Random Babbling Post #97

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Saturdays are made for sleeping in.

Salsa Rio Doritos were the best alternative flavor for the cheesy chip. Sucks that the company stopped making them.

 

Well, in a last ditch effort to do something about my phone 'til my new one comes in, I made a post to my local community LJ. Lo and behold, there was a local who had a spare battery of the same type that he traded me fully charged for my drained out one. He also said that if I needed, he'll recharge mine and trade back out. this means I can stay connected until my new phone comes in. Yay.
Oh, and it turns out we lived near each other as kids, and rode the same bus to school. Small world.

 

Argh, I am freakin tired because my sister had 5 friends sleep over and they talked very loudly during both the night and the morning, so I fell asleep at 1, woke up at 7ish, and barely got any more sleep until 11:30.

 

Ah well, prescription, schrescription. I'll have to pay my glasses anyway. I guess what I will do is to get me a cheap set of back-up glasses, and wait for what the doc will tell me before I aquire something with coated lenses and the like, and try to get an earlier appointment with another doctor.

Except for that, I have just recovered from yesterday night, and from having steak for breakfast this morning at 2pm. Thinking about it, it's time to get ready for going out again.
Cheers

 

Okay, fun's over - I'm back from a self-imposed period of 'off-line-ness'^1. Sorry for inflicting myself on everyone again.

Had a hoot of a day - got together with my wife and kuemper and her husband for lunch. I'm getting cheesed off at work (new deli manager is a 'burrocrat' that seems eager to push us all as far as we can go, and a little bit farther for 'the good of the company' ) and kuemper suggested something simple and painless (yet not free) as relaxing therapy - feed ducks.

So the four of us went to a store, bought a ten-pound bucket of bird seed and got to the university's Duck Pond. (it's perfect for the purpose - largeish, out-of-the-way for traffic, has a small island in the middle with plenty of trees/bushes for nesting, and the staff mechanically clear ice for the birds in winter so they can stay 'in residence' year-round)

Well, I've fed ducks before (even swans in one occasion), but this lot are positively domesticated! Before we even had the bucket open, they were starting to swim in our direction, and by the time k's hubby had flung a handful of seed into the water as 'a trail of breadcrumbs' to us, we were beginning to get mobbed - a HUGE flock of pigeons flew in and landed around us, making the ladies squeal (despite the birds' exemplary control of their bodily functions - guess they know what side their bread's buttered on, eh? )

And then they fed from us - we'd strew a handful over the maybe HUNDRED ducks and pigeons (with a couple of geese hiding in the flock) and it wouldn't reach the ground - it either got eaten up in midair, or landed on someone's back and got snapped up quickly.

And these avians were NOT skittish about eating from your hand - maybe a third of them would crane their necks up and look at us eagerly. I started (I've got this intangible knack with animals - I have gotten wary city-bred pigeons to eat from my hand) and had several pushing their bills in to hoover up the seed. K & 'Mr.K' followed suit, and my wife even tried it once, but she was getting a little overwhelmed and had to back off for some breathing space...

...and then we realized we were literally surrounded! (shut up Mr.Hitchcock! ) It took the other three of us to 'attract attention' by throwing and offering food in other directions to make the ducks thin out enough to let my wife scamper back to the path and go sit on a wooden dustbin...and even then one or two hopeful birds followed her!

As we carried on feeding them - making comments like "when did you last eat; convocation day?" "what, the students are hogging all the ramen noodles for themselves?" - I started to feel a tugging on my pants leg (hard to notice at first, since ducks were 'tromping' all over my feet and pecking their flat bills around my shoes to get ANY stray grains - though I still think that albino one was trying to untie my laces! ) but after a minute I twisted to look and K's hubby confirmed that one duck behind me was 'trying to get my attention' by grabbing the denin right behind my knee and pulling gently!

It was almost like she (yes, a female duck by coloring) KNEW how 'deep' to grab with her bill, how hard to tug and when to let go so that she'd make herself known, without either causing me harm or pulling me off balance! (in all probability, it's likely just the size of her bill and angle she could open it that prevented her from 'clamping down on my leg' and the smooth surface of her bill that allowed it to slip off the fabric after a certain force was used for the tug. I laughed and gave her (and her neighbors) a few handfuls.

Before we knew it, the ten-pound bucket was empty and we had to present our bare (but dusty) hands to get the ducks to stop following us.

It was FUN. Just a unsettling (shades of Tippi Hedren when the pigeon flock flew in, hovered in front of us and landed), but really therapeutic - to the extent that my cheeks ached a little from grinning so much.


