Update - I shoveled.

And now my back hurts.



And in the back yard, the birdbath. Or a snowman's backside*, you decide.



*thanks to Flickrite deadmanguru for this comparison

2 weeks...

...and it'll be Talk Like A Pirate Day, again.

Also, today is Junior Ricardipus #2's fifth birthday.

And, since I seem to be posting random thoughts, here's a picture of the handsome little budgie who's been flying around our neighbourhood recently. He seems very healthy, although a trifle puzzled as to how to get the seed out of the tube feeders we have up for the finches. His beak is just the wrong shape. There's plenty of other seed around though, so he should be ok, at least until winter comes.

The same stuff as usual

Well, a few weeks of summery weather have passed recently (punctuated by the occasional thunderous windstorm, like the one that made me half an hour late getting home last night), and that means that the sports car crop is beginning to show signs of establishing itself nicely for summer. Recently:

- a Ferrari 308 GTB (as far as I could tell), which my commuter bus actually managed to overtake on my way to work
- a few BMW M3s and a rather spiffy M Roadster, parked at the local Home Depot. I suspect that the owner was using it to pick up a bag of dirt or something similar.
- the ugly, but oh-so-expensive Bentley Continental GTC, looking even worse as a convertible than it does as a hardtop
- the tediously boring looking, but deeply expensive and horrendously fast Mercedes SL65 AMG
- the not-at-all boring, very stylish and still deeply expensive Maserati Quattroporte, as well as a Maserati Coupe looking all mean, dressed up in its best black tie and tails
- and today, a BMW 645ci, which is not by any stretch of the imagination the most lovely thing ever, but is probably pretty fun to drive anyway.

Sigh.

On the completely unrelated topic of birds, I saw a Robin and a Cardinal teaming up to chase away a Blue Jay, a species notorious for predating other birds' youngsters. Quite the rainbow of colours there, for a few seconds at least. And a few weeks ago, we had a very handsome little White-Crowned Sparrow for a day or two, migrating on through to wherever it is that they normally nest (somewhere north of here, I'd guess). Unfortunately, he was a) very small, b) far away and c) hiding under a bush, so no photos I'm afraid.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that, after several months, I saw the hawk again, being chased away by a flock of starlings. Poor thing.

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In other news, it would appear that I didn't win the University of Toronto Magazine Short Story and Poetry Contest (is anyone surprised? I'm not.) My poetic entry may yet surface as a guest-blog item over at Zoe's place at some undefined point in the future, so I'm not going to post it here. You'll just have to use your imagination.*



*I wouldn't waste a lot of time on this, though.

The obligatory post with cars and pictures

Well, as I've been muttering recently, spring has finally sprung in this part of the world and the back yard is beginning to fill up with hanging baskets of flowers:


Petunias and some yellow things.


Unfortunately, the back yard is also filling up with weeds:


This is a dandelion.


And occasionally with hack photographers taking pictures of themselves through glass tabletops:


Ricardipus.


and really silly looking birds, too.


A Common Grackle, Quiscalus quiscula, marching along.

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Oh yes, cars... well, recently, a bright red Ferrari (probably a 360 Modena) which my morning bus overtook on the highway; a white Lamborghini Gallardo parked near a waste transfer station (I suspect mob activity); and a spiffy, late-model Mustang GT at the local chopper shop (that's a "custom motorcycle modification and fabrication establishment" for you non-North Americans). A rather large number of convertible Mercedes seem to have crept out of the woodwork too, as well as the drop-top BMW M3 that I saw yesterday as it gradually left us behind on a country road. And there have even been some old muscle cars, escaping their winter garages: Camaros, older Mustangs, and the like. All in all, a good week or two.

Hawk

Again. The pictures are getting a bit better than before, but it was still a long way off. It's looking well-fed though, sleek and fat on tasty, tasty dove. Here's one of the previous pictures now that I spent some time fixing the original horrible colour balance: