Makes it feel like Wednesday already. This morning before dawn the moon shone into my window through the trees and it was like a painted picture in a children's book maybe. Slate blue sky and big yellow moon setting behind the winter branches, it was almost surreal in the sharp edges and simple forms of the image ( Read more... )

Heading down toward the single digits again, which is quite a wrench after the warm weather we had for the last few days. No heavy snow, but all the melt and spongy stuff from the weekend is now hard as iron again. I'm trying to get the woodstove going after it has set cold for a week, which is sometimes a challenge if there's not enough breeze ( Read more... )

Wednesday will kill me yet. It's just tooooooo long ( Read more... )

This is a surprise to meApparently as a result of hacking attempts originating in China and seeking to pry into gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, Google will no longer censor search results as demanded by the Chinese government. They announced that they will close their Chinese operations completely if forced to do so. All I have to ( Read more... )

Not the best. Some sort of power failure in Rockford took down the internet connections at most of the consortium's member libraries. We were one of three exceptions because we are far enough east that our T1 line goes through a different POP. Not that it made much difference, since with the main site offline, we had no catalog, no technical ( Read more... )

Still down in the dumps, maybe farther than yesterday. This is so unlike me I don't know what to make of it. Read Kyell Gold's latest story posted on FA, which didn't help. It's not porn, which pleased me as I think he's a really fine writer when he talks about feelings, hopes and fears of his characters rather than describing every "unf" in ( Read more... )

Still with the rain and gloom all day long.

I think everything is totally saturated, creek is rising. Neighbors' chickens hanging out under our birdfeeders, gleaning. Leftovers from last weekend's party are finally gone, I had to cook something today. ;p

The rumors and clamor about "swine flu" are taking off, apparently. I keep seeing references to ( Read more... )

The sheepie got at least a temporary reprieve. Vet says it's probably one of three things, old age, injury, or Paralaphostrongylus tenius. He could find no evidence of injury, and the third choice is a parasite infection commonly called "brain worms" (ewww) that comes from deer. A typical parasitic worm, it has a two host life cycle that involves ( Read more... )

Despite the weather service continuing to insist that there was "no more than four inches of accumulation" we have a good six inches at work and five inches at my house. And it's still snowing, with the so-called weather advisory extended until midnight tonight. Driving was very dangerous this afternoon and has probably gotten worse since sunset. ( Read more... )

There was a young man from Quebec,
Who stood buried in snow to his neck.
  When they asked, "Is you friz?"
  He replied "Yes, I is.
But we don't call this cold in Quebec."
[Vague reference to the befuddled political tangle in Canada, in which the prime minister who is about to get tossed out of power by a Parliamentary vote of no confidence has been ( Read more... )