Tweets and Twitterings from the Matrix Refugee

• 00:31 Revisiting old fandoms: I've been listening to Wagner's Parsifal lately: good tome of the year for it. #
• 10:35 Good morning... off to run errands in the rain. Not sure how much I'll get done. Would like to go to Burlington, but not likely #
• 14:16 Back home, drenched to the skin. Did not get to Burlington. Not sure if I'll make it to work tomorrow as the street is flooded now #
• 16:00 Found Poppy Z. Brite's "Lost Souls" at the Lowell library book swap. A rip on the back cover makes it look like someone tried to stake it. #

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I saw that coming when the water collected on my street yesterday...

By some happy accident, my dad left his wader boots at home today, and so he called to let me know that I could borrow them to wear as I went to work; the water on the street is now across the street and over parts of the sidewalk, specifically what we're now calling "the dippy-doo by Dunkin Donuts", where it dips down to admit a drive-thru driveway. So I put them on -- and considering that they were five sizes too big for me, it was like walking with a pair of wastebaskets on my feet. I managed to shuffle down the street to the dippy-doo, and I got about a third the way across before the water started to ship almost as high as the waders, and I still had a ways to go. To say nothing of the waves being made as people driving through crept past me. I finally gave up after three tries and clomped back home to call my boss and let her know that my street was impassible again. I kind of needed the day off anyway, since I need to brace myself for the onslaught tomorrow and Friday.

And so I'm about to start typing one of the Fanfic Roses which I'd finished. Hopefully I can get at least one typed and posted today, if not two of the shorter ones. Maybe I can get one of the story_lottery stories done as well, and there's always the centi_50 fics. I might just slap all of those up here this week and get the dang things out of the way.

Long Awaited Boston Flower Show shenanigans

Also known as "Watching Pete's 'Keets". I spent much of Sunday over by Peter S.'s garden/flight cage exhibit, watching the silly birds. He's usually got birds of some kind in his exhibit, but this year he had a large flight cage with doves, quail, pheasants, cockatiels, wood ducks, several different kinds of parakeets, java finches and budgies. The budgies especially stole the show: one of the doves was hopping up and down very oddly; I took a closer look and discovered a budgie was riding on the dove's back, nipping at the dove (and the dove was about five times the size of the budgie)! Also, the budgies had set up their own little territory in the top of one weeping cherry tree: if any other birds came flying in for a landing on that one tree, they would promptly chase away the intruder, or at least they did until some of Peter's crew came to drain the duck pond. The cockatiels were carefully avoiding the budgies by hiding up in the wooden bracings at the tops of the posts that supported the roof of the flight cage, about thirty feet off the floor.

Mind you, I did look at the other exhibits, including the very strange garden which the grower my dad works for had put together, with the brown lawn and the cluttered stone heads: Pharaoh head with a fountain, Buddha head, Easter Island head -- buh? I guess it was supposed to be multi-cultural.

There were some different bonsai this year, including a bonsai cherry tree, which lead to some hysteria in my headspace, in which one of the occasional visitors embarrassed one of the residents by talking about "the bonsai incident".

Then there was the weird little garden with the oddly cut stone blocks and mosses, and the one with the savanna animals made from dried grasses. Sadly, there weren't any of the quirky flower arrangements with oddball props, but that may come back next year.