Would you get rid of a Friday?

Samoa has decided to place itself on the other side of the international date line. To do this they had to skip a day. They picked December 30 - a Friday - to skip!

Who would skip a Friday? Friday is a good day - it's the run up to the weekend.

A Monday - most people who work a Monday to Friday workweek would gladly lose a Monday.

Tuesday - that's a good day. Monday is over, and you have time to get stuff done on a Tuesday.

Wednesday - that's the day I would get rid of. It's "hump" day. Once you get through Wednesday you are on your way to relaxing on the weekend. Getting it over with in the blink of an eye sounds like a marvelous idea to me!

Thursday - that's another good day. You can still get lots of stuff done, and the weekend is almost on you, so you have something to look forward to.

Friday - if you have mindless stuff to get done, Friday is your perfect time to do it. I've never been able to do anything solid after noon on a Friday. Anything I write is basically a write-off on a Friday. (What time is it now... oh, maybe I shouldn't be blogging right now... oh well, it's just for fun.)

Saturday - hands off. No one skips a Saturday.

Sunday - lazy sleep-ins and indulgent breakfasts at mid-day. No one in their right mind would get rid of a Sunday, and if they did, they would find themselves alone in taking on Monday before they have to.

Fire? What do you mean there's actually a fire?

I've been living in apartment buildings for a good 25 or so years now. I've lived through dozens of false alarms in these buildings. The alarms go off. Depending on your state of mind, and how high up you are, you either:

• curse the noise and wonder who set it off this time
• run to your kitchen to make sure you aren't the one on fire
• go out onto the balcony and look to see if there are any flames
• get out of the building, then find out if any of your neighbors who are outside know where the fire is

I find as we get older, the more cautious we are. We now choose to get out of the building, and then try to find out what, if anything, is on fire.

Of course, I use a wheelchair when I'm not in my home now. Getting out of the building takes on a whole new dimension now.

Luckily, my spouse is a runner of marathons and trail races. When we hear the fire alarm he runs downstairs and outside on an advanced scouting mission to see if there really is a fire, and reports back to me.

This morning he reported back yelling "Get up! There really is a fire!"

So much for the nice sleep-in I was having.

I can still walk short distances, slowly. Somehow my spouse had found 2 guys I may know in the building, they looked familiar - probably some maintenance guys doing work in the building. They did offer to carry me down, but that's just not appealing, and I can walk short distances, slowly. So I grabbed some clothes and threw them on, and they grabbed my manual wheelchair and one of them took it downstairs for me. OK, so when I make it downstairs, I'm good. Now it's just a matter of me making it downstairs.

So slowly, grabbing the railings, with one guy in front, and my husband behind me, I made it down a flight, then stepped aside to rest and let others get past on their way down. Then I started on another flight, and when I was almost down, half a dozen axe-carrying fire fighters came up, so I grabbed one railing with both arms and said "OK, go around me!" The fire was on the roof.

My goodness, firemen are large examples of the human form aren't they? One of the firemen offered to call in other firemen to carry me downstairs. I was doing OK, so I declined.

Thankfully, we are only on the fourth floor - or actually just three floors above the lobby, which has a ramp down to ground level. I made it down, and was very happy to see my wheelchair. Then outside we went.

Luckily it wasn't raining, but it was cold, and I didn't have shoes on - only socks - because I walk better when I can feel the ground with my feet. One of our neighbors manages the apartment building next to ours, so he let anyone who wanted to stay warm sit inside the lobby of that building.

Once the fire was out, we were told we could go back home. What started the fire? The elevators. The terms being used were "melted" and "you can't see much because of the smoke damage" in the room on the roof with the elevator controls. So none of the apartments were burned, which is good. But now we have no elevators. Probably won't have elevators for at least a week - and that's a hopeful evaluation. So we can all go home now... back up the stairs. 

Oy Vey.

I just looked up the term Oy Vey in Wikipedia. I'm using it in a very appropriate way. It means "oh pain".

Long story short, I made it back up to my home, but my arms are very tired, and the muscles of my best leg have complaints and grievances to discuss with me and the other leg.

So yes, we actually had a fire. And I have to report, after 25 years of false alarms, all the thinking "what will we do next time if it isn't a false alarm..." does make it easier to deal with when it really is a fire. So maybe the false alarms aren't just annoying. 

