This weekend we received a red-bellied woodpecker as a backyard guest.
That’s just what they’re called. He didn’t explain the discrepancy. (The red crown distinguishes the gender, by the way.)
Look at this little guy:
One of his friends gave me my best photo yesterday, bird division:
Of course the cats like the birds. They have strategically placed spots with great sight lines of the menagerie taking place just beyond their reach and on the other side of the inexplicable transparent walls.
What must pets imagine of glass, and us?
Anyway, Phoebe is taking a break from the bird watching. She has the most intense relaxation face you can imagine:
Last month we noted that Poseidon likes to watch car chases with us. Apparently they make Phoebe a little more nervous. She couldn’t watch last week’s historic car chase.
Poseidon, meanwhile, has found himself a hammock bridge. Like he needed the help, or a new place to sleep:
Last night he decided to have a bit of water fresh from the mountain stream.
Better than the several bowls he has available to him.
More tomorrow. Check out the Instagram account that Phoebe and Poseidon run. Keep up with me on Instagram, too. And don’t forget my Twitter account.
See you there!
Monday / photo — Comments Off on Mid-winter week 1 Feb 21
It is sloppy and slushy out there. And cold, bitter, bitter cold. I went in a half hour later than normal. Let someone else’s car warm up the roads a bit. We live in the county, but the city limit is literally just down our road. Our road is never plowed, despite the man who lives on the street who has two trucks with mounted plows. I assume it’s a contractual and liability issue, and maybe one day I’ll see him out and ask him about it. Maybe I can take up a gas money collection to get a path cleaned on our road.
After that first residential street, you find that the next one wasn’t snow and slush and a touch of ice. It was just wet slush. The road after that was just wet. The one after that was basically dry. So, waiting for others to get out and about was a good plan.
Tomorrow it will all be melting. Oh, sweet optimism!
It will be cold, but perhaps not bitterly so. And! It will be sunny, and some of the snow will melt. That picture is from Friday, before the weekend’s weather, which gave us a full blanket. Seeing that melt away will be a treat. But you can’t take too much of that. It’ll get worse before it gets better.
The cats are taking it all in stride, because they stay inside. They don’t want to, but that’s just because they don’t really understand snow. They, of course, understand cold. They’re always burrowing into something, as you learned last week.
Phoebe had a casual Saturday night:
Yesterday, she had a big day of yoga:
This is how she gets down after a cuddly nap. She wants her belly rubbed, and then she’ll stretch out like this for a while and then push off the chair and roll forward. It’s quite athletic.
Poseidon wants you to know he knows how handsome he is:
Sometimes his cuteness makes up for what we’ve termed his high-spiritedness. Sometimes.
He’s listening to The Yankee walking around upstairs. It’s a very intriguing part of the evening. She’s getting ready to call it a night and if the cats didn’t immediately follow her upstairs we have a few moments of this.
Then it is a big sprint! Something more fun than this is happening up there!
Isn’t that just the way of things?
food / Monday / photo — Comments Off on The photos improve as you scroll 25 Jan 21
It was this kind of weekend. Cold and damp and it could work almost to the bone. It was 32 at best, and that didn’t last long, either day. It left us with lovely views, like this:
Timing is everything in meteorological events. All that fog would be a great mood-setter around Halloween. But here, near the end of January, I’m close to over it. The good news is have 10 more weeks to get good and bored with views like this:
“But we’ll have sunny skies on Friday!” he said, exasperated.
We punctuated the evening with ribs, of the fall-off-the-bone variety. They were quite tasty. We should have had more. We should have them more.
A friend said on Instagram that he wants to have abs, but he likes ribs too much. I don’t see what the problem is. Abdominal musculature and ribs are located closely to one another. Why not have both?
I didn’t mention he’s getting to that age where that idea is a vanishing proposition. Let him figure that out on his own. And then he can enjoy his ribs in peace. If he’s lucky, they’ll be in pieces, not unlike the ones we had last night.
It’s Monday, so, to the cats! The cats are grand. Just had a nice little play session with one of them, in fact.
Poseidon, as ever, likes being under the cover. It’s a morning and nighttime ritual at this point. It might be too cold for him here:
Phoebe also likes cover, but she takes her cozy naps in the evening.
Poseidon got himself stuck in a box.
He was nosing around it, the top and the bottom had been opened up, so the cardboard wanted to fall over on itself. But if you stood on either side it would stack up nicely and he shimmied in, grateful for the help, until he realized his predicament.
