Sometimes I do not. Last week however was a highlight in the whole paralegal thing that I will be telling at dinner parties for the rest of my life I think. I was hanging around in traffic court, attempting to get a deal for driving school signed by the ADA (Assistant District Attorney) as it was the ADA was doing some defendant pro se (without an attorney) pleas. So this one gentleman comes up and Paul (the ADA, who by the way is an absolutely charming young Korean gentleman for whom English is a second language). The defendant shuffles up and the ADA begins to read the charge "ah your honor this case appears as number (whatever) on today's calendar, the State has arraigned the defendant on one count of hunting a squirrel while failing to wear an" he stops, and looks over at the charging officer who is sat in the jury box "while failing to wear an orange hat" says the officers. The ADA looks back at the ticket and looks back at the officer, convinced I think that the entire world is setting him up for some sort of candid camera type stunt. He rereads the charge "the State has arraigned the defendant on one count of hunting a squirrel while failing to wear an orange hat" at which point I had to leave the court room, rather than being ejected by the bailiff that is for laughing so hard I thought I would pee myself. As I left the courtroom it appeared that the Judge was having a hard time keeping a straight face. Later in the day I spoke with Officer Daniels of Wildlife Resources (the charging officer) "so what was that charge again, hunting a squirrel while failing to wear an orange hat? Is that to warn the squirrels?" he smiled at me "no its so he doesn't get shot" "what?" I said "are squirrels carrying guns these days?" It was one of my more fun days in court. But when you think about it, it is in and of itself hilarious. Hunters, for the most part, do their level best to blend into the forest by wearing all this wonderful camo gear, then, due to hunters tendency to shoot each other while in the woods, (I don't know about how often it happens but it must have happened often enough that they had to introduce legislation), they now require hunters to wear some sort of dayglo orange form of clothing, either a vest or a hat. One wonders however if the government wasn't actually trying to be wildlife friendly, when bringing in these laws, I mean how much of a help is it to the deer etc., of this State when formerly the hunters could stalk around the woods in camo gear blending in with the trees (and merrily shooting each other) whereas nowadays all a deer has to look for is a flash of dayglo orange to know that it is time to get the heck out of dodge. I think it levels the playing field to be honest. Well ya know that and issuing all the squirrels with guns....

A little known news item would have perhaps passed by those who are consumed with the winner of the superbowl. A place has been found in New Guinea, which is, for the most part, a "lost world" just as depicted in the movies. In this place species that have long thought to be extinct, as well as species that noone ever knew existed live. THEY LIVE. It is just an amazing thought, an amazing discovery, an amazing reality. Great joy, great great joy. As smart as we think we are this world is not completely mapped and this world is not completely discovered, and living happily and silently in their own part of the universe are a miriad of species that we didn't even know existed. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it. Mother nature yet again smacks the treacle out of human beings. When are we going to learn? [[LINK:http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article343740.ece]]

isn't that a familiar refrain from me? The technician is coming out tomorrow to replace the mother board (again) so at last count I have gone through SEVEN (no that isn't a typo) power supplies and as of tomorrow two mother boards. Me and dell have issues as you can imagine. So right now I am working on my "shoe box" the old faithful Compaq Presario which in its eight (I think) years of life with me has never broken down once. Maybe I should have learned something there, in my defense however, I did not buy the dell, my husband did and he thought he was doing me a favor by getting me a puter with enough memory that even I couldn't kill with my photographs. Oh well we shall see how long the dell lasts after its latest bought of surgery. If it lasts longer than a month it will have set its own record. As if that wasn't bad enough I went into work last Monday and discovered that due to a power outage and surge my server was toast. Despite the best efforts of my techs, it could not be revived, so a new server had to be built for us. Then as is usually the way with these things once the new server was in it was discovered that our ancient (and badly installed to begin with) networking system was just not up to snuff when it came to the new super duper server so that had to be replaced too and then of course once that happened we discovered that the work stations, which are all old and working on WIndows 98 don't want to play with the server working on Windows XP so now we have to get new workstations. If its not one thing its another. I have been sitting kicking my heels at work all week not being able to accomplish anything while my inbox teeters towards the heavens and last I looked had a light dusting of snow on top of it. Who knows how long it will take me to catch up once the system is back up.

