A week or so ago, we caught this little guy at our hummingbird feeder. I have only caught a hummingbird up close once before, and didn’t have a camera with me.
We saw him flying to the feeder from the tree behind our yard several times, so we sat there waiting for him to return. We had to watch for about 1/2 hour to grab this shot of him, but it was totally worth it.
A sunset as we traveled between Iowa and Omaha last weekend.
There’s only one radio in the house that I could think of… my daughter’s. Could we find it? Well, not till the next day. So we went to the basement and turned the TV up loud enough where we could sort of hear it.
The tornado warning was mostly right around our neighborhood, which is what sent us to the basement. Normally these things kind of freak me out, but mostly only when I am on the road driving, trying to pick up my daughter from school.
After an hour, suddenly the warning was called off. I saw a news story the next day saying that a tornado had touched down, but I’ll be darned if I can find the story now. 🙂 However, there is this nifty stormchaser blog that discusses the storm.
Living in the midwest, this is our version of severe weather. No hurricanes or earthquakes. Just tornados, mostly in June or July, but sometimes in 迈开腿尝尝你的草莓是什么感觉. If you’re interested, here is our famous tornado from 1975, which went down the center of the city.
So, day two of messing around with the intranet design and doing menial things inbetween, like help desk calls and swapping out hardware. Who knew a person could like working so much? 🙂 I may be about 1/2 done with it all, but I feel a design change coming on… to get it where I want it to be.
I found a new toy today. It’s Browsershots.com. Input your website address and see how your website looks on all sorts of browsers, including Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox. It’s stepsaving if you do design work, or just want to see how things look without loading a bunch of different browsers.
Oh… I got nominated to be on our United Way Campaign. This means some planning with several other people, free lunch and convincing some people it would be nice if they gave money to charity. Mind you, at the non-profit, we don’t make too much ourselves, but they say that “You don’t know the meaning of giving until you’re poor.” lol I’m not poor, but it sounds good anyway.
So, it’s 8pm and I’m off to help my daughter with her birthday thank you’s. Can I have more hours in my day, please?
The only poem I ever memorised, after I sent my rat terrier off to the kennel to be adopted by a better family (I took pitty on her, being yelled at so much.. not by me) and found out she was instead euthanised:
Turn Again To LifeIf I should die and leave you here awhile,
Who keep long vigils by the silent dust, and weep.
For my sake – turn again to life and smile
Nerving thy heart and trembling hand to do
Something to comfort other hearts than thine.
— A. Price Hughes & Mary Lee Hall
Last night, like much of the world, I was glued to my television as we paid our last respects to Steve Irwin via satellite from the Australia Zoo.
I spent most of my day on setting up Lisa’s rendition of what our Intranet should look. It was fun playing around with the design. After awhile, I became adventurous and started adding stuff I use on my blog, like Clocklink and a weather doohickey.
I figured out how to plot the navigation and have buttons automatically appear in the navigation bar. The hard thing about it is that you don’t get too see too many examples of what people do with Intranet designs. We had a good one at my previous employer, but of course, no access to it. So I’m winging it with a Frontpage template I found, and it’s not too shabby. It’s keeping my design intact from page to page, so there is a consistancy in the look and feel.
After some time, I felt like I was goofing off. I mean, is work sometimes fun?
So I have my concept started, at least. Tomorrow, more goofing off. 🙂
Yesterday, my DailyOM email said: “When a door is opened, walk through it. Have faith that the door was placed there for a reason.”
I need reminding of this from time to time. I don’t mean to harp on losing my job over 6 months ago. I’m coming to terms with it. Each day, I get a little closer to getting completely over it. Aside from the obvious upheaval from being in a particular place every day for 20 years straight, it’s the loss of most of the people I thought were my friends.
After I read the email yesterday, I could see why the door was placed there for me. At least part of it. I want to be thankful for the door and learn from it. I want to eliminate those days when I’d like to hack the door down for just being, and I’m getting so much closer to that.
I’m learning to consider each day as a gift instead of being afraid of what the day will hold. It involves a lot more, “Oh well”‘s and “I’ll deal with that when/if it happens”.
More than anything, I am learning that I can be the one in control. I just have to not be afraid to take control. And I’m not.
Today, I saw my doctor. The one who delivered The Little Kid 6 years ago. He cracks me up.
I asked him one question… “What’s all this HPV testing stuff about?” I ended up getting a humorous rendition about how couples who are married for 15 years are having an HPV test turn up positive. My doctor said that HPV is passed on through sexual contact. The only way to suddenly turn up positive when you’ve been negative for awhile is that one of you has been messing around with someone else. He told me that’s happened to a few couples and neither one would fess up to having an affair. He said, “What do you say to them when they say that?”
Then he mentioned there is a vaccine for girls who are age 9 and up. He said that normally it’s only recommended for girls who are potentially sexually active. I thought to myself that if my child is even thinking about sex at age 9, something is terribly freaking wrong.
I guess there are things you don’t immediately think about when you give birth to a child. This is one of them!
My doctor said, “Well, on another note, you lost 3 pounds since we saw you last time. At least you’re not gaining weight. Some people gain 5 pounds a year and that’s not good. You might want to work on a little more than 3 pounds a year.. maybe step it up to 6.” (where he started laughing, and so did I)
I said, “Yeah, by the time I’m 70, I’ll be really thin.”
At this point, he did some quick math in his head and told me how much I would weigh by then. I don’t understand how people do math in their head. I really don’t.
Overall, this visit made my week. Sometimes, I wish he would just change specialties and become a primary care physician. Then I could see him more often than once a year.
tentaclelocker 