Good morning to everyone!  See?  I can keep it short.  Sometimes.  It just isn’t really that much fun doing things normally.  And I’m certainly not normal.  As many of you know, and probably wish you didn’t know, especially when you have to explain to your friends or co-workers who that strange guy is that keeps talking to you.  And you have to quickly come up with an answer like, ‘never saw that guy before in my life’.  But he talks to you every week when he comes shopping, they say.  Oh him, you say, he’s just some odd guy that thinks he knows everyone, there is something wrong with his head.  Then how come he knows your name, they ask.  Oops, gotta go, have a meeting with the manager, you say.  Hmm, can’t be that bad.  But things do happen to me.  And people would rather not be around when they do happen.  Or they might get caught up in the happening.  And, believe me, no one wants that.  Speaking of birds.  I like to feed them.   But I had a bit of a problem earlier this winter when a neighbor complained to the town about my bird feeding.  You may remember I mentioned that.  I managed to fix that problem by complying with the bylaw and raised my feeder to the 10 feet off the ground rule. Kind of odd looking, but it works.  Anyway.  The other night I heard a noise out on the deck.  Hmm, must be the raccoons back again, I thought.  Then there was some very loud banging.  Not raccoons.  Possibly one of the bears has come out of hibernation.  If any have done so, they certainly were shocked by our sudden return to winter yesterday.  Wasn’t even in the forecast.  But we received an additional 6 inches of very wet snow in the afternoon.  Actually I think it would have been closer to 8 inches but the first part melted since the temp was above freezing for a while, meaning around 36F, which is about 2 for those of you who prefer the outdated, archaic, and totally ridiculous method of measuring temperature.  Can you tell that I really don’t care for Celsius?  Or metric for that matter.  Okay, I’m crazy.  I don’t mind admitting that.  But I’m a nice sort of crazy.  Sort of.  Anyway.  That’s the reason for the continuing warm looking header pic above.  I was going to chose something different.  But I decided to stay with Hawaii.  A much better choice than what we have right now.  Though some of that new snow did melt today.  Sigh.  But it’s going to get cold again.  Meaning no melting for a few days.  Supposed to be a cold April.  Sigh.  BUT, the gulls are back!!  That’s always a plus, and a sure sign that spring is here, even if it doesn’t look like it.  I always look forward to the gulls coming back.  A lot of people wish they wouldn’t.  But I like them.  I love listening to their cries of various varieties.  But first the crows came back a couple weeks ago.  Then the eagles, though some always stay the winter.  Then the Canada geese arrived last week.  So the gulls were fourth.  Okay.  I know.  I got sidetracked.  Back to the loud banging on the deck.  It scared Muffin, so I knew it was something to check out.  I was already in bed, as was Muffin.  It was late.  Naturally.  Things like this don’t usually happen at a convenient time.  Sigh.  But, by the time I got to the window there was nothing.  Nothing.  How can nothing make so much noise?  Obviously that nothing had to be something.  But I could not see that something but saw what that something which was now nothing had done.  It had taken my bird feeder down.  And wire that I had used to hold the bird feeder pole in place (I know, sounds odd, but it worked quite well) was neatly tied up very tightly so as to make it unusable.  Hmm, doesn’t sound like the work of raccoons or bears.  More like a two legged something.  Who obviously doesn’t like the fact I feed the birds.  Fortunately I had 2 feeders, so can still use one, it’s the hard one to get at, which is probably why it is still there.  Sometimes it really is hard to believe.  Speaking of food.  No, wait.  I think I will save that one, and a couple more, for next week.  By then I hope to have a new look.  My blog that is.  Not me.  At least I am going to try something.  Which for me usually means disaster is on the way!  Muffin is telling me to get away from the machine.  She’s hungry.  Then she complains that all we ever do around here is eat and sleep.  Her Cabin Fever has been as bad as mine.  And we both still have it!!  Sigh.  Sometimes it’s hard to understand why people live around here.  Hawaii is looking better all the time.  Sigh.  Anyway, I hope you all can enjoy your week and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.