And man, are firemen huge, or what!

PS - my horoscope for today said: "If someone says you should not be concerned about what is going on in your immediate environment that means you should be very concerned indeed. Go out of your way to find out what it is – then act."

Did I really just alphabetize my roses?

Some people alphabetize their books on their bookshelves.

Some people wonder if it was the book titles or the authors that were alphabetized... because they're wondering which way to do it themselves. Others know that it's by author first and then book title. Yet others feel that it should be by author and then date of publication... 

... and that is one true sign of insanity.

But I just alphabetized the roses on my Flickr set. Does this put me a step closer to insanity than anyone with an organized bookshelf?

It's not as bad as it sounds, really. I was "pruning" my roses. My photographs have gotten better over the years, so I do occasionally remove some of the older, less appealing photos. Then I noticed an option to "alphabetize" the set of photos in one of the menus, so I chose it. Simple, really. Not that insane.

Of course, then I went and changed the titles on some of the roses so that they would sort properly. And "alphabetized" them again. That may have been the step over the line to insanity.

Then I had to fix the blog entry that was muddled from the reorganizing in Flickr.

No, I'm not trying to avoid doing other things that really need doing. Honest.

Am I addicted to photographing roses?

Roses, a set on Flickr.

Roses, a set on Flickr.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet... Shakespeare

But most of them don't actually have much scent any more. The hybrid tea roses in particular are less than forward in the scent arena these days.

So why do I have 81 photos of them on my Flickr site? Why do I have at least 2 more batches of them to process and add to my Flickr site (probably 4 or 5 new photos to add from that)?

I'm not actually that attracted to roses... but I feel a compulsion to take photos of them!

When I'm in Stanley Park's Rose Garden the flowers just sit there looking picture perfect and daring me to go by without taking a shot. I can't resist.

The only way I can resist taking photos of more roses is when they don't have name posts letting me know who they are. "Lovely flower, but I don't know the name, so I won't bother taking a shot." is the only thing that saves me!

Sounds like an addiction to me.

When did I get so picky about grammar?

Brothers Grimm Fairy Tale Rose, a photo by Clara Johnson on Flickr.

This bloom is on a bush called Brothers Grimm Fairy Tale Rose in the Stanley Park Rose Garden. It has a label on a post in the ground underneath it that says so, but it has a grammar problem. The label says Brother's Grimm Fairy Tale Rose.

This is wrong because there is an apostrophe in it. The way it reads on the sign is that a Brother owns a Grimm Fairy Tale Rose... or even funnier, Brother is a Grimm Fairy Tale Rose!

There were two brothers with the last name of Grimm. They wrote stories. The stories are by the Brothers Grimm. The people who bred this rose named it after their stories.

After being irked by the sign (I take photos of the signs to make sure I get the names of the flowers correct in Flickr) I googled the details and found I was correct about the inappropriateness of the apostrophe.

So how did I get from being a child who thought spelling a word only one way was a sign of a lack of creativity to an adult who is bothered by apostrophes?

Why do I unintentionally relax when I find the first typo in every book I read? I know they are there, and I seem to be so happy when I find this is yet another book proving my theory that there is no such thing as a book without a spelling or grammar error.

When did the speed bumps on the road to reading enjoyment start bothering me so much?

Maybe I've read too much? No such thing.

Maybe I've read too much drivel? That's a possibility. So many things to read, and not that many years left to do it in. I don't have any patience for drivel left. Thank goodness I don't have any of my writing from my youth around anymore!

Do we need to duck this time?

So was everyone expecting the world to end at the turn of the millennium?

Another satellite that was sent into orbit in the 1990s is about to land back on our planet. "Land" being a rather bland way of saying "hit very quickly while burning up and shattering into many pieces." And no one knows where it will land. 

Did no one in the 1990s think of what happens to objects in orbit after they've been up there for a while? They come back down. It's this gravity thing, you see... not really a new phenomenon, if people got the satellite up into orbit, they had a good understanding of the concept then, so they knew it would come back down eventually. Did they not care about the eventual crashing back on the planet?

Of course, this one is only the size of a car... the last one from the U.S. was the size of a bus. So much better. Really?

This latest satellite comes from Germany. The European Space Agency has a Space Debris Office. (That's a trashy job, ha, ha.) They say there is a 1 in 2,000 chance of hitting one of us monkeys with this satellite - the last satellite only had a 1 in 3,200 chance of hitting a monkey. 

A smaller, but better targeted piece of space debris.

This satellite has the added bonus of a mirror which the Space Debris Office says may not burn up before hitting the planet, meaning some serious shards may come flying off the debris when it hits.

Of course, the planet is mostly covered by water, so the satellite has a better chance of hitting fish than us monkeys. 

Any space aliens out there watching us must be wondering if we're just on a fishing trip with some really weird ways of catching fish.

Update: It landed in the Indian Ocean (probably) (hopefully). So it hit the body of water next to the largest population of humans possible. This could be the work of a super villain!

Is it Summer again?

The calendar says October 7. This weekend is Thanksgiving - the harvest festival time in Canada. So why is the Cox Bay Beach in Tofino covered in surfers? (There are more in the water.)

This is a screen shot from Tofino today. (Click on the image to see a bigger version.) (See the Long Beach Lodge Resort website for the live webcam.)

I'm not there myself, and I can't surf (but would love to), but it's 15 degrees Celsius on the beach! For Tofino, that's balmy! It's cold in that water... but it's cold all year round. Dry suits are the clothing of choice at all times of the year when surfing Tofino.

I've just spent a warm sunny afternoon cleaning up the plants on my balcony, and I had to come back inside because it was too hot!

We missed having a lot of hot sunny days this summer, so are we having it now? This weather does not make sense.

Am I living in a cartoon?

How NOT to Break Into a Safe, a photo by Clara Johnson on Flickr.

The Flintstones is a TV cartoon show from my youth. Fred Flintstone worked at a quarry mining stones while sitting on top of a brontosaurus that picked up the stones in its mouth.

Now I find myself watching the action again... from my balcony.

There is a crew of demolition workers leveling the old stores and restaurants from the property beside my condo building. They are almost done, but there is one bit of the old buildings that is not going anywhere soon - an old safe.

So on Thursday, while finishing up breakfast, we heard and felt loud thuds. We knew the demolition workers were about to get rid of some large stones from the site, so we figured they were being put into the dumpster that had been driven on to the site that morning.

Well, they were moving the stones, but it wasn't putting them into the truck. They were lifting one of the stones with their machine with a shovel, and dropping it on top of the safe!

It didn't work. The safe seems to be as solid as ever. In an earthquake, the safe would be fine. In a cartoon show, the safe still seems to be fine.

Am I living in a cartoon show now? Is reality slipping from me? Or did the guy with the machine with the shovel watch too many Flintstone episodes when he was a child?

Where did that satellite land?

The satellite known as UARS (Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite) is now back on the planet Earth. Somewhere.

It landed sometime last night. Probably.

It was calculated to hit somewhere between 57 degrees South and 57 degrees North. So pretty much anywhere on the planet Earth that isn't a magnetic pole. But that was just a guess. Well, the planet Earth part was pretty certain, the rest, not so much. And, oh yeah, most of the planet is covered in water, so it's probably in an ocean somewhere.

So don't we have thousands of these satellites circling the planet Earth now, giving great GPS tracking information down to the centimeter in accuracy? Aren't there many tracking systems for planes, tracking everything flying in the sky? Isn't Google Earth using satellites to take pictures of most of the planet most of the time? Surely someone must know where the satellite landed!

Or does someone want to fuel conspiracy theories?

If we never know... we can always imagine a good conspiracy to theorize about.

Maybe NASA did have control over the satellite and wanted to hit somewhere specific. Nah, too much effort. Maybe aliens grabbed it, and it didn't actually make it to the planet. Nah, we have lots of space junk up there, they don't need to grab something that was burning up already (there were photos of that). Or maybe fiction writers just needed a fresh idea to build on... yeah, that's why it has to remain a mystery, to cure writer's block.

Is it ironic to watch a movie about movie rentals on Netflix?

We've finally decided to sign up for Netflix, since all our local movie rental places shut down.

