Jun 29, 2015

Morbilliform Monday

morbilliform ~ like or resembling measles

Well the big news last week was the ruling of the Supreme Court in the U.S. that same sex marriage is legal in every state now. A whole garden of rainbows sprang up over Facebook with people showing their support.

I don't normally mention stuff that's in the news but aside from the fact it's refreshing to see a legal system doing the right thing for a change, I really got a chuckle out of the reaction of those who weren't please by the court's decision. You know, all those people who threatened to move to Canada over this.

As a Canadian, I'd like to say two things. First, we don't want you. We're an easy going bunch and we need neither you nor your vitriol opinions messing with our peace and quiet. And second, duh! Where do you think all those gay Americans have been going to get legally married? That's right. Canada. Same sex marriages have been legal in Canada for years now, and we're okay with that. So go invade some other unsuspecting country ... if they'll have you.

June is almost over and it was cold enough on the weekend that I wore socks to bed. The hubby's got the pool uncovered and almost clean, but I shudder to think what the temperature of the water is. And have I mentioned the excessive amount of rain we've been getting? The animals are starting to line up two by two.

So ... Saturday night we ended up watching not one, but two really bad movies. With the popularity of Sharknado, with Ian Ziering, there's been a rash of bad movies starring one or two former celebrities to attract notice. Sharknado was awesome in its cheesiness, the movies we watched ... were not.

Earth vs. Volcano starred Dean Cain, who really should have known better. He played a passenger on an airplane who ends up taking over when both the pilot and co-pilot are killed as they're trying to navigate through a ring of volcanoes that appeared out of nowhere. ***Spoiler alert*** He dies in the end, taking what's left of his career with him.

Asteroid vs. Earth was even worse. This one featured Tia Carrere, you know, from Relic Hunter? She's kind of shanghaied into helping with the plan to move the planet Earth out of the way of an approaching asteroid. Honestly? She should have stuck to hunting relics. Two hours for each movie; four hours of my life I'll never get back.

In case you missed it, I did my fourth blog post in a row on my writing blog. This is getting to be a habit! It was kind of funny, really. I had intended to make notes on some of the books I've read recently so I could update my Goodreads bookshelf, but I ended up writing the blog post instead.

This week should be interesting, what with two holidays and all. We have Canada Day on Wednesday and the American Independence Day on Saturday. Altogether now, hold up your flags!

Jun 22, 2015

Mulciberian Monday

mulciberian ~ of, like or pertaining to metalworking

It's a funny thing, but now that I'm busy with work during the week, I have a whole new appreciation of weekends.

Okay. Yes, I know just last week I was saying how I liked Mondays better because I can go back to all my routines that I don't have on the weekend, and that hasn't changed. But there's just something about having those two open days at the end of the week ...

And I know there are some of you out there with puzzled looks on your faces because I work at home and isn't every day like a weekend? Technically that's true, but that just opens a whole new can of worms and if you want to read more about it, go here.

But as I was having my breakfast on Saturday, I started wondering what I was going to do with my day. I had this whole day ahead of me, and I could do anything I wanted with it. It was kind of a heady feeling.

Of course then reality intruded and all sorts of things that I had to get done intruded, like buying a new frying pan (when stuff starts burning on to your non-stick frying pan, it's time to get a new one) and a new mouse for my lap top (you have no idea how annoying a faulty mouse can be!), figuring out what that smell was in the corner where my recliner is, baking to be done, stuffed hamburgers for Sunday to make . . . the list was endless. At least it seemed that way when you go from two days with nothing to do to a whole list of things.

But I pecked away at the list, alternating things that needed to be done with things that were fun to do, like sitting out on the deck to have my lunch. So while it was a busy weekend, I still found time to relax a bit.

I am no longer the orchid whisperer. I have, to date, lost FOUR of the blooms off of the bloom stalk, bringing the total down to a measly six. My orchid is still pretty though, and I'm hoping the smaller one beside it will take the hint and grow a bloom stalk of its own.

