Mar. 8th, 2010

Oddities

Mar. 8th, 2010 07:41 pm
altivo: My mare Contessa (nosy tess)
Last week I had a web site called 750 Words pointed out to me. I messed with it, though at least for me, I can't see that it has any point. However, for someone trying to develop a habit of writing daily, the site could be of interest. You are presented with a challenge to write at least 750 words a day, and the site keeps track of your stream of consciousness or whatever it is, and gives you encouraging little rewards for consistency. It also runs analysis tools that tell you word frequencies and try to detect your moods. I didn't think it did too well at the mood part...

Anyway, whatever you write does seem to be stored and you could get it back from the site, but it isn't a blog and no one else (they say) can read what you write there. My stream of consciousness seems to have logorrhea most of the time, so getting to 750 words of just chuntering is too easy. I also tried copying and pasting my own blog post, which got me a message that chided me for "pasting a whole chunk of text" which might "mess up the statistics" by which I guess it means the typing speed and words per minute. It does go on to say that pasting is all right. In any case, it's an interesting curiousity that some may like. After a couple of days, I've lost interest. It doesn't seem to do much for me that writing here doesn't do.

Finished the spinners' newsletter early this morning and sent it off, thank goodness. Then got to work to learn that one of our board members passed away over the weekend. It wasn't unexpected, he had a bad fall (fractured pelvis) back about December, and at age 86 just wasn't up to recovery from that I guess. A very dedicated and persistent crusader, he'll be missed. He served 18 years on the board, part of it as chairman. The first couple of years that I was at the library, I mostly remember going with him to put up announcements on the Chamber of Commerce "Sign". Like most small towns, there is a signboard at the main intersection where special events can be announced in big three inch letters. We'd go to the Chamber of Commerce office where they'd have the stack of letters all ready for us, with just the ones we needed to spell out whatever message we had for the library. Often it would be icy or snowy, and you had to climb up and stand on a ledge about four feet above the sidewalk to work the letters in and out of the track. My boss was worried that Alan would fall if he climbed up there, so she sent me to do it. He'd pass the letters up to me one by one, we'd remove the out of date messages if there were any, and take the letters back over to the office. I don't remember ever doing it when the weather was nice. Seems like it was always icy or raining. In any case, Alan was cheerful and optimistic, always interested and ready to listen, and we're certainly going to miss him around here. The Chamber replaced its manual sign a couple of years back with a modern LED array that can be programmed by computer from their office, so our little expeditions in the snow to put up word about some library program ended some time ago. Even so, I'll not forget them.

Spring has sprung. All the snow is gone from the roofs, and much of it from the ground around the buildings though the pastures are still covered (or were yesterday, I didn't look today.) Now comes the era of mud. We've had fog and drizzle today and apparently that's what we're getting for the rest of the week too.

We added four new platy fish to our big tank two weeks ago as the population had grown rather sparse. Now there are already at least two babies in there, and they are growing fast. Unlike guppies, who multiply like rabbits, platy fish reproduce more slowly. We rarely see a brood of more than a dozen, and they mature slowly. The adults seem to age past their spawning time quickly too, and then stop breeding. Usually we can keep the tank populated for about a year before the reproductive cycles seem to die out. This time we have a good mix of colors, blue, gold, red, and black, so it should be interesting.

RikkiToo is still limping around on three legs in spite of the antibiotics he's had for the past three days. Gary found and drained an abscess on one of his ears, an almost certain sign that his injuries are from fighting another cat. He has nothing to fight over but apparently just can't resist the opportunity.

I'm slowly rebuilding my reading list here by adding feeds from LJ as necessary. Unfortunately, some of my LJ friends have their journals set to default to "friends only" which means I can't see their posts that way. I guess I'd have to ask them to add my DW OpenID as a friend, and then read them directly on LJ. Boo.

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