81 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 6-22-17”

  2. And here I thought I was the only one still up. But I just received an email from Cheryl with more pics.

    Go to sleep Cheryl! 🙂

    I think I might just take my own advice. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  4. AJ, the last two days I took about 700 photos. I got 400-some odd at the butterfly garden (of which I have flagged 21 to send you, and have sent you half–I’ll hold onto the rest for another day). But I also have found a mulberry tree on my street that is really pulling in the birds (and my husband even said I got a lot of really good shots yesterday–he’ll compliment individual shots, but doesn’t generally give the positive feedback about the whole group), and I have assorted other photos I hadn’t sent yet . . . but anyway, I really am showing some</i? restraint!

    But now I really am on my way to bed.

    Liked by 2 people

  5. The photo that just got posted is of course of the two baby pileated woodpeckers. Male on the left, female on the right (our left and our right, not theirs). The female had her head out most of the time, but the male only put his out at feeding time, and then he’d stay out for another minute or two before going back in until time to be fed again. In this photo, they may have heard their father calling as he came to the tree, and they’re looking for him–I know I had one or two like that, and this may be one of them.

    In this shot you can see the second hole in the tree, above the nest hole. I don’t know if a different woodpecker used that one last year, if the parent started that one but didn’t finish it, whether the second hole provides ventilation, or what. But the two holes together made it easier to identify the hole when we went back the second time and the babies weren’t yet peeking their heads out. (The first visit the father was finishing the nest hole, the second we didn’t see any woodpeckers, and the third–50 days after the first visit, a few days after the second–we finally found babies big enough to be poking their heads out of the nest even when the parent wasn’t around.)

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  10. I have received my contracts from the new company. They sent everything for electronic signature this morning but spelled my last name incorrectly. I have asked that it be fixed before I sign. One document is in legalese and normally I would have had my friend B look at it before I signed. It is heavily weighted in the company’s favor, but then they all are. Any intellectual property or invention I develop while employed with them is their property. Hmmmm…..shouldn’t be a problem but it still bothers me. Ex husband had to work out of the area when BG was 15-24 months old due to a non compete.

    Liked by 1 person

  13. Maybe I should disclose that?
    Chas, If I design a revolutionary new customer contact management system while I am employed and under contract with them—it belongs to them.
    I also can’t take any knowledge I gain from them and use it with another company for a period of 2 years after the termination of the contract. How is that measured. I am the sum of everything I have learned in real estate in the last 14 years. They are hiring me for that knowledge. It would be impossible for me to NOT use what I have learned.

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  14. It would be hard to prove that someone with your experience learned it while working with them. It would have to be a big deal to activate the contract.

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  15. Chas, 6:59, yeah, I know. Plenty of preachers have pointed out that staying up late is sinful, but rising early one of the clearest signs of godliness. To me, being up being midnight and 7:00 a.m. simply means “being awake in the middle of the night” whichever end you work it. 🙂

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  16. I had an interesting thought while we were heading toward the butterfly garden yesterday. Several parts to this, and then I’ll bring it together:

    First, naming implies some level of authority. We name our babies and our pets. Managers, not employees, generally decide the job titles of employees, and even when employees decide their own job titles, they don’t decide those of people above them in rank. One of my friends told me a few years ago that her pregnant daughter-in-law had told her she was not to call herself “Grandma” or “Mimi” or anything to the baby, but wait to see what name the baby chose. I told her that was nonsense–yes, grandparents sometimes choose to be called some cute, slaughtered version of “Grandma” that a toddler comes up with while trying to say the word . . . but naming implies some level of authority, and babies don’t name their grandparents. (Our next-door neighbors growing up were raising their spoiled granddaughter; she was four when they moved in. She called them Bampa and Mah-maw based on inability to say the real terms when she was younger. Her grandma hated it. In my mind, you either accept it as cute, or you tell her, “You can say the words now. We are ‘Grandpa’ and ‘Grandma.’ It will take some time to get used to it, but that’s what we want you to call us now that you’re a big girl and you can say it.”)

    Second, Adam’s first job in the garden was his first act of stewardship, authority: naming the animals. It occurred to me to wonder how much pre-fallen animals understood their manager when he talked to them. And then I realized . . . this is speculation, but I can only imagine it is also true . . .

    Third, when Adam named the chickadee, expressing his jurisdiction and authority over it, that was its name. That is, when he called out, “He-Lion, come,” Mr. Lion would obey and come. Whatever the animals did or didn’t understand of his speech, I can’t imagine that they didn’t understand–and obey–that much. Perhaps not the butterflies and beetles, but the mammals and birds and crocodiles, if Adam or Eve said, “Come,” they came, and willingly.