Meanwhile, the flowers in my garden are doing well and the prettiest of them all is this one:



This is my iris, the only one I've managed to keep alive. I did have some yellow ones in my pond garden, but I have no idea what happened to them. One year I had them, the next year there was no trace of them. But the purple ones ... I received a clump of irises from a woman I worked with a long time ago, and planted them in the pond garden along the fence. These aren't them. I'm not sure where they came from but I know they didn't bloom last year. They've certainly made up for it this year though and I notice they've started to spread a bit too. As far as I'm concerned, they can spread right across the whole garden - I love irises.

I love gladiolas too. And delphiniums. And lilies. I like big plants and I cannot lie. LOL

But the day I went out to take the picture of my iris I ended up standing in the driveway talking to a neighbour and this guy just happened to mosey on by:



I should say "she" because my neighbour spotted a bigger one out behind her house so we figured this one was a female. She didn't seem particularly bothered by us, even stopped to pose when I asked her to. She was more like The Littlest Hobo - she had places to go.

I might have mentioned this before, that we've had some coyotes moving into the neighbourhood. They usually aren't seen this close to the lake, but there's been a lot of development up by the train tracks where they've been living, and instead of going further north, they've come south.

To be honest, it doesn't bother me to have them around. My cats are indoor cats, and I don't have a dog to walk at night, so it's kind of a live and let live kind of thing. I don't even mind hearing them at night when they're hunting, although I have to admit it kind of freaked me out the first couple of times I heard them - I had no idea what it was.

There's a wooded laneway that's been closed to the public where it's suspected the coyotes are living to keep people from walking their dogs up there. Surprisingly, there's been few complaints about them, other than the noise.

Maybe I'm not the only one with the live and let live attitude. Now wouldn't that be nice?

Jun 15, 2015

Minauderie Monday

minauderie ~ display of affectation

You know, I kind of like Mondays.

Yeah, I know that's crazy talk. But you almost expect that kind of thing from me, now don't you? ;-)

Don't get me wrong, weekends are great. All kinds of wonderful things can happen on a weekend - you can sleep in (if you don't have cats), you can go places and do things you wouldn't normally do, or you can even just relax.

But by Sunday night I'm starting to look forward to Monday and all my little routines. I'm a creature of habit and I like my routines. And even though my routine had to be adjusted of late, I still enjoy it.

One of the benefits of having to work in my office during the week is that I have far less time for games. And surprisingly, when I do have time to indulge in a game or two, I'm finding they don't have the same interest for me as they once did. My time is limited now, and games seem like such a waste when I could be reading or writing or something else.

I'm still plugging away at my to-be-read bookcase and the cleaning of my office. I worked on both over the weekend and managed to fill another bag with books to get rid of. Re-shelving the books is slow going because I want to try and be organized about it. This venture may kill me yet. ;-)

One of the things the hubby and I got done on the weekend was the annuals for two of the gardens. We were all set to get them on Saturday, the one really nice day out of the whole week, but something came up and we had to put it off until Sunday. When it was raining. *sigh*

It was lightly raining when we went to Home Depot, which had a surprising variety of plants, and it was still raining when we got home. So the hubby took pity on me and helped plant the front garden, which is wide but narrow.

And since I was already wet, I figured I might as well do the smaller garden around the fountain we call Kelsey Park (named for the dog we have buried under there). I even went so far as to water the snapdragons that we got from a different store. They were really dry.

But not for long.

After all that planting in the rain, and separate watering of the snapdragons, the rain stopped just long enough to have a good laugh at me for being all wet, and then it rained steadily for most of the evening.

It was also grey and rainy most of last week and this week looks to be pretty much the same. The water is starting to accumulate out there.

Where's Noah when you need him? :-D

Jun 8, 2015

Mucronate Monday

mucronate ~ terminating in a sharp point

Do you think if we changed the name of the day to something else it would make Mondays more tolerable?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

I made an important discovery over the weekend. I've got a lot of books. :-)

Yeah, I know this really isn't news. But remember the SF books I was going through last week? Out of 14 or 15 boxes that I was offered, I only ended up with two full boxes and the daughter took a half a box. And quite frankly I was really regretting not taking more ... until yesterday morning.

