Dancing Around the Four Sides

Good morning.

Just finishing up banana French toast and a little fresh grapefruit juice (mmmm) and ... I kinda want decaf this morning. I miss my coffee.

*heads downstairs to brew up some sissy-brew*

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Mmmm ... grapefruit juice. I love it but I'm not allowed to have very much (interacts with hypertension meds).

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I'm thinking about taking this afternoon to eat lunch out, mail packages, and possibly go to the gym.

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That sounds nice! There are many other things I could be doing today, but I think I'm going to stick to the absolutely necessary.

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I think I will keep the gym on my list; I need the endorphines and the forced cheer-up. Not a good night last night.

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perspi.livejournal.com

HELLO HELLO!

*passes coffee*

I'm on my second cup of tea, and about to start really really grading. I only have two hours now before I have to go get Z...

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YAY PERSPI! That grading will be done before you know it.

Yeah, right. Heh.

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perspi.livejournal.com

That's...a very pink stove. :D

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*beams*

That's my Happy Pink Stove!

patterns_rhyme made it -- plz feel free to grab!

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I need motivation and I have basically none.

Did at least get showered and wash my hair this morning, so it's still drying. If I use the blow-dryer on it, in this cold weather, the static will make me look like a laboratory experiment.

I slept pretty well last night but still feel like crawling back into bed.

It's, like, fifteen degrees outside and supposedly 84% humidity, and honestly, I want to know how that's even possible. I would think the water would condense and freeze out of the atmosphere, but I guess it doesn't. Indoors, of course, is a different thing. Static, static everywhere.

And my toes are getting red and swollen and itchy/painful again, these last couple days. This "chilblain" stuff is so not fun. I do think it'll go away though. It did before.

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silverjackal.livejournal.com

Are they house wrens? ;)

I can see where Chango is fascinated by the birds. So many, so much activity! My lad likes them too, but he hasn't quite caught on to the fact that he doesn't have a hope of catching them because they can just fly away.

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Heh. I'm honestly not sure what kind of wrens these are -- we seem to have house wrens, Carolina wrens, and Bewick's wrens all resident in Texas, and they all look basically the same.

Chango used to chase birds -- now I think she's more content to just watch. *g*

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I just saw your ETA about the wrens coming into the house, and I just think that's wonderful!

Well, it is unless the poor darlings can't find their way out again. Or unless they poop on something that isn't easy to clean.

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So far the wrens have proven to be much smarter than the sparrows who used to come in the house occasionally -- they poke around for a little while (never beyond the alcove by the back door), seem to decide this isn't really very interesting, and fly out again. Amazingly enough, they've never pooped on anything.

The sparrows would immediately panic and fly all the way to the front of the house, where they'd get tangled up in the curtains. Idjits.

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Aw, silly sparrows.

I just answered a Craigslist ad. Someone wants two life-size penguins painted for $100 each. Dude. I can totally do that.

*g*

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Why would someone want ... well. Hm.

What do you think is the oddest thing you've ever been commissioned to paint?

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My guess is that this is a business of some kind. They didn't say in their ad, but given the season and the unusual request, that's what seems most logical.

Weirdest thing I've ever been hired to paint? Hm. Possibly the condo floor that I helped turn into an ocean, complete with lapping waves at the shore where the elevator opened into the foyer, and seawall stones with coral and sea fans and such all along the walls, and all manner of fish and crabs and things, and the sandy little island in the middle of the dining room, where the table was going to sit.

I was on a team for that one. I was also one of several artists on the Addams Family Game Room job, which involved gray faux-marble walls with dead rose vines and cobwebs.

Both those jobs were work I got with Martha. As an individual artist I haven't had that many weird gigs.

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Of course ... the very first commissioned job I ever got, when I was 16, was a bit odd, come to think of it.

My dad's old friend, a fellow named Eddie, hired me to design and paint two fierce-looking graphic-style winged horses on the big metal rudders of his new airboat.

I have photos of them somewhere.

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The winged horses sound very cool. The Addams Family Game Room sounds ... interesting. Heh.

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The homeowners had an Addams Family pinball machine, which was the starting point for the room. There was also a pool table, of course.

I didn't get to paint the ceiling, sadly. That involved a stormy sky and a WWI dogfight with all the cool old airplanes.

Ya meet some really interesting people, doing what I do for a living. *g*

And, yes, the winged horses -- in black and red on white rudders -- were pretty nifty.

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takes-a-fairy.livejournal.com

Hi there! Chango sounds like a very fun doggie to have around. Alas, I am a cat person. But once in awhile I get around a dog I can get along with. =D

80 degrees and 55% humidity, here. Lovely, lovely day out there! And the high pressure of 30.20 is making my head feel great...so getting more done today than I have in a week! 2 loads of laundry, rearranged a few things in my room, made myself a meal and did some socializing with ya'll.

*sighs* Another cold front is moving down in a couple days so I'm making the most of this before it hits and my symptoms crash me with the drop in Barometric pressure. At least I can kinda predict when I can function. hee

Well...back to work for me. Wanna finish what I started.

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*smiles*

I wish sometimes that we could have a cat, but Mr. N is fiercely allergic to them.

And you're like ... your own walking barometer, in a way. Hm.

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takes-a-fairy.livejournal.com

Actually....yes! *beams*
I should try to find a market for weather reading by using my head. *G*

Months ago, my eldest locust insisted that I keep a diary of what I do, eat, see, hear, etc. every day for one month. I also decided to check Wunderground every day to see if there were any type of weather patterns that were happening at the same time my symptoms were doing certain things.

After reading my 'diary' he's the one who noticed the pattern between my bad days and the rises/drops in pressure. Nothing else, however.

Now my Mr. will ask me how I'm doing and all I have to say is...there's a cold/storm front coming in. 'Nuff said. He then picks up his own dinner on the way home. Heh!

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Yes, but after the front pushes through, you'll be under high pressure again and that'll be helpful, yes?

I'm having some of those spiced-up Thai Kitchen noodles for lunch. :-) Mmm.

No email back yet on the penguin-painting gig, but I bet you $5 I get it. That extra $200 would be most helpful right now.

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takes-a-fairy.livejournal.com

*g* Thankfully, yes!!! It usually takes several days. It takes me a minimum of two weeks to get a dress back to Lyn because of it.

I'm always three steps back and one forward with my housely throwing out stuff. By the time I feel well enough again, I have somehow accumulated a similar amount of paper stuff that I just cleared out! *groans* Even on nice sunny days when the pressure is still low, I don't fare well. But today it's really high and I'm on a marvelous roll! =D

*puts hands together in a prayer*
Saying a prayer for you on the $200. gig, but I'm keeping my $5. when you get it. hee *ducks*

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What about rabbits? They're quiet, affectionate, you can litterbox-train them...

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My rabbit was a rotten little creature that would lunge and bite.

I've met nice bunnies, but just FYI, there's no guarantee. Besides which, Chango + Bunny probably = LOOK MOM! IT SQUEAKS WHEN I BITE IT!

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My rabbits have been...well, 'neutralized,' so that takes care of a lot of the male nastiness.

Not if the bunny's a Flemish Giant. Seriously, those bunnies are large and in charge.

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Chango seems to be part Border Collie, which are supposed to have very strong prey drives -- I'm not sure how well a small, squeaky bunny would fare with her. She'd probably be terrified of a Flemish Giant, though. Hee.

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They easily get up to the size of a housecat, fifteen or sixteen pounds. Sometimes larger.

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I'm not sure what Rocket would do when faced with a live bunny. He's very destructive with toys, but he sits and watches birds and wild rabbits without chasing them. We sometimes joke that he's waiting for several of them to appear so he can herd them into a group. :)

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phinnia.livejournal.com

good afternoon from unusually snowy seattle!
there's got to be at least two inches out there and it's still coming down. meaning of course that the entire city has shut down. fortunately the boy can work from home. the little one hasn't been to school all week. (at the moment he is asleep on the sofa and our girlcat is curled up prtectively next to him.)
and yay for wrens! there were gulls that did that in the bus station in Toronto. Chris and I named one of the more persistent and daring ones Charles Squab. <3
i have also seen pet dvds which show birds or squirrels or whatever and you can put them on for your cat or dog. i don't know, i would call that a window, but some people spend absurd amounts of money on their pets.
hope you're having a wonderful day! i'm staying inside where it's warm and eating raisin bread with peach jam.

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Hee! Seattle sounds like Dallas in the shutting-down-when-a-snowflake-falls department.

I wish it would snow here ...

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phinnia.livejournal.com

Yesterday everything shut down because it MIGHT START snowing. Which ... it did not. It started snowing around 2 this morning. The kidlet had a Cloud Day.
On the one hand I do understand why the city shuts down - it snows so rarely that we don't really have a lot of equipment to deal with it, and usually it melts and refreezes as ice, which is awful (especially since the city itself is built on a series of hills) but yesterday was ridiculous. Today at least it's actually DOING something.

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Alas, there were no flocks of birdies at work today. It's very overcast, drizzly and foggy here. All this is supposed to eventually blow out and it'll be cold and windy.

I realized today that I have five action-packed workdays and then this year will be over. I'm not entirely sure how it's all going to fit in there, but I'll sure be glad when it's finished.

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That's what it sounds like here for weather. The clouds keep getting darker and then it lightens up for a while and then it gets dark again. Argh.

I think there's some sort of time-dilation device that kicks in to wedge those action-packed days in. Now if there were only some way to turn it off ...

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I think that device has been permanently stuck "on" most of this year. But this year is ending up better than last year when I was trying to run two different accounting programs simultaneously and make them balance with both reality and each other. Yeesh, that was horrible.

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Corgigirl, that icon makes me grin every time I see it.

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