    It has long occurred to me that when Even went into the garden before the Fall, the rabbit didn’t freeze and hope she didn’t see it, and it certainly didn’t hop away. It either came to her to be petted or sidled up to her to browse near her feet. It was her friend. I have long imagined that each time she stepped into the garden and the animals looked up, startled, and got out of there quickly, she had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach and remembered what she and Adam brought into the world.

    I don’t know if God left them, not wild, the dog and the horse and the cow and the chickens (at that time only for milk and eggs, not meat), though we know He left them the sheep (for clothing and to offer as sacrifice), or if they somehow had to tame all the creatures they would use as servants. But it didn’t occur to me until yesterday that before the Fall not only were animals friendly to the humans, but they probably knew and obeyed the names they had been given.

    Liked by 4 people

  17. Let’s hear it for us night owls.

    It does seem strange to see Jo in the middle of the thread. 🙂

    This morning I’m going out to interview the military museum director — after 2 decades of effort, the city is finally reopening the restored WWII pool that needed $7 million worth of restoration. (The funding finally came via a lawsuit some residents filed against the port & a shipping company over pollution — the settlement included a provision for the port to pour moneys into selected community projects and the pool was one of them.)

    It sits on what was once a U.S. Army base that saw many talented Hollywood types pass through back in the day. Some of them, led by then-recruit Sterling Holloway, put on a traveling play called “Hey, Rookie” to raise the money to build the pool, which opened in 1943. So it’s called the “Hey Rookie” pool. It was built into a hillside (which was the cause of a big portion of the restoration and repair costs) and has an ocean view. During the war and afterward, many of those synchronized swimming shows were held there and a number of Hollywood stars of that time were featured guests.

    It was opened as a community pool in the decades after that (the Army base was converted into a large city park) but had to be drained & closed in the early 1990s when it was deemed structurally unsafe. It then became a hangout for skateboarders, graffiti vandals and the homeless.

    The museum director told me I was the “first person who would listen to him” back when he first started talking about bringing the pool back into service. My first story about his unlikely dream was published 17 years ago. Kind of fun to see these projects finally actually happen. 🙂 The grand opening is next Tuesday.

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  18. Well, Cheryl, Cowboy didn’t come to me when he slipped out the open gate the other night. (Tess always comes.) He gave me a backward glance and off he went.

    I had a dream I was going to a service at Hollywood Presbyterian and the person I was with said, “Hey, Cowboy is here” as we walked in the door.

    What? How can that be?

    But there was Cowboy — no tags for proof, but he still had on his distinctive “cowboy” western-style collar I’d bought when I first adopted him so I knew it was him.

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  20. Cheryl mentioned that some preachers have said that staying up late (& presumably sleeping in late) is a sin. I’ve read of preachers or people involved in Christian organizations (where they are together for some reason) tell of staying up late & getting up early, as if lack of sleep is a biblical virtue.

    One organization I read of, that had young people living in a building together as part of the ministry, had late services every night, going to bed around midnight, then being awakened at six in the morning. I just couldn’t see that as being particularly “godly”.

    I’m one who, unfortunately, needs closer to nine hours of sleep each night. If I were forced to only function on six or seven hours each night, I’m sure my attitude & behavior would turn pretty ungodly. :-/

    Liked by 1 person

  21. Kind of in that vein. . .As a young Christian, I read some materials from Jimmy Swaggart. One thing he wrote struck me as not quite right. He said that his position as a man of God meant that he could not indulge in some of the things that ordinary people indulge in, like going bowling. He made it sound like he had to be super-spiritual all the time, & couldn’t have simple, ordinary fun.

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  23. Well, they do serve beer at some bowling alleys and that could have ruined his “Christian Testimony” because people would have thought he was there drinking. Guess since the affair wasn’t in a public place it was OK

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  24. The new photo was taken just a couple of days ago. I finally got a good indigo bunting shot. (“Good” meaning clearly in focus, showing the eye at least somewhat well, ideally in an all-natural scene though a bird on a weathered fence post can also be a good shot, with the background a good color for the species, and ideally doing something other than just sitting up straight.)

    The last few years we have seen indigo buntings in an area of stuff growing wild that is more or less across the street from us (it’s across from the two neighbors to our north). There are several cedar trees, and wildflowers fill in the area every spring and summer, because there is a farmer’s field behind it but no house, and that edge of the lot apparently isn’t tillable ground. So the birds love it, and I’m sure there are a half dozen nests in there. Anyway, in the last couple of days I have seen a male indigo bunting in three separate places on our street, in those trees, in a mulberry tree down the street (almost certainly not the same bird as in the cedars), and then in these grasses a couple of houses down from the house with the mulberry (so it’s possibly the same bird as the one in the mulberry tree, though I suspect it wasn’t).

