hop

I met an awesome woman at the movie theater, and we had a great conversation. She liked Star Trek. She thought the Futurama reference I made was funny. She wrote music and lyrics I was really looking forward to hearing her sing.

Then she turned into a poodle and and ran away. And then I woke up.

Figures.

I just drove by the CSU Veterinary Teaching Hospital, and there was a large flock of distinctly undersized Canada Geese on the front lawn. Either there was not a single adult goose in the flock, or CSU has been breeding miniature geese and is letting them roam loose on the grounds.

I am now at my favorite Fort Collins park, having a fish-and-chips picnic. (I am fairly certain, incidentally, that it can't be quite healthy to love malt vinegar as much as I do.) It's a nice day and temps are in the sixties, but the wind is a little on the strong side. Which probably explains the fir needle I just found in my haddock.

Oh, and I have exciting news! (Well, it's exciting to me anyway.) I was told that I would see quite a lot of magpies in Colorado, but in three and a half months here, the only corvids I've seen have been my beloved crows, which are fortunately pretty well ubiquitous.

Until three days ago, that is. I went for a walk by the river, and saw not only two magpies, but also the first Clark's Nutcracker I've ever seen in all my life! The sheer delightfulness of this experience cannot be described in mere words. A lot of ecstatic hopping and squealing might come closer, but this really isn't the right medium for that. So I suppose you'll just have to trust me when I say that it was very exciting indeed.

Tonight I *finally* managed to see one of the Met's HD broadcasts at the movie theater. I have been meaning to do this for ages and ages now, but somehow I just kept missing dates or even flat-out forgetting that the theaters even *did* this.

I'm glad I actually made it to this one. It was a re-broadcast of Iphigénie en Tauride, and it was amazing.

All three of the leads- Iphigénie, Oreste, and Pylade- were incredible. Placido Domingo (Oreste) made me think of a huge lion. He and Paul Groves (Pylade) were amazing in duet- at a couple points I realized I was actually, literally gaping at the screen. ("Close your mouth, Michael. We are not a codfish.")

Susan Graham (Iphigénie) was heartrending and awesome and the whole opera was just fantastic. And both Susan Graham and Placido Domingo had bad colds during the performance- I can't believe it's possible to sing like that with a cold! Except, I sort of have no choice but to believe it because I saw them do it.

Oh, and on a totally shallow note, Iphigénie's fellow priestesses had extremely nifty dresses and I want one of them. (There's a picture with the priestesses in it here, fifth picture down, but sadly it does not show the way that the skirts flare out when the priestesses twirl. Alas!)

There are several more operas left in the Met's Live in HD lineup this season, but I definitely am not going to be able to afford to go every month with tickets at $20 a pop. Not that I'm complaining- I'm just glad that they're showing these broadcasts at all. There were only seven other people in the theater, and I'm pretty sure that Cinemark could have made a lot more than our $160 by using that screen to show a movie... or even two, since Iphigénie lasted three hours. Apparently putting on Operas at the Met at all is a losing proposition, financially speaking- it was mentioned during the intermission that revenue from ticket sales only covers about half the cost of each production- yikes! Grants and donations and so forth cover the rest. So I can hardly balk at the ticket price, even if it did make my wallet squeal a little in protest. And while I could of course just rent recordings of operas on DVD, seeing one on the big screen was so immersive, and I'd definitely like to have that experience some more!

I'm a little tempted to go see Lucia di Lammermore next month (or possibly even this Saturday if I want to see the live broadcast rather than the later recorded re-broadcast.) I have a job interview tomorrow, which is always a stressful thing, and I have a sneaking suspicion that I may end up using that as an excuse to justify splurging on another ticket already. Besides, I'm pretty sure I'm going to skip the next two (Le Comte Ory and Capriccio) after that. The plot of Capriccio just doesn't appeal to me particularly. Le Comte Ory is a comic piece and might be fun, but I think I'd prefer a sweeping tragedy. I like catharsis.

Besides, I should save my money for the two after that- Il Trovatore and Die Walküre, both of which I absolutely want to see!

Why is it that I can spend all sorts of time flooding the inboxes of co-workers who would probably just as soon stay dry, and yet I never post here? After all, anyone reading this is probably subscribed to my journal, which at leasts suggests a willingness to be subjected to my occasional bouts of inability-to-shut-up. My co-workers, on the other hand, never actually signed up for all the birdspam.

I'm tempted to just start recycling e-mail into journal entries.

