It is an absolutely beautiful August day, the sun is shining brilliantly providing a nice penetrating warmth without being overly hot, a nice gentle breeze causing the leaves to whisper quietly, just one of those fantastic summer days!  I hope you are able to get out and enjoy some of the splendor of summer before it disappears.  The birds are especially active today, chickadees, nuthatches, goldfinches, rock doves and, of course, the ever present grackles and crows, and last but not least, Sir George, which you all know is a herring gull.  They are big birds.  Very big.  Especially when he is sitting on my little bird feeder.  And they are such a brilliant white, plus a bit of grey and black, with his bright yellow bill sporting a brilliant red spot.  They are a beautiful bird really, but many people just don’t seem to appreciate them.  Garbage birds, they say, and, too noisy.  They can be noisy, but it is such a welcome noise to me as it means summer!  It is always a thrill to see or hear them back in the spring.  Sigh.  It won’t be long and they will be leaving once again.  Though some do stay until November, most of the adults are gone by mid October.  That’s just 2 months.  Sigh.  Sir George is getting quite tame, I have been able to approach to within 3 feet of him, not bad for such a wary bird.  My aim is to get him to eat out of my hand.  Or at least off the plate I am holding.  Then to try and get a picture of that, which won’t be easy.  Sigh.  It is so nice to sit at my desk and gaze out the window at the picturesque lake, so calm in the early morning light, just a few ripples made by the loons and gulls, and a beaver quietly swimming past close to shore heading back to his lodge after a night of cutting trees, getting ready for the coming winter.  The loons mournful cry breaks the solitude of the moment, though for me that cry is more of a loud laughter of joy and praise to his Creator.  One after another many birds begin waking and soon a chorus of different songs fill the air.  And that air is so clear and clean it makes one invariably take a deep breath to enjoy it to the full.  A beautiful moment, and a beautiful memory.  Unfortunately there is no lake outside my window now, but there are lush trees of many varieties just past my little deck, a nice quiet spot to enjoy a morning cup of COFFEE!  And, of course, say hi to my many little visitors, Chipper, Cheeky and Stubby, the 3 chipmunks, Nosey, my squirrel, and the birds.  Last night there was a fox around, he barked steadily for 20 minutes, very loudly.  Woke me up.  Woke up Muffin as well, though I am sure she enjoyed having something different for a change.  To watch, that is.  However, this started just after 3am, a little too early even for me.  But I was very much awake by the time that little fox stopped.  He must have been pretending to be a rooster.  Or something.  Sigh.  So I am a bit tired now.  But it is too early to head to bed.  Yes, it is evening.  Muffin is sleeping, but if I went to bed now I would be up at 3 again.  Not a good idea.  Sigh.  Speaking of technology.  Why is it only me that has problems?  Sigh.  At least my computer is working again.  Except it won’t talk to me anymore.  She says she can’t hear me.  Right.  Just doesn’t want to.  Sigh.  Now my tablet is giving me trouble.  Turned it on yesterday and nothing wanted to work.  Not even factory installed items.  Discovered it was in something called safe mode.  So what’s with that?  How did that happen?  And I couldn’t undo it.  Fortunately my tablet was still talking to me, one of the few things that did work.  So it told me what to do.  Odd.  Now it works.  Sort of.  Wants to freeze up all the time now.  And overheat.  Sigh.  It’s enough to make me jump up and down, pull my hair, bang my head against the wall, roll on the floor (what do you expect after banging my head on the wall), and, and, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!! It’s okay.  I’m fine.  I’m calm.  Sigh.  Had to phone some place the other day.  I hate doing such a thing now.  Nothing but machines telling me to press 1 for this, 2 for that…and so on.  But I did it anyway.  Nothing on that initial list fit what I wanted to do.  So I picked the closest one.  On to the next level.  Did the same thing.  Next level.  Same thing.  On the sixth level it finally had press 4 to talk to the operator.  GREAT!  Right.  Got the operator.  Sort of.  All operators were busy.  So I was put on hold.  What they mean to say is, they only have one operator who is presently talking to a friend.  Sigh.  Anyway, after only 8 minutes I got to talk with the operator!  Who told me I was in the wrong department and to go back to the original menu and press 2.  And then…that’s when I hung up.  Okay, so I’m a terrible person.  Sometimes I hate machines.  Sigh.  Mostly they hate me. Oops.  I was supposed to finish the insulatoring story.  Sorry.  Next time.  Maybe.  Who knows?  Anything can happen with me.  And usually does.  Sigh.  I hope you enjoy your weekend, and God bless!

Steve.  And Muffin.  And critters.

Good morning on this rather cloudy and cool day which could mean the end of our nice hot summer weather that we enjoyed for about a week which really makes for a short summer thought a lot of people seem to like this cooler weather better which is hard to understand since most of the year it is either cold or cool so it is actually quite nice to get some hot weather too and we just don’t get much hot weather anymore like we used to have and I am not going only by what I remember but actual weather records that show our summers used to be hotter for longer periods of time than they are now but I guess we just try to enjoy what we have as much as possible and since I spend most of my time indoors now anyway then I guess it doesn’t really matter too much although it still is nice to have weather that is nice and especially nice sunny days which are nice thought we do need some of those cloudy rainy days too I guess but this year we have been getting a lot of those rainy type days and I mean a lot of them meaning more than the non rainy type days except for the last week or so but now it looks like we are heading back into the cloudy rainy days for a while and the days are sure getting noticeably shorter now too which is terrible since that means that we are heading quickly to that season of the year which makes up most of our year and which I don’t like to talk about since it is too cold for old critters like me and I think I will be staying indoors even more than usual when that season shows up and, and…sigh.  Some people think my ‘musings’ are too long but if I make them any shorter I won’t be able to say anything.  Not that I say much anyway.  But I sometimes spend a lot of time saying nothing.  Which can be fun.  Sir George just arrived again.  Second time this morning.  Not bad.  Chuck isn’t too happy.  Nothing left for him.  But he got some before.  Actually have 2 squirrels around again.  One is a young one.  Not much bigger than a chipmunk.  And a blue jay has also showed up again.  He’s molting so looks a bit odd.  Having these 2 coming back is a sign of fall.  Or autumn if you prefer.  Cooler days are good days for COFFEE!  And speaking of COFFEE.  Dad and I had decided to find a nice sunny spot to sit and have our COFFEE so we could dry out a bit and relax after our little adventure, as you might recall from last week.  Actually it was a fairly hot day so getting wet was not really so bad.  Although dad wasn’t so happy about his part.  We climbed a little hill overlooking the area nicely.  A great spot to see where we will be heading next.  A fairly large hill coming up.  Sometimes they can be quite productive.  Though not always.  But sometimes.  Dad, as usual now, sat as far from me as he could.  Odd.  Toss my sandwiches, called dad.  So I did.  He missed them.  They bounced off a boulder and slid down the edge of the rock hillside and right over the edge to the tracks below.  Dad just stood there looking over the edge.  Then he called out, BONEHEAD!  Odd that he would be enjoying that.  Oh well.  You can go down and get them, he said.  Me?  Yes, you.  Sigh.  Off I went.  Came back up.  Dad said, toss them gently this time.  So I did.  He missed again.  Knocked his cup of COFFFEE off the rock where he had it ‘safely’ out of the way he said.  Should have realized that no place is safe, he said.  Not sure what he meant by that.  I poured him another cup and brought it over to him.  Careful, he said.  I’m not going to spill it, I said.  I didn’t try to anyway.  But I stepped on a little rock which moved and I lost my balance, dad’s eyes got real big and he tried to get out of the way but somehow we both ended up in the same spot and I kind of threw the cup of COFFEE and his stomach ended up getting rather wet.  BONEHEAD, said dad.  You shouldn’t have moved, I said.  I shouldn’t have left home this morning, he said.  Odd thing to say considering he likes insulatoring so much.  Chipmunks are back looking for peanuts.  Guess that means it’s time to quit.  I hope you all enjoy the rest of your week and weekend!  God bless!

Steve.