I just finished reading three chapters of Moby Dick to Chris. We think we've figured out why some people don't like the story. It's because Ishmale goes off on these long tangents that have nothing to do with the plot. He likes to educate in full detail to help us understand his vocation and from this point in time the history. These last three chapters we read were really funny because they were about whales in art of the time. Ishmale rips into all the artists and almost calls them idiots for not drawing whales right. He's a good man for demanding realism. He makes one point that was interesting and true of his age. He said no one could ever paint an accurate whale because you can not see the whole of the living whale. Scuba diving hadn't been invented yet, nor under water cameras. When I read I forget he's a fictional character and I want to reach into the book, shake him by the shoulders and go, "Look man! Come see what we know now!! Whales are now drawn right because we can look under water." But I love all the insults and with the limits of his age he was right about everything he said. In the end he gave credit to very few that kind of got it right. I would be the same way so it was fun to see him being so judgemental which is odd for a P. P's can get that way on the one subject they are expert at though.

I have finished shading Owen and Cope themselves. I'm impressed with how nicely they turned out. But now I have to shade the background and again starting out from nothing is always overwhelming and I don't know where to start or what to do. I hate that but I always figure things out eventually. I do love how this is turning out like a cartoon. Aarg, Cope's hair! I love drawing it but I hate coloring it. I had such a hard time shading it because I wanted it to look oily and moist. I think I kinda got it right. Owen's hair was easy, but Owen is always well groomed even when his hair is being yanked out. Yes this is before he got his fire.

My relationship with my macaw Daimon has been falling apart for the last few months. He just decided one day that he wants to kill me. None of my other macaws have done this and it's annoying because I can't read him. But I've come to realize that he's probably a female. I'm 85% sure now it's a girl. That probably explains why he's so different and I can't read him. I've never owned a female before and really if that's so I like males so much better. If it is a girl it's easy enough to change the name to Diamond. So her. I noticed because her head seems rather small and she's not as big as Joel was. It really looks like a female to me now. She might be getting cage bound and territorial so for a week now I've only been using the cage for her to sleep in. I've taken two nasty bites from her already but I won't be scared off by a bird. Moving her to new locations everyday helps disorient and calm them. If the cage is just for sleeping then it's not something she can be defensive over and she doesn't try to attack me anywhere but in her cage. Progress is being made and today I was able to reach in for the first time in months and pick her up without getting bit or using a towel. So there's a chance I might get my nice pet back. I do miss Joel so much though. He was the best.

I have a naughty budgie girl named Seagrass. She gets out of the cage everyday and just flies around the patio, enters and leave the tiel cage at will and makes a nusance of herself. She's easy to catch and doesn't bite, but there's no point in putting her back in the budgie cage because she just gets out. I kinda don't blame her because she doesn't get along with the others. So I've only been putting her up at night so she can sleep and will be safe.
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Oh dear. With the 4th of July right around the corner it's time to keep the pigeons locked up. The 4th, Christmas and New Years are the holidays I can't risk my birds getting burned or shot with fireworks so I only fly them in the morning. No more evening flights until the skys are safe again. But perhaps the fireworks will scare off the hawks or they'll give up thinking I won't be flying my birds anymore. That would be good.

I have named the yellow budgie hen I put in with Peep, Lemon Drop. She doesn't know she has a name. She's an older hen and won't respond to it but I call her that so I know which hen I'm talking about. Anyway she laid her first egg today on the floor of the cage. It's her first time. I'm a bit worried though because despite having a cuttlebone she's been eating, her abdomen is big and swollen and I can tell she has lots of eggs backed up. Luckily this one finally passed and no prolapsed uterus like what killed Punkin. But I'm going to be adding lots of calcium to the water to help out. I don't know if she eats the pellets but they do have calcium too. Hopefully she'll pass the rest of the eggs and they'll all hatch into pretty Phage/Gaus crosses. As for my other pair...they aren't showing any interest in the nest box. I think they were pretty traumatized by the snake. If worse comes to worse I may repair the male with another hen. I don't know if he'd go for her. Sigh.

And in other bird news...Olney and I aren't working out well. She's gotten really mean and I suspect she may be a he. I didn't want a male because males are mean and not snuggly. She might be going through her terrible twos, but I think it acts too much like a male. Not sure what to do yet but this sucks. I feel like I'm dating after having lost a mate. Punkin loved me. I can't seem to find that again. BUT there is a new baby that is one of Punkin's siblings that looks promising and unqiue! I hope it's a girl I really do. I think this pigeon might be a half sider. It's all white but the left wing has a bit of normal grey. That's fine, but the right wing I think has cinnamon. If so that means she could be a half sider which is VERY rare. I've only seen it a few times in budgies where half the budgie is blue and the other half is green. Grey is the normal dominant color while cinnamon is sex-linked. Also this would be a half sider pied. Hum, I'm thinking this IS a female because none of the parents were visual cinnamons so that means the father passed it on visually only to his daughters. Olney might be losing her airconditioned cage and name if she doesn't straighten up. Having Punkin's little sister might be just what I need.

I have finished watching all the Darkwing eps. Now I can concentrate on Tiny Toons and Gilligan's Island.

BTW, I'm still offering budgie art commissions if anyone is interested. I could use the money. They are $20-$30 depending on how complex or if a background would be wanted. If you know someone that might be interested tell them about me. I take paypal.



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Ok, I've been playing with Punkin. She's such a sweet pigeon. But I had to put her away yesterday because she was pecking my head and trying to pull hair out. It hurts! She was trying to make a nest under my desk. When she's in the computer room with me I notice she tries this. She'll go around and pick up tissues and put them under the desk. It's cute and she makes all these cooing noises. But finally I had to put her up.

Seagrass my pastel sea green budgie girl is a real pain lately. I don't know how she's doing it but she's always getting out of her cage and getting into the cockatiel cage. She's so cute about it but I lovingly get mad at her. I need to figure out where she's getting out so I can lock that door. At least she's easy enough to catch and doesn't bite despite being fully flighted, but it's to the point now that there's no sense in putting her back in as she just comes right out again. But then she wonders why she's hungry. Silly bird. She was Phage's mate so she's special and the mom of all my Phage babies except Protist. Protist was born to another female that died, or Phage's first wife.

I tried to make some level 20 items today with the intent to sell them and boy did it suck. It said I had a 90% success rate and I failed both times. That's why I'm slightly grumpy. I should have just given those resources away. Sigh, it sucks. But I do want to start making more resources and gambiling is part of capitalism. You have to take the risk to make the bucks unfortunately. So I just made a level 10 item instead and put that up hoping to make some of my loss back. Yeah but that's how it is I guess. The higher the risk the greater the reward. I may try again some other time. But come on!! It said 90% chance of success!! ARG!!



I am happy that nearly everyone on my friends list now has a dragon. In a way it is my fault. I got one then I slowly watched as everyone on my list started getting one hee hee. And I got into it because Suzi and Silvolf were doing it so it's really all their fault. Hehe.

I am very behind on making videos for Youtube. I've got to get on that. I still need to make the pigeon hatching one. I have some very rare songs from original Epcot Rides like The Land and Spaceship Earth. They don't play these songs anymore. Epcot is still great but they've made some changes that I could have done without. I think the worst was getting rid of the song Listen to the Land for the Land boat and greenhouse ride. So I need to do that. I made a comment on someone else's video and have gotten a slow but steady stream of people asking me for copies of the song. I think putting them up as videos will make fans of the origianl rides very happy. I'm glad I have something rare to offer that will make so many out there happy.