That is probably a terrible idea. Then again, if it weren't for terrible ideas, I would have no ideas at all.

Why do I keep having dreams about being pursued by T. Rexes?

Because, seriously- T. Rexes are very large and being chased by one is EXTREMELY ALARMING.

---

In other news, I am back from CO. I have actually been back for almost a week, but all I've done since then is work and sleep (and dodge carnivorous dinosaurs.) At some point I may actually make some posts about the trip. Fair warning: At least one of the posts will be mostly about birds.

Last night I dreamed that I was lying in bed¹ and I saw something small and furry standing on the floor with its front paws up against the side of the bed. This is a frequent occurrence in a three-cat household, but when I looked to see which kitty it was I discovered a little black-and-white skunk.² Naturally I wriggled my fingers at it and made kissy-kissy noises. It hopped up on the bed, where it proved to be somewhat bitey but still fairly pettable. I only got a few minor nips and the skunk seemed to enjoy scritches on the head.

After that it took a nap on the bed. I wanted to get a picture of it curled up next to the Tortie, but I was still mostly under the covers and I didn't think I could wriggle myself close enough to the camera to reach it without disturbing the skunk. So, no picture. In retrospect, this seems less disappointing than it did at the time- I've found that pictures taken in dreams are rarely to be found once one is awake again.

¹I tend to find this sort of thing slightly unsettling after the fact. I often dream that I have woken up in bed, only to have something implausible happen. Eventually I wake up in bed, and a series of plausible things happens, and I am satisfied that I am actually awake this time. And then I wake up.

²You'd think I wouldn't have to specify, but domestic skunks (yes, domestic skunks!) have been bred to come in several colors. Even wild skunks come in more than just the well-known black-with-white-stripes. The spotted skunk has a pretty marbled pattern. It's an especially charming member of the skunk family, with an "I'm going to spray you, perhaps!" warning that includes lifting the entirety of its hindquarters into the air and shuffling about on its front paws alone. (You can see the behavior in this somewhat annoying video, in which the skunk's antics are interspersed with shots of humans dancing, doing handstands, and spray-painting graffiti onto a wall. Subtle!)

While I was sorting through the pictures on my Blackberry, I found this:

I really wish I could remember where this was taken, because it is fantastic. I think it's the frowny faces that really make it shine.

The niftiest thing happened when I was lurking around the dairy section at the grocery store a couple of weeks ago. It all started with buying a half-gallon carton of almond milk made by Silk, a company which has only just begun making almond milk.

Doing this made the cash register spit out three coupons for almond milk made by Almond Breeze, which has been making almond milk for a while and apparently does not care to lose any customers to Silk, thank you very much.

Two of the coupons were for for $1.50 off a half-gallon of Almond Breeze. That is pretty good already. But the third one was for a free half-gallon. Yes, FREE! I wouldn't have to do anything but give the store the coupon and then they would give me the almond milk and I could keep all my precious monies! This was clearly awesome.

It was EXTRA awesome because I almost never splurge on almond milk. It is delicious, but it is also ruinously expensive, so I had not had any in ages. I only got the Silk milk because of the Special! Low! Introductory! Price!

So I was able to drink the first half-gallon of almond milk while reveling in the knowledge that when it was gone, I could have another. Decadence!

BUT I HAVEN'T EVEN TOLD YOU THE SUPER-DUPER-AWESOME PART YET.

When I went and got my free Almond Breeze almond milk, I discovered that Silk wasn't having any of that "letting Almond Breeze keep its customers" nonsense. When I "paid" for the Almond Breeze milk with my coupon, the register printed out a coupon for a free half-gallon of the Silk milk. Yes! More free almond milk!!

Sadly, the train ride ended after that, as redeeming my second Free! Almond! Milk! coupon did not score me a third such coupon. But still! That was a pretty good run. And I still have the two $1.50 off coupons.

Some people may think it is silly to get this excited about free non-dairy beverages, but those people have probably not spent the last two weeks drowning in deliciousness. So nuts to them!

Disclaimer: I swear I have not been paid anything by Silk or Almond Breeze to mention their names a squillion times in a row. But if they wanted to send me some more coupons after this I would totally not object.

This is a little late (because I am a bad, bad Hop) but I wanted to say "Ooh! Thank you!" to whoever sent me a carnation v-gift on LJ. :)

In other news, my part of Oregon has had a second area code added. Since the new area code is serving the same parts of the state as the one already in place, we've now got ten-digit dialing.

