R.I.P. CarrotTop

It's been a sad week. Just as we were getting used to the idea that Eve will not be back, everyone's favorite hen, CarrotTop, is no longer with us. We don't know what happened. I saw her with Lucille this morning, just lazing around in the sun as she has been doing these past few weeks. Just as I was getting ready to make dinner, I saw a pile of something in the backyard near the garden. PopPop said he hadn't left anything out there, so fearing the worst, I walked out and found CarrotTop. PopPop went out with the wheelbarrow, collected her and buried her in the small pet cemetery. Poor Lucille is in hiding under the deck, sitting at the top of the stack of milk crates.

CarrotTop was a real character. She was an old chicken, from one of the second or third groups the Younger Pea had. She might have been as old as 6-7 years old and she was in fine fettle, just regrowing her head feathers and starting to slow down and show her age. She had a great sense of humor and was always interested in being with people regardless of what you were doing. Just yesterday I was out watching the small birds in the yard, with Sophia and CarrotTop at my feet. I'll miss her greeting my car, walking with me and the cats around the yard and racing to get whatever food was being tossed off the deck. She had a good and long life, and she was a fine hen. Poor Lucille will miss her most of all.

Prom night

It's hard to believe, but the Elder Pea will be finished with high school in another week. Graduation is next weekend. Last night was the Senior Prom.

Needless to say, our EP was stunning in a beautiful aqua blue gown and silver accessories. Of course, we forced her to pose for photos for an interminable length of time, with the promise of many more photos to come throughout the evening. A large group rented a trolley bus to take them back and forth to the Prom, which was held in Dorchester (??!?), so nobody had to worry about driving or parking or getting lost. I'm sure she had a great time.

Eve, come home

We haven't seen Eve since Monday. We are beginning to lose hope, she isn't one for disappearing for days on end like this.


NOTE (5/29/08): It's been well over a week with no sign of Eve. We have resigned ourselves to not seeing her again.

Hummers!

Finally, I saw the female Ruby Throated Hummingbird tonight! She appeared at the new feeder that Queenee picked up a few days ago. I had two feeders last year, but as of yet they have not been found, and the cheesy "orange" feeder isn't getting any action.

About ten minutes after I spotted her, the male showed up. He didn't land to feed, but he made an appearance. She came back a couple times to stock up for the night. PopPop saw them both too, so it isn't just me anymore. I first saw him a day or two after the Baltimore Orioles showed up - we have one pair for sure, and maybe two pair of Bluebirds. I'm hoping to get a video of the Grackle Dance this year, but time is running out on that. I'd love to have a decent microphone next Spring to record some of the songs, especially the Robins. They are so ubiquitous, we don't think about them as being songbirds, but during the early Spring they have a very beautiful song. Once they've mated, they go into chirping mode and stop really singing, but for those two or three weeks, they really are something to hear.

Speaking of the Orioles, he is such a tease. I swear the one male follows me around the yard and sits just out of view outside my computer room window. I hung out some sheets the other day and he was completely fascinated by them and spent a good ten minutes flying from branch to branch looking at them and singing. When I'm outside combing the cats, he's always there to sing and watch. Of course, any time I have a camera handy, he takes a powder.

BCC Please

God bless 43 Folders for Thanks. No. and Brett Kelly for setting up this BCC explainer page. They were both far more polite than I am inclined to be on this topic.

There are few things in digital life more annoying than being on someone's email forward list. I don't want to get an email that's been forwarded to hundreds of people and have to scroll for six pages to get to what is probably a bad joke or some political hack story or something that urges me to pass the message along to at least ten other people or I'll have a bad day. I'll take my chances on the bad day, but I promise you I don't read those messages. In fact, I never see them anymore, because I have my email program filter everything that has Fwd in the subject line straight to Trash.

