The Path Less Travelled

It's the path untravelled so far. It's an amalgam of pavers with a bunch of holes awaiting the next step. It's a good analogy for mid-life, looking down at the pavers (3). There's definite structure, and a firm placement of a substantial portion of the whole. The tougher parts are still ahead, though the work so far was not trivial either.

Clearly if we rehearsed our lives before we lived them I would have found a way to create a paved walkway without sweating so much, or putting so many km on my car. But today I had selected the colour of pavers I wanted and picked them up, along with some extra substrate material (stone dust and 1/2" gravel). Too much detail? Oh well such is life. It's a lot of detail and none of it too exciting. I'd work on a better plot than this if it wasn't the LWoP blog.

So a nicely packed and leveled foundation and then the stone went in. I'm got most of it down, and just have to do the cutting tomorrow. But the sun swings around to make it quite warm to work in the direct glare of mid-day. So though I started before 9:00, I was ready to call it quits by about 4:00, and have had a cooling shower and a brief read through good ol Plato before a 10 minute powernap.

Cats
We've got a pair of cats who will go un-named on the blog. One is named after a fine single-malt scotch, cause he's so smooth and complex. The other is named in honour of hike to the top of a Scottish mountain. After we bagged that, we gave a similar name to our first feline. Let's call them M and B. B is currently running rabidly around the house, screaming from each window. He's a black and white, with a dash of white on his nose, and three of his feet. Quite a personality. He's never nipped at us during the roughest play, and only slowly got used to the overwhelming experience of being outside on his leash. Now he loves it.

M, the older one (about 8 yrs now) loves to be outside, a testament to the fact that she was a stray as a kitten. She's happy to try and nip your knuckles while playing. Swears at B all the time, and does her own yelling, but mostly after we've gone to bed. She's a dilute calico - kind of a greyed out version of the traditional calico. Quite attractive.

A striking difference between the two is that B is bigger and totally motivated by food. That's what he's shouting out the windows right now. "I want food." "They don't give me food, call the cops." "What the Hell are you doing - I'm sure it's suppertime!" M just lazes around on the hammock I built for her years ago. It's an "X-frame" structure with two levels of hammock. She's owner of the top. B used the bottom to curl up a few times when it was knew, but now it's largely just a canopy to sleep under occasionally. M is likely down there curled up right now, looking out the backdoor at the yard where she'd rather be out wandering around. She gets an hour or so out on her leash occasionally too.

Topics List
I started building a list of topics to cover at the left sidebar, you might notice. Those will continue to grow, though I don't think I feel like tackling anything that works up too much of a froth today. Listening to the news, I realize that I want to add the Middle East situation on to there - so I'll do that. I fear where things are headed, and can see a scenario that I'm hoping won't come about. I'll expound on the currrent Israeli/Hezboullah situation when I feel like typing ferociously. Suffice to say that I can't see how this current cease-fire can last, but hope it does.

I also feel compelled to rant on the US media's ability to continually play to the lowest common denominator as tabloid stories fill their press again. I hesitate to mention the story 'cause I don't want to get hits from people searching for commentary on that particular freakish, sordid case, and the senseless obsession of the media with fixating on it. I did just hear some very canny and intelligent comment on the media by a Toronto Star media columnist, who I'll identify in a second and link her here....

...Ah, here she is: Antonia Zerbisias Heard an interview with her today on CBC with Adrian Harewood. I really liked her candour. I felt like I could agree with everything she had to say on the subject, and it was refreshing to hear someone talk about how insane the obsession with that particular story of a murdered young girl in a freak-show family was. (BTW, this Harewood fella is doing a decent job - though he's a bit humourless).

But there's more to be said on the media generally, and you can get the BitPlayer perspective in a future LWoP blog posting.

Wrap Up
Not much else to add there today. My fingers are sore from gripping paving stones (muscle sore, not abrasively - I know enough to wear gloves. If you're doing any masonry on paving work, don't skimp on the gloves!). Hence, typing is a bit sore.

Oh, but I haven't introduced any of my other crazy projects! Well okay, I'll introduce one - I'm writing a short story (very, very short) with an interesting characteristic. I'll leave you hanging, but will share it with you sometime soon. Stay tuned. This is a wacky project (Proj10)

Finally, of course - your immediate, gotta do it right now, assignment for today is to go to a quotation database site (e.g. QuoteWorld) and search for a pithy quote. Then write it in your handwriting on a scrap of paper and put it on your wall. Let me know what you found! One I just found realted to Life Without Practice is....

"A man must love a thing very much if he not only practices it without any hope of fame and money, but without even any hope of doing it well."