Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

A bunch of sleepy kitten pictures have been posted to warm you on a snowy weekend. The SNOWPOCALYPSE is still going strong down here with 5-ish or so inches of snow already on the ground. We’ll see if it lives up to the hype. The kittens are thrilled. Abby is peering out the window right now trying to figure out why the world is so different. (This is their second big snow so it’s still rather novel.)

Tonight, in honor of the SNOWPOCALYPSE, I made deep-dish pizza in little cast iron pans. I rushed the dough through its rise but there was much tastiness anyway. I also finished knitting a cute little hat for myself. Tomorrow I suspect will be all about reading in the tub after moving large quantities of snow. It’s been a very long week. At the end of it I’m not entirely sure what I accomplished but I’m sure there was a lot.

Right, time to sleep.

snow, weather, cats, photographs, kittens, bengals, SNOWPOCALYPSE, random

“We should go back to sleep, Tasha, nothing’s really happening.”
“True, but somewhere someone needs our adorableness, Abby!”

I’m having one of those days when Incompetence lurks around every corner waiting for an opportunity to pounce on me. Little things and big things… small and large frustrations all snowballing into me being rather angry and frustrated with the world. Things that shouldn’t be a problem, things that aren’t rocket science, things that are really just simple as pie or simpler: Incompetence says “FU!”

Little things… Such as buying bananas. I put them in the cart. I put them on the belt at the register. I got home and couldn’t find them. I looked all through my car. I checked the receipt. Apparently the Produce Gnomes stole them before they could be rung up. So at least I didn’t buy the bananas I failed to bring home. Of course, I really want a banana now. Merf.

Luckily, there’s a Monster Cat and there are kittens. Currently all three are mostly asleep in my office. Oops, Tasha woke up and is wandering over. She must know I’m writing about her. Abby is, however, blissfully unconscious. She’s the heavier sleeper. They are getting bigger – probably 6-7 pounds each at this point – but they’re still not as big as Mr. Paw. Mr. Paw is probably weighing in at about 18 pounds these days.

(Taking a moment to save this draft before Incompetence decides to visit me here. Ah, there. Better.)

How were your holidays? I had snow for Yule and Christmas, which made me happy. I was in Maine with family and saw friends too! Not my usual road trip about the countryside but still a fun trip. Santa loves me and so does my family and I love them all back. I got some lovely, thoughtful, fun and useful gifts. I had a lot of fun baking this year too. I took better notes so I can be better organized next year.

So it’s the day before the last day of 2009. I don’t usually care much about the changing of the year… after all calendars are just an arbitrary system imposed on the universe by us humans and really represent nothing more than a way to count things and the New Year is just a psych-out trying to trick you into thinking that you can start again. But this year? Yeah, 2009, I’m pretty much done with you. I’ve learned a lot and won’t make some of the same mistakes again. I had some fun and some not-so-fun. There are accomplishments I can add to the Big List and there are some failures as well that I won’t soon forget. (I will listen to my friends’ advice… especially when they independently agree with each other.)

But again, luckily, there are cats. New kitten pictures start here on Flickr. Tasha snores so cutely. And then farts. Thanks, Tash.

2009, bengals, cats, holidays, incompetence, kittens, tennyson

We have snow. Snow on the ground! Snow falling from the sky! Lots of snow! And this is serious snow… fine flakes falling fast and dense. The powder on the ground is glorious and I briefly contemplated where I might find a decent hill to play on the snowboard. Briefly. I did don my snowboard jacket to do the first round of shoveling. I love it so… it has little zippered vents to let air in so I don’t overheat. I moved 9 inches of snow off the walkways. The snow is coming down so fast you can barely tell at this point. While I was out shoveling, Will locked me out of the house by accident. (From time to time this happens to each of us – it’s just habit to lock the door behind yourself…) My footprints on the walkway were gone by the time he let me in and the area I’d just re-scraped was pure white again. This is awesome snow!

Naturally, our street has not been plowed. I’ve seen a snowplow go by on School (the snow emergency route) twice today. Not often enough to really keep up with the snow, but at least they got the plows on the garbage trucks… the first snowplow was a little town truck that looked like it might not be able to clear more than an inch or two at a time!

And now, there are kittens. I added a few new photos to the set on flickr starting with this photo.

I have photos of snow too, of course, but I’ll save that for later.

kittens, bengals, snow, weather, photographs

It’s been snowing all day down here but it didn’t start to accumulate until early evening. I drove to class through steady snow and on wet roads.

Tonight was the second session for my writing class this term. We’re down to three students – which is good and bad. It’s good because it means we will get to really focus on each individual’s work and really drill down. However, it means there are fewer voices and perspectives in class and we’ll each really need to keep up with the others’ work to make the class as valuable as possible. In short, this class will be more work now, but it should be better too. I am increasingly enthusiastic about this class.

