Wordless Wednesday: What We've Been Seeing

Red-breasted Sapsucker

Western Bluebirds

Yellow-rumped Warblers

Pileated Woodpecker

Mountain Chickadee (at the nestbox!)

We're expecting our first real winter storm of the season. We think we're ready for 6 to 10 inches of snow. Wheeee!

Disconnected From This; Connected To That (now with an update!)

My computer is having a life crisis. Since I last happily wrote that it had been returned to me, it had a heart attack two days later. I picked up its lifeless body, which was weirdly hot with its fan blowing madly, and tried to perform life support. It played dead. It had been home less than a week when its condition decidedly took a turn for the worse. I called Dr. Apple and reported the symptoms. I am beginning to dislike and mistrust them as much as I am skeptical of all know-it-all-agenda-driven professionals. Of course they said I should ship it back to them for repair, yet again. I dutifully did so. This time they replaced the hard-drive, which they did not replace the last time they had it which had only been only six days earlier. You see my discontent here?

So, I have my computer back. It's working, but as as I told the lovely voice of Dr. Apple, I am slowly losing my mind over this. If this machine breaks one more time, I WILL NOT SEND IT BACK. Dr. Apple said that if my computer breaks, he won't make me send it back, but that he might ask me to check some software stuff. Okay, whatever. I just said to him, "You will hear from me. You will remember this conversation, right?" He said, "Yes, Robin, I will remember." Sure. I believe him.

My warranty is good until some time in late August. They will have to send me a new computer if and when this when breaks. In some ways, this computer is pretty new: it's on its third logic board, third power cord, second connector, new battery, and a new hard-drive. How many more components can they replace? Oh don't answer that. I don't want to know. The latest repair required that I restore my files from my back-up. For some reason it backed up to March 28, 2011, even though I had an April 28th backup. So a month's worth of photos is somewhere on the backup disk, but I'm not even sure I want to start digging around to find anything. ENOUGH ALREADY.

So, I've been living a weirdly disconnected life. I've been sporadically using my mom's new PC. I have been slogging along on our five-year old PC. Luckily spring is happening here. My mom is still visiting (and we got to spend Mother's Day with her for the first time in years!). And Indigo came and cooked a fantastic delicious dinner for us. The geese are keeping us amused. The strawberries are blooming in their new bed. And the bluebirds, those magnificent birds of happiness, are keeping me company in this time of computer crisis.

Best News Update: My computer actually died one more time Monday morning. I called Dr. Apple. He asked me to try one more thing to see if it might in fact be a software problem. I did as directed, and the computer was still dead. Dr. Apple said, "Where would you like to pick up a new computer?" Tomorrow at the Apple store!

A Thousand Miles Later

A week and a thousand miles later. A little bit of road weariness, but not too bad. We drove 420 miles Saturday. I spared Roger the worst of the trip by driving north through Orange, LA, Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties. It's 180 miles of split second, gut-wrenching, never-take-your-eyes-off-the-road highway. I drove 80 mph in the diamond lane (carpool, two or more passengers) through the worst of it. Still it's insanely intense to drive that fast with other cars hurdling past you on every side at the same or faster speeds. I distinctly recall three moments when it occurred to me that I had drifted in thought away from the highway and driving. It startled me to slip back in and wonder what the heck I was thinking. You know that feeling? How long had I been gone? Was I writing a haiku in my head? A blog post? Imagining some bird? What was it that lured me from that careening lull of speed? I don't know. Gone and back in an instant, like some kind of time traveler.


On the trip south through the Salinas Valley, there were thousands of butterflies crossing the maniac highway. There was no way to not hit them. I can't tell you how many times I viscerally dodged their bodies as they slammed into the windshield. It was brutal. I wished I had a way to not hit them as we drove. There was nothing we could do, and five days later, on the way north they were still emerging. Had we had all the time in the world and my mom not waiting for us, we could have postponed the journey, but there we were.

My mom is doing fairly well considering the rough year she has had. It was so good to be there with her, cooking nutritious meals and having grand conversations. Roger and I made sure that we took good walks everyday. Luckily the Western Bluebirds and Yellow-rumped Warblers were out and about thrilling us with their flashes of brilliant colors. When we showed my mom the photos, she couldn't believe what beauty there was all around her. She told me, after we drove home, that she spent Saturday afternoon on her deck listening to the birds in the trees, marveling how wonderful it was to know they were there.

Have You Ever Seen A Western Bluebird?

We hadn't. So it was exciting to find this pair spending much of the day sitting on the fence posts around Indigo's garden. We have a plan with Indigo to go up to her place to help out in the garden once a week (or more, of course!). So, we went up the other day and there they were sitting calmly, even while Roger mowed the knee-high grass that had grown between the garden beds.
I wish I had thought to photograph the garden, but I just couldn't take my eyes off these little beauties. You'll have to imagine the full bed of garlic, the beds of spinach, onions, carrots, blueberries, artichokes, salad greens, raspberries, potatoes, chives, oregano, etc. She planted extra tomatoes and basil for us. She knows what we'd miss most this year, not having our own garden space. We're lucky, we know we are. Homegrown tomatoes, bluebirds, and love.