We saw the first swallowtail of the season (Virginia’s state bug) and went out to investigate.
Specifically, we wanted to know if it came out of the above. Nope, that little package is still wrapped up. And, the swallowtail evaded the camera.
I have two big training sessions that I’m leading coming up in the next few weeks. And, by that, I mean my rooms are capped at 100 people and the registration is still open because we’re only like 60-70% full at this point (I stopped looking at the number earlier today). Sweet Jesus. I’ve never trained that many people all at once. In one week, I’ll talk to 200 or more people. I can go a month or more and not do that, easily.
One day I’m leading the training for an hour and then immediately (like in minutes) turning around to be the wing-(wo)man for my co-worker. He has a training of about 10-20 in the room right after mine. He’ll be my wing-man so both of us are holy-cowing it right now. The bummer is that we finish mine, start his and at some point say around 2 or 3 we can eat lunch/take a bathroom break.
I’m sure it will be fine. And, it is one way to welcome in my first week as a real employee. Yep, that’s right. I’ll be converting over on May 1st instead of June 1st. Additional background checks are going on now. Wheeeeee!
Last night we walked around the yard and let ourselves into the garden to check the progress of the asparagus. Nothing yet, but I bet there will be by next weekend. We’re finally going to have spring temperatures here. I’m thrilled. Tomorrow I have plans to work on weeding flower beds and doing other outside stuff.
As we were walking around we checked on the aeration and seeding a service did for us earlier in the week. I told the better-half this morning that I was so glad someone else did it. I’m finally letting myself be OK with someone else doing the work. It’s not that I can’t, but it’s just not something that I like doing and the last time I was in charge of doing it the stupid lawn mower and I got jacked up. So, paying for the service is alright with me.
Today we took the chain saw and the weed eater to be serviced. The guys at the counter were happy to write up the chain saw for tuning and sharpening, but they were all “seriously, don’t spend money on that hunk of sh*t” when they looked at the weed eater. We walked out of the store with a brand-new weed eater and I’m thrilled. The battery packs are charging now and I can’t wait to buzz the crap out of stuff tomorrow. A girl and her weed eater is a happy thing.
We went out to the garden today to mow down the weeds in the asparagus patch. The better-half hit the fruit vines too.
I’m happy to say the chives survived their wintering in the garage and I dug up either early garlic or onions that volunteered in the garden. I’m ashamed to say I’m not sure exactly what they are. At some point both onions and garlic were planted in the general area.
Updated at dinner:
It’s garlic and is now tied up and hanging in the garage.
I haven’t mentioned it before, but it seems Simon and Lucy are actually friends. I don’t know that they curl up together, but they spend quite a bit of time playing. Their favorite spot is the foyer rug where they get a long, slow patty-cake game going. Sometimes we see this odd game going on and we turn around and go the other way so we don’t disturb them.
Here they are this morning supervising my computer usage:
Speaking of cats, I’ve taken Jim off the About page. He doesn’t live here anymore. I don’t know where he lives but he’s always hale and hearty when he cruises past us. The last time we saw him he sat in the woods by the driveway and refused to pay any attention to either of us. So it goes.
A friend on Facebook sent me a private message today asking me if she could give her boss my email so he could ask me if I wanted to apply for a part-time job with that organization. I don’t know her boss, but someone else suggested my name to replace the current position holder.
Allow me to be perfectly clear on this point. This is the organization that cancelled the grant that funded my old job. This is the organization that I left as a contractor and that I’ve had a love/hate relationship with since 1998 (mostly hate, honestly). When I told another friend about it, she said why would you give the requester permission. I replied with a snark–something about how smug I’d feel when officially turning them down–but the truth is I gave my friend permission because her boss asked her to get in touch. I didn’t want to make it weird for her and for her to have to smooth over a conversation with her boss about how there’s no way in Hell that I’d ever work with them again.
In fact, this organization could be standing in a lake of fire and I wouldn’t do a thing to put the fire out. I’d flip the bird and walk away. That’s the organization as a whole. Now, the friend who sent me a message on Facebook? I’d throw her a rope. And, the person who is leaving the part-time job? She’d get a rope too.