I may eventually get used to having to dial the area code for local calls, but I'm guessing it's not going to happen anytime soon. I keep trying to dial the old way, which results in getting an obnoxious tone in my ear and a "d'oh!"¹ from me.

¹ Because I am mostly at work when this happens and can't say anything stronger than that, if I know what's good for me. D'oh!

These are in alphabetical order rather than chronological, just because. I haven't bothered to mark which ones are new and which ones I've listened to before, also because. I am full of just becauses, and that is how I like it.

( Cut for being a big long list. )

Grand total: 70. (Since I didn't bother to number them. Apparently I'm too good to type numbers in front of things.)

I have to say, if you'd told me five years ago that there'd come a time when the number of audiobooks I listened to in a year would be larger than the number of ink-and-paper books I read, I would have scoffed at you. Scoffed.

But then, five years ago I hadn't had an mp3 player for very long at all, and the only things I really listened to on it were music and podcasts. (And the podcasts were mostly shows containing music.)

Most of the audiobooks I listened to came from the library, and most of them were on cassette. I really only listened to them in my car, which didn't work out to all that much listening time.

Library2Go and Librivox have made made huge differences in my listening habits. Also, I've gone from a job where I had to keep my ears open for clients and the phone all the time to a job where we're closed for most of my shift, and I'm free to take Poirot or Jeeves and Wooster along with me while I walk dogs and so forth.

To the scoffing five-years-ago me I can only say: Embrace what's coming. You get more books into your brain this way! And that, you must admit, is futuriffic.

[Asterisks denote re-reads]

( January through September )

October

49. Charles de Lint - Little (Grrl) Lost

50. Lemony Snicket - The Carnivorous Carnival

51. Octavia E. Butler - Kindred

November

52. Doug Fine - Farewell, My Subaru

53. Beryl Bainbridge - An Awfully Big Adventure

54. Tananarive Due - The Between

55. Chris Adrian - A Better Angel

56. Sue Monk Kidd - The Secret Life of Bees

57. Dean R. Koontz - Watchers

58. Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

59. Paul Schullery - Pregnant Bears & Crawdad Eyes

December

60. Mercedes Lackey - Take a Thief*

61. Wilson Rawls - Where the Red Fern Grows*

62. Bill Bryson - I'm a Stranger Here Myself

63. Mercedes Lackey, Tanith Lee, & C.E. Murphy - Winter Moon

64. Temple Grandin - Animals in Translation

65. Eric Knight - Lassie Come-Home*

66. Jeanette Winterson - Oranges are Not the Only Fruit

67. Robin McKinley - Sunshine*

68. P.G. Wodehouse - Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit

Excitingly, someone seems to have anonymously placed a v-gift on my LJ Profile. (Thank you!)

I gather that the purpose of v-gifts is for anyone who looks at my profile to see the v-gift and go, "Ooh! Shiny!" plus also I can go look at my own profile and say it myself. (And I did!)

However, I don't know how many people (if left to their own devices) are likely to happen to look at my profile while the v-gift lasts. Therefore I feel compelled to say "Hey you guys! Lookit my profile! There's a snowflake and it's shiny!"

And you know what? I'm going to give in to that compulsion. As follows:

Hey you guys! Lookit my profile! There's a snowflake and it's shiny!

I just got back from doing some laundry, because from time to time one must do such things. I was the only one in the laundromat, and while I was folding laundry at the table nearest the door, a complete stranger passing by on the sidewalk suddenly poked his head in and asked, "Hey- you're not single, are you?"

Possibly I just don't spend enough time in the company of other humans, but this struck me as strange.

In other news, my cats have taken to sleeping in a line stretching from one side of the bed to the other, rather like this:

[If you were expecting anything other than a bad cell phone picture, you probably haven't been reading my journal for long.]

Which makes it more or less impossible for me to stretch my legs out without dislodging or at the very least discomfiting a cat. It is, in fact, very much like being short-sheeted every single night.

A friend and former co-worker of mine recently moved about seventy miles east of here for school. It's much colder in her new town than it is here, and it gets considerably more snow in winter.

While we were talking about this the other day, she mentioned that she prefers to let the temperature in her bedroom drop below 60° at night, because she finds a 60° room uncomfortably warm for sleeping in.¹

This nearly caused me to faint in startlement. My bedroom has been hovering around 60° at night,² and I have been spending my nights curled tightly around a hot water bottle under a gigantor pile of blankets. And I still wind up chirruping and kitty-kittying to try and coax the cats to come sleep on top of me⁴ for extra warmth.

