From the Horse's Mouth

It's kind of annoying, but I can't listen to the first movement of Beethoven's Symphony #6 without thinking of the 'going home' scene from the movie Soylent Green.  Instead of the  intended peaceful and happy mood it's supposed to reflect, it evokes something a little more sad. 

It's no secret that I'm a fan of a lot of silly, older movies.  For years, I've been looking for an mp3 version of a phone that was used in Our man Flint and its sequel, In Like Flint.  A slightly different version of it was used as an homage in the Austin Powers films.  I never found one and would always procrastinate when it came to figuring out how to snag the sound from one of the movies myself.  Something got me thinking of the films again recently and I started poking around online.  This time, I found what I was looking for.  Yay internet.

So, at least for now, this is the ringtone on my cell:

Trying to get some gov-related stuff straightened out at work today.  Gotta do X to get access to Y, but can't do X unless Y is already approved, but Y can't be approved without X....

So yeah, I find myself identifying with Darwin in this clip:

It's not like I want a blizzard or anything, but could we at least have a bit of proper winter weather?  Unseasonably warm and rainy just aint cutting it.

Thanks to Sandy and some roof leakage, my office and all the other ones on the west side of this wing of the building have some water issues.  I was fortunate in that my office only ended up with damp carpeting.  Right now, I'm sharing my office with a commercial blower and big ol dehumidifier.  Dang it's noisy in here.


I'd typed in a somewhat longer post about this, but LJ apparently made changes that were making it difficult to insert a couple pictures that're hosted elsewhere.  In the process of trying to get that to work, LJ decided to reload the posting page and lost everything I'd typed in.  Bleah.

I spent the weekend down in Kentucky, celebrating my stepdad's 70th birthday.  To say there was a lot going on would be an understatement.

Saturday evening and again Sunday morning, I met this fellow:





That's Larry.  Larry is an angus bull.




Those are a couple of Larry's girlfriends and and kids.  Larry's got 11 cows and (currently) three calves in his family.

I got to spend a chunk of time Sunday morning helping to convince Larry and his ladies that they really shouldn't be in the neighbor's pasture and that their own home was much better.  The process involved my stepfather rattling a bucket of feed while slowly driving a golf cart toward home while two of us tried to keep 15 bovines from straying off into the woods.  Herding cattle on foot was rather a new experience for me.  It wasn't bad, though I'd have preferred not having to trek through waist-high grass that was also the motherlode of ticks and chiggers.

While doing this, I chided Larry for letting his women run off to strange pastures, whereupon it was pointed out to me that all the cows are pregnant, so Larry is 'kind of done with them' til next year.

You're giving us males a bad name, Larry.

I'm among the million or so people in the area who are without electricity due to the storm last night.  The power companies are saying it may take days to get power back to some people.  I rather hope mine is restored sooner than that.

It was quite an impressive storm, to be sure.  After it knocked the power out, I could've actually walked around my apartment without a flashlight for a few seconds at a time, thanks to the illumination from the frequent and nearby lightning outside.  I had to go around shutting up all the UPS's in the place to end the little symphony of beeps as they diligently told me they were on battery power.  There's some device I missed, though.  Every minute or so, I'd hear a quiet little chirp.  I can't track it down though.  It's loudest in my bedroom, but there's no UPS in there.  The front door and entry stairs for the apartment above mine is on the other side of my bedroom wall.  I'm wondering if I'm hearing their alarm panel complaining about its backup battery being low.

Anyway, it was a night of poor sleep.  I woke up to find one of the fish had died.  He was fairly old, though, so it may just be a coincidence.  I'm worried about the rest of the fish though, since they don't have any filtration in their tanks now.

On the plus side, my office is near home and has power, so here I am, enjoying the air conditioning and doing a bit of reading.  There's also an ice machine in the kitchen, so I'll fill up a little cooler before I head home later.  The cell and land lines are so busy that I couldn't call in the outage at home officially.  I'll try calling home now and then to see if the answering machine picks up, indicating there's power there again.

I am SO ready for autumn.

Over a year ago, a pair of crows built a nest in one of the trees near my office window.  They abandoned it shortly after completing it.  They built it well and much of it is still intact.

I check it out every now and then to see if anyone has moved into it.  This morning I looked and at first though it'd been built up again by some new birds.  Then I realized that it hadn't been built up because what I was seeing was fur, not twigs/grass/etc.  The leaves on the tree obscured my view but by going up the hall to other office windows, I was able to see the occupant more clearly.

The color of the fur is reddish and really looked like a fox's coat.  I've never heard of foxes climbing trees though.  The mystery critter was curled in the nest with its back to me but was moving as if grooming or something.  Finally it decided to have a little stretch and I could see its head and face.  A raccoon.   I don't believe I've seen a reddish raccoon before.   I'm a little surprised he decided to spend the day in a tree by a parking lot with no real food sources nearby other than the dumpster by the building next door.

The raccoon seems to be comfy where he is for now.  I guess he'll spend the day there.  At least someone is getting some use out of the nest those crows built so well.

There's a new mare at the barn on a trial basis.  She's  small-to-mid-sized, about 16 years old, and may be a quarterhorse.  Her name is Sadie.

When she was a foal, Sadie got kicked in the face.  She healed up just fine and isn't disfigured or anything.  Without someone telling you, you'd never know she'd been injured.  I haven't tacked her up, but was told she's got no issues taking a bit or any kind of discomfort, nerve, or dental problems.  She does have one little quirk, however.

Sadie's tongue pokes out the right side of her mouth most all the time.  It's just the tip, it's not like she's got it hanging out like a dog.  Some horses do that now and then for various reasons, but with Sadie, it's all the time.  You can push it back in with a finger, but she'll poke it right back out.  Someone commented that it gives her a 'duh' kind of expression.  I kinda see it like cartoons and comics where someone is concentrating really hard.

It's not really that noticeable.  Actually, it's kind of cute.

I'm getting very little actual work done this morning.  Instead, I keep looking out the window. I've got my little handheld transceiver tuned to the 1R/19L runway's frequency so I'll have a little warning before the 747 carrying the shuttle Discovery actually lands.  It appears they're using a special frequency for the 747 and its escorts.  I only hear information that's relayed to the other aircraft that are taking pictures or otherwise in the vicinity.

It did a flyover earlier here and is now somewhere over DC providing photo opportunities.  I did get a few shots of that.  Kinda wish I had a longer lens for the dslr though.