There’s something so welcoming about sitting on your porch reading a book while your neighbors mow the lawn, or weed the flowerbeds, or clean the garage. It’s a friendly kind of neighborhood, one that’s comforting in its quiet diligence.
I sat on the steps and read until…
Every day after lunch, Chad and I take a leisurely stroll down our very long driveway to check the mail. It’s a nice break in the middle of the day, a chance to get outside for two people who work from home and could go from the time they wake up until the end of the working day without ever seeing the sun.
Just a quick housekeeping post to let folks know that I’ve added my Twitter feed and journal updates to the main page of my website. You can subscribe to the journal updates there through either RSS (powered by Feedburner) or email. If you run into any problems with the feed or email subscriptions, please let [...]
I’ve been fascinated by bonsai trees for over twenty years. I started out buying pre-made bonsais from places like Sam’s Club or Target. Invariably, they all died. After reading a few bonsai books, I understood why and decided to follow the advice of those same books — grow and train my own. I placed seeds in the freezer for a few weeks, like the books said, then planted them in pots at the precise depth the books said — and watched them fail to sprout. I bought junipers, box elders, and other evergreen shrubs from places like Lowes and Home Depot, carefully transferred them to bonsai pots, trimmed them, watered them, did everything the books told me to do. And, invariably, they all died.
I’m not a bird person. It’s not that I don’t like birds. It’s just that I’ve never been very interested in them, beyond pointing out hawks sitting on poles by the highway, or looking for owls in the trees by my old house, or being entranced as a massive flock of unspecified birds wheels left and right, up and down in perfect choreography (which is, if you’ve never seen it, amazingly cool to watch).
We got Freya’s biopsy results today, and everything looks good. The pathologist found no sign of cancer, so that’s a huge relief. The inflammation also appears to be a recent change — no sign of scarring, which apparently would have made it harder to get Freya back to 100%. So that’s good news.
For now, Freya [...]
We called our vet this morning because Freya hasn’t eaten much since we got her home. Just a little canned food Thursday evening and a few bites of dry yesterday. And she isn’t simply not eating. She’s running away from the food. Set her down front of it, and she’ll take one sniff then bolt [...]
Those of you who follow me on Twitter have heard a little about this, but I thought I’d do a full blog post to bring everyone up to speed on Freya.
One of my favorite places to visit in Greensboro is the Natural Science Center. So on Sunday Chad and I headed out there to catch Sea Monsters in 3D at the NSC’s OmniSphere Theatre and to watch the tiger feeding.
For the last three weeks, I’ve been busy editing a manuscript. Not one of my own. Something someone else wrote. This was the first editing pass. I wrapped it up and emailed everything to both the author and the publisher Friday night with thirteen minutes to spare before the clock ticked over to Saturday morning.
It [...]