On the trail today

As always, the bullfrogs are plentiful.


This Mallard attempted to remain inconspicuous.


As did this Momma Robin.


By the time we passed this spot on the trail again, Momma Robin had flown the nest.

Have you ever noticed ...

the artistry found within the mundane?

I was struck by the beauty of this head of red cabbage.

Strange, isn't it?


(What? Were you actually expecting profound thoughts on this gorgeous day?)

Victory!

Sanity has triumphed in Ontario. As of today, fascist Homeowner Associations can no longer ban outdoor clotheslines! To celebrate this veto, Toronto Hydro will be giving away 75,000 retractable indoor/outdoor clotheslines over the next few weeks.

Well done, Ontario! Let your freshly laundered freak flags fly!

GSD day 2 - Gardening

Today's efforts were muted, as I am working tonight.

Ridiculously large and exuberant pansies were planted amongst the tulips. This required a great deal of weeding. As a bonus, we incorporated a science lesson into this activity: earthworms and the definition of a hermaphrodite.


I started my tomato and cucumber plants. It will be several weeks before they can be put into the garden.


Several of the raised beds were weeded and aerated. Next week I'll take a gamble and plant a packet of mesclun mix lettuce seeds.

I suspect that my muscles will be screeching at me later on tonight. Ah well!

GSD week

Inspired by Redneck Mother, I've been making a concerted effort to Get Stuff Done. Here's one such project:



Twisted Tales, or When Four Cats Meet.

Posted for my Sister-In-Law, the Engineer

An Engineer's Guide to Cats.



I'm not an engineer, but I am that weird woman with three cats.

Across the pond, they've taken notice

The lead story in Sunday's online edition of the London Daily Mail is a sharp rebuke of the way the UK honours its fallen soldiers upon their repatriation from Afghanistan. The article lauds Canada for the way it honours her fallen. Both the government and the ordinary citizens of my home and native land do it with class. It should be noted that 82 Canadian soldiers have died in Afghanistan in the past six years.

Meanwhile, nineteen American soldiers have been killed in Iraq in the past six days. Can you hear the crickets chirping? South of the 49th parallel, the fixation has been on what is being reflected in a certain chickenhawk's sunglasses. It's rather like a national Rorschach test, isn't it? Personally, I see a hand holding the neck of a fiddle, with flames dancing in the background.

A walk in the woods

Momma Osprey on her nest. This is at the entrance of Wellesley Island State Park.

Poppa Osprey stands guard.

Poppa Osprey in flight.

Porcupine gnawing on tree. See the damage?

The first butterfly of the year. I think this is a painted lady. She's looking a little rough around the edges, but she's here, and that's all that counts.

By the dawn's early light

It occurred to me that I should bring my camera with me when I hung out the laundry this morning. Turns out, it was a good idea.

Peacefully coexisting

This was the view from my upstairs window this morning, at about 0700:



A flock of turkeys had gathered to partake in their mating ritual, with the toms competing for the attention of the hens. The deer were mostly minding their own business, but from time to time they would look up to see what was happening. Maybe it was the equivalent of Animal Planet for the deer.

Dis speeks 2 mee

For our daily laughs, my son and I are regular visitors to the LOL Cats. It could be argued that I spend too much time there, because my speech is now peppered with illogical phrases like "Oh Noes!" and "I can has anudder coffee?" My son tells me to "stop with the LOL-ish!"

And on that note, I leave you with this LOL Cat:

A sappy but heartfelt haiku

So many birds sing
Glorious cacophony
Spring is truly here

More snow geese!

