the_vulture

Inspired, in part, by conversations with swankivy , I've decided to put some effort into maintaining seasonal displays. I've put up displays for specific seasonal holidays such as Samhain, Yule, and Ostara before, but I've never put up anything for Midsummer. That changed not long after my Midsummer stay at the beach.

Below is my first Summer seasonal display, featuring sea shells, gathered during my Midsummer vacation, and one very cute stuffed lobster toy:

For the last few days, my life has revolved around the activities of the contractors I've been assigned to keep track off. They are currently grading the roads, as specified by the engineer, into my uncle's future subdivision. I've been noting start and stop times for various pieces of equipment, in particular the bulldozer (henceforth, the Cat) and two dump trucks (nicknamed Red and Blue (though blue is really red, white, and blue, but I digress...)). I've been pretty much fixed to staying in visual contact of Red and Blue so I can keep track of how many loads of dirt they take and where they take them. The task has it's inconveniences, but, at the same time, it gives me a lot of opportunity to catch up on various stationary activities, like blogging, for example. 

Of course, having to continually focus at least part of my attention on the trucks may have slightly deleterious effects upon my sanity, as demonstrated by my rather one sided conversations with the trucks ("Red, where are you? Ah, there you are. What the hell took you so long? Blue, did you just head out the other way when I wasn't looking?!?")

My dad gets to play with a loader and an excavator whilst I sit around all day; that's not fair.

Meanwhile, the exercise regime has been shot to crap over the last week and a bit. I'd been doing well establishing a routine of running, cycling and yoga over the last several weeks, but that ended early last week when I came down with a rather nasty chest cold. At the same time, my right knee started acting up again. I think I may have moved oddly in my sleep, as I woke up in the middle of the night with it being a bit sore. I attempted to end the lack of cardio yesterday with a bike ride out on the property. That lasted all of ten minutes. Granted, I hit the road hard and fast, but I didn't expect to soon be coughing hard enough to see spots. Nope, cardio, at least hard cardio, will have to wait for a while still.
 
The job hunt isn't going as well as I would like. A call centre job I had an over the phone screening interview for has declined to offer. I strongly suspect that I'm 'overqualified'; few people will hire someone they think will be moving on very soon, as I suspect they think I would. I wonder how many people have been stuck unemployed simply because they were 'overqualified' for all the work that was actually available. *sigh* Still, I'm fairly hopeful I'll pick up something fairly soon; I'm just trying to keep from settling for minimum wage work.

With lots of time available for things like blogging, I've started the transfer of entries from person.com to here. I've been posting them using the Date Out of Order function, so they'll be in the appropriate chronological order. I've also begun putting tags into my past entries. I've become quite fond of tag clouds in my other blog and was pleased to discover that I could use them here, as I was selecting a new theme for my LJ blog (Do you like?). It's going to take a long time to get things sufficiently tagged, methinks.

(What is Red doing now?)

Other odds and ends:

• I've purchased and arranged for the delivery of 1grl_revolution's birthday pressie.
• I've recorded a chapter of the novel I've been reading to my girlfriend. I'll have to get that burnt to disk and sent out sometime soon, as well as the really cute pressie I picked up for her. 
• I've been seeing coloured balls rolling around in spirals and such whenever I close my eyes, courtesy of playing way too much Zuma.
• I've discovered that Chucky really, really doesn't like the utility jeep. He'll let you walk up pretty close before ducking into his hole, but he bolts for it on hearing the jeep.
  

And that's about it for now.

The other night, as I lay me down to sleep, I was looking at the rather large picture window that takes up most of my outside wall and realized that, in the event of a zombie holocaust, I'd be zombie bait. (Don't ask me why I think about such things; maybe it's just the gamer in me trying to find a way to express itself now that I'm no longer playing D&D.)

Essentially, not only is my room fairly indefensible against zombies (or anyone armed with a brick, for that matter), the entire house, as beautiful as it is, would have as much resistance to invasion as a greenhouse in a field of rocks. My former single room flat has more defensibility.

Granted, the property has one thing that my flat does not - the garage. Now much of the garage, too, has far too many windows to even keep a rabid gang of hoodies at bay for long, but the middle bay can actually be closed off from the front and provides far more defensive value. Furthermore, it's got a few things I wouldn't have access to in my former flat, like the spade, the machete, the chainsaw, the gas powered scythe, the axes, the pitchfork, the TRACTOR (with enclosed cabin), the other chainsaw, the pick axe, and other goodies (did I mention the machete?). Yep, a veritable arsenal of zombie destruction... if I could make it to it after the house got overrun. *chuckle*

In other news, I completed another 3.5 mile run. The thighs were a bit unhappy about that to begin with, but shut up soon after the run began. The nipples, sadly, took up the cry of complaint as they got chaffed. Yerg! Add in a bit of surveying that involved climbing over windfalls and you've got a fairly physically active day.

Final musing: camouflage is not always such a good thing. After spending an hour or so riding around on the lawnmower, I commenced with trimming the odd bits of uncut lawn with the battery powered strimmer (also from the arsen... err... garage). At one point I looked down as I saw what I initially believed to be water running along a bit of concrete. A second glance revealed the movement to actually be a baby garter snake that just narrowly avoided getting snicker sneed by the weed wacker. The wee thing made good its narrow escape and fled into what remained of the grass, disappearing from view within moments. 

Yep, that's the salient bits that have run through my mind today, only to continue without stopping...

Whilst doing an image search on "Saturnalia", I came across this image. It reminded of tales told that domestic turkeys have been so dumbed down by in-breeding, that they'll drown in a rainstorm as they always look up when rain touches their head and that their beaks are so malformed that they let water in.  

After a little looking around, I discovered this wasn't quite the case. They don't look up because they're dumb, they look up because of a nervous disorder, and only for up to a minute. So if it's a light rainfall, I guess they'll live. 

But there are some extraordinary differences between wild and domestic turkeys. The domestic variety are now so large and cumbersome that they are pretty much wholly dependent on humans for survival, as they cannot fly or escape predators.  

In fact, they can't even breed without human help, as the males (toms) have such large breasts that they can't umm... get in there, so to speak. Yes, this has led to the creation of one of those ever so amusing jobs, performed on farms around the world, turkey masturbation. 

As side note, not all turkeys are the result of sexual reproduction; some turkeys arise from unfertilized eggs, which is known as parthenogenesis. Yes, you've got it right: virgin birth turkeys! Hallelujah! 

If that weirds you out just a little too much, you'll be pleased to know that some wild(er) versions of turkeys are still being farmed. They're pricier, but apparently have a rich flavour to them (domestic turkey is so bland, it has to have flavour added to it). 

For way more information about turkeys than you'll ever need to know, read here:  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticate d_turkey

Enjoy!