Yesterday morning I found myself going through the two bookcases and large basket that hold my to-be-read stash of books, organizing them as well as trying to thin out the herd. Some were books I will read and keep, some were ones I will read and then discard, very few were ones I was willing to part with unread.

Still, I managed to fill three boxes with a mix of hardback and paperback books, and one box full of textbooks that will be great as kindling some night when we have a fire outside. I don't normally advocate for burning books, but these textbooks are out of date and all marked up, so I can't even donate them.

However, I still have two boxes of science fiction paperbacks, so really, I only got rid of one box of books. *sigh* But the good news is, I've been making more time to read lately, so maybe I'll even do a post about it on Friday. ;-)

This working for a living is for the birds. While the interviews I'm transcribing are really interesting, they're seriously cutting into my gaming time. And now that I've acquired all those lovely sci fi books, I kinda want to read them.

The audio I'm working from is pretty bad, which makes the whole process a little frustrating, but I'm hoping it'll get better.

The highlight of the week last week was the appearance of a mouse in the house. I heard some noises under the couch in the living room last week and one of the cats let me know there was something under there. So the hubby and I moved the couch and though I saw the mouse, we weren't fast enough to catch it. I think it ended up hiding inside the couch. Then, a couple of days later, late in the evening, it scuttled from under the couch, across the floor, and under the TV stand on the other side of the living room. Right in front of one of the cats. The TV stand is large and wedge shaped, so there was lots of room for Mr. Mouse to hide from the cat. Dante kept vigil for about an hour or so before giving up. We think the mouse escaped though the vent.

I don't know whether that is one brave mouse, or one suicidal mouse. ;-)

You'll notice that is no picture of the orchid today. Poor, sad little orchid. All of the buds did indeed open, but before the last one did, one of the blossoms fell off. I have no idea why because it was right in the middle of the stalk. And a couple of days later it's mate on the other side of the stalk dropped off too, so there are only eight blossoms still.

Guess I'm no longer the orchid whisperer.

Jun 1, 2015

Magnality Monday

magnality ~ wonderful or great thing

I swear the weather lately is on drugs, and potent drugs at that.

After a pleasantly warm week, Saturday was insanely hot and humid, despite being overcast and rainy. Sunday, however, was incredibly cold and rainy. We're talking "put your jacket on if you have to go outside" cold.

Colour me unimpressed! And apparently this is supposed to be the pattern for the rest of the summer.

So . . . remember how I was supposed to be weeding out books from my office? Well, a funny thing happened last week. I went to the gym on Thursday and a couple of members were talking about these books one of them had to get rid of . . . science fiction books. To make a long story short, she had a van full of boxes of books that were destined for donation to a charity yard sale, but she was willing to let me go through them first. Since her time was limited, we loaded half the boxes (six of them) into my truck so I could go through them over the weekend.

It would have been so easy to just take them all. But two things stopped me. First, my shelf space is limited (which is why I'd been trying to weed out books in the first place). And second, so is my reading time.

And I guess maybe a third thing would be how unimpressed the hubby would be. I'm already fortunate that book hoarding isn't grounds for divorce. ;-)

If I could do nothing else but read all day, I might have kept more that I did. But although I have been making an effort to work in a little more reading lately, it would take me the rest of my life to read all those books. So I showed great restraint and only kept a box and a half.

I get to go through the rest of them today. :-)

And of course just when I have all these new books to read, I pick up another oral history project to transcribe so my free time will be limited for the foreseeable future.

But don't worry, very little of my writing/editing schedule will change. What will change is the amount of time I've been wasting on games and mindless surfing. Who knows, maybe I'll even develop some good working habits for a change.

As mind boggling as it is, I now have nine blossoms open on my orchid's bloom stalk and the tenth one is almost there. The last time I was this excited about an orchid was for this one:



I grew this orchid from a seedling and it took seven years for it to blossom. And I'm really glad I took several pictures of it because shortly after this I moved it from the window ledge to a counter top where it still got lots of light, but it was also in direct line of the cold air coming from the air conditioner.

This is when I learned an important lesson about orchids. They do not like cold air.

*sigh*