There is little chance that meteorologists can solve the mysteries of weather until they gain an understanding of the mutual attraction of rain and weekends.  ~Arnot Sheppard

Hey, minions.  I’m seriously exhausted after this week, and a car just drove off a road into a house on the edge of campus so it’s going to be a hectic day.  Here are your links, tell me what you’re doing this weekend, and excuse me I’m pretty busy!

This is awesome.

Present shock – a fascinating idea, and an excellent interview on the subject.  Does anyone suffer from it?

Ever feel link you haven’t accomplished anything with your life? Me too. Here’s some salt for us collectively. (Editor’s note: this kid is seriously cool.)

Food for thought.

My love for historically based photo projects should be well documented at this point. Let’s add another to the gallery!

I predict this child will have a thriving career in espionage.

Boy golly…and just what have I done with my life…?

Five months, five months, five months… (Sidenote, how great are these?!)

Ha!  No.

(Warning, profanity discussed). Some of these need to come back.  I think I’ll need to add “Snails!” to my repertoire of in-case-I-stub-my-toe-near-impressionable-children alternatives.

Perspective.

Wow!

Alas that my summer roadtrip was cancelled, but yours doesn’t have to be, ducklings! 

Best movie breakup lines.

“Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says I’m going to snow.  If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that’s tough.  I am going to snow anyway.”
– Maya Angelou

Last time this week is was 70 degrees, bright and clear.  Glancing outside my office window right now it’s snowing.  Blech.

As always, TGIF!  I’ve been doing some intensive training for my replacement this week, which has been rough, but on the other hand J. and I went to a lovely dinner party on Tuesday, we have friends coming over tomorrow evening, and I’m making progress on several of my innumerable projects.  Random Spring snowstorms notwithstanding, the winter blahs are behind me I think, and things are looking brighter and brighter.  Here are your links, minions, and let me know what you’re up to this weekend:

I may dislike cooking intensely, but I can also make you a magnificent roasted tomato soup from scratch.  Chalk another one up to Mum for insisting I avoid this fate.

Lord Byron might have bee “mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” but his physician is something more of a sad, ridiculous character.

Make the call, genius or a bit too much?

Seriously?  Locally there’s a somewhat unfortunate tendency to treat proposals as if you’re asking someone to prom.  J. was the subject of some scolding from female friends when of our proposal they demanded, “How did you do it?!” and his response was, “I asked her and she said yes.” I have no complaints, note.

The cost of libraries.  Worth it.

Fear that your social media presence will die with you?  Fear no more, there’s an app for that.

Alas, poor Easter Egg Roll!  Fun fact, I participated as a young child when my father was working in DC and still have a wooden egg signed by the then president squirreled away somewhere.

Cool!

I first learned about Mike the Headless Chicken in a Psychology class in high school.  To this day I remained fascinated, and vaguely appalled.

Good advice.

As if watching Mad Men, excellent as it is, doesn’t make you glad enough these days are behind us, here’s what the folks of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce might have thrown together for a successful campaign.  Yikes.

Jeans and t-shirts, apparently, no one could have predicted!

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.
~ Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

Hectic week – our landlord transferred our building’s management out from underneath us.  We found out with three days in which to figure out whom to pay rent to.  That’s been fun.  We might at least get a functional kitchen light out of it since our old managers, while very nice, were terrible at actually managing.  I tried storytelling in public for the first time, and it was a blast – post on it coming!  Worked on the MP.  Training replacement at work – angst inducing, but onward, ever onward.

This weekend I plan on continuing the battle against the blahs with some late winter sunshine, editing a manuscript of a friend as she preps it for querying (go Catriona!), and more MP work.  Here are your links, kittens:

Award for best news story title of the week goes to…

People.  Inherently decent.

Technological progress, for all that smartphones are still a brave new world to me, I never long to go back to these times.  Although I might have been one of those sly ladies who just sat and listened to the lines all day for dirt.

Ugh.  (h/t Caitlin Kelly)

How do you date the oral storytelling tradition?  Pretty cleverly.

