Forgot to mention

I also finished Going Postal by Terry Pratchett last week. Very funny. I’ve started Thud by him as well. I’m like some kind of book whore lately. I’ve got four books on the go right now. I used to be so faithful to one book at a time, felt like I was being unfaithful if I tried to read two at once. Not now, heck, bring ‘em on. My attention span is about 4 seconds long. I’m reading also reading Night Watch by Sarah Waters and I’ve had the tiniest peak into Telegraph Trails by Larry McMurtry.

It would truly seem to be the summer of the novel around here. Nothing heavy, just pure escapism. Love it.

Man it’s hot. It’s like Africa hot. Tarzan couldn’t take this kind of hot.*

Summer’s here! With a vengance. Where I live is supposed to be a temperate, rain forest sort of climate. 34 degrees celsius is not temperate.

Oh well. One good thing, when it’s this hot I just become a huge slug and read until it cools off. I finished The Accidental by Ali Smith yesterday. I liked it. It’s funny, by the end, the character that I had disliked throughout most of the book, became the one I cared about the most. I found the language very interesting too. Even just the look of the language on the page when the step father was the foremost character. Kind of cool.

Now I’m reading A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore. Not the most politically correct author, but his humour makes me burst out laughing all the time. It must be a bit disconcerting for hubby to have me suddenly bray out laughing. Oh, and I do bray. I have one of those distinctive laughs. In other words, in a packed pub, you can find me by sound alone. Not that that’s a bad thing, right?

Okay, I’m off to bed to read a bit more.

*Everytime it gets hot like this I see Matthew Broderick in Biloxi Blues arriving at basic training in Mississippi and he’s saying that line.

Wild Kingdom

Our yard is pretty big and wild. We have a little over a 1/4 acre and it’s pretty natural. Read: we’re a bit lazy and this shit all seems to grow wild. It’s good for the local wildlife though, especially the birds. We get hundreds on a good day. I don’t feed them but I do provide water and a tonne of unpruned hedges, laurels, trees, and low income bird housing for them to raise their kids in. Their happy and I love watching them.

Two years ago we heard this unholy squawking and screaming going on around a big cedar tree we have in the front yard. There were three Merlin Falcons (thank you Wikipedia!), flying around and screaming at each other. Two males and one female, to be exact. She had obviously made here choice and was settling in with Afpha bird but Beta was not taking the news well. This went on for what felt like weeks. Finally things quieted down and I’m assuming little baby Merlins were produced and sent off into the wild.

After the nest was vacated we found a pile of trash and cast off animal bits under the tree. Thinks like this crow skull. Of course I kept it! Go ahead, make that ewwww, noise. Then whoever is near you will ask what you’re looking at and they can come over and say ewwwwwww, too.

You would have kept it too. It’s Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, right in my front yard! Worries about bird flu? Hmmmm, I’m pretty sure the UV rays of the sun have killed anything that lived on this baby.

Anyway! Man I have the attention span of a gnat. It’s all tangents, all the time. This morning I’m in the bathroom and I hear bird screams. I have parrots, I know all about bird screams. There was a biggish bird in the laurels outside the window. Wings flapping, screaming, looking all distressed. I thought it was a parrot for a minute, then I immediately thought, “shit, another homeless animal shows up in my yard!” But then realized that the colours were wrong and it was a Merlin. A Merlin with a little something in his claws, something screaming.

He flew down to the woodland meadow of our side yard (read: overgrown grass & dandelions!) and what was in his claw was wriggling and desperately trying to escape. Merlin started to defeather the starling and I must have made some sort of noise because all of a sudden he stopped being a killing machine and went into defense mode trying to find the source of the noise. Then the wee scabby dog came around the corner of the house and he grabbed his breakfast birditto (that was bad, right?) and flew away to find somewhere peaceful.

Oh, and after all that, what did I learn about my little wild kingdom? Grab the bloody camera you stupid twit! I totally froze in the moment and didn’t get a single picture. Oh well.

The first zucchini of the season!

The first zucchini of the season! 

Grrrrrrrrr!

