First spring walk

What a pretty day it was. Although I woke up with a migraine and some deafness (still congested), I decided to get rid of the laundry I haven't done since before I went to Dallas. In the afternoon, I went for a walk in Regent's Park. I love how it's just round the corner from my house, and every spring I take my first uplifting walk through it. The paths were packed because a lot of people get Good Friday off, even though Easter Monday is a public holiday.

I was bombarded with sounds and images and snippets of life:
Tiny green buds on the ends of branches.
Blossom petals on the ground.
Groups of geese flying over the bridge.
Pigeons doing the courtship dance.
Lady feeding the squirrels and a robin joined in after singing in a bush.
Italian greyhound arcing across the pathway at full bound.
Couples of all ages laughing, chatting, holding hands, kissing.
Mixed groups of adults and children kicking a ball around.
I saw a duck dive and not surface for over 10 seconds.
Children on bicycles have no sense of direction.
A football rolled towards me across the path so I stopped it and kicked it (perfectly directed, may I add) back to its owner.

Standing by a bush looking at some tulips and topiaries, I spotted a robbin who popped up from behind a tulip, peeping at me with his big beady eyes and little red breast, so I stayed there and next minute he'd flitted over into the hedge, and a second later he popped out right at my foot! I had my phone out, but was so excited I couldn't turn the camera on without moving. He hopped about for a bit looking cheeky and then flipped over onto a bench. Sweet!



On my way back home, still enjoying all the sensations, I started sniffling and my eyes got sore, so I decided to pick up some allergy tablets. On a rather empty bit of pathway on my way out, I passed a couple of Middle Eastern men in their late 20s-early 30s, bowling about on the pathway like they owned it. As soon as I was level with them, one of them said something that sounded like, "Hi." In the big city, people learn to ignore what other people say sometimes, so I did. Then his mustachioed companion said it louder and his friend said, "Too much". I was at least 5 steps past them by now and still going. Then I imagine they turned around a bit and the first guy said, "Scuse me!" and his companion followed with, "Hello, scuse me!"

I mean, what am I supposed to say? English guys do not do that unless totally drunk. Italians do, but they are kind of laughable. One time I was waiting at the Tube turnstiles for [the first guy I nearly dated when I came to London] when an Italian man standing near me said, "Would you like to go out for a drink?"

How do they come up with that stuff?

So yea, the only attention I get is from [you fill in the blanks] instead of the guys I am interested in. When I am interested in a guy, I only get as far as "being friends". (See rant below, yes it is happening again.) I will let you know if that ever changes.

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Bok! The Bunnies!

I love how the chickens

1) Run over to break up the fight with a few frontal shoves

2) Stare the bunnies down while tempers cool

3) Strut off together with a warning "bok!"

Keeping the mean streets safe from marauding lagomorphs.

Coward

I watched The Ring last night. Most of the crucial scenes were viewed through the gap between my fingers. Thankfully, because of this, I didn't scream. Sometimes I get taken by surprise, though.

It was scary, but not as viscerally frightening as Ringu which I saw on TV last year. Shoot, that one scared the toenails off me. (This time, I knew when to cover my eyes, see.) Plus the original was shot in constant semi-darkness.

When it was over, the back of my neck felt uncomfortable and I was paralysed until I came across a link to this refreshing recut of The Ring as a family drama.

I also came across some hilarious answers on IMDB to the question, "If you knew she was going to come after you, what would you do?"

There were the predictable ones like: "I'd scream and run / I'd hit her with a chair / I'd shoot her". And anyway, she's dead and she can control electrical devices, so there's no stopping her, but still some great ones were:

• I'd put my TV on top of the wardrobe so she would fall out and break a leg

• When she was halfway out of the TV I'd turn it off so she would be stuck and I'd watch her squirm

• Before she crawls out I'd change the channel to Jerry Springer or some soap so she would be forever trapped in awful TV land. [I vote we send her to Big Brother...]

• I'd reason with her
  
  

However, assurances that "it is just a movie and they are just actors" soon pass, and when it came time to go to bed, I couldn't turn off my lights. Yes, I know that nothing will ever crawl through my TV screen...but I left it on the digital BBC classical station and turned on the blue light that illuminates the dome on my humidifier.

Even after watching Ringu I turned off my lights, so what happened???

And what is the big deal about the dark? Some of the deaths happened in broad daylight.

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In much lighter topics, I've restarted the application I mentioned a few days ago. I was working on it on my old laptop, which is so mangled it takes 5 minutes to notice you've actually hit a button. Slow going. Today I spent the entire afternoon running System Mechanic on it in an attempt to speed it up a bit, but it's a lost case I would say. Surprised it didn't cut itself off or give me the Blue Screen of Death today.

I haven't been able to work on it on my new laptop because it came preloaded with MS Works, which, in short, is crap. Plus the world and its uncle send attachments as .doc or .ppt or .xls. So it was only a matter of time before I had to relent and buy an Office Suite. And SWEET indeed it is -- I am on the Office 2007 free trial. It is a-mazing.

It comes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and a new program called OneNote. With a few clicks and drags you can assemble anything, all sort of notes, pics...it predicts what you want and before you know it you have pages of bullet lists, tables, boxes, sidenotes, and so on.

All the programs have an intuitive Ribbon that replaces the clumsy old toolbars. And so much more I have not yet discovered.

So anyway, I have restarted the application...well, when I get through playing with everything :)


Here is a picture to please your eyes, taken from the breakfast table one morning in Canada:




Pretty little Mourning Doves. So shy and gentle.