Dreary day. Dreary weekend. Winter is here. We’re low on snow, but that’s just fine. I’m pretty sure it has snowed more, so far, on family in Alabama than it has here. So they’ve had their fill of snow, and maybe we can just go without this year.
Of course, the year when you don’t go much of anywhere, it might be nice to sit and watch it fall and not have to worry too much about it.
I am looking forward to seeing the sun and blue skies, which may return as soon as … tomorrow? Tomorrow! If so it would be the first sunny day since … January 4th. That was the only day that had nice atmospheric conditions this year. That is, in fact, as nice as it has been since the day after Christmas.
If you were here you could have seen a blue sky and the sun for the better part of six hours, since Dec. 26, 2020. In the last 17 days you could have seen the blue sky, or the sun, for 1.4 percent of the time. Which explains a lot, I’m sure.
I think the cats can tell. Phoebe is sleeping a lot more like this lately:
This photo of her hints at some sun, and it was taken on … January the 4th (see above):
Poseidon has lately found a new interest. He is a keen observer of car chases.
That one shows a helicopter pulling away after a pursuit ended when the driver jumped out of his car and ran into Los Angeles’ storm drain system. We can all agree that if part of your night has found you in the storm system, you’ve likely made some unconventional decisions. This, I said as the helicopter moved away to its next assignment before they killed the web feed, is the problem with car chases. Often, you don’t get a resolution. Maybe the next one! Maybe tomorrow!
Take this one, for example. Poe was watching here a guy who worked his way into a Motel 6, where the standoff began. They didn’t stick with that one, either. “It was not immediately clear if the driver was located and arrested,” says the station’s website. Which, if you’re going to write it, stick with it. Maybe the next one! Maybe tomorrow! On the other hand, it’s better than watching a dramatic accident unfold in front of you.
And it’s an influence thing, too. He’s klutzy enough on his own. Let’s not give him ideas.
This evening we went for a walk and saw the pond out back was starting to freeze in layers:
Of course we tested it out:
And after our little walk, which was only about three miles because it was 24 degrees, I pedaled on the bike for an hour.
Got in a nice 20 miles before dinner. That’s the world course from the UCI Championship in 2015, which I’ve mentioned here before. I wonder where I might ride the next time. Maybe tomorrow!
cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off on Yes, there are cat photos 4 Jan 21
It was a lovely little weekend. We ventured out to pick up our regular Chick-fil-A lunch, and the parking lot was almost entirely empty, despite being noon on a Saturday. Everyone was watching bowl games, safely at home, I’m sure. We took ours home to do that very thing, and had a day full of football, and evening chatting with a few friends. It was all delightful.
We spent yesterday afternoon riding bikes indoors. The Yankee and I tooled around Normandy and a flat part of France for a while.
And then I slowly went a third of the way up Mont Ventoux. According to Zwift Insider … :
This GPS-accurate model of the world-famous climb is by far the toughest ascent in game, climbing 1480 meters (4857′) from the beginning to end of the timed KOM segment.
It’s something like a mile of vertical gain! Naturally my non-climbing self is eager to get to the top of one of the storied cycling mountains. I just need to plan my days better. And I’ll need to bring my lunch.
Oh, it’s the Bedoin ascent, one of the hardest in cycling. It’ll take me hours, plural. I’m looking forward to doing the whole thing.
Seeing that it is Monday, we do our regular photo feature checking in on the kitties. They’re doing swell. Phoebe really likes paper bags.
This was once a bag full of bagels. We have a few grocery store paper bags that I can’t bring myself to fold up or re-use because every so often she re-discovers them and they serve as either a complete cave, a cute hidey-hole like above or a nice place just to have a seat and think cat thoughts.
Poseidon had a nice morning in the sun recently.
When he does the early morning chattering thing, and it is always him, it could be that he thinks the sun is ready for him and we should open the curtains. He’s always wrong, and I really wish he would figure out how the tree line is an obstacle to his winter sunbathing.
Phoebe gets her time in the rays, too, of course. But this is more of an afternoon warming session..
And here’s Poseidon, hard at work.
More tomorrow. Until then, did you know that Phoebe and Poseidon have an Instagram account? Phoebe and Poe have an Instagram account. You can keep up with me on Instagram. And don’t forget my Twitter, where most of the nonsense goes.
