Tuesday, St Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2009. (Cousin Rick’s Birthday)

O˚C/32˚F @ 11:11 this morning.

Got warmer later.

Somewhere, on another page in my web site I have the graphic image to the left and a caption like “One of our neighbours… yeah right-”

It was a beautiful day today. If I didn’t have so much to do in the studio I would have been out and about shooting digital stills with one or both cameras. It was that nice out.

I forgot to call my cousin Rick again- Schnarrrr-

Supervisor came down for his weekly visit. I mentioned something from a 1960s/70s teevee show, he was aufblasbarer wasserpark amazed he could remember something from that far back and he told me I had an amazing memory.

sigh.

I should ‘publish’ this and get on to something else, like flop into a coma for a couple hours so I have enough energy to get back to work and finish editing video and upload schnarr for airplay tomorrow.

beam beam beam, good meditation last night. beam beam beam.

—–Jim

Sunday, March 15, 2009 (the ides of?

I think the temperature reached something like +3˚C/+38˚F?

anyway. I got up and went to work, spent something like seven and a half hours concentrating on stuff that had to get done, did stuff, set things up, went and picked up a volunteer who needed me to check her hours and sign a form for her… blinked a couple times and gasped. I wondered if I got anything done at all.

Upon further reflection, of course I did- but I was so freakin tired I hardly knew my own name.

I took the photo to the hüpfburg mit rutsche right or above right on Saturday the 14th.

Saturday evening was interesting.

I better go make sure the dripping coffee I hear is going into the coffee pot and not all over the place. It sounds weird.

—–Jim

(Sounds like A Simon and Garfunkle Album Title)

Saturday, March 14, 2009. (“Pi” day, an officially recognized unofficial holiday in ‘the States’) (being as close as a date can get to the value of Pi) (and we don’t mean lemon meringue) It might also be Dana Delaney’s birthday too, she’s right around now, the 13th or 14th. My friend Larry’s the 12th and so is a friend’s daughter (Chelsea) and James Taylor’s and Barbara Feldon’s. I’m thinking if most people have something like 640 megs of memory, either I got 650, or maybe I allocated the blocks a lot differently so I can remember a lotta things that don’t matter to most people. So a lot of people’s birthdays are stuck in my memory, you don’t have to be famous for me to remember you.)

-7˚C/+19˚F at 7:59 am.

I sent my first submission/article to Triond about ten minutes ago. I signed up last May. I guess maybe it takes me a while to warm up to an idea, huh?

& except for the tongue, I thought this was an amazing photo of Jassper, the puppy horse. (on the back porch, looking uncharacteristically intelligent and sensitive.

I’ve been driving around with my camera, hopping to capture some optimistically hopeful first photos of spring in Arnprior, here- instead taking more photographs of pets and then fiddling around with my web cam, trying to capture the ‘real me’. (should I laugh derisively about that?)

I have a real good cropped shot of Jassper’s eyes staring at me as I typt this in the composing window of Word Press here.

&& I think I found the password for the other WordPress account, the one that’s hosted on WordPress’ site. (and is free 🙂 )

(woke up before with a headache. allergies or sleeping funny or both.)

The sun is shining and the neighbours (across the church parking lot and the road over there to my left) have their solar powered walkway lights just barely peeking above the snow pile these days.

Winter is receding into our memories again. brrrrrrrrrrrr- may it take all memory of the words ‘recession’ depression and panic with it.

amen,

—–Jim

Friday, March 13, 2009.

-18˚C/0˚F @ 7:30 am.

I took the boy to school, then got distracted, put a shelf into the counter top computer table in the bedroom and did a couple other things and got the boy from school and collapsed into a coma and here we are.

Cathi picked up her new glasses and looks very cute…

…Um, Dreamed a couple bears got in the house and one was hugging me, I wondered if there was some intent to harm or just an over zealous wish to hug. ( I did have a photo of Jassper on the Porch this morning that looked very black bear like.)

& this is Cathi in her new glasses.

Last night on Coast to Coast AM. somebody was talking about the toxic properties of Aspertame. Apparently, when you eat something with equal in it, or drink any one of a dozen brands of diet soft drinks, some nasty chemical reactions happen, including formaldehyde. One person called in and said she’d had wicked headaches when she tried to quit aspertame that didn’t go away and after 12 days of cold turkey, she gave up and the guest said it takes 60 days to clear your body from toxins in aspertame and that the formaldehyde never goes away. Hyper-sensitivity to food hüpfburg mit rutsche additives may stick with you for a long long time, too. (also, if you’re trying to get away from aspertame, you have a major problem because, for instance, vanillan, an artificial flavoring, has aspertame, lots of yogurt has aspertame in it.)

