Blog wisdom

From a blog called Asparagus Pee:
http://chrisandjanet.net/weblog/blogger.html
"I was visiting with my good friend Bob the other day, and he showed me this model for evaluating projects. The idea is that everyone wants things to be Good, Fast and Cheap, but in real life, you only get two. So if you want to remodel your kitchen, you can go cheap and good and do it all yourself, but it won't be fast, or you can hire it done and get it done well as quickly as possible, but it won't be cheap. Or you can hire it done by a bunch of unlicensed people with little experience, and it may be fast, and it may be cheap, but it won't be good.
He pretty much convinced me that you can apply this model to everything."

Discuss.

Cute Minnesota Wildlife

Chipmunks, for instance.

(This picture comes from a website I 'googled', in case you're interested.)



Yesterday, I mowed around the corner of the propane tank...and I guess the excavation began after I'd graciously cleared the site.
By evening, a LOT of gravel was already piled up. From my office, I could watch him* burrow--lol, it's really cool to see. Such quick little kicks, and the dirt literally flew!
(No problem--at least he didn't choose the middle of the yard.)
*Who really cares if it's a him or a her?








Ha! I just took this picture through the screen:







(Click to enlarge)
Ya see him?

---------------------------------------
So, I went back in the house to "post about it " ...lol

As I sat down at the computer, I heard (What's that???) rapid bump! bump! bumps...ON the house. Oh, oh...MORE wildlife for YOU!!

LOL...must be young woodpeckers, 'cuz they (THEY!) let me get pretty close:










Sheesh...now I need to do some hole filling on the house. I found at least 6 small caverns on the east and south sides...damn.

How cute is all that wildlife NOW, Birdie, huh?

I'm asking you

Is this honestly better...








then this? LOL...yes, I'm done mowing for this week, and you missed the pre-mow whining!



(Counting your blessings?)


Because of the position of my apple tree (too much shade), I only get apples every other year, so I forgot about this again till today:








Mowing is a GREAT way to peel apples!!






LOL

Glitters not

It's on the counter and the floor,
into Produce, and tracked in the door
of the office of the store.
(You can tell when I've been
to the restroom, too!)
Whew!

It's on me, of course--like sparkly dirt
on my shoes and inside the V of my shirt.
My coffee shines;
I inhale it sometimes
-- then what've I got?
(Read the title out loud)

Damn, I'm funny!!

#6--Butterflies!

Yesterday, I saw a tree full of migrating Monarch butterflies...AND I had my camera handy. Wow, how often does that happen, huh?
There were many more than show in these pictures, tucked into the leaves and turned away from the photo-op. Poor things had no idea they could have been immortalized at Ephemeral Florist!


Be sure to click these pictures for a larger view.

A few delightful things

The first in an ongoing series of "Favorite Delightful Things"...lol....probably.

YES, I started Christmas designing last week. What a great feeling it is to actually start early for a change! Looking back in the archives, I see I started Christmas on the 29th of October last year. That's WAAAY too late!

You there, with your hand raised!

"Okay...but don't you think...I mean, isn't AUGUST a little, um, ya know, early??!?"

(Fav thing #1--Q&A sessions!)
August, as a month, sucks. It's hot and usually dry. No sane person goes outside unless it's on the way to an air conditioned vehicle (to go somewhere else that's even cooler). What ELSE is there to do but crank the Christmas CD's and design for the holidays? Besides, that means I get to play with Delightful Thing #2:








(Click this picture for sure!)


GLITTER.

Did I mention I LOVE glitter? Yup, I do. I think it came from the Magpie side of the family.

(Delightful Thing #3 is that wonderful feeling you get as you crawl back into bed after a 4AM bathroom break--AHHHHHhhhhhh! mmm, snork, snork, snort)

Delightful Thing #4--stuff like this, out back, when I got home tonight.







I suppose you think my Delightful Thing #5 would be my readers, right?
(Hmm, let's see....I have nine fairly regular readers, five of whom are related to me...four who comment once in awhile... two who stop by here more than once a week, and a bunch still looking for 'Daud'.....but yeah, you delight me...big time! LOL)

LOL...Thanks!

Ok, what delights YOU?

About that last post and it's comments...

LOL...on closer inspection, there are THREE blunders in that announcement.

The words "grammatic", "regimine" AND "erros" should be grammatical, regimen and errors...but who's counting??

So, am I missing any others?

(Thanks for the comments, you two! lol...I only saw "erros"!)

I owe it to Mom and the nuns...

Take the Everyday Spelling Test and see how well you spell. I myself am a...... Spelling Nazi You scored 90 Spelling smarts!

"Okay so you've either cheated, or you know all the vocabulary rules by now. "I before E, except after c." bla bla bla. Great job. You know how to spell, and you might be a bit anal retentive about it too. Not a bad thing mind you, but I get picked on for it." The graphic is too big on the page, so here's what it says: "You are the Adolph Hitler of spelling. Your grammatic regimine is so strict, no erros get past you; and no one with bad grammar talks to you for very long. If anyone doesn't use at least relatively good grammar, they don't stand a chance with you." (That's the way it's written, 'erros' and all....) Mom would be so proud! No, NOT about the Hitler part, but about that last sentence....and, look! there's a mis-spelled word in the announcement. Sheesh!