And here’s a paragraph that falls squarely into the “not a normal girl” category: When I got home from class, I shoveled the walkways and the end of the driveway. I am my father’s daughter in many ways but I’m not likely to get up at 4 a.m. to shovel snow like he does. Of course, he has a snow-blower and a quad with a little snowplough to play with so maybe he has more fun than I do and wakes up giddy to go play in the snow. Um, no, I really don’t think so. But I digress. There’s something peaceful and lovely about shoveling snow in the dark while it’s still snowing. There was no real wind, no traffic, no noise from anywhere so it was almost a meditative experience – just me, the shovel and the falling snow.

As you can see from this photo, taken at 10:40 pm, about 20 minutes after I finished shoveling, the snow was enthusiastically trying to undo my hard shoveling work. And now? I’m in warm, dry pjs, and the walkway is gone and my car is covered in snow. I’m going to have to shovel again tomorrow. Oh darn.

driving, shoveling, snow, weather, winter, writing

It’s kind of a gray day down here… we got a dusting of snow over night and it’s threatening for the evening as well. I have to go into the city for a class tonight and I think I’ll take the good ol’ Subaru in rather than the shiny new Mini. I just don’t trust the drivers around here. Well, that and the concept of plowing doesn’t really exist here. Plus the Subaru needs a little outing to keep it peppy.

So here are the amaryllis blooms that burst out over the past few days. From the looks of the bulbs there are more to come. I love the geometry of amaryllis flowers and the coloration on this set is particularly lovely.
There are only 3 bulbs and each stalk promises 3-5 flowers.
Hurray!
Sure, they might be a little crowded in the tiny little basket they came in but they’re fabulous!!

amaryllis, bulbs, flowers, red, weather

First, I gleefully reached the land of snow yesterday. It wasn’t hard as the snow isn’t far from Philadelphia at the moment. I was paranoid about checking the weather last night and it didn’t look good. I stepped outside about 20 minutes ago to a fine precipitation of snow and ice. Right. Not going to drive to NH in that! I stepped back in and went to send people e-mails that I’m going to be late. Since stepping inside, the snow has turned to sleet, back to fine ice balls, and now looks to be heavy and wet. No more fine mist, now it’s snowing steadily and properly as if the storm had been waiting for me to decide not to drive before opening up. From looking at the radar, there’s no way I could have avoided the storm unless I’d driven straight to NH yesterday… which I totally didn’t have the energy for. And while I should go back to sleep, I’m gleefully glued to the window. The plow guy came through earlier and zoomed along the parking lot letting sparks fly. The snow is just beautiful. And in just the time I’ve been typing this has changed again and appears to be trying to settle into that medium-sized, fast and steady flake that brings with it accumulation. I’m not fooled, I see the pink on the radar. Ice and rain are coming.

snow, weather, travel, road trips

More moon photos! I cropped the first one and played a bit with the color for fun. The second is cropped to show off the various other objects visible around the moon during the eclipse. I love how the light changed as the eclipse progressed and regressed. Just amazing really. I’m also still incredibly happy that I was inspired to find my tripod… (I blame Mike.) More cool night photos may happen now.

The green reflection in some of the photos? It was caused by my UV filter. It didn’t occur to me to take it off. Apparently this is a common side-effect of leaving on the UV filter when taking photographs of points of light. The earlier photos didn’t have as intense a light source as the last bunch I took of the moon emerging out of the eclipse. I admit it, I’m lame and use my UV filter primarily as a protective shield for my lens.

Oh, Very Happy Friday to all of you! Buon Weekend! Hurray! I think I may have lost Thursday this week but I’m not sure. Hopefully it won’t reappear in the future to make another week longer… that is unless it picks a week I’m on vacation.

I did survive the week though and for that I thank my lucky stars. And my unlucky ones too because they weren’t too horrible this week. I did make the big french press of coffee this morning instead of the little single-serve press but I think it was a good decision. I *know* that it was good coffee. I felt vaguely on top of things when I shut down the work laptop this evening. Monster Cat was later rather than earlier (in the day that is) most of the week but I have some ideas that I want to play with this weekend so that next week’s Monster Cat episodes are posted first thing in the morning instead of at lunch.

Most importantly, at least to me, is that it snowed today. We got about 2 inches of accumulation then a bunch of misty wet in the afternoon. We might get a little more snow overnight and tomorrow but the radar isn’t promising. Still, it was fun to shovel the walks this afternoon and the world is a better place when it’s covered with snow.

More than anything I want more free time… specifically free time when I’m not already mentally spent and exhausted. Seriously.

lunar eclipse, moon, photographs, photography

I might be perhaps a little crazy… but here’s a link to a set of lunar eclipse photos I took. I was excited to get to see the eclipse at all given that it was snowing (hurray) earlier this afternoon! I went outside 3 different times – I found my tripod for the 2nd and 3rd. So, my tripod is aluminum or stainless steel or something equally shiny and silver. It’s sturdy, not terribly light but not too heavy and is “on loan” from my dad. (Hi Dad, um… yeah, I still have your tripod.) It also gets cold very quickly. Very very quickly. And it stays cold. Plus it’s 25° out there tonight. The first time I went out, I didn’t wear mittens or gloves – after that I took my fingerless gloves
(thanks so much again, Violet! They continue to be perfect!) and wore a more wind-resistant coat. Yes, it’s windy tonight too!

