Almost Lost

We recently had a death in our hard drive family. In a stroke of sheer good fortune Jay had backed up our photos only days before. Yeah, Jay! It was such a wonderful feeling to see all of the pictures restored by Picasa.

I had completely forgotten about these photos I took just a few weekends ago when we were balancing on the cusp of autumn.





Thick grey clouds have hung over us for two days now and they are not predicted to depart for at least another day. We are well into the thick of the season.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow because I'll actually be getting to spend some time with my future class. I think it will be a good day except for the fact that my immune system is probably going to take a while to get back into Daycare mode and there's a stomach virus going around!

Jay and I are working on some carpooling experiments this week. So far it's worked out pretty well (all one day of it). I can actually walk to work if I give myself enough time. The walk takes about as much time as my morning commute in Dallas and it is much more pleasant. If I'm really good with my time management I can stop at Starbucks on the way! I'm thinking about purchasing a bike and helmet with my first paycheck if I can figure out a good place to chain it up at work and keep it here at the apartment.

I also have to make the ever important bell or horn decision.

Training Starts on Monday

My application for employment has been approved by the home office! So Monday at 10 a.m. I will start the training process. Apparently there will be videos and reading.

Hopefully, none of it will be as graphic as the Chemistry Lab Safety Video that shows you how to stab yourself in the hand with a glass test tube.

So far the hiring process has involved interviewing, fingerprinting, and getting poked with a needle. Videos aren't so bad after all of that.

The "Great God" Bird's little cousin . . . "Holy Moses!"

Sufjan Steven's collaborated with All Things Considered for a story about the return of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker and the impact on the small town of Brinkley, Arkansas.

Welcome the Equinox (22/09/2005 @ 22:22 GMT)

It's half-and-half day. So go all out and celebrate our tilted, spinning planet however you see fit! Whether you believe this marks the beginning of fall or autumn's halfway point, have a little fun in the diminishing sunlight of the northern hemisphere.


(December 2004. Dallas, Texas. )

Birthdays, birthdays everywhere!

Happy Birthday Jeff!
I hope that you had a great day!

Happy Birthday to Wendy, too! I hope that the Chinese food was excellent!

I apologize for the lateness of these birthday wishes. I had a busy day preparing to be employed. This morning I was fingerprinted by a very friendly Rocky Hill police officer. Which ended up being a free service! The physical and TB test that followed later that afternoons were not so free. I also wasn't prepared to pee in a cup (always my downfall)! At least the nurse didn't have to stand in the room and witness my tribulation this time. It's stressful enough to have to pee in a cup without the added pressure of an observer. I go back on Thursday to get my TB test read and I should know by Friday evening whether or not my application was approved by headquarters.

To go back in time a little bit, I interviewed for a day-care teaching position with KinderCare last Thursday. I had a follow up job tryout this Monday and was able to meet some of the kids. I'm going to be with 2 year olds again! (No that's not a sarcastic exclamation point.) I really like working with 2's. When you're 2 everything is an adventure and in general kids are less "terrible" at school. The whole classroom is on their level and organized so that they can have fun, explore, and learn with a minimum amount of boundaries.

If all goes well I will start my training on Monday!

One of the things I miss about Oklahoma

Don't Worry I Can Make One in Your Size!

Yeah! The Chickadee Hat is finished. Can't you just feel the cuteness?

(It matches these in case you have forgotten.)

Nothing Says "Scenic Lookout" Like a Castle

We've seen more castles in Connecticut than should really exist in a place that never had to defend against the Saxon hordes.



This is Castle Craig. Really it should be called Turret Craig but alliteration is more important than accuracy when naming such things.

Castle Craig sits among The Hanging Hills of Meriden.



The view from the top of the ridge is pretty cool and worth the hike even when you meet such fellows as these on the way up.






The way down was less eventful creature-wise. But the trail was steep and littered with round and ready-to-roll rocks that had me flailing about more than once, much to Jay's amusement.

In birding news, we are now the proud caretakers of seven bird feeders.

We had to deploy our back-up finch feeder because waiting patiently for an open perch is not what finches do best. We had also purchased an extra tube-feeder before we realized how successful the Blue Jay Mafia had been at not only combating grackles but also acting as Jay's back-up alarm clock. Nothing says get out of bed more authoritatively than a blue jay doing its best impersonation of a red-tailed hawk.

I also got some awesome mail from two of the kids that I used to teach in Dallas, including this masterpiece entitled "Rainbow."