And as if the week hadn't been bad enough one of my kittens went missing. Arnamade, my orange tabby (who by the way is named after an orange tabby I had as a child who was named Marmalade, but my five year old mouth couldn't pronounce Marmalade - hence Arnamade). He came home after being gone two days and crawled through the pet door, soaking wet, filthy dirty and with a very obviously broken leg. I took him to the vets on Saturday and the x-rays showed that indeed the leg was broken very close to the hip, and his tail bone was broken. So he is scheduled for surgery on Wednesday morning to fix the leg and to amputate his tail (as the nerves have been damaged and his tail is paralyzed and therefore more of a liability to him) He is doing okay, being a very good patient and taking his medicine (he doesn't like it, but he takes it). He is eating well and believe it or not he has managed to climb a flight of stairs twice in the past couple of days to get to the guest bedroom which is where he likes to hang out. The resilience of cats truly amazes me sometimes, can you imagine how difficult it must be climbing a flight of stairs with a broken leg? Anyhoo, here is a picture of the brave boy, having (with broken leg) managed to climb on top of the dead dell to sit while he waited for his dinner. As I am going to be giving the vet a boat load of money this week I thought I might as well go all out so I booked his mother (Patches) and his sister (Minime) in for their spayings. I am determined that there will be no more kittens in my future (or theirs more is the point). Once Arnamade has recovered from his trauma he will be going in for the snip too, but I figured that one surgery at a time is enough for any six month old.

It was 45 degrees outside last night, our heating is set at approximately 60. I go to bed and my husband has the bedroom window open and the ceiling fan on. "It's cold in here" I say, reaching for my pink, fluffy monster of a dressing gown. "No its not" he says "its just right." So, I quickly remove my clothes, wrap myself in my fluffy monster and snuggle under the covers, whereupon my nose begins to turn blue. "It IS cold in here" I say turning on Fox News just a bit too loud so as to annoy him. "No its perfect" he says. He's getting too big for his boots you know.

Where the hell do all the clothes hangers go? This is beginning to become the same sort of mystery as the sock eating dryer or washing machine but that has a sort of logical reasoning behind it. Socks can get lost in tubes and hoses and vents and stuff and it makes sense that you perhaps put three pairs of socks in the washing machine and take two and a half pairs out. But clothes hangers? I routinely buy ten packs of plastic hangers from the dollar store and carefully hang up all our clothes after they have been washed and dried. On occasion I had a few left over which I would place in the closet lonely and clothesless until I needed them. Nowadays however, I go to the closets to hang up clean laundry and there are no hangers. This is not as a result of me going out and buying lots of new clothes at the weekend, I am not a clothes buyer, personally I would rather roll around naked in nettles than go out clothes shopping. Do I have an item specific hanger burgler? Does someone sneak into my house while I am out and take off with my cheap, ten for a dollar, plastic hangers due to some sort of fetish? I am waiting for a story to break in the local paper telling how the police have just raided the house of a local strange person whose rooms are stuffed full of plastic hangers lovingly arranged in areas of size and color and neat labels telling where they were stolen from. To be honest I think I would be happier if someone were stealing my underwear off the washing line, at least underwear doesn't need hangers.

