Random Photos, Heated Musings

How about some random pictures on a Friday? I thought so!

Take this car:

And this car:

Do you automatically think, "Binary"? What does that say about you if you do? Or if you don't?

Walking dinosaur balloon!

Look at this, and then answer the question.

The question is, What other kind is there?

Books!

How advanced a student do you need to be to learn about heat?

Also: Castle in the Swamp? In the swamp? Um, yuck.

 Once and for all!

The Chicken-Wagon Family? ...uh...hmm.

Now here's a good one:

It's something to brighten my Friday: my mother let me cash in some reward points she had. A little shopping on the agenda! Books, cat treats, cold coffee drinks ... ahhhh.

It's another day of super-hot here on the east coast, hot enough that I don't even care how hot the actual numbers are: 95, 99, 104, whatever. Hot.

When I lived in Charlotte, years ago, I passed a bank on the way to work that had one of those digital time-and-temperature signs. Over time, as the bulbs started to blow, it became harder and harder to read the numbers, until finally the pattern was incomprehensible. At that point, the bank took the sign down and, to fill the space until the new one was put up, they had a couple of basic, canvas-type signs put in the spot. One side said:

IT'S HOT

and the other side said:

YOU'RE LATE

It's close to 20 years ago now (really? well, yeah, I moved to NC in 1994; still, how is that possible?), and I still remember how that made me laugh. And I thought of it again today, because man, that says it all.

IT'S HOT

No kidding.

(Not my picture, but it gets the point across.)

It's supposed to cool down somewhat after a storm system rolls through tomorrow afternoon. Forecasts after that are 80s instead of 90s. But for now? So hot, just so hot. Mind you, I'm still not complaining as much as I do about winter, when the degree (pardon the pun) of coldness continually takes me by surprise. In winter, the temperature shocks me, while in summer, it's just a statement: yep, it's hot.  But it was very chilly at work today, and you try dressing for 60 inside and 95 outside. It's a special challenge.

I don't know that it was actually 60 inside, by the way, just that apparently the system thought it should be. The maintenance man came by and apparently the system is kind of borked. "It shouldn't be blowing all the time," he said, and I wanted to laugh. No shit, Sherlock! (As we used to say in high school.) Stay tuned; we'll see what happens with that next week.

Tomorrow afternoon I'm going to play in the dirt, which isn't something grownups get to do that much, is it? Or if they do, they call it gardening. My friend's garden is apparently growing a world-record crop of weeds, so I'm going to help, and have fun getting dirty. Doesn't that sound like a good plan? On Sunday, my plans involve more air conditioning, namely a movie and dinner with family friends. Despicable Me 2! Gru! Minions! Freeze ray!

Don't miss the small print...

Here I Am! Kind of.

When I don't blog on a weeknight, do you just assume it was due to a headache? (Do you even notice that I haven't written, is I suppose the first question, but pass that by for now.) It so often is the reason, after all, and it was indeed the reason yesterday. I woke in the night with it bothering me; when I got up, it was at a manageable level, so I was able to go to work, but by mid-afternoon it was bad enough that I went home. It got worse, but eventually I was able to sleep for a few hours, and woke sometime after 7 feeling fragile but better. I ate some saltines, took it easy, and then went to bed for the night. Today I felt a little morning-after, but all right.

And that's kind of a good thing, because when I saw my boss this morning, she let me know she'd need me to order lunch for today, and also a taxi for some of the people to go to the airport this afternoon. That's a new one for me! Who do I call, will they come ... suddenly ordering pizza seemed less fraught than usual. You can't believe how nervous I got during the day that something would go wrong, that it wouldn't show up or it wouldn't be big enough (there were five of them, plus suitcases). A small chickensh!t part of me wanted to leave before it was supposed to arrive, so I wouldn't have to be there in case anything hit the fan. (Everything worked out fine, of course, at least to the point I know about. The van came early, and the people were ready, so I could heave a sigh of relief in the relative quiet left behind [one person wasn't going with the group, and of course once they were out the door, he was on the phone...]). I wish I didn't worry so, but hey, I suppose that's part of being a detail person, and that trait stands me in good stead professionally as well as other ways, so there we are. As Popeye said, I yam what I yam.

