Odd things stand out. Yesterday, at the side of the road in tall grass - a hawk rides the winds to hover in place a foot above the grass, while 10-12 red winged black birds hover and dart all around the hawk, all within a few feet of space. Today, a kestrel loudly claws and scrambles across our tin roof trying to grab a small finch or chickadee out of the group or birds that hang out under the eaves. Later, a helicopter flies so close that the echoing chop of its beating rotors rattles the aging windows in our house and suddenly the sound is just GONE as if it never was to begin with.
posted:4:31 PM | link |

I've sent this around in email form a few years ago, but since a URL has just popped up for it, I'll post a link here. Warning - do NOT click on the link if you are easily grossed out and don't like or get dogs or natural dog behaviors - otherwise you'll probably find this really really funny. *grin* Presenting, Dogs in Elk. (Thanks for the link find, memepool.)
posted:10:20 AM | link |

Huh! An interesting article - Forbes response to Cheney's comments about "energy". I like it! :-)
posted:10:27 AM | link |

Some weeks ago, a friend and I were having a discussion about how trends work their way into mass culture. She had been considering me at the front of the movement, but used the term "early adopter", which is a popular buzzword these days. I never thought of myself as an early adopter, since to me, instead of being on the front, that seemed to me to be further back in line. In front, seemed to be those people who were out there CREATING (naturally, that's what I believe MYSELF to be - LOL). People who were just listening to their inner creative voice and giving it expression, without much positive support or feedback from society at large. THEN came the people that adopted the new ideas or technologies (that have been created) early. It all has to come from SOMEWHERE - heh heh.

Well, recently I ran across this article about marketing and teens and trends. The article itself was pretty basic, but had one especially terrific paragraph which mirrored by friend's and my conversation:

"...Actually it's a triangle. At the top of the triangle there's the innovator, which is like two to three percent of the population. Underneath them is the trend-setter, which we would say is about 17 percent. And what they do is they pick up on ideas that the innovators are doing and they kind of claim them as their own. Underneath them is an early adopter, which is questionable exactly what their percentage is, but they kind of are the layer above mainstream, which is about 80 percent. And what they do is they take what the trend-setter is doing and they make it palatable for mass consumption. They take it, they tweak it, they make it more acceptable, and that's when the mass consumer picks up on it and runs with it and then it actually kills it."
posted:7:46 AM | link |

Nyuck Nyuck - funny road signs - don't say I never post anything intellectually stimulating. *grin*
posted:5:21 PM | link |

The Harry Potter books have sold over 100 million copies and J.K. Rowling's still got three to go in the series! Very cool! :-)
posted:4:51 PM | link |

I surf the web in the Opera browser, and sometimes in Netscape, but mostly Opera. Somewhere on our computer is a messed up DLL file that prevents us from running Explorer. The thing is, Opera is fast, and, with our mostly icky dialup connection, it's even faster because I can easily toggle between downloading the images on a page and NOT downloading the images. And we have the Flash and Shockwave plug-ins. I mention all of this because it really pisses me off when sites automatically check to see if you are using NS or IE and then when you aren't, say that you need one of them and the flash plugin to view their site. I have them (well, NS) - I'm just not using them. And you CAN use Opera on these sites. But their automatic checking system says you can't. And that's when I leave their site and don't give it a backward glance.

Wasn't that a great story?
posted:2:43 PM | link |

Sometimes you just have to FEEL determined. But I also think I'd like to create doing something ABOUT this determination, so I'll focus on that next. Sometimes I forget that I can choose pathways like that - huh.
posted:10:13 AM | link |

A few fun links: a documentary is being made about The Fairy Faith including chats with those who have experienced fairy encounters; and, can a lavalamp generate truly random numbers?
posted:1:13 PM | link |

Yay - tom is home from his east coast travels! I already apologized to him about the weather being so warm and sunny here - LOL. We're working on it. *grin* Yesterday got up to 85 degrees - the worse part is that is kinda sneaks up there after a lot of cooler days before. And since it's California, you don't notice because you haven't started to SWEAT because it evaporates before it can accumulate at all. On the east coast, when it got hot, you'd sweat - that's how you'd know. (Yeah, yeah, besides looking at a thermometer - get over yourself.) I'm going to stay inside today as much as possible and avoid the sun and pollen that's dusting everything yellow - seems quite active and plentiful this year.
posted:10:21 AM | link |

Sometimes I get distracted from what's in front of me by thinking about the "bigger" context within which all the little things in front of me are happening. Not just the symbolic meaning of it all, but how it all fits together in an overall scheme or arena of life. I'm an impatient puzzle worker however, and sometimes I have to wait for other pieces to show up before I can see what I'm doing. Then I remind myself to just focus on the things I CAN do and enjoy, and not to worry about it.
posted:10:01 AM | link |

Thanks to the Drak Net General News page, I was able to browse through the Ten Greatest Phone Pranks as found on the web. Started giving me evil ideas, it did! *grin*
posted:2:42 PM | link |

Moose (meese?) references seem to just follow me around somehow. In high school, I had a long dark winter coat that my friend Paul called my moose coat. Then, this same friend Paul got his dream car, an old Delta 88 (don't ask - LOL), and named it Moose. My dad used to go camping on Moose River in the Adirondacks of Upstate New York, and my sister and brother-in-law camp there as well now. They also visit Maine a lot - definite Moose home, and just sent us a package with a moose blanket, a moose beanie, a moose Christmas ornament, etc. My sister gave me moose slippers one year for Christmas. I have a small piece of marble with a moose carved in it. A few years ago, there was also a mailing list where the subscribers called themselves Meese/Mooses. Moose Ahoy! *grin*
posted:11:02 AM | link |