I am fascinated by these birds. Courtesy of the Hinterland Who's Who site, here are some interesting factoids:

The Greater Snow Goose

• can walk 30 km when it is one day old
• usually flies at 55 km/h
  
• can fly as fast as 95 km/h and make nonstop flights of up to 1 000 km
• has a migratory route of over 4000 km
  
• mates for life
• gathers in great numbers during its migrations: for example, 500 000 geese at a time can be seen in early April at Baie-du-Febvre, Quebec
• has a wingspan of up to 1.5 metres (5 feet)

Its migratory route is rather narrow:

This map is probably a little inaccurate, as we are closer to the eastern shore of Lake Ontario than the diagram suggests. The snow geese have been landing in the field down the road every year for at least the last six. I'm always thrilled to see them.

Spur of the moment field trip

When I took the compost out a few minutes ago, I caught some brilliant white flashes out of the corner of my eye. The snow geese were landing in the field down the road!

William and I grabbed our coats and the camera, and wandered down the road to investigate.



Note the beautiful white plumage, with the black wing tips.



Cut-down cornfields provide a welcome resting spot for these weary travelers.



The field is big enough for their Canadian cousins.



And for these wild turkeys.



Time to fly the friendly skies again. See you next spring!

Nom nom nom

Black squirrels in my parents' back yard.

The part he left out

It's a little-known fact that my brother-in-law is the Chief Creative Officer at Cryptic Studios, out in Los Gatos, California.

Yesterday, he created a developer's blog entry to answer the question, what exactly do you do all day?

Jack left out the most crucial part of his day: calling us to "commiserate" about the cold. Last week, he left a message on our machine, saying that it was a brisk 69F and he might have to go and put on a jacket, and how that made him think of us because he heard it gets a little cold in our neck of the woods, too.

Grrr ....

Noted for posterity

At 0930 on 25 March 2008, the snow geese passed over the wilds of Pamelia.

How many deer can you spot?

(click to embiggen)

I can see seven.

I took this picture from my upstairs window. The deer are grazing in the field about 400 metres north of here.

Edit: They've moved closer! Now how many are there?



I can see ten here.

Dear IRS Dudes

Thank you for your kind letter this week, reminding me to file our taxes so that we might receive our economic stimulus cheque. I knew this already, but the reminder was nice, nevertheless.

I was also pleased to learn that folks like us, who opted for the direct deposit option on our refunds would be first in line to receive the stimulus cheques. Hooray for modern technology! Hooray for internet banking!

I would like to take this opportunity to point out, for future reference, that the reminder letter was moot and redundant. It was sent out the day after Uncle Sam kindly deposited the refund into my bank account. If Amazon and Netflix can keep track of my interests and suggest books and movies which I might enjoy, then Uncle Sam is surely capable of knowing that I know I need to file a tax return .. having already done so. You could have shaved a buck or two off of the 42 million that you spent, sending those letters out.

I'm just sayin'

Six degrees of Schadenfreude

While my Mother-in-Law was never directly implicated in Spitzer's witch hunt of that certain large insurance company, the investigation made her life a living hell.

Thus, the cackles eminating from Chez Miniature Rose grew even louder this morning when we learned that the {ahem} entrepreneur involved in the scandal grew up mere miles away from my inlaws. Way to go, little Jersey girl!

But let me tell you why ...

There has been much cackling and giggling chez Miniature Rose these past three days.

It's not that I care about the soon-to-be-Ex-Guvnah's peccadilloes per se. He's not the first, nor will he be the last, narcissistic, powerful man to explore his {ahem} options.

It's the hypocrisy. It's the hubris. It's the schadenfreude. It's the unfolding of a 21st century Greek tragedy before our very eyes that brings such amusement to this house.

A couple of years ago, my Mother-In-Law called in the middle of the day. Before she even said hello, she blurted out, "I just want you to know that it wasn't me on the cover of the New York Post, and I haven't been arrested."

The rather large insurance company, for which my MIL still works, was a very lucrative target for Mr. Spitzer when he was the AG of this great state. I won't pretend to understand the larger picture, let alone the nuances of Mr. Spitzer's charges against this particular insurance behemoth. However, it was crystal clear to us, from the beginning, that this "campaign against corporate corruption" had nothing to do with business practices, and everything to do with The Steamroller's political aspirations.

