Ponderings and Musings

One of the things I have always wondered is if Captain Marvel and/or Isis ever rolled their eyes. I mean, here they have to withstanding changing their clothes courtesy of an explosion of some sort, only to rescue some teenager from falling down a well or driving over a cliff. There’s was even that dumb guy that tried to eat the honey off of a tree. I mean, did Isis secretly want to smack the idiot that purposely disconnected the brakes on the school bus as a practical joke? And why was Rick Mason driving the school bus from the passenger seat anyway?

But I digress.

The reason I wonder these things is because the news media is going into chicken little mode again with the Dreaded Snow Storm. The weather services, depending on which one you ask, are predicting that we will get either 16 inches or a tenth of an inch of snow sometime between yesterday and tomorrow. The high temperatures could be anywhere below or above freezing. Fembot #3 on the news (no relation to the fake Callahan) speculated that schools might be closed tomorrow due to the weather and that this posed a problem because there are no snow days left. Would anyone believe the announcements that schools are closed on April Fools’ Day? I know I wouldn’t. I fell for that “we’ve converted to metric time” on KG104 back in 1992 and I’m wiser nearly 20 years later. KG104 had commercials advertising VCR reprogramming and everything. Metric time. It was the future, yesterday.

Because of this false sense of hype on the news, the conversation about the office is that about the Dreaded Snow Storm with speculation as to how an ATV will fair on the roads when they’re dry on the way into work but impassable to other than ATVs for the evening commute, because after all, we are getting either a tenth of an inch or 16 inches of snow. After talking out loud yesterday and saying things that I should have said in my inner voice, I have wisely decided to just keep my mouth shut altogether and not even roll my eyes.

If Isis can keep her mouth shut when the kid wandered onto the munitions dump (or was it a dam that was being checked for water pressure?), I can certainly keep my mouth shut about a little bit of snow.

My head is a little scattered today so I am going to write a few bullet points of the bloggy things I have been thinking about and get them out of my head so that I can feel less cluttered.

1. I saw a video on Twitter from the set of the new Wonder Woman series pilot that David E. Kelley is producing. After a rather loud backlash on the internet after the new Wonder Woman’s costume was revealed, they have changed the new costume to have the traditional red boots (instead of the planned blue) and, from what I saw on the video, they replaced the latex material with something more like the original costume material worn by Lynda Carter. The fact that they made these changes has prompted me ti actually watch the show should it ever make it to television, because they listened to the fans. ‘Tis a pity the reboot of The Bionic Woman a few years ago didn’t listen to the fans as well, it might have developed into something.

2. I have been buying way too much gadgetry lately as I am overcome by tax return giddiness. I don’t know how Earl puts up with it. I do have a couple of things to sell, including an unopened Apple bluetooth keyboard (like the ones that come with the new iMacs). If you’re interested, let me know.

3. Speaking of Apple, I have tried to love MobileMe but I just can’t. It sucks. Synchronizing is wonky at best and mail support is bested by Google’s Gmail so I really doubt I’m going to renew it when it comes time. Thank goodness jp@jpnearl-dot-com will always work somewhere.

4. While The Weather Channel is predicting “6 to 14 inches of snow” by Friday afternoon, the National Weather Service is calling for “accumulations near a tenth of an inch”. I don’t know which to believe, though I’m inclined to not believe the one looking for ratings, but whichever the case I am ready to lose my shit completely at the thought of more snow. I’m praying for rain. I’ll squirt CFCs in the air if it’ll make it that much warmer. Calm down, I’m kidding, I’ll just have a cow fart or something.

5. I’m ready for someone to tell me that we won the lottery. We already have the charity picked out and Earl and I have pledged 10% of our winnings to it.

6. I am overdue for my annual physical and I’m starting to feel responsible to do something about it. My general practitioner moved from one hospital network to the competitor; it’s my responsibility to coordinate the transfer of my records since I guess they belong to the hospital, not the doctor and definitely, gasp, not me. How’s that easy health care plan working out?

7. I have made a marked attempt at keeping to the speed limit this week and I have an extra quarter tank of gas to prove for it. Keeping it near 65 is where the Jeep is most happy. I slow down for the villages, though.

8. And last, but not least, it’s been a while since I’ve worn just a mustache. I get nods from firemen and policemen in the area but it takes more time to get ready for work.

Renovations are in progress at The Manor. Just typing this sentence strikes a little bit of fear into my heart, because I don’t like feeling that the house is in a topsy-turvy state. I can easily handle chaos, but disruption makes me crazy, if that makes any sort of sense at all.

The kitchen floor is officially missing. A couple of years ago the ceramic tiles started buckling and cracking. We’ve officially decided to do something about this and the new floor has been decided upon and will be finalized tonight. In the meantime, we had a crew come in and remove all the tiles. Walking through the kitchen is now a little like an episode of “Bonanza”. The people look familiar but there’s a little bit of dust being kicked about. We clear the kitchen table with a leaf blower now.

To install the floor properly will involve the removal of all appliances. The cabinets can stay in place, we are just going to leave the tiles under them. Out of site, out of mind. It’s a shame that the original tiles weren’t put down properly because the original floor was quite nice.

Other sprucing up of the kitchen includes new countertops and a new refrigerator. Both will be much appreciated.

I think I might have Earl talked into a new washer and dryer, since the stack unit now rumbles so loudly that is sounds like a Harrier is hovering over the house when everything is spinning. Tom still braves the sound to use his adjacent litter box, but his ears are folded back and he had a look of displeasure on his face when he’s doing his business.

I think we have picked out a gazebo type thing for the back patio so we can enjoy the outdoors in shaded comfort this summer. Plans currently include more time at home and less time on the road this summer, so we should be comfortable whilst doing so. I think we might spruce up the flower beds and landscaping too. It’ll be fun to have something to do for relaxation that doesn’t involve a tweet or a beep. I think I might give out canned fruits and vegetables for the holidays at the end of the year. Act giddy when we give you something practical.

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.

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