How can something so stunningly elegant and pretty be such a pain to shovel?
New Scientist magazine has about a dozen images of snowflakes captured using a unique snowflake photomicroscope. The images can be viewed here. The symmetry and grace of these tiny things helps remind me that sometimes the earth is a pretty cool place (no pun intended).
Your ‘clever’ little spambots may have figured out how to register on this blog but you will never be able to post your dirty little spam messages.
Please stop registering.
Thanks.
UPDATE: Shortly after this some entity going by the name of ‘strmasteresz’ registered on this blog.
Dear ‘strmasteresz’,
Your account has been deleted.
That is all.
“So, what’s new?”
“Not much, just…mass animal deaths around the globe.”
I don’t know which is creepier, all of these mass death events (“500+ blackbirds”, “thousands of fish”) or the fact that Google maps allows you to conveniently peruse all of them.
One of my resolutions for 2011 is to write more and to that end I have declared January official Write At Least One Blog Entry Per Day month. This sometimes leads to what one might call filler posts.
Such as this one.
Oh, here’s something kind of weird. As of tonight the Vancouver Canucks are the top team in the NHL, with 55 points and a record of 28-8-5. They have the fewest losses of any team and are tied for the most wins with Pittsburgh and Detroit but have two games in hand on both teams. I’m not sure when the Canucks were last on top of the league in January but I’m thinking it was approximately never, so it’s nice to see now. Go Canucks and all that.
Maybe they just needed 40 years to warm up and become Stanley Cup champions!
I rang in the new year in a way I never have before.
On the bus.
As you might surmise, this was not by design, no matter how much I enjoy riding on public transit. Instead, I was working until 11:30 p.m. and as it happens my schedule and the bus schedule do not overlap conveniently, so as the hour struck midnight I found myself sitting on the #22 at the bus stop at the intersection of Broadway and Clark. The driver was kind enough to come onto the intercom and wish the six or so onboard a happy new year. It was nice.
The new neighbors at the corner of the street had a big and not-terribly-legal firepit raging in their backyard to help celebrate the passing of the old year, with a number of revelers in attendance, while the crisp night air was pierced by the occasional whistle and explosion of fireworks. I also watched as a guy walked directly down the middle of 19th Avenue while talking on his cellphone. Another on the other side of the street angrily shouted at…no one that I could see. But oh yes, he was angry.
All in all not a bad night and it was perhaps the first-ever New Year’s Eve on which I got snugglebunnies, so that was a bonus!
It could be better, it could be worse.
And holy tofu, I’ve only made one other post this month and it was about eating at McDonald’s.
I have failed as a blogger. I’m sorry, Internet, I promise to do better!
Last week I neglected to bring a lunch to work so I headed to a nearby food court and chose to consume some of the edible products offered at McDonald’s. Specifically I had a McChicken Meal, which consisted of:
On a scale of 1 to 5 Twinkies, I rate the McChicken Meal 4.5 Twinkies. The Twinkie scale works in reverse, so more Twinkies is worse.
I’m packing my lunch every day now.
Somehow we’ve ended up with winter about a month and a half early.
After getting a decent dusting of snow — more than all of last winter, as previously mentioned — we are now in a cold snap where the temperature is expected to hit a low of -10C tonight. It’s also been rather breezy so there’s actual wind chill, like what they get on the Prairies when it drops to -80C and your nose freezes if you get too close to a window. Much like how we’ve had more snow already than last year, these few days of sub-freezing temperatures already beat what we had last winter.
Maybe the farmers’ almanac and the squirrels were right after all.
I promise my next update will not be weather or oat fudge-bar related.
One pic, to be precise. This was the scene shortly after midnight, November 19th. We already have more snow* than all of last winter.
* damn snow, that is.
There are all kinds of dire predictions going around about what Winter 2010/11 is going to be like in these parts, though I haven’t tracked down specifics. Something along the lines of ‘harsher’, so maybe more storms, colder or something. More colder storms, perhaps. This is according to the farmers’ almanac, squirrels gathering nuts and other proven scientific methods. In any case, my own observations have been that the snow on the mountains arrived earlier this year (in October) and we are getting a dusting of snow here even as I type, which is often not the case for November, so the possibility of More Snow (compared to the almost zero we had 2009/10) seems a distinct possibility.
I will endeavor to take some pictures tomorrow for my own cursing pleasure, but in the meantime:
Damn snow.
When I changed my diet back in June 2008 I pretty much swore off sugar-filled snacks and since then have rarely indulged (the occasional strawberry cheesecake mini-Blizzard for example — mmm!) and when I do it’s usually with something unsexy like an apple or one of those Lindt 99% cocoa bars which, to the average person, tastes a lot like chalk with a vague notion of what they imagine to be chocolate added in somewhere.
My current workplace has a Starbucks on the ground floor of the tower. This is not surprising, as there will likely be a Starbucks in every building in every major city at some point. They have an oat fudge bar and from days of yore I remembered it as being quite yummy. When I espied several sitting on a plate in the glass display case, I felt a nostalgic yearning and ultimately caved in to the urge, buying one for the low price of $1.95 (HST not included).
I’m pretty sure the bar contained enough sugar to keep me on a sugar-filled bender for the rest of my shift, the evening and part of my shift the following day. To say the bar was sweet would be akin to noting that Jupiter is a big planet in comparison to Mercury. It was so sweet that it went from yummy straight over into gross. My nostalgic craving was cured, forever.
As I write this I am eating fat-free cottage cheese. Times — and taste buds — change.
Oof.
I have been negligent in my bloggy ways and for that I aplogize to the person who accidentally entered the URL that brought them to my site.
I shall make another post immediately following this one to discuss nothing in particular!