Part of what else I yam is tired. It will be an early night for me, and I may skip the biking as well. Sometimes caution is called for.

*****
I saw something while driving to work Wednesday morning that I had only ever seen in the movies: a car with a set of horns mounted on the grill. Have you ever seen one? Was it a really big car? I'm imagining a Cadillac, like in Smokey and the Bandit.

But wait, it gets stranger, because the car I saw them on was a Prius. A Prius! I just kept looking, and shaking my head.

*****
I received an e-mail today about an awesome blog sponsorship opportunity. Check this out:

My name is Michelle from www._____.com. I was searching for 
bloggers on Google that talk about raising kids and keeping the 
household together while still having time to look stylish despite the 
hectic mom life. Your blog, knit-read-cats-hockey.blogspot.com/ is just 
the kind of voice we need to attract the right kind of people!

You don't know how badly I want to respond and ask them just what drugs they are on, and where I can get some. The filter knew that the e-mail offering me my share of $47.5 million was junk, but somehow the problem with this was less obvious to it (since I'm not a mom, don't have kids, don't keep the household together, and almost never manage to get anywhere close to stylish... other than that...). This part also cracked me up:

We are an online shoe store that carry brands that do not compensate 
fashion over comfort. 

Compensate? Perhaps I should just reply by thanking them for the laugh. There isn't enough humor in my inbox on a daily basis.

As Promised, Of Food and Sun and Bike

When I mentioned last night that I needed to get my lunch ready for work, I knew there was a possibility that I wouldn't need it, since we have bigwigs in the office and lunch might be provided. On the other hand, they were there on Monday as well, and since no word went out about lunch and nothing happened, I ate what I brought Monday. (An hour and a half later, sandwiches showed up; I wouldn't have wanted to wait that long anyway, and especially not for something as basic as a sandwich.)

So I made tuna salad last night, providing me with three meals for some times over the next few days, and the cats were very happy to get the "tuna juice" (tuna-flavored water from the can); Carlos got most of it, but with two cans worth, there was some left for Miri too.

And so naturally, it wasn't today's lunch after all (though it will be tomorrow's), since they got us pizza for lunch today. Not that I'm complaining: it was good, it came early, and I didn't have to order it. If my big contribution is giving someone else the menu, that works for me!

Since I had been planning to eat lunch outside, in the sun, I went out for a few minutes after eating my pizza, just to feel the sun. There was a car and driver waiting there with a sign (just like at the airport), and a minute later a group of four men came walking back from the cafeteria and said to him, "Still waiting for Hanson?" and he said yes. Then as they walked on, one of them snapped his fingers a few times, and a couple of them broke into the start of "MMMbop", which cracked me up. Haven't heard that song in a few years!

Since I complained on Saturday about missing the sun, it has been around at least part of the last three days, which has been much appreciated, even if it is sickeningly humid along with. Sunshine! On Sunday I took a chair outside and read for a little bit, just to be in the sun. On Friday at work, I'd eaten lunch outside even though there was no sunshine; I just wanted to feel like it might happen. Summer's half over and my sun batteries do not feel half charged to get me through the winter. I need more, please.

I hope there's some this weekend, too, though the only plans I have for the weekend so far involve going to the movies: a friend and I are going to see Despicable Me 2 (yay). But that leaves me plenty of time to be in the sun, if the weather cooperates.

And whether it does or not, thanks to air conditioning and a fan, I can keep biking. Yes, I've been biking! Every night, in fact, and I should go off and do it now. Will I? Ask me tomorrow!

Redirection

I got home an hour ago and have been spending time with Carlos, but now it occurs to me that I have to figure out something for lunch tomorrow... So! If you want to see something worth seeing, go read the funny and oh-so-true How to Live with Introverts, and I'll try to have more substance tomorrow night.

Sunshine! Biking! Deadly humidity! Catnip mice! Could be any, all, or none of these.

Books, Cats, the Usual

Another thing I've been meaning to write about for some time has to do with books. For someone with "read" in the name of her blog, I don't write about books often, do I? It's not that I don't read--heavens, that's certainly not it! So far this year, I've finished 65 books, and that doesn't count all the ones I start but don't finish, either because I try them from the library and find I don't like them, or because I pick up an old favorite and read a bit of it, but not the whole thing.

