Where is Spring?

I had a full tank of gas today.  I kept getting out of the car, getting cold, getting back in the car and having one of those irrational thoughts... If I drive South on a full tank of gas, I'll make it somewhere warm.  I know I'm not the only person feeling this way.  If I type Florida into the GPS, it'll get me there, right? :)

The snowbirds are still here and as much as I love seeing them, I want them to leave. Go home Juncos,  I'm ready for Spring! The birds are starting to get their spring colors. This is especially exciting for the goldfinches. The guy on top is going to get all of the ladies, the rest of them will get the ladies eventually, but in the meantime, their splotchiness is funny and makes me feel slightly bad for them.

I promise that this will be the only picture with snow because I'm done with it. Think Spring! I had a flock of Grackles at the feeders, but two of them were red wing blackbirds being sneaky.  The grackles just showed up a few weeks ago and I can tell you that I didn't miss them.  I also think there is a cowbird sneaking in the picture as well (the bottom-most bird in the pic).

This orange hibiscus makes me happy. It's warm like the Spring sun :).

Here's some sun rays on the Lemp building.

Here's a picture of my niece, Molly, jumping on my mom from the stairs before we went to a Girl Scout dance. 

Monkey is ready for Spring. 

Blueberries. MMMmm very Springy. 

I don't want to skip a season and miss Spring, but the Summer beers are coming out:

Rural King has the chicks for sale. You know why? It's Spring.

Awwwww Spring bunnies!!

Here is a picture of some seeds I hadn't seen before. Pumpkins on a stick aren't really pumpkins, they are ornamental eggplants. Still pretty cool though!

I went to lunch with Becky the other day. She ordered this raspberry lemonade in hopes for Spring temperatures :).

We went to Don's Grandpa's house on Easter. We threw a football and frisbee around and flew some kites. It was a pretty good time and today when I woke up and was sore, I realized how out of shape I am and how much kickball is going to beat me up when I start on Sunday.

In conclusion: I need warm weather and I need it now so everyone do your warm weather dances. 

Blerrgh argh blahhh blehh

The title of this post is how I feel right now.  Well, not quite. Take off the blehh and that's how I feel today, but add it back in to get a good idea of how I felt yesterday.  This is my second cold of the season and I'm NOT happy about it. At least it isn't the Flu.  I felt like I was incredibly lazy on Sunday. I was sore, and just couldn't get motivated to do normal Sunday things (grocery store). I'm kind of happy that we didn't make the playoffs in kickball because I would have gone and given it my all which probably would have put me in worse shape Monday.  I went to work on Monday after waking up with a sore throat. I know, don't go to work when you're sick, but I don't get to work that often and I wasn't passing it up. As long as I stay away from my 3 co-workers and Lysol the keyboard mouse and phone, I'm all good.  Tuesday, I slept most of the day.  This could have been due to the fact that I didn't sleep that night. It was one of those nights where I was super thirsty but I couldn't wake up enough to get out of bed to drink anything. The next night I put a glass of water on the nightstand but I wasn't thirsty that night (go figure).

This morning I woke up with a little bit of energy so I decided to get dressed (albeit in mis-matched pajama-esque clothing) after I took a shower.  I even put in my contacts. We're talking a real day here and I even felt somewhat human.  I started looking at blogs on the internet and knew fairly early on that if I didn't make some pancakes, I might just die.  So I made pancakes and imported pictures to the computer, and that's about where I'm at right now. I don't have any spare frozen pizzas so I don't know what I'm going to do for dinner. Maybe if I don't do much for the next 5 hours, I'll have enough energy saved up to make something decent. I'm going to work tomorrow.  I've got tax stuff to do!

I'm still seeing my Red Winged Black Bird on occasion.  Here he is next to a dirty Starling. The picture isn't that great, but I don't have that great of a zoom on my camera.  I built a suet feeder the other day that is completely starling proof. Those birds drive me up the wall so I find great satisfaction in watching them fail. A lot.

When it's so cold that water stays frozen all day, I usually see the Northern Flicker.  He's so cool with his spots and his red on the back of his head.

This is the white breasted nuthatch.  He likes to climb trees and feeders head down and it's pretty neat to watch. He's also very picky about which sunflower seed he takes before he flies away with it to crack it open somewhere else.

This is one of my Carolina Wrens. I don't know if it's the male or female because they look really similar and you can only tell if they are together. They are monogamous birds (awwwwww).  My goal is to get them to nest in a bird house in the backyard this spring.  I realize I have weird goals, but it's what I'm interested in and I cannot change it :).

This Cardinal was almost the color of Don's boat. I think it was brighter.

Dark Eyed Junco on the snowy shed, probably a female:

Black Capped Chickadee:

Ducks at the neighborhood lake. I love the variety that calls this place home:

My big gourd I grew last summer is slowly drying out. I'll probably make a bird house out of it, but for some reason, I don't expect anything to nest in it. I guess we'll see.

I'm watching that new Kevin Bacon show, The Following. I was very upset because in the first episode, the girl that drives my car dies.  Not cool! I'm going to keep watching though... lots of killers to catch. Lots of Bacon to watch.