Our first viewing was a documentary about cracking the Maya glyphs writing system - so this Flixster thing does have the potential to be educational and not just a bunch of brain-numbing movies.

Next we moved onto movies - and the independent movies were the most intriguing. We watched a movie called The Sasquatch Gang - which was very well done and quite funny - a bit of teenaged adventure angst wrapped in a Pulp Fiction-like time editing package. The main characters had a lot of connections to movie rental places - during the time of the old VHS tapes. One worked at a movie rental shop, another rented his own tapes out to friends - a main story conflict was focussed around getting one of his tapes back.

So is it ironic that the first movie we watched on Netflix was a movie centered around renting movies? The stores that are no more because Netflix is here?

We weren't shooting for ironic... it just sat there and stuck out it's tongue at us.

Why am I always in a bathroom during an earthquake?

Since we moved to Vancouver, just over a decade ago, we've experienced 2 earthquakes.

The first time, back around 2004 or so, I was in the shower. I wondered why the water was splashing oddly on the bottom of the shower, and I felt a bit dizzy... I thought it was me. I heard that one of our hanging lights was swinging back and forth, but I didn't see it myself.

A few hours ago, I was on the loo. And we had an earthquake just off Vancouver Island, which could be felt in Vancouver. Again, I felt a bit dizzy, but I thought it was just movement from the building next door to us which was being demolished today.

So an experience that not everyone gets to have - the planet shifting underfoot - and I'm in the bathroom.

I'd like to see what happens outside during an earthquake - do the trees sway? I bet they did. Of course, with the building next door being demolished today, would I really have noticed anything that unusual that I wouldn't have attributed to the demolition? Probably not.

Not that I'm hoping for another earthquake... I just wish I wasn't always in the bathroom for them!

Are street cleaners a form of crowd control?

The fireworks were on last night. We live about 3 blocks from the place where they have them, and depending on where they anchor the barge in English Bay each year, we get to see bits of them from our balcony.

Of course, the fireworks only last for about 1/2 an hour. There will be 3 nights of them this year.

But for many hours before the event crowds of people migrate to the beach to get a spot to see the fireworks. The first wave is typically young families with whining or screaming children and parents. Organizing a trip to the beach is quite the exercise in major troop movements for them. The second wave is typically the hooting and hollering teenagers. They've shed their parental monitors, and now they're drunk and just out for a good time. The third wave is typically the mid-twenties adults in ridiculously high heels clattering along, having arguments with their dates, all running to the beach because the fireworks have already started.

Then thousands of dollars of fireworks go up in pretty explosions.

And now comes the exodus. It took hours to accumulate all these people. Now there are loud speakers telling them to get out quickly; police to move them along efficiently; thousands of dollars of fences around the gardens in the neighborhood to keep them off the flowers; security guards at most of the buildings to monitor our homes for vandalism... and street cleaners.

Machines to clean streets. They have brushes in front that turn to sweep big debris. They have water that sputters onto the ground to clean dirt. And really big, loud, insistent engines to drive them. Possibly making them the most efficient crowd control device we have.

The machines that comb the beach the morning after to get all the debris left by the thousands of people who don't live here, and think dumping their garbage here is OK, are also seriously big machines. No one ever sees them unless they get up really early, but they do a lot of work. And if you are on the beach at that time... you will go off for breakfast somewhere else quite quickly.

Cleaning as a form of crowd control. That's what we've come down to.

Do flies copulate in mid-air?

If we leave our balcony door open in the mornings by noon we have half a dozen flies flying about in our living room.

If we leave the balcony door open into the evening... the flies go away. This is a bit disturbing... I hope they are flying out.

It's like they commute into the office in the morning and then leave again in the afternoon. Or I'm just going a bit insane.

So when they are here, they spend the entire day flying around in circles. Just over there. In reality, just in the one spot. Again, I'm thinking desks in an office... insanity creeps up on you, you know.

Sometimes they meet in mid-air and briefly fly around each other. So are they having sex? In mid-air? Is this office romance? Are the co-workers finding they have a lot in common, and getting to know each other really well?

Or is this just a plot to drive me insane? I don't like driving, so I guess it's nice to have a chauffeur, but I do get dizzy watching them fly around in circles.

Will I ever paint again?

