Hodge-podge

I had a miserable night sleeping. Tossed and turned for a good portion of it and woke off and on from 4 AM until 6 when I gave up trying to get back to sleep and got up to feed the cats. Now my spine aches from my neck to my tailbone and my knees are forgetting they can bend. I'm moving around like Lurch. *sigh* Guess that's what happens when you don't really do anything all day but sit and surf the internet.

And that's all I did yesterday. Around noon the thunderstorms started to roll in from the northwest and they continued right up to sunset. Watching their progress on the radar was fascinating. There would be nothing on the screen until about 20 miles from here and suddenly, as the air would approach the Northern Tier of PA, the clouds would blossom up and out. Fortunately the strongest of the storms passed just tour east and west or didn't develop their full potential until they had moved over the hill to the south of us. We were never in the direct fire of the lightening that seemed to stay one to two miles away. Still, the rain came down quite heavily at times and the lights flickered off and on occasionally. I haven't gone out to check the gauge yet but I'm sure we had over half an inch. (UPDATE: I was close. We had 0.43 inches of rain yesterday.)

I went out to bring the bird feeders in around 8:30 PM. The two feeders with sunflower seed were not a problem but I had to wait for the hummingbirds to finish before they would let me bring in their sugar water. I guess the rains took a lot of energy form the little guys and they needed to stock up. Anyway, they finished around 8:45 and allowed me to remove the feeder from the deck as things were starting to get really dark.

At 9 PM Mr. Bruin showed up looking for some sunflower seeds. I had forgotten to empty the tray feeder and he promptly spilled that but he knocked the tray right on top of the seed and could not figure out where it went. He then checked the pole where the other feeders usually hang and was disappointed to find it was empty. So he took a nosh out of the one sunflower that was growing next to the pole. It had a nicely formed head and would have been a pretty flower in a couple of days. Now, half of it is gone. Once again, this bear knows no fear. Shining the light on him, yelling at him proved fruitless. He was not going until he was ready to leave. (And it is a "him", he stood on his hind legs to check for the hanging feeder and gave us proof that at least one black male still has his nuts.) This is a young male but he still goes in the range of 250-300 pounds and I'm not about to go out and rassle; ala Davy Crockett. Of course, if he continues to show up through the hunting season....Nah, just like the turkeys, when the calendar says it will be okay to shoot him, he will have found himself a safe hidey-hole somewhere and he won't be back in the yard until late April or early May.

And then there's the Mets. They didn't do it the easy way (Santana gave up 5 runs in 4 innings ad Heilman gave up 3 in 1/3 of an inning) but they got the job done behind Wright, Delgado and Tatis. They dropped the Reds 10-8 by scoring 4 runs in the ninth inning. The Mets have now won 10 straight and are tied for first place with the Phillies. There's still a lot of baseball to play, however, and the collapse they suffered last September should keep them aware of the need to play hard to the end.