Was it a mere coincidence that the photographers from the NY Post were waiting outside the offices of this insurance behemoth when several of its employees were frogmarched out of there like war criminals? Wasn't that a nice little bit of free advertising for Mr. Spitzer's gubernatorial aspirations?

On behalf of the entire state of New York, I'd like to apologize to the world for the scuzziness of our soon-to-be-ex governor. I wish I could offer y'all some mental bleach.

It's Haiku Time Again!

Oh, Guv'ner Spitzer!
How is life in that glass house?
You are such a putz.

Dear Missus Spitzer
Get thee to a nail salon
Sharp nails make the point

I don't find this stuff amusing anymore ..

.. the weather, that is.

Yesterday's "storm of historic proportions" delivered a great deal of freezing rain, followed by snow, which is being now whipped around by a bitter wind.

Note to Old Man Winter: enough already!

On the other hand, I found this to be highly amusing:




That's not my cat. Gandalf is smart enough to stay inside during the winter. But the picture does sum up, with great accuracy, the weather we've been having lately.

Whuh?

I see that there is a class action suit against the makers of Airborne. Airborne is getting dinged, to the tune of $23.3 million dollars, for false advertising.

I'm a little distressed by this development. I am a serious devotee of Airborne, and have turned several of my coworkers onto this marvelous product as well. Touch wood, but I haven't had a serious cold in over two years. As an asthmatic, my lungs are my weak point. A cold can quickly become bronchitis or pneumonia, neither of which I can afford. Popping an Airborne at the first sniffle seems to be effective for me.

I do hope that this lawsuit does not sound the death knell for Airborne, because I have no intention of giving it up!

Icy morning, and a haiku for Heidi

Ice on the window
The cafe is still open
For my little birds

A haiku, for posterity

The robins are back
With their sweet promise of spring
For the cold-weary

Oh well, whatever, nevermind

So, it turns out that those Limited Edition Coconut Creme Hershey's Kisses are au courant, after all. The shelves at Target are overflowing with them, and with Lemon Creme and Orange Creme Kisses, and all manner of other concoctions.

Having convinced myself that my wooshy stomach was the result of having consumed some very stale candy, however, I left all those confections right there on the shelf at Target. There's nothing like a wooshy stomach to serve as an aversive to all that sugar .. and sugar is not our friend*

*inside, family joke

My own LOL Cat

Existential angst. I has it.

Living in oblivion

We haven't had a television in our house for nearly four years now. Our one TV died back in August of 2004, and I still haven't gotten around to replacing it.

The benefits of this lifestyle are many. In terms of sheer numbers, I figure that we've saved over $3000 so far by not having cable. I cannot calculate how much we've saved by not being compelled and manipulated into purchasing the latest, greatest, limited-edition gadgets and gizmos and goodies which flash across the flickering screen.

The downside, I suppose, it that I am oblivious to the latest, greatest, limited edition gadgets and gizmos and goodies which flash across the flickering screen.

Case in point: the Limited Edition Hershey's Kisses with Coconut Creme Filling.

There was a bag of these delectable goodies at the nurse's station when I arrived at work on Friday night. I sampled a few, declared them to be divine, briefly lamented the fact that I had been oblivious to their existance, and chalked this ignorance up to our TV-free lifestyle.

Last night, when I did some shopping at the Uber-Empire up the road, I searched high and low in the Easter Candy aisle to find those wonderful, Limited Edition concoctions. Alas, they were nowhere to be found.

When I came home, I used the Google, and learned that those Limited Edition goodies hit the shelf for a brief period in 2006.

No wonder my stomach felt wooshy the next day.

Have no fear, soldier!

Mickey Mouse is here to save the day!


It seems that the wise people at Walter Reed Army Medical Center have enlisted the Disney Institute to assist with their hellacious systemic F.U. attitude customer service difficulties.

