Good photographic evidence on Blogger/Google here. Hmm.

I cannot believe it: there are already 33 fridayfivers posted!

Here is my Friday Five:

1. What is your favorite type of literature to read (magazine, newspaper, novels, nonfiction, poetry, etc.)? Let's see. That would be yes, yes, yes, yes, and only if it's very good.

2. What is your favorite novel? A River Runs Through It by Norman Mclean. (There are neat quotes pulled from the novel at that link.)

3. Do you have a favorite poem? (Share it!) Yes. It's a Wordsworth. I'll have to go get it.

ODE
INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD

The full version is here.

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

XI

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.


4. What is one thing you've always wanted to read, or wish you had more time to read? Oh geez. I just wish there was more time to read. Books are stacked up in all different genres around the apartment ready to be read.

5. What are you currently reading? One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gonzo Marketing by Christopher Locke, The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, the newspaper, the back of the cereal box, and the toothpaste tube.

Oulipo. I have been told to: Use the word "Oulipo" in your blog. I dunno, go see meg.

ooops....overslept!

Any Survivor choices?

Have a marvelous Thursday!

My Wednesday Wonder for LAST week is posted here. Kathryn has just posted a new Wonder there.

And the top ten reasons we blog:

10. Because we can.
9. To add pundit or zilla to our name.
8. For community.
7. We're inveterate readers.
6. We're inveterate writers.
5. It's an open venue to practice various forms of expression.
4. To further a cause.
3. Because Pyra has this cool tool that works really well 90% of the time and sucks majorly 10% of the time and we enjoy the challenge. (Applies only to blogger...welcome aboard, Lynn!!)
2. Blogging is a necessary step in the evolution of cyber-space and we want to be pioneers.

and the #1 reason is:

<---------Over there, on the left. Under Visiting. Those folks. Mmmmhmmm. Yep. 'Nuff said.

Okay, I'm calmed down from Monday now. Tuesday was our charity day at work. On this day we pay to dress in a theme and two of us bring stuff for a bake sale. It was my turn to bring stuff. I ran out of brain power on Monday night, so I thought I'd just whip up some no-bake cookies. They're easy, they're chocolate, they don't crumble and the guys like them. (I work at an HVAC company.) I got them started and then thought, "no, let's make it a double batch!!"

Well, I suppose that would have been okay, if I had put them in a bigger pan--but I didn't. Soon I was boiling away, and the goo was getting higher and higher and higher in the pan and I'd lift the pan off the heat and it would go down, and then setting the pan back down the goo would rise again and....well, you can see, I need to go back to cooking school. I did better as a ten-year-old than I do now! By the time the cookies were done, the stove was smeared with chocolate, and I wasn't too sure that the cookies were going to set-up!

I couldn't NOT show up with anything so I launched plan B...cupcakes. I had some funfetti ones I hadn't made up at Valentines. Out came the stuff for those. (AFTER I cleaned the stove, of course!)

About 11:00 p.m. the second batch of cupcakes were ready to be removed from the oven. And in the morning, I was able to take both cupcakes AND cookies to the bake sale. And I included some bananas and apples (a couple of the guys don't like sweets, hard to imagine).

Over at Mandarin, meg is on "orange-alert" and has been color-charting Pumpkin the finch. Well, you know how "monkey see, monkey do". I'm not on "orange-alert" but I wanted to color chart my baby robin. Whee! That was fun! (If you haven't stopped by to visit with meg I highly recommend it. Incredibly generous. And she never laughs at poor rip-offs.)

One of Kathryn's Wednesday Wonders dealt with color. You know how it is sometimes: a topic is brought to the forefront of your mind and you find great examples all over the place. Color-charting from nature was one of the ideas in the reading on that wonder. On the video I saw on Sunday Gen on Trading Spaces pulled her palette from an artichoke. And here's meg charting her birds. Pretty neat.

I ALMOST have last week's Wednesday Wonder done. I really am regressing...I haven't been this behind since Miss Hall's 4th grade class. Someone smack me!

Tuesday This or That:
1. Holland or Netherlands? Netherlands
2. Emu or Ostrich? Ostrich
3. Biff or Happy? Happy
4. Quincy or Braintree? Quincy
5. Cassius Clay or Muhammad Ali? Muhammad Ali
6. Instanbul or Constantinople? Constantinople
7. Pig or Swine? Swine
8. Barf or Puke? Barf
9. Potatoes or Spuds? Spuds
10. Squeeze Box or Accordion? Accordian

Tuesday....definitely a better day.
Today is the final Tuesday of the month, so it was Charity Day at work. Today the theme was "presidential" but we all chickened out on wearing stove-pipe hats or white whigs wigs (argh, what did THAT typo mean???) and settled for the standard red/white/blue. We have several people on lay-off, so we didn't quite hit the $50.00 mark this month, but a good time was had by all.

Oh yeah...Survivors! Predictions for bootee this week? (The way we say it at work is "Pick your bootee." Ok. Sorry. We get bored.)

