I have survived my Month of Doom! I’m a little worse for wear, perhaps both mentally and physically, but I did indeed survive. The next time my boss says something to the effect of, “Oh good, I’m glad you’re taking a week off in April! That will make up for March…” I will run away. Possibly cackling insanely as I flee.
Donna Aldrich, my piano teacher growing up, passed away last week. The huge norfolk pine tree on our porch was rescued from her once upon a time when both myself and the tree were much smaller. She was my first music teacher, my first Spanish teacher and my piano teacher for years upon years. She taught me that it’s okay to mix your languages because it challenges people to keep up. She also taught me, accidentally, that I can often sight read a new piece of music better than I can play a practiced piece. I did not work hard enough for her and probably should have quit or swapped teachers sooner than I did, but I did learn a great deal from her. She is the reason I adore Chopin and why I enjoy piano solos so much. Mrs. Aldrich what quite a character in my childhood. She had an underground house, a daughter in Arizona, huge pine cones collected when she lived in California, all sorts of little things from South America, a husband (who passed away last year) who had Very Cool Toys, and a … gasp … little white dog. Goodness, the Little White Dog Mafia has been stalking me longer than I thought!
Mrs. Aldrich was 86 years old. That means she was about 58 when I started taking piano lessons from her. She retired from teaching in the school district at the end of my kindergarten year. She didn’t stop teaching piano until 2 years ago. She was amazing.
Chronology is such a funny thing.
donna aldrich, little white dog mafia, month of doom, music, piano, piano lessons, work
That’s right, folks! Scandalous photos of Spring-like things that will depress and exasperate my dear mother especially since they got 5 inches of snow on Friday. Shhh… don’t tell her.
Oh. Hi. If it’s any consolation, dear Mum, it was too chilly to work outside, at least given that I’m fighting off a cold or something.
This weekend was almost really incredibly productive! Instead it was just soft of productive. Yesterday the Fop woke up not feeling well at all and decided it was best not to go to Mudthaw. When he eventually felt more human we hit a movie. Superhero Movie falls squarely in a genre I really don’t care for but I hated Spiderman so much, I thought it would be fun to see the parody. Indeed, it was fun – it turned out to be a little better than a series of jokes and spoofs strung together by virtue of each skit involving the same characters and it was definitely far superior to Spiderman. Don’t get me wrong – it was still a dumb movie, but it was a parody of something I felt needed to be parodied and I enjoyed the silliness and stupidity. Leslie Nielson is still quite a crazy, dead-pan man. Pamela Anderson still has boobs that defy the laws of physics. (I’m surprised more physicists don’t try to give her a ticket for that as a pickup line. Then again, she probably doesn’t hang out in many locales populated by physicists.) I’m not saying you should go see this movie, but it didn’t suck. If you do go, stay through the credits because there are several more little skits in the final credits that look like they got cut from the movie.
Now that the Denny’s near us has improved its service AND eliminated its smoking section, we’ve gotten in the habit of having breakfast/brunch over there like once a weekend. So this “morning” involved Denny’s then a trip to Home Depot for indoor gardening supplies. I may or may not have over-purchased. After an afternoon of standing in the sun out on the enclosed porch, I have transplanted about a dozen plants and started seeds for 3 or 4 types of hot peppers, chives, parsley, basil, white echinacea flowers, columbine and 3 pots of oat grass for the kitties. I have a plan for a raised bed herb garden. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the peppers yet.
In other spring news, again don’t tell my mother, the peonies that Janet gave me in October appear to have weathered the incredibly and depressingly mild winter quite well in their new beds. I can see the beginnings of new growth poking up through the rather clay-like ground I planted them in. Finally there will be flowers in the narrow strip between the driveway and the fence! Fierce peonies! The plum tree is budding, as seen here. The rose bush is starting to show new growth as well. The lilies have already popped up new growth and the lone tulip is deciding if it’s going to bud or not. It’s good that I have already given up on winter (despite the fact that my desktop image is a photo of a pink flamingo lawn ornament under snow), otherwise all this spring stuff would be hard to take.
Oh, and dear mother? Yes, this is revenge for all the photos of snow you sent me.
Why does today feel like it should be at least Thursday and even possibly Friday? Alas it’s only Wednesday.
I am going to be forced to give up on Winter soon. This morning while I was on a conference call, I watched a fat robin hop across the unnaturally dark green lawn of the church across the street. Bah. Perhaps we’ll get a crazy April snow storm! My plans for this weekend include garden clean up and pruning shrubberies. I also hope to get over to Home Depot for supplies. I’m still out of potting soil and several of my house plants desperately want for transplanting.
The Little White Dog Mafia has been out and about this week as well. With no post-snow mud to muck up their coats and a relatively dry week, it’s like Little White Dog Mafia central around here. I’ve seen no fewer than 4 different little white dogs, not counting the little black-and-mostly-white dog next door. Perhaps there’s a convention.
And, given the crushing disappointment that it is only Wednesday, that’s all I have for today.
This song and video makes me giggle a lot with great glee so I must share it with the world!
In other news, apparently the use of the word “douche” as a negative descriptor is coming back in vogue.
Apparently I’m on a language kick this week. No real surprise there.
