a day off

Now that I'm working two jobs I usually work seven days a week, if not whole days every day. Yesterday I had a Whole Day Off. I spent the morning sitting by the fire drinking coffee (and reading blogs.)

Don't fail to notice the dark green coffee pot keeping warm on top of the stove.

From that chair I have an excellent view of the tree.

In my never-home-for-long existence I haven't bothered to cover up the paint bucket with a sheet (flannel, the better to represent snow) as I usually do, because I'm not going to have time to entertain. I did get the sheet out, though, in case I have any warning if people drop by.

I did some decorating just for my own pleasure. I can't stop putting shiny egg-like objects in the real, gilded, bird's nest.

I put more in my grandmother's cut glass bowl, on the table with the unwritten Christmas cards.

Here's most of the loot from work: my share of all the food our customers brought us that wasn't so perishable we had to eat it right away. I had eaten a little, though, before I took the picture.

Last but not least, I spent the afternoon cooking a turkey. A restful job. It looks quite decorative, doesn't it? I'm not sure whether the slight bow in the edge of the rack is really there or an artifact of the camera, but it was an eighteen pound turkey. I may live alone and have few guests, but I have a freezer. This is the only time of year you can get a fresh turkey at my grocery (the frozen ones have all been injected with a variety of things I'm either allergic to, or don't want in my meat--sugar? are you kidding???), and I obviously don't have time to raise turkeys myself. Maybe someday.

orchids, yes, orchids

I hope you all don't get tired of all these orchid pictures, because I don't think I'm going to.

Trying to grow through the roof....

more orchids

If you look carefully at the enlargement, you may be able to see Muffet the Yorkie enjoying the atrium in the "outdoor" part of his run.

He's the little yellow-grey blur between leaves almost at the center of the picture.

I am not sure what the woven bird nests hung among the plants are for, because all the birds are kept in cages.

Here's a view from the break room upstairs, rather blurry through its railing and the double-glazing, into the front greenhouse, which is plants only.

Back in the main greenhouse, the future:

mother of invention

In the forty-eight hours from Sunday afternoon to Tuesday afternoon I collected two and a half inches of rain in the rain gauge. (The few pieces of sleet and snow from Tuesday wouldn't have made much difference to the total.)
The building where my second job doing kennel work takes place is, shall we say, unusual. Bits and pieces have been added on over the years seemingly at random. Therefore, there are leaks. Monday evening I was asked to move a set of cat condos because the water running down the wall behind them was getting into them. When I had moved them, we found that catching the drip was a bit difficult,  because it ran down the wall and then dropped to the window sill, where it splashed and splattered. Putting a pan at floor level did nothing to collect the water.
So my co-worker's ingenuity was tested. He collected a bird-cage stand, a food bowl, a flower pot hanger, and an upturned litter box to prop the stand against the wall. I added the towels in case of overflow.

A closer look at the pot:

And three seconds of live action, with local background music:

It made me proud to be human. Rube Goldberg's got nothing on us.