You'd think after an entire weekend, I'd have something to talk about.

You'd think wouldn't you?

There was free patio furniture from a moving friend - and an investment in five cans of spray paint resulted in this. They need another coat of paint next weekend, but I now have a lovely table for sitting out on the patio and enjoying the summer nights. I'm quite pleased, and completely covered with paint today. Blue paint on my elbows, purple paint on my knees, even paint on the bottom of my feet. What can I say, I'm a bit of a messy sort of girl (she said, as every ex-roommate she ever had was suddenly struck by fits of laughter.)

I'm going to attempt to switch to Moveable Type to run the site soon, so I may break everything around here. In the meantime, I went ahead and updated the clicky-photos to the right.

One of them reminds me of a place, which in turn reminds me of a person, which in turn makes me smile. And that's all you'll get about that for now.

It's Friday and my concentration is shot. Zip. Gone. Out the window. Where, hey, it's sunny and beautiful in Austin today!

But I promised someone an update, since he's been grumbling and rumbling about vultures for a few days now. And I don't have enough of an audience to go pissing off people - no matter how far away they live and how unlikely they are to make good on threats toward my person.

However - I'm being pulled away to lunch, so I guess a real update waits til later!

Maybe I'll think of something I can talk about by then...

Vultures.

Turkey vultures to be exact. They make their homes in the hills where I work. Big, huge, behemoth birds. Most everyone I know who moves to Austin sees them flying and thinks they're hawks or eagles before seeing one up close. They alternate between soaring in spiraled circles above the trees and drunkenly bumbling about like they're not really sure if they can, or should, fly. Being carrion eaters, I assume that the first (the soaring) is pre-dinner, and the latter drunken stagger is post. A meal of the nearest roadkill would make anyone wobble, after all.

They always make me smile. I can identify with their flight patterns. Some days I'm not sure if I can fly at all or if I'm going to crash to the ground in a thud of feathers.

Other days, I get the hang of it and just soar.

In 1976, I was seven years old. I had a red, white, and blue bicycle with a banana seat, a bell on the handlebars, and stars on the frame to celebrate the US Bicentennial. I was in third grade, where I saw my first Apple computer, and had my first political falling out with my parents.

I had no use for Republicans. If I'd been eleven years older, I would have voted for Carter.

I saw Jimmy Carter speak once when I was in college. He was amazing: eloquent, compassionate, intelligent. I walked away from the lecture hall feeling that my seven-year-old self had been right. No matter how he performed as a President, this was a man who cared deeply about the human condition and his contribution to making the world a better place.

Tonight I read this, and once again I feel that same respect for Jimmy Carter. And my respect for my current President continues to spiral downward.

What is it with me and porn spammers lately?

Once again, some jackass has sent out porn spam with my e-mail address as the return. This time it isn't my domain, at least, but someone who used my yahoo e-mail account as the from and return address. Sigh.

I wish there were some sort of laws I could invoke for this sort of thing. Because I'd love to egg the bastard's house, but it's too far away to drive to Korea (where the e-mails REALLY came from.)

Pffft.

"In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting out our real characters, even more clearly than we see others awake."

Henry David Thoreau

I've been beset by strange dreams lately. I'm sure they're a product of my life stress, but it doesn't make them any less disturbing.

The night before last, I dreamt we went to war and were attacked - by a giant tidal wave. (Apparently quite a large one to make it all the way inland to Austin.) I spent the night running through the city streets, trying to escape the water while managing a struggling cat under each arm. I was crying as I ran, because everything I knew was being wiped out - all the places, all I owned. All I could save were the cats - but only if I ran fast enough.

And for some reason this seems like a bad dream as well. I was reading the article a bit ago, wondering if my parents could see the mushroom cloud from where they live in Florida, and while looking back at the picture, I suddenly felt like I was in 5th grade again. 10 years old and in the height of the Reagan era, when shiny bombs and mushroom clouds and the USSR populated my childhood fears.

That same sense of fear nudges at the corners of my mind lately. But it's different. I'm not particularly afraid that some other country is going to hurt me, bomb me, or bring about The Day After horror of my pre-teen nightmares.

I'm more afraid that I have a president and government whose actions are nudging others to that result.

And like all the other stress in my life right now, I'm afraid that I'm powerless to do anything to stop it.

Nothing quite says 'Monday Morning' like trotting into the IT office to say that, um, well, gosh there was a link to a file posted on the message boards and you wanted to check if it was a virus program, so you downloaded but didn't run it (because you're not a complete git, really) - except that for some reason your virus scanning software went off anyway and you deleted the file, but upon reading up on the virus, discovered you were supposed to clean it, and now you're just not really sure if you've got a virus or not, really.

Yeah. I'm so about to have an optical mouse chucked at my head.

Not funny so much - but cool:

I was on the phone with my mother Sunday night when I looked up and saw a gaunt white face bouncing about on my patio. "Errr, I think I've got a possum on my patio," I said. "Well don't touch it! They're mean!" my mom sagely pointed out. Because, of course, my first instinct had been to rush out and cuddle the semi-balding, gray, rat-tailed creature of the night as it foraged around my plants.

Instead of hugging, squeezing, and calling it 'George', I sat down near the front window and watched the possum wandering randomly about for 15 minutes or so. Despite being butt-ugly, or perhaps because of it, the little beast grew on me as he meandered about, eventually disappearing into the bamboo reeds at the back of the patio.

I had just settled in on the sofa last night, ready to spend the evening playing .hack, when both cats perked up and rushed to the front window. I could vaguely make out the bobbing white face bouncing around on the patio again. The possum (henceforth known as Pugsley) was back.

I curled back up on the floor to watch him. Either blind as a bat or fearless, as he wandered right up to the window - coming within six inches of where I, and the curious cats, sat. Wondering what was bringing him back to my patio, I remembered - the squirrel feeder. I picked up a brick of nuts and suet at the store last weekend, and Monday morning hung it from the tree overhanging my patio. Pugsley could obviously smell it, but had yet to figure out where it was (considering it hung a good six feet above his head.) He rooted around a bit, then once again disappeared back into the bamboo.

Show over, I pushed Chet off my lap to go back to my game, when I saw movement along the fence dividing my patio from the freeway beyond. There was Pugsley - scooting along the top of the fence towards the tree, where he leapt out onto the branches. The entire tree swayed under his weight - he looks about the size of a cat - and he started to make his way through the branches on splayed legs. By now I was alternately laughing and cheering him along as he ended up within a foot of the squirrel brick - stretched across four separate branches, and bending his head somewhat backwards to crane his neck towards the food. He got a quick bite off one side and sat chewing a bit. Shifting position slightly, another bite. And then he finally got a grip on the whole brick and tugged, tugged, yanked, until finally the whole brick fell to the cement below.

And he waited. He was all tangled up in the tree, and by now I was starting to worry that he'd make his way back to the fence and fall over onto the freeway. Just my current luck that I'd be all amused by this and end up killing a possum - which is bad luck in some parts of the South, I expect. (And good eatin' in others.)

I watched as he twisted and turned and sort of fell backwards into a hanging plant. All of him in the plant pot -- a pot o' possum, to be exact. He did another backflip, digging his feet into the trellis, and landed one the pavement, where he sat for a moment - resting up, I expect. Finally, he looked around, sauntered over to the brick, grabbed it in sharp front teeth, and loped off into the bamboo, dragging his prize behind him.

Cost of the squirrel brick? $2.99
Enjoyment factor of watching Pugsley's elaborate thievery? Best $2.99 I've ever spent.