Wonders of a Weekend Off

It was a good weekend – especially since it was 3 days long. Shari and I figured that we would spend at least one day out on the road, and to avoid shore traffic, Sunday seemed the best choice. That being determined, I spent Saturday mowing the lawn, cleaning up the yard, cleaning and fixing the gutters, filling the feeders and some other basic duties around the house. Shari did her part by cleaning up the kitchen, installing new shelves under the sinks and washing the windows. By the time we were done, it felt like a full, satisfying day. We still had other stuff we wanted to get done on Monday – including going to Home Depot to get the materials to redo our door frames and baseboards, but we figured we would do that later.

Forsythe

Sunday ended up being our big day out, heading down to Forsythe NWR to look at shorebirds and whatever else happened to be out there. I wanted to leave early to get down there for morning light, but Shari wanted to wait a little later so we cold sleep in. Ironically, she ended up waking up early in the morning so we left a little earlier than expected anyway. The dogs were ecstatic at getting to go to Forsythe (they always are), so they’re nearly uncontrollable excitement played a part in the decision — that and not wanting to sit around the house.

It turned out that Forsythe was a bit different than we expected it. I’m not sure if it’s the lack of rain we’ve been having or that they are purposely keeping the pools on the dry side (to grow plants for the waterfowl in a month or so?), but we were surprised by how much dry ground was there. But it still was a good trip as we worked our way around the Wildlife Drive 4x through the day.

Highlights

• Two new additions to my lifelist – Wilson’s Pharalope and Red-necked Pharalope
• LOTS of shorebirds and wading birds
• Beautiful weather
• A day out with my wife and dogs

Lowlights

• Greenheads – still. Only a 5.5 on the Greenhead Annoyance Scale — they were controllable with bug spray, although the dogs weren’t nearly as laissez faire about it.
• Bad day shooting – over 300 pictures taken, only a dozen keepers. Well, if it were easy, it wouldn’t be fun to do.
• The NWR is in poor shape – the urinals in the men’s room have been broken for at least 2.5 months, and their was no toilet paper in EITHER bathroom. Overall, the condition of the facilities is among the worst I’ve seen in a refuge/national park.

Non-Labor Day

We had planned on finishing all of those chores that we had put off Saturday night, but … well, somehow it never seemed to happen. Instead, we went through our pictures, had breakfast together, I caught up on the 633 articles that had stacked up on Netvibes and learned a few new methods and tricks for CSS/Design/HTML. We laughed about it more than once, but we never actually ever went out and visited Home Depot, nor did we really do any work.

We did, however, make brownies to celebrate all of our non-efforts.

What’s up around the world

• Jason Santa Maria (and others) on a quest for a true cheesesteak in NYC – I wonder if it exists?
• Google Chrome: The next big browser? – I played with it a bit, but it’s hard to really get a feel for it without really putting it through the paces, which I can’t do until I get home.
• The Second American Revolution by Thomas Paine (YouTube) — I don’t agree with everything he says, but a lot of it makes sense.
• Wacky Pod Races (video) – Star Wars meets Hanna-Barbera Wacky Races.
• Joe Cocker at Woodstock – Translated (video) – Joe Cocker obviously had a LOT of fun there.