Good 'Ole MO

When we woke up today it was warm and wonderful, but everyone knew they had to act fast because we are under a *cue scary echo* winter weather advisory now.  It is currently 48 and dropping fast! While the weather was still wonderful for the past few days, I managed to get a few good walks in for the dogs.  We walked down to the park and fed the ducks today. Yesterday I took a walk, went back back to the park, and cleaned some trash out of the lake.  I don't know why I enjoy fishing trash out of a lake, but I have a lot of fun doing it.  Next to the lake (I say lake, but it's more like a pond or a sink hole) there is a house with a guard goose.  This thing is crazy! I kind of wonder if the owners can even get near it or they just leave it to do whatever it wants because quite frankly, it's kind of a bitch. So here are some of the pictures that I took during the past couple of days during the unseasonably warm weather:

The yard waste truck broke and dropped the dumpster outside our house. It has since been replaced
but the original one took a giant fall and majorly twisted in the process. 

I saw a red wing black bird at one of my feeders.  Usually you see them in open fields but I guess this one
decided to come get some food in the city. I didn't see his red, but they have yellow as well. 

I always like to take pictures of the sleeping finches on the window sill.  

Dove. 

This is the guard goose coming at me: 

Then, from my car where it could not eat me should it escape: 

People like to throw trees in the lake. That would be a great fish habitat if there were fish in the lake. Unfortunately, there are not and throwing a tree in a fishless lake just makes you an idiot.

Throwing this stuff in a lake makes you an idiot teenager (most likely). 

I see you in there. 

I felt bad for cleaning this crawdad's can home out of the lake, but I'm sure she'll find another one. 

Don wanted to know if there were a lot in there. I wonder why. heh.

This is how I knew it was a she. See all the eggs? Then I really felt bad for evicting a pregnant crustacean. 

I don't know where my neighborhood got such a fabulous collection of ducks, but we did. Notice Oscar's head in the bottom right of the picture.  He was determined to grab one, but he never did.  

quack quack quack

Someone put a pretty big turtle in there. I don't think he wants Christmas trees either. 

Someone put in a blue lobster. 

This is a delicious dinner salad. 

Casual Resolutions

I guess it's January 6th and I should get around to making some resolutions.  Since 2012 was the year of the drink, 2013 will not be.  I can always say I'll eat better and I need to, but that seems like such a popular resolution that never lasts very long. I believe my 2012 resolution was officially to stay on top of my medical stuff. I did for awhile, but come December, I was NOT going to call to schedule my festive holiday colonoscopy.  My Gastro's nurse was supposed to call me in November, and schedule for early December which she did not do,  so I've been off and on again pouting about it for a month.  I will call soon, but I'm not happy about it. That office never calls when they are supposed to call and when I do call they have no clue what's going on. I'm in my early 30's and I still feel like I shouldn't have to have a colonoscopy every year.  I've never had a polyp, I've been in Crohn's remission since 2008 and I think one a year is overkill.  Moving on.  I think my resolution will be to stay off the computer more.  I've gotten into this habit of surfing the web for hours on end and it's not really the best use of time. I'm not sure what the best use of time is, but I'm sure as hell not going to figure it out on the internet (OR WILL I???).  I know what life was like before the internet, but it's so odd to think back to it. There were so many little pointless questions that never got answered.  What was once an ongoing argument with a friend is now stamped out in 3-10 seconds depending on your network.

Don gave me a new iPod touch for Christmas. Actually, he handed the neatly wrapped gift to me and said Happy BirthdanniversaChristmas. It was a mouthful, but he said it eloquently, which made me think he practiced it at least twice.  The new iPod is not going to help me stay off the internet so I guess it'll be an extra challenging resolution. I take a lot of pictures with it.  Not the best quality pictures which reaffirms my opinion that no matter the quality of the phone on your cell phone, it's always worth it to have an actual separate camera. But for the sake of a thin ipod that you carry around and is with you most of the time, it's great for taking pictures of crap you normally would not take pictures of. I love looking at pictures that other people take at random during the day so I'll post some of mine in hopes that someone else out there enjoys the same thing.

I like it when the snow curls down a windshield. I do not like it when the birds poop all over the truck. 

Finch napping on a fish. A finch fish, if you will. 

Becky picked this picture over the other one I would have posted. See Becky? You just look confused :)

Whenever we go to Becky & Rich's house, at some point, when we all move to the table, we stack the fake apples.  You'd be surprised at how much fun this is. 

Ricky, professional apple stacker.

 In case you needed a little more apple stacking, and I know you do, my iPod takes video as well.

Fránk

JMoooooooooo

If you are hiring one of these people and see this pic, just know that they are all AWESOME :). 

Sasha's on Shaw. All the tables and most of the seating are slabs of granite. Awesome. 

The bar was dimly lit, but this girl had the cutest outfit ever.  A pleated red skirt (that I'm sure had pockets)  with black tights, three-quarter sleeves on a scalloped collar shirt. If I was a more brutish person, I would have tackled her and stolen it. Luckily for her, I'm a pretty normal person. 

Because I'm taking more random pictures, hopefully I will have more to blog about and hopefully, my friends will still love me after taking lots of pictures of them (although there has always been a lot of it). Happy New Year! :)