I've found it hard to pin down why I don't write about reading more, to explain it so it makes sense to those who don't live inside my head (a surprisingly large group). I read a book recently where an exchange between two characters really hit home. Click on the pictures to make them bigger.

"...it's the sort of book I like. It's about nice people and it ends properly." ... "Some of the books nowadays begin quite nicely and cheerfully and then, half way though, they go all wrong and make you miserable." The older I get, the less I read of mysteries and creepy, suspenseful books, and the more I enjoy reading pleasant books that I can trust. Nice books. At work recently, I've been re-reading T. Tembarom. I'm sure it looks a little odd (not that I care, of course). It's implausible and all, but it's a nice book.

That's not to say there aren't exceptions: I recently read a novel called Me Before You, by JoJo Moyes, and it was so good and yet had some troubling ethical questions*, the sort of thing that you finish and keep thinking about for a while. And in a quite different vein, Jane Austen Goes to Hollywood was an enjoyable teen novel that I think would be equally enjoyable whether or not you were a Jane Austen fan; I do recommend it. But fewer serial killers, less of the blood-and-guts-and violence, and more pleasant, possibly improbable, entertaining reads for me, and that tends to send me toward old books, often out of print ones that are challenging to recommend to others.
*But wasn't the sort of thing to piss me off, the way My Sister's Keeper did, which put me off the author permanently.

Anyway, in case you've wondered, that's a good part of why I don't write about books more often.

To completely change the topic, I have more pictures to share. It's been a while since I've had an orgy of cat pictures, hasn't it? Well, here they are, His Lordship and Miss Priss.

Pretty cute!

Hockey, Knitting, Sunset, Strawberries

One of the Bruins/hockey blogs I read said recently, "Fill in the blank time! I miss hockey more than _______." And I have to admit, nothing sprang to mind. I mean, it isn't even three weeks since the playoffs ended! There's been so much going on, hockey-wise (not that I'm complaining, mind you). Talk to me in a month and I'll probably be counting the days until training camp, but right now? There's hardly an off-day from hockey news and developments.

Speaking of which, I went up to the Bruins development camp this morning to watch the future Bruins practicing. Having been in Ristuccia many times before (such as in 2006, 2007, 2012) I brought a sweatshirt and a jacket to wear, and thus was able to stay the whole hour and leave with only cold legs--through jeans, mind you, I don't know how people in shorts did it. And sandals! Brr. But it was fun to watch the boys playing, to see them and hear them.

And the unfamiliar names, on familiar jerseys, that's always weird. I'm not a fan of the practice jersey design, by the way, particularly the white ones.

The black around the underarm sections makes it hard to read the numbers from the side, or in motion. Anyway, for whatever reason, the black jerseys were nearer to me most of the time, so it was mostly them I got pictures of.

There are a couple that are almost elbow-to-elbow names there! I couldn't get a picture of him, but one of them is named Grzelcyk, which looks to my eyes like it needs a few more vowels in there.

I always wonder how many of them will end up with the big club; some won't make it professionally, some will be traded ... you just don't know. The consensus seems to be that goalie Malcolm Subban will be in Providence this year, as a backup. I didn't get a really good picture of him, since at any distance the rink's safety netting throws the camera off, but for what it's worth:

I noticed Ryan Fitzgerald a few times, in a good way, so maybe one day he'll be there. It's always nice to see a legacy make it, isn't it?

Anyway, it's summer (not that the weather is all that summery today, mid-70s and cloudy, and where the hell has my sunshine gone), and there are other things to talk of. Like the bike, which I did in fact ride last night, thank you--keep asking! And like the latest purse sock, which is coming nicely:

Not bad for three weeks of around-and-about time. And there are so many odds and ends of things I've meant to post about, in the last month or two, and somehow haven't. For today, here are some lovely sunset photos from my friend's wedding. The reception location has a lovely view over the water. See Boston's skyline in the distance?

The bump on the hill to the right of the sunset in the photo above, is the tower in the photo below. And to the right and up of the tower, see the plane coming in to Logan?

Wasn't that pretty? The whole wedding was so nice. Did I show you the chocolate-covered strawberries?

How cute is that? They were delicious, too!