Started to become interested and active in local politics (city with pop of just under 100k) Left a bad taste in my mouth.
My hairstyle (or lack thereof) was developed directly in response to living in a high wind area. Wash, braid, repeat. I am sitting here contemplating the beauty of my garden, in particular a red trailing rose named Henry Kelsey that is in full bloom. As soon as I finished perusing the new posts here, I'm off to rebuild a stone patio.
Is that the name of the variety of rose, or do you christen individual flowers and give them surnames as well?
Name of the variety. Henry Kelsey is part of a series of roses developed in Canada for harsh conditions and named after famous explorers. I have several roses with Canadian origins and one called Polarstar or Polstjärnan that has roots (ahem) in Finland. Warning: you should be very careful when asking me about roses since I am capable of going on about them at much greater length than you may be interested in enduring.
Watching several zillion sets of fireworks from my balcony. We're on a bit of a hill so I can see over most of the city. For whatever reason, my yorkshire terrier is completely immune to fireworks, thunder, and anything else loud. Every other dog in the hood is going batshit.
Nothing really. Booze, BBQ, and a full day off because all my stores are closed. Not much else, though it does mark the official beginning of "tourist season" in my neck of the woods, so there's a bit of a mental switch that flips until Labor Day.
Been reading 100 Animals That Can F*cking End You by Mamadou Ndiaye (who runs the Casual Geographic channel on YouTube) and boy howdy he is not only completely entertaining, but also informative. The style may be off-putting to some readers as he uses slang such as 'merk' and phrases like 'evict your soul' and 'violate your internal organs'. Informative, but if this isn't to your taste, then probs not for you. I also learnt something from this book. We all know of the Emu War in Australia in the 1930s, but apparently there was another great war against an overpopulated species: The Galapagos vs. Goats. Essentially the goats, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, ate all the vegetations on the island causing a massive decline in the population of the famous Galapagos Tortoises. To save them, the government issued a decree in the 1990s called ’Project Isabella’. It was a success — as of 2006, all the goats were gone. The vegetation grew and the tortoises endured. This did catch my eye, though. According to the article: “Strangely, though, the story of Project Isabela upends the theory of natural selection that Darwin began to develop in the Galapagos. Goats, of course, weren’t native to those islands. But they had lived there for centuries, and during that time, they became better adapted to survive and thrive while the tortoises they displaced seemed unable to do so.” Doesn’t that just confirm it, though? He’d have seen it as goats being better able to adapt to a changing world while the tortoises could not. Mind, he’d be screaming at the humans to stop killing the goats. https://allthatsinteresting.com/project-isabela#:~:text=In%20the%201990s%2C%20the%20Galapagos%20Conservancy%20launched%20Project,the%20Galapagos%20Islands%20“a%20little%20world%20within%20itself.”
Scientists caught an 18 foot 215 pound Burmese python in the Florida Everglades, the largest such reptile to come out of the Glades yet. They found evidence that she'd recently dined on an adult white tail deer and she was carrying something over 120+ eggs ready to lay and hatch. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/florida-biologists-capture-record-breaking-215-pound-python-180980363/
I just realized I posted the above in the wrong sub-forum. Thought I was in the useless bits of information sub-forum. Oh, well. What I was doing was watching videos about Burmese pythons in the Everglades, so I suppose that works.
Typical New Englander… As soon as the cock crows on July 4th, real Americans, overcome with swelling patriotism, blare the following song and promptly fire shotguns into the air.
Fool, we invented America! Founded in 1636! Of course, my ancestors were still wiping their asses with their bare hands in Sicily at the time. Come to think of it, not much has changed nearly 400 years later.
Hmm, I managed to miss Charlie singing that one somehow, thus calling into question my country music credentials, if not my status as a Murican. Oh, dear. Did someone buy up all the TP in Sicily during the early days of covid?
Credit given where credit is due — dude knew how to make Napoleon suffer for every inch of ground. “Invade my country, will you? I’ll not make your retreat a pleasant one!”
I am playing on the computer, putting off the inevitable moment when I must get up, get dressed, and go to work. So not in the mood...
Re-learning Megadeth's Holy Wars/The Punishment Due on the guitar. One of those songs I pull up every year or so to see how much progress I've made. It's NOT easy. You can fudge a little, but the rhythm is so crazy precise that one picking misstep crashes the whole thing. Dave's solos are relatively "easy" in that they're mainly pentatonic runs that follow a logical pattern. But again, crazy fast and crazy precise. Some of Marty's shit, forget about it. I'll never be able to play that Spanish breakdown in the middle.
I just crunched some chili cheese flavored Fritos into my omelet, and now my life is changed forever.
I'm sitting in the shade, drinking ice tea with lemon mint from the garden, listening to the sprinkler run, and contemplating the two sets of notes I'm making for two separate projects. I haven't written a young adult novel in a long time, and this one would involve fire, horses, and rattlesnakes- what could be better? Maybe I'll go with that one for now.
Watching Les Miserables for the first time and I wasn't impressed with it, but then Anne Hathaway singing I Dreamed a Dream brought me to sobs. I feel like it's gotten better a bit now, but holy hell. It was rough getting here.
