Category suburbs

4 and 20 (thousand) blackbirds

On Saturday morning, whie Amy napped, I heard the CAW!s of The Blackbird Gang right outside my window. I took a look outside and discovered that our backyard was their newest turf:

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I was worried that blackbird-on-blackbird violence might lead to a drop in our property values, but the upside of roving gangs like this is that they never spend more than 10 minutes in one place. Really: hundreds of birds descended on our yard, filling the trees, noshing on our weeds, chattering away on a Saturday morning, and then one of them got the signal, and they all flew off.

Unrequired Reading: Oct. 9, 2009

It’s been another wipeout of a week for me, dear readers. But I’ve got one of my 20-year high school reunions coming up this weekend, so I’m trying to enhealthify. Not that you care. You’re just here to see the latest collection of links that I think you sortamaybe should read. So just click “more”!

Why I live out here

The view of my backyard this evening, as we enjoy the last of the summer wine:

Also, I can play my music pretty loud.

(UPDATE: On the downside, when I was walking Rufus this morning c. 5:45 a.m., one of our neighbors warned me that there was a black bear further up the street. I guess the bears know when it’s garbage day, and plan their schedules accordingly. I do carry bear mace with me when I take Ru out, but I doubt my aim would be too good, esp. given the hour, the fog, and the fact that I’d also be holding a flashlight, Ru’s leash, and his bag of crap. In fact, the bag of crap might make for a better weapon than the bear mace.)

Airbus

Here’s a picture from the bus-stop around 6:30 a.m., after I dropped my wife off.

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The Deerest Yard

Open the front door, enjoy the post-tropical storm weather, and . . . stalk a deer!

Click through him for the silly-ass photoset. You’ll even meet his wife and kids.

The Unflappable Hart

On our walk around Skyline Lake this morning, Rufus & I stumbled upon a deer who seemed to think that he owned his side of the street. Seriously, I was standing 2 or 3 feet away from him (the iPhone camera makes things look a little further off) with an 80 lb. dog, and he showed no sign of nervousness:

Except for the ears.

Lakewalk

I spent a chunk of the morning working on the garage. After clearing out a 40-year-old worktable, I discovered that it was over a square foot of extremely sticky, viscous grease-oil sludge, with decades worth of junk (nails, can lids, lightbulbs, etc.) trapped in it. I scraped up a lot of it (it takes the paint off the floor!), then decided to take a break.

Since it’s such a lovely day — 70 degrees, sunny, nice breeze — I decided to take Rufus out to a trail on Skyline Drive and walk up to Ramapo Lake. Ru decided that he needed to cool down a little, and, well . . .

Here’s the full set of pix from the walk. Now, back to home-work!

Lakefront

It’s another vacation-at-home day, dear readers! I started it off by taking Rufus for a 6:30 a.m. walk down to Skyline Lake. I’d have gone later in the day, but then it might get too warm or start thunderstorming. Here’s a pic from the side of the Skyline Lake clubhouse:

And now . . . to clean out the garage!

Last day!

The production schedule read, “Final Materials to Printer – July 2,” and I’m gonna get those final materials to the printer by July 2! Just a couple hundred words more about Pfizer and a brief writeup about Abbott Laboratories, and this year’s Top 20 Pharma / Top 10 Biopharma ish will be finished!

So don’t expect any more posts today.

In other news, it looks like the constant dreariness and rainfall of June has had at least one positive effect: the deer have had enough to eat in the woods and have (mostly) left my tigerlilies alone!

Rufus See Well

Last week (?) (seriously, I can’t keep track of days anymore), the police officer who handled the report for Rufus’ dog-attack case stopped by. Because of that letter I got from the Akita’s owners stating that Rufus had walked into their yard, I wanted to check with the officer that the report hadn’t been changed from the once I’d received. He supported the initial report and said that nothing had been changed; the Akita (King) attacked Ru outside the property.

We talked for a bit after that; it turns out that the policeman is a neighbor of ours (which answers the question of why I occasionally see a squad car parked in the driveway of a nearby house), and had seen the Akita unattended in its yard many times. Also, he was glad to see that Rufus was alright, because he last saw our boy the night of the attack, and things looked pretty bad.

Near the end of our conversation, I said, “Y’know what burns my ass? It’s been more than 3 weeks since their dog ripped the hell out of Rufus’ leg, and they haven’t asked once how he’s doing. I can understand them not wanting to come by, but not even a note?”

He said, “That tells you who they are.”

“That it does.”

Today I discovered that it was probably better that they stayed away.