Florida

I'm in it, it is warm, and as usual I'm sleeping poorly in my hotel room as the bed is too springy and the pillows too soft. But as I say, it is warm, and unlike some of my colleagues from British Columbia, the midwestern USA and other points in that general direction, I actually got here more or less on time.

One acquaintance, who lives in Iowa, arrived here in the middle of the day on Friday. Having left home on Wednesday. Seems there was a bit of snow.

However, all is mainly well, I am learning lots about complicated and newfangled DNA sequencing technologies, and am slated to return home tomorrow, nearly-full disposable film camera in hand, so we'll see whether that yields any halfway decent pictures. I have high hopes for the shots of the fireworks on Thursday night, but realistically they'll probably be all out of focus and useless.

Not much else to report... might go for a nap now. Later, all.

Three Seasonal Fragments

It has snowed here. Again. And I've had no time to go outside and take pictures of the Winter Wonderland that is the back yard (or the front yard for that matter). Mrs. Ricardipus is stringing lights on the tree, the classic Anne Murray Christmas album is playing on the stereo, and the whole family spent the day at a nearby mall shopping, going to see Santa, and enjoying the snowy countryside between here and there, horse farms and sheep and Christmas tree farms and all. The photo is a taste of last year, but it's beginning to look like that again.

In a snarky mood, as I am once again plowing through a large grant application (not ours this time, but one I'm reading through for various reasons), so for the remainder of the post you get some ancient, recycled poetry. Standard disclaimers apply, of course - these were written at least twenty years ago, trying to capture the bleakness of a winter far, far to the north of here.

Recycled picture, recycled words, recycled ideas. A veritable hat-trick of blogging.


Three Seasonal Fragments

i.

the knives
in the winterstorm
tear

shreds of flesh
deer meat
in cracking
ice-snow




ii.

in the darkness
of peace

the inner length
the knife
lies




iii.

I am suffering
heat-death
I am experiencing
combustion
I am a moss-fire
slowburning

It never rains but it pours

Or in this case, snows. Like it did Thursday night. In April. Friday morning looked like a Winter Wonderland, although to be fair it was only a couple of centimetres deep and it all melted pretty quickly. Didn't stop traffic from slowing down to a crawl though. You'd think we'd be used to the stuff by now.

And now it's Saturday morning, and I am tired. I got an emergency call yesterday afternoon from a consulting client who needed information for a meeting this morning. Fortunately, she's two time zones west of here, so I could work past midnight, email the information, and still be confident she'd have time to look at it before she had to get some sleep. Of course, this means I went to bed about three hours later than I really wanted to.

Also in the pipeline is another consulting gig, for a company that used to employ me but saw fit to lay me off and now needs my considerable expertise again. Hear that noise? That's the sound of the hourly rate ratcheting up.

Just kidding. Also just kidding about the "considerable expertise" thing - they could get all kinds of people to provide the information they need, but I guess I'm cheapest, or easiest, or the biggest mercenary they know, or something.

But it all adds up to extra work on top of the full-time gig. What with completing that Government of Canada report (which, by the way, they have yet to pay me for), fighting with email, the day job, the family, reading other peoples' blogs (including this tasty science one I just found), and messing about with Flickr, it's remarkable that I even have time to toss off blog posts of my own. So you should all feel very, very sorry for me and send me chocolate and stuff. Because I deserve it.*


*Some aspects of this statement may not be entirely true.

Icy

Snow. On top of freezing rain. On top of snow.

Pretty though.