I do not want to buy a car alright, I am happy with the car I drive, a 2000 Kia Sephia. I really, really do not want to buy a car. So WOULD YOU PLEASE STOP YELLING AT ME AT 2 minute intervals between 6:30 and 7:30AM when I actually watch TV TELLING ME WHAT A WONDERFUL TIME IT IS TO BUY A NEW CAR AND IF YOU DON'T COME DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW AND BUY A NEW CAR THEN YOU ARE OBVIOUSLY A MORON WHO HAS NO AMBITION AND NO CLASS AND EVERYONE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD IS POINTING AT YOU ON THE STREET AND LAUGHING THEIR PANTS OFF CAUSE YOU ARE NOT DRIVING THE CAR THAT WE WANT TO SELL YOU! I really do not want a new car, could you please leave me alone now? I propose a cable channel that is dedicated to car dealer ads, 24/7 so that people who are actually looking to buy a car can go to that channel and be told that NOW IS THE BEST TIME TO BUY (even though they said that last month was the best time to buy, a smart person would hold off for a while, knowing that next month will be an even better time to buy, in fact how about two months from now? in fact hold off for six months and they'll give you the car, put gas in it, and throw in a guy who will drive it for you so long as you feed him every now and again). Yes, that is the solution, a car dealer channel (hey there is a golf channel so ya know, what kind of demographic is that? I should imagine that approximately .00000000000001% of the population watch that one) where people who are actually in the market to buy a new car can go and be yelled at all day WE WILL NOT BE UNDERSOLD, YOU PAY INVOICE AND YOU KEEP THE REBATE, WE WILL GIVE YOU THE CAR AND OUR FIRST BORN CHILD, YOU PAY WHAT OUR EMPLOYEES PAY - hey with what you pay your employees they can't afford to buy your cars, that's why they all drive Kia's.

I care about alot of things, the state of the environment, the apparent lack of concern of the people of the globe that eventually natural resources are going to run out and eveyone is going to be toast, the lack of concern of people in general that a plant or animal becoming extinct is actually a disaster as opposed to a blip on the headlines. I care about the fact that the past year or so has brought an almost unprecedented string of natural disasters, from the tsunami, to Katrina, to the earthquake in Pakistan. What do I not care about? I really do not care that Britney and Kevin despite having a baby to worry about appear to be having problems, I really do not care that Angelina is having Brads baby, I really really do not care that Katie is having Tom's baby (although you know I think immaculate conception might have had something to do with that one as I am not sure that the poison dwarf has it in him), I REALLY REALLY don't care that Jennifer is seeing Vince, and finally I REALLY REALLY REALLY do not care that Jessica and Nick, the famed "newlyweds" have split up. Unfortunately I appear to be in the minority. It is very sad when you consider what people care about.

This is a Brown-headed Nuthatch. As a result of deforestation he is becoming very rare in some of his ranges. Luckily in my garden that is not a concern, I have a thriving population of them, and I like to keep them well fed. Perhaps we should all care more about this little guy.

Despite the fact that my window for doing so was quite slim, due to having to paint trim and remove gutters and power wash windows and such. Still I allocated myself some time to watch the birdies, seeing as that is the main way I relax. So in between doing dishes and laundry I set up my tripod in the kitchen sink, opened the kitchen window and waited. To my great delight the male Pine Warbler decided to come and pose for me. The only other photo I got of him was so lousy it looked like a yellow blob. The reason this capture was so important is that the Pine Warbler is a new one for my life list. For those non-birders among you a "life list" is the list of birds that you have seen in your lifetime. (I know it almost sounds self explanatory.) So this is a new one for my list of birds seen in my lifetime.

The photo is a little misleading however because normally he would not have that black mark by his eye, I am assuming that it is an owie or some sort of anomaly with his feathers.

In addition to the Pine Warbler my goldfinches have returned in droves. They visit me every winter to stay fat and happy and then come spring, just as they change into their brilliant breeding plumage they move inland to breed. I have three thistle feeders, with twenty feeding stations between them, yet, even that isn't enough when the flocks arrive. Invariably someone has to stand in line and wait for an opening, its a bit like going to IHOP for breakfast at the weekend.



I also got another nice shot of the Red Bellied Woodpecker who is a personality and a half. When he arrives at the feeders it is like the parting of the red sea, everyone scatters. I suppose it is a safe bet, most of the birds on my feeders have short stubby beaks, when you come across someone who is armed with something like a rapier it is safer to get out of the way.



And finally the tufted titmouse decided to cooperate and pose on the posing table for me. They are delightful little birds, but incredibly difficult to photograph seeing as they, like their cousins the chickadees, utilize the "swoop and snatch" method of feeding, stopping only long enough to grab a peanut before disappearing again. I have learned of late how to recognize their distinctive call and can therefore prepare for their arrival and hopefully focus the camera in time. Today it worked.