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To jinx it...

I think it's starting to look like spring outside!!! I hear birds, the snow is almost completely melted away, and the sun has been out for a couple of days in a row!

Add to that the fact that the weather forecast is calling for rain instead of snow....and hooray! The temperatures are supposed to be around 15 too. I'm terribly excited.

Of course, now that I've said all that, it'll snow before Friday. Because God only knows that the end of March is the time for snowstorms.

It was so nice on Sunday and I was in such a terrible mood that I decided to go for a walk. I looked outside and saw all the people all dressed up coming home from church, and arriving at families houses for dinner and I thought, hmm... why not take a walk, they all look warm.

And sure enough it was warm. I put on one of my lighter jackets and off I went. I took my camera with me just in case I came across anything that I might want to take pictures of, and sure enough I found...FLOWERS!

(Apologies for the fence getting in the way) They're looking a bit neglected there in the corner of the garden, and if you'd seen the rest of the yard, you'd know that I'm not making that up. The place looks remarkably like a junkyard. But hooray for the flowers for surviving and giving me hope!

Then I went to the park, where there were actually kids playing. They were on the playground (which I can say quite definitively is a fun playground...I played there late one night last year), and they were throwing footballs with their dad, and they were walking their dogs... It was great.

So then I walked a little further and I found woods. I didn't even know there were woods there. Seriously. So, I wander along the path (I did know the path was there, I just wasn't sure about the woods), and find that the 'forest' floor was covered in snow. Well, that's not shocking, the sun can't get in there so easily I guess. But it was melting. And there's a creek in there that was flowing along quite nicely. And...there were buds on the trees!

So, between flowers and buds on the trees, I figure spring must be here. Or, at least, it must be close.

Ten Years Later

I was filing some paperwork away on Friday and in the cabinet with my mortgage, work, and benefits papers I found an enevelope full of things. I took a look at it quickly and saw that it came from the university I attended, which seemed strange to me. I mean, I'm a pack rat and all but surely I haven't been keeping my acceptance package from university lying around all this time?

Thankfully, no. However, inside there were photographs, postcards, pamphlets, spare change, pins, tickets, etc... from when I went to Paris in 1995. Which is actually pretty much exactly 10 years ago from now to the day.

When I came back I started a scrapbook, which I still have lying around somewhere, half finished. So, I pulled the envelope out and decided to see about finishing it. I looked at all the stuff and decided not to finish it. I pulled the photos out and went through them. In the middle of random pictures of our messy room at the hostel, pictures of us with various liquor bottles (it was a big deal, we were all still underage here!), and other stupid pictures there were three beautiful ones I took while I was at Pere-Lachaise cemetery. Why did we travel all the way to Paris to go to a cemetery?

1. It's gorgeous
2. It's full of famous people

I think the second reason was actually what inspired us to go there. Jim Morrison of The Doors is buried there, or at least, he has a gravesite there, whether or not his body is actually in there, I have no idea. (When I came back, people told me that in fact he was buried somewhere else...and seeing as how I know nothing about either him or The Doors, I am in no position to argue) Either way, I really wish we hadn't spent so much time trying to locate Jim, or at the very least that I'd taken about three more rolls of film there while we were looking for him. (I did not particularly want to see his grave in particular, however, other people that I was with did....I was more impressed with Chopin's grave)

That's the difference 10 years can make. When I was still 18, I didn't give a shit about what I was looking at. We went, we looked at things, and I didn't give it much more thought than that. Looking back on the very few pictures of scenery I did take, I am furious with my 18 year old self for not looking around more.

So, as I was digging a little deeper into the photos I found, again randomly interspersed with stupid pictures, a rather gorgeous photo of The Venus de Milo, and a lovely one of Diane de Versailles. I remember being impressed with those two things, obviously enough that I took pictures of them. I remember being distinctly underwhelmed by The Mona Lisa. Which is this teeny tiny painting, that is behind glass, AND roped off by a velvet rope. I sat on a bench nearby and fell asleep while the others looked at it.

The pictures are gorgeous, and I wish I'd taken more. Also, I wish I could go back there. Because quite obviously I would look at everything with completely different eyes. I didn't take a single picture of Monmartre, though I have a couple of lovely ones of Scare Coeur. I have one very fuzzy picture of the Eiffel Tower (Which I never went up while I was there), and many pictures of the Arc de Triomphe. It was just a very strange trip, and one I really wish I could do again...but correctly this time.

it is snowing again.

first off, my shift key is broken, therefore i can't really type capital letters. sorry, i know this is terribly annoying, and as soon as i get paid this weekend, i will go and buy a new keyboard. i was just thinking the other day that it was time for one anyway.

so yesterday it was lovely outside. absolutely lovely. it was so bright and sunny that it was actually hot inside the car. i had to drive with the windows open so as not to be too hot. it was fantastic, and it gave me some hope that spring was coming, and that shortly after that it would be summer.

today it's snowing. and not the occasional snowflake either, it's snowing hard, and with purpose.

i hate winter, hate, hate, hate it!

Boredom

My God I'm bored.

I had the day off today. And I did what I needed to do. Went to the dentist, did my laundry, cleaned up my dishes. Which left me the majority of the day free to do pretty much nothing.

Sounds heavenly right? No, I'm bored to death. So bored that I'm pacing like a caged animal. This is bad. My only highlight today is the fact that Alias is on (it's a commerical right now).

The good thing about a normal week is that after my day of complete boredom I'd go back to work. I have tomorrow off too! I was thinking maybe it would be warm and I could go outside, but I hear it's supposed to snow. I am so incredibly tired of snow. It's the middle of March, couldn't the snow just fuck the hell off and let us have some spring?

Since I wasn't paying any attention, did March come in like a lion or a lamb?

Maybe I'll sleep through tomorrow.

Redecorating

Have you seen anyone who redesigns more often than me? I'm not sure what it is, but I get bored. Very easily.

Today I decided that I would try something new, of course, what I wanted to do wouldn't work, which I discovered fairly quickly, however, I quickly came up with a compromise. The photo at the top I took ages ago at the cottage, there was one I wanted to use more, but it just wouldn't work properly, so this will have to do.

All this came about because I couldn't think of a single thing to write about. So, what do you do in that case? Well, I'm not sure what other people do, but what I do is redesign.

Who knows how long this will last, I'm sure I"ll get tired of black and white fairly quickly, but in the meantime, the sunset makes me hope that spring will be here soon.

This can't be good...

I wonder about the amount of insulation in my attic when I see things like that. Not to mention that it seems a little unsafe to be going out onto my deck at the current time.