As you may have noticed, I haven’t been posting much lately. I just don’t have much to say of late. And the whole sxKitten thing isn’t really working for me any more - it just doesn’t fit. So I’m retiring the sxKitten and hanging up my blogging hat.
I’ll still be out there commenting, and Dean has generously offered to let me post at his place if I feel the urge to blog. But around here, it’s lights out.
Vale, lacerte!
On my way to work every morning, I pass a field. Actually, I pass many fields, but this field in particular can usually be counted on to house an eagle or 6. Or 20.
It’s hard to tell at this size, but there are at least 19 eagles in this photo, and there were 3 more out of frame. You can see the embiggened version here. As I was watching from the side of the road, a tractor pulled up beside me and the farmer therein said the farmer who owns said eagle-rich field dumps his not-so-livestock there. Fortunately, from the road you can’t see any ex-cows or ex-chickens or whatever they’re eating.
Here are a bunch of full and presumably happy eagles taking off:
Triggered by Dean’s reminiscences. My memories of 1980 are quite different, mainly because I was only 13 for most of the year. 1980 was a pretty good year - I got my braces off, and started wearing contacts in March, and we moved to a bigger house with a pool in July. I’d joined a community band, and went on my first band trip, to Edmonton for 10 days. I made some good friends in grade 8, enjoyed school, and was earning money for the first time, babysitting.
Random Memories
- being terrified of Mr. Cunningham, our biology teacher, who referred to all grade 8’s as “scum of the earth”. I outgrew my fear and (along with every other girl in the school) later developed a massive crush on Mr. C . A crush I haven’t entirely outgrown to this day.
- my parents’ first trip to Asia. My grandmother looked after us, and I went to Victoria with my cousin for Spring Break, to stay with a friend. Kind of weird to think Dean and I were there at the same time (although I’m pretty sure we never went anywhere near Woolco).
- reading parts of The Happy Hooker while babysitting.
- the slightly overwhelming decor in our new house. My north-facing bedroom had purple and white wallpaper, purple and white shag carpet, and purple curtains. Can you say dark? My brother’s room was all black and white geometrics. The en-suite had white shag carpeting and powder blue fixtures. The kitchen had black cabinets, fake brick walls, brick-coloured linoleum, and one small window. And the living room wall had an 8′ mural of a lake on it. My parents used to joke about adding a pair of nude lovers, just to see people’s reactions.
- there was a cherry tree in the back yard - not sure what variety, but the cherries were yellow and red - that I could climb, and a grapevine that bore prolific fruit which the raccoons ate the second it was ripe.
- the pool was under a deck. The deck was huge. And turquoise. It faced south, with 2 stories’ worth of white walls gleaming down on it. For most of the summer, it would blister your soles if you tried to walk across it barefoot.
- Lynn Canyon was a 15-minute walk away. 3 or 4 evenings a week, when the weather was nice, we’d take our dog over for a swim, and stop for popsicles at the corner store on the way home.
- we were partially surrounded by wolves. Wolf was a wolf-husky cross who lived across the street. Blue was a wolf-malamute cross who lived next door. Blue was big, tough, smart and unneutered. He adopted us, coming with us on walks and guarding our house (seriously guarding - someone tried to break into his house once, and Blue pinned the guy in the backyard, standing on him and snarling, for over an hour until someone came home and called the police).
Thirteen nicknames with which my love could possibly be tagged. He doesn’t have many (OK, any) because in our family we have a strong tendency to apply nicknames only to those smaller and weaker than ourselves and, let’s face it, there ain’t no one bigger and stronger than Dean. But, following his same logic, and plagiarising shamelessly, if he were to become a capo in the local mafia, he’d need a nickname.
1. ‘Dim’ Dean- on mornings when he’s up first (i.e. all of them), I often come downstairs to find him sitting in the dark, lit only by the glare of his laptop screen. Ironically, he’s the one who needs to turn a light on to pee at night.
2. Dean the Blade - I don’t know how many knives he has, but it’s well above the national average. And that doesn’t include the sword in our closet, or the full-to-bursting knifeblock in the kitchen. And the little suckers are sharp ! He gets the whetstone out at least once a month.
