I saw the above in the garden a few days ago. For a moment, I feared alien invaders. Then I recognized it as the emaciated remains of a poppy bloom. (Unless poppy plants are, in fact, alien invaders. But that's a theory for a whole different blog.) Anyway, I thought it was strange enough to photograph for posterity.
Or for kicking off a pointless blog post written solely to procrastinate on other things.
Po-tay-to, po-tah-to...
Well, as one might surmise by the lack of blog posts, January has been a rather dull month (knock on wood here), poppy pod photo ops notwithstanding. The horrendous winter weather we were promised by grim-faced meteorologists muttering about the horrors of La Nina has thus far failed to materialize... at least in this part of the country. So, I haven't been able to use the weather as much of an excuse to keep myself from doing anything.
Dang it.
With the holidays now a faded memory in the rear-view mirror of life, I've been slowly working on getting myself back on track insofar as Accomplishing Things. While I can't report spectacular success, my efforts haven't been entirely discouraging. I'm at least maintaining my artistic efforts, and I've made a conscious push to resume writing on a more regular basis. I haven't made much progress when it comes to making myself exercise, though I still delude myself into thinking that my job - which involves lots of walking and bending and moving - counts for something here. I'm even getting back into reading again, after the holiday-imposed moratorium. (I stopped reading during November for NaNoWriMo, and December was just too danged busy.) Anyone wondering what I've been reading - or even what I'm reading now - can visit my book review blog, via the sidebar link.
It doesn't make for spectacular blogging material, but it's what I've been doing nonetheless.
In other news, the Golden Taurus is hinting that it might want to visit the shop in the nearish future. Ever since it got back from the previous maintenance visit in December, I've had an intermittent, annoying buzz from the dash area, and occasional issues with the windshield defrost not liking to defrost the driver's side and with air vents blasting cold air instead of warm. In my experience with cars, A/C issues like this are never just A/C issues, and thus it seems to be the case here. I've also noticed, along with the buzz, condensation problems inside the windows. This may or may not be related to a door latch problem I noticed during our last cold snap: the car door latches want to freeze themselves open. I'd get one opening and closing out of them, then the danged things would freeze in the "open" position for several minutes. Spraying deicer stuff onto the latch didn't seem to help. I'd just have to work at it and get the car warmed up enough that the things would thaw. Online research indicates that this may be a sign of moisture getting inside the doors, driving out the lubricants in the latching mechanism and potentially creating rust issues. Moisture, not unlike condensation, which seems to be directly related to the dashboard buzz and the A/C problem.
With any luck, I'll get the thing dealt with before we have another bad cold snap. With even more luck, it won't require me to drain my savings account to deal with whatever's wrong.
Well, I suppose that's about it. I just figured it had been long enough that I ought to write an I'm-not-dead-I'm-
