Category Archives: Whatever

Whatever

Ranting and spreading some joy

10 Comments

“We are formed and molded by our thoughts.
Those whose minds are shaped by selfless thoughts give joy when they speak or act.
Joy follows them like a shadow that never leaves them.” — Buddha

Dear Mary sent an award my way, as did Trixie a while back, and I’m just now getting around to saying thanks here. Thanks girls! Just goes to show you how behind I am that I’m only now acknowledging nice things said about my blog.

Trixie said this: Laura at Somewhere in New Jersey — This is one of the most polished blogs. Her writing is always thoughtful and considered.

Mary had this to say (and which I think is probably closer to the truth!): Laura at Somewhere in NJ — You can feel her softness and charm in her writing. Now and then, she rants and curses a little bit and we all love it.

A few of my closest blog buddies have said the same and I find it a little curious. Just ask someone who lives with me or has to work with me – that ranting and cursing happens a little too frequently. I recover pretty quickly, though.

😉

Back to the ranting in a minute. First I want to mention a new blog that’s been making my day lately. It’s a collaborative photo blog called Shutter Sisters – lots of creativity and inspiration there for the photography buffs among us. Check it out! I’ll post a few other favorite *make my day* blogs in the next couple days.

Today’s rant: Phones. What else? I’d been away from the office since last Thursday and had 11 messages waiting this morning. No big deal. Wrote them down and planned on returning the calls late this afternoon. In an effort to maintain my (semblance) of sanity I try to get actual work done during… oh say, 6 hours of the day. Talking on the phone doesn’t count as actual *work* as far as I’m concerned because none of the piles on my desk get any smaller that way.

I also tend to screen my calls when I’m there at my desk and won’t answer the phone unless it’s either a call I’m expecting and know to be an urgent issue or the person is a pain in the ass and calls the secretary to put the call through to me. Otherwise I let the calls go to voicemail with the idea that I’ll return them in the afternoon when I’m brain-dead anyway and can’t get any other more useful work done.

So… today between 9 am and 2 pm I had an additional 14 messages to return. The kicker is that 11 of those were from the same frickin’ person! She called me over and over and over and left the same ridiculous long-winded message 11 times! In a row! And guess what? When I called her back – she wasn’t home. No answering machine either… lucky for her …cause you know how I’d have spent the last couple hours of my work day.

😉

Snapshots, Whatever

Just bits

8 Comments

Here’s something I’m learning lately about blogging: it’s really hard to come up with anything interesting to say when you leave thinking about it to the very last minute of the day. I’m days behind with reading all of your blogs and weeks behind with commenting or responding to your kind comments here. I’m sorry… I’ll catch up one of these days!

In the meantime, or today at least, have a peek at some pretty flower bits from last spring. Some type of azalea that I found growing wild at the edge of the woods. Hopefully, the muse will find me tomorrow with a bit of inspiration and a bit more time to write something worth your time.

😉

Snapshots, Wanderings, Whatever

Little toot

5 Comments

I roamed around for an hour or so on Sunday at the boardwalk in Point Pleasant Beach, but spent most of the afternoon at the inlet in my car because it was freezing cold along the boardwalk. Lots of people out despite the cold. The draw for me at the inlet there is the chance to see loons up close – I have some awful photos, but wont subject you to them. Point Beach and the inlet, especially, is a favorite spot for locals, I think because of the chance to watch the fishing boats come and go. There’s a still thriving industry there and I get a kick out of seeing the boats and the interesting names people come up with for them. This was a favorite of the day.

Whatever

Seeing spots

7 Comments

Have you seen this photo? Pretty amazing, isn’t it? I’d imagine those to be locust or apple blossoms that are camouflaging the fawn’s spotted back. Smart mama, I think, to leave her little one there.

😉

(I have a migraine at the moment… hence the post title)

Seasons, Whatever

Weather report

10 Comments

Isn’t that a pretty sun
setting in a pretty sky?
Will we stay and watch it darken?
Will we stay and watch it darken?

–The Waterboys Church Not Made With Hands

It was 74 degrees today here at the Jersey Shore. 74 degrees on the 6th of February. Hmmm… the sunset was right for the season: a pink bowl glazed with gold and orange that quickly changed to deep purple and brilliant blue that deepened then to black.

The gulls and runners were out in force along the boardwalk, as they should be, both facing into the warm wind. The cabanas and empty condos are shuttered against blizzards that may never come this winter. The marina boats are wrapped in plastic and the motels empty among the blinking traffic lights.

Where’s the snow to fill the gullies in the jetty? Why isn’t the sand crunching underfoot? Why aren’t my eyes tearing with the wind along my raw cheeks?

What is wrong with this picture?

😉

A year ago this week I was watching the iceboats on the Navesink, kids skating and playing *river* hockey. Today I put the air-conditioner on in my car and have most of the windows open here at home tonight.

This balmy weather is a treat, but I’m sure we’ll pay for it somehow. Probably with an Easter Sunday blizzard or the likes.

😉

In the neighborhood, Snapshots, Whatever

Around town

10 Comments

Saturday errands can be such a bore, but today was a lovely day to be out and about. It felt warmish almost and there were no signs of ice on any of the local waters.


I love living with so much water close to home; there’s always a little creek or river or the bay or ocean within sight. A water view always cheers me. And if there’s waterfowl in winter or herons and terns in summer, well… I’m sure to be smiling.


There were a dozen or more parasurfers out on the bay this afternoon, and foolishly I didn’t stop to photograph them before the wind died down. This guy had been windsailing and was just picking up his gear while I watched. Of course he insisted he was plenty warm in his wetsuit!


Even the ever-present Canada Geese are beatiful in the right light on a winter afternoon.


I visited with some gulls in a parking lot littered with broken clam shells along the river. My car and I almost ended up in that very river today due to a moment’s inattention. Foolish, but I had a good laugh at myself as a result.


Yeah… I was that close to going into the drink! Pretty view, but would’ve been hard to explain to the tow-truck guy (or the scuba team).

So… how’s the view in your neighborhood?

Whatever

Tell me a joke, quick!

10 Comments

“To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury; to study hard, to think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common, this is to be my symphony.” –William Henry Channing

I’m working on that “to bear all cheerfully” the past week or so.

😉

Common, ordinary, everyday sorts of troubles, but finding the way through without giving in to the urge to be unnecessarily cranky is something of a challenge. Mostly, I feel like sticking my head in the oven!

😉

I think I find meaning in this quote today because it speaks to personal choice and responsibility for one’s own happiness. A challenge for many of us, yet so simple for some others of us.

Little by little I’m learning enough about myself to keep my emotions mostly even and I find that little things, even big things, no longer hold the same power over me that they might have at one time. Sometimes I don’t do so well with that, though! It takes practice, I think, for me to feel relaxed and flexible enough mentally to ‘go with the flow’ when the universe seems to have other plans for me. Laughter is my way around that crankiness… and lots of ice-cream.

Anybody know a good joke or two.. to cheer me?

Books, Whatever

Too many books?

12 Comments

I don’t have nearly enough shelf space for all my books, so they tend to pile up in all the expected places around the house. This is 1/3 of one of the 4 piles on the desk in my office – the top of the tallest pile that threatens to topple over at any moment. All but the King book are ones I’ve already read, but haven’t found a place for just yet.

The Michael Korda book was part of the horse obsession last summer – thank goodness that never went much beyond books! This was my least favorite of the bunch I read and I still haven’t managed to recycle it to the trash.

The Pine Barrens field guide more or less lives on my desk together with a wildflower ID book on the off chance that I’ll feel like puzzling over the bundle of photos I took there this spring and summer. The McPhee book is a great one, but I’m only a quarter way through it since October or so. I’m not really reading that one in a linear way anyway; instead picking it up and reading a chaper when it falls out of the pile at me.

😉

Fields of Sun and Grass is a great book… one that I’ve read a few times; most recently back in April in preparation for that trip up to the Meadowlands in North Jersey

So… I’m wondering what you all do with the books you no longer have a use for? Anything natural history related that I’m willing to part with I donate to the local Audubon chapter for fundraisers, but the rest of them? Save me from being buried, please!

From the field, Pastimes, Whatever

Weird Monday

12 Comments

Asbury Park has what I think is the nicest stretch of boardwalk here on the northern shore of NJ – too bad most everyone is too afraid to walk it. It’s empty like this even in the summer, except for the homeless people who sleep below it and then sit around leering at passerby during the day.

I’m caught deciding whether today felt more like an episode of The Twilight Zone or Candid Camera… ever have one of those days? Today’s field visits were going fine until I ran over a gull – that jinxed me, I think. Silly gulls were fighting over a bit of bagel or something along Ocean Ave. and this one decides to drop down and grab it just as I was accelerating at the green light… I think it tried to fly underneath, but didn’t make it. I hate killing things with my car!

I went by some of the local ponds to look for ducks at lunch time and every one of the good ponds is frozen. I was wandering around with my big lens looking for some open water and one of last week’s redheads or hoodies when this lady in a car stopped me and asked if mine was a good camera. I started to explain to her that it was reasonably ok for the type of photos I’m capable of and blah-blah-blah when I realized that she was trying to take pics of the Canada Geese with one of those cardboard throw-away cameras from Walmart. Pfft! Shut me up quick.

My next visit was with a lady who was off-her-rocker-crazy. Before I even got in the door I knew I was in for something interesting. I’ll just say it was a very short visit and I kept the door in clear view at all times.

😉

This evening I went to the Y for a yoga class and then tortured myself for a bit with the weight machines afterwards. There’s this guy that I see there pretty often, old with a really bad dye-job and he wears those ridiculous spandex exercise things that show every possible … nevermind … you know what I mean. He really works himself hard and wears earphones the whole time, so I guess he can’t hear all the grunting and moaning he does with the strain of it, but the rest of the weight room hears it all. I sat there on the leg press listening to the obscene sounds he was making, trying to keep a straight face myself, and watching all the women in the room doing the same. At one point, all us girls were laughing openly at him, but every single guy in the room was staring straight ahead pretending not to notice. That just made it funnier to me!

What a weird, weird day.

Bunnies, Garden, Pastimes, Seasons, Whatever

Summer… or snow

9 Comments

The gray snowless sky is getting the better of my mood lately, I think. I love the winter and the chill wind, but it all seems pointless without a covering of snow to change the view some. It’s all just brown and monotonous otherwise.

I walked and walked in the woods this afternoon to get rid of the restlessness and to look for some color or something of interest. Finally I settled on the boost a visit to the greenhouse would give… that stifling heat and the smell of growing things and the color! I do this often enough that the ladies who manage the greenhouse know not to ask me if I need help with purchasing something… I’m there just to wander among the flowers and soak up enough of the moist air to help me remember that winter and its gray wont last forever.

I saw the beginnings of their Spring display, with primroses and pansies and the most wonderful of hydrangeas. Bunny topiaries and sweet little bird’s nest wreaths. It’s all deception now, in late January, like the seed catalogs with their pics of tomatoes red and juicy enough to make my mouth water at the thought of a summer afternoon wandering barefoot along the rows of my garden. That memory seems like such a luxury at this time of year, roaming around the garden to see what’s ready for picking, sitting down beside the pond to watch the dragonflies and the fish, hanging out there until the fireflies come to flash their love songs in the night.

My heart’s set on summer… or snow.