Mike’s night photos (specifically his mooning) inspired me to actually find my tripod and use it for a change as opposed to just thinking about it. His eclipse photos are also full of awesome.

The third time out I realized that my tripod-fu is indeed lacking. The moon was almost directly overhead. I wanted to be able to look through my viewfinder and my back was not exactly thrilled with the contortions I’d already done. So… I ended up kneeling on the sidewalk to look up through my viewfinder.

Did I mention that it had snowed earlier today? Snow rocks. I love snow!

Yeah.

A dusting isn’t much unless you’re kneeling on a frozen sidewalk. Luckily, I didn’t mind. My knees were a little less happy though.

Ultimately though, I’m not the brightest girl on the planet tonight.

But I have awesome photos!

Finally… what is up with this green shadow/reflection? I think it has something to do with the length of the lens? I used a 300mm zoom with a UV filter to take these shots. (Juli’s Google-fu points at the UV filter as the culprit.) Of course, it only happened the 3rd time I went out so it could have been some of my electronics telling me it was too cold and could I please stop taking them in and out of the house. (Note: the tripod didn’t care. Nor did it warm up much in the house between shoots.) I’m too tired right now to go research it so if anyone knows, please share!

So, in short, I had a lovely evening. It was cold, clear, brisk and fun. And it was the last chance to play with a full lunar eclipse until December, 2010!
, cold, lunar eclipse, moon, photographs, photography, snow, weather

This older photo of Tenny really sums up what I feel like at the end of the week lately.

My week was long and rather bothersome at times as you might have guessed from my lack of posts or commentary on Monster Cat. The trip to New London was productive but kind of intense. One of the teams I work with clued in to some important stuff and wanted to absorb it all at once… always fun. Wednesday, I got to clean snow off my rental car! Okay, it was kind of icy and more like accumulated freezing rain, but I think of it fondly as snow. That same day, I attempted to fly home on a mid-afternoon flight and ended up hanging out in the airport until that night. Why? Because Philadelphia still can’t handle landing planes in the rain. We had our plane at the gate in Providence but Philly kept us on a ground hold until 8 pm. I did eventually get home, and only 5 hours later than expected, so I guess that’s not horrible just bothersome. I think I was in bed less than 45 minutes after I got home. Happy, warm, snuggly blankets improved my day immensely.

Thursday was, of course, V-day. I am so lucky I planned ahead this year on the whole gift thing because I’ve had so little sane time the past couple weeks. I had a call run past 5 pm which made us late for our dinner reservation but luckily it didn’t matter. Dinner was fabulous. The rub on my steak included coffee beans – a subtle addition yet delicious. I foolishly ordered hazelnut chocolate cake for dessert. I say foolishly because the slice that came out was bigger than my head. We took home 3 meals worth of left-overs and I am stretching the cake 4 meals or so.

Friday was another day of crazy work. I feel like I’m going to need Monday to catch up on stuff I was too frantic to address yesterday.

Today is much more relaxed. I woke up earlier than I wanted to and gave up on going back to sleep. I cleaned my desk before lunchtime though I’m still contemplating how I can rearrange things better. I’ve got some throws in the washer – I bought them to turn into curtains… if I can get them to smell like something other than diesel that is. The dishwasher is running, a round of trash has gone out, and I’m getting a handle on the paper recycling in my office. I like visible progress. And I like being able to slow down and take the time to breathe.

airports, busy, home, rain, snow, travel, weather, work

Happy Friday! The fact that this is a long weekend finally sank in while I was planning my work for next week. Hurray for long weekends! Eek for short weeks when I need to get stuff done! I have 2 major objectives for next week – both of which are critical, at least to me – so hopefully nothing else will blow up and steal my time.

I took this photo this morning while I was making coffee. The rain took away all my snow (well almost all my snow) but at least the residual water was pretty on my rose bush. (Special thanks to slyppi for her assistance with choosing the favorite of the bunch!)

I’m making excellent progress in NOT getting sick. I slept a lot last night. There’s something delightful about going to bed early only to wake up, look at the clock and think, “I’m usually falling asleep about now but tonight I’ve already sneaked in a REM cycle!” I’m actually feeling better as the day goes on, which is better than yesterday went so I’ll take it. Happily my network is feeling better today too – last night I was getting huge lag spikes. I suspect in the MASS CHAOS caused by less than an inch of SNOW FALLING FROM THE SKY (aka omgwtfbbq on wheels!), someone hit a utility pole somewhere and my network connection ended up routed through Nebraska.

work, health, photographs, photography, water, weather, snow, rain