Grackle Season

Over the weekend I saw a house finch and a nuthatch at the feeder and the suet. The weather is supposed to warm up this week, which is good. The weekend was in the forties – brr - but now it's getting up into the 60s and 70s. Tulips, crocuses and daffodils are starting to come up, and the lawn is greening. It is full of lumps and bumps. So is the little black cat. It has become quite curvaceous. I wonder if its owners have realized that it’s pregnant yet.

I think when I get my next paycheck I will buy a weather alert radio.

My car seems to have something wrong with the muffler. When I drove it over to the Eastern Suburbs to go shopping, it was very LOUD. While there I bought several t-shirts, a button-down shirt, books, CDs, finials for a couple of lamps, a pair of crop pants (and tried on endless pairs of jeans, fruitlessly), underwear, socks, and stockings. I've also gotten a haircut.

The house is a mess and my parents will be here in less than a week!

And then I have to go to New York for yet another wedding. I'm tired of weddings.

I wonder if I should give up the blog for real. Only three people visited it last week. Wouldn’t that be an irony, speaking at a conference about blogging after I’ve given it up.

I wish I had a faster connection at home. It'd be easier to maintain, then.

Work is seeming more and more pointless these days. I really do not have enough to do, and requests for more are gently turned aside. The projects I am able to work on are either never going to materialize while I am there (so I don’t feel much personal investment in them) or have so many petty political hoops to jump through that, again, I don’t see much likelihood of my getting to do anything more with them beyond noodling about on my desktop. So, anyways, I’m feeling burned out at work, which is bad, because I spend most of my good hours there.

Not that my own writing work is seeing much progress. I do have the raw materials for the next few monthly clusters printed out, so, really, it’s just a matter of sitting down to deal with them. I really ought to get them started and hopefully done before the weekend, which will be a whirlwind of cleaning and tidying in anticipation of my parents' visit. (That, in turn, will further disarrange my writing efforts.)

It’s too dark and early this morning. The wind has risen, the growl of thunder and the splat of rain, and as the sky lightens – lightning. The air grows heavy with rain, graying out the beginnings of dawn back into murky twilight. It is weather to be inside for, and I… I must go out into it, raincoat wrapped tight, bare legs hastening through the wet not-quite darkness.

That feels much like life this week...

Comments

[Pilgrim/Heretic]

I'm still here!

Sorry about the work blahs... is there any chance you can work on your own writing while you're there, so it looks like you're busy but you're doing something more meaningful?

[Rana]

I've thought about it... unfortunately, I really loathe using the office computer for typing (the keyboard stinks, it's a PC, blah blah) and when my boss and/or students are around, it makes me feel rather self-conscious. I did attempt it, briefly, and then my micro-drive had to be reformatted, and the office computer has refused to recognize it ever since. So, alas, no. :(

(I suppose I _COULD_ work something out, like emailing myself, but then I'd have to log on daily to my slow dialup - which is part of the reason I've not been blogging much. I know, excuses, excuses, but, yeah. I'm just counting the days until I leave.)

[David]

Rana, please don't leave. I, too, know the frustration of only a few comments.