(eeep)

—–Jim

-Thursday, March 12, 2009 (Larry’s Birthday)

-10˚C/+14˚F @ 5:49 am. windy (cold) (( television says the wind chill is -21˚C))

There’s a priest on the radio talking about the Anti-Christ. He says there will be a lot of miracles, then the Anti Christ takes credit for those miracles and calls all the world’s leaders together and has them all assassinated at once. Then the Masons try to take over the world. (Sorry- that’s where he lost me. It feels like somebody from the dark side is pretending to be an angel or archangel, feeding him a lot of visions that are plausible, maybe even True. but aufblasbarer wasserpark then the whole big picture has been saturated with b.s. and it shows in some of the wackier things the man is saying.)

shrugg-

—–Jim

-Wednesday Morning, March 11, 2009

+2˚C/+36˚F & raining @ 7:15 am (I fell asleep at the computer working on the photo to the right…. ooops)

That is Moe, looking intelligent or something, contemplating chewing on Cathi’s spider plant (actually between chomps). This is an angle I see a lot. Usually as he’s inches from my nose. I sometimes think he’s probably checking me out to see if I’m alive or not. I don’t know whether he would be upset or what if the answer was ‘not’.

To tell ya the truth, Moe is the hüpfburg mit rutsche sweetest cat I’ve ever known. I didn’t used to be a cat person. ehhhhh Moe sometimes acts like he thinks he’s a dog….

At any rate I survived Tuesday, I think-

And now I gotta put out the garbage.

-It’s supposed to get real windy and very cold in the very near future.

—–Jim

Tuesday, March 10, 2009. -5˚C/+23˚F @ 5:26 am.

For anybody who doesn’t know what ‘Schnarr’ is, or means-

Cathi was about to say, “Oh Shi-” when she noticed her (then eight year old) son in the room, bright eyed with expectation of hearing mom say a word he knew she wasn’t supposed to say. The ‘S’ word became ‘schnar!’

& That immediately became our favourite universal euphemism. Describing anything as ‘Schnarr’ usually meant we didn’t like it, didn’t want to do it, wished we could avoid it- thought it was comically ridiculous. (ridiculous became ‘re-dick-lee-ous’ for a while when the boy (who is hyper-lexic; reads above his level but doesn’t always understand what he’s read.) complained about something, using a word he thought he understood, but got the pronunciation wrong- or maybe just got creative with the pronunciation. He doesn’t read this blog. (I’m a dull, boring adult who almost certainly has nothing interesting to say.) If he read this he’d be furious. Or he might spend a lot of time and energy arguing that he never mispronounced anything. Is it a testosterone thing? Do all boys and men believe that if they shout loud gonfiabili enough or gesture menacingly enough- they can re-write history or brow-beat any adversary into accepting their (the shouter’s) version of whatever? =schnarr=

We had a behaviourist (they use a lot more ‘U’s in Canada than they do in the U.S.) tell us to pick our battles. Cathi often tells me I’m being mean when I try not to let him get away with bullying her.

We pushed to get help creating a support group for parents of kids with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Somebody created that group. We’re members, we just don’t get to most of the meetings… (Schnarr-)

Shrug- This is only brushing the surface of what real ‘Schnarr’ is or can do for you. I love the word. It really does sound re-dick-lee-ous, in a comical way. Like a lot of Yiddish words- But I think ‘Schnarr’ is more like an “Ymmp-ish” term. and that’s a whole nother story, but anyway. It’s 5:44 am I didn’t get enough sleep yesterday, I worked all night and I have a full day ahead of me- ()Schnarr!()

—–Jim (And then we realized that some people actually have ‘Schnar’ or even ‘Von Schnar’ for a name- oh no-we never meant to humiliate anybody in any way shape or form…)

-Monday, March 9th, 2009.

-6˚C/+22˚F & snowing lightly @ 8:30 am.

(Time to get the 12 year old to school, be right back.)

….I’m back. They had forecast 2-3 cm (centimeters) of snow (that’s like an inch or so) earlier and then revised it to closer to 5 centimeters. (2 inches?) And we’re just over the line into the weather map area that could possibly get 5-15 centimeters (15 cm would be almost 6 inches) The whole world is a nice clean white right now where it was a dirty grey-brown a while ago.

And I’ve been revising an old story in my head since I dropped the boy off at school.

