Snowflake-shaped ice, the leave-me-alone gods, +10 minutes a month, and imagining…

~Wednesday~  If you remember, it snowed here on Saturday. It’s Wednesday now, and it’s obvious by the snow still on the ground four days later, that I get limited direct sunlight in the front yard of my townhouse. This morning it was in the 19°-20° range, and when I got in my car to drive over to the park and ride, the sun was just beginning to shine on my windshield to illuminate the snowflake-shaped ice on it.


I caught Wolfline #1 Avent Ferry bus, on which the girl to my left had on a black ski jacket. She kept the hood up over her head and down to her eyes, as well as kept on black knit gloves, the entire ride.

At a subsequent stop, some nice eye candy, perhaps a soccer player, with just the right amount of stubble to make it look like he was so masculine that he couldn’t stop if from growing faster than a razor could tame it.

The bus driver, to no one’s surprise, didn’t speak on the microphone to the bus at all.


I had no meetings today. Praise the leave-me-alone gods.

I had a very productive afternoon, and from about 3:00 until about 5:00, I was so absorbed in my work that the two hours passed in record time. I updated the web pages associated with our switch from Intego to Trend Micro for antivirus protection for Mac OS X.

What? An actual increase in benefits from the State of North Carolina? “For those employees having state service time from 2-5 years, beginning January 1, 2011, the rate at which you earn leave per month is changing from 9 hours, 10 minutes to 9 hours, 20 minutes.” Let me start thinking about how I can not blow those two whole extra hours all in one place next year. No, I’m not still bitter about going from having five weeks vacation at IBM (after 21 years, you’d hope so) to getting two weeks with the state as a new employee, why do you ask?

My previous boss, the one who retired in September, tweeted this today:


When, eight hours later, she still hadn’t provided any other update, you know I fired off an e-mail to her: “Oh no you can’t just tweet something like that and not follow up! WOOOOHOOOOO! Did you win them from NPR for a fundraising donation drawing? Inquiring minds want to KNOW! ”


I’m just going on record as thinking the name Fifth Third Bank is stupid. I don’t care if it’s from a merger of Fifth Bank and Third Bank. It just sounds stupid, and makes you wonder if First Third, Second Third, Third Third, and Fourth Third just weren’t available. Besides, it’s hard to say without a good dollop of Poligrip.

I’m happy to report that blowing graphite into my front door bolt lock’s keyhole did the trick. It’s working like a charm again.


Dancing was fun enough tonight, although we didn’t really have that many dancers or bar patrons. The ones that were there, both patrons and dancers, were fun though.

The most significant thing of the night was probably that I danced the entire night without the fan.

Van found a CD called Winter Wonderland by Mandy Barnett, whom I love, and he bought me a copy. Sweet. Perhaps I’ll find a favorite song on it to share here in the next couple of weeks.


It occurred to me today that I’m never going to have enough “favorite” holiday songs to have one every day between now and Christmas. At least I don’t think I will. So, I’m going to skip one today and instead post my favorite John Lennon song of all time, in honor of his death 30 years ago today.

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