Roll your stone on over here...

There are some penguins that are common along the Antarctic coast called the Adelie Penguins.  If you would like to learn more about them I have included the link from my friends (they are not really my friends but I use it almost as much as Google, so I feel close to them) at Wikipedia.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad%C3%A9lie_Penguin

If you enjoy penguins I am sure this information will fascinate you, or perhaps just be interesting to say the least.  I love penguins for various reasons, many of which are not why I am posting about them in this blog, (and of which would probably actually bore you to death,) but I saw an article on them the other day (or maybe it was just a little blurb) and it fascinated me.

Stones are huge to penguins.  I don’t mean that they live around big rocks, I mean stones play a vital role in a lot of species of penguins’ lives.  Primarily used for nesting, Adelie penguins get very aggressive when other Adelie’s steal their stones.  It is noted that these penguins are quite full of themselves and act very childlike or childish rather.  That still isn’t what fascinates me. 

When it is time to mate, a male Adelie penguin rolls a stone toward a female’s feet.  If she accepts, they will mate.  If she doesn’t, they won’t.   Sometimes they mate for life, but it is not uncommon for them to stay together for several years and then just not return to their mate, and roll another stone…

Why does that fascinate me?  The simplicity of it.  Here…look at this pretty little stone…do you like?  Yeah?  Ok, let’s have babies.  No? Ok, I will find someone else who will like it.  No drama, no B.S., no lying, cheating, stealing, just a simple yes or no.  No asking why, no crying, no looking in a mirror and comparing, no nonsense.  No?  Moving along then…He doesn’t sit there and MAKE her like the stone…he just rolls it on over to the next lady penguin. 

Why can’t we do that?  As humans.  Not necessarily in regards to mating, although if you think about it, that does happen now…Hey lady, you like this rock?…well you get the idea.  What I really mean is just the simplicity in finding a partner.  One that sticks with you and is faithful.  Even if it is not forever…but they share the task of raising the babies.  It’s not one sided.  Just a really simple gesture that doesn’t get blown up and broken down if the female doesn’t accept the pebble.

It will never be that simple for humans.

How to boil water...

What a crazy day!  I love being busy, absolutely love it.  I hate being busy because I have a deadline though and I am right down to the wire.  That stresses me out a bit.  FINE…More than a bit.  Especially because of someone else’s poor time management.  So, a very big part of my job (that most people don’t even know I have) is dependent on getting information from other people.  Most of the times I have to search and find that information myself…again, no problem…if I have more than a minute to find it.  I am OCD about information, about the piles on my desk, about the piles in my head.  I can handle pressure, and I will admit I complain about it the whole time…but I can handle it a lot more if that pressure is brought on by myself or something I have done, instead of that pressure being brought on to me because I am waiting for information from someone else.

So with that being said, today was one of those days that I forgot to the go bathroom.  Would have forgotten to eat had sister no fed me half her soup.  One thing after another…after another… after another.  It just kept going, like boiling water. 

Have you ever watched a pot of boiling water?  I mean, I know “a watched pot never boils”…but have you ever watched one?  It’s a lot of hard work for the water.  And when it starts increasing in intensity you get excited because a) all its hard work is paying off, and b) the quicker you can get your food cooked.  But then when you put the food in it tapers off…calms down…to a slow roll and its almost sad…like sorry man, I know you just hauled it to get to this point and I go a throw a wrench in it so to speak…probably really just noodles and not a wrench, but just the same.  This is how I feel when I am working on something(s) and it builds…like for a deadline.

I had three deadlines to meet today…all at the same time.  I got them done.  With 5 minutes to spare…but I felt like boiling water all day until 15 minutes till 2!  Pretty much a slow boil all day, and then I reached my, for lack of a better term, “boiling point” and then, just like that, noodles were added, or in this case, the work got completed and everything just stopped.  Like slamming on the brakes.  And I was sad…not because my work was done, but because it took so much energy to get to that point and then it was just over.  Sometimes life feels like one big pot of boiling water.

Anyway, I have an amazing weekend planned and have decided for all the boiling today required, I am going to start early!

P.S.        Putting a lid on a pot of water, will indeed, make it boil faster. 

Something to believe in...

Wow…long time no Blog.  It’s been a whirlwind of emotions this past holiday season, and to be honest, I am glad they are over…that being the holidays.  I think the older a person gets the more stressful they become.  Then you add a divided family to the mix and that’s always fun (not.)  I can successfully say that I started my Holiday Cheer a little too early this year.  Not all of my cheer, just my HOLIDAY cheer.  I was warned that I was starting too early.  I generally don’t listen though.

I need a mini voice recorder because when I am lying in bed with insomnia (such as I was last night) I think of a thousand things I want to write.  And then I play a game, going over and over and over the topic in my mind thinking I will remember or even dream about it and then bam, no such luck.

2011 did not turn out the way I expected, but then again neither have any of the previous years so perhaps this would be a good year to stop having them.  Expectations that is.

Life is what you make it.  Don’t sweat the small stuff, and it’s all small stuff…I could go on with the cliché’s about living life daily and not letting people hurt you or not getting angry or not allowing someone to make you feel inferior, or appreciating your job or appreciating your relationships…or growing up and realizing someone has it so much worse than you do…the point being I can talk until I am blue in the face about “living my best life,” but the truth of the matter is, to put it bluntly, shit happens.

When you try to plan for a rainy day, the rainy day comes before you can totally prepare for it.  You can treat everyone the way you want to be treated but there will still be one schmuck who ruins it for everyone.  You can sit back and be jealous/envious of what other people have and especially so at the ones who get those things but never have to work for them, but feeling that way will not change things.  You can be a friend to someone and think it should be relatively easy for them to return the favor, but in reality it’s the last thing that they want to do or will do.