Category: Nature

Sundry and various

Mom and baby moose.

A plug for the hilariously named Reifel Bird Sanctuary.

I have learned I can still apply for my FAC (the gun licence thing).  I am going to.  My to do list is growing like a six foot across amoeba while I watch in hor-ror.  So what am I going to do about it? Party!  Jim E.’s stag tonight so he’s invited people, alcohol and musical instruments into his home.  I intend to be there and make a joyful noise or two.

I have substantially completed my May 3rd homily and have forwarded the order of service to the service coordinator. So at least one thing came off the list.  I also picked out a new hymn and ran it through the music interpreter to figure out if I liked the tune or not…

Miss Margot continues her plans for global domination

In direct contravention of the breeder’s request, I am letting her out on the back deck.  This is made easier by the fact that she comes back in when you call her. I don’t want to get her a collar but I will have to now that she is going outside.

She and Gizmo ate next to each other yesterday and touched noses. 

I’m glad I made it to work, Tanya’s sick, poor baby.  Of course when a massively pregnant woman calls in sick everybody is hopping from one foot to the next predicting imminent parturition.

Miss Margot purred and purred and purred this morning.  She is a most companionable critter.

Jeff caught her doing parkour on the livingroom furniture yesterday.

and now, an anteater in a purple sweater

because the internet says so.

Worked until just before 8 last night.  Nothing is ever simple.  But I can see my desk.  This is important, because it means my desk has been clean two work days running.

I will be blunt.  Very very blunt.  We have hired a woman who is a dead ringer for Morena Baccarin and seems to have just that bubbly kind of personality that makes engineers turn into vast blobs of goo (she’s married – which is good). She also mentioned that she’s very organized, and I believe her.  She’s going to cover Tanya’s maternity leave.  If ever there was a woman who was my polar opposite (except she does have a sense of humour, thank goodness) this new gal would be her.

I, being evil, want Tanya’s desk and that means I have to clean mine off.  See, it all makes sense. Anyway, Newgal starts on Monday so I am, after more than a thirty years of desk surfaces that look like hippos have recently left off fornicating upon them (Catherine’s original phrase was more trenchant but less family friendly, and besides, hippos can’t fornicate because they don’t have souls) I am going to try to train myself to keep it clean.  Jeff, passing in front of my room and surveying Grandad’s desk, gets a hall pass on however many snorts of amusement he wishes to emit, because there are midget high crapstacks on it.  If tidy begins at home, I gots me a problem.

Miss Margot slept on my bed last night and purred.

Big Bang Theory last night was great.

How’s that again?

Last night when I got home from work there was the same picture I’d left on the screen from the morning – it’s from a series of pictures Cousin Gerald sent me.  It’s of the underside of a dock in the wintertime. Margot walked across the computer keyboard and – I’ve not the faintest notion how – suddenly there was a picture of a person holding up a sign saying “Most of the things you worry about never happen.”  Bizarre.  Then she stood on the brightness key until my screen disappeared, which is a much less entertaining and more cat like thing to do.  Took me ages to figure out what had happened. All of these miracles would not occur if I just closed the darned thing up.

I am reading my grampa’s stories.  I am now up to the point where his family could have taken the Titanic across the ocean but left a couple of days earlier that it did.  One of his near relatives was so famous as a bookseller and antiquarian in England that a letter from America with his name, occupation and country on it – and NO other details – was delivered to him. I find it entertaining that anybody who really wanted to find me could do it in two steps on the internet, but the Post Office would be scunnered if somebody sent me a letter with my name, occupation and country on it. Mind you there was delivery twice a day in England then, and a little more enterprise among the employees.

He mentions another person from his childhood who noticed that the Greenwich Mean Time was off by two seconds one day and reported it by telegram.  He was right, and they said so.

My grampa worked in the Cadbury chocolate factory when he was a boy.

Eddie is eating and going outside again, so he has recovered somewhat from the cold Jeff gave him.  Mistress Margot is showing signs of wanting to go out.  Sigh.

Kitty (and people)

Every morning she climbs up on me and ritually sneezes in my face.  This is, according to the lad I got her from, pretty normal.

She is struggling less and less when I brush her; when she’s about as relaxed as I can expect, I’ll bathe her. Jeff has made me swear a mighty oath that I won’t do it unless he can film the entire thing.  I’m thinking we should film it AND get stills.  It’s gonna be an event.  Now kitty is stalking the power cord for the MacBook.  Now she’s chasing Gizmo off his food dish…. bad plan.

To be able to wake up at 2 am, with her just out of my sleepthrashing range on the bed, instantly purring when I reach out to touch her ludicrously soft fur, is the most beautiful thing in my life right now.  I know I kinda ‘bought a friend’ but there was no guarantee she would even like me, and but she’s showing every sign of liking me a lot, rushing up to me when I come home from work.  She likes Jeff fine, but I’m the one who cleans her and brushes her, so she knows who mom is.

She’s got the boys completely whipped, and it hasn’t even been two weeks.

When Katie was here for dinner two Sundays ago Margot jumped onto the blue exercise ball in the living room.  Jeff reports that she has now jumped onto the ball and stood on it for a second and then jumped off.  I wish I had somebody who could circus train her, she’s got native talent.  The man who runs the cat circus (and while looking for him I found the Charles Mingus Cat Toilet Training Program, apparently written by the bassist himself) says that by watching a cat carefully you can tell if they have a certain bent and then you very slowly and patiently shape the behaviour until they are pushing strollers full of other cats, walking on high wires, walking on their front paws, and doing complicated dance routines with other cats, among the many other bizarre things he’s trained cats to do.

Hm.  Well, I’ve been remiss in reporting the social news.  Dr. Filk paid us a flying visit on Friday, and mightily glad was I to see him, and he found la belle Margot entertaining.

Paul and the kids were by for Sunday dinner and we watched Jurassic Park.  Paul brought the best pork roast, and we had onions and carrots and taters and corn, so it was a real Sunday dinner.

No date with my new friend this past weekend, I’ve been feeling a bit off colour and my foot is still hurting like a b9st9rd so anything involving more than about ten blocks of walking finishes me off.  Yes, I should see a doctor, but for what?  To get told it’s sprained ligaments and I should get orthotics?  I am so tired of going to the doctor and finding out I’m a jeezly hypochondriac.  Given that I’m fifty I’m sure I’ll get bad news eventually but every health scare I’ve had except for my back – which is the same as always, thanks – has turned out to be figmentary.  Actually, I took Robaxicet last night and I had an AWESOME night’s sleep.

Just fixed poached eggs and toast for brekkie, and I am now contemplating a second cup of coffee.  Oh Margot, quit chewing on the cable…..  If you get electrocuted, nobody will be able to tell.

The landpeers have rearranged the way they park their vehicles so I can use the walkway.  Jeff and I are responding by ensuring they have the rent cheques in hand in about fifteen minutes.  It’s actually kinda handy having the landpeers that close.

I handed out biscotti at work yesterday.  Man, I love doing that.

I wish I could blog about work.  But continued employment beckons encouragingly, so I will defer to my more sensible, grownup, beaten down by capitalizm self, and keep my icecream siphon closed.

Speaking of ice cream.  I brought some home last night.  Then I said to Jeff, “Screw this noise… Dessert, it’s what’s for supper.”  Thus my atonement with a nourishing and sensible brekkie today.