Not.
Admit it, I had ya goin' there for a second, didn't I?
But while we are on the subject of ice, how about this?
As that picture loaded I expected the captions to mention the ice auger sticking out of the kitty's right ear. But, no, apparently the frozn harbls were funnier.
F is also for famous, which is how I am feeling right now. Check out my picture, right next to Dale-Harriet's, over at Franklin's post about his Yellow Dog photo shoot.
* * * * *
We got some snow yesterday. This is around the corner and up the block from my house.
It was several inches of heavy, wet snow that made all the trees and bushes very pretty.
Some people are just too darned conscientious for their own good. These folks had already shoveled their sidewalk by 8 a.m. Don't they know it's gonna melt almost immediately? Or at least by June?
Across the street, Linus was looking a little... bedraggled.
Downtown, we have people to take care of these things. Wouldn't want anyone to get their Ferragamos wet.
Don't you love how I take pictures through the windshield? While driving. Not to worry; I didn't hit anything. Yet.
* * * * *
Observed at the office:
* * * * *
Last week I bought some daffodils from the the Cancer Society to brighten up my cube.
Knowing how fast they open, I thought it would be fun to photograph them every hour and make a blog post about it.
Hmm. It's a slow game.
Not a lot happening.
Okay, I guess they are opening. A little.
Ya wanna see the high-tech tripod I devised so I'd always get the same angle on the shot?
Upside-down glass on top of a pile of notepads, camera on top of the glass. Yeah, I know. I'm a genius.
Jumping ahead...
Did you notice how I put the digital clock in there now, so you can tell that an hour has elapsed? Genius, I tell you.
Yeah, I was getting bored, too. They seemed to be going pretty much directly from barely open to... dead.
* * * * *
Matthew's joke. (You have to imagine him saying these things)
"So, what's happenin'? Where's the action tonight?"
(scuffle, scuffle, whisper, whisper)
"Police! You are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say..." etc.
Franklin.
On Saturday I went to Yellow Dog Knits in Eau Claire.
It is a sweet little yarn shop, full of fibery fun and wonderful staff. It is where I met La Harlot back in 2006. I think there is a plaque somewhere.
Saturday I met another famous knit blogger. And photographer.
He was as delightful in person as he is on his blog -- personable and easy to chat with. Of course, once a person has knitting in her hand, how could she be nervous, even in the presence of the great and famous?
There were about 65 knitters who came to be photographed, but Dixie of Yellow Dog had organized the whole thing so well there was no waiting.
Dixie's son Nick was there.
Isn't he cute? Wanna see a close-up?
She has trained him right. What a guy.
Oh, did you notice Franklin's earring?
I say again, what a guy.
* * * * *
Thanks for all the sympathy and encouragement after my whining yesterday about working so many hours. Today the pace slowed a bit. I can never see that coming -- I feel like whatever is happened right now will continue to happen... forever. Now, though, I think I may survive. Maybe even get a full night's sleep a few times this week. Whew.
exhaustion.
I had great plans for the letter E. It was going to be a post about entropy.
en-tro-py ...broadly : the degree of disorder or uncertainty in a system...a process of degradation of running down or a trend to disorder
Yup, that's what I was gonna do. I was gonna have tasteful photos of my desk, a monument to my ability to pile papers higher and higher; the floor of my office, a museum of everything I have touched in the past six years; the dining room table, buried under piles of mail and discarded packing materials and various other incoming detritus; the front entry, filled with the artifacts of a months-long sorting of the tools project that has run aground on the reefs of distraction.
Entropy is kinda like gravity. It's always lurking there in the background, just waiting to screw with me. One little stumble and gravity is right there to pull me hard to the ground. A few days of not paying attention to keeping things picked up and entropy is right there to multiply the disorder.
But that post ain't gonna happen. The pictures didn't get taken. And if there are no pictures, there is no post. I think that is written somewhere in the Manual of Me.
Instead, E is for...
exhaustion.