So now, of course, I cannot rest until I know what you guys think is a comfortable sleeping temperature. Therefore, here is a poll!

Poll #1696 Brrrr?

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 2

View Respondents

1. If it's 60 degrees in the room where you sleep at night, it is:

View Answers

Freaking freezing!
0 (0.0%)

A little chilly.
1 (50.0%)

Perfectly comfortable.
1 (50.0%)

A little on the warm side.
0 (0.0%)

A profligate waste of energy. Turn down that thermostat!
0 (0.0%)

2. What temperature to you keep your bedroom (or wherever you sleep) at night? (If you do not sleep at night, skip to question #4.)

View Answers

3. How come?

View Answers

It's a comfortable temperature.
0 (0.0%)

Some other reason.
2 (100.0%)

4. Are you a vampire or some other creature of the night?

View Answers

Yes.
0 (0.0%)

No.
0 (0.0%)

Sometimes.
1 (50.0%)

Maybe?
1 (50.0%)

If so, why didn't you TELL me?

View Answers

What, I never mentioned it?
1 (50.0%)

I don't like to talk about it.
0 (0.0%)

It was a surprise for your birthday.
1 (50.0%)

I sleep hanging upside down in your closet, and I was afraid you might object.
0 (0.0%)

I'm planning to devour you.
0 (0.0%)

I'm behind you right now!!
0 (0.0%)

¹ 15.5 °C for you shameless Fahrenheit abstainers.

² Because I haven't turned the heat on for the winter yet.³

³ Because I am a cheapskate.

⁴ Fortunately, this is their preferred method of sleeping anyway, so very little coaxing is required.

I was just coming over here to write a post in which I planned to shamelessly attribute human characteristics to the universe at large, when I was startled and excited to discover that some splendid individual has anonymously bought me two months of paid time for my Dreamwidth account. I feel compelled to address that person:

Dear Whomever-is-behind-this-niftiness,

YOU ARE AWESOME. And mysterious! And awesome.

squeefully,

Hop

Also: Yay!!

Everything is a cat bed. [Exhibit #4238]

In other news, I always see the niftiest things in Ashland. Two weeks ago I saw a Steller's Jay there, and last week I saw two!! Together! Right next to each other!

This probably doesn't sound all that impressive, but I would like to point out that in the five years I've been back in the area I have NEVER seen a Steller's Jay any closer than an hour's drive from here. And now I've seen three in the last two weeks!

(It still may not sound all that impressive even after I have explained this, or so I gather from the response I got when I came bouncing into work bubbling over about the jays. Apparently, a) there are plenty of Steller's Jays in Ashland and I just haven't been spending enough time out in the countryside, and b) what's so great about Steller's Jays anyway? My jays never get any love at work. *grumble*)

AND I haven't even told you the best part yet. The same day I saw the pair of jays last week, I also saw someone DOG SCOOTERING! (Oh yes. It exists.) Thanks to the internet, which fills my brain with ever-greater amounts of useless trivia, I was already familiar with the concept of dog scootering.¹ I had never actually seen it done before, though! In this case a Samoyed and another dog² were harnessed up to a three-wheeled scooter, towing their accompanying human down the bike trail. It was, let me assure you, awesome.

¹ I know what you're thinking. But just because I may have read one or two things about it doesn't mean that I've ever considered doing it. Or thought about whether the sorts of dogs I'm likely to wind up with might be good at pulling. Or priced scooters with hookups for dog harnesses. Or anything. So you just hush!

² I couldn't tell what the other dog was because it was mostly behind the Samoyed from my angle. It was around the same size as the Sammy, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a snow dog of any kind. I mention this because I'm sure that as soon as I gave the breed of one of the dogs you were all ravening to know why I hadn't given the breed of the other.

When I wandered into the treatment area yesterday, the office manager saw fit to brandish a handful of tracheal tubes at me, for some reason.

"Hey, need any straws?"

"Not... not really."

"Come on- we can have a spitwad fight!"

"EWWWW!"

"You're no fun, Hop. You don't like spitwads?!"

"They have spit on them!"

"Then let's use saline!"

HA!

I still passed on the salinewad fight, though. Maybe I really am no fun. Oh, dear.