No, not a whine about losing abilities... just a long think about painting that makes me wonder if I ever will paint again.

Wall painting, not artistic painting. Just to be clear.

My spouse and I have just spent yet another long weekend painting. We painted the kitchen and a hallway that hadn't been painted yet. And now we are done. We moved in about 12-13 months ago, and had managed to get almost everything except a washroom, the kitchen, and the hallway painted before we moved in. And we are now declaring ourselves finished.

You know... you can pay people to paint walls for you.

Yes, that is true. This is what we told ourselves last time we finished painting a new home. We vowed "we will pay someone to do this next time". This was next time. We did it ourselves again.

But we do so much better than others. The painting mess we just painted over was badly done. No, we don't know who did it, but we have our suspicions. The place was bought by the previous owners with the intention of fixing it up and flipping it. They didn't live here, they just rented it out. So who did the walls? The cheapest labour possible. Judging by the appliances that were put in (all new, all cheap) that's all we can say.

But what about the next time we need walls painted?

We never expected to paint again. Of course, we never expected to be middle aged, we never expected to be married for 20 years either. Just when did that happen? When did those years fly past? Where did they go?

So what about next time? We said "never again" last time, but that didn't happen this time. Is life too long for "never again"?

Why don't ebooks have indexes?

Must admit, this is a sore spot for me - I create book indexes part time as a freelancer.

I'm one of those people who enter a non-fiction book from the back - from the index! If I know what I want, and I can find it in the index, I will dive into the book... if it's not in the index I can save myself a lot of time by just finding another book. But if the index is missing - or in a lot of ebook cases, it isn't linked to the text... page numbers just won't work for an ebook - using search just makes the effort tedious.

I'm currently using Adobe InDesign to help an author publish his book, and he wants to go ebook, rather than print, to start with. For print publication InDesign does have a rudimentary index generation function - nothing like my professional indexing software, Cindex, but useful when I've already written the index in Cindex, and can just input it into InDesign. But for an ebook... I've been Googling for how to translate the index into a functioning - click an entry and go into the text - index. If I can figure it out, it doesn't look like it will be easy.

So it looks like the available software to create ebooks is not up to the task of creating an index. I think this is a big gap that should be filled. I hope more people will realize this and start asking for indexes on ebooks.

Does a water tornado mean sushi rain?

Waterspouts or water tornados are a truly awesome thing to see. With the huge number of land based tornados in the US this year, it doesn't seem to be so odd that there are water ones around Australia as well.

But what about the fish?

Do fish get caught up by these water tornados? Well, yes, it seems they do! See this news article from the UK Daily Mail on the subject.

So what would you do if a whole lot of fish started falling on your head? They're probably dead from their flight... but they are fresh. Is it sushi time or not?

And what about the fish's take on this... just swimming around, minding their own fishy business, and whoosh, they're airborne! Flying fish. They probably think those silly fish that started walking millions of years ago were nutters, but now they're flying in the air.

There are fish that leap out of the water by themselves and attack people in boats in the US. Intentional flight, not just a gust of swirly wind.

Does this mean the fish are trying to take the next step on the evolutionary ladder? Is Nature trying to help? Should we sit them down and have a talk about this... is it really a good idea?

How distracting can Google get?

I think it's wonderful that Google changes its logo for special occasions, but this is getting to be a bit too distracting isn't it?

The logo from one day a month or so ago that was actually a little movie of a Charlie Chaplin impersonator when you clicked on it was very distracting.

The Earth Day logo that had different moving parts on it when you moused over the different parts of it - the swimming fish, flying birds, moving water, jumping frogs, etc. - was so distracting I completely forgot what I was going to Google on. I spent quite a bit of time playing with that logo, trying to remember what I was supposed to be searching on!

But today: "the 76th Birthday of Roger Hargreaves: Little Miss Shy" has many different logos. Every time you go into Google, you get a different picture! Wait, let me reload that page! Oh, that's a cute one.

Honestly, anyone not completely focussed on their task is going to find it very difficult to concentrate today.

This is fun, but is it really a good thing? Maybe I should Google on "distraction" to see if "Google" is part of the definition. Oh, that's a cute one too!

Why is the poll so late in reporting results?

