Sunday, April 27, 2008

A lazy Sunday Springy morning

Dandelion
A weed.

The tell-tale green haze on the willows, tiny leaflets on the rose bush and clematis, the sweet smell of manure from nearby farms hanging in the air. Another sign: I sighted the first Ferrari of the season yesterday - a 355, freed from its winter lair, shamelessly downshifting for no obvious reason other than to make a cheerful noise, flaunting its 8-cylinder muscle at the record-high gasoline prices we seem to be saddled with in these parts.

Spring, it seems, is here, as is the annual post about it, I guess.

And with spring comes grant deadlines, unfortunately. I have a string of them on my whiteboard at work, stretching out through mid-May (and a few long-range ones into July, and even October). Which goes a long way towards explaining why posts here have been thin, to say the least, even taking yesterday's exceedingly lame effort into consideration.

Of course, the deadlines really have the effect of feeding my procrastination engine: weekends are now so nice and sunny (although still cool, with a crisp breeze blowing today) that I have no problem at all in finding multiple things to do instead of grant-writing (or blogging, for that matter). Even mundane tasks, like dismantling the ageing composter, or picking last year's ivy leaves out of the flower beds, take on a remarkably romantic appeal when compared with sitting and typing about this piece of equipment, or that budget line item, or trying to articulate in 2,000 characters or less why we need great gobs of government money to do our research.

I would type more now, but I need to pour some more coffee, and maybe barbeque some lunch. Having already been roped into playing a couple of rounds of a Scooby-Doo boardgame, after watching the red cars dominate the Spanish Grand Prix, I'd say that this Sunday, like many others, is shaping up to be another less-productive-than-anticipated day. Ah well. At least there's a blog post to show for it.

16 comments:

Unknown said...

My mate came in the pub today in his Maseratti quattroporte,all in yellow! Bastard!!

zoe said...

I'm always baffled how Todd can manage to mow the lawn and miss ONE dandelion.

It must be artwork of some kind.

Richard Wintle said...

John - your mate was dressed in yellow?

Please tell me the Q-port wasn't yellow... eeeurgh.

Zoe - I lack his finesse. I usually miss a whole bunch of them.

Anonymous said...

What is the canonical way to spell the music of that Ferrari downshift?

Bvhrbbptptptptt-bbbttbbttbt

is my attempt.

WrathofDawn said...

A weed.

Indeed.

And all yellow cars should be banned. Yellow is the colour of a banana or a flower. It is not a car colour.

That is all.

Richard Wintle said...

How about orange? I saw an orange Lamborghini downtown last year.

Currently puzzled by whatever drove past me today... looked a bit like a DeLorean, but wasn't. I suspect some nasty old Maserati, or maybe a Nissan of some kind.

#Debi said...

I tend to agree with you, Dawn, on the yellow car thing. However, there is a yellow PT Cruiser tooling around town lately that does it right. It must be a custom paint job, since they don't show them in that color on the website. It's a creamy, buttery yellow, just this side of beige. Really nice.

Richard Wintle said...

Debi - that kind of butter cream colour looks excellent on old Camaros, too (think circa 1972).

I'm just sayin'.

#Debi said...

Now you're just bein' a big ol' tease, talking to me about my favorite car and all...

;)

Unknown said...

Lambourghini downtown? Never heard of it!

Saw some Noble sports cars going past the pub today,on their way to our local proving ground at Bruntingthorpe.

Unknown said...

Google 'bruntingthorpe'.

Also, www.noblecars.com

Richard Wintle said...

Hm. Rather uninformative website, that... good looking car though.

Richard Wintle said...

...and to finish this thought off, I saw a bright yellow Maserati Coupe downtown yesterday. About two seconds before I saw a black Aston Martin.

Yellow Maserati Coupe... *shudder*. Terribly shame - that car looks excellent in, say, dark blue.

#Debi said...

We don't get all that many REALLY fancy cars in Lexington, but on the drive home from work tonight, there was a BMW Z3 in front of me, and a Z4 behind me. Both in an understated gray color. I thought of you at that moment... :)

Richard Wintle said...

I am flattered ;)

I've never quite figured out the differences between all those Z-series roadsters (Z3, Z4, Z8, others???)

#Debi said...

I admit I had to look at the "labels"... The only real difference I noted was that the Z4 didn't have the "shark gills" (as I call them) on the sides...