Sunday, August 31, 2008

A DAY AT THE BEACH

Today being the last day of August and a hot, muggy one at that, my sister Melissa and I decided to head to the beach for the afternoon.



(Disclaimer: All pictures shown in this post have been snagged from various sites on the Internet, as I neglected to bring my camera with me. Except the one of the car really is my sister and her car - she emailed it to me. But I am sure you will get the gist of the day anyway.)

We drove up to Patricia Beach in Melissa's brand new Mini Cooper S Clubman that she picked up just days ago. Neat little car, that! Lots of ponies under the hood and spaceous to boot.



When we headed up, the weather was quite overcast, although the temperature was about 30 degrees C at that time (just after noon). It looked quite like this:



We picked Patricia Beach because it is a lot less crowded than the more popular Grand Beach:



Patricia Beach tends to be more of a family oriented beach, whereas Grand is the meat market kind of place.

Because it was quite overcast, and the breeze off the lake made it cooler than the 30C that the city was experiencing, we dabbled our feet in the water but found it too cool to tempt us to swim about. (Would have been quite refreshing had the sun been blazing and the day smokin' hot.) So we lay around on our towels on the beach and people watched, chatted and generally just relaxed the afternoon away.



Not two seconds on the beach and this appeared!



And she bit me.



Like this:



Nasty little bitch.... so I squished her dead... why, oh why, do I have to be at the top of mosquitodom's favourite flavour list????? ((sigh))

We enjoyed some cold soft drinks I had packed along; having stopped at Quizno's for a bite of lunch before leaving the city, we didn't pack any food.

During the afternoon, the clouds broke up and the sun came out, warming the beach considerably. We wandered over to the local snack shack for an ice cream cone. Melissa had Maple Walnut and I had Chocolate. Mmmmmmm



On the way back to the beach, the ice cream on my cone took a nose dive into the sand. I was horrified!



But I managed to rescue most of it, paring off the contaminated bits with paper napkins until clean ice cream was left. Which I then ate! (Yeah... whatever... five second rule and all that.) It was delicious and no, there were not sand bits in it.

We watched people playing frisbee.



We watched kids playing in the sand, building castles and whatever else their imaginations could come up with.



There were kids on boogie boards. (Lake Winnipeg actually has waves and tidal action, as it is large enough and shallow enough to be influenced by the moon, just like the oceans.)



We watched families interacting and enjoying each other's company.



We watched gulls and pelicans flying over and around the beach.





All in all, a lovely, relaxing Sunday afternoon. I hope everyone else out there had a great last day of August as well.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

HEARD AT THE BEIJING OLYMPICS...

Here are the top nine comments made by NBC sports commentators so far during the Summer Olympics that they would like to take back:

1. Weightlifting commentator: 'This is Gregoriava from Bulgaria. I saw her snatch this morning during her warm up and it was amazing.'

2. Dressage commentator: 'This is really a lovely horse and I speak from personal experience since I once mounted her mother.'

3. Paul Hamm, Gymnast: 'I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father.'

4. Boxing Analyst: 'Sure there have been injuries, and even some deaths in boxing, but none of them really that serious.'

5. Softball announcer: 'If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again.'

6. Basketball analyst: 'He dribbles a lot and the opposition doesn't like it. In fact you can see it all over their faces.'

7. At the rowing medal ceremony: 'Ah, isn't that nice, the wife of the IOC president is hugging the cox of the British crew.'

8. Soccer commentator: 'Julian Dicks is everywhere. It's like they've got eleven Dicks on the field.'

9. Tennis commentator: 'One of the reasons Andy is playing so well is that, before the final round, his wife takes out his balls and kisses them... Oh my God, what have I just said?'


All I can say is HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!

Saturday, August 23, 2008

LULLING ABOUT......

My life is in a lull..... there is no one special in it at the moment. Beginnings have come and gone, nothing right enough to become a continuation.... the discontinuations leave me feeling a bit sad, and bad, for the possible discomfort I may have caused, but one must be true to one's self, which entails being honest with others.

No point in continuations if it is not the right sort of thing. Has to be two-sided as one-sided just doesn't work, as the past has shown me. Continue too long, past the point of discovering the one-sidedness, and the discontinuation becomes a painful thing.... a pain that I dislike causing.

So I am quietly lulling about my life right now.... trying to get into a space where I am comfortable with that position... the alone-ness, the one-ness... although not with loneliness.... that has not appeared as I have friends and family that I adore.

There is potential in one direction.... someone from the past... hesitant but interested.... the interest is mutual but never acted upon.... time will tell what is brewing beneath the surface, if indeed there is anything. So for now, I continue... to lull quietly...

Excuse me now, while I go and lull off to sleep.... I am tired.... zzzzzzzzz

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

So... I Googled my blog name...

... because it is kind of cool to see where you fall on the list of cyber searches ... and came up with a bunch of images. Some were totally expected. Like this, which is just too cute:



Then... I came across this one, of a stone carving in Europe - Oslo, I believe the caption under it said... looks like it is depicting an adult woman with children playing "horsie", riding on her back. Kind of interesting... looks like part of a larger display of stone statues depicting family activities and something that parents around the world do, I am sure.





But then... I came across these and thought .... WTF!!!!





It turns out, with further investigation, that 'Ponygirl' play is a form of bondage... I had NOOOO idea when I chose the name for my blog that this even existed! I named my blog Ponygirl Ponderings because of the horses (real ones, by the way.... just see some previous posts) in my life.

You can even buy books detailing the training of Ponygirls for submission, and all that goes with it, I guess (just surmising here, as I haven't read any of them and really don't want to, thanks very much...).



There is a magazine dedicated to this, uh, 'sport' as well - Equus Eroticus - but I decided not to put a picture of their cover up as it is pretty explicit.

All I can say is... THOSE Ponygirls are waaaaayyyy weird! And my blog didn't even make the search list.....

Monday, August 11, 2008

FITTING IN...


Pips (aka Pipsqueak) has settled into the family quite nicely. She has adapted from barn cat to house cat status with nary a twitch of her whiskers and spends time each day looking out the living room window at the birds and bunnies that populate the neighbourhood.


She is likes to kick back and relax...


... is definitely a snuggle bunny...


... does a good job keeping herself clean, especially behind the ears and between the toes...


... looks a tad scruffy as her hair grows in but she's unconcerned with appearances...


... every once in a while joins Zoe for snuggles on the floor ...


... and on Zoe's bed too ...


... and best of all, she and the B-man are getting to be buddies, playing and sleeping together.

Saturday, August 9, 2008

ISSUES! I HAVE ISSUES...

Well, actually my external hard drive does. Ever since I moved into my new house in July, it has been causing me problems. It is soooo slow... takes forever to open up files (this is where all my data files are stored - like the gazillion photos I have...), tends to freeze up, and now it is telling me it is not formatted and needs to be formatted, do I want to do this now?

NO!

Because I am pretty sure that would wipe off all the data in the thing and I would be ready to kill it... smash it with a hammer or something... out of rage that it destroyed so many things that are precious to me.

So tomorrow I am picking up an 8GB flash drive to transfer all the data to, so I can reformat the damn E:/ drive and hopefully get it back up to snuff. I actually found a nice little flash drive for under $30! Can't beat that!

This better work.... if I lose anything I will most seriously pissed off. And I can't do any of the posts I have planned because I can't upload any photos! I have things planned... and none are coming to fruitition because of technical difficulties.

Grrrrrrr!

Sunday, August 3, 2008