    These grasses are in front of a drainage ditch/mini swamp alongside the side and then front of a large lot with a house, and in it I have seen muskrats, mink, a young raccoon, turtles, frogs, and lots of dragonflies. On the lawn I’ve seen groundhogs and rabbits, though both are common along here, and in the ditch I have also seen great blue heron (when we’re driving by). It’s maybe 3/4 mile from my home, and well worth walking down to a couple times a week in late spring and summer to see what might show up. Plus, behind the drainage ditch is a thick row of mature evergreens, a privacy fence of sorts, and the house is well back on the lot, so I don’t feel like I’m trespassing/spying at all if I’m standing next to the road watching the water, because I can’t see the house and they probably can’t see me.

    Liked by 1 person

  27. The conversation about whether one is up early or up late when awake in the middle of the night reminds me of when 1st Arrow was doing overnight shifts at the convenience store where he used to work. There were some “regulars” who were ending their day in the wee hours of the night, and some who were beginning their day. There may have been some overlap, especially, I think, during deer hunting season, when the early risers might have arrived before late-night workers finishing their shifts.

    There was a brief period of time a few years ago, after the company for whom my husband worked bought another company and moved to a bigger location, that Hubby would start work in the afternoon and sometimes not finish until 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. during those weeks. The “new” (now a few years old) location is next to the convenience store where son worked, so his dad would have been one of those “up late” customers when he’d stop in before going home.

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  28. Our email provider has revamped their email system, and now when I get emails that are responses to previous group emails, they end up grouped together, which is kind of nice, rather than scattered throughout my inbox in whatever order they and other non-related emails come in.

    It doesn’t look like they have all the glitches worked out yet, though, with their new format. For example, some of the groupings I’ve noticed on old emails are kind of strange. For example, one group email from a couple months ago, initiated by my brother-in-law about a family matter, has got within the group an email by a friend of mine who doesn’t know any of my extended family. The only reason I can figure out why her email ended up in the family group is that it came a couple of days after my brother-in-law’s, and neither email had anything in the subject line. So maybe the system thought it was related because the subject line read, essentially, ?

    Weird.

    It seems to me there is someone on here with the same email provider as the one I have. I think it was Peter L. Anyway, someone who had posted his (or her? — but I want to say I’m pretty sure it was Peter) email on this blog once.

    Peter, did you just get an email service makeover notice yesterday?

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  29. Well, that’s strange. The last sentence of my second paragraph at 3:09 should have read, “So maybe the system thought it was related because the subject line read, essentially, No Subject?

    I typed the words “No Subject” in my original post, but they didn’t show up. Probably because I put these symbols just before and after the words, using no spaces:

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  31. Never mind. (See the comma and period keys, and the symbols that result when you hold down the shift key at the same time.)

    I will quit trying to figure out technology now. 😉

    Liked by 1 person

  32. Art got a visit from the Aetna contracted nurse practitioner at our home today. It all went okay. I did not know what to expect. I got up between 4 and 5 a.m. to try to straighten up the house a bit more.

    The nurse thought Miss Bosley was a friendly cat. Toward the end of the visit, Miss Bosley wanted to get into the nurse’s big black bag. You know how cats are about bags. I knew Miss Bosley would be happy that we had company. She tends to think she is the one being visited.

    Art got a small list of things he could do to help with staying healthy. He can get a lung checkup or screening for cancer, a colonoscopy, and the new pneumonia shot.

    It looks like it might rain again. We are about to float away or perhaps sink like Representative Hank Johnson said might happen to Guam. He is our outstanding representative. Not sure if I like him or the other former Representative, Cynthia McKinney better. She is the one who punched a capitol policeman for not recognizing her with the new hairdo. This is how the South does far left Liberalism. It makes the Republicans look good.

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  33. 6, those “angle brackets” are indicators used to identify what’s between them as formatting instructions, like [b] for bold or [u] for underline. (I’ve substituted [] for the angle brackets since the angle brackets won’t print.) Since what you put in between the angle brackets, “No Subject”, isn’t a valid formatting instruction, it ignored it.

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  34. Aw, Miss Bosley.

    Annie Oakley, despite her fearless name, vanishes when strange people come around.

    The pool tour was spectacular, and what a view — overlooking the entire harbor. It’s really gratifying to see projects actually happen after so many years when it looked like just another lost cause.

    Military museum director also gave me a new story idea before I left, bird guy who comes by to catalog all the bird species around the park property and gives occasional talks at the museum. He and director went on a 4-mile hike near San Gabe Mts. recently and he identified 51 species. Kind of an odd guy, I’m told, with lots of wacky equipment strapped all over him, but he should make a fun story. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  35. I didn’t know those were called “angle brackets.” (The things that look like the less-than and greater-than signs in math.) I also didn’t know how to underline, so thanks for telling me — good to learn something new every day. 🙂 I have used bold, italics and blockquote between the angle brackets.