Tonight is going to be a horrid 32. I went out and blocked off the window to the pigeons with towels so I hope they'll stay warm and that the babies will be safe. It should help keep the wind out. I still have to go out and cover the cockatiels. Man it's gonna suck and tomorrow will be the same thing. Budgies and finches were brought inside.

No writing today. No creative works of any kind. I want to work on something but I just don't FEEL like it. Blarg.

OH btw, just a reminder. I know some of you have been understandably busy or have had computer issues, but don't forget to read my story about Owen and Cope. It's under the tag "story". My list of tags can be found on my sidebar on the right. It's finished and includes author's notes as well. So please if you started it and liked it, it's all done now. I'd love to hear what you think. And I'm happy to see the meme I coded up on so many of your journals.
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I'm doing better today. I don't feel that bad about Gaus anymore. I'm thankful for the great times we had and cherrish the memories he left me. But lossing Push Pigeon is what really made the last two days difficult for me as it was so sudden.

But yesterday was a very good day. We went into town and borrowed my father in law's van. We picked up the old pigeon loft. The very first one I ever built. Then we went to Alex's and finally picked up the couch. I felt bad we hadn't gone and I know it was taking up lots of room in his apartment. So he helped load it up and came with us to help unload it. It's a tan leather couch. A three seater, and it's nice to have our first piece of real furniture finally. I showed Alex how the pigeons fly and he thought it was really neat. Chris made some slushies for him since he has a new ice shreader he bought. I'm not big into cold deserts because my teeth are cold sensitive. My front teeth especially hurt because they are so thin. Then we took Alex home and dropped off the van. On the way over Alex had the couch to sit on but on the way back there was nothing so we took one of our two plastic chairs. Well we forgot to bring it home. We use those chairs for everything and move them around the house. They are cheap lawn chairs but they work for us until we get a love seat and stools for the breakfast bar. But even if we hadn't forgoten it wouldn't have it in our truck. So we've been using the cushions of the couch in the game room to make up for the missing chair. A small love seat is the next thing we hope to get for the game room.

The weather was kinda gross yesterday. It was cloudy and very windy. It was a hot wind too so it wasn't nice until the evening. It blew the lid off our spa and it was cool to see how many frogs were living under it and just using it as their own private swimming pool. Unfortuantely they are all Cuban Tree Frogs. They are an introduced species that eats native frogs. They are hard to get rid of. It's been a long time since I've seen regular green tree frogs. When we get our pond built I'd love for Bullfrogs to move in. But that's in the far future. My next big project I really want to tackle is rebuilding the arbor.

We rented Cloverfield and it was suprisingly good. It's one of those rare American Giant Monster movies. Some of the mushy emotional character scenes were driving me nuts and of course I was hoping they'd call get picked off one by one. You know I hate typical happy endings where the hero unrealistically saves everyone. SPOILER ALERT
But this movie finally delivered and all the characters were finally killed. Although the last two not fast enough for my taste. They died at the very end but I'm glad. The other thing I liked was that everyone died and New York was leveled by a nuke. YES now that's my kind of ending!! The monster was ugly though. I like most monsters. I thought the parasites he droped were cooler. They were like these neat bity insects.

It just bugs me to no end how many people don't have the guts to torture or kill off their characters and keep things realistic. They get too attached to them and have them survive the most amazing thing. No! I hate that.

Randy's been really annoying lately. But I can't blame him. He screams a lot now which he never did before. He'd always been a single bird and he hated it when I put in the finch and Gaus. I took out the finch a few weeks because because he got aggressive. And well Gaus died and I think Randy is confused about what happened. Suddenly he's all alone. So he's probably screaming for Gaus. It's only annoying in the morning when we're sleeping but he also gets on Daimon's nerves and Daimon will scream and say, "Randy Bad Bird! Be Quiet Randy!" Daimon knows the names of the other birds. He can say Punkin and refers Protist and Peep just as Budgies. Poor Randy. I'll have to play with him more now.
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Hum, I don't like this trend I'm getting of posting in the morning. Let's see if I can't break that habit. I've always liked posting at night while everything's still fresh on my mind.

I finished the arbor. I'm not as thrilled or have that proud feeling of accomplishment that I did with the loft though. Perhaps because when I finally put it together it was wobbly and didn't line up right. Chris helped me put it in the ground. I know what mistakes I made and can do better next time. But I think for a first time I did well and made typical beginner mistakes on it. Well there may not be a next time. I may just end up buying one if this one falls apart like I expect it to after a while. I think a mistake I keep making and I need to do something about it is not squareing thing properly. I don't forsee building anything else for a while. I really need to get a chop saw first.

An Oriole came to the backyard the other day. I think it was a male Orchard Oriole. I'd never seen one before and wasn't sure what I was looking at. At first I thought it was a cardinal but then saw the black. What was annoying was that he was under the oriole feeder that I kind of gave up on and was filled with rotten oranges. So I cut up two oranges quickly, threw away the old ones and put the fresh ones out. But I don't think he saw me do it and now I may have missed my chance to keep an oriole, especially a rare one like that around. Darn it. That does make me want to make a new oriole feeder that's got room not just for oranges but for grape jelly dishes.

Yesterday it rained all day, but gosh was it ever beautiful and relaxing. After all tha work we just kinda sat around and didn't do much of anything. The peach tree is loaded with peaches that are startin to turn red. I need to figure out how to tell when they'll be ready to pick.

I ordered that Tesla movie that I used for the videos. I can't wait to get it. A little expensive but I know it's a movie I'll enjoy and is rare. I wish my plant and seed orders would hurry up and get there. So much to do still. I may plant some of the mini luffa seeds and see how they do. I want to grow them on the fence in the front yard. I'll post pics of the arbor soon.

EDIT: Oh almost forgot. Check out my profile! I just updated it and added my four Totem animals. I decided to keep them contemporary so I replaced the Raptor with the Raven. I felt odd that I'm such a bird lover and none of my representations were birds. I thought about it and since that are is my intelligence the bird I felt most drawn to was the raven. I'm still flip floppy on if I'm really a raven or a raptor. I don't know. Both are my intelligence and mean streak. But I think my little banner looks nice. It was hard cutting all the animals out of their backgrounds. I'm not good at that but I think that they look good once shrunk.
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Lots of stuff to talk about. My mind is a bit chaotic right now so this will probably be all out of order. First off I'm very proud of my birds. The day before yesterday we had our first predator attack on the flock. A redshouldered hawk dove on them but they all split up and avoided him. This happened in the front of the house. I was in the back so I ran to the front and scared off the hawk that was still hanging around. So the flight went pretty well. Yesterday morning Chris and I took the birds out to a Home Depot parking lot that's five miles away. They found a single wild pigeon flying around and chased him. It was so funny. I could tell this bird was running scared at these three white strangers chasing him. I was laughing so hard. This was their first five mile test and they came home perfectly. I don't know how long it took them because we went to the post office after that then had breakfast. When we got home the birds were all waiting in the loft. I'm very proud of them. I feel that I may be able to start the business quite soon. I'm thinking of may-be going to very close churches and Budist temples and giving them my info. With only three birds and a tiny radius of five miles I can't exactly get booked. If I did get a customer and they rented all three birds then that day would be filled pretty much. I'm very excited about this. I just wish I had more birds.

