My day

Dot dot dot... took down the chicken wire and screen door that turned the living room into an enclosed area for cats.  First it was used when Nelson was recovering without surgery from a luxating patella, and later it was used to help Nora get used to the Pooshkateers and vice versa.  Inertia kept it in place for years after it was no longer necessary...  

Mallard pair again sighted in the back yard, Still not sure whether their nest is on our property or whether they're coming here to join the other birds who are feeding here.  The hen was determined to keep smaller birds away from the dish of water we'd set out for all...

Rain in the forecast tomorrow between 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m.  Just ducky...

Well, I believe it's been decided.  We're going to go for the lower-cost landscaping and save the big-ticket flooring installation/roof replacement/deck repair/window replacement and the driveway re-do for another time.  With a house, it's not (just) the cost, it's the upkeep...

Finished reading Much Ado About Me... watched Nebraska volleyball spring game, the Wheat Shockers vs. the Cornhuskers... and I dinked around with the drumsticks from time to time.  Still improvising surfaces to tap upon; mouse pads are good sound deadeners.  Keeping time is interesting, making lots of loud noise is what I want to avoid.  

The Myth of Talent

 This is one of the things I thought about before buying that set of drum sticks.  

“When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of ‘getting to know you,’ questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, ‘

‘Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: ‘ I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.’

And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could ‘Win’ at them.”

-- Kurt Vonnegut

Still learning, a little better than yesterday.  This afternoon, YouTube's algorithm suggested The Humpty Dance by Digital Underground, and a few seconds into it, I picked up the sticks and tried to play along.  

Did not see this coming

Seen outside the kitchen window at suppertime this afternoon.  What attracted them to our yard?  Are they planning to build a nest here?  Given that in the past we've also played host to raccoons, starting a family of ducklings does not sound promising.

Anyway, there are bodies of water in the area, but none within several hundred feet.  It produces a mental picture of mother mallard leading her surviving ducklings across lawns and asphalt to reach the nearest pond. 

Still, it wouldn't be the first time I'd witnessed it.  These are from Hersheypark in 2006.

I don't have any more pictures, but fear not.  Traffic stopped, and the mother duck crossed the road safely with her ducklings.  

And what is this?

Seen crawling eight feet off the ground in the garage yesterday.  Tiny, smaller than a ladybug.  Let's call in Google Images and find out what it is.

-------------------------

Moments later:  uh-oh.  It's a varied carpet beetle.  Never heard of it before today, and now it's one more thing on the list of things to be concerned about.  

Like the deck that was built decades ago with nails attaching it to the house, nails that are pulling out now and threatening collapse of the deck.  A ledger board with lag bolts would have been the way to go.  

Another shingle blew off in the last big storm.  Three trees have died and their roots are still in the ground, getting in the way of replanting plans.  The windows came with the house and are no longer sealing out the cold.  

And now, at least one varied carpet beetle, and probably more.    

*Now* what is he doing?

Drumming update:  the sticks arrived on time, so I have no excuse.  

Plenty of videos out there, and the biggest problem is narrowing them down to those that can be useful to someone of my advanced years, and who had some experience with music in high school band, so an explanation of 4/4 time isn't needed.  Explain it to me like I'm five, but just the stuff I don't already know.

Everyone I've seen so far looks to have been playing for years, if not decades, and is doing something they were born with the talent and the drive to do.  If they can teach as well as play, then everything's going to be OK, because I'll put in the time.  

In my day job, I'm at the other end of that equation.  I do training with clients, and most importantly I know the subject.  I also like the subject, and I understand the importance of teaching it to someone else.  Now, I'm the student, and it helps me have a good idea of what I'm looking for in a teacher.  

Earlier this afternoon, I brought up a metronome app and tried a couple of exercises at 50 beats per minute.  Results were what you'd expect from someone with no experience.  But I got it all OK for a couple of beats, so that'll keep me coming back for more.  Reminds me of when I played golf; all it took was one or two good shots during a round to give me hope.  

PG and I just went for a walk in the neighborhood.  Usually, we go in the direction where the sidewalk remains flat, but today she wanted to go in the other direction, which has a gentle incline to it.  

In a few seconds, we saw two rabbits in the yard three houses away from ours.  It pays to listen to her.

PTO

A day off with pay.  With those paid hours, I picked up some dead branches and other detritus from our property and took it to the township yard waste site.  (But not before snapping some of the flourishing wood violets.)

