Happy Anniversary, Key Dear and Mr. Bill!

Congratulations to Key Dear and Mr. Bill on your thirtieth anniversary!!

I messed it up last year, but I know this year it's thirty years, quite a milestone!

So what's the appropriate gift for a thirtieth anniversary? Can you guess?



Yep, it's pearls! Honestly, I can't picture Mr. Bill in pearls, but I can imagine you two chowing down on a plate of oysters. The best I can do is virtual oysters, but the sentiment is there — congratulations!

And best wishes to Mr. Bill for a successful surgery tomorrow — please keep us posted!

Happy Birthday, YP!

It's the Younger Pea's birthday today, 17 years old! Time sure does fly — she'll have her driver's license soon!

I hope you have a very Happy Birthday today and enjoy the summer - you'll have a great senior year in high school next year!

Chicken Dance

Hmmmm… I see a Gorilla Dance video appearing on YouTube sometime in the near future…

Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to PopPop. The Pantooset gang came over to give PopPop cards and some very nice golf clothes (trousers and two shirts) — he'll be styling now! We went to JJ's for dinner and were joined by Dawg and Fluffy. JJ's needs another waitress, but the food is good. After dinner we came back here for cake and ice cream, though it was late for PopPop and he was too full to have any dessert (but breakfast was looking tasty).

The Cooper's hawk made an appearance, eyeballing the small birds at the feeders. When we were having cake later, a skunk showed up to help the gray fox clear away the food I had thrown out earlier in the afternoon. That's a shame, really. I don't want to stop feeding the fox, but I don't want to encourage the skunk either.

My day got off to a sucky start. Chubba had brought a chipmunk in the night before and try as we might, PopPop and I couldn't catch her. She'd have to take her chances overnight with the cats. Amazingly, she survived the night and the cats seemed to have forgotten she was in the house. She was running around under the baseboard. After cleaning up her pee and poop from the far corner, PopPop and I made a plan to shoo her out the door. Unfortunately, I couldn't get her out of the baseboard. Unbeknownst to me, she had her head over the pipe, so when I flipped the baffle up to see where she was, I snapped her and killed her. I was sick, it wasn't what I had wanted to do at all. Stupid me.

Fox at 8 o'clock

She's a machine, our fox. She is always here at dusk, right at 8pm most nights, though a couple nights ago she was a bit late.

Last night I decided to try to get some video of her. I had a feast laid out — pizza crusts and a pork chop. I was just getting set up at the dining room window, turned on the camera to focus, and there she was.

She started off eating pizza crusts. The crusts were all close to the arborvitae, so I was trying to get video through a tree branch (which will be cut down later today). She had eaten probably two or three before she noticed the pork chop. She chewed on the chop for a short time, then left it and went back to the pizza crust. Curious behavior, right? I kept filming her through the branch, hoping she'd go back to the pork chop before it got too dark. She ate every single pizza crust, she didn't leave a smell, then went back to the chop. She picked it up, got a good grip on it, and headed off. I'd like to think the meat was going back to the pups, who should be a decent size by now.

Queenee was coming down the stairs just as the fox was finishing off the pizza crusts, but I didn't dare move or say anything. By the time she got to the dining room, the fox had just gone. Queenee has never seen a gray fox. She'll have to stay up some night and wait. It won't be a bad wait, our fox is very punctual.

The eyes of Mr. Bill

Mr. Bill is having his eye surgery today. Everyone here is thinking of him and wishing him well, hopefully he'll be back to normal quickly! I'll report the news as soon as I hear from Key Dear. (see comments)

The past two weeks have seen a baby boom of birds here. We must have had close to 100 baby sparrows hatch, no kidding. I haven't spotted the bluebirds with their babies yet, but I have seen what appeared to be a youngster. The baby robins are now pretty much indistinguishable from the adults. I've seen the young hummers, too; there is a juvenile male and what I believe is a juvenile female. The three adults are all still here, one female and two males. We've got more catbirds than a month ago as well.

There are a few hawks hanging around in the yard, taking advantage of the increase in small bird population. I've seen Cooper's hawks and what I think is a sharp-shinned hawk. Two redtails were circling overhead yesterday afternoon. Last night I saw what I think was a young Cooper's hawk (maybe a female sharp-shinned hawk) in the cherry tree. She flew down to the apple tree and I ran for my camera. Naturally, by the time I got back, she was gone, but it was just coming up on 8pm and when I turned to have a word with Little One, who was on the lower back deck, I saw our resident gray fox.

She was moving up to the spot where I toss leftover pizza crusts and whatever else. Last night it was a bit of spaghetti. She is very consistent, within five minutes of 8pm each time I've seen her. I'm guessing it's a female, no way of knowing for certain. I got a few photos of her this time. None are good, there isn't a lot of light that time of day, but she's easily seen and identifiable.

Juvie Baltimore Oriole

I heard an unusual bird call early this morning and finally spotted the singer during the late morning. It was a young Baltimore Oriole, still sporting his head fluff and singing for his parents to bring his breakfast. Both adults tended to him all day. He spent several hours in the arborvitae directly under the nest in which he was hatched. I didn't see another juvenile, so he may be the only one, though there could have been another one perched out of sight.

Not a good photo, but good enough for an ID. I shot this through two panes of dirty glass (one of which is old and rippled). I didn't want to go outside and risk him flying off, or disturb his attentive parents.

