“Friday Flower” or “Monday Marigold” would have been far more alliterative,
but it’s not Friday and
this isn’t a marigold.
Some days you just have to be grateful that it’s not worse.
Author Archives: momdude
Reprise From Sting
One of my all time favorites from Sting, I do truly love this song:
And now he’s got a live version for the people of Ukraine. As he says, he hasn’t played this very much recently because he didn’t think that it would be relevant again.
Cry your way through either, or both.
Filed under Moral Outrage, Music, Video
Serenity, Courage, And Wisdom
I am quite vocally not a fan of organized religion and a card-carrying atheist, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t recognize anything good at all coming from various religions. Look through my past posts about cathedrals, church architecture, and pictures of stained glass, for example. I’ve also found a number of excellent intellectual and philosophical concepts that are expressed in religious terms. For example, the Serenity Prayer, which you are probably familiar with:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.
These days, with all that’s going on in the world, I’m struggling with all three segments of the assignment, but I think the most important is the third.
Without that wisdom it’s way too easy to just freak out about everything, while so much of “everything” we have so little control over. What I’m finding in my own frazzled nerves when I can step back, take a breath, and grab a glimpse of the bigger picture is that things I can’t control at all (i.e., the extent of Putin’s insanity, the future of COVID variants, etc.) take up way too much of my mental energy. This isn’t to say that there’s nothing that can be done about those threats, but that wisdom needs to be invoked so that intelligent, informed decisions can be made about prioritizing individual details into the first two categories.
MUCH easier said than done. I understand.
Just keep doing the work every day. Despite the almost overwhelming displays of evil and danger around us, there is beauty all around us if we remember to look. And there are good people out there to help. We are not alone.
As a side note, I think that I’ve referred to this prayer in the past as being from St. Francis of Assisi. That’s what I remember from my Catholic school days, and I’m apparently not alone with that mistake, but:
- There’s a different prayer that’s commonly called “The Prayer of Saint Francis,” and;
- It’s not from Saint Francis either.
The things I learn doing a bit of quick research for this site!
Filed under Sunsets
Fog & Crescent Moon
Behind me to the east, the front that passed through with scattered rain and hail, snow down to 2,500′ in the mountains.
Ahead of me to the west, rolling in from Ventura County, a cold fog bank.
Caught in between, the three-day old moon, 7% illuminated, the other 93% glowing softly in Earthshine.
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space, Sunsets, Weather
The First ‘Hiding Under The Car’ Lizard Of The Spring
Do you see it?
I’ve been playing #FindThatLizard since long before it was a wonderful, Wednesday, Twitter phenomenon, so as soon as I stepped out of the door to get the mail, I spotted it.
It’s spring, a first encounter, and it was skittish, ready to bolt at any sudden movement. I kept well away, moved slowly, and used the telephoto abilities of my iPhone to get what pictures I could.
Event that didn’t do much good, since it was on a hair trigger. But it’s not one of the inch-long babies that are hatching and hypersensitive to perceived threats, so it eventually stuck around until I went back into the house, taking the long route. (It’s all good – the mail was all junk, tomorrow’s trash pickup day, so a detour down the sidewalk to dump the mail straight into the recycling bin was no biggie.)
Let the front yard lizard sightings begin! Any time spent lizard looking is less time spent doomscrolling, so it’s all good!
Filed under Critters, Photography
Nineteen More Days Until Spring Arrives
I know there are parts of the country (HI, VERMONT!) where it’s still below freezing on a regular basis.
SoCal is not one of those places.
We might get some rain on Friday and be back down into the 50’s and 60’s, but for the last several days and today it’s been pushing 90ºF.
On the rough days, one advantage to working from home is the chance to go out for a quick stroll around the back yard and recover your sense of balance and re-connect to the real world.
Even if you’re in an office and not working from home, I highly recommend it once every couple of hours!