All government and military staff members at WRAMC will "experience the business behind the magic" in day-long seminars given by trainers from the Disney Institute. Yes, there really is such a thing, and their pixie dust will be sprinkled all over WRAMC for the bargain price of $800,000.

Your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentleman. Doesn't that make you all warm and fuzzy inside?

Sunday at the zoo

Redpoll invasion!!

We have an astonishing number of redpolls visiting our feeders this winter. Their frenzied feeding can be rather messy, to the benefit of Monsieur le BunBun.

Now I've seen everything!

The topic of conversation over this morning's coffee was the Wedding Industrial Complex. Sigh.

My husband's little brother recently got engaged to a nice New Joysee Italian girl. The current proposed budget for these impeding nuptials is .. well, let's just say it's about twice as much as I plan to spend on my next vehicle. It's somewhere between ouch and bo-oy-oy-ng.

Over the course of the conversation, we lamented the sense of entitlement that seems to be pervasive in our culture these days, as evidenced by the hors-de-control bridal registries that we've been invited to peruse lately. I resent being manipulated into buying a $75 crockpot for some distant relation that I've met once.

On that note, I went to post to run a few errands. As I was breezing through the PX, I came across this ridiculous item.

An electric martini maker.

One hundred dollars for an electric martini maker.

Just how lazy does one have to be, to have a machine shake the vodka?

If it wasn't so early in the day, I'd feel compelled to make myself a martini with my own two hands, sip it slowly, and lament the conspicuous consumption of this age.

And if M&C put such a ridiculous item on their wedding registry, I will disown them at once!

A little dash of colour for the day

Gratuitous butt shot

Monsieur le Bun Bun is fearless and audacious, chowing down at the base of the feeders all day and all night!

How do I love thee?

What can I say? We lived in Italy for a few years! How could I not express amore this way?

Noted, without further comment

A Veterans for America report slaps a label of inadequacy on the mental health services available at Fort Drum.

In other news, rain is wet.

Engaging and electrifying

This will be an awesome election.



Is it too much to dream for an Obama/Winfrey ticket?

A sad cautionary tale

I have been plagued by asthma for about 13 years now. It's unpleasant, even scary at times, but it's mostly under control these days. I've been using Advair for several years, with great success. This preventative medicine, coupled with New York's strict laws restricting smoking in public spaces, have enabled me to be live a normal, healthy, wheeze-free life. Most days, I forget that I am asthmatic.

Such was not the case for a young woman in Michigan. She died from an acute asthma attack, which was triggered when she arrived for work as a waitress in a bar that was not smoke-free. This was the first reported immediate death due to second hand smoke.

The victim, it is reported, had suffered from asthma for a long time, but was not compliant with her treatment regimen. She did not have a rescue inhaler on hand when she succumbed to the fatal asthma attack.

This is so sad, and such an unnecessary tragedy. There are some good rescue inhalers available. There are also portable nebulizers which can easily fit inside a glovebox. I have this one.

Asthma is serious stuff, kiddos. Don't leave home without a rescue inhaler!

Fluffitude!

Monsieur le BunBun has declared the area under the bird feeders to be his.

Noted, without need for further comment

From the San Francisco Chronicle, earlier this week:

Veterans not entitled to mental health care, U.S. lawyers argue.

Memo

To: General Eric Schoomaker, Army Surgeon General
CC: All the other perfumed princes and princesses of Army MEDDAC system
Subject: Stop Lying

Last week, NPR ran a story which discussed the frustrations that soldiers who are going through the Medical Evaluation Board and/or Physical Evaluation Board are facing. Specifically, NPR asserted that Army officials at Fort Drum had forbidden the folks at the VA from helping soldiers with their paperwork.

The Army, unsurprisingly, issued a flat denial of these assertions.

NPR, may they be touched by the FSM's noodly appendage, has come across a four page oocument which substantiates their original claim.

So, to whom it may concern: I humbly ask that you stop lying, stop trying to cover your asses, get off said asses, and take care of your soldiers.