Category Archives: oddness

oddness, strangeness

Wha?

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Today is being spent making up for all the brain deadness of yesterday. Yesterday was one of those days that would have been better spent not even getting out of bed. How bad was it? Well …

The day began with me getting up and mentally going through my todo list for the day as I got dressed in my bathroom. My attention wondered back to reality when I saw a flash of green and  had the random thought “I don’t have any green pants.” A few moments later it struck me that I was busily trying to stuff my leg into my green tee shirt sleeve and pull it up in the belief it was my pants. That brought reality crashing in for at least a few moments, at least long enough to finish getting dressed and get to work. At least I didn’t look quite as odd as Lady Gaga in one of her tamer incarnations:

But it was close, too close for comfort.

The bad thing is that it was the high point of my day. The rest of the day amounted to being interrupted mid-thought in everything I tried to get done. I got phone calls from every marketing firm in the universe, a couple from people who still won’t believe I’m not named Steve, and the usually assortment of lost pets and animal care concerns. After trying 5 times to fill out the grant paperwork for a proposal and still not getting past the first paragraph, I decided to go with the flow and just shut the brain down for the day. How do you handle those kind of days?

So today my brain has been rebooted and the cogito interruptus has been at a minimum. Maybe I’ll even get some real work done and not do battle with non-existent green pants. A guy can hope, can’t he?

Maybe tomorrow will be even better as I turn yet another year older and closer to death (with due apologies to Pink Floyd for mashing their timeless lyrics). (Yup, that’s right. I have a {*gasp*} birthday tomorrow.)

oddness, snow, weather

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It’s …

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Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It’s off to shovel snow we go.  It snowed again yesterday and so this morning it is time to clear it off before getting down to real work.

(Courtesy of VSTA Newsletter)

Makes me a bit jealous of L. She headed down to Arizona yesterday for some corporate training this week. Her biggest concern was how not to carry her heavy coat with her on the plane.  After all it is a toasty 3 degrees out right now with corresponding highs for the day compared to the balmy weather in Arizona (in a city where the BCS National Championship game is being played tonight.)

Odd question of the day: Do you have certain actors/actresses you like to watch and yet you cannot put your finger on why you like to watch their work? I do and it often bothers me as to why I like to watch their work.

In one example that springs to mind, the actress in question is not exceptionally good looking, sexy, or even capable. Her acting seems monolithic and wooden when I reflect upon the performance in retrospect. And yet I will scour NetFlix to find shows and movies she is in just to watch. Why? Who knows?

So do you have similar inexplicable quirks in your viewing preferences?

oddness

And Now For …

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And now for something completely different.

Do you ever find that there are things that inspire emotions in yourself and yet have no logical connection to the emotion? For example, do you ever see a storm rolling in and experience a set of emotions in no way related to any storm experiences in your past? I do. Sometimes inane things bring forth emotions that I can see no logical relation to the thing that evoked the experience.

Tonight as I was coming home from the city council work session, I was thinking a bit of the county fair which is now going on. But I happened to be driving past a well lit section of the downtown and the shadow and hue of the lighting caused a distinct feeling of elation. For absolutely no reason that I can ascertain. That ever happen to you?

Getting back to reality, the work session this evening was with the firm doing the water and sewer rate studies for the city. All preliminary at the moment and about as dry as it can get. But, … Never let an engineer with power point loose on a captive audience. I was tired anyway from finishing up the great tree cleanup in the heat earlier in the day, so having someone recite their power point presentation just didn’t lead me to feel the experience was worthwhile. I could have read the presentation in a tenth of the time and not wasted those hours. Oh well, maybe someday I’ll get a chance to bore him to death in return.

It is still warm at 10pm here, above 80. Typical weather for July and August, but completely atypical for what has happened thus far this year. It makes Molly and I sit around with our tongues hanging out. Add to it the swarms of little itty bitty mosquitoes and life is one continuous annoyance. I figure it will get worse on Thursday because that is the day I have booth duty at the fair for the EMS authority campaign. Our booth is outdoors, in the sun, and open walled. So I figure it will be 100+ degrees and windy. Either that or it will turn freezing. (The last time I had booth duty was for the school bond effort a few years ago. It had been hot and dry  right up until that day, then it suddenly turned cold and poured rain. Not only was no one coming by the booth, but I was cold and miserable too.)

Time for me to make a few notes for the radio show in the morning and head for the bed. I’m still debating about getting up early so i can hit the cowboy pancake breakfast on the way to the station. Decisions, decisions.

garden, oddness, weeds

Weeds, Weeds, Weeds Everywhere

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Today after therapy for XXX, I went over to chop, pull, hoe, stare at, rant at, and finally come to an uneasy coexistence with all the weeds in the garden. Parts of the garden were still too wet from Sunday’s downpour to even attempt to enter. But the other side was dry enough so I spent about 6 hours weeding. I think I need a motto like the U.S. Postal Service: neither heat nor weeds above my head will keep me from my appointed hoeing. What do you think?

