Rainy Deliciousness
Mama and I went to Greensborough Plaza today in order to leap about at the Millers sale, because Millers sales are awesome. Came away with lots of goodness to wear – new with tags! This Savers girl doesn’t know how to feel about that… anywhoo, as we were paying, the lights flickered and thunder rolled. Then thunder rolled. Once we’d left the store, we noticed all the internal lights that weren’t in stores were off, and through the big skylight we saw heavy rain. Heavy, heavy rain. The storm didn’t last particularly long, but it hit with power, dumping vast amounts of wonderous wet stuff.
We stopped off to see Katie at her bauble stand and she said she could feel water hitting her, but figured she was just being paranoid. Apparently not, quite a lot of the plaza had incoming water issues.
Okay sure, there’s been issues. Someone in Eltham came home to find the contents of their garage, including a double deep freeze, floating down the road. Greensborough Plaza had some MAJOR issues themselves:
As well as multiple stores flooding, they had a cave in of the ceiling near the main street doors. Quite a few shops closed up till the waters were out, and the shops near this cave in were closed pretty much till that’s fixed I think.
In Diamond Creek, the supermarket was dealing with a rising tide of water coming in, and recovering from a power failure which left a few registers out of action. Again, more shops closed.
Pretty wild old day for weather. Came home to find my desk covered in water from an old roof leak, but we’ve only had 1 leak in the whole house, which is a record for us.
I still love Grover.
I went to the mall today to pick up some final giftings for people who need their giftings posted. The DVD I wanted for my mother was no where to be seen in JB, but as I poked around in the bargain bin (you must NEVER skip the bargain bin at JB HiFi. I got “To Kill a Mockingbird” for $2 once) I found a DVD we’ve had at work for a while and I pondered buying. Sesame Street Old School.
It’s volume 2, so covers 1974-1979 and oh my god I love it so much I could weep. I parked myself on my bed with my crochet hook and my little DVD player thing and watched the first two discs as I worked on a thing. This was preElmo people, how could it be bad?
I love Grover. Grover brings the sunshine. I just read a review on the DVD that stated it was grey and miserable and depressing. Uh. What? It’s certainly not the frantic rainbow of today, and there’s things that wouldn’t pass muster in the current paranoid climate but it’s far far from miserable. Some of my favourite bits are the bits like this:
I loved those as a kid, and I do now. I don’t know if Sesame Street still includes little snippets like that, but I hope they do. It’s simple but it’s interesting and educational.
Grover is still my favourite, but it’s a close call.
Eh.
Been longer than I intended. The nano stuff has ground to a halt, as has about everything else to be honest. I’m down.
I’ve talked to my doctor like a sane person should, and had my happy pill dose doubled but it’s done not as much as one would hope to help me pull out of this slump. I head home from work with the intention of crafting or writing till my boy wakes up on the other side of the world, and instead I nap, or sit here in front of the PC bouncing around the internet. It’s nice and brainless.
I’m working on getting out of the gloom, but it’s taking some big scary steps which I’d like to hide from for a long time. I am not a brave person actually, despite my big mouth and sometimes bigger personality. I’m a smartarse, but I’m not overly brave. Switching jobs is utterly and indescribably terrifying, but it HAS to be done.
I’m annoyed that my leave has to be reset in a new job too, because with Matt moving over next year I would have liked to had some time off to hang out and introduce him to Aussie things like meat pies and AFL football (not that I give a flying fig about sport, but he seems to enjoy it because he’s weird).
So yeah. I’m not in a happy place at the moment.
Brainiacs
One of the things I really love about where I work has nothing at all to do with my job (like that’s a shock). When I pop outside for a ciggy (shut up) there’s very often a small collection of crows wandering around the raised garden bed. I adore watching them, they’re utterly enchanting.
I like birds anyway. From the tiny little wrens with such skinny legs you wonder how they work to massive eagles and hawks, I just think birds are awesome. I love their social structures and habits – for example, the white winged chough (which against all logic is pronounced “chuff”) lives in large family groups and because bigger families mean more babies, they kidnap the young birds from other family groups in order to grow their own. Nifty huh?
But back to the crows. They live entire life cycles around the building. A couple of months ago it was all babies screaming for more food. Now they seem to be out on their own for the most part. They don’t tend to worry about me, they’ve seen me out there so much I’m part of the landscape to them now I suppose (and I’ve been known to smuggle them some meat when we have left overs from functions). What really gets me about crows is that they are incredibly bright.
I’ve often seen them hiding bits of food for later on. They dig careful holes and make sure that the holes are properly covered with mulch and things. I’ve seen them walk away, check from a distance and come back to make things just so. I’ve seen them dig with sticks, gather more nesting material in their beak without dropping the bundle they’d already collected… lots of smart things these birds do.
Today however, took the cake. We’ve a couple of those big volcanic type rocks outside the staff door – the kind that’s riddled with interesting holes. Moss tends to grow in these holes when enough dust and dirt accumulates in them. Today I stood enthralled watching a big shiny crow as he (or she) very carefully lifted the moss out of the holes, slipped in a little bit of the food he’d found and then place the moss back into the same hole, sometimes patting it down to keep it in place. I figure while I was watching he hid about 7 or 8 little morsels for later, in the most amazingly secret hiding place I’ve ever seen them use. Brilliant.