Numbers, Numbers, Numbing Numbers

There is "eye candy" at the end of this post. Thank goodness for the natural beauty we need to see every day.

Hurray! It’s budget prep time for the State of NC! There’s some fooling here…I can’t stand numbers. Funds have been frozen on State accounts since March 30 and it’s a killer process. I have five large budgets to monitor and I’ve encumbered funds down to the least cents before the State sweeps it away. It’s not my money and I don’t really care about it. It’s just another job-related function I need to perform, another headache, and another pain in my a...

Budget prep for 2007-2008 began today in a 2-1/2 meeting at one of our campuses located very close to the Charlotte-Douglas airport. This is the type of meeting that causes my eyes to glaze over. I yawn. Oh, yes, I participate in the number crunching while I’m dreaming of those US Airways and Southwest planes flying by so close that you could count the number of windows on them. I arrived at the meeting twenty minutes early, with camera around my neck, and explored a beautiful campus. No birds. No flowers. What a waste. But they do have aircraft. After the first hour of the meeting, I wanted to call a break to put my camera to the window to see something in flight!

When we lived near the Dover Air Force Base a few years ago, I had the best view of the largest aircraft in the country – those C-5’s and C-19’s that were large enough to carry 15 eighteen-wheelers. When they flew low over our community, the sound was deafening but you could wave to the pilots (rookies in training…scary, yes!). My next door neighbor was a squadron commander and we waved the American flag to him when he trained pilots. That was cool.

I’m off course here. Perhaps my mind is blown away due to those dang numbers. Allocated budget, deficit, revenue, blah, blah, blah. I arrived home much later than usual. Chloe threw up outside because she knows by the time Oprah Winfrey is over, the local news starts at 5pm and I wasn’t home yet. Yes, I leave the TV on for them during the day. They see Good Morning America, Kelly and Regis, Dr. Phil, and various soap operas before Oprah. I should really switch to a radio instead.

Dorothy from PA calls my photos “eye candy”. I like that adjective. She’s been commenting frequently and she just started a blog of her own while battling the beginning Blogger woes.

When I arrived home after a ten-hour day, I found some eye candy. (Lizards? Eye candy? YES!) With my handbag still on my shoulder, I first noticed a new lizard to add to the other two species I have found at my house. So far we have Five Line Skinks and Eastern Fence Lizards. When I’m not so tired, I’ll try to identify this skittish, tiny creature.

Click to enlarge. It was very curious. See it peeking and holding on to the brick?

REAL eye candy. A butterfly. Something else I need to ID. Later…

I want to be a little closer. Please don’t move… The honey bees rule this patch of blue and purple.

Ahhhh. Just what I needed. I'm delirious and you are medicine for a tired soul.

Directly below the nesting place of the Barn Swallows, I found this. It matches a description of her egg. Did she come by to annoy me? Or, will she arrive again to build a new nest? Time will tell. My heart still aches.