I worked as a poll clerk at the federal election on Monday. It was an extremely long day. Many people on the outside were grumping that it took a long time to get the poll results in from our area. Apart from bad organization on the parts of most of the people in the room after the poll closed and we started counting the votes, the poll was also late because there is only one handicapped washroom stall in the typical public washroom.

Yes, the counting couldn't start until everyone was locked into the room to count, and I was in the washroom, delaying everyone.

But was it really my fault?

I must use the handicapped stall. I need to use the bars in the stall to help me stand. Another woman - physically fit and fully abled - was in the handicap stall. So I waited for her to finish. And everyone waited for me to finish.

Angry about delays? Welcome to the world of being handicapped.

I think everyone should spend one day in a wheelchair. Try it, you'll see the world from a different perspective.

So do you really need to use the handicap stall in the washroom? Ignorance can be a handicap, but you can get over that one.

Did someone decapitate my Mii?

As you can tell from the image in the "About Me" box on my blog, I have a Wii.

I have an image of me in my Wii called a Mii. That's the image in my blog. I watch my Mii playing games as I move on my Wii Fit balance board, which I use pretty much daily.

My hair has grown quite a bit since I made that Mii, so I changed the Mii to have longer hair. And now that Mii looks disturbingly like it's a decapitated head.

The scores in the Wii Fit game come up with images of my Mii beside the score, but just the head shows up, not the body. Now that I have longer hair, you can see the hair under my head. No neck or body, but hair under the chin. It looks like a body-less, ghostly head floating about.

It didn't look like that before, when the hair was shorter and none of it showed under the head. But now... it's quite disturbing.

Is the surf really up?

It's been the coldest April on record here on the west coast of BC, but I was just watching my favourite webcam of Tofino - on the west coast of Vancouver Island - and there were two surfers walking on the beach with their surf boards! Even in the middle of the summer surfers need to wear wet or dry suits to surf Tofino, so that water is always cold, but it must OK for surfing now.

I've been hoping that summer would turn up sooner than later, so I guess this is good news!

Surfs up!

Is life really in full colour?

It has been such a slow Spring... I was wondering if my favourite webcam from Tofino, BC was actually still in colour, or if it had gone to black & white & a million shades of gray. This screen capture from a few moments ago shows actual colour on the right hand side! It's in colour! The world is in full colour again! Let the Celebrations begin!

Update: The screen shot I captured yesterday disappeared! And today we're back to monochrome... as you can see from the screen shot that I just put on this post (unless it disappears as well).

But there was colour, I saw it.

Of course, this shot is kinda cool because you can see little tiny people close to the waves about 1/3 of the way in from the left side of the picture. It's a big beach.

Does Libya even have flying submarines?

You may think of submarines as flying through the water... but I just don't see how enforcing the "no fly" zone over Libya means brining in the anti-submarine equipment is called for.

Canada, are we just a bit backwards? We are the ones who sent the anti-submarine aircraft into the Mediterranean according to this news article. Where does "no fly zone" apply to submarines. We may be new at this waging war thing, but really? Submarines?

I was so much happier when Canada specialized in Peace Keeping, not war waging. We were so much better at that.

Does Libya have flying cars?

There is a "no fly zone" over Libya right now being patrolled by all sorts of airplanes from all sorts of countries.

I just saw a picture of some burning vehicles in Libya that were hit by an airplane from one of the countries patrolling the "no fly zone". They looked like cars and trucks to me.

So does Libya have flying cars? Such an advanced technology... maybe no one should be firing at such an advanced technology, hmm?

Is the super moon super annoying for emergency workers?

In my neighborhood the people who operate the sirens on emergency vehicles often seem to indicate their emotional state of being.

The quick "woo woo woo woo woo" lets you know that they are really in a hurry and don't want to deal with idiots, so move to the side very quickly.

The bored "woo woo whip whonk weeep" that occasionally comes out can actually start you giggling. The trucks calling that out are not usually going that fast - an emergency, but they just know it's probably another false alarm.

The annoyed "wooooooo" often happens around rush-hour, so get out of all intersections everywhere in the city please.

