Musings on a Small Life

"Slip slidin' away Slip slidin' away You know the nearer your destination The more you're slip slidin' away...." Winter in this part of Ontario isn't quite what the song means, but hey, I'm just going with it. And the words are appropriate! Below: The view from my bedroom when I got home yesterday afternoon. Our director let us go early, and a co-worker drove me (carefully and slowly) home. It got worse from there, but we were lucky in that most of it fell as ice pellets, which are granular. So while everything has a coating of ice, it's not the sheer skating rink it could have become. Getting into work this morning was pretty straightforward, actually, no delays. I was smart enough to wear my ice grippers on my boots, though!   The trees looked pretty, their berries with a light coating of ice. Still, you can see how messy things are, below.  Anyone else other than me ready for Spring? If you're dealing with si...

I see it's been 10 days since I've done a blog post, so I ought to make an effort. I've got nothing, though. It's winter, it's freezing, I'm either at work or doing the usual stuff at home on the weekends. The boys are okay. I've been trying to cut back on their food, but Derry keeps getting fatter and the one who doesn't need to lose any weight, Nicki, has. He looks too thin to me now, but that might be just because of Derry's sheer size. I think I need some help in trying to get some weight off of him (Derry). It's tough, when you have two pets with two different body types and eating styles! I have nothing but admiration for the many who have a full house of companion Beings and who have to juggle so many different dietary (and health) needs! That in itself is almost a full-time job.   Nicki has a vet appointment on Monday the 21st, for regular stuff, and I've got a few things to follow up on (kidney stones, his weight loss, and...

We had about 10 cms of snow overnight Wednesday, so I took my little point and shoot to work with me yesterday and went for a walk at lunch time. Fresh snow makes everything, even the mundane, look like a magical winter wonderland!   This is Bella Most of it will disappear now with the milder temps and rain that's in the forecast. It's been a strange winter so far! Anyway, happy Friday! It's a short work week for me, but after the holiday break, even three consecutive work days feels looooonnnng.   Peace.

I'm skirting over how ridiculously early it is to have a snowstorm and am hoping it disappears within a few day. In the meantime, the first snowfall of the winter is always magical. I brought my point and shoot with me today, and went out early for a few pics, before the messy mix of rain later. I hope you have a magical (yet snow-free) day! Peace.

OMG, I'm so far out of the loop when it comes to technology today. My new director (two full weeks now, into her third) asked me earlier today if I could build a web interface that would feed the (excessively) complicated calculations needed for all the university budget projections, etc. I could barely grasp what she was asking me...and the answer was no, that's way over my head! She mentioned a software program and after she left I had to Google it...it's a platform for coding apps, games, web sites, etc. Completely Greek to me, not a clue. (I'm checking with our IT department, though, to see what, if any, options we might have.) Then I had someone apply for a survey platform account (the university has a license with a third-party for a product which is used to create and deploy surveys), and on the application, under the source of the data sample, he had listed " Mechanical Turk ." Huh?! I had to Google that too, to find out what it was. Who kne...

Most of the time, winter in the city looks like this: That was the start of our big melt, mid-past week. A slushy, icy mess that makes walking a dangerous challenge. And winter looks like this (we got walloped Friday night and Saturday morning, with at least a foot of snow):  The cars below are dwarfed by the snowbanks! But sometimes, just sometimes, winter is magical and looks like this (click to enlarge):  The poles (?) below look like iced-over ducks to me! I had errands in the west end this morning, and though it was minus 23C and I whined (to myself) about it, I forced myself to go out. I bused to the nearest Starbucks for a chai latté, then took my time and walked the rest of the way to the big box store complex, detouring via my favourite little park. So, so worth it . The paths weren't plowed, but a few others had tramped through the snow before me, so I just followed in their footsteps, seeing lots of critt...