Luck, rain, daffodils, and Oakland
Oct. 26th, 2005 09:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zdashamberHa-ha! It's raining! I no longer have to water my iris! Or, more like, look at the iris sadly drying and tell myself, Oh, they've got tubers, I'm sure they'll perk up once the rainy season hits...
Oakland, which is an awesome city you should all move to, has a program in its second year now, the goal of which is to fill the city with blooming daffodils come April. To this end they're giving away free up to 200 daffodil bulbs per person.
I heard once of a scientific study on luck: some scientists stood along a street and asked people walking past whether they considered themselves lucky or not. Further along the street, they'd dropped a $5. The ones who thought themselves lucky noticed the fiver and picked it up. The unlucky ones walked blindly past. Their conclusions were that luck was a function of awareness.
One of my bits of stunning luck was to lose my glasses in the Gulf of Mexico and then find them again. There was a beach in Florida, maybe a quarter mile of shallow sloping wading waves and sand, a couple miles long. We visited when I was 11 or so, when my sister won a trip to Disneyworld. I suppose I got knocked over and my glasses fell off, and I walked back to my parents on the sand and told them, and then I walked back into the ocean, cast around a bit (blind as a bat without glasses, would I have to spend the rest of the vacation thus?), and found them.
So I reckon luck is also to some degree about not giving up until the satisfactory condition appears. Also, spatial memory. ;)
Anyway, a couple months ago I went to an Oakland street fair to get to know my city better, and was rewarded for my attention by the appearance of a booth from the public works department with a signup for the free daffodil thing...
(Because Oakland rocks) there is a tool lending library. I'm thinking I'll see if I can borrow a rototiller, because chipping a shallow hole for my iris in the slope out front practically took a pickaxe, and daffodils have to be buried 6" down. Maybe the rains will make digging easier.
Hah! Full circle!
Oakland, which is an awesome city you should all move to, has a program in its second year now, the goal of which is to fill the city with blooming daffodils come April. To this end they're giving away free up to 200 daffodil bulbs per person.
I heard once of a scientific study on luck: some scientists stood along a street and asked people walking past whether they considered themselves lucky or not. Further along the street, they'd dropped a $5. The ones who thought themselves lucky noticed the fiver and picked it up. The unlucky ones walked blindly past. Their conclusions were that luck was a function of awareness.
One of my bits of stunning luck was to lose my glasses in the Gulf of Mexico and then find them again. There was a beach in Florida, maybe a quarter mile of shallow sloping wading waves and sand, a couple miles long. We visited when I was 11 or so, when my sister won a trip to Disneyworld. I suppose I got knocked over and my glasses fell off, and I walked back to my parents on the sand and told them, and then I walked back into the ocean, cast around a bit (blind as a bat without glasses, would I have to spend the rest of the vacation thus?), and found them.
So I reckon luck is also to some degree about not giving up until the satisfactory condition appears. Also, spatial memory. ;)
Anyway, a couple months ago I went to an Oakland street fair to get to know my city better, and was rewarded for my attention by the appearance of a booth from the public works department with a signup for the free daffodil thing...
(Because Oakland rocks) there is a tool lending library. I'm thinking I'll see if I can borrow a rototiller, because chipping a shallow hole for my iris in the slope out front practically took a pickaxe, and daffodils have to be buried 6" down. Maybe the rains will make digging easier.
Hah! Full circle!