3. ‘Snappy’ Cochrane - Dean can easily shoot 400 photos in a weekend.
4. Dean ‘The Tongue’ - women always come first when Dean’s around. If you know what I mean.
5. Mr. T - if Dean could live in t-shirts and jeans, he’d be happy.
6. ‘Hot Stuff’ - I swear his core body temperature is 2 or 3 degrees higher than mine. Which is lovely at night, when I can curl up against his broad, warm back. Not so good in the daytime when I’m freezing and he wants to open the windows.
7. Dean ‘Coffee Grounds’ Cochrane - every morning, there’s a little pile of fresh coffee grounds on the counter by the coffee maker, damp coffee grounds on the floor by the garbage, and a little trail of coffee splotches between the two.
8. ‘We have too damned many pets’ Cochrane - I think he’d say this even if the only creatures in the house were dust-bunnies.
9. Dean the Legs - man’s got some nice gams on him, he does. He thinks they’re too skinny, but they’re not. His hands and wrists are elegant, too.
10. Cochrane the Curmudgeon - Dean never met a rant he couldn’t love. I used to try to derail them, because I don’t like it when people are angry, but I’ve realised how much he enjoys them and now I just egg him on. Sometimes I point things out just to set him off.
11. ‘Muscles’ - Dean has broad, brawny shoulders and bulging biceps. A man who can sweep me off my feet with ease is dead sexy.
12. ‘Speed Demon’ Cochrane - The man likes to drive, and he likes to drive fast. Especially on the curvy bits. I can tell Dean’s been driving my car, because he knocks a good 5% of my fuel mileage. He’s also one of the safest, most responsible drivers I know. Sounds like an oxymoron, but it ain’t.
13. ‘Bedrock’ Dean Cochrane - if I had to pick one thing that described our relationship, it would be ‘trust’. All of the good things we have together flow from this trust. I would trust this man with my life.
This morning, at 6:38, Monkeybean padded into my room, hopped onto the bed and asked if I wanted a noogie. Not being entirely foolish, I said “no, thanks.” “Why not?” he asked, all wide-eyed innocence. “Because I know what a noogie is,” quoth I. “How do you … oooohhh, it’s your intermission.” “My what?” “You know, your woman’s intermission.”
Crushing insecurity. Sadly, my self esteem is such that the more people there are who want something from me, the more people I have to worry about disappointing. While it was briefly exhilarating to be wanted by so many, by Monday night I was a raging bundle of insecurity, convinced I was going to fail everyone.
I think I’ll settle for a life of quiet obscurity.
I’ve been working as a business analyst (translation: creator of really big spreadsheets) officially for just over a year now, unofficially for almost 2. It’s the first time in my life that I’ve been really good at my job, and valued for what my strengths rather than penalized for my weaknesses. It’s a good feeling, and one I’m still getting used to.
Which is why I was taken by surprise when a consultant I’d worked with briefly called me last week, to see if I was interested in some freelance spreadsheet work, building some custom reports. I said sure, what the hell. She promised to send me the necessary files on Thursday.
On Wednesday, I got a call from another consultant I’d worked with even more briefly, to see if I was interested in some freelance spreadsheet work, building some custom reports, for a client of his. I said sure, what the hell. The client sent me her files about 2 hours before the first set arrived.
It’s such a strange feeling to have people clamouring for my services.
We’re in the midst of a BIG office reno. Big as in stripping the building back to the outer walls and starting over, one floor at a time. My area is the last to go; we’re moving into temporary office space next week, for a couple or 3 months, so today is cleaning out files, boxing stuff up, and hauling armloads of paper to the shredder (apparently everything I touch is confidential, so it can’t go into the regular recycling - it all gets the chop).
The temp space is going to be, well, interesting. Right now I have a 9×9 cubicle on a corner between a bunch of offices. There’s lots of foot traffic, but no one actually overlooks my space so it’s fairly private, and quiet. The new desk will be facing 3 other people (including my boss), in a room with 15 others. It will be neither private nor quiet. But it has windows, floor to ceiling, while I have not even a peekaboo glimps of the outdoors now, and the view of the river is gorgeous.
Play this video for him.
You can make him cry. Seriously.
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