Foiled and Used!

Yes, my ability to post new office specials has been severely hampered by some doom & gloom rumours at work. You see my company is clamping down on rampant internet use as another added reason and excuse to kick people to the curb. You see firing someone is infinitely cheaper than laying them off, so they have their minions out and about looking for firable offenses.

I heard it through the grapevine through a fellow geek in the IT Department that they will begin tracking individual user's internet time, and use that information when it comes to review time. Pretty evil, isn't it? Considering how quickly I can stamp out an office special, type out some fairly random post to accompany it, and be on and off blogspot -- I shouldn't really be concerned, but since they do probably log visited sites, and here I am logging on to a blog during my work day, I suppose it can be construed as my being naughty. Heaven forbid!

Anyway, that is in part made posting during the day a no-no, and by the time night rolls around, and I've got the dogs let out, fed, let out again, dinner cooked & eaten, dishes cleaned, a load of laundry done or picked up all the dog toys strewn all over the place, some eviscerated and their fluffy guts spread all over kingdom come... I'm usually not really thinking all too much about blogging. In fact, I usually remember the next day, at my desk, while sitting down with a fresh cup of green tea, thinking "This would be a great time to draw an office special.. Oh, waaait... Riiight. I have some new drawings but they're at work and unscanned.

OH WELL. I'll make do I suppose. Damned IT spies.

I grabbed my camera this evening, after I fed the monsties, and took some pictures of some of the interesting blooms that are busy showing off right now. My day lilies are in that stage where they bloomed spectacularly, and now he blossoms are shriveled and ugly, and the next ones are still all alien-pod-like... so I couldn't grab those... but here are two of my favourite delicate flowers that I adore.

This is my Crocosmia Lucifer. Loverly isn't it? The red is so vivid and saturated it's almost hard to imagine it's natural.


The Gaura is probably more common. Despite it being hailed as a great plant for well drained soil and direct sun, I have had very little luck with these plants. This year I just crammed it in the base of the wisteria pot this year, and hope that it'll survive. I've tried various colours and types of Gaura in the past years, including a really pretty variegated one that died immediately. As my Master Gardener coworker says; "more will die than will flourish." Thanks A LOT. I want these to work because I just LOVE LOVE LOVE the delicate little butterfly flowers that flicker around when there's the slightest breeze.

O.C. (Yes, Orange Cat... that's his name, we are Soooooo original, and he's not even ALL orange, he's orange in spots, and his orange spots are really tabbied up) has been coming back. Tonight, I went outside to take the flower pictures, and I hear the persistent, persistent meowing of the 'oh, I'm so shy, let me take hours to come to you but once you touch my head and pet me in the tiniest way I'll follow you around rubbing all up on you and meowing incessantly until your head explodes' cat. So I tossed some kibble in his little bowl, because now he has a freakin' bowl... Remind you of another post I once made? (being bamboozled on a smaller scale) and he just totally crammed his head in there and just hoovered it.

Then when me ate every last kibble in the bowl, he's like... PET ME SLAVE! MEOW MEOW MEOW... So I comply like some stupid robot, which he is just mega-kitty-delighted, rolling around, purring, stretching up his back in that Halloween cat thing... then he's like. Yah, thanks, later lady. Off he gingerly tippy toes away in his kitty-user way. Cats... I know there's a reason why I don't like them as much as I like dogs. There's a word for creatures like that in French: Le Profiteur. Or maybe Sale bête is a more apt description.

Either way, I always walk away from OC encounters feeling like I just threw on my clothes, stuffed my underwear in my purse, and ran home after that questionable one-night stand. Damned cat.