I know we constantly recycle fashion and movies in this culture but you’d think we’d at least be able to come up with some new insults. “Douche” in particular reminds me of grade school and apparently is mapped to that age in my mind. Every time I hear or read someone using it I think they’re 12 years old. Then I start watching out for spit balls and nose-picking, because that’s bound to come next. I realize this is mostly in my head but it’s highlyamusing when the Fop uses the word and I do a double take and exclaim, “What are you? 12?” Seriously, folks, let’s come up with some better insults and descriptors rather than the old standbys and recycling ridiculousness from years past.
If you must recycle, reach into the deep past, please select your insults from the ages, eons past (instead of the 1980s please… we don’t need to recycle anything else from that decade). Here are some suggestions that aren’t too archaic (at least to me, and I know that’s a special perspective) that you can start using in place of more mundane, over-used insults and negative adjectives. As an added bonus, you’ll be able to use these words in polite company and even in meetings because they sound more context-appropriate.
Miscreant: a person who behaves badly or in a way that breaks the law (noun or adjective) example: We have some miscreant users who keep changing their login scripts and breaking the server.
Mountebank: a person who deceives others, especially in order to trick them out of their money; a charlatan. See: quack. (noun) example: He’s a total mountebank – don’t believe a word he says, his estimates are fabrications.
There you go! 2 words to work into your conversations this week! They’re not too far off the beaten trail, linguistically speaking, I think. But perhaps you should practice the follow-up phrase, “Go look it up in a dictionary” if it becomes necessary. Or if you’re feeling nice, define them as required by your audience.
cats, communication, hey little sparta, insults, language, songs, youtube
Thinking things through is always important in business. Thinking through your acronyms is VERY important! I am often amused and amazed by some of the acronyms we end up with at work. “Acronym rich” and “alphabet soup” do not suffice to describe the nightmare sea of letters we navigate. You can see the lost acronyms float across the eyes of new team members as the gloss over after trying to decipher a sentence comprised entirely of shot-gunned letters. What’s worse is that sometimes it’s very hard to undo the acronyms when asked. Conceptually, I can explain to you what an “IPT” is, but I always forget what each letter actually stands for. To add insult to injury, in many places I’ve worked, the acronyms shift from functional area to functional area, some of them overlap. At a previous job, what I thought of as “QM” (quiz module) was not what our development team thought of as “QM” (quiz management) and was certainly not what corporate thought of as “QM” (quality management).
And then there are the people so desperate to shorten everything that we end up with acronyms that spell hilarious or inappropriate words. “F/u” is a favorite I see flying by quite a bit. My job title is abbreviated to PMM but could have easily been PMS. BM is not the best acronym for an online test system, WTPS echoes “TPS reports” of Office Space fame, and the list goes on… The worst I saw was a Customer Notification Tracker…
I think every company should have a Keeper of the Acronyms. Perhaps with a crown and scepter just for effect. This person would maintain the Acronym Translation System, a wiki-based rosetta stone for the secret lingo of the company, as well as settle any problems with disputed territory. Wouldn’t that solve so many problems?
Okay, perhaps some overlapping acronyms are necessary – but the Keeper of the Acronyms could raise awareness for these overlaps and enable better communication. Ideally when one team talks about SOWs to another team, everyone’s on the same page (SOW = statement of work, a fairly standard one for us) and no one’s thinking about bacon.
As appropriate, I had easter candy for breakfast. And that was the full extent of my observance of the holiday. Some traditions should not be broken.
All in all, this was not the most productive weekend in history, but it suited my mood. I could have used a little more sleep, but that was apparently not to be. I could have used a little more time with my brain functioning as well, but this was also not to be. Oh well.
We did go see 10,000 B.C. in which we saw some pretty ticked off giant arboreal attack chickens who were some ticked about that bunny stealing their eggs. Even after bracing ourselves for a fantasy movie, it was a pretty bad movie. Silly and amusing enough but bad. I don’t feel cheated out of time and money, but in hindsight I really didn’t need to see it.
The Bank Job would have benefited from skimpier costumes for Jason Statham. Alas, he was fully clothed most of the time. Despite this, it was a good, fun caper flick.
This weekend also involved looking at couches again as our current couch is rather … squished. We have confirmed that we are incredibly picky. We have also confirmed that we should probably carry around little cards that explain to sales people to leave us alone because they’re more likely to get a sale that way. However, I am at least somewhat optimistic that we will be able to find a couch we like when the time comes. Our current couch is probably about 10 years old and those years have not been easy. If all else fails, I’ll get it refurbished with new cushions and upholstery or maybe do that anyway and put it somewhere else in the house. I’d also like to put a comfy reading chair in my office where I currently have a bunch of crates and boxes for recycling. I need to stash my sewing machine boxes somewhere storage-like as well. And I should do something about bookshelves so I can get my books out of the Fop’s office… not that I can navigate through the boxes of comics to get to my books right now. *giggle* I do sense a trip to IKEA in my future though.
But, first on my list is to play with fabric. I need some sort of carrier for my laptop accessories and cables. I keep seeing the neoprene ones for sale and thinking “cool but I could make that” so I guess I should get off my butt, right?
I know the photo is not very Spring-ly, but I really like it. I hadn’t posted a non-monster cat photo in a while and wanted to post something. It would also make an excellent location to hide easter eggs. In fact, maybe this is an easter photo and you should find the easter egg hidden in this picture!
10,000 B.C., easter, movie reviews, movies, projects, shopping, The Bank Job, weekend, photographs