    But I’m still confused. How, when I get an email where the sender didn’t type anything in the subject line, does my system show the angle brackets and the words No Subject between them? How come it doesn’t all disappear like it does when I type it exactly the same way on here?

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  39. 6 Arrows, you need underline, perhaps? [u]underline[/], only with brackets instead?

    Could you “like” my post if you read it? I’m trying something. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  40. I see I can view my email by conversation or by message. Maybe I could always do that, and just didn’t know it until yesterday. Viewing by conversation is where the grouping feature I described above comes into play. But by switching to “by message,” it goes back to the way I used to view emails. However, there is no indication anymore who the emails are from. I don’t know if I messed up my system myself (I was deleting a bunch of old emails yesterday that I didn’t need anymore, when an email came in from my provider, saying that a new system would be coming soon). Maybe the new system isn’t here yet, and I goofed up the old system somehow in my settings.

    I’m going to head to my kitchen now. I know how to do things there, and don’t mess up too many things there. 😛

    Liked by 1 person

  41. Oh, I always forget that. They changed the standard some time back and [u] no longer works. It’s hard to get underlines now and I don’t know how to do it. Sorry to mislead you.

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  44. About why in your email they are able to put “No Subject” inside angle brackets, it’s possible to include angle brackets in your text, but there’s some other code you have to put in to tell it you mean literal angle brackets and not some formatting code.

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  45. Does this work?

    Thing is, Kevin, underlining is a handwriting or typing thing. When one has access to italics, as on a computer, italics is the proper mode.

    Liked by 1 person

  47. 6 Arrows – What you wrote earlier reminds me of something I’ve previously mentioned here. When Hubby takes Chickadee home (after babysitting in the evening), around 1:00am, it is the end of one day for her, but the beginning of the next day for him. 🙂 Sometimes, when I have trouble sleeping, I’m still awake when he is getting up.

    When the McKs lived here, we sometimes joked that we lived in different time zones. Because of Hubby’s schedule, we tend to do things on the early side, while the McKs had later dinners, & were often were still up & busy past midnight.

    Chickadee has said that Mrs. McK insists that they hold dinner until everyone is home, even if that means not eating until 8 or 9pm. I’ve wondered if that leads to more snacking for those who are waiting.

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  49. Okay, to do a less than, you have to type an ampersand (&) followed by the letters “lt” and a semicolon (;), with no spaces in between them. That’s “lt” as in “less than”. To do a greater than you use gt instead of lt.

    & lt;
    & gt;

    Except without the spaces I put in after the ampersands.

    And I found out that technically greater than and less than aren’t true angle brackets. True angle brackets are not bent over as hard as greater than and less than. Learn something new every day.

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  56. I tried the & lt ; (no spaces) & the & gt; along with the angle brackets , to compare the difference. Only one set showed up.

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  58. They look the same! (The first time the angle brackets didn’t show up because of the way I had them positioned.)

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  61. Can you guys help me out? I need to come up with some questions about Oswald and Biddy for my publicity team. Just ask any questions and I’ll see if they fit what I’m filling out. Thanks!

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  65. Michelle:

    How did Oswald and Biddy meet? How did they encourage each other in the Lord? How did Biddy influence Oswald? How was she the wife that he needed?

    Liked by 1 person

  67. The header photo: Unfortunately these are white mulberries, so they don’t provide the flashes of color, and the varying color of berries ripening and changing color, that one really wants in a photo of birds eating berries. Nevertheless, it is a successful “cedar waxwing with berry in its beak” photo.

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  68. Kizzie, I thought of your hubby when I posted about the start of day / end of day thing. 🙂 And I thought exactly the same thing as what you said after AJ’s 6:59!

    Liked by 1 person

  73. Thanks, ladies. When I first started getting bird photos, it was with a slower camera and not as much zoom. Half the time the bird wasn’t even in the frame by the time the camera took the shot. (I’m not exaggerating with that “half”–most birds move around a lot.) It’s still hard work, but many times successful, and it’s always fun when it is.

    Liked by 1 person

  79. 6Arrows – I used to have CenturyLink, but use gmail or yahoo. Charter is our provider, but we don’t use their email.

    Speaking of email, if rkessler sees this could she send her email to AJ so he could forward it to me? Mrs. L doesn’t like our email published, otherwise I’d put it here.

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  80. Ah, I see. (I see I was mixed up again.) 😉

    Yes, Cheryl, how did you bold and italicize the “Like”? I tried doing that in my 8:40 pm, but obviously did not succeed.

    I succeeded in getting the kitchen orderly today, though. Well, in the visible areas, if you don’t open drawers and cabinets. Actually, those aren’t too bad, except $200 worth of groceries, much of it belonging in the kitchen, got bought today, so the cabinet contents could use some straightening since those new items appear to have gotten put in every which way.

    We’re still learning around here. 🙂

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