This is quickly becoming the tax season from hell. Occasionally a tax season breezes by with only modest amounts of overtime. More often, there are systemic bugs that complicate our work lives. One year there were so many computer issues slowing the process that there was literal panic on April 15th. One year the network crashed on April 10 and everyone sat for three days until the tech guys got it back up. (Happily, that was the year before I started so didn't get to enjoy the experience.) Some years the balance between incoming work and the staff available to do it tips toward the staff side; overtime drops (but staff worries about layoffs). Some years it tips the other way, and we burn the midnight oil (and staff grumbles).
This year is one of the latter kind.
This series of numbers:
10, 10.1, 11.3, 11, 10.3, 0, 11.8, 12.5, 9.2, 11.2, 8.3, 11, 0, 6.8, 12.33, 11.1, 13.6, 11.1, 6.5.
represents how many hours I have worked on the days since February 26. There are a couple zeroes in there; those are the two Sundays I took off, but notice how I worked 10.3 and 11 hours, respectively, on the Saturday preceding each, in order to gain myself that blessed day of rest.
And it is only March 16. Four more weeks to go. ::Le sigh::
There is no excuse to be sleepy at work.
If I am feeling extravagant in the morning, or a colleague and I are in need of a mid-afternoon break, we have our choice of nearby caffeinated establishments.
Those are just the places within 90 seconds of my desk. I swear there is a coffee shop in every building downtown.
At home in Wisconsin I have a little Krups espresso maker with which I brew myself a grande latte every morning. My version is roughly equivalent to a Starbuck's nonfat quad grande latte (quad = two extra shots). But I am such a plebian; my milk gets hotted up in the microwave, not frothed.
The Kat™ after her morning coffee: 8-)
This coffee shop is popular with the folks in my office.
After I took that photo, I turned 180 degrees and took this one:
For some unknown reason most of the folks in my office walk right past this Starbucks to go to the Caribou that is 20 feet farther away and down four steps. Maybe these accountants are rebelling against megacorporations? Maybe because Caribou is a local franchise? Just one of those unexplained phenomena that bedevil us at 2 a.m. when we can't sleep..
All those coffee palaces are after I get to work. On my way to the freeway every morning I pass this one (recognize it, Dale-Harriet?)
I also pass a Starbucks that is even closer to my house, but I didn't think to get a photo. You'll just have to imagine a corner Starbuck's in the Lynnhurst neighborhood of south Minneapolis.
And now it is time to get busy.
I am addicted to bleu cheese, the tangier the better.
I generally buy a semicircular hunk whenever I am at Sam's Club. It weighs about a pound and costs less than $10. That's a lot of yumminess for not a lot of money.
When there is a chunk of bleu cheese in the fridge, it calls to me when I am reading in bed. Kaaaaaathy! Eat meeeeee! I'm taaasty! With craaackers and wiiine!
With such a strong-tasting cheese, my palate wants a plain cracker. Whole-wheat saltines are my favorite, but Stoned Wheat Thins are also good (and cost about 3x as much). Either red or white wine will do, but red is better, imho.
There have been bloggy indications in the past of my addiction: this post and picture
and this one.
I don't care for bleu cheese dressing, and I seldom use bleu cheese in a recipe, but the other night I made this salad for Andrew and I to eat with our steaks. Romaine, pears, pecans, and bleu cheese with a sweet-ish vinaigrette. Mmmmmm.
After all this arranging and slicing and photoing and thinking of bleu cheese, I had to have a little snack. And tell myself sternly that 2 pm is too early to have a little glass of wine to go with it...
...airport.
This is the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, where on Sunday night I picked up another A:
Andrew, home from Chiapas for two weeks.
Here is Andrew making waffles for breakfast this morning. I had to sneak the photo 'cuz he gets really pissy about having his picture taken.
See how sneaky I am?
I'm sure you will agree that I took him completely unawares in that photo. Yup, that's his usual expression: alarmed, alert, antsy, a little apoplectic.
We were all eagerly anticipating what he would look like when he arrived. We knew he had lost at least 25 pounds, so we thought he might look anorexic; we also anticipated he would be tanned (yes) and furry (see above). What we didn't expect was how sun-streaked his hair would be. Attractive, no?
And now, a bonus B:
He's a bleeding-heart liberal.
Translation of the shirt, as best I can remember:
