Thursday.

Ugh.

Slept in this morning;

Awoke to find my alarm turned off and stuffed under my pillow.

As I have no memory of doing this, I blame the dust bunnies.

Or perhaps Morty has decided to branch out.

Eight things...

1. I love English Lavender. The smell reminds me of the time I spent in the UK during my undergrad. It was a really good four months.

2. I can be seriously dramatic, especially if I'm upset, but I'm usually pretty level-headed.

3. I am 27 years old and absolutely love children's literature.

4. I am a fairly solitary person, but I over think things if left to my own devices for too long, so I go out of my way to be in social situations that I might otherwise avoid.

5. When I was a kid, I used to stand on the shallow tree roots in the woods on windy days and sway with the trees.

6. I have a vivid imagination.

7. It takes me a while to process things that people say, or things that happen. This means that I'm excellent in a crisis, as I won't start to panic until several hours after everything is over.

8. I love to swim; I love the feeling of moving through the water. When I was younger, I would pretend I was a mermaid discovering a deep-sea trove of treasure. At the same time, really deep water, and the possibilities it holds scare me.

Ok, now it's your turn: Tell me eight things about you!

It's a slow day...

Overheard at the office:

"That's the first time I've ever seen purple paint!"

Internal commentary:

What kind of hideously sheltered life has not, in over 50 years, involved purple paint?!?

.

Meet Dax.

Note- to the best of my knowledge, no squirrels have been injured in their pursuit of pilfered bird seed.

For a little over a year, my father has been waging war on the squirrels that have cunningly found their way into each of the four or five bird feeders that reside in our backyard. It's been quite entertaining to observe the new tactics and fantastic structures that he has employed in an effort to thwart the little critters... it has been even more amusing to watch said critters find their way around each and every one of these measures.

Typically said measures have consisted of hanging the bird feeders by metal twining (to prevent the squirrels from chewing through the cord, felling the seed-filled feeder, and running away with the spoils crammed in their little cheeks); placing a wide, circular object, such as a garbage can lid or a pizza pan, above and below the feeder (to impede the squirrels' ability to access the feeder); or placing the feeder far out on a small branch of a tree so that the branch will not support the weight of the squirrel and will flop it onto the ground. We even put out some seeds in a container at ground level to lure the squirrels away from the feeders and their need for high-flying acrobatics.

None of it works. These are canny critters that we're dealing with here, and they can pretty much find a way around any obstacle. Steel twining? They chewed through it. Garbage can lid/Pizza pan? They would hang by one back paw (how do they do that??) and swing onto the feeder. Thin branch? They would either take flying leaps onto the feeder, or would team up and while one squirrel applied its weight to the branch, dipping it closer to the ground, another would jump from the ground to the feeder.

I used to watch this while playing the theme to Mission Impossible in my head, secretly rooting for the squirrels (sorry, Dad). It was a hilarious scene.

This past Christmas, my Mom thought that she had finally found the coup de grace. A certified squirrel-proof bird feeder. This sucker is designed to be hung from your house, and has a little grate in the front that birds can fit through, but squirrels cannot. Being that our house has vinyl siding on it (not an ideal climbing surface) , it seemed that the squirrels would have a devil of a time even getting to this feeder, much less be able to extract seeds from it.

Could it be? Could the little birdies that reside in our backyard finally get an undisturbed meal??

Maybe not.


I have no idea how it got up there, but isn't it cute?? I think I will name it Dax. Just because.

My sister took this picture and sent it to my Mom and I and then posted it as the desktop on the family computer so that my Dad would see it as soon as he got home. There was a certain amount of resignation in the disgusted look on both Mom and Dad's face. And a certain amount of amusement (I think...).

As for me, I don't think I've laughed that hard in quite some time.

I'm still giggling just thinking about it.

Ice, ice baby.

This morning, the roads were so slippery that nobody could get anywhere for approximately an hour and a half. It was the strangest thing- at 6:30 am, the roads were fine; from about 7:30- 9am, the roads were a death trap, and since then they've been fine. A city bus and a dump truck collided and ended up in a ditch (no one was injured as far as I know). When the tow truck arrived to pull the vehicles out of the ditch, it was instead pulled in. A police car then arrived on the scene and promplty slid into the ditch as well. I imagine all of the passengers and drivers are still stuck in that ditch- they have lit a fire by now and are busy roasting marshmallows and singing Kumbaya.

20 points to the person who knows the answer.

Something very strange has just occurred and I am in need of explanations...

I was making myself a cup of tea this evening 'cause it's cold and rainy out, and tea is just the beverage for such a night. As I added the milk, my mug began to whistle at me. A very strange, high-pitched, whiny whistle. I feared for the safety of my mug (was the tea too hot? Was my mug about to crack? Even though I first tempered it with hot tap water?) so I quickly transferred the whistling drink to another mug. As I was pouring the tea into the new mug, the whistling increased in pitch steadily, until it ceased altogether. Hm.

Upon examination of the whistling mug, I found no cracks of any kind... nothing out of the ordinary at all... nothing different from the last time I drank tea (quiet tea) from it. So, as an experiment, I transferred the tea back to the whistling mug, where it promptly began to serenade me again. Puzzled and cold, I transferred the tea back to the quiet mug, and went about my business.

But it's still bugging me...

Does anyone have any ideas as to the source of the whistling? Help put a sorely anal retentive mind at ease. Please.

cause for solitary exhalation

You walk into the bathroom, and nod as you pass one of your coworkers, who is busily scrubbing out her coffee mug at the sink.

You lock yourself in one of the stalls and go about your business.

Just as you begin to contemplate the meaning of life, your coworker finishes with her scrubbing.

And turns the light off as she leaves.

*sigh*

Random Jenn, MLA?

I have done something that I have sworn many, many, many times that I would NEVER do.

That's right. I ran. In the provincial election. For a seat.

I lost.

But then, I expected to. That's the thing with being a paper candidate, you see... you're not supposed to actually win (although, truth be told, it has been known to happen from time to time). The whole purpose of a paper candidacy is to get the party in question on the ballot in the event that a serious candidate cannot be found for a particular riding.

Why, you ask?

Because the way election funding goes, a party receives a certain amount of cash per vote it receives (I think in this case, that certain amount is $5...). Thus, even if the party has no hope of winning a seat or two, it still wants the potential for votes... so it can get money... to run again later. So they get people (like me) to volunteer their names and faces to the campaign, but little else (which is good, 'cause I had NO time to give...) In fact, they often place these volunteers in ridings to which they have never been, and in which they know not a soul. In my case, that was a riding located approximately an hour away, in a part of another city to which I had been only a handful of times.

So there I was, content in the knowledge that I had done my civic duty by signing up, and in the assurances of the party staffers that I would have to do no more than that. Then I recieved a phone call. At work.

The caller was a man who works within my organization. He asked very tentatively if he had correctly seen my name on the list of candidates? When I answered in the affirmative, he began an enthusiastic spiel about the voting history of my riding (1800 votes for my party in the last election), and how I could quite possibly be voted in as the next MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly)there.

*gulp*

But... but... I have plans!! I can't be voted in! I can't stay here and be an MLA! Ack! Gah! Stupid assurances of the stupid party staffers. They don't know what they're talking about! Oh. My. God. I'm going to have to move. To a new city. And represent people I have never met. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

The freak-out lasted a couple of days. Until I realized it might not be so bad to be paid to represent a group of good, hardworking people, to be a voice of opposition in a legislature full of pompous middle-class white men who are more interested in furthering their own ends than those of their constituents. I could stir up a lot of shit, and maybe even affect some small modicum of change... The idea actually began to appeal a bit.

And I could do that job. Well.

Even still, come election night, I was not disappointed to see the votes of my opponents climbing higher and higher, while mine remained stable: I got 283 votes. That's 4.17% of the popular support in my riding, and $1415 for the party.

And in hindsight, I'm glad to have participated. Maybe I'll do it again sometime... for real...

Oh, and man, it's good to be back. I missed you guys.