Oh, and did I mention that all this happened within twenty minutes? Hungry little buggers, eh?


footnote: 1. Wireless ethernet SUCKS, by the by - had to wait until payday to get 50ft. of Cat6 cable to replace the *intermittent* connection I was getting - landlord is away at his cabin until labour day and I don't wanna muck with his dsl modem or the router I patch into, so I needed thirty-seven feet of cable to go from the latter to my NIC's socket. *shrug*


EDIT: Ah, the 'Cool Ranch' flavour Doritos - I think they sent all the leftover bags out here to Newfoundland; I remember seeing some just on Thursday when we went grocery shopping. I also remember seeing TV ads on the U.S. networks of a pre-Tonight Show Jay Leno plugging them with the tagline "Crunch all you want - we'll just make more."...an eon ago.

I got accustomed to the 'original' Nacho flavour...up until Pepsico decided to 'flavour blast' them. The seasoning is too thick on them now for my tastes, and seems to come off too easily - making a mess and losing some of the flavour.

I've found an alternative for this substandard product: Old Dutch 'Arriba' Nacho Cheese flavour tortilla chips. They only showed up out here on 'the Rock' a few months back, but I know O/D is a staple in the US midwest - used to eat them plenty when I was living in central Iowa almost a decade ago.

[ September 30, 2007, 00:43: Message edited by: jaded empath ]

 

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[No one word-posts, please. No invisible word posts either. -Tal]

[ September 30, 2007, 03:28: Message edited by: Taluntain ]

 

I just realized that I just passed the 5000 post mark! Yay for semi-intelligent spam!

In other news...I'm working overtime... Yay for more money!

 

While we're still on Doritos, here are my reviews of other flavours I've tried:

Sonic Sour Cream: Loved it but I must have been in a real minority becasue I haven't seen in in about 8 years.

Tandouri Sizzler: They suck. Hot and spicy, but not a good spicy.

Sweet Shili Heat: Great. My second favourite kind (next to Cool Ranch).

Chili Cheese Lime: Wasn't crazy about them, but my mother likes them.

Nacho Chese: Not bad. I'll eat a bag every once in a while...

 

I like drinking Mt. Dew through a Twizzler straw.

 

I had a very nice evening tonight, despite going to two truly rotten places earlier, we ended up in that Russian bar, with Russian music drinking excellent vodka, and some beer, getting philosophical being semi-drunk at 4am. A good evening

PS: I saw one most hilarious sight this night, an extraordinary sinister looking metal head wearing a 'Sodom' t-shirt, getting his mane gently combed by his caring girlfriend. When I was their age, metal heads used to pour beer over their heads before dancing to do something about their hair, if they had a reason at all. And the metal chicks didn't wear ribbons in their hair and looked like skinny, hungry looking black dressed cheerleaders in army boots. I also witnessed some dude checking hair and ... eyeliner ... in front of the mirror in the men's room for some ... five minutes at the very least. WTF? That was supposed to be a heavy metal party. Not to mention that it was supposed to be the men's room. Needless to say, that was one of the rotten places.

 

I guess bad dudes need to make themselves look pretty these days After all, check out Dog - he must use a full can of mousse and go through a lot of beads to make his hair so nice.

Fancy Dog

 

Japan needs to stop producing shojos for the love of decency.

Honestly what girl doesn't want a guy who's super handsome, super rich and nice to a fault (not to mention he's literally saves her life twice)? I honestly don't understand how you make a show revolving around a girl trying to decide whether she has feeling for this "perfect guy" or not. She knows he has feelings for her on top of it so there's no fear of rejection.

I don't understand how Japanese girls can watch this stuff. How can you watch a romance when the relationship is at best in superficial danger (like when she gets mad at him). Where's the literary climax?!

 

My feet hurt, my head hurts, I'm tired, and I have so much work ahead of me that by the time I done, I'll be drenched with sweat...but hey, for the next hour non of that matters because I'm on break!

I could use a good foot rub right about now...

 

played in the rain earlier for the first time since high school. lotsa fun, felt like that scene in goal when he was trying out in the rain

 

I'm finally going to play BG online with my cousin this year (me plays thief-dual->mage)

ION: The computer's making loud noises, I need a new fan.

 

Dude; one word: KISS

And what it comes down to is the ATTITUDE behind the person (behind the makeup) - if they're wearing because they think it'll make them look 'cool', it's going to fail. But if they wear it because they think they'll MAKE it cool because they are wearing it, it'll succeed.

Despite what Clinton&Stacy or Trinny&Susannah or Lisa&Mica tell you, it's not what you wear, it's the unshakable belief that whatever you wear is cool/hot/sexy/fashionable because YOU ARE WEARING it.

...and it's really annoying that I've realized this, yet haven't been able to cultivate that belief.

 

Mine sounds like a low-flying plane. It's stops when I give it a kick.

 

My computer kept turning itself off because of a noisy fan. My suggestion: Go at the insides with a vacuum.

 

Yep, that's usually a very succesful method to shut PCs up.

 

My two year old is jumping on the bed while eating a mini-kitkat and watching Treehouse station on TV. I'm not sure life can get much better than that when you are two.