Along the way, we got a look at the construction going on at the site of the new township building along Grange Road.  There's also been a lot of new housing put up on Route 100 since the last time we went to the Weis in Fogelsville.   Progress -- there's just no stopping it.

What is he doing?

Just for the record:

 -  Did my job for a full 8 hours today.  In addition:

 -  Walked around the neighborhood before sunset and saw two cottontails along the way.

 -  Looked up a recent paycheck to see what I'm paying for medical insurance, and compared that figure to the amount I might be paying for Medicare Part A, Part B, and Part D, along with the cost of Medigap coverage (everything Medicare doesn't cover).  I have multiple college degrees, and it's hard for me to keep it all straight.  Just imagine what someone else would have to understand.

 -  I read some more of Fred Allen's unfinished autobiography, "Much Ado About Me".  Kindle tells me I'm 85% finished, and I already know there's an index after the last chapter that is probably good for 5% right there.  

 -  After months of watching YouTube videos of Japanese pre-teen Yoyoka and German teen Sina, I'm interested in learning more about drumming.  I found a few absolute beginner instructional videos and can compare and contrast where they differ and where they are the same.  Right Foot/Bass Drum/on 1 and 3; Left Hand/Snare Drum on 2 and 4; Right Hand/Hi-Hat for 1-and-2-and-3-and-4-and.  If I start slowly enough, I can duplicate that pattern.  One beginner video started with the bass drum, another with the dominant hand and the constant pattern.  

After the Drumming 101 lessons, I re-watched Sina drum along with Home At Last and recognized the Purdie Shuffle variations on the basic pattern.  The right foot does a little more than hit on one and three, and the high-hat is a shuffle instead of a simple straight eighth-note pattern.  Not saying I'll ever be able to play it myself, and I'm positive I'll never try duplicating Steve Gadd's work on Aja.  I wasn't born with that kind of talent.  If I had been, it would have appeared long before age 66.  

Funny thing, though; in the comments of the videos, not just once, but several times, the writer would admit to being 45, or 61, or 64, and only now starting to learn now to play, just like me.  

In my early 20's, a lady I was dating taught me the moves to juggle three balls.  I kept trying, and eventually got a good grip on the technique.  And that's where my juggling education ended.  No desire to learn five balls, or a cascade, or bouncing the balls instead of tossing them up in the air.  That's how I'm looking at drumming now.  On Sunday I should receive two pairs of Chinese-made maple drumsticks, and I'll substitute them for the pencils I've been using to tap on the legal pads atop my desk.  I'm not going to eat, drink, or sleep this thing, but just have fun with it.

So I'm reading, taking pictures of cats and preparing them for publication, socializing cats, and now teaching myself basic drumming.  Doesn't leave time for TV, does it?  And when all that is done, I sometimes write about it. 

That was then

Taken July 19, 2015 just before driving to Tabby's Place.  In 2022, a road was built through this area, between the groves of trees in the distance, to create a second entrance to the Upper Macungie recreation area.  

They don't let the wildflowers grow there anymore, either.
 

My Day

Going to bed after this.  It was a bright but chilly day, with temperatures below normal in the 50's and gusty north winds bringing them down further.  Too cold to take a walk, so I just stepped in place and did deep knee bends, which was better than nothing, but not by much.

A good day at work.  I've had jobs in the past where I hoped for nothing out of the ordinary, just wishing for one easy day after another, and inevitably feeling miserable when the unexpected occurred.  This job is at the other end of the spectrum.  I know what I'm doing and I like what I do.  If a routine task comes up, I feel confident that I know the answers and how to accomplish it.  But if something out of the ordinary arrives, I still feel confident that I'll be able to figure it out.  And eleven years ago, I was 55, hadn't had a full-time job in more than three years, and didn't see how things would get better as I got older and further from the job market.  But we never know, do we?

Outside of work:  read some more of Fred Allen's autobiography, "Much Ado About Me".  I'm at the point where he had the choice to be a full-time writer or continue as an entertainer, and he chose the latter, which for nearly anyone else would be the risky choice, but in his case was the safer, more secure one.  After his radio career ended, he used the time to write, but that only lasted until his death at age 61.  

Today's Wordlebot gave me an A (>90%) for skill at each step, but only 38% luck, so I'll accept my par 4 on a tough word.

A game of Strat with the 74-79 1958 Orioles.  Above average pitching, well-below average hitting, so games are usually close and low-scoring, and quick.  That's not what happened tonight, though.  The O's dropped an 8-5 decision to Jim Bunning and the Tigers and now stand at 21-19. 