Oh boy. Mondays are tough.

Way tough! Lynn, what's going on at your place? Email or comment, pretty please?!?

Kathryn is Google's #1 Kathryn. Yay! She points to the Random Name Generator here. Some options for me would be: Amory Brandice (gag), Riley Lillian (not so bad), or Amma Kyleigh (hmmm). Have fun!

Susan had a wonderfully evocative piece on trains yesterday. Lovely piece of writing.

My cyber-brother, Jeeem, is down with a cold. Fortunately, reinforcements were coming this weekend to help apply the Vicks. Don't forget the Vernors, Jimbo!

Bryn says it's about dinosaurs today. Some days I FEEL like a dinosaur.

I think it was meg who blogged The Sound of Silence one day. Gonna go check her archives.

Edit: Yep, it was meg. And she must be in the same mode. The post is right here.

It was strange and wonderful seeing Simon and Garfunkel tonight on the Grammys. And the thing that made it special was that I was IMing with my old friend S when they came began to sing. She's in Florida, I'm in Michigan. She's one of my oldest friends, and she ran to her TV (which is on the other side of their house) to watch them. And for a moment the breezes of the 60's wafted through my heart. Fuss all you want, Meryl, folk-rock is always going to have folks like me misty-eyed with memories. Even, no, especially James Taylor.

And oh boy..."Lose Yourself". Yes. So I'm not totally living in the past.

Wednesday Wonder from February 12 on Food Rituals is here.

(This time there is a note that blogger is going down at 7:00 p.m. Pacific...hope this makes it.

Gone In the Morning.

I miss him on cold snowy evenings.

Looking up Robins.

A robin's diet is 42% animal and 58% plant. My robins are early birds (not getting any worms today) as the typical migration is around March 15-April 15 in this area.
More information here.

And then, of course, we can visit people Robin, who has just had some great news!

Still having some problems getting published....I'm just not as persistent as you, leah *grin*

Now I'm wondering...maybe I just can't see myself? It's 11:08 a.m. and I still can't see this...can you?

Unconscious Mutterings:
I say .….….…… and you think .….….…… ?

Key :: .….….…… Lime
Ice :: .….….…… Cream
Compassion :: .….….…… Friends
Crayon :: .….….…… Lose Yourself
Insatiable :: .….….…… Hunger
Bench :: .….….…… Press
Capsule :: .….….…… Time
Heart :: .….….…… Soul
Fourteen :: .….….…… 92
Postcard :: .….….…… Old

Unusual 404 pages here and here.

It's too early for the robins!!! We have a snowstorm in progress. The flock I saw earlier in the week is still here, stranded in a stand of pines by the building to the north of me. They've been joined by about five Cedar Waxwings. They were feeding on these crabapple? berries. There must have been thirty of them in the trees. Argh. I had no birdseed, but I did have some Cheerios. Do you think that will hurt them?

Sunday Update on Birds: Not here anymore. And no little corpses lying feet up are found, so they must have decided it was time to continue their journey.

Confession: I came up Manila the first time, so took the test again.

You are not very reliable but people like you anyway because you are so easygoing and fun to be with. And cute, too. Which Blogging Tool Are You?

Eventually a new header is going to show up on this page. Yes, they are JellyBellys. Special ones: the Bertie Bott's Flavor Beans.

Now, when the nieces and nephews have had them I've ughed and arghed and said "why would anyone want to eat those?" That's what aunts are supposed to do, right? But last night, when I stopped in at Caruso's Confectionaries for some lemon/chocolate drops, they cute little boxes were sitting right at the counter. So I bought a box, and here we are.

The silver one on the left is called "sardines". Here goes.

Argh. Uck! EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!! Fortunately, the yellow is a lemon, so we'll clear the palate.

Next up, the brown one next to the sardines. That is called "dirt".

mmmph. Yikes! How do they do that? It's been a long time since I've eaten dirt, but that's it! Fortunately, there's a buttered popcorn in the batch. Unfortunately, it appears that popcorn doesn't quite cover dirt.

Okay, the plain green one is either grass or green apple. I suspect it might be grass. Oh yeah, it is...and I rather like the taste of that. Cool! Now on to the dark green ones...another kind of grass: spinach. Uhoh. Here goes!

It appears that spinach isn't too bad in JellyBelly world. There is no aftertaste. Now we'll add a little Black Pepper (dark one right in the middle). Yum. That is good. Now on to the one I was avoiding the most: Booger. That's the innocent-looking one over on the right, above the lemon. Uck. Tastes like dirt again. But I'm home free. I've saved a cherry and two toasted marshmallows for the finale.

Thank you very much for revisiting childhood with me this fine gray Saturday morning. Maybe I should go turn on the cartoons!

Note: I see that Kathryn published and it came through. Mine hasn't. Hmmm. Mebbe I've done something bad.

Saw DareDevil tonight. Still processing. I didn't know the character at all.