Little Unrelated Things

I had a word spelled wrong in the description at the top of my blog for months and no one noticed. Every time I saw it I thought, "That looks kind of funny but my sister, and she's a teacher, she should know, said it was right." Since then I have learned that teachers make mistakes so I looked it up and, sure enough, 'occasional' only has one 's'.

On a walk a couple days ago I was very amused to pass a lawn proudly bearing the sign, "no pesticides used". The only trouble was the lawn was ugly, brown, and dead-looking. A couple houses down the street had a pretty little pond with a dead goldfish floating on the top. Rather morbid. You can see some strange things around town. Today I saw and heard the ice-cream truck for the first time this year. I think it was premature though, because I didn't see anyone buying ice-cream. I'm ready for warmer weather. Flurries in April don't thrill me the way they would in January.

On Sunday I cooked asparagus, chopped diagonally in inch long, quarter inch thick pieces with butter, salt, and pepper. I'm quite fond of asparagus, especially that way, in spite of its curious, unmentionable side effect. As I cooked I listened to Joshua Bell's CD, Voice of the Violin. In it he plays music written for the voice which he transcribed for violin. It is exquisitely beautiful. Highly recommended.

I love spring break. I just got to reread an old favorite - Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield. I love the whole "Shoes" series but Ballet Shoes is definitely the best. It's a delightful, improbable story about three adopted sisters who attend a dancing and stage school in London. I won't give away more; I recommend reading it. I don't have a good memory for books, unless I've read them a brazilian times, like Ballet Shoes. I definitely don't remember the names of characters and many times I don't even remember the very basic plot. It's a little depressing, but I can't decide if this is entirely a bad thing. It definitely makes rereading books even more pleasurable.

I've wanted to share this amusing (I think) story for a while. I wonder if anyone else will be as amused as I was: Often when I'm walking with my puppy someone will comment. Usually it's something vaguely intelligent like, "How old is your puppy?" or "That's a pretty German Shepherd." Sometimes it isn't. On a walk a few months ago a man saw Telly and, nodding his head in a condescending, knowledgable way, he said, very authoritatively, "Canine." I agreed, and we went our separate ways, but I still get a chuckle out of it. People can be very funny without meaning to be.