I haven’t paid much attention to owls since the Great Owl Incident of 2004, but today they are everywhere: the Smithsonian Store spam, a post on design*sponge, a random Etsy page . . . I only hope that whatever the noise was that woke us up at 3:30 this morning wasn’t owl-related. Once in a lifetime is enough.
The next time someone expresses skepticism when I share my story of being attacked by a centipede, I’m going to direct them to this You Tube video. Assuming the centipede I bludgeoned to death in my yard with a garden trowel mere days after the incident was the same one or its brother, my attacker was only an inch or two shorter than the star of this film.
(I think the answer to the untranslatable archive dilemma is to simply repost the “best of” here a little at a time with the appropriate retro timestamp and let the rest retire quietly to CD to play shuffleboard and bore each other to death. I’ll lose the few comments I have, but so be it.)
My Etsy shop is now up and running! Look for new items every couple of days — there’s a queue of fun stuff waiting to be photographed and posted, and I’m working on some cool new ideas. Feedback is always appreciated.
Still trying to figure out this template. A few annoying problems remain: the sidebar is pushed down on permalink pages without comments; I can’t figure out how to get margin around my posted photos without throwing the little icon next to the comment line way out of whack; and for some reason the text is starting at the bottom of the photo instead of wrapping (I do have the text alignment set to “left”). But I’m sick of messing with it for now, so we’ll all just have to live with it until I have time and energy to tackle it again. If you have a suggestion for any of those problems, or any other comments to make, please let me know. For now, I’m just going to bed.
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[Exhale.] I’m back to full-time freelancing, and wow, does it feel good. Even though I was aware of the massive stress I was under at my recent staff job, it wasn’t until I left it that I realized just how much it was affecting every last fiber of my being. Freelancing has its own stresses, but they’re stresses I’m more willing to live with. The flexibility is allowing me to branch out and pursue some tech writing in addition to my established editorial services, and also to spend more time with my jewelry and other art.
Flexibility has also been a necessity in catching up on wedding plans. We’re just over four months away, and there’s still more left to do than I would like, but over the past two weeks I’ve been able to get a lot accomplished. Mom and I spent some time last Tuesday and again today doing the legwork on cakes and invitations so J and I could make our decisions. We settled on a photographer last week and figured out what we’re doing for favors. The next major obstacle is finalizing the guest list, probably the most difficult thing we have to do and something almost all couples struggle with.
My plate still overfloweth, but in a good way. It’s good to be back.
I *knew* I should have migrated to WordPress long before now. Seems there is no easy way to migrate posts from new Blogger to WordPress, and the one set of (many-stepped, convoluted) instructions I found online won’t work with the current iteration of new Blogger settings. Oh well. I was tempted to burn the existing archives to a CD and start fresh anyway. Looks like my decision is made for me.
Patience, please, while I figure out how to migrate six years’ worth of posts to WordPress.
I came home Tuesday night just in time for the start of Gilmore Girls. I was looking forward to a quiet night on the couch after a stressful couple of days. I threw my stuff on the kitchen table and went over and flipped the TV on. A minute or so later, I went back to adjust the volume. As I did so, I heard some rustling coming from the plant on top of the CD case in the corner. It struck me as odd, since Fiona (the cat) is not able to get up there, and even if she could, there’s no room for her anyway. I went to shoo her away, because two of my favorite ceramic pieces live on the top of that case, as do some other breakables.
Much to my surprise, it was not Fiona up there, but a good-sized screech owl. A quiet, mellow, Fiona-colored screech owl, but a screech owl nonetheless. After a moment of panic and trying to remember if owls have a tendency to get pissed off and peck your eyes out or something, and being paranoid about how it might have gotten in, I decided to just call Mom to ask her whom I should call. She didn’t believe me at first. After I convinced her that it was for real, she suggested calling the police. I’m not sure that they believed me either, but they put in a call to the dogcatcher (?!?) to call me back.
Sometime in the middle of all this I saw Fiona saunter casually into the bedroom, and promptly shut the door so she’d stay in there. I don’t know how she managed to not notice Screechy’s presence, as she gets hyped over birds on the outside of the house all the time, nor do I know why Screechy wasn’t more upset about Fiona’s presence. Maybe there’s some kind of owl/cat nonaggression pact in force that I don’t know about.
While I was waiting for the callback, I grabbed the camera and took a few pictures so that I could prove it happened, and propped the front door open, hoping Screechy would take the hint and fly out. He showed his rather large wingspan and moved from the plant to the curtain rod. Then I called my friend Sara to see if she could send her brother over. He didn’t believe her, but nonetheless came over. As we stood there staring at Screechy (whooo was quite content to sit quietly on the curtain rod and follow me wherever I went with his eyes) trying to figure out what to do, the dogcatcher called back. His helpful advice was to prop the door open and try to shoo it out. Thanks.
Screechy was entirely unfazed by my waving magazines in his general direction. I didn’t want to get close enough to be in pecking range. Bill went to fetch his fishing net, while I went downstairs for the broom. Bill nudged Screechy with the broom while I held the net in one hand and a magazine in the other. Screechy took a lap around the living room before he decided the best place to perch next would be on Bill’s pant leg. Once the surprise wore off, Bill started moving slowly toward the door. Screechy hopped off about halfway there, at which point I was able to put the net over him and trap him in there with a newspaper. I took him outside, where he was quite content to sit in the net and stare at me some more.
After I closed the door so he wouldn’t be tempted to go back in, we nudged him enough to get him to hop out of the net. He hung out on the lawn long enough for me to worry that he had been hurt, then took off and settled on a branch in the dogwood tree. I thanked Bill profusely for his help.
Throughout all of this, Screechy made no noise at all, other than a little wing-flapping. He didn’t seem particularly upset about being in the house, or being in the net, or anything at all. I told him that he was a beautiful bird and a nice addition to the decor, but would probably be much happier outside.
Best I can figure, he came in through the chimney. There’s an open vent near the furnace in the basement that goes into the chimney, and there was a bunch of dirt and debris under it when I went looking Tuesday night. I’ve temporarily made it less open with some strips of duct tape, but I need to get someone up on the roof to rig some kind of wire mesh contraption up there so critters can’t get into the chimney in the first place.
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