We went to the botanical gardens. I had a feeling the Tabebuia tree was blooming and I was right. It's GORGEOUS!! I've never seen it such a vibrant pink as this year. The pyro vine wasn't doing as much but it was still nice. I'm friends with one of the ladies that works there. Gosh I'm so bad I always forget her name. We had a fun chat about plants and pumpkins and I told her about our move and the birds. I totally forgot the botanical garden had weddings so I told her I'd give her my info once my birds were trained for 20 miles. That's how far it is from our home. I'd LOVE to have them as a steady customer. That would just be awesome!

The other morning was so cool bird wise. There were two Eastern Pheobes in my yard. I saw all the major predatory birds flying around: Red-tailed hawk, red-shouldered hawk, Cooper's hawk and Bald Eagle. The Yellow Rumped Warblers are down in huge numbers. They were all over the yard too. And a swarm of Purple Martins was flying over and low. That was the best!! It was like being at the mouth of a bat cave when all the bats came out. These birds were all over the place. I bet they've just come back from their migration in Brazil. It's amazing how far they travel. Some will stay but others will keep flying north. I wish I had a martin house. I want to grow gourds to make my own Martin houses. I bet those were scouts and I don't know if I missed my chance to establish a colony. I'd have to buy gourds if I want to get it up in time and I don't see that happeneing. My pigeons circled during all this. I don't think they were able to land with all the air traffic over my house.

Oh and yes it was a perfect day for flying. Not only were all the birds out but so were the air palnes. Our area has an air port for private planes, gliders and sky divers. There was a bi-plane that was flying around. It was so cool. There was also an old WWII looking Mustang style plane flying. I've seen several gliders being towed by propeler planes too. It's so neat out here.

I got another good section of writing done as well. I'm happy with how my story's coming along. I'm nowhere near finished but any progress is good progress. I've got to stay on top of it. I need to ride this creative wave as long as it lasts.

The State Fair is in town. Yikes that means the band Runa Pacha is too. I NEED to get working on that drawing for them. I'm picutring drawing them playing in a cute style and having a llama on one side, a few gourds and a condor on the other side. He won't be flying. He'd be standing with the band. That would be a neat thing. Oh and the sun in the background since the sun god was so prominent in their religion.

We planted one of our baby Jacarandas yesterday. I hope this one will do well and grow quickly. I'd love to have flowering trees like the ones at the botanical garden. Our baby Tabebuia is so tiny and cute. I hope it will get big too and flower soon. I've been told it can take seven years to get the first flowers. Yikes! That's not good, but I have seen younger trees with flowers so I guess it depends on the tree. Oh and the one tree I wanted to get rid of I may not. I may just trim it so it's away from the house. It's getting fruits and I think it's a peach tree. I have no idea. May have to ask on the gardening forum for another I.D..
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I'm pissed right now. The computer is making me mad. I uninstalled Adobe CS3 because it was giving me fits. Well I just found out that somehow it must have uninstalled my driver for my scanner. Not again!! Of course it tells me to stick the CD in. Well I don't know where it is and even if I did know where it was it wouldn't work. This has happened before for no reason. The scanner worked fine then suddenly it decided the software on the CD was no good anymore. So now I'm scannerless. I found this out when I opened Photoshop to scan a sketch I'm working on. I want to blow stuff up right now. I hate it when these things happen when installing stuff shouldn't be so damn hard. Yes I downloaded the drivers from Epson. No that doesn't work either. Now I have to bug Alex again. He found the driver somewhere last time. I don't know how. But with this new drawing that's almost done I really need my scanner. As an artist I'm dead without it. Must get scanner working ASAP.

Well I WAS in a good mood. I've had a rather creative day other wise. But I'll get to that in a moment. I'm sick of the computer having problems of one sort or another. At least Alex found out why it kept shutting off. It wasn't over heating as everyone had suspected. I figured it couldn't be because it would turn off when I had just started it in the morning and it was still cool. Turns out the power supply was bad. Alex changed it out and he told me it was burned and had wires that were about to melt. Holy cow. So I at least am very happy to be able to listen to CDs and mp3s again in Media Player.

The day started with my Gouldian Finch getting out of his cage. I had left the door open and was thinking, "My finch is great. I leave the door open and he doesn't get out." I had to think that. The moment I did he got out. And what does every bird do that gets out? Why it goes into the macaw cage of course!! Yes let's all go into the worst possible place to land. Well with such a tiny bird I knew Daimon wouldn't catch him. So I kinda let it play out and wondered how long it would take for Daimon to realize it was pointless to try to eat this finch. I went to get the camera because the size difference between these two was just incredible. Of course the moment he saw the camera he forgot all about eating the finch and started hogging the spot light. Here's what I got.



I circled the finch in the lower left in case he's hard to find. Daimon was moving which is why he turned out blury.



And here's the finch being all cocky and cute. I unlike Daimon didn't have a hard time catching him. He was a handfed baby and I managed to grab him after a few tries.

Ok lastly I've started working on Owen's Character sheet. I've drawn four of his five poses. Check this out. I had to take a picture and it's hard to see because my SCANNER isn't working. Grrr. Anyway...



Click for full size. I only have to draw a complete back pose of which I'm thinking of cheating and only drawing his head and shoulders. Since the 3/4 back view you can see most of his back and I don't feel like redrawing it. I don't know. May-be I won't take the lazy way out. I'll also add a detailed shot of his helmet both wearing it and not. I'll also draw his sword. This should be a very nice reference sheet and it will be funny because he'll be narrating it himself. I hope you guys can take the over blown ego. He'll be so bad. Hehe gotta love Owen.

Edit: Silly me. This is why when I get angry (or any strong emotion. Happiness can screw you up too) I don't act right away. I forgot Chris bought a brand new scanner. It's an awesome one. So until I can get mine fixed I'll just scan stuff on his. I'll have to aim them to myself which will be the only annoying thing. So that's why the scan is nice. Well sorta. I need to learn how to use Chris's scanner. Hehe.
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Poor Chris. He got a sore throat last night and got sick. I've been taking care of him though feeding him healthy food, keeping him warm and giving him medecines. It's a cold. I really don't think I'll get it. I feel great and I trust that my immune system is strong right now. I fed the birds by myself this morning. That's not a problem. I've been feeding my birds alone long before I met Chris, but I'm slower when I feed alone. Well more bad news. Torque's baby died in the aviary. I don't get it. I think the problem is a really strange one. I think the parents are OVER feeding the chicks. I may cut back on food. This baby had food in his crop up to his chin and it's very possible he Asphyxiated. If the food came back up that can happen since the pharangeal opening is on the tongue. I don't want to hand feed any more babies. It's nice having a brake since my two whites have weaned and the parents need to learn how to be parents. It's the first time for everyone except Gorda and Turbo. I would say keep a better eye on things but I have been. This all happened suddenly.

I'm not really upset just disapointed. But I've still had a very nice day. The weather was nice again. I tried a different type of orange from one of our trees. The color of it is more yellow and it has a milder taste. I think I like that better than the regular oranges. Yum. The budgies like them too. They've been getting slices everyday.