Filed under Photography, Weather
March Madness & The First Strike Option
I had every intention of starting off friendly, cooperative, maybe even upbeat with March. Just like I did with February. Look where THAT got me, but I’m an eternal optimist. Let’s start by encouraging March to be the very best March that it could be!
That approach lasted all of about ten seconds.
March had other plans, and announced its presence with authority…
I did NOT see that coming!
You might remember that last night I was trying to finish uploading payroll at the end of an extremely long day. I was writing a post because I had gotten booted off of the payroll site about 22:30 because they had shut down for “maintenance” but would be back “shortly.” I (foolishly) assumed “shortly” would be some time period, say, of less than an hour. SURELY less than two hours. WRONG! After I posted I kept trying until after 01:30 before I gave up and went to bed.
After something on the order of maybe four hours sleep, I was back on the computer and finishing data entry, looking and feeling my best. Semi-conscious at best, I managed to get it done and avoid that disaster. (Folks tend to get cranky when they don’t get paid on time. Go figure!)
Still without a shower, breakfast, my other four hours of sleep, or anything resembling a civilized existence, I was leaving my computer to go get at least two of those things when I noticed the count of unread emails in my personal email. It should have been on the order of a dozen, not ten times that. WTF?
There’s a flood of emails from Match, the dating website. As I said, WTAF??!!
Someone has obviously set up a new account on the dating site and put in the wrong email address. This has happened before with several kid’s education type sites (online math & science tutoring) and with several French websites. (I don’t speak French, so that’s my first clue in that case.) Match is a new one.
However “Kate” described herself she must have hit all of the hot buttons for every middle aged, (presumably) single, horny black guys in the Deep South. They ALL want to meet “Kate!”
Alas, none of their passionate attempts are going anywhere, much like most of the red-feathered finches in the back yard, hopped up on hormones and the endorphins that lengthening days bring. All of those guys are now ending up in my Spam file, and they won’t even make it to there once I set up a filter to simply delete them.
I attempted to contact Match through their customer support email address. There’s five minutes of my life I’ll never get back! They sent a standard response with several dozen FAQ’s and answers, none of which had anything to do at all with my issue. Thus, the kill filter!
From there the rest of the day was “nibbled to death by ducks” levels of stupid annoyances.
The MLB owners and players aren’t even talking and the owners have started cancelling games, so I’m seriously pissed at both. Probably 3/4 owners and 1/4 players, but still.
The Russians continue to try to provoke WW3 and I’m horrified that their next tactic, even if it’s not lobbing nukes at everyone, might be horrific crimes and autocracies against the Ukranian people. If that doesn’t depress the crap out of you, I don’t know what will.
And an Illinois house that I’ve been seriously lusting after on Zillow, like a LOT of house lust, got sold. We weren’t ready to pull the trigger and that opportunity is waving at us as it pulls away.
So, March…
We are not off to a good start, you and me.
Filed under Death Of Common Sense, Paul
Riders On The Storm
It’s been a long, long day and I’ve got a while to go yet – some deadlines are more serious than others and payroll’s one of them.
I’ve been listening and watching live webcams from Ukraine. I’m shocked every time the air raid sirens go off and you can hear announcements being repeated over loudspeakers in the middle of the night. On the other hand, one camera is probably on a church bell tower of some sort and the ancient, mechanical chimes that sound at :15, :30, :45, and the top of the hour are enchanting, as are the crows being especially raucous just before dawn. The juxtaposition is … something.
Looking for something different for music to process payroll by, I opened Sirius/XM Channel 26, “Classic Vinyl.” The first song up is The Doors’ “Rider on the Storm” from their “LA Woman” album. Listening to it was transformative. That was an album I got when it came out in 1971. I would have been fifteen and VERY into music. I listened to this album, and this song, until I wore out the grooves. I had a pair of headphones that were bright red with Snoopy on one ear and the Red Baron on the other. I would kill to have those back, but they fell apart from overuse. And that was probably over forty years ago, so I’ll be having a bit of a mind blowing and “Jesus F’ing Christ I’M OLD!!!” moment now.
This should give us some interesting payroll results…
Anyway, “Riders on the Storm.” Yeah. Look around at the world and check to see what kind of progress we’ve made in 51 years.
Or not.
Payroll.
‘Cause I’m an adult.
Damn it.
Filed under Freakin' Idiots!
Last Week Was A Long Year
I’m sure that so many of you feel the same way. I hope that for all of us on the big things (COVID, Ukraine, the GQP) get better, or at least stop getting worse, or at a very minimum slow down in how fast they’re getting worse. I hope for each of you that the new week and start of the new month are less stressful and easier on your spleen, although I’m not sure that’s going to be the case for me. Nothing life threatening, I’ll live, but time-wise I’m still trying to put eight pounds of pickles into a five-pound pickle bag. The fact that it used to be ten pounds is only mildly comforting.
Sorry, I don’t have any sunflowers growing in the yard – yet. But this beauty popped out over the weekend as the roses realize that spring is almost here, so it will have to do.
Keep breathing. Stay calm. Punch Nazis.
Filed under Flowers, Photography
Hey MLB – READ THE ROOM!!!
An open list of suggestions to the MLB Players Association and owners, who are currently involved in a months-long pissing contest which is delaying the opening of spring training camps and threatens to very soon delay or eliminate a chunk of the regular season —
As I said above – READ THE ROOM!!! In case it might not be obvious to all of you chuckleheads, we, the American and baseball-loving public, are ***NOT*** in the mood for your shit right now.
- Russia is invading Ukraine while Madman Putin threatens worldwide destruction.
- It’s year three of COVID, where we still have over 1,800 deaths PER DAY in the United States, but the CDC is bowing to political pressure from morons and cultists and reducing mask useage mandates.
- It’s year seven of the GOP revealing itself as a fascist cult and enemy of democracy in the United States.
- The aforementioned fascist, white supremacist, anti-science, anti-knowledge, anti-democracy cultists are trying to ban and burn books, ban medical care regarding abortion and medical treatment for trans folks.
Given all of this, we’re exhausted, frustrated, and furious. We need a break. We were really looking forward to going to the park, sitting in the bleachers, having a beverage and a couple of hot dogs, and catching a game.
But again, it’s the greedy billionaires vs the greedy millionaires, debating once again which group is the most clueless and selfish.
Guess what, guys? WE DON’T CARE ABOUT THE DETAILS. We really and truly don’t.
But we’re going to care a LOT for completely different reasons if you don’t pull your heads out the bodily orifices where you’ve stuck them. If we don’t actually have baseball to go to in April, if we don’t have a way to shut out all of the things above for a couple of hours, if you can’t see common sense and compromise, we’re all going to be mightily pissed off.
We’re not going to be pissed off at the players. We’re not going to be pissed off at the owners. We’re going to be pissed off at ***ALL*** of you.
You think you’ll get by because you have massive TV and radio contracts… which are worthless if you’re not playing games. You have massive naming rights on your stadiums… which are worthless if no one’s in the stands.
Consider also all of those who rely on you for jobs at your stadiums, parking, office staff, and all of the tens of thousands of suppliers and merchants near your stadiums. Bars, restaurants, and so on.
It’s been one thing when you’ve pulled this stunt before, in relatively good times. We got by, although your finances and attendance and popularity always took a hit.
No worries! The fans will always come back! Right?
But these aren’t good times, relatively or not. Things sort of suck right now. We need a pick me up, we need a break – and you’re going to pile on just to prove that you can be more petty and shortsighted than the other guys?
Think very, very carefully about that decision. Take a look at what’s going on in Ukraine and ponder how badly Putin has miscalculated. Your decisions are inconsequential compared to Putin’s mistakes, but for those who love the game, who need the game, and whose livelihoods depend on the game, they’re non-trivial.
Don’t screw up.
Filed under Deep Thoughts, Freakin' Idiots!, LA Angels, Paul
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 