Tuesday, February 15, 2011

An Early Arrival Of Spring?

I just paid my third electric bill in three months, in excess of $300. This one was the highest yet, at $344.44. Thankfully after more than 37 years of blood sweat and tears in an international chemical corporation's manufacturing plant, I have a decent secured pension, and could afford to heat my home this frigid winter. Sad to say, that many of those younger folks following me, will not be so lucky, as corporate leadership elected to do away with the company secured pension plan, and force everyone into funding their own retirement, through volatile IRA's, and 401 K's.

As cold as it has been for the last 2 and a half months, spring seems to be at our doorstep! Yesterday the mercury soared to 70°F/21°C, but along with it came tropical storm force winds, gusting at 40 to 50 MPH! Living on a wooded lot, high winds are always a concern, especially for the dead and dying trees, and yesterday was no exception, as an old dead tree gave up it's ghost, and tumbled down across the driveway. A last minute call had to be made to my mother, to inform her that I wouldn't be coming to supper, because I had some emergency lumberjacking to do.

In another sign of spring, I heard a tremendous chirping of birds this morning. I rushed to the back door to see what was causing the commotion, just in time to see a huge flock of starlings taking flight across our finally unfrozen pond, from the the trees above in my woods out back. They are amazing birds, and when in flight, remind me of schools of fish, in the way they behave as a single unit.

I must be getting old, because Im not very keen on learning new tricks. I recently obtained a DVD of The Social Network, because it had received rave reviews, and won a bunch of Oscars at the Academy Awards Show. I'm sorry to say that I was not all that impressed. It did have and intense driving musical score, that kept the film on a very upbeat pace, but the storyline about a surly, obnoxious computer geek, starting up Facebook, left me kind of cold. I'd give it maybe, six or seven stars out of ten. I'm just not that impressed with the subject. Indeed, I rarely ever visit my own Facebook account, because just like Betty White, I think FB, Twitter, and the like, are such a colossal waste of time. I've thought about closing my Facebook account, but I keep getting requests for friendship from people I have met here on Blogger, and many others I have never met at all. My usual reply is to accept the ones I know, with the caveat, that I rarely ever check into my account, so don't hang around waiting for me to respond if you leave a message. I will eventually get to it, but by then any response will more likely than not, be irrelevant.

Here is a treat for you all. Unfortunately, I can't embed the video. It's a lovely clip of an Orangutan and Blue Tick Hound, who have become the best of pals! Check it out here.

Melissa XX




8 comments:

Rachel said...

I'm also lucky to be old enough to be in an old style final salary pension scheme although how long it will last in this day and age no one really knows. They have just renegotiated and the company has piled in a load of cash to make up a hole but I think our contributions will be increased too. They sent around a thick glossy brochure to all our homes to explain this at our expense no doubt. I haven't opened mine. To busy on Twitter and Facebook :)

Claire L Hallam said...

Spring seems to have suddenly arrived here today after a long winter- it does lift the heart doesn't it?......as for the Facebook film...I'll file this just after "Randy Newman" in my list of things I should see, but only on TV.

Elly said...

Thanks for "The Lumberjack Song", it's been a while since hearing it. This past Sunday we were awakened to perhaps hundreds of robins here in South Florida.

Hugs, Elly

Anonymous said...

We didn't think The Social Network was a best picture, but we both found it fascinating. It seemed to me it was less the story of Zuckerberg and more the story of Eduardo. Zuckerberg is not an approachable character. He's just too weird, too inhuman (and apparantly somewhat fictionalized). But Eduardo is someone we can relate to (except that he's billionaire)--a guy who got caught up in something that went way beyond his control and turned in directions he never expected.

Blogging and reading blogs is social networking, not all that different than Twitter and FB. Just depends on how you want to interact with people. I spend too much time on FB, but I'd still rather meet people in meatspace.

Stephanie said...

It's been in the high 60's and low 70's here too. It's suppose to stay that way for at least the next 10 days.

When I took the dog out the other night, I heard frogs croaking down in the low part of our property.

I've found Facebook is good for keeping up with family. My youngest daughter is on it a bunch.

Terry said...

Snowing here and I'm in CA. I use Faceboo mostly for folks I know in person and some I've corresponded with. I deleted some trans connections who contacted GG friends because they thought they were trans. Quite embarrassing. At one point I dropped about 100 trans folk because we had nothing in common other than the T connection. Now most of my FB friends are real life friends.

Angel said...

Here you are, paying electric bills in excess of $300, and my hubby is complaining to the utility that our last one was a whopping $90.

Facebook... I used to waste so much time on it, but I've since found other things on which to waste my time. One nice thing about it though, is that it has allowed me to be reunited with some of my old schoolmates, as well as other people from my childhood.

Looking up at Teri's comment, I can totally understand where she's coming from. A couple of years ago, a female friend was congratulated by a transgender acquaintance of mine on FB for looking so "realistic". She was not amused. Makes me wonder how many other female friends were similarly contacted and just never told me about it... or worse yet, dropped me because of it. Since then I've changed my privacy settings so that my friends list is no longer visible... FB friends can only view mutual friends. That's becoming increasingly important because a growing number of my FB friends are people I know in real life, most of whom don't know about my past.

Jenny said...

Spring, how marvelous! Everything's in that waiting phase here.

FB? I don't do it. A company with an extremely cavalier attitude to your dats.