It's almost 7pm and he's still singing for food. I can't see him, but he isn't far off.

Foxy fox

As I was coaxing the furchildren to come into the house for the night last night, I spied a gray fox. I haven't seen a fox for a while, though the neighbors have. I toss leftover pizza crusts, veg and stale bread off the end of the deck and have long thought I was feeding the local raccoons. It seems the fox is the lucky scavenger. She looks good, not too thin and not at all mangy. I suppose it could be a red fox, I didn't get a look at its legs, but it was quite gray and not red, and on the small side height-wise, which makes me think it is a gray fox.

edit 6/14/09 8pm: I had a very good look at the fox tonight and it is definitely a gray fox!

Belmont and D-Day

She picked him in the Kentucky Derby, and Key Dear stuck with him for the Belmont and won! Summer Bird, the other son of 2004 Belmont winner Birdstone, beat Dunkirk and his half brother Mine That Bird to win the Belmont Stakes.

For a brief moment as the field rounded the turn into the stretch, Mine That Bird, who ran in last in the ten-horse field on the backstretch, made a sweeping move to vault into the lead past pacesetter Dunkirk with nothing but open ground in front of him. Dunkirk, however, dug in and did not let Mine That Bird run away uncontested, giving Kent Desormeaux and Summer Bird a clear lane on the outside to drive past the leaders to the line.

Summer Bird covered the distance in 2:27.54 on a track rated as fast for trainer Tim Ice, who picked up his first career graded stakes victory and only his second stakes victory in 15 months on his own following 15 years as an assistant trainer.

The win was sweet redemption for Desormeaux, giving him the Belmont victory he desperately wanted. Last year, he won the Derby and Preakness aboard Big Brown, only to have to pull up the colt in the Belmont. In 1998, he brought Real Quiet into the Belmont for a Triple try only to get beaten by Victory Gallop by a nose in a heartbreaking defeat. He was roundly criticized for his ride in that race.

Key Dear had Summer Bird picked to win, with Charitable Man, Chocolate Candy and Dunkirk. PopPop went with the D-Day theme and picked Flying Private, Brave Victory and Dunkirk. Mr. Bill had Chocolate Candy, Luv Gov and Dunkirk, and Logito had Miner's Escape and Flying Private. I had picked Mine That Bird and Dunkirk as my locks, with Chocolate Candy and Mr. Hot Stuff as my longshots.

The final order of finish was:

1. Summer Bird (4)
2. Dunkirk (2)
3. Mine That Bird (7)
4. Charitable Man (6)
5. Luv Gov (5)
6. Flying Private (8)
7. Brave Victory (10)
8. Mr. Hot Stuff (3)
9. Chocolate Candy (1)
10. Miner's Escape (9)

Key Dear had first, second and fourth, I had second and third — well, we all had Dunkirk doing well, and he did. Chocolate Candy was a disappointment, I thought he would do better. I still love Mine That Bird, but have to admit to a wee bit of schadenfreude about Calvin Borel. There's a difference between confidence and arrogance and he just got bitch-slapped by the fickle finger of fate.

Thanks for the mammaries

Today Queenee and I celebrated the annual squashing of the boobs. I scheduled us for the same times, since we see the same oncologist. I also still see the boob surgeon, since he's the one who does the exam. The radiologist wasn't there yet, so we left without our results. The nurse thought Queenee's images looked fine, but wasn't so eager to make a determination on mine. I'm sure it's just that the usual calcifications need a doctor's eye for dismissal. They'll call if either of us need more pictures taken. If not, we'll do it all again next year. Oh, joy.


Great news from PA — cousin Laura had a baby girl! I need to get down there to see them. I would have gone with Queenee two weeks ago, but my left elbow is having fits and I didn't think it wise to do the drive. Maybe in another month or so.

Windows Vista

Having just gone through three weeks of crap with Windows Vista, I thought I'd share my experience in case someone has a similar problem.

First, let's accept that Vista is the new ME. I'm hoping for better things with Windows 7 (but no, not holding my breath). If Adobe ever writes their software for Linux/Unix, I suspect a lot of folks besides me will stop using MS for our OS.

Three weeks or so ago, Vista suddenly started to randomly blue-screen on me. I hadn't installed any new software or hardware for the previous two months, so you wouldn't think that would be the problem. I could boot into Safemode with networking with no issues. I ran the usual programs - CrapCleaner, HijackThis, SmitFraudFix, VundoFix, ComboFix - all to no avail. No viruses, no malware, nothing evident. I have a Windows Vista repair disc, which also solved nothing.

I really, really didn't want to go through a reinstall of Vista. I would have opted for RC1 of Windows 7 first. However, I decided that maybe the issue was something to do with my profile. I created a new profile, copied anything over that I wanted from the screwy profile to the new one (which has taken the better part of six hours), and then deleted the bad profile.

So far, so good. No problems booting, no crashes (I hope I am not jinxing myself here), everything seems to be working.

It pays to do regular backups, which I do, but moving profile info from one account to another takes a bit more tweaking. Nothing major, mind you, just time.

Bottom line is, if you must use Windows, and have Vista, and haven't had any major problems yet ... do yourself a favor and back up anything you value, like your Bookmarks, email profiles, any sounds/fonts/photos/etc., and you will be ready if/when this happens to you.