These are my favorite cloud formations, because they’re dramatic, but not normally directly associated with severe storms. They only lasted a short while before dissipating, and then the sky was just boring rainy grey for the rest of the afternoon. Luckily, I happened to look out the window at the right time.
This was posted to BoingBoing Gadgets. I ended up with the very same computer, for exactly the same reasons. There’s the expected Windows-bashing in the comments thread over there, with the same asinine arguments:
Porcine meat: carcases and cuts. I swear, no work day is complete without a UN or EU document on the handling of meat.
In other news, the neighbors upstairs and across the hall (the ones who took the place of the Stompy Girls), are moving out. It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since they moved in. I watched both their puppies grow up! It’ll be nice not to have to worry about them not cleaning up after their dogs, but other than that, they’ve been awesome neighbors, and I’ll miss them. Hopefully, the new people will be quiet.
Before they left, they brought me two bookcases (yay!), a really nice tea kettle, some stainless steel pots and pans, mixing bowls, some odds and ends of food, and the remains from their liquor cabinet. w00t! I never turn down free booze! They would have given me their almost new gas grill, too, except I don’t cook out and really don’t have anywhere to put it on my patio.
In other other news, there was a hard, heavy frost last night. It took me forever to scrape my car windows. I hope the sprouting plants in my garden are okay.
I’ve been transcribing more letters, and listening to The Decemberists while I work. Again. This is from their new album, The Hazards of Love (the whole thing is available on YouTube). The last song is so haunting that it got stuck in one of my dreams last night.
The Hazards of Love 4 (The Drowned) by The Decemberists
WILLIAM:
Margaret, array the rocks around the hole before we’re sinking
A million stones, a million bones, a million holes within the chinking
And painting rings around your eyes, these peppered holes
So filled with crying
A whisper-weight upon the tattered down where you and I
Were lying.
So tell me now, O tell me this: a river’s son, a forest’s daughter
A willow wand, a will-o-wisp, our ghosts will wander all of the water
W & M:
So let’s be married here today, these rushing waves to bear our witness
And we will lie like river stones, rolling only where it takes us
But I pulled you and I called you here
(Didn’t I, didn’t I, didn’t I)
And I caught you and I brought you here
(Didn’t I, didn’t I, didn’t I)
But these hazards of love
Never more will trouble us
WILLIAM:
O Margaret the lapping waves are licking quietly at our ankles
Another bow, another breath; this brilliant chill has come to shackle
W & M:
But with this long, last rush of air let’s speak our vows in starry whisper
And when the waves came crashing down, he closed his eyes
And softly kissed her
chorus
This song is specifically about the IMF, and that would be awful enough, but it also seems applicable to what’s going on in the US financial system.
I love me some Bruce Cockburn.
One of my coworkers has a bunch of recycling bins at her desk, in which people dump their paperboard, plastic, and aluminum. Aluminum cans have to have the pull tabs removed, because she saves those for Ronald McDonald House[1]. Plastic bottles must be a 1 or 2 and must have the lids removed. Paper board must have any plastic bits removed.
People, of course, being people, are bound to make recycling mistakes. Instead of just fixing them, this coworker hunts down the offender and explains to them, in excruciating detail–like they’re two year olds–just how they screwed up.
The result? I, for one, prefer not to get a lecture from her, so I don’t use her recycling bins. This is, I assume, not the result she’s aiming for.
Recycling: Ur doin it rong.
_______________________________
1. Ronald McDonald House, bless their hearts, decided to make it easy for people who saved up pull tabs for mythical kidney dialysis credits to recycle their tabs. So, RMH will take tabs, but they don’t get anything extra for them. Aluminum tabs get recycled just like cans, at the same rate. Why the hell can’t we just save cans for RMH, then, instead of pull tabs? RMH would get a lot more money out of the deal, then, and we wouldn’t have to screw around with removing tabs. Better yet, we wouldn’t get a visit from The Tab Police when we inevitably forget to remove the tabs.
It poured rain this morning, and most of the day the sky was wall-to-wall grey, but the clouds are starting to break up. And I’m not really complaining. I just checked on my garden, and it’s happy. There are tender shoots popping up everywhere. Primroses, irises, lilies, columbine, bleeding hearts, and all sorts of other stuff.
One of these days, I’m going to remember to buy staples. I have a nearly full box of them, but they are horrible. The glue holding them together is brittle, so the staples break apart and jam my stapler.
red paper boat 