I went out and mailed off a lot of stuff. I sent out my ebay auction for the Kroenen figures. I'm worried about that. I shouldn't but I'm like that. I want to make sure they make it and that my customer will be happy. I don't want anything to happen that would ruin my 100% positive feed back I've had for nearly ten years now. I went to a feed store and picked up some wire for the last part of the aviary. The mesh is slightly bigger and the wire is thicker. I hope I can cut it and staple it on without it being a problem. And I really need to get the loft onto its stand. I hope the neighbors can help me with that tomorrow. My birds are ready to start flying. Can't waste anymore time.

And today is Boxing Day. I don't really know what that is but you know I love holidays so happy boxing day. I pretend it's a day to celebrate people that play the sport boxing. Or like Squidward it's a bunch of boxes fighting boxing style HAHAHA.
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Today was a very lazy day. Chris and I beat The Simpsons Game. It was a lot of fun. You could only be the the family members unfortunately. But there was one level where you had to rescue Frink from a gorilla. That was good. It was funny how the game kept making fun of itself saying it sucked and how it had ripped everything off of every game. If you were good with your video game history you'd catch all the hints and references. Of course I was cracking up all the classic SNES and Genesis Sonic and Mario refs. Bart and Lisa going through the warp pipes and making the suction noises while in the running pose was great! That's just some of it. Playing this game got me thinking about Frink again. I want to draw him and his family now. He's so cute and sweet.

I got my commission in the mail today from silvolf. We chatted on aim for a while. Chris sent her a ton more metal mp3s from his massive collection. I thanked her for the drawing and was flipping out at the two adorable budgie stickers she put on the letter that came with it. Chris said I was more excited about the budgies than the drawing. I told him the budgies were just unexpected is all but I loved it all.

Then we cleaned up the birds. Everyone needed their papers changed. I'm glad that's out of the way now. We went to the store and picked up more pie crust and we're currently baking the last of the pumpkin batter. I hope this one will turn out as good since it sat in the fridge for a few days. We also bought a few more ingredients like evaporated milk since I have two more pumpkins lying around. One pumpkin makes two pies. Must remember that. And I went ahead and ground all the cloves with the mortar and pestle. Lots of fun. I need to look up info one what cloves are. Perhaps I can grow my own. Spices are expensive and if I can grow, dry and powder my own I will.

Silvolf and I were talking about Owen and I showed her some of my earlier drawings of him. Now I've noticed that something hasn't been quite right with him lately but I couldn't figure out what. After showing her I began to compare the drawings and realized it's his eyes. I changed the way I drew his eyes and that's why he looked different. Mostly in his upper eyelids. Before I used to draw just two lines that headed for the middle of the eye but didn't connect. Ever since the drawing of him in Slytherin I've been completely closing the eyelid. I've been perpetuating that same mistake over and over since then!! Don't close his eyelids, Des! Owen has bulging judgemental piercing eyes. I'm amazed how in drawing a small detail like that can make such a difference. In this drawing from my icon his eyes are right. So I have to be careful about that from now on. I KNEW his eyes weren't right and now I finally figured out what was wrong.

Chris showed me a great patriotic video with awesome music and lyrics. I'm all riled up and feeling American now. We kick ass! Check this out.




Courtesie of the Red, White and Blue.
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I got up and first thing I did was leave with Chris to go pick up the birds from Luis's. I was determined to get them and tell him that I thought it was very rude to not call and let me know he had to cancel and the fact he's done this twice to me now. Also that he doesn't carry his own phone or checks his voice mail or calls back. I was very pissed. I get there and he wasn't in because he went to Puerto Rico to see his sick mother. His wife was home and she let me in. I wasn't going to bring it up to her because my beef wasn't with her. Also it's hard to be mad when you think that that's a a good excuse for not showing up. But still it's not hard to take a few seconds to say, "Sorry I can't make it. Don't wait up I had an emergency." I had my list with me of all the birds I had to get back and how many cages. I got some of the cages. I was more interested in getting my birds. I stuffed a dog crate full of cockatiels, pigeons and doves. Some had babies and some had eggs so I brought the proper containers for them. In the pigeon cage with Turbo and Gorda there were lots of babies. They had one nest that I knew was there because Turbo was sitting tight on it. There were two babies that would rush me when I opened the door begging to be fed. This made me think he was handfeeding them and that they weren't weaned yet. I don't know if these are Turbo's babies or not. His wife didn't know. She only feeds and waters them. OY the last thing I needed was to have his birds die because I took away the parents. So I decided to just grab the two extra babies. I told her I was doing this and I could give those babies back once they weaned or once he got back. I made sure she had my number so he could call me with questions or problems. He's supposed to return on Friday.

That's the difference. I'm very responsible in my business both to the animals and my customers. I had four budgie I'd left but only found two. So I'll have to call him Friday and ask where my other two are. I was nervous and annoyed. His chihuahua had had puppies in the aviary. I'm glad Chris thought they were so funny and cute. Well they were but they were annoying too because I'm trying to catch biting birds and had to content to being careful where I stepped so I wouldn't step on a puppy. ARG!! And it didn't help that the puppies purposely got between your legs and chewed on your shoelaces. Double ARG! So I packed up what I could then headed off to pick up the pigeon from Rick's. Luckily Rick lives in the same subdivision. I got there and saw the pigeon was a short beaked kind but one thing was neat was that she had one red/orange eye and one brown. She looks like a different bird from each side. I love her orange eye. Chris says I should name her Yuna because of that. She flies well but does have a bad leg. I'll have to see what I can do about fixing it. Rick and his friends found it amusing that our truck was stuffed full of birds and I was adding another. I told him I'd just come from another bird house and was making my bird rounds for pick ups. hehe.

On the way home I realized, "OMG!! I didn't grab Titanic and his mate!!!" Titanic is one of my sweet older males that sings a lot. He was my first talking cockatiel and special because he flew into my life. I never found his original owner but I hope they know somehow he ended up in good hands...until now. How could I have missed him? I think with all the puppies and extra babies and eggs my count got messed up and I didn't look at some cages that were on the very bottom. Sigh, well I have to go back to pick up the last of my cages anyway. I didn't take any pictures, but I will and I'll post those here and on my pigeon journal soon. So right now I'm handfeeding two babies. A pied and a normal from Turbo and Gorda. Turbo and Gorda are in the aviary and don't have a nest so I have to take care of these little guys. They were a bit old but I managed to get them banded. WOO hoo my first banding ever. The older bird was a tight squeeze. I had to use soap to get it on.

Then Chris and I went out to Target and a dinner date. He got me this neat DVD set of Christmas movies like Rudolf, the Grinch and a Santa movie. I also picked up a copy of Wicked. It's neat because the edges of the pages are neon green. I love that! I hope it will be a fun read.

Well no pics but I did make a movie of my babies being handfed. I think this is my best so far because I have subtitles and background music.




The music is Insanity by King Diamond. Listen closely and you'll here one squeek and at the end budgies screaming in the background.

Oh, I have two people down on the official list for the calendar so far. I only need three more.
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Well I've been thinking about it. I'd love to get these calendars printed but I'm a hundred dollars short. I hate to even ask this but would some of you consider paying early so I can get the prints going? The price would be $20US that includes shipping. I would need at least five people to do this so I could have it covered. If I got those five people you'd have to wait a little extra to get them while it goes to print. If for some reason it doesn't work out I'll give everyone their money back. I'll definitely keep you guys informed. I made a list of those interested but it's been so long I need to update it and make sure I have the same people or different people on it. Ok so here's a preview of what you'll be getting.