So part of me wanted to and did the right thing and the other part of me wanted to feel smug and superior. I knew from the moment we heard the grant was going to be revoked that I’d never work with that organization again. I actually knew it way before that time, but the idea was cemented then. I do think how funny it is that almost two years ago no one from the organization really approached me to find out if I was interested in joining them. It’s also funny now that they are in a bind, I’m one of the first people they think of. I guess I left a good impression. Apparently, they never knew my solution for them standing in a lake of fire.
This weekend we went to Annapolis to celebrate our seventeenth anniversary. We were able to purchase tickets to see this band on Saturday night (our actual anniversary). So we went fancy-pants on Friday night and had a great meal at Osteria 177. From the super-talented bartender to the fabulous waitress to the outstanding food, we couldn’t ask for a nicer dinner out.
On Saturday we wandered around town and had to stop for this:
While we enjoyed the Guinness, we ate fried oysters, fried corned beef poppers and crab cakes. The crab cakes weren’t fried so I can’t say that it was a total fry throw-down. But, it was close to that.
As we wandered around town, the better-half tried really hard to get a picture of the capital building. Like most cities that are from olden times (ha), all of the power lines are above ground. It was really difficult to get a shot that wasn’t a riot of electricity:
We finally came at the capital from a different direction and he got off a pretty good shot:
We decided that Annapolis is a high-speed collision between Williamsburg and Boston. There are tiny little colonial houses shoved in right next to large brick buildings. This is the view from our hotel room:
And, the house I called the scaly house. There’s one that’s similar in Austin right near the capital area there too. I really like the texture and the use of stained glass:
We went down to the harbor area a couple of times just to sit and look at the water. What is it about harbors that bring out every tacky t-shirt/ice cream/candy place?
The weather was sunny, cool and breezy but it was nice enough to wander all over the place on foot. The car was taken by the valet when we got there and returned to us this morning. There was no need to use it and the roads are built for horse and buggy so it was fine with me not to have to worry about parking or driving. No sooner did we get home than we saw snow flakes and now I think there’s a mix of rain and sleet. I’m glad the craptastic winter weather that won’t go away waited until we got home.
From an interview with Stevie Nicks at SXSW:
Nicks: It worked. It always worked. So, our boys never went anywhere without us. And we were always invited to the party. But it was because we demanded that from the very beginning. ‘Cause you know, you can’t just, like, be a wimp and then a year and a half or two years later decide to not be a wimp anymore. Because people will always treat you like a wimp once they have decided that’s what you are. So you can never, ever be that. You have to be strong and tough and intelligent and smart and kind of plan out what you’re going to say and know who you are. So that people will get that right away. Because then they’re always going to be great to you. And they’re always going to treat you with respect. And that’s what you want, because then they listen to you. And then they listen to your songs. And then they give you a chance. Otherwise, you get nowhere.
As you know we have a feral cat population in our backyard. Some may argue that they really aren’t that feral, but they certainly aren’t cuddly house cats either. Our population is down from, at its highest, 15 to 6. I don’t count all the males who show up whenever a female smells so good. Because they aren’t one of the regulars. Yes. There are 6 cats that routinely show up with their paws out and their mouths open. It drives me nuts and we’re going to have to sort this problem out at some point.
The first step is this: There are three females sitting in humane traps in the garage right now. The better-half found a clinic that isn’t quite as stringent on the rules as the SPCA. Tomorrow the three girls go to have their tubes cut and then there will be no more kittens at our house. ThankyewJesus. We’re holding out hope that the lone unfixed male will be dumb enough to get in the last trap, but really, he won’t be bringing any of his offspring home. His name was once Dumbbubba so maybe we do have some hope.
Last night when we set the first trap, one of the longest lived females who has already been spayed stepped right into the trap. She spent last night and all of today in the dog kennel we still have in the garage from when Lucy bit the SPCA worker. She was not happy about that turn of events, but we didn’t want to keep trapping her. She had food, water and a litter box. I don’t think she used any of it. She high-tailed it out of the garage after we caught the last female.
Maybe she’ll get so mad that she’ll find another kind-hearted couple to mooch off of for the rest of her days. Yeah. Right.
