Posted in books, tagged book, how can I get a job at, museum of play, stick on November 9, 2008| Leave a Comment »
This post reminds me of a joke from The Vicar of Dibley:
What’s brown and sticky?
A stick!
Ah, Dawn French, you are my hero 😉
It seems the National Toy Hall of Fame has finally honored the most basic of all toys: The Stick. From the picture in this article here, you can also see one of my favorite new children’s books:
Not A Stick by Antoinette Portis which celebrates a child’s imagination. Why don’t you check out this lovely book review here (since you know I am too lazy to write reviews).
Posted in Bird, Insect, Library, Mammal, tagged book, frogs, nature, night, opossum, woods on July 31, 2008| Leave a Comment »
(I was thinking about Inspector Clouseau, with the bumpf on his head…)
I came across an interesting book the other day: Central Park in the Dark: More Mysteries of Urban Wildlife by Marie Winn.
You should check it out as it’s chock full of interesting nature/science stuff. Plus, the author has an awesome blog: http://www.mariewinn.com/marieblog/
I miss going out on night hikes and monitoring frogs…sigh. There’s nothing better than being out in the park at night: no people, much less ambient noise, and it’s peaceful. Of course, some people are freaked out about being out in the woods in the dark. According to the author, there’s even a scientific name for this fear: nyctohylophobia. Usually, the worst thing that can happen to you in the forest at night, however, is that you will trip over something or get whacked in the face by a low branch.
Still, we all can give ourselves the heebie-jeebies at times. Years ago, I was frog monitoring (this involves walking a transect at night and counting the number and type of frogs we hear) with another park naturalist. For some reason, maybe too much caffeine or bigfoot stories, we both got spooked by a rustling off the trail in the bushes. It was like something was following us down the trail but hiding and lurking. Trembling, we both trained our flashlight beams on the sound. All of a sudden, something came out of the undergrowth with a crash. We both screamed and jumped about 4 feet in the air. It was an opossum. Admittedly a large one, but still, just an opossum. We told no one of our foolishness (until I blabbed today).
Oh, and don’t miss this blog: http://urbanhawks.blogs.com/ with great pics of the birds in Central Park.
Posted in Daily Life, Random, tagged book, cooped up inside, cute, ice, movies, Pratchett on December 9, 2007| 1 Comment »
Had a big ‘ole ice storm today around these parts. So, I stayed inside and watched a few movies: Hot Fuzz {yarp!}; Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang; Mr. & Mrs. Smith {the Hitchcock one in good old black and white!} Happy Feet; Impact {again, in black and white}.
Out of all of those, I had to turn off Happy Feet after 10 minutes. Sorry, not my kind of movie. I found it to be like nails on a chalkboard.
That’s not to say I don’t enjoy my share of schmaltz…in fact, I spent some time today browsing I Can Has Cheezburger and Cute Overload (which somewhat inspired the title…the behbeh part..with this picture from a place just down the street from me).
Also, in an effort to cheer myself up, I have gone back to reading some older Terry Pratchett novels (his new stuff just isn’t cutting it for me…I’ll stick with Granny Weatherwax). Hard to pick just one, but I would rank Hogfather as right up at the top of his best.
Well, it looks very pretty but slippery outside and I expect the commute tomorrow will be a bit tricky. So, with that I’m for bed.
Posted in Random, tagged book, fantasy, stairs, work on November 25, 2007| 1 Comment »
Had to work Friday, which was kind of nice as nearly everyone else had taken a personal day off. Discovered, however, that the stairwell at work is a portal directly to Hell.
Seriously. It was about 100 degrees in that stairwell. I expect vines to be growing up the walls any day now…I’ll open the door and hear that stock jungle sound that you hear in every Amazon movie (parrots squawking and an odd rattling call). Just going up one flight of stairs causes me to be drenched in sweat.
One time I did have cause to go to the basement down there, as there was a tornado warning. Three of us went down to the bottom of the stairs and pulled open the huge steel door marked “Authorized Access Only.” It revealed a rusty wall with a small, person-sized square opening leading to a dark corridor even further below ground. Spooky! We decided to not investigate further.
It would explain how they heat the whole place though…but I haven’t seen any dark rivers flowing down there or guard dogs, so maybe not, huh.
(There is a similar story involving this theme in the fun and worth reading book: Summon The Keeper by Tanya Huff
Claire Hansen, the Keeper, is summoned to the Elysian Fields Guest House to reseal a hole in the basement, which is literally an opening to Hell. The owner and monitor of the site disappears, leaving Claire stuck managing the place until the problem is solved. Her new employee, Dean McIssac, is a gorgeous Newfie who cooks, cleans, and lives the Boy Scout oath. Then there’s Jacques Labaet: very French Canadian, very sexy, very dead. Jacques is a ghost who wants to be the man in Claire’s life. Oh yeah, and there’s Austin, a talking cat with attitude: “I barely know you, but I’m assuming you’re human. I’m not saying this is a good thing, it’s just the way it is.”
Lawnchair Naturalist 