Click for full view. Size will be 11x8.5 inches closed. Open it will be 11x17 inches. So let me know and I'll add you to the list. Once I get five people I'll make the order. I'll take money orders, checks (hold until clears) and may-be pay pal. I just got my pay pal and had a bad experience on my first use with it. I didn't sign on as a seller with it. Do you know if I were to be sent payment would I get charged and is it alot? If so it won't be worth it for me to even use it.

Calendar List
1. the_pixie ü
2. cheezey ü
3. darknessiguana ü
4. kyence ü
5. queen_kitora ü

I'm very excited about the commission I ordered from silvolf. She sent me a preview and so far it looks great. Sorry still haven't thought of a background but I will let you know soon. Anyway it's going to be Owen, Thanatos and Solan. Three of my four bad boys. Very cool. Thanatos needs more attention anyway.

I got an aim last night from my friend Rick. He told me he found a pigeon and watched to know if I'd take it. The poor bird's been hit by a car but is ok now, eats and is friendly. It's a breed called an Ancient. I wish people wouldn't breed these birds because they have virtually no beak. They look like budgies but they don't have a beak. When they have babies the babies have to be fostered out because the parents can't feed their own young. That's wrong and cruel to perpetuate a gene that nature would have killed off. I'll take this bird because the poor thing has to be resuced and I have the extra room. But I'm definitely going to make sure he won't breed. Also Rick lives very close to Luis so Chris and I are going to go tomorrow to pick up some of my birds. About darn time.
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Well sure enough Luis stood me up again. He never showed up on Sunday and the worst part is he didn't even call to say he wasn't going to make it over. I left a note on the door saying that if he had come to leave the birds on the patio because it was left unlocked. No birds so he didn't come at all. My car still isn't working right but I'm going to have to go out there and pick up the birds myself. I'm tired of his no shows and no calls and I'm going to let him know so. I'm grabbing as much as will fit in my car. If they have babies I'll grab them too and hand feed them. I'll keep my end of the bargin and give him the babies once they wean but I don't want to leave them there because he won't separate pairs and would let them keep breeding beyond three clutches which isn't healthy. I force my birds to stop breeding for their own good.

And DA was stupid again today. They moved a bunch of my pics to my scraps. Those jerks! Their excuse was that they were in the wrong category. I think it's because they were screen caps from the wrestling game but they can't get me because they are of my own characters. Since I'm sure they are watching me I'm going to give it a week or two then move them all back. Scraps is a stupid concept anyway. It's supposed to be a gallery to show your best stuff. Why have a section for bad or sub par stuff? Why would you want to show that? And even if you did unless you know the url there's no way to access the darn page. I'm so glad I don't react on emotions. I wanted to send them a scathing letter and put everything back myself but if you're a good villain you bide your time. Once they quit looking at my gallery I'll strike and put it back thwarting their usless efforts. And if I get any grief I have them on my website where they can't touch me and is better so screw you DA! GAH and why does it keep logging me out now? Everytime I leave or close th browser and come back I'm logged out. I never was logged out. This sucks.

I've been working all day on the calendar again. I finally found a way to make the grids and have a plan for how to put all the pages together. I got so busy I forgot to call the local printing company. That is probably for the better. I'd rather call when I have completed files I can send off anyway. I made it to March including the two months left in this year. Some of the trickiest stuff is finding the holidays. I'm not exactly sure if I got Chinese New Year and Earth Day right since I keep turning up different dates on searches. I think I can finish the grids tomorrow then start the fun part of putting in the colors and pictures.

We went and picked up Transformers on DVD today. We watch the first set of making of and it was really neat. My only complaint about the movie is that they were fools to not higher Frank Welker to play Megatron.

A finch died today. It was one of my Javas. So I finally took the time to bury some of the birds I have had in the freezer. I'm not upset. I've been expecting this since the whole flock is very old and they will all probably start dying as they already have. There is one death that's coming though that I'm going to take kind of hard. Not as hard as when I lost Phage but still hard. Gaus my big yellow budgie. He's an amazing ten years old. That's very old for a budgie and REALLY old for an English budgie which have shorter life spans. Budgies average around 6 years. English Budgies around 4. Gaus is 10. But he's slow and doesn't fly anymore and mostly sits on the bottom of the cage while the other budgies play. I'm going to bring him inside soon to keep more comfortable. But I'm really expecting it any time now. Gaus out lived my two favorite and best talking budgies Virus and Phage. I got Gaus in 1997 as my first hand fed baby budgie. I was told he was a girl and thought so until his nose stayed pink. Adult hens get brown noses. Also I can tell what baby budgies are now easier than I could back then. Virus taught him to say budgie and hello. But when Virus died he quit talking. Then I got Phage to relace Virus. Gaus was there through all of that so he's special. I called him my helicopter budgie because he was so big, would fly so slow while flaping so hard. I'm going to miss him when he goes.

Well working on my art I had totally forgotten about this but Chris didn't. This is a funny image he made in Photoshop.



I had totally forgotten about his idea to have Dr. Claw talking to Zorak and Squidward. He still wants to do this project. Well, I'm all for it once I'm done with the calendar. Comment on his journal draconisthanos if you like it. He needs to make another post anyway. *hint hint*
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What a full day today has been. I cut a path out to the big bush of Four O'Clocks. It was really hot today and I tried to not be out much until the evening. Chris came home early and we ordered cable and internet from Verison. So by next week I will finally have a high speed connection. Good ridance modem. Woo hoo. Unfortunately where we are we couldn't get regular cable from any company. We have to have sattelite which I didn't want. I don't like the idea of losing reception in storms, clouds or birds landing on the dish. I also liked that in cable the weather channel was specific to your area for the local forecast. I don't like these general reports they have now. Gosh doesn't anyone have normal cable anymore or are we really out that far in the middle of nowhere? But I can't wait to have high speed internet. Oh that will be so nice.

We've pretty much finished the entertainment set for the game room. Chris is still working on some little details. This is the first time we've had all the game systems out. The Rage machine has its own corner. Later we're going to add shelves to display all our action figures, cars, kaiju etc. I've been thinking of doing the computer room in a dark red with gold and black accents. I'm going for the fancy Davon office look. So this will be the next room I paint.

After that we drove out to Luis's to pick up my pigeons. I got 11 of them back. We stuffed them all into a big dog crate. I also got my pair of male gouldians and pair of society finches back. If I had had room I would have taken my budgies and Java finches but wasn't able to. I gave him my new number and address and he's all ready to go to help me start building the loft. Here's the deal and as far as deals go this rocks. It's just insane. He'll build my loft for me and I can pay him back but letting my cockatiels, doves and pigeons stay with him for one more clutch of babies. He's impressed with what good breeders I have and how many babies they have. Of course. My birds are champion blood lines and I've done nothing but take good care of them. I've always had very good tiel breeders. And to get a whole building out of it Hell yeah I'll let him keep them longer so he can get more babies out of them. He wasn't impressed with my budgies but that's ok. I warned him the budgies were aggressive and I don't think he liked that. He'd put his cockatiels in with the budgies and I told him not to do that. I don't know why people don't listen to me until it's too late. I told him the budgies were as bad as lovebirds. They are just like lovebirds only smaller with the females being extra aggressive and that they would hurt the tiels. Well they did. So now he knows and last time I went the tiels were in a seperate cage. Geee, I wonder why?

