underdogishere

Andie has been gone
four weeks; heartbreak still opens
a lonely home's door.

Labels: Darkness, Dogs, Haiku

Feeling peace, stillness,
quiet heart, one should not have
to get out of bed

Labels: Haiku, Musing, Uplifted

I desperately
want to build a bridge, but can
see no way forward.

Labels: Darkness, Haiku

at my side He lay,
as His great heart slowed, slept, and
then stilled forever

Labels: Darkness, Dogs, Haiku

Those who twitter have
discovered haiku. Only
now? Such a great fit!

And a reminder that butterfly posts have moved to JudisButterflies.com, where new posts are being posted. The most recent descibes a successful operation to repair a butterfly's broken wing. Take a look!

Labels: Butterflies, Haiku

I don't usually give my haiku's titles (okay, I never have), because, like, does a title count towards the syllable count? And if not, is the title cheating? But I'm going to give this one a title. It's:

Wiser

Horrified because
you should have saved him. Angel,
you did what you knew.

Labels: Butterflies, Haiku

Wrenching news for Liz;
But out of woe may come good.
Crossing our fingers!



(This isn't something the ancients addressed, but I'mpretty sure that when you include a hyperlink in a haiku, it doesn't count towards your seventeen syllables.)

(Also on a bookish note, "our" can be considered either one syllable -- "ahr" -- or two -- "ou-er." If you choose to join us in crossing fingers for Liz, please use the one-syllable version.)

Labels: Haiku

Where I work, the official Web broswer and the only one that anyone is supposed to use is IE6. Yes, I know.

I loaded Mozilla on my work computer a while ago, and then switched to Firefox back when it was still version 0.9. But a year or so ago the I.T. Trolls decreed that FireFox and Mozilla were banned, because -- get this -- they were security threats. Like IE6 isn't already the buggiest and most vulnerable browser out there. Anyway, the I.E. Trolls set up a regimen through SMS that automatically deletes FF or Moz from any computer where we try to install it. :(

But at that time I found that there was a beta Safari for Windows, so I loaded that. And I liked it. A lot. There were some things that seemed odd -- in an Apple kind of way -- to this Windows user, but it was fast. Fast, as in blazing. And it had tabbed browsing, which was the thing I missed most in IE6. Yay, Safari! Yay, Apple!

Well, this week it looks like the I.T. Trolls' SMS script has been updated to delete Safari. Every morning it's gone and I have to reload it. So... I am trying Opera. I don't know if that will get scrubbed or not. I used to use Opera years ago (Opera 5), but when I upgraded to Opera 7 I didn't like the changes in the the user experience and gave it up. The latest Opera, 9, seems pretty good though. And it's fast. Fast, as in blazing. And it has tabs. Yay, tabs! Let's hope it's still loaded tomorrow morning....

If I have to have tabs, what about IE7, you ask? IE7 is also banned. Yes, in this IE6 shop we are not allowed to upgrade to IE7. Why? Because the I.T. Programmer Trolls have invested countless person-years in writing software that is riddled with the non-standard features of IE6, and their software, much of it critical to our company, might or might not run in IE7. And IE7 replaces IE6 completely when installed.

Q: Can anyone say "standards compliant"?

A: Not in our I.T. Department.

Anyway, I know none of you care about this. On a completely different note, I did learn something last week: That if you average only three visitors a day to your blog, you can really pick up the pace -- to between ten and twenty -- by mentioning the Os.car May.er Wein.ermo.bile. But it doesn't last. ;)

I know I've been scarcely posting lately, but posts to come soon about happenings in the Butterfly Garden (including some pictures that might be called scandalous), and something about Shakespeare (you can go ahead and yawn now).

Since this is Tuesday, some Haiku:

No Mozilla. No
FireFox. Tears fall to the floor.
IE6 sucks eggs.

I'm free of colon
cancer, but would rather not
speak of how I know.

Labels: Haiku, Inner Geek

Unable to leave
work -- thunders bang, rains hammer.
So what else is new?

Labels: Haiku

Unexpectedly,
Blues in my mailbox. Busy
day, ends hopefully.

Clara in a crash!
Just as she predicted. Please,
no more predictions.

Zeus hanging in there.
A guy who knows when to kiss,
when to wag his tail.

Labels: Haiku

They've always had love.
Today, Californians
add duties and rights.

Labels: Gender Issues, Haiku

A withering plant's
unexpected flowering
rains on our desert

Labels: Haiku, Princess Sunni

We are, each of us,
Superheroes. In
tights, we fight, we soar.

Labels: Haiku

"Memorial Day"
contains memory, as do
we, reliquaries

Labels: Haiku

Out of pants! (Clean ones.)
What to do? (Don't let yourself
get in this tight spot.)

Labels: Haiku

The title of this post was the headline in our local newspaper this morning. For those of you who don't know, Palm Bay is the city where I live.

Currently, there are no fires near my neighborhood, but the blowing columns of smoke are clearly visible. It's very, very dry -- the rains haven't started yet -- and very hot. The fires are believed to have been set by an arsonist, possibly driving a blue van. Fires have also been burning near the city of Cocoa, about fifteen miles north, and near Daytona, about sixty miles north. They've been burning since Sunday, Mother's Day. Somewhere between fifty and seventy homes have been destroyed. School has been cancelled today throughout the entire city of Palm Bay.

I don't have television, but yesterday I ate lunch in a restaurant that had a TV tuned to the news, and it cycled constantly between our fires, the tornadoes that have been seeming to hit the Midwest every day, the cyclone in Burma, and the earthquake in China. Not what you would call a slow news day.

It's been a while since I took part in Haiku Tuesday, but I thought I would today. The observance of Mother's Day was first proposed by Julia Ward Howe in response to the suffering of mothers during the American Civil War, and this (sorry) haiku is dedicated to a mother in China who was interviewed on NPR this morning:

It's not about me.
It's my children, dear God. How
can I save them? How?

Labels: Haiku

I go through cycles where I find it easy to write bad poetry. I haven't had one of these cycles in a while, though, so in honor of Haiku Tuesday, albeit a day late, I thought I would dash off a bad poem that has the extra added benefit of being uninspired:

Everyone, please
Objurgate objurgation.
Serenity rocks.

Labels: Haiku

Slats of morning sun
ladder the floor. Early hour,
day brims with promise.

Labels: Haiku

HEADLINE

Possible blindness!
Beagle takes cone in stride, while
Mommy comes apart.

(Try to hang in there, Mommy.)

Labels: Haiku, Princess Sunni

For the past few days, on my drive home from work, I've been passing a sheet of plywood leaning against a telephone pole with the words "I (heart) Pokey" painted on it in lime green. Now, I don't know Pokey, or the person who loves him or her, and I don't want to rain on their parade, so I have had to try hard to resist the urge to stop and write "the Hokey-" in front of "Pokey."

In celebration of Pokey, the lime-green-sign-painter, and their love, and because it's Tuesday, I give you this haiku:

My love for Pokey
is on display, to show to
all it's not hokey

Labels: Haiku, Seen