETENED iced tea with lemon, please?” The capital letters reflect the emphasis in my voice.

The newly installed display with flying graphics and whimsical fonts showed:

1 UNSWEET TEA LG
1 LEMON


Since the flying graphics and whimsically styled letters were urging me to check the display for accuracy, I did just that. All looked good.

I pulled up to the first window and gave the sleeping clerk my money, where she took it, flung some change at me and promptly shut the window. Behind the coating over said window I could see her going back into nap position. I hope her mouth was agape.

I pulled up to the second window where the I was handed a straw, a napkin and a large drink. I could see the lemon floating nicely on top. This made me happy.

I pulled away, since I had checked my order for accuracy and went to a secluded part of another parking lot about a mile away. I flipped on the hotspot on the iPhone, unsheathed my straw and pulled open the laptop. I then took a sip of my 1 UNSWEET TEA LG and discovered that I was the only one that had apparently checked the whimsically designed flying letters for accuracy.

My tea is SWEET.

This does not make me feel SWEET.

Since fuel prices are soaring beyond control as oil corporations laugh gaily, I decided that to go back to the McDonalds would be a waste of fuel and that would outweigh the money I had spent on the allegedly labeled 1 UNSWEET TEA LG. Therefore, I dumped the concoction down the nearest storm drain and fed the lemon to a seagull. I do find the presence of the seagull to be rather disconcerting because we are hundreds of miles from the ocean and at least 100 miles from Lake Ontario. Perhaps he is lost.

I know I feel lost without my unsweet tea this morning.

On the bright side, I shall never cast my eyes upon the whimsically styled letters, the sleeping clerk or the newly renovated McDonalds, because I am going to donate any remaining money I have on my Arch Card to the next homeless person I see and I am never going to set foot into the place again. I don’t care if you have a burger that tries to mimic itself as a McRib sandwich and I don’t buy into the folly of the whimsical letters. The renovation was mere lipstick on a pig and if you can’t pour unsweetened iced correctly into a large cup, when there’s probably an over-designed, technologically wasted piece of crap doing it for the minimally paid minion, I’m certainly not going to contribute to this idiocy.

I’ll stick to the tea run through the coffee grounds in the future.

As I mentioned earlier in the week, blogger folks are starting to write about the signs of spring and how wonderful all of it is. The signs of an early spring are here as well and people are often surprised when I say this is my least favorite time of the year. It’s true, early spring ranks last on my Casey Kasem countdown but I think if we lived in any other part of the country it would be a different story.

You see, we live in the Lake Ontario snowbelt. It’s actually something that I’m quite proud of because I believe it adds to my heartiness. When one lives next to one of the great lakes, you’ll find that when the lake is relatively warm for this time of year, the cold, Arctic air will pick up an extra helping of lake water, shake and stir it gently and then dump it onto those of us that live in the aforementioned snowbelt. This isn’t bad in itself, except that it’s a heavy, wet snow, versus the dry, fun, fluffy one usually finds in a debilitating blizzard. Our snowblower can barely get through an open lawn of dandelions, say nothing of six to ten inches of this heavy snow. There is clogging, there is swearing and there is a promise to a nosy neighbor that if they keep looking out the window and laughing at me, I’m going to clear their breakfast dishes with the aforementioned snowblower.

There is hope, however, because as I cleared out the driveway this morning, the sun was warm enough to force me to take off my hat due to overheating and it was able to melt the rest of the snow. Who knew the pavement was still there under all the white stuff? An extra bonus is when the landscape lights shine brightly under the snow. It’s like Christmas except it’s not.

So I’m ready for the big blast of heat that moves us from early spring to late spring. In these parts it usually comes around July.

Until then, we shovel the heavy, wet stuff.