Anyway, I'm so excited that we might get this loft soon. But I haven't finished the floor plans. Actually I don't know how. Making architectural drawings is harder for me than drawing characters. I'm not sure what I'm doing and I keep ending up with lots of wasted space. I need help. I need to have this drawing done to scale and SOON. Could one of you fellow artists possible offer any advice? If need be I can post what I have so far. Oh and the pigeons he's keeping to breed are Turbo and Gorda. I was so happy to see Gorda and her two newest babies. Last time I went they were just eggs. He lost one of his pigeons to a hawk so I can understand that he'd want to keep the babies.

So I brought my birds home. The finches are on the patio. I have to clean the cage and put them in a bigger one. I put the dog crate in the aviary and the pigeons walked out. There are no real perches in there except for the support 2x4s going around the middle. They can use that, a feeder, a nest box and some woody vines. I do have to make some perches on poles since the walls are chicken wire. They were flying around scared but they'll learn where they can land. It was late and too dark to take pics but I'll take some tomorrow. I've got this HUGE Bouganvillea growing over the aviary. It gives it nice shade but I'm going to have to kill it because it's threaded through the wires and I need to rewire everything. I need to find out what other plant I can grow that will provide shade and isn't an annual. But wow my white pigeons looks so good in there. It's very relaxing to be there and see my pigeons in this nice aviary and all my nice flowers.

I saw the most unusal moth today and was thrilled to have it. It was a Gaudy Sphinx Moth. The caterpillars feed on grave vines. I do have native muscodine grapes which I've been thinking of totally getting rid of. I'd rather use the arbor they are on to grow gourds. But now I'm having second thoughts. But I've never seen a caterpillar on the grapes so I don't know what to do yet. Anyway the Gaudy Sphinx is beautiful and the most colorful sphinx moth. I was so excited I tried to catch one with a butterfly net but missed. I accidentally caught a five spot. It was dark and it was hard to see so I caught the wrong one. Oh and this is kinda bad. I found out the Five Spot is the adult form of the caterpillar called Tomato Hornworm. That means when I plant tomatoes next year these caterpillars are going to give me Hell. What I'll do is plant extra tomatoes for the caterpillars and transfer what I find to the sacrificial plants. Also I'd like to raise them again inside my house. I love raising these moths since that's what I did so long when I worked at the butterfly garden at the museum.

Ok totally changing gears. Ever since I posted the picture of my Dr. Claw chair I've been thinking about Dr. Claw and the show he ws on Inspector Gadget. First off I HATE Gadget himself and was only fan of the show for Claw. The show came out when I was in like second grade and I was too young to realize that bad guys don't win in kid cartoon shows. I watched each ep hoping that the next one would be the one when Dr. Claw would finally win...or that they'd finally show his face. To me Claw's face was always in plain sight. I imagined him as being a demon and the mad symbol was his face. He had metal claws why not a black metal face. That would rock. I know about the crappy toy that came out and that is NOT Dr. Claw. To me Claw will always be a metal faced demon. Well another thing I was thinking about, despite how I loved and hated the show at the same time it really was ahead of its time. It had concepts that seemed like magic or at the time science fiction. For one the girl's "computer book". Heck that was a laptop! She could look up anything and carry it around everywhere. And her computer watch was a cell phone. Both Gadget and Dr. Claw had GPS computers in their cars. This show came out in like 1982!! Amazing that so much of it came true. Watching the show now kids wouldn't think much of it because all those things would seem normal.
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Oh gosh I'm so tired. Chris worked in the morning again then came home and we kept working on the house. We finished painting the game room. It looks great. I painted the footer and the trim around the closet and door glossy black.



I'll take more pics once it's set up. Those are the shelves for the entertainment set. I love them in black. They used to be this ugly brown color, but I wanted Chris to paint them black. I didn't want ugly brown shelves in the house. You can kind of see what they used to look like in This picture.

We also put Daimon's cage back together and that was really hard. Each piece weighs a ton and really it takes three people to build it. But we did it just the two of us. My back was hurting after that though. But it was worth the effort and Daimon is happy to be back in his full sized cage. Look how cool my birds look in their new home now.



What's nice about this is the tile. I can roll that big cage around and get in there to clean and sweep under it and the bird shelves.



Here's the view from the side. Notice the little green clear cage in the bottom shelf. That's Alex's budgie Sky. She got in a fight with another female and got hurt pretty bad. I'm keeping her and medicating her for him. She's doing much better and should be ready to go home by next weekend. I've got her on antibiotics and want to make sure she gets them for five more days. The wounds on her leg are healing up nice.



And last picture for today. These are my Titanic figures. From left to right are John Jacob Astor, Molly Brown and Captain Smith. I love history and Titanic is one of my favorit things to study. I've had these figures since I worked in the museum and we had the Titanic exhibit. That was almost four years ago. I bought these figures and never took them out of their boxes because I never had room to display them. I also didn't want them to get dirty or lost. I'm so happy to finally get them out. The pic isn't very clear but Molly has so many details. They all are very well made.

Just wondering for those of you that keep tags. Do you have a way you organize them? Sometimes I talk about something that I only mention once and don't know if I should make a whole new entry for one topic. But then again I may want to find that obscure post one day when I talked about orange bouncy balls or something. Then there are my big categories like birds. Sometimes I talk about specific things like today rebuilding Daimon's cage. That would go under birds because I don't plan on building his cage again for years. The problem is I think my list of tags is getting too long but I don't know how to organize it. If I should have broad categories or a bunch of specific little categories that would make it a longer list still. Any suggestions?
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Gosh I'm loving it here. Today was great. Chris got me that bird bath I wanted. It's beautiful. And I waited until dusk. All the four O'Clocks were open and I got to see the sphinx moths again. This time Chris was able to go outside with me. We got real close and put our fingers under some of them and felt the wind from their wings. They are very easy to get close to and O-so cute! Here is more info on Four O'clocks. We have this color and they are likely the Brazillian strain.

Ok picture time. ( 8 pics of the house )

The show went fairly well for me today. It was very slow and small. I've never gone to one run by this new guy and when we got there he seemed over contrling by telling us where to park and that he wanted to meet us at the back door and walk us to our table. No table cover was provided but luckily we had a twin sized blanket that worked fine. But I got over that quickly once we set up. Both of us made a big mistake. We loaded up the birds and cages but forgot our supply bag with the change box, price cards, recipts etc. That's NEVER happened before. But it's a good thing this one was so close. So Chris was able to run home, feed the rest of the flock and run back with the supply bag and the camera. When he got there I had my first customer. This really nice lady wanted my last quaker. I gave her a good price and knew from her story he was going to a good home.



Here he is in his temporary travel cage she had. It was funny to stuff him in there. I hope she can get him out when she gets home. The door was tiny! I also took this funny pic of my cockatiels.



Cockatiel Totem. Too bad a third bird didn't get under them or it would have been great. I sold everyone except for two tiels. By that time we were so bored with how slow everything was that we decided to just leave super early. We didn't want to wait around until 4Pm. We split around 2pm. I hope the owner doesn't get pissed at us but I don't think two birds would have sold in two hours at a show that was practically dead. Besides I paid for my table so he shouldn't have a reason to complain. So very close to selling out. I met with a lady that knows WAY more about cockatiels and their genetics than I do. She's someone that I will take heed of when she speaks. She has her own big breeding opperation and gave me a very interesting proposition.