[Asterisks=Re-reads]

July

29. Lemony Snicket - The Ersatz Elevator

30. Scott Westerfeld - Extras

31. Kai Meyer - The Glass Word

32. Lemony Snicket - The Vile Village

33. Alfred Hitchcock - Alfred Hitchcock's Ghostly Gallery*

34. Albert Payson Terhune - Lad: A Dog*

35. Daphne du Maurier - Rebecca*

36. Albert Payson Terhune - The Faith of a Collie

37. Christopher Stasheff - We Open on Venus*

August

38. Jules Verne - Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

39. Stephen King - Just After Sunset

40. Nicholas Stuart Gray - The Seventh Swan*

41. Daniel J. Wallace, M.D. & Janice Brock Wallace - All About Fibromyalgia

September

42. Octavia E. Butler - Fledgling

43. Neil Steinberg - If at All Possible, Involve a Cow: The Book of College Pranks

44. Peter S. Beagle - The Line Between

45. Lemony Snicket - The Hostile Hospital

46. Max Brooks - World War Z

47. John Wyndham - The Midwich Cuckoos

48. Cornelia Funke - Inkspell

I have the internet again! I HAVE THE INTERNET AGAIN!

I'm not sure how long I was without it, exactly- I think there was about a week of intermittent connectivity at extremely slow speeds, followed by five or six days of no internet at all, but by now it's all just melted into one long blur of internet-less horror and I could have been offline for anywhere from a week to countless months for all I can tell.

But today an extremely tall cable tech came and replaced my (apparently) monstrously huge¹ old Netgear modem with one about half the size, and the internet is RIGHT HERE ON MY SCREEN and I am a much happier camper.

Also, the realization that a tech was going to have to come inside my apartment to fix my internet resulted in a lot of panicked vacuuming² on my part, and as it was much-needed vacuuming, parts of my apartment are now looking much better. So yay to that too.

p.s. My baby brother is getting married in THREE DAYS!

¹ I actually had no idea that my old modem was a behemoth, but the tech was extremely surprised by it and went on at some length about how he'd never seen one so hugely gigantic in all the time he'd been working for Charter.

² The spell-checker does not think that vacuuming is a word. As an alternative, it suggests vacuousness. I wonder how one would go about engaging in panicked vacuousness, exactly?

From The Onion this morning: Solitary Crow On Fence Post Portending Doom, Analysts Warn.

I'm sure you will be shocked- SHOCKED- to hear that I got all sorts of wriggly amusement from reading that.

Of course, the funniest part was the crow sitting unworried on the post while a special crow task force approached it. The crows around here- and most places I know of, for that matter- are so wary of humans that they tend to fly away if you so much as look at them sidewise.

This makes it very difficult to feed them, needless to say. Wait, come back! There's peanuts! I didn't even get to show you the peanuts yet!

As it happens, though, I *did* manage to feed peanuts to four different crows on Sunday. This is a rare and nifty treat. Due to the above-mentioned wariness, I hardly ever get to feed crows, despite the fact that I keep peanuts and a crow call in my car at all times. (I also tend to ignore the straightest route home in favor or detouring past parks and through streets where I've seen crows before, but sadly this rarely avails me anything.)

I lucked out though, Sunday, when I stopped at the bank to drop off my paycheck. A smallish group of crows was hanging out around the train tracks behind the bank. I managed to roll down the window and chuck out a peanut without spooking them off, and two of them eventually worked up the nerve to sidle over and see what I'd thrown. Once they realized it was food, they were quite amenable to having more of it tossed to them.

After the bank I went to get some breakfast at Jack-in-the-Box (like the terrible, terrible person that I am) so that I could go straight to bed when I got home. (Getting up at 4:30am for work will drive me to decisions like that, sometimes.) I parked in a nearby lot to eat in the hopes that I could lure over some more birds, and lo! After some starlings and blackbirds had thoroughly investigated my initial peanut offering, two more crows came by and consented to be fed. Hurrah!

In both instances, though, the feeding sessions were cut short when other humans came by and the crows took flight. And these were just single humans going about their non-crow-related business! Task force, indeed. Pfft! If crows are harbingers of doom, they are the most shoo-able harbingers EVER.

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
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Hop Blog Hop

Unsurprisingly...

Weird

Opera!

Unreasonable

Question:

Dreams! They are entertaining.

More picspam!

Possibly the best $2.79 I ever spent.

Belated!

Bonus List: Audiobooks!

Books: The Final Roundup

Eepity!

Er... what?

Am I a reptile?

Oh, eepity!

This is why we can't have nice file folders!!

Conversation at Work

Late Again! Quarterly Book Report

Oh hurrah!! The internet!!!

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

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June 2011

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