Adventures in Birdland

Yesterday I went to clear out the dead blackberry bushes from the side yard. After awhile of hacking away I looked behind me and saw a tiny naked baby animal squirming around. My first thought was, "oh crap! I have a nest mice". As I got closer it turned out to be a tiny baby bird. It was ugly as all get out but melted my heart in about 1/2 a second. After several fruitless minutes of looking for a nest I gave up and made a little one in a plastic dish. My thought was to put him back close to where I found him. I thought I would sit at a distance in one of the plastic patio chairs that I had dug out of the bushes earlier. That's when I started to hear multiple chipping birds,(5 in total now). The nest was between the seats of the two stacked chairs.

As kids we were all told that if you touch a baby bird it's mother will never come back. So I packed the nest up and made a trip the Audubon Society of Portland. The gals there were all ewing and awing. They let me know that it's an old wise tale that their mom won't come back. It's true of some mammals that rely on scent, but birds don't rely on scent. They told there best chance for survival was if I could put the nest back as best I could and see if the mom does come back.

So back home I went. Put the nest back between the chairs and back in the bushes. It was only a short time before their mom was back with food. It's great to see it all work out but I can't wait for them to grow up because I really want to get my side yard cleaned up.

DIY Desk

I made this desk a few years ago but most people seem to like it so here are some photos.

The legs I got years ago at IKEA: Vika Curry.
The file cabinet is from an old job, needs painting.
The top is OSB that I shaped and clear coated.




Wire management is also IKEA: Signum

Holly crap! I did what?!

My friend Jen Green told me this weekend that she had stopped watching all TV for a month. She felt like she watched way too much and wanted to cut back. She had been watching 9 different shows and has now cut it down to four. In my mind I thought, "holly crap I know I watch more than nine TV shows." In fact I have been think about this a lot lately and knew I needed to cut back.

Last year I moved into my new house and have never gotten cable. I watch all my TV on the internet. At first I thought this would be great because there would only be a few of my favorite shows I could watch. How wrong I was! You can find and watch everything online. It use to be when I had cable that I would turn on the TV while I was eating and just watch what ever random show was on the Discovery Chanel or something. Now I started finding myself starting to find new TV series to start watching when I had already seen my normal ones. For example one night I sat down to eat dinner and decided to watch an episode of NCIS because I was all caught up the other show I watch. This kind of thing happened a lot in the summer time. Back when I just had cable that my have been a one time deal, but with internet it's a whole new game. Basically for free I ended up watching all 6 seasons of NCIS.

This lead me to write down every TV series that I followed this last year. This included over the summer and the television season that is now finishing up. I knew it would be a lot more than Jen's nine shows but I was shock when the list ended up at 54!(really it's only 53.5, I didn't watch all of American Idol) I'm glad I did it though because it shows me just how bad it's gotten. I think I need to follow my friends example and just stop all TV for the summer. That shouldn't really be the hard part, it's trying to figure what shows I will keep watching next season that will be difficult. I'm sure Lost and the Office will make the cut but I will have to do some major cutting.