Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

Look what survived the snow and ice of the weekend! I took my camera with me out on my walk yesterday. I ended up taking about 10 minutes longer on my walk but I had fun seeking out little crocuses and irises. The tiny irises in the darker picture are just too cute. I’m impressed too – I expected the wee little flowers to be a lot worse for wear after weathering a long, icy, nasty storm. Apparently I should have more faith in the power of adorable early Spring flowers!

The snow is indeed melting again. Quite a bit disappeared yesterday and routed itself to our basement. (Go, go sump pump power! Go, go further procrastinating doing laundry!)

I went through with my plan and cancelled my gym membership. Of course, due to their clever terms of cancellation I end up having the membership through May anyway. Oh well. It doesn’t actually change anything at all! I will be free of my membership soon enough. If the weather gets really nasty this spring, I guess I could go to the gym, but the whole reason I’m cancelling is that I never did get in the groove of going to this gym. (It’s not convenient, close or otherwise conducive to handiness.)

I took today off walking though. I don’t want to over-do it in the beginning and I still feel pretty good today. Tomorrow I’ll be back out at lunchtime though. It’s a great way to break up the day and clear my head in general.

Okay, I also took today off from exercising because all of a sudden I was slammed with work. I got through most of what I needed to get done today but I still have a pretty serious to-do list for tomorrow. Oh, plus breaking the news to the business sponsor of my project that we’re delayed AGAIN due to the project we’re dependent on taking far longer than anticipated to get out the door. I think there was a lack of planning somewhere along the way though not on my part… we’ll see if the business sponsor is okay with the delay. It would not be unreasonable to send us back to the drawing board at this point. Of course, if she did that she’d have to send us back with more money. No one likes doing that! And we’d have already blown the budget if we’d gone with any of our other options. I think our current plan is great and will result in a great tool and build an awesome project management community. I just need the system to get migrated so I can get my ball rolling!
Now I’m clearly rambling because work isn’t all that interesting excepting the pace of it today. Despite feeling pretty good today I’m also feeling pretty tired this evening. I was “on” all day (a feature, given the aforementioned work) and now I seem to be crashing a bit. Perhaps an early dinner and silliness are in order.

Baseball season starts soon. Easter and Passover are both creeping up in appropriately slippered feet. (Easter in bunny slippers of course!) Only 2-3 months more to wait for the iPhone. Flowers survived the snow. Spring just might be on its way.

crocus, exercise, iris, photographs, photography, seasons, signs of spring, snow, spring, winter, work

So I’ve been quiet lately mostly because Civ IV has eaten my life. I won a diplomatic victory last night! (I was going to be about 5 turns short of a space victory too!) As usual I’m behind the times and only started playing Civ IV recently. I didn’t like Civ III at all so it took me quite a while to become interested in trying a new Civ again. (Civ II is still my favorite!)

It snowed the end of last week. Well, it kinda snowed. First it rained, then it iced up and turned to sleet and freezing rain, then it might have snowed a while, then it went back to freezing rain. The accumulation was dense, icy and a pain to shovel again. Think “packed powder” from snow making at ski resorts. Little tiny ice cubes! The temperature started to rise yesterday and likely today will be my last day with significant white on the ground. Of course, the folks at the church across the street are still trying to clear out one of the doorways to the rectory and finish their sidewalks.

Since snow is melting again, there’s water in the basement. Yippee!

I need to cancel my gym membership. I’ve gone out walking more times in the past 2 weeks than I’ve successfully made it to this gym in a month. So, out with the gym, in with the walkies. Of course, walking means I get to observe additional idiocy. Two public service announcements to the folks in my neighborhood:

1. Putting ice-melt pellets down on 3 inches of packed freezing rain and snow does not constitute clearing the sidewalk. And this is not the kind of snow that is going to be “worn away” by hundreds of high school students walking to school.
2. Just because it’s snowy and icy does not mean that you do not need to clean up after your dog.

So shape up before I get my clue-bat out.
My open tabs are getting kind of unruly, so here they are:

• Captain America is dead: Zach over at nosheep has the Colbert coverage.
• The MadMusicArchive: Crazy Dr. Demento tunes!
• Copper plating and etching Altoids Tins: Fun with chemicals with beautiful results.
• Polish lace-makers find a new market: Thongs. (I know you’re going to click now.)
• Digital infrared photography: I may have figured out what I’m going to do with my old digital camera. The sample images are really pretty and infrared photography is fascinating in general.
• For the math geeks who read my blog, a bit of a romantic tune, snagged from gillianic tendencies:

Finite Simple Group (of Order Two)

Perhaps I should have warned you how geeky the song was?

civ iv, entertainment, exercise, games, open tabs, random, snow, snow removal, walking, weather

• Part the First: Bald eagle at the Philadelphia Zoo

The zoo has a pair of bald eagles who like to pose for the camera however last time I visited only one came out to strut about. I should take pictures of their claws as well. They are impressively powerful birds. Majestic? Not so much. But definitely powerful carnivores who are not to be messed with.

• Part the Second: In which I take a quick walk and don’t get rained on

I took a quick walk at lunch today – about 2 miles in 35 minutes or so. I enjoyed it despite the cold, gray, damp weather that was actively threatening rain. However, this afternoon I feel incredibly mellow and spacey. It’s been a while since I had such an exercise high. Once upon a time I lived in Vancouver and would go jogging in the morning along the Seawall. I ended up giving it up because the post-exercise high made me a danger to myself and others during my morning commute. I would be in such bliss that I simply wouldn’t care about traffic or potentially getting in an accident or anything. I considered this to be, generally, a bad state of mind to be in while driving, even in Vancouver. Thank goodness Vancouver has some of the most polite drivers on the planet otherwise I might not have lived through my morning jogging phase!

So I sit here all mellow, drinking my water, and wonder what I can do to counter act this annoying yet blissful state. I am vaguely useless … well, at least I think I am. Tomorrow morning I’ll look at the presentation I whipped up after lunch and see if it’s any good. Perhaps I shouldn’t have skipped making tea for lunch. At any rate, we’ll see if this is just a one-time relapse of mellow-spaceyness or if it persists. I think I’ll really like lunchtime walks. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lovely little high, just not a very productive one!

• Part the Third: In which I send a quick little e-mail and make a lot of folks happy

Communication is easy. I don’t know why more people don’t do it. Once my project was approved I sent a quick update to a group of potential users who had helped out with a questionnaire and providing their input. You’d think they’d never been updated before! Half of the group responded gleefully, grateful to have received the update and enthusiastic to do more. Each of the respondents mentioned that most often whenever they provide feedback it seems to go into a blackhole. I admit that I updated them specifically because I hoped they would volunteer to help more with the project but I didn’t expect quite the response I got. Even if I hadn’t wanted to leverage them for other work, I would have sent them a thank you note with the news of the project. That seems just simple common courtesy. Their feedback was incredibly useful in supporting the proposal I wanted to put forward. They responded quickly and on short notice.

My my mission shouldn’t be to become Wiki Queen but to instead ensure that no one feels their feedback is going into a blackhole in the future! (Of course, my master plan for this includes a wiki…)

wiki, technology, communication, zoo, philadelphia zoo, eagles, bald eagles, exercise, walking, vancouver