And for those of you who think I'm a crank, and I know who you are, try this on for size. Do you have your email set up to add every address you send or reply to to your contact list? Do you know whether everyone you forward to has their email set up that way? It is thoughtless to assume that everyone who uses email is savvy enough to know their way around setting up their email account or program. It's just rude, RUDE, to be lazy and hit the forward button and start tossing in email addresses.

If the email is worth forwarding, it takes very little effort to remove all the previous forwards from the email and to then use BCC instead.

I don't need to be in the contact list for people I don't know and will never meet, and they don't need my email address and/or name clogging up their contact list unnecessarily. In case you hadn't noticed, I don't blithely forward email to anyone, nevermind everyone. Please do me the favor of showing me the same courtesy. If that's too much effort for you, please lose my email address.

Happy Birthday Mr. Bill

Hopefully this Happy Birthday wish will be passed along to Mr. Bill, since he for sure never looks in here.

Have a great day, Mr. B, I hope it's a doozie!

Man vs. Wild

Am I losing my mind? Or did I really just see a commercial for this show that has the protagonist, a guy who is supposedly out in the wild making his way as best he can, grab a cayman (or a small gator or croc, whatever) by the tail and swing it upside the head into a tree? Was that *really* necessary? Or is animal cruelty in vogue now, what with DMX being the latest asshole to be brought up on charges for dogfighting? I cannot begin to describe my disappoint with the Discovery Channel for this. And I'm not interested in any crap about how this is a survival show - this is sensationalistic bullshit at its finest. Boo. And to those of you who think this is some great shit, I hope you have a slow and painful death, you are a waste of oxygen.

Oh hey, I have an idea. Let's film the host being ripped to shreds by a polar bear, or hyenas, how about that?

Happy Mother's Day!

It's Mother's Day today, so I want to wish all the mothers (and muthas like me) a Happy Mother's Day! I think the best gift is probably a day to yourself, but I also think that is highly unlikely for most mothers.

Anyway, to Queenee, Key Dear and DamCat, may you all enjoy your day!

Gangstagrass

Rench has done an album's worth of mashups between Gangsta Rap and Bluegrass songs. You must download this (free and legal).

It is a slow download; the news of this album's release on BoingBoing has clogged the tubes, but it is also available as a torrent if you are so inclined.

R.I.P. Eddy Arnold

I don't know about everyone else, but I get asked "what kind of music do you like" a lot. My standard answer is boring...I like just about everything, with a couple exceptions. One music genre I cannot abide country music from the late 1960's-early 1970's. It's just way too whiny and all that "Stand By Your Man" crap makes my skin crawl. Except for the version done by the Blues Brothers. And believe me when I tell you I know whereof I speak; whenever PopPop was around it was just about all we heard. A couple I babysat for listened to nothing else.

Not that PopPop had no musical taste - he still adores anything Benny Goodman, and I learned of Ben Colder (think country music's Weird Al a decade or more earlier - Fifteen Beers Ago is pure genius) because of an album he bought in one of the Dakota's. Or maybe Montana. I'd bet big money he has no idea that Sheb Wooley was Ben Colder. The Outlaw Josie Wales, anyone? But pretty much anything not big band or country escaped him entirely.

This morning, one of his favorites passed away. Eddy Arnold, just days shy of 90 years old, died at a care facility near Nashville. His wife of 66 years, Sally, had died in March, and in the same month, Arnold fell outside his home, injuring his hip. He had many hit songs, but one of my favorites was Come Live with Me and Be My Love. Had I ever had a proper wedding, that would have been the song playing when I walked down the aisle.

Either that or NIN's Closer.

RIP Eddy Arnold.

Not meaning to be a tease, let me tell you a bit about Ben Colder. He is Sheb Wooley's alter ego...yes, that Sheb Wooley, of Purple People Eater fame. Sheb was in many movies as well.

I have a soft spot in my heart for Ben Colder. It helps to know the original country hits he parodized (if that isn't a real word, it should be). Fifteen Years Ago was a #1 hit in 1970 for Conway Twitty, and then Ben got hold of it and recorded Fifteen Beers Ago - an improvement, imho. Fifteen Beers Ago is the only song anyone could ever get me to sing in a karaoke bar. Trust me when I say that me not singing at all is a blessing to everyone.

Evolution of Dance

I've seen this a dozen times over the last couple years and it still makes me smile. If not for the worm and the deep knee bends, it would make a great exercise routine.

Derby Day

Key Dear and I were on the phone and made our Kentucky Derby picks. She was having an unreal day picking winners race after race. Neither of us thought anyone would beat Big Brown, but as he was the favorite (therefore not a good bet) and favorites have only won three times since 1980, we each chose three other horses. Key Dear went with Court Vision, Visionaire and Smooth Air. I chose Eight Belles, Visionaire and Gayego. Overall, Key Dear did better than I did. Her horses finished 11th, 12th and 13th. Mine finished 2nd, 12th and 17th, but poor Eight Belles, who finished a strong second to Big Brown, broke both front ankles after the finish and was euthanised on the track.

Horse sports are having a very bad year. Several eventing horses have died in the past year, along with a couple riders. Others have been seriously injured. While eventing is getting crazy difficult with higher/bigger/longer and immovable hurdles, at least horseracing is trying to do something to help reduce injuries by changing over many track surfaces to polytrack.

Baltimore Orioles are back!

I saw a red squirrel on the barn roof this morning around 8am. I haven't seen one in ages. At first I thought it was a chipmunk, but it was definitely a squirrel, cute as all get out. I went to get my camera, knowing he'd be long gone by the time I got back (and he was), but you never know, right? He might hang around...

Needless to say, he didn't hang around. But looking out the window, I saw the male Baltimore Oriole hanging on one of the suet feeders. I read that they had been spotted in the area last week, and now it looks like our Orioles have arrived. The hummingbirds should be close behind - we need to find those feeders!

Today is Kentucky Derby Day. I have no idea about any of the horses this year, I missed all the prep races, but I'll be rooting for the filly Eight Belles. Her stablemate Proud Spell won the Kentucky Oaks yesterday. On the news this morning there was a report that said this is the third biggest party day for people throwing parties at home. I never would have guessed that. First is New Year's Eve, then the Super Bowl, and third is the Derby. Things that make you go hmmmmmmm...

DamCat is back from another week in Baltimore sorting out the new software. Hopefully this week went better than the last one!

Back to work

Queenee spent a few hours back at work today. Of course everyone was falling down with appreciation that she was back, she's so special and they were all so worried that she might be considering retirement. HA! Not a chance. Now everything will get back to normal and be done properly again, so there was a collective sigh of relief. They have Queenee back and will be rid of me post haste. Too bad nobody will hire me, because Queenee and PopPop would dearly love to be rid of me and my cats as well (and a big shout-out and thanks to those of you agitating behind the scenes for them to throw me out - don't bother denying it, you and I know who you are), but that can't be helped for now.

This has been a chilly week weather-wise, we were getting spoiled with the 70F weather for a couple weeks. Poor PopPop had a frigid day of golf yesterday. However, May is upon us and soon we'll be whining about how it's too hot and humid.

I just took the Scandal-Gate: The 1980s quiz at Mental_Floss and scored 10 out of 10. Good guesswork on three, there were only seven I knew for sure. Mental_Floss is a pretty cool site, check it out if you are interested in interesting things.

Anyone not watching the Kentucky Derby this Saturday might consider checking out Pangea Day. Four hours of short films will be broadcast over the internet from 2pm-6pm Eastern time. The point is to try to get people to think about "the other" in a less virulent, vitriolic way, and to promote better understanding between various cultures, religions, etc. It's a very hopeful idea, but I'm not sure you can sway people who have long ago decided what is right and wrong and who they like and don't like. Too many people have already made up their minds about pretty much everything and they will not be moved. Still, it's a noble effort and I wish the organizers well.