Brew yourself a custom perfume – brilliant!  I’ve been wearing the same scent for a decade now…and I’m actually feeling like it’s time to turn over old loyalties and find something new.  I feel treacherous just typing that!  Lady minions, do you have a perfume family you prefer?

Norwegians splitting hairs over splitting logs.

Very important for you young, budding cryptozoogists.

I now long to live in a Spite House – emotional architecture!

The weekly sheep is very happy to see you!

“I find it shelter to speak to you.”
– Emily Dickinson

I’m a firm believer that good people and good food is the cure to a lot of ills, even extraordinarily rough days.  Five years in with J. and I’m still incredibly amazed at how just hanging out with him makes hard things easier.  He’s my hands down favorite.  Unfortunately, in spite of a gloriously sumptuous dinner (tried scallops for the first time, if you can believe it – what else have I been missing?!), work is still a bit hectic today, kittens, so here are your links:

Here’s another Oscar nominated short film – and warning is a subtle sort of tear inducer.  Warning the second for pearl-clutchers, there are some hints a nudity but very faint, very stylized, appropriate to the subject matter (they abandoned the proverbial fig leaf) and truly nothing that I think would offend.  Don’t let that scare you off in anyway, because it’s really heartwarming and well worth watching!  (Update: alas, the vid has been made private!  Here’s a Jazz Age style cover of Macklemore’s Thrift Shop instead.  Also, pretty nifty.)

This photographer decided to do portraits of his daughter in the style of the Dutch masters – the results are great.

The latest recommendation by Peregrine – an excellent read!

London from space (I will be there in six months, I will be there in six months…)

Foldable, packable Hunter boots.  Genius.

Suddenly I’m feeling a desire for too much rouge and the charleston.  What a great cinematic find!

Tumblr find of the week – oh this brings back memories of middle school!  Peregrine and I once spent a whole afternoon choreographing a dance to an N’Sync song – not one of our proudest musical moments perhaps, but still quite funny to remember.

I’m not actually a major watch wearer, but this brand is singing a siren song to my wrist…

“There aren’t enough days in the weekend.”
~ Rod Schmidt

It’s been another week of lunches mostly at my desk, except for Thursday when a lovely friend rescued me and dragged me to the university art museum – which is really quite an impressive place with an extensive collection, but for the point here also contains the best cafe on campus.  A great and much needed interlude in a week filled with a lot of rejection (entirely vicarious, but it’s odd how it still smarts and still feels disheartening), and a bunch of changes at work, but that’s another blog post.

I’m tired, and grumpy, and not much feeling like myself, which is always a chore to get out of – like trudging through a pit of glue.  The mere thought of cooking dinner fills me with a churlishness fearsome to behold.  My weekend to do list feels acres long and two days to do it all in feels ridiculously short.  I am, minions, in short, out of sorts.

I proscribe myself tea and taking projects one at a time.  There’s nothing tea doesn’t fix.  Here are your links, amuse yourselves:

Do women worry more about “haters,” and should they?

How gorgeous are these folia wallpapers?

Holy crud, what a story!

I’d go to a Ministry of Defense dinner in a Tudor wine basement in a heartbeat.

For the Lady Mary lovers out there.

Look at these shots of Dutch tulip fields!

Curry – sustaining desperate people since long before midterm cramming and last minute dinners.

It’s official, Richard III has been found!  The whole story behind his body’s discovery is incredible, from finding the skeleton on the first day of the dig, to the confirmation of physical deformity that scholars have debated as being either truth or Tudor propaganda.  History nerds, revel in the awesomeness.

We’re all about the genderswapping here at Small Dog Inc., it allows us to pretend we’re like Shakespeare.

Ahem, Mr. President.

My childhood is a lie!

Here’s the story of two girls who left the Westboro Baptist Church.  Putting aside my own feelings about that organization, which are far from cordial, the tale of these girls and their journey from absolute truth to uncertainty is really powerful.