This weekend we had a super full moon - 20% bigger than normal because the moon is in an elliptical orbit around the planet and it got as close to earth as it ever gets. It was reportedly the biggest full moon in 18 years. And a full moon means many humans on the planet went quite insane yesterday. How many old boyfriends were talking to ex-girlfriends in a drama of insanity? Good day for target practice in Libya, eh?

So yesterday there were lots and lots of emergency sirens going off. And today there were almost as many. All of them were very, very angry.

So has this full moon been super - once in 18 years super - annoying for emergency workers? They being humans as well... they were probably going a bit crazy themselves! I hope the work scheduling has given all of them a break!

Is the wobble not just me?

I have MS, and problems walking from it. I tend to wobble. OK, as my spouse puts it, I walk like I'm on a small boat in the middle of the ocean. He occasionally complains of sea-sickness if he watches me for too long.

So I wobble.

But so apparently, does the planet Earth. And since the Japanese earthquake, it now wobbles more.

According to this National Geographic article, we may actually be able to measure the increase in wobbliness. To measure the earth wobbles, you need a lot of data, and in Japan, there is a lot of data. Not only from the earth-quake monitoring equipment, but from a large number of GPSs that were up and running along the Japanese coast when the earthquake happened.

So we got data, and we got wobble. This may help to predict earthquakes in the future, which would be very nice.

I can predict my wobbles too... if I walk, I will wobble. I'm a simple person. But it's not just me anymore... the whole planet is wobbling more now!

Is that a character from the book I'm reading?

I'm currently reading a book by Tom Holt - Djinn Rummy. One of the main characters is very much like a lot of Tom Holt's main characters, an unappealing person with very little drive. Not a very active person, bit of a bump-on-a-log, shuffling through life, doesn't have a lot of ideas, no real purpose in life type of person. Not someone the reader would aspire to be... but oh so very true to life.

As a matter of fact, I met a woman on the weekend who reminded me so much of the character from the book, I'm still queasy with recognition.

It's really not a good thing when you seem to be a character from a novel. Bad things happen to people in novels - that's where a story comes from. A novel without something bad happening to challenge the main characters is... not read through by anyone, because it's boring.

And why did this woman's parents give her a stripper's name? She really doesn't fit her name. By the time you get to be an adult, you either grow into your name, or you change it, legally or via a nickname. I don't know what happened in this case, but the name would also make a good name for alcohol, so maybe there's even more trouble here that I don't want to know about!

Maybe she actually is a character from a novel who has escaped from the book.

Are there any more characters wandering around out there?

What does a bonsai tree in chains mean?

A bonsai tree is created mainly for contemplation, according to Wikipedia.

While having breakfast at a local restaurant, I saw a corner store opening for business for the day. They wheeled some plants out to the sidewalk as they normally do, and then they wheeled out something I hadn't seen before. A small bonsai tree. It was chained to the cart with a very substantial looking chain.

It is an expensive plant - they wanted $80 for it. But it looked like a fugitive with the chain around it.

So is a bonsai in chains a deep statement on life? Are we all chained to something? Is it our lot in life to go on as we can within the bounds of our chains?

Does it mean the bonsai was a bad tree? Is it a reincarnation of a villain? What evil deeds did it do to become a bonsai on a chain?

Is a chained bonsai aesthetically pleasing? Who would find a chained bonsai something good for contemplation? Does it have more meaning than an unchained bonsai? Is the fact that it was chained what makes me think about it? What does that say about me?

It almost makes me want to buy the bonsai, to free it from its chain.

Where did that month go?

Ever had one of those months when you just get the hang of it on the last day of the month?

I'm set for February now.

Ever found yourself on the same side of the sun (again!) and wondered how many more trips you will be making around it? That's the fun new way I will be thinking about aging now... measuring time in trips around the sun... I just read a book by Christopher Moore - that's his way of putting it. I like it, very cosmic.

Ever found yourself stopped by an inch of snow? I'm getting older, and perhaps a bit grumpy. I grew up in Edmonton where snow piles were often taller than me... now I stay inside when it snows here in Vancouver, which it did on the weekend, and some of the white stuff is still here! We don't do snow here. We have snow, but we keep it on the mountains, where it is nice to look at and you can visit it if you really want to. So now I stay inside and peer out the windows, and go a bit stir crazy.

