What, no, I’m not staring at YOU! I’m, um, staring at the thing next to you, sure!

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Photo #386: Staring CatLocation Taken: Savage, Maryland
Time Taken: August 2010

Do you ever feel… watched?

I don’t. Not even when I am being watched. I’m too oblivious for that.

But at least I am good at spotting things, so despite never getting that watched feeling, I usually spot anything watching me. Especially animals. I’m really good at spotting animals.

Though it seems to mostly be cats and hawks and the occasional deer I spot. And I suppose there’s all the smaller birds and squirrels too, but those are common enough anyone can spot them. And bugs, I see a lot of bugs. Not too many other creatures live around here, so that’s a pretty good rate then.

I have seen the occasional moose when in Canada, and some elk, and coyotes and foxes and the like. Even seen the occasional fox around here, now that I think about it.

Maybe if I went outside more I’d see more animals. But outside is the land of the burning day orb, and I dare not enter its domain too frequently. And well, it’s tough to spot animals in the dark.

Well, except for bats. There’s some bats living down by the local river, and you can hear them flying if you go down there at night. I’ve only done that once, though.

  

What, don’t you ponder pronunciation in your spare time?

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Photo #385: French FortLocation Taken: Castle Hill National Historic Site, Newfoundland, Canada
Time Taken: July 2012

(The photo is of an old French fort, which was the closest thing to this topic I had.)

Every so often my brain gets stuck on odd things.

Like the French word “Je”, pronounced zhə in the International Phonetic Alphabet. It means “I”, so it’s a common word and is used in a few French phrases that are used in English, like “Je ne sais quoi“.

The thing is, does English pronounce “je” as zhə for any other word?

All the English words that start with J-E that I can think of use a harder sound on the je (the IPA uses “je” for the sound). That’s the sound you say when you say “Jenny” or “Jeopardy”. But it’s not the softer “zhə” of the French “Je”.

But, given the history of the English language, it actually seems a bit odd that we no longer use that sound. I mean, as the saying goes, English is what happened when French knights wanted to pick up Anglo-Saxon girls. The invasion of Great Britain by the Normans, a group of people from Normandy on the north coast of France, introduced a lot of French terms into the language the Anglo-Saxons who already lived there spoke.

I mean, that’s why we use different words for an animal and the meat that comes from it, like “cow” and “beef”. That’s actually very rare amongst languages. Saying “Can you give me a hunk of cow?” is perfectly normal in much of the world, but seems very odd to my English-attuned ears. It came from that same Norman invasion, really. The French word for cow meat is bœuf, which was heard as “beef” by the Anglo-Saxon servants they sent out for dinner. But since the Normans asked for the meat of the cow a lot more than they asked for the cow itself, the Anglo-Saxons kept on using their old word for the animals.

Ironically, French is another language that has a different word for the meat and the animal. Le bœuf and la vache for beef and cow respectably. Go figure.

Perhaps it’s just a case of us mispronouncing the words that sounded like “zhə” originally and hardening the j sound to match the way we said other words. Language shifts around nearly as much as people do, and for much the same reasons.

Still, my brain keeps coming back to the question and running all the J-E words I know through my head. It’s getting a bit repetitive…

  

It’s tough to get good animal pics. You’d think they were wild or something!

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Photo #384: Bison NomLocation Taken: Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
Time Taken: October 2012

I just started another character in Guild Wars 2, an Asura Ranger, which basically means a short smart person who orders pets around. She’s currently got a pink moa!

So, in honor of my new character, I’m going to put up an animal picture.

It’s a bison.

On the top of a roadcut cliff.

Eating some grass.

I know, exciting, isn’t it!

  

I Dream of Nicer Days, Far Far Away… I mean, it’s snowing in Nebraska right now!

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Photo #383: City DaffodilsLocation Taken: Chicago, Illinois
Time Taken: April 2008

Well, Spring is most definitely here, the flowers are blooming, and the temperature is soaring!

It was in the 80’s today, and sunny. One of those quintessential “nice days”!

I, of course, was miserable.

I melt in temperatures above 70. By that I don’t mean literal melting (that’s reserved for when it gets above 100), but a general feeling like my brain isn’t working at all and my energy reserves are showing empty. Not really pleasant at all. I don’t think I ever want to visit Florida in the summer, or any of the other beach hotspots for that matter. Give me nice cold northern waters instead.

I also hate sunny days. I’m fairly sure I’m somewhat allergic to sunlight. My skin constantly tingles when exposed to it, and not a good tingle. And if I’m out in it without protection for too long, I get headaches and the general lethargy I associate with my allergic reactions.

Put the heat and the increased chance for sun together, and that’s why Spring is my second least favorite season. Summer is my least favorite, as you probably guessed. I’m just a puddle from June to August.

Oh, and air conditioning doesn’t really help. For some reason AC makes me feel a bit icky, almost like I want to break out in a sweat despite the cooler temperatures. It doesn’t help that I get somewhat adjusted to the cooler temperatures while I’m in AC and the heat just hits me that much harder when I go outside.

Really what I need to do is move to a nicer climate, one with lots of rain and storms and clouds and cold. Doesn’t that just sound wonderful?!

  

Quick, you’re being chased by a bear and there’s a break in the trees ahead, what do you do?

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Photo #382: Cliff FaceLocation Taken: North side of Lake Superior in Ontario
Time Taken: June 2010

Step one of not dying in the wilderness: don’t run off any cliffs!

I know, it seems pretty simple really, but people do it all the time!

I mean, it’s just a sudden lack of land where you were going to stop, nothing more. And if you’re not being careful, that slight break in the trees might just be a slight hundred-foot plummet. No big deal, right?

At least cliffs aren’t too common. I mean, do you really think you’d find a cliff in Nebraska or something.

Well, aside from all the cliffs by Scotts Bluff in western Nebraska, but those are pretty obvious ones, and they’re mesas rather than simple cliffs anyway. You’re not going to just randomly walk off one of those unless you randomly climbed to the top of one first.

Most cliffs are formed by water carving away at the rock for long periods of time. That’s why you find a lot of them in very wet places like this part of Ontario and very dry places like Wyoming. The dry places have no trees holding onto the ground, while the wet ones have enough water going through that the trees don’t matter much.

You also need a decent gradient to the ground. If there’s a two-foot difference between the top of the cliff and the bottom, well, you might get hurt falling off it, but otherwise it’s not really a cliff. More of an embankment.

And the ground also has to have rock near the surface. If it’s all dirt or sand, that cliff face will fall down rather quickly and become a slope or a sand dune. Hence the lack of cliffs in places like the coast of Lake Michigan, despite the wet climate and multi-hundred foot dunes dotting the coastline.

So hopefully the next time you’re being chased by zombies at night in a dense forest, you’re in Minnesota or something, where all you’ll do is fall into a lake.