Leaving the weeds behind, a couple of odd things.

Do you ever look in your spam folder to see what is being sent to you? I do from time to time because I run my own mail servers and filter spam rather aggressively, so it behooves me to make sure I’m not throwing away “real” mail. Spam in general is not overly interesting, but I find the types of spam being sent seems to cycle from time to time.

Today when I looked on the server at the collected spam of the last week, I was astonished to note that there wasn’t a single sexually oriented message. No penis extender ads, no ads for fake Viagra, no young nubile girls desiring me to call them for cybersex. None. Nada. it must really be a bad economy when the sex related spammers slack off.

On the other hand, the number of ads for ersatz debit cards that work just like a credit card seem to be rising fast. So too are the work at home scams.  And the refinance shills are working the internet mails as well.

One surprising spam was one I haven’t seem before. It was offering home cleaning services. I have to wonder how many people would invite unknown people to their abode to clean on the basis of a spam email. I have my doubts that there is any cleaning service behind the email – I suspect it is simply a way to collect valid email addresses cross matched with a physical address. Perhaps a targeted list of home owners by region?

Second odd thing.

Tonight three different people called and left messages about mayor business after 7pm. They all three obviously didn’t expect to talk to me (they assumed I’d be in the normal Tueday night council meeting, but there wasn’t one this week) and in that they were not disappointed since I was fixing supper when they called. But the odd part is that all three said they had a meeting and would be tied up until 9:30pm and for me to give them a call after 9:30. It is going to be interesting to see what meeting they were at and why it couldn’t wait until tomorrow. Hope it is interesting.

Time to go get cleaned up so I can mosey down to the radio station in the morning. After that, I have a speaking engagement for lunch with the Rotary club. Since they are changing officers and holding the meeting as a pool party, I’m wearing swim trunks and a Hawaiian shirt. That way if there is any truth to the rumor of plans to throw the mayor in the pool, I’ll be prepared. {*grin*}

oddness

Odd Things To Do

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Tomorrow after I mosey down to the radio station for my “Mayoral Midweek” show, I’ll venture over to XXX’s to do her therapy and then I am actually free until 2:30pm. I like those days where I have a bit of freedom!

At 2:30pm, the local outlet of the state prison system is having their tenth anniversary and awards ceremony. I must be important since I got invited. I had assumed the other council members were invited, but it seems that only I got invited. Maybe it is because I am the one who has spoken at several graduations. Maybe it is because I am the one most likely to come for a long stay. {*grin*} Or maybe I am the only one that passed the vetting to get in past the gates. In any case it will be fun and I am hoping for good food.

Why good food? Well this particular branch of the prison system has a culinary institute training program as one of the rehab programs to ensure that inmates have viable skills when they are released. The program caters for many events in the community and will cook to order for non-profits. Thus some local churches sell cabbage pockets and other goodies to their flock that are made by the prisoners as a fund raiser. In any case, every time I have been out there, be it for a meeting, a graduation, to tour a program, or for education on gangs, there has been good food at hand. It is really interesting when you attend a graduation because one of the standards is that they have cake for the inmate/graduates following the ceremony. Outsiders go first, then the inmates. Given the treat free diet of the inmates, cake is such a rarity that the prisoners are on their absolute best behavior in hopes of getting a second piece. They are often more excited than a class of second graders by the thought of cake with {*gasp*} icing. Some of them will stare with anticipation and longing at their cake, eating it in tiny bits just to prolong the pleasure. Think about how sad it is to have a life so drear that even a piece of cake is a cause for tears.

In other odd news of the day, I now know when the Super WalMart here will be finished remodeling. I got a call asking me to speak at the Grand Re-Opening at 8am on July 1st. That should be interesting just to see the crowds waiting to rush in the doors. It’s a good thing that they having it early in the morning since I had already committed to speaking to the Rotarians at noon.

It poured rain during the city council meeting tonight, culminating in a tornado warning. Since city hall is next to the fire station, we got to see all the spotters on the fire trucks heading out to be on station to watch for tornadoes. I suspect they didn’t see much since the tornado was 15 miles down the road and moving away from us. Since we were basically through with the meeting when the skies opened and poured, we didn’t adjourn and instead went through all the misc. business we could dredge up. That at least let us wait until we could see across the sidewalk before exiting council chambers. This is shaping up to be one of the wettest Junes on record here. Nothing like the shifting weather patterns from global warming to make life interesting.

Time to get some work done and then get to bed. That 6am rise and shine for the radio show can come awfully early.