OK, had enough of February. Let's get on with March.

It grows back doesn't it?

It sucks that you don't know how bad your hair will look until the next day.

And yes, it did go poof in the middle of the night!

I was concerned that the young little thing didn't have a clue what I was talking about... and I was right to be concerned. What a hatchet job.

I was going for a 1950's style and getting close to it... now I have down-right boring interpretation by a 20-something fool.

So this all grows back doesn't it? That's the great thing about hair it grows back... it will take ages though :-(

Should I wait up for the poof?

Got my hair done today. But not by my favourite hair stylist.

When I called to book the appointment, they said he left the salon. I asked where he went, but they wouldn't tell me, and since I needed a cut, I went with someone new - Whitney... just as long as she didn't sing, I was ok with that. Boy do I know when she was born and who her parent's favourite singer was! Poor kid.

Whilst I was on hold and they were figuring out what to say to me about my old hairdresser I heard a really silly add. It was for a new product of theirs. It's a frizz control that lasts 12 hours. All I could think was "What happens at hour 12? Is there a popping noise, and your hair puffs out in a huge ball of fur?"

So when the new hair stylist said "Can I use this on your hair, have you ever tried it?" and she pulled out the frizz control stuff I started laughing.

I don't have frizzy hair, but it's their new product to push, and I don't typically have allergic reactions to the Aveda products, so I said sure, why not.

But now I have a dilemma. I would like to see the 12th hour poof, but it was put into my hair at 1pm, so that means I would have to stay up until 1am to see this miracle of hair productus poofius.

So is it funny enough to stay up that late... hmmm.

Update: Didn't stay up... didn't have to... around 1am my spouse actually reported a popping sound... when I woke up, the morning was extreme on the poof, it took much shampooing to get it to stay down! Quite the science lab hijinks on my hair!

Why is he wearing sunglasses?

You know it's been raining for a long time when the sun hurts your eyes when it occasionally peeks out from behind the clouds for a couple of minutes.

It's been raining for a long time.

So why is that guy wearing sun glasses?

The chance of anything poking out from behind the clouds today is slim to none. The sky is a uniform shade of light grey - flood-fill grey if you are familiar with image software. That guy will not be attacked by any stray beams of light today.

He's looking around at everything and everyone. Looking everyone in the eye, it seems. So he's not blind. He's not trying to avoid being noticed. He's actually looking like he wants to be noticed. That's rather odd.

It seems like a good day to smoke some herbs, judging from the number of clouds of herb smoke I have gone through today on the sidewalks. That's an odd thing when it seems only elderly women are walking around out there... OK ladies, who has the pot?

So is the guy in the sunglasses having an interesting trip? Is that the reason for the sunglasses and the staring into stranger's eyes? So if he's walking quickly around all the streets smoking pot, does that qualify as exercise? Does the pot help make the flood-fill grey less depressing, more varied and interesting? Do dark sunglasses that make everything even darker help?

I think I need to run back to my home and sit by my full-spectrum light lamp. This is just all too odd.

Who is that?

Sometimes a situation or something I've read starts me thinking about characters for a story. This is one of them.

The Food Lurker

A magazine article I just read had suggestions for starting up conversations at a business conference. The first suggestion was to hang out around the food table and talk about the food as a conversation starter. There were suggestions on what to talk about after a conversation was started - asking what company the other person worked for, or asking what their job in the company was, and other ideas, but it made me shiver to think of someone who missed the part about having other things to say after the food conversation was over.

A character like this would probably be an introvert, a technical guy who works with computers and can be very succinct when instant messaging with the people he works with, but stumbles when talking on the phone or in person with them. He is probably in his 20s and hasn't managed to find a life partner yet - due in part to his lack of confidence when speaking - but has many friends that he instant messages with for hours on non-business topics.

What drove the food lurker to the business conference? Was he forced to go by a well-meaning boss that wanted him to get to know more people? Does he himself want to increase the number of people he knows? Does he want to learn something from the formal sessions? I think it may be a combination of all of these things. Unfortunately, he may succeed in learning something from the formal sessions (I've been to a lot of business conferences, and I know learning things from them does happen, but honestly, it's rare) but will he succeed in getting to know more people?

Now where does this story go?