(I added more pictures from the park to my Around Connecticut Slideshow at Flickr.)

When Critters Attack

Our bird feeders were under siege this weekend from both a roving band of grackles and a determined squirrel.

The grackles managed to empty an entire bird feeder in just a few hours. They dispatched two envoys whose job it was to throw the seed down to the rest of the mob on the ground. Jay and I spent much of Saturday yelling at them to go away.

Grackles are a member of the corvid family. This group of birds also contains magpies, blue jays, and ravens. One of their dominant characteristics is their intelligence which gives them a remarkable memory when it comes to remembering where to find food.

We have some allies against the grackles, their cousins the blue jays. I like to refer to them as the Blue Jay Mafia. They agree to help with the annoying grackle population and we look the other way when they themselves wreak havoc at the bird feeders. Of course blue jays have the distinct advantage of being prettier than their cousins and also not quite as intelligent since they themselves haven't figured out how to gorge themselves on our freely offered seed.

So now we're faced with the choice. As the marginally more intelligent species how do we choose to act when all the cute birds are scared away by the annoying ugly ones who consume too much food at too quick a pace?

Do we resort to violence and start shooting BB's at them, do we sacrifice our reputation as sane and normal people by continuing to yell at them from the window, or do we try to outsmart them?

So far we're going with the outsmarting option. We are recalling our gazebo feeder and replacing it with a tube style feeder which, according to birding experts, is inaccessible to large birds.

Hopefully this ploy will work until the grackles migrate further South. I fear for our sanity if they are here to stay.

The "outsmart" strategy is a dangerous one -- not for the critters but for my own self-esteem -- because how do you cope when they outsmart you?

And here enters our other backyard nemesis -- the squirrel.



When we first put the feeders out several squirrels made investigations into them. Mostly they found that they were simply too far away from the branches for them to reach. This weekend we realized that one female squirrel had solved this dilemma.




She had learned to pull the seed bell up by it's rope. Saturday, she was able to dump the remaining seed off onto the ground.



When she realized her booty was too heavy to escape into the trees she proceeded to cheekily gorge herself on the remains in plain view of our window.

Our "outsmart campaign" involved replacing the string with a wire coat hanger. We assumed that the wire would be too stiff for the squirrel to manipulate.

The stiffness of the wire now allows the squirrel to put more of her weight onto it. She doesn't need to haul the seed up because the wire now makes it possible for her to stretch all the way to the seed. (I know it doesn't seem possible but when you deal with squirrels you start to believe the unbelievable.)

Tomorrow, we plan to make the wire longer.

A failure of the imagination

I sat down to write an amusing post about the various wild life that have driven us crazy today. It turns out that the only thing that can keep my attention is the news out of the Gulf Coast. I am relieved and overjoyed to see that help is finally arriving for those who have been devastated by the hurricane.

It has been almost emotionally suffocating to watch the horrors mount up daily.

As one young four year old said, "It's pitiful, pitiful."

Reading over the headlines over at Salon and MSNBC only reinforces my sense of shame and disbelief. I don't know how the President can look survivors in the eye and talk about spending money to rebuild the region when his administration (and administrations before his) have repeatedly refused to pay to avoid this tragedy.

This tragedy calls for a leader who can do more than just strike a courageous pose. We need a leader who can imagine the horrors before he sees them or even before they happen so that the proper actions can be taken to prevent the preventable.

Why didn't he donate the use of Marine One to the rescue effort instead of going on a sightseeing trip of the damage? I don't need him to sit on the porch and commiserate with the devastated, I need him to actively participate in the effort to save lives instead of using up vital resources so that he can better understand the situation.

I continue to be amazed at the generosity of individuals and horrified at the devastation that has inspired such acts.

Happy Birthday, Lori!

(These birthday flowers are guaranteed not to wilt depressingly on your kitchen counter.)

I hope that you enjoy your long birthday weekend! I wish that we could be there to celebrate with you, then we could play another Birthday Badminton Tournament.

Signs of Indian Summer

"Indian summer is like a woman. Ripe, hotly passionate, but fickle, she comes and goes as she pleases so that one is never sure whether she will come at all, nor for how long she will stay. In northern New England, Indian summer puts up a scarlet-tipped hand to hold winter back for a litlle while. She brings with her the time of the last warm spell, an unchartered season which lives until Winter moves in with its backbone of ice and accoutrements of leafless trees and hard frozen ground." -- Grace Metalious from Peyton Place