Apples

Remember this spring--those
delicate, sweet apple blossoms?





The birds get most of the apples, and then the bees and lady bugs move in on the damaged fruit, but they always manage to leave one or two for me:

One of late summer's many charms

Bzzzzzzz...bzzzzzzzzzzzz....
It's here, in my office.
Landing on my leg.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....
Then my neck.
Then my arm. Shoo!
bzz...bzzzz...bzzzz
Back on my arm. Dammit, SHOO!
bzzzz..
past my ear--bzzzz!
Back on my arm.
(Slap! Ow)
Rrrrrrrr!
......................
....................
...........?

Back.
On.
My.


Arm.







I ask you--where's the flyswatter when you NEED it?

A perfect day

If you've never been on one of this country's Rails to Trails bikepaths, you've missed a lot. Today, it's gloriously temperate for mid-August in Minnesota (it's 72 right now, at 3:30, and sunny, with low humidity!)
Wow, huh?







So, earlier today, we had to "do the trail" that's right across the road from my house. The amount of walkers, bikers, runners and skaters was moderate, but we all greet each other when we pass by.
The illusion seems to be that we never expected to see anyone ELSE out here.....! lol







From where I took the first picture, this field's directly to my left, and these trees to my right:







I think the Lake Woebegon Trail is one of my favorite places on earth, especially on a cool, sunny summer day.
I'll make sure to take a corresponding picture series this fall, when all this lush green will be rusts, golds and reds, ok?


And yes-I-know, you've seen hundreds of pictures of yellow cone flowers in your lifetime, but these were needing to be photographed this morning.
Here and there, I saw lovely purple vervain, too, but none growing next to the coneflowers....so here's a "google" of vervain:




Recognize it?

A day in the life...

It's been too long since I've shown you pictures of Central, where I'm working on silk arrangements full time now.
I know.
You miss them!

Today, I snapped a picture every hour, on the hour--just for YOU!
Ready?





















LOL...one of the joys of using a "beta" feature (Blogger's Add Image button) is that you never know how it'll turn out! They're scrambled...but the clock in each picture'll give you some idea, ok?
Oh, BTW, I think 2PM is the last one...gotta figure out how to add the others, right?
Don't hold your breath....

The rest of the day, in the life...

OK....here're the others! (And YES, I know there are 11 of 'em, in an 8 hour day...so, sue me!

Question:

You know that little bit of skin between your front teeth--the thingy that hurts after you've eaten pizza? What's it called?
(Anon, you usually know this stuff...)
My cousin sells sweet corn to the store where I work, and today he left a few cobs for me (Thanks, Rog!). Of course, I got home and nuked one right away. Mmmmm, he's right, it's the BEST I've had in years....and then I remembered:
Pizza AND sweet corn.
Ow, Ow!

This is cool!

If you've read this blog more than two or three times in the past few months, you know that I call my precious daughter "daud", and that she recently got married, right?

Evidently, there's a person or two in South East Asia named Daud whose daughter got married lately, too. I've had 'hits' from India, Singapore and the Russian Federation looking for "daud's daughters wedding". lol!

Sorry, folks, but this series of entries was about Birdie's Daughters Wedding.

I wish all the best to Daud and daughter--congratulations! I hope you have many joyous years together, and that your wedding was as wonderful as MY daud's was...lol

So much stuff

Wandering into a department store or the grocery store or even my favorite store, I'm always struck by the myriad choices I have. I appreciate having 30 tee-shirts in each of three sizes that might fit me (my size, one smaller and one larger, you know?) I expect that the buyers for the store know how many will probably sell this month, so I don't think about the extravagance or overkill that so much product represents. I can usually choose fairly thoughtlessly, pay for the merchandise and leave.

At work though, I'm often struck by the endless "giftware" that I work with...today, it was baskets, Made in China to look Early American...yikes!
Each rectangular basket had a small piece of masonite wired to the front of it with one of these scenes:



(I removed them so the baskets would be more useable.)
I tried to figure out if they were prints, or if some poor souls had to sit and paint the same ugly buildings thousands of times. I can't tell, really--there are differences in shading and execution on each little board, but it could be only slapdash printing techniques.
The thing that caught my eye, though, was the tree to the left of the church (and to the right of the red house)--is that Early Chinese-American?
I only hope someone had a little fun designing what they hoped would appeal to us...or that they did it, tongue in cheek, to see if we'd buy it anyway...OR, that they did it cynically to prove that Chinese art could "show through" even something as silly as this.

Gearhead alert

These things interest Minnesotans, trust me:

I downloaded and watched this video http://www.v8snowblowers.com/index.html
and I expected to see an amazing column of snow shoot out of the thing.

Instead, I was back in the garage with my teenage son....lol