Hiatus

Sorry everyone. Summer got too busy. I've been away three of the last four weeks for work, and everything else in my life fell to the wayside. I've got to take some time to catch up. I'll be back in the fall!  

Home Improvement

I intend to get a dog. When I was shopping for my house, a fully fenced back yard was a requirement. And my house had that, with one catch. The back deck was open to the front of the house via a staircase, so while the yard was fenced, it wasn't entirely enclosed.

Flowers 3

The flower I mentioned in this post, with the trellis, has bloomed. It's a beautiful purple flower. I still don't know what the fuck it is.

When fish and verb tense jokes collide

A man is on his first visit to Boston, and he wants to try some of that delicious New England seafood that he’d long heard about. So he gets into a cab, and asks the driver, ‘Can you take me to where I can get scrod?’ The driver replies, ‘I’ve heard that question a thousand times, but never in the pluperfect subjunctive.’

Source.

Don't tell me I'm too old

I don't know if any of you who read this also check out my tumblr page. It is updated far more frequently, mostly because it requires almost no effort. I only mention it because I have 32 followers on tumblr. I'm pretty sure that makes me internetfamous.

I've waited four years for this...

http://www.smbc-comics.com/

I no longer have student loan debt! I just have all the other debts, but no student loan. That's what matters. My overpriced education is finally paid for.

I'm a child for laughing at this

Thanks, CBC.

Dear Oz,

It's summer! Remember summer? I don't. Not really. I had to refresh my memory.

Happy Birthday Oz!

I've been sick, so I haven't been able to prepare my usual post for you. When I'm feeling better I'll pull together a belated one.

The Last Ocean

The Halifax Oceans Film Fest is going on now, and last night I went to a screening of The Last Ocean. It's a movie I hadn't heard about previously, on a topic I only knew in passing.



It was a good movie in that it got its message across. It had some beautiful Antarctic footage. Lots of penguins, some seals. Not really enough fish for my tastes, though, given that it was a movie about the effect of overfishing on this system. But there was some amazing under-the-ice footage that was wonderful. My main problem with it is that it covered a large time span - over 10 years and it was often unclear when they were talking about. It's a bit of a convoluted story and I think the timeline could have been more clear.

"A whale has eaten one of the trainers."

Thanks for sticking around. I now reward you with a trailer for a movie that is going to make me cry. I know that because the trailer almost made me cry.

Flowers 2

I have flowery type things in my back yard at the moment. Kimm said some were day lilies and the others hostas. She's certainly right about the hostas.

The other flower patch has two plants growing in it. One has lovely tall stalks with hanging bell-shaped flowers:

Tree 2 :Updated

After my last post about My Tree, Kimm said she thought it was a slippery elm, and Deb said red maple. While I was away, the leaves started to come out and the tree turned all lovely and green.

Leaves

Green back yard!

 For some dumb reason, I didn't take a close-up of the leaves yesterday. But they don't look like a slippery elm, so is it red maple? Or something else? I bet it's going to look bitchin' in the fall.

I would like to get a lilac tree. Any one have advice on those?

Update:

The List of Top 10 Most Read Books in the World...

...is making me sad.

Source

How long before Fifty Shades of Grey knocks Anne Frank off the list? I console myself, ineffectually, with the thought that at least people are still reading. That's something. A very small something.

Flowers (?)

These are growing in my yard.

Tree

This is my tree.

Tree

Squirrel

The squirrels really like my bird feeder. This one is named Rowsdower.

My yard

I have a yard now.  It came with the house.

There are little flower plots in the yard, as well as a bush, and a tree. I don't know what any of them are, but I'm really enjoying watching them come alive in our wet, wet, Halifax spring. Stay tuned for more exciting, in-depth coverage of all the crap growing in my yard.

Comments

For some reason, I don't think I've been getting email notification for when comments are submitted. I apologize if your comment took a long time to appear.

Scarfolk Council: Scarfolk tourism poster 1972

Scarfolk Council: Scarfolk tourism poster 1972: Despite the letter spacing typo on the poster, Scarfolk's 1972 tourism campaign was as successful as the mayor had hoped. Seven tourists...