She's been asked to fill an order for 400 birds. She's close but she can't meet it. Basically this is the same as that CD guy claiming to have the merchandise but really hoping to buy it later but still taking the customer's money. She sounded like she's in a bad pickle and wanted me to help her out. She wants my babies when they are about seven days old. She'd give me $15 for regulars and $20 for white faces. Doesn't sound like much but at seven days I haven't invested much in them anyway. She can come and take the whole clutch, I can start the birds over again and be done with my breeding season very fast. I wasn't going to breed any tiels but since I don't have the pigeons making money for me yet I think I will do this until I start to work with them full time. I don't know how many tiels she needs to meet that 400 but I wont' do more than three clutches per pair. The good thing is I won't be over crowded and be forced to not breed like what happened last year. Well I wasn't over crowed just filled to capacity and had to stop. I'd never over crowd my birds. That's just asking for disease to come in.

My rival was there like always. Goodness why does she come even to the shows you've never heard of. It's like you can't shake her. But as always I have better birds and happier return customers. I met with a lady I sold some lace wings two four years ago and she told me her birds are doing great. Awesome. Then I met with another lady that bought tiels about six months ago and she told me she's thrilled with her babies and told me the names and the funny things they do. See that makes it all worth it. I love hearing that the birds are doing well and making people happy and that they are in good homes. I get smiles and these people are happy when they see me. In fact I didn't know I'd sold a blue budgie years ago to the lady that wants to do business with me. Chris went to her table to give her my info since I was packing up and leaving early. When she saw my name she remembered who I was and told me that I was the one that had sold her Jaws. I didn't know what she meant so she told me the story. She bought a baby budgie from me to hand feed herself. I'm one of the few, VERY FEW, that hand feeds budgies. Well for some reason my babies go insane and will attack you when you feed them because they go food crazy. She told me this blue budgie would attack the syring when it was feeding time and bite with full force that you could feel it on the other end. So they named him Jaws. HA HA!! That's awesome! Nice to know my psycho budgies are biting and making people happy.

The reason she wants such young babies is she wants to put her own bands on them because she sells to a fancy pet store in New York City. I've never shipped my birds out of state. I'd be afraid to, but the thought of my babies (even with her bands they are still mine) ending up in a big fancy New York store also appeals to me very much. Let my reputation spread out of state. That thrills me quite a bit too.

So a good show. After that Chris and I went bike riding. We left the truck at Roy and Julie's again. One thing we saw that was very disturbing was a horse and a Gopher Tortise. Now Gopher Tortises are endangered but you wouldn't know it. They are common in the state but not many other places. They dig huge tunnels and love sandy areas. Well one had gotten into this horse's are and the horse was kicking it REALLY HARD! It was aweful. You could hear it echo everywhere and I thought he was going to break the shell and kill it. Why would a horse do that? I'm sure the turtle wasn't bother him. So we yelled at the horse and managed to get him to come over. I was a little afraid because I don't know horses and he was kinda big and scary. I fed him some grass to distract him but once I was out of food he went back to kicking the turtle. I didn't want to trespass but I think in this case it was ok. So I went down the long dirt driveway up to the fence and stuck my hands through the wire fence trying to lift this turtle. If I could lift him over the fence and let him go somewhere else he'd be fine. But the turtle dug his feet in the ground and was really heavy. I couldn't stick my hand in too far and needed two hands to lift him. The horse then started kissing my arm and I was afraid he would bite me. Finally I realized the horse wasn't going to bite but then the turtle wasn't cooperating and going deeper and deeper into this guy's property. I felt bad and gave up because now there was nothing I could do. We rode back and told Roy what had happened. Luckily he know the owner of the property. He called them and I think they did rescue the turtle. We drove back to check. The turtle AND the horses were gone. I bet he locked them up for being bad. Here's a pic of the horse and the turtle.



Chris took this one.



Chris also took this one of my bike beads as I was riding. Aren't they colorful. I like this pic too because you can see my insanely long hands in a weird controtion. It's normal to me.

Oh and almost forgot. I got a new green English Budgie. He's not very big but he'll be a breeder.

EDIT: Sorry I've missed some of you on AIM the last few days but as you see I've been VERY busy. I've had to get up early so that means going to bed earlier. My sleep pattern is changing and I've been waking up earlier on my own which I'm very happy about and need if I'm going to be flying birds. But that means I get tired earlier now too. I haven't forgotten you though. Especially those of you I'm RPing with. I am thinking about you and our stories. And now I'm going to bed. Good Night.

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Well the sun did come back so that made me happy. I was watching the feeder today and in the neighbor's yard a saw a big wing flap. I'm like, What the heck? It was the young Cooper's hawk I had fed!! What was he doing perched on a stand in their yard? It really threw me. I wanted to go over and knock and say, "Did you know you have a hawk in your backyard?" I wonder how that would have gone over. But he flew up into the wires. My heart raced. I didn't have any rats on me this time. But I did grab a piece of sandwhich beef from the fridge and ran outside. I put it on the feeder again and he saw it. But then a stupid bluejay came in and started harassing him. NO!!! He flew into the tree. What's funny is that it's an ear tree and he grabbed an ear and was trying to break it open and eat it. Yes silly young bird. But the bluejay kept diving at him so he flew away and didn't ever go for the meat. Darn so no repeat of last time. I think he'd want live food that he could kill himself anyway. Tomorrow I want to go to the petstore to pick up some food for the snakes anyway. I think I'll pick up an extra rat to have around just in case since he's coming around now.

Chris got home and then we went out to eat. We went to one of our favorite German restraunts then we went to Target. I wanted to pick up more soil for the raised bed. I got five bags and found a blub planter. I've been needing something that bites holes out of the ground because I'm going to plant a bunch of sunflower seeds for that sun forest I want. This will help a lot. I think I know a way to keep the squirrels out of the new soil too. I'll put little plastic bottles from sodas over each seed with the tops open so they get air. That's gonna look really bad for a while but it should be cool if I can get this to work. I finally uploaded the pics of the raised beds.



The one in the foreground is for hummingbird flower and the one in the background is for veggies and gourds. They don't look like this at the moment but are covered with a light insect barrier not to keep insects out but to keep those dang squirrles out from digging. And those are my two foxglove plants. Aren't they pretty? Ok so we get back and the Coopers hawk was back on a telephone post. It was so cool to see him so close again, but this time he was attacked by a stupid mockingbird. One thing that struck me as odd was that there were pigeons right next to him. WTF? Are they stupid pigeons or are they that confident in their evasive manuvers? I also wonder if he's been picking off birds from my feeder. I don't mind. I'll sacrifice some song birds to keep him around. So yes I definitely want to keep a spare rat around just for him. I'd like to feed my hawk.

Anyway we put the soil in the raised bed and it nearly filled all of it up! I laid down red mulch and at last we planted our tomato seedlings. I also set up the five tomato cages I ordered. I will have to order more because not all the plants got a cage and I still have more seedling inside. The mockingbirds are going to LOVE all these new 'perches'. No pics yet since it was getting dark when we did this, but I'll get them tomorrow.

And now just more random bird pictures.



This is what Daimon looks like when he talks. I caught him saying a word. His eyes get all dilated like that and he hunches over. It takes a lot of energy for him to speak and he's very forceful and clear when he does. I love how he looks like a vulture in this. This is also similar to his aggressive stance.



