Career options under consideration due to long underwear

Cold.

Brrrr.

Brrrr again, but this time with feeling!

New occupational vistas have opened all because of this ridiculous Dallas November cold snap. Within the week I'll probably have to turn the air conditioner back on, but right now it's dang chilly for working outside. So I bought some black polyester/spandex thermal undies at the sporting goods store.

And suddenly my whole occupational outlook was transformed! [Insert rainbow cosmic enlightenment clip art here]. I now have the outfit to be a cat burglar, a recycling ninja, or an interpretive dancer. Maybe even all three at once! It's Martha Graham meets John Dortmunder on America Recycles Day.

 2014 Nancy L. Ruder

N is for noticing nests in November

Craning my neck lately as nests become more visible in the baring branches. These are at the Rory Meyers Children's Adventure Garden in Dallas. The first is in the Kaleidoscope exhibit. The second is above the touch tank in the Texas Wetlands exhibit. The first seems tidy and homogeneous. The second is a crazy construction of natural and man-made materials.

Nodded off to sleep thinking not nest thoughts but cranes. At the UT-Dallas campus it is always craning!

A crane fly

Regretting that I've been so busy I missed the fall sandhill crane migration on the Rowe Sanctuary's crane cam. Craning my neck for a view of a future with a five-day work week.

crane (n.) 

Old English cran "large wading bird," common Germanic (cognates: Old Saxon krano, Old High German krano, German Kranich, and, with unexplained change of consonant, Old Norse trani), from PIE *gere-(cognates: Greek geranos, Latin grus, Welsh garan, Lithuanian garnys "heron, stork"), perhaps echoic of its cry. Metaphoric use for "machine with a long arm" is first attested late 13c. (a sense also in equivalent words in German and Greek).

crane (v.) 

"to stretch (the neck)," 1799, from crane (n.). Related: Craned; craning.

© 2014 Nancy L. Ruder

Bobcat butter pats

 My sister went plum slack-jawed when she spotted these butter sculptures in her Giant grocery store. We will skip right over the indecision about plum and plumb.

Butter sculpting is a big deal at the Texas State Fair, and we all know that butter is major for tv celebrity cooks. Plus, we all know that mashed potatoes were invented so kids could enact volcanic lava flows during major holiday feasts when they are not putting pitted black olives on their fingers... Yes, I am grateful for Thanksgiving!

I went slack-jawed myself watching this very large cat visiting the local watering hole below my apartment balcony. We knew there was a bobcat living along our residential creek. This feline seems to be a bobcat mix. It is usually sighted at dawn or dusk, which would make it crepuscular. It has a raccoon tail, bobcat ears, and a feral kitty cat's fur.Is it a half cat half bob? Shish! Is it a catcoon halfbob mixcat, or a bobcoon catkebabbob? It's unlikely to be a Cynarctus raccoon dog from Ashfall Fossil Beds in Nebraska.

On the subject of butterpat meltdowns, I am reminded of a historic bit of bad manners in Omaha. The mayor, Mike Boyle, started throwing foil-wrapped butter pats at a county corrections official, and then threw expletives at the governor, Bob Kerrey.

You can't make this stuff up!


AP, Associated Press Aug. 16, 1985 2:10 PM ET
OMAHA, NEB. OMAHA, Neb. (AP) _ Food fight? More of a playful pat, Mayor Mike Boyle says of his reported showdown with Gov. Bob Kerrey and some county officials over dinner. ''No one was injured. The butter wasn't frozen,'' Boyle joked Thursday in response to questions about a dinner a group of Democrats had last month. As for throwing foil-wrapped butter patties, Boyle said he was just having fun among friends. ''I think a sense of humor is one of the things that keeps everybody sane,'' he said.

© 2014 Nancy L. Ruder