Tammy is a Gravel-Eating Giant Monkey …with a Battle Rating of 7.3 To see if your Food-Eating Battle Monkey can defeat Tammy, enter your name:

Dog – 5, my shoes – 0

Why yes, this is the 5th shoe that the wee scabby dog has killed.

I am now officially out of flip flops. She’s killed them all. And hey, am I the only one that misses calling them thongs? Most of my life, these were thongs. Now if you call them that people giggle like you’ve said panties in mixed company.

At least she’s nice and clean! She had a bath last night. We FINALLY decided to call her Abigail. Abby for short of course. And then we can still call her Wee Scabby and just throw Abby on the end. Bahahahaha. Okay, I need some coffee. It is way to early.

Dogs are great

This is Balto. He lives next door, and this is how he sleeps. Isn’t that great? I just love him. Every once in awhile he’ll have a dream and the legs get going too. Hilarious. Sorry for the vaguely blurry photo, but if I get any closer he wakes up and comes over to see if I have a cookie and to get a scratch.

Hubby is off to Ottawa tomorrow for 4 days so we gotta get him all packed up and ready to go. I swear to you, I’m not turning on the tv for 4 whole days! Can you imagine how much reading and knitting I’m gonna get done? Which is good, ’cause yesterday I bought some Fleece Artist cashmere. Two skeins of the 4 ply Cashmere and 1 skein of the the Silk Maiden. Truly glorious stuff. I also cast on for CeCe this week too. I’m doing it in some Phil Onde in the lime colourway that I wrenched from the stash. I’ve never had one of those “little summer sweaters” that the catalogues are going on about. I’ve always been a hoodie kind of girl. Thought I’d give it a try.

I think I was inspired by Mac getting her bad self a spring skirt!

Okay, back to work. Hubby is home and we gotta lot to do to get him ready to travel tomorrow!

Statistics that scare me

So, there was a poll done recently in Canada about what men and women found “immoral”. ‘Cause that’s not too subjective a word, right? It was done by Leger’s Marketing and here are some of the little gems that it found:

A recent Leger Marketing poll asked Canadians what behaviour they consider immoral. The results:

Pedophilia: 81 per cent (men 78 per cent, women 84 per cent).

Extra-marital affairs: 74 per cent (men 68 per cent, women – 81 per cent).

Prostitution: 68 per cent (men 59 per cent, women – 76 per cent).

Alcohol abuse: 65 per cent (men 59 per cent, women 70 per cent).

Sexual relations before age 16: 65 per cent (men 61 per cent, women – 68 per cent).

Pornographic films: 58 per cent (men 46 per cent, women – 68 per cent).

Blasphemy: 51 per cent (men 45 per cent, women 57 per cent).

Abortion: 34 per cent (men 35 per cent, women 33 per cent).

Homosexuality: 31 per cent (men 37 per cent, women 26 per cent).

Divorce: 17 per cent (men 19 per cent, women 16 per cent).

Contraception: eight per cent (men nine per cent, women eight per cent).

Ummmm, wtf? Can someone explain to me how 16% of women and 22% of men in this poll do not find pedophilia immoral? Are you effing kidding me? Don’t even get me started on the abortion and homosexuality parts of this little horse and pony show.

Now I know, statistics can be whatever someone wants them to be, but the ick factor on this one just bothered me. I’m gonna go knit now. My yarn is never creepy, or worried about morals, or immoral, for that matter!

Dulaan Knitting

I’ve almost finished my Dulaan knitting. I finished one more scarf tonight, cast on and knit 1/2 a hat, and have just the sleeves to finish on the final sweater. I didn’t hit my goal of 50 items and I’m really bummed about that. When I mail it all off on Monday I will have finished 23 items. Next year I will remember how fast time goes and set up some sort of monthly goal/schedule system to ensure that I stay on target.

In other news, I’m running in the Rick Hansen Wheels in Motion run this Sunday. It’s to support spinal cord research. You may remember a few years ago Rick wheeled around the world to raise awareness and funds. He’s a local boy so it’s only polite that I get on out there and run a bit.

Off to finish a hat. Have a good night all!