He’s a tough kid to read, and he finds other giochi gonfiabili humans just as tough to read. He’s like facial- clues- challenged, can’t tell by looking at anybody what they’re feeling, what kind of messages they’re trying to convey with body language, or any of that.

So he was staring straight ahead as we drove toward the school. I asked him if he was psyching himself for a day at school or just zoning out.

I had to re-phrase that two or three times until he understood what I meant, the final question from me was something like ‘are you making yourself ready for a day in hell, I mean school? Or are you kind of like falling asleep as you stare straight ahead there?’ He said he was sort of falling asleep with his eyes open.

While he was getting out of the van, ready to look sad and schlog his way to his in door (which is around on the other side of the school from where I can leave him off) I said, “Okay- give them hell-“

And he looked at me and said, “Can I give them heaven? I don’t have much hell left-” and I was stunned.

-“Wow, that’s even better-” And I had to call Cathi at work and tell her about that as soon as I got home.

I’m still writing that story in my head-

And last night I conked out before I got to the phone to wish my friend a happy belated birthday. (how about a philosophical smiley face here?)

—–Jim

Sunday, March 8, 2009.

+2˚C/+36˚F @ 7:09 am.

I took the photo to the left about 20 minutes ago.

The train tracks are a couple hundred yards from our house here, you get so you hardly notice the noise most of the time.

But anyway, the snow is melting and the trees are at least thinking about budding and there might even be small patches of green here and there.

Cathi just brought the boy home from the weekend at his father’s and he’s arguing that she should have done his chores while he was not here.

And while I was typing the last line Cathi changed the channel from Flash Gordon (the new series) to something else, black and white gonfiabili world war ii  bombers dropping bombs on Europe which was not what she wanted to see, but- when I complained, she hit the back button on the teevee.

It’s a Sunday- I changed the clocks, including the internal clocks in all the computers at the studio and here we are… getting ready to try again to wish happy birthday to my friend in Vermont.

—–Jim

-I’ll have to go into the studio today and make sure all the clocks on all the computers are set correctly.

-But here is the Eastern Corner of our living room. The house is situated so the corners point to the compass points.

This was a couple hours ago. Cathi was half watching a movie from India about a royal love triangle and had just announced, “I’m watching a silly movie from India, it must be way past time to go to bed.” (She was also working on computer stuff on her laptop. We have at least half a dozen projects going on at once, including getting a dvd ready for a friend, editing a radio interview with Geneve Blue (who wrote “I Ching Jukebox”, a novel) several web pages, a couple custom graphics for web pages… and income tax returns (which seem to be much more complicated up here in Canada than anything I had to deal with in the states.) )

Paintings on the walls. the one to the left is a numbered Robert Bateman print. There’s too much glare to tell, but the subject is a spotted leopard reclining. We have a spotted and striped Bengal cat (newish breed, crossbred from asian leopard cats and domestic tabbies, their import was illegal in Connecticut last time I heard, because they thought they were a wild breed, cat sized cats, nothing like a tiger or cheetah or other exotic cat, but-) anyway, Cathi saw the print in a commercial gallery in a big shopping centre in Ottawa and had to get it. (Domino, whose birthday is March 4th, is a worrier, he worries about everything, he wanders around at night calling out to other cats that we can’t see in a trilling voice, sounding like “Moe- Moe- Merrrrrrrrroe! Merrrrrroe!” he is quite ambivalent about letting us pet him, he gets so happy he falls off the edges of whatever furniture he’s sitting on and then he has giochi gonfiabili trouble coping with the fact that he’s been clumbsy in front of humans (which every cat knows, are members of an inferior race of quasi sentient beings.) He spends a lot of time running away and hiding.

The painting to the right is one Cathi painted, “Bo” was a white long haired cat, an instigator, ring leader, and trouble maker, who weighed in at 32 pounds (which is huge for a cat). That makes him twice as big as Moe, our own orange instigator (who loves waiting until I’m almost asleep on the couch or in the recliner, then running across the room and jumping about five feet through the air to land on my poor unsuspecting belly. I’m thinking he secretly keeps track, giving himself a score that he calculates, based on how high I jump and how loudly I gasp.)

Another interesting thing in the top photo in this article/post- The Native American/First Nation drum, hanging from the light switch of the old old light fixture in the corner there, often thumps on it’s own. Cathi and I are pretty sure the thumping is caused by our ancestors and friends and guardian angels who have crossed over, announcing their presence, asking if it’s okay if they pay us a visit.

hmmmmmmm-

—–Jim