Monday

I woke up this morning around 4:30 AM and for the life of me I couldn't get back to sleep. After trying for 45 minutes, I gave up, got out of bed and came downstairs to feed the cats. I spent some time online looking over the news and checking a few blogs but felt no inspiration to do more than comment on others' posts.

(I see that the RU Men upset Seton hall on a buzzer beater to end the season. The RU Girls lost in their first game in the Big East Tourney by two when the ball was stripped from the RU point guard in the last seconds. This comes after they dropped a close one to #1 UConn in their season finale. And Lance Mackey still leads the Iditarod but his lead is down to minutes at the Koyuk checkpoint.)

After Terry came downstairs and had breakfast we took the Tundra down the hill for the first time since Friday. Ice still coated all the trees but surprisingly the road was ice free just a few dozen yards from the driveway. I guess yesterday's sunshine played a role in that even though the temperatures never got above 28 degrees and were just 2 degrees at 9 AM. (It was 14 degrees when I came downstairs.) There was quite a pile of mail in the PO Box. But more importantly, we saw a killdeer near one of the farms--another sign that spring is near.

When we got back to the Aerie, I went back to peruse some more blogs and check the weather forecast while Terry booked a airline, hotel room, and rental car for the June wedding of my Goddaughter in San Francisco. Again, I just couldn't find any partiular item I wished to write about.

Outside, the sun moved in and out of the clouds and the temperature slowly edged toward the freezing mark. Ice on the deck and driveway melted but not on the trees. They continued to glitter as if someone had draped tinsel over them. Flashes of red, green and blue could be seen from the ice that sheathed the branches.

At 11:30 AM i looked out the door and there were the five male turkeys that have made it a habit to appear at the bird feeders every day it's not raining, snowing or icing. They had been showing up at 11:30-noon before the clocks changed. Yesterday they appeared at 12:45 PM. They must have forgotten to adjust their clocks but they got that done last night for today they were on schedule.

The turkeys stayed for an hour or so before a neighbor's cat came stalking. he chased them--slowly--into the woods, but gave it up as a waste of time when the much larger birds stayed allmost exactly 5 yards ahead of him the entire time. (Or maybe he suddenly realized that, once they entered the woods, the five birds formed a U that he was hentering and he would soon be flanked on both sides by birds with spurs, long legs, strong wings and a 3 or 4 to 1 weight advantage.) The cat left. The turkeys returned to feed for another hour before wandering off.

I went into the workshop and produced three more birdhouses from the scrap wood left from our construction. Now I just have to figure out where to put them.

When I came back upstairs, the turkeys were back but I could only count 4. Hopefully the fifth had merely separated from the group and was wandering on his own. I don't think the cat got 'em because it was under the Tundra and made one brief charge at the smaller group when they wandered too near the truck. But only a short, half hearted charge did he make, and when that was aborted, he turned and walked in the opposite direction down the driveway--probably to search for smaller game. The turkeys stayed under the feeders for a good hour and then disappeared back into the woods.

Back on the computer I read more blogs and checked the news. Except for the bombshell about Governor Spitzer, I found little to inspire me. While I could write about Spitzer's hypocrisy and his two years of lousy governance, I just wish he would go away. Hard to believe he could almost make former NJ Gov. McGreevy respectable. Almost.

Anyway, it's coming up on 10 PM and my fingers are getting loggy, my eyes are getting heavy and I think I'll hit the showers and the bed.