 I am so in love with this site right now, it's shameful. 

Climatophile

I had a panic attack earlier this week. I went to check Environment Canada's weather office page, for the weather, as I tend to do a few times a day. But it was different. Out of nowhere they redesigned it. They changed the icons to these terrible [more] cartoony shapes, and the colours are all dull, and it's terrible and I hate it.

Best context-free headline of the day:

xkcd, anyone?

The "Time" comic is still going. Check out the whole animation.

There's a reason why I love this town

Yesterday after work I went to Chapters. I walked thorough the door and the first thing I saw was Joel Plaskett. The actual human. Just walking around with some kid. I've never seen him in Halifax/Dartmouth in a non-performance capacity. It's so cool that he just lives here.

PSA

Spring Forward!

Kon-Tiki

I saw a trailer online recently for a movie called Kon-Tiki, a dramatization of that time Thor Heyerdahl jumped on a raft and drifted from Peru to Polynesia just to prove a point. Science was so much cooler back then. “You don’t believe my theory? Well, I’m just going to build a raft and live on it for 100 days to show you how right I am.” Anyway, I was reading about the movie (which looks beautiful) and found out that Heyerdahl filmed his actual journey and made a documentary about it, which won an Oscar back in the day. I got a copy of the doc from the library and watched it.  

Bunny Scale

Oz sent me an interesting philosophical question about the Bunny Scale which I want to share.

“I saw two bunnies fighting each other (literally boxing at each other with their front paws) over an apple core on my walk home today. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN??!!!”

Firstly, Oz, why didn’t you take a video? That shit would totally go viral.

Secondly, the Bunny Scale was originally intended to predict how good a day will be, not to be used a posteriori. So I’m not sure what seeing bunnies at the end of your day means.

That being said, the original classification of a 2 Bunny Day was:

2 bunnies: A good day – I’ll only think of quitting my program once or twice

So, I suppose if you were to see two bunnies fighting, maybe that’s a physical manifestation of your inner struggle to finish your thesis. Maybe the apple core is your thesis and the bunnies were like the good part of your brain that wants to work on it and the bad part of your brain that doesn’t. Or something. I never actually took philosophy. 

"The Miracle and the Horror."

See Chasing Ice if you get the chance. It is the most beautiful thing I've seen in a long time. As a climate change warning cry, it is very effective. But it also has a nice exploration of field work in extreme conditions (anything less than success is normal). It also, interestingly, touches on some of the things that are wrong with modern science and how we communicate to the public, and what Science as a career has become. It touches on what I know a lot of my peers feel - that that they love science but don't want to be scientists.

Mostly, though, it presents beautiful, simple, elegant, horrifically scary, effective, visceral proof of climate change impacts on shockingly short time scales.

This movie is probably the only chance you will ever have to see these glaciers, since I do not see how we'll ever get them back.

Headline of the Day

Iceland tests find meat pies contain no meat at all

Source. 

Where the fuck have I been?

I’ve been busy since Christmas and went on hiatus to focus on my “life” instead of sporadic blog posts. In December I decided to plunge head first into chronic debt and I bought a house. Like, an actual house. On land. I own property. It’s pretty insane. I was so absurdly excited about it for about a month. Then the excitement turned into the stark realization that someone who hates housekeeping is probably a bad candidate for homeownership – but it’s too late. Really, though, I fucking love my little house. It’s so bright, and quiet, and lovely. I complain about cleaning it (I swear, the first two weeks I was there it felt like all I did was mop), but I don’t regret my decision at all.  

I'm not actually going to post a picture of my house on the internet. Instead here is a picture of my driveway and lots of snow. 

    

Stories of my death blah blah

That was a longer hiatus than I intended. My apologies to Kimm, who relies on this to vicariously experience my wild and exciting childfree life (I assume). Regular posts will resume soon, so be sure to check back obsessively over the next few days….

2013

I'm taking a hiatus right now. You may have noticed. January is going to be busy! I'll be back shortly. Oz, get back to work.