I’m baaaack! The holidays are over, and I’m back to being my busy self. And I have another cold. 🙁

I have a resolution for the New Year: maintain a healthier lifestyle. After a week and a bit of over-indulging during the holiday season, this is a no-brainer. I already have a reasonably good diet (little processed foods), but I’ll try to cut down on saturated fat. The biggest change I need to make is regular exercise. Mr. Pickle and I used to go swimming regularly, but we stopped during the summer because of our crazy travel schedules. During the summer, any free time we have is spent in our ocean kayaks, so we don’t really need to swim during the summer. Fall and winter, however, are a different story. The pool was closed for part of the fall due to a strike of public workers; we never got started again even when the strike ended.

So, my resolution is to get more exercise. How about y’all?

kd lang

Constant Craving

Roy Orbison

Pretty Woman

This house right next door to us has been abandoned for years and supposedly the will /deed was unclear and so the heirs are fighting over it. Nobody lives there but people show up to hunt…. I am not sure what style one would call it…. perhaps supreme redneck?

A horse across the road. I don’t know him well but he is getting a barn built for him and he has two kids.

A few neighbor dogs who look ferocious but aren’t… my border collie doesn’t like dogs and I was worried she would pick a fight with them. She won’t walk on a leash and escaped out the front gate when I wasn’t paying attention because she was pissed off I was taking Arno out. She has an old injury so normally I don’t take her on long walks.Typically Arno and I walk about three miles a few times a week and for shorter ones other days. Honestly he needs to walk three miles a day every day of the week, he is pretty high energy.

Nothing fancy this morning. Now that I have whined like an addled lost cow about my stressful week and let’s face it I didn’t lose my job or go hungry or face great adversity or torment so in the end what is there to really complain about?

Here are a few random pictures I took around home and the neighborhood…

I don’t know why Sawyer kitty looks so grouchy in this picture. Maybe it is because I wouldn’t let him eat these guys…

Arno gives a big yawn, and he clowns.

So…. I had a crazy week at work. One night I had to tell the &^%$#@ doctors how to do their job when they decided to have a collective brain blank when a patient got sick. These people are smarter than I am when I started basically telling them what to do they said,”Good idea”, and then when we got the patient to ICU I had to answer all the questions for the big dog doctor that they should have. In the movies doctors are all cool and heroic and the nurses flutter around them like silly butterflies hoping to be noticed while they are applying lipstick

Last night, I had a complicated social situation that involved an intervention with volatile people who for a strange reason liked me. Follow up included several phone calls and emails and no doubt a meeting next week.

Then I had to read my evaluation. Usually we hand in a self review first. Because we were so short staffed this year I did a terrible job of keeping up my accomplishment diary so one of the two big critiques I got in my evaluation was that I handed in a terrible self review. I was also told to work more closely with my manager to solve ongoing conflicts but was told I deserve “partial credit” for improving morale. I won’t challenge number two even though my manager tends to ignore many of my concerns until they blow and then act like I did not keep her informed. She also has a different way of dealing with personal conflicts. I like to meet with each person separately and then bring them in together with myself and or my manager for a group discussion. My manager just brings them in together without talking to them separately and people have a tendency to feel ambushed. I like my director and I am alright with my manager and I don’t plan to change my style to look more harmonious. The net result of this is an excellent evaluation instead of an outstanding one. Only one co-worker got an outstanding evaluation last year and she is the director’s pet. I actually like her and work well with her. She has the ear of the director so I often tell her things I hope will float back to the director when I think being completely open and honest might damage my ability to pay the mortgage. Ah, the price of being a slave.

Working for a living is highly over rated even though I enjoy the challenges my job brings.

Hey. That felt good. Time for tea.

Thanks for stopping in….

Hang out and chit chat for awhile… and when you’re done

check out some of the excellent offerings on our recent and rec’d list.

O & Please don’t rec the pony party, another will trot up in a few hours.

(^.^)

Well what do YOU think it’s about?

Thanks for stopping in….

Hang out and chit chat for awhile… and when you’re done

check out some of the excellent offerings on our recent and rec’d list.

O & Please don’t rec the pony party, another will trot up in a few hours.

(^.^)

It occured to me this morning that I’ve seen some new ‘faces’ around…

                     and that we’ve probably grown some since I joined in mid-September.

So I went on a search and found that the last user to join in 2007 was…

::da-da-duh-da::

Cue music—

Here is an illusion that is supposed to indicate whether you are Left-brained or Right-brained.

via videosift.com

If you see her twirling Counter-clockwise you are left-brain dominant.  If you see her twirling Clockwise you are right-brain.

LEFT BRAIN                 RIGHT BRAIN

uses logic                 uses feeling

detail oriented            “big picture” oriented

facts rule                 imagination rules

words and language         symbols and images

present and past           present and future

math and science           philosophy & religion

can comprehend             can “get it” (i.e. meaning)

knowing                    believes

acknowledges               appreciates

order/pattern perception   spatial perception

knows object name          knows object function

reality based              fantasy based

forms strategies           presents possibilities

practical                  impetuous

safe                       risk taking

I am left-brain all the way. I can’t even conceive of how she could be rotating the opposite direction.  It’s not logical!

Don’t rec the Pony Party.  This is an Open Thread.   Keep dancing!