Monday, July 06, 2009

Laptop, jokes, birds and other stuff..

I had a nice long 2 hour talk with some Indian guys working for Dell. They had me take my laptop apart a bit and do some tests. Unfortunately, nothing was determined, so they have arranged for FED EX to pick up my laptop and send it to DELL for fixing. At least I now know that the problem is not with the hard drive. Luckily, I am still within the warranty period.

This is the first PC that I have had that I could not fix myself.

Elaine and I were telling jokes this morning. I remembered my first joke: Question: Why does a cat walk across the street with its tail up in the air? Answer: So the cars can see its license plate.

(I know, its not great, but what do you expect from an eight-year old?)

Elaine made up a new joke: Question: "Why did the chicken cross the road?" Answer: " She forgot her cell phone."

Uggg!

Elaine and I like to watch the birds outside of our bowed window, here in Maryland. Once a week, I fill five bird feeders and one finch feeder, and a suet holder. Usually, it takes a complete week for the birds to empty the feeders. However, this week, everything has gone in four days! Why?

We like to watch yellow finches eat thistle seed. I had thought that yellow finches were only here for two weeks and then went on to Maine. Apparently I was wrong because they have lingered here for a couple of months. Beautiful birds that are a delight to watch.

Other birds we have seen this week: Red wing blackbirds.. which we thought only populated marsh lands. Well, here they are.

Also, mocking birds, sparrows, starlings, woodpeckers, crows, house finches, mourning doves, etc. Apparenty, next to the side of the house, under some bushes, baby sparrows have come into existence. It is fun to watch them take their first flights, prodded by their mama. If their flights are not as long as she feels necessary, she butts them in the rear end to get them to take off again.

The heavy rains of a month ago washed away the mulch along the sides of our house. In this environment, residents are not supposed to move mulch or do weeding. We are supposed to write up "pink slips" to trigger maintenance to work. However, in our bad economy, some maintenance activity has been curtailed. But.. since our monthly fee has gone up this month, I feel that we should not be losing out on our perks. The Village has a large surplus held for "a Rainy Day".. hey! Isn't this a rainy day??

The Market had been going up for a few weeks, but now it has taken a down-turn again. Who knows what tomorrow may bring. Let's hope that the recession has bottomed out.

It looks like medical problems will keep us from visiting New Bedford this year. It took years for my leg wounds to heal, and now Elaine has foot wounds that are not healing properly. We will be visiting doctors every day this week.

Our garden is going well.. in fact, one of the zucchinis seems to grow a few inches every day. We also have about 30 green tomatoes growing on the vines. Every morning I deliver 5 gallons of water to the plants!

Am I a great farmer or not?!

No comments: