Unseasonably Comfortable

Weirdly enough, it's in the 40s at night here. So for the past few days we've had the windows open again, though I'm pretty sure someone will remember to turn Florida's broiler back on soon enough. Earlier today a bird hit the glass part of the storm door hard enough that the cats scattered in terror - scared the hell out of me, too. The bird was okay and flew off, but there's an impact outline on the glass and it had some small brown feathers stuck to it. I picked those off and showed the cats, who were GREATLY interested in them. SMELLS LIKE BIRBS

The interesting bird thing lately has been hummingbirds. We usually get some because, well, we put out feeders. But Fox has been watching what might be a mated pair on the rear deck, and this past week or so there have been not just two or three but nearly a dozen coming to the front yard feeders. On the back deck, the female often perches either on the feeder or on a rafter in the roof while the male does acrobatic flights for her. If she's on the rafter he flies up over it in an arch, back and forth, making this very distinctive chirp as he does. If she's on the feeder he flies loops wherever he seems to think she'll see. The front yard is basically a war zone. A very cute, beautifully-colored, insanely violent war zone. A female was defending one feeder last night and she'd go after other birds and literally SLAM into them. You could hear the impact. I'm not sure if I should put a few more feeders in other areas of the yard.

There hasn't otherwise been a ton of stuff happening. We visited Disney for the Flower & Garden Festival, and if anyone's interested I can link to a photo album. It was weird for me being at Disney when it wasn't marathon weekend, which is on the whole a more adult, and more in-shape crowd. I am so thankful for my IUD. But anyway it was also an excuse to hit Blaze Pizza again. They've got a vegan chorizo now which I want to try, but it wasn't out yet when we went. We'll be heading back in October for the Food & Wine Festival and the Wine-n-Dine Race Weekend. We're both doing the Two Course Challenge, so 10k and half marathon. The previous week is the Black Creek 5 & 10k, which I am currently training for and hoping to smoke my previous time in. So the Disney run will be more of a fun thing - or so I keep saying, but knowing how competitive I can be I'll probably bust ass at that, too.

Something woke me up last night and I heard the neighbor lady shout at someone to "get back in the ..." either house or car. One syllable, but I couldn't hear well. I don't know what was going on but everything seems okay today. Their kitty has been visiting our yard again though she hasn't managed to kill any birds lately. I haven't seen Bhageera (the big black tom) lately so I wonder if someone picked him up, or if something bad happened to him. We have some very active TNR programs so perhaps they caught him. And since I started bringing the hummingbird feeders in at night we haven't seen much of the bear. Fox also helped me get a little fence up for the trash can, which undoubtedly helps as well. I don't mind the bear living around here and doing bear things, but I'd prefer not to encourage her to regard human habitations as an AYCE buffet.

(no subject)

So apparently A Canticle For Leibowitz is going to be a real thing. From a summary:

This study discusses the semiotic techniques suitable for prevent intelligent creatures from intrusion into nuclear waste depositories. It advocates the cultural option, examines the appropriate nature of message, source, channels, and context, and makes a number of recommendations. Its central proposal is to transmit the necessary information within the framework of artificially created ritual and legend passed on from generation to generation. The task is to be followed by an atomic priesthood. 

In other, significantly less important news, I picked a bunch of blackberries from the brambles around my house. I guess I could make pie or something but nice cream sounds a hell of a lot better.