Here he is fluffing for the camera. He's very relaxed around it and has fun. I'm SOOOO glad he's not afraid of it. He's such a coward when it comes to many other things.



Lastly Turbo being a cutie. He's holding up that feather in his face and strutting with it. Here he's standing on his tips tring to look big and give a gift to Gorda. Gorda's in the background acting like a typical female and not caring. If I were a pigeon girl I'd be impressed.

Well I've had a good time today. Need to catch up on a few things since I didn't post yesterday. Chris got me more plush Peeps yesterday. We went to Toys R Us and found they had this HUGE hairy Peep bunnies and chicks. I had to have one so I picked a pink chick. Now my collection has grown and is rounding out better with more yellow and purple too. Check out the updated pic.



The hairy Peep is on top. I was holding that one, the polka dot blue bunny, the yellow chick and the purple bunny when I went up to the register and I was laughing my head of and saying, "They're so soft and cute!" Everyone was smiling and also started to laugh. My laugher and emotions are very contageous I've found. When I walked in there were Peep posters and I started going. "Peep peep peep." And this little boy started doing it too. Now I must find a way to use these powers to my advantage hehe. Well it was fun and I love how soft and cute my new Peeps are. I'm running out of room on the table.

I got a few of the pictures of the birds to show too. First off is Protist in Daimon's old cage.



It's so funny to see that little budgie in a huge cage that she can easily walk through the bars.



Daimon is such a camera hog! I'm so glad he doesn't get scared of it and will dance and pose for it. Here he is getting in close to the lense. So funny! I love the 3D effect this has.

Today I went with Chris to his parents house for Easter lunch. I talked with his aunt and a few other guests there. Chris's dad makes such yummy stakes on the grill. My only complaint was that today was too darn cold. Tomorrow things will get back into the 80s. Anyway his mom gave me this really pretty hair clip.



Isn't that nice? And I love how pretty my hair is. I love being naturally curly when others spend so much money on perms. So after this we went bike riding and birdwatching. I saw two pairs of bluebirds and was so thrilled! They were beautiful. A flock of Cedar Waxwings landed in a tree and they were so silky and soft looking. The weather wasn't good for picture taking. I'm amazed I lasted so long in the cold, but we don't often have time to go riding so I was determined to not let that stop me. Chris also spotted a giant thistle on the side of the road. I'll post a pic of that next time. I bearly got it as we drove by and it was so awesome! Looked like a monster in a video game. I almost expected to see goldfinches on it. I know they can get like five feet tall but I hadn't expected them to be so wide.

And great news!! I have finished the Owen drawing and I am thoroughly impressed with how it turned out. So much darn work but so worth it in the end. Check this out. Click for full size.



This isn't part of my story but I did come up with a backstory of how this happened to him. On his way home from work one night he was stopped by Davon. Davon was ready to fight him to take his fire but was interupted by Solan. Something very serious had come up that he had to tend to right away. More serious than the Owen issue. Owen would have to wait. But while he waited Davon transported him to the frozen waste of Northern Canada in winter. Owen is completely unprepared. He's not wearing a heavy enough coat, it's bitingly cold, it's storming and he fears his fight might go out. If that happens he dies. I'm very happy with how the colors and special effects came out on this one. I will likely make this the January drawing and the Thagirion pic will be for December so change of plans for my calendar.

I was talking with Chris's Aunt today. I was explaining to her how fun it is to raise caterpillars to turn into butterflies or moths. I promised I'd post the steps on my journal and I thought some of you would enjoy this too since you like to garden as well.
First off you need to have a host plant that caterpillars will eat. I highly recommend Mile Weed for Monarch butterflies because it is easy to grow and monarchs are easy to raise. Milk Weed is poisonous so be careful when cutting twigs from it. Caterpillars are host specific and you can't just feed them anything. It has to the their host plant. So grow some Milkweed. The female butterflies will lay their eggs on the plant. Look on the underside of leaves and you might find eggs which are tiny light yellow dots. When you see tiny caterpillars get some empty yogurt cups with lids. Poke a hole in the middle of the lid, fill the cup with water and put a cut twig of milkweed into it. Milkweed will "bleed" its white milk. That's the poison so be sure to wash hands after handling. Place these in a ten gallon tank with a screen lid and newspaper on the bottom. Caterpillars eat a lot so they will poop a lot. If you have a lot you'll be changing papers often. When the milkweed has been eaten down replace it with fresh branches. It should take a week to two weeks for the caterpillars to reach full size. At this point they will climb the tank to the top of the screen and form a crystallis. Butterflies make crysallis by shedding their skins. Moths make cocoons by spinning silk. The crystalis will hang from the screen. In about two more weeks they will emerge as butterflies. Make sure the wings have dried completely and stiffed before releasing. Letting one go too soon and it will have to be placed on a branch and won't fly right away. That's about it. Enjoy.

Goodness we're already into the third month of the year. Time is going by fast. The corn sprouted two days ago. It's nice to see the cute little sticks emerge. Only two of my fifteen haven't come up but they may just be late. I need to plant one more row of five for proper pollination and it should be interesting. I hope I can keep the caterpillars off of it this year. Today is yucky, rainy and cloudy. Turns out we did miss out on the state fair, but I will be going to another event very similar to it. The Strawberry Festival is in town and started yesterday. I'm not missing this, though it's not as cool as the fair. I don't think the have all the exhibits and animal shows the fair does. That's what I was mostly looking forward to. But there are rides so I play to go on some.

Well finally after that whole fiasco with that girl she's finally off my watch. Good because if she'd stayed she'd have been a glutton for punishment. And now that reminds me. I totally forgot but I HAVE been published before. Back in the 90s I had an article and some of my artwork published in G-Fan magazine more than once. So I have that under my belt that I can wave around if need be. I know I'm an infectious writer and people will like my style. What's not to like hehe. Like I said, I'm not worried. I also need to get back to writing those articles for Birds and Blooms. I have no doubt those will be published again it's just on my end that I need to write the silly thing. If some thing won't happen it's because I don't do anything about it and it will be no one's fault but mine. My writing has a way of getting folks attention. Back when the game Primal Rage was new and only in the arcades I was in love with it and I wrote a few letters to Time Warner of which I got responses for!! I still have those saved away. They actually thanked me for my I think they said creative letters. One of the things I wrote them was that the game was popular and they should look into making action figures because I and many others would definitely buy them. Not long afterwards the DID and I still feel strongly to this day that I played a major role in that. I poked around so much I actually tracked down the sound creator for the game and was actually emailing her and talking to her. I bought the CD directly from her. But stupid me lost track of her. I wish I hadn't done that. Her email changed and it would be much harder to track her down now if I want to re-establish communiction.

I sent out payment to renew my breeder's license. I won't be breeding or exhibiting much this year since I'm trying to downsize. I would like to get another pair of English budgies and just concentrate on them and Gouldians. I still need to buy female Goulds too for my two lonely boys. But before that I need to sell the last of last year's stock so I can make some more cage room. Speaking of cages we brought the cage home yesterday. Check out how huge this thing is.



The sides, top and bottom. And even in pieces it's heavy.



The trays and skirt. I forgot this had a cage skirt which will make it even bigger now! Chris thinks he can put it together for me. I hope we can with just the two of us. If not we'll have to get this dad to help us. But the screws are still missing as are the bowls that go with this. ARG! I hope we can find screws that will work for this.