Listened to the first episode of "One Year: 1942".  Liked the focus on everyday life in the first full year of WWII, and appreciated that they chose a little-remembered government official, Leon Henderson, to be this episode's subject.  Of course, they used FDR's "a date... which will live... in infamy" but there were plenty of sound clips that I hadn't heard.  

Used "Read Aloud" text-to-speech on an article in Le Monde.  The man who got away at age 20 comes back into her life at 40, and they live happily ever after.  Able to follow everything, understood most of it and could guess the rest from context.  Still wouldn't try to express myself in French, but it's enough that I can understand it when it's spoken clearly, and that I have the vocabulary to read a story without stopping for translation.  

Clicked a shutter hundreds of times Sunday afternoon.  Even after deleting the obviously bad ones, I still downloaded dozens of images.  Looked through them, culled some more whose flaws didn't appear until they were viewed full size.  

In the end, 24 photos made it to a final version.  This one of Walker was the best.

Walker looks confident here.  It's like he's saying, if you like me, terrific, and if for some reason you don't, well, who cares what you think?

What's new and different?

 - Two trees in our yard, a fruit-free cherry tree and a volunteer dogwood, both looked unhealthy last year.  I suspected either lanternflies or something in the mulch that was applied around them.  Since we'd already spent four figures on cutting down and disposing of a dead weeping cherry in the front yard and a dying red maple out back, we just didn't want to spend any more.  

The mild, nearly snowless winter might have given the two trees a little more time.  A few leaves are showing on the cherry tree, although a good many branches are dry and brittle.  The dogwood, being smaller, was easier to play tree surgeon on, and one afternoon I lopped off all the dead branches I could see.  What's left is spindly and widely-spaced, but it is undoubtedly alive, with green leaves popping out on every branch.  

 - On a walk around the development, I saw speedwell in varying amounts in nearly every yard on our side of the street.  In addition to that wildflower, one of our next-door neighbors has an impressive patch of wood violets appearing now.  The neighbor on the other side uses a lawn service, although a few dandelions are showing anyway.  And here at home, there are large spaces with tiny blue speedwell flowers in the front and back yards, along with increasing patches of wood violets in purple and white.  Then on the sunny south side of the house and just to the right of the front door, red deadnettle is covering dinner-plate sized areas.  It just makes me glad we don't have a homeowners association that enforces rules requiring lawns to be free from anything except grass.

 - And finally, on the bunny front:  I hadn't seen a rabbit in weeks, maybe even months, before yesterday when an adult cottontail showed itself in the yard across the street from us.  Then today, as PG and I walked around one curve in the development, a spooked rabbit jumped high and headed for cover.  

 - There are two piles of yard waste in the yard, cuttings and loppings of dead wood and bushes.  In addition, there are the remains of one full-grown flower bush, approximately three feet across,.  I planted it while PG was in the hospital in 2019, and it survived until past winter. I chopped that out Saturday morning.  Our yard -- good for wildflowers, less so for trees and bushes.

Read all about it

Movies used the onscreen newspaper a lot, and the procedure for creating reasonable facsimiles must have evolved over the years. The top two are from TVTropes.org, and the one on the bottom is from the film that's on the TV screen right now.   (You'll notice they share more than one of the headlines.)

Harold Lloyd used the current edition of the New York Times during one scene of Speedy, although the purpose of the paper wasn't a continuity shortcut the way it is in the examples above.  

In this example from early live television, they slapped a made-up front page on an actual tabloid.  The back page references the Chicago White Sox acquiring Phil Cavarretta and George Kell, which they did the same week in May 1954 that the show was done live on Armstrong Circle Theatre.

A new arrival

After several days of only purple violets in view, today this appeared in the grassy area at the back of the property.   If my Facebook memories are any indication, this is far from the only spring season that I've taken snapshots of violets.  But the flowers only bloom for a short time and anyway, I've never taken a snapshot of *these* flowers.

 

This afternoon in the back yard

Next to the broken-down swing at the back of the property, there are several clumps of green leaves that should soon produce wood violets.  On the back side of the formerly landscaped area, a few violets have appeared without the leafy bunches.  Close to the house, there are no violets, but dandelions help make up for it.  

A good day at work

At work this morning, I looked over my left shoulder and saw Nora posing in her cat tree.  PG has taken a copy already to use as wallpaper for her new phone.

 

Brilliant springtime

Henbit deadnettle is good for the bees, and according to this, humans can enjoy it too.

Nature finds a way

Our next-door neighbor mowed his lawn today, but the mower didn't touch these low-growing violets next to the front sidewalk.