Reading: Margaret George, Mary Queen of Scots and the Isles

Moving: Additional weights plus 15' at level 12 manual, 151 bpm.

Viewing: "That '70s Show"

7 February 2000: Pictures

Blake has scaled my desk organizer and has discovered the treasure I keep behind (and, in future, beneath) my Pooh pencil box: the one and only perfect tail feather he has ever kept long enough to shed. He likes to preen, smoke, and otherwise chew on dropped feathers. He doesn't realize that as soon as he drops them, they're mine. Similarly he gets upset when I sand his playpen. He worked hard at pooping all over it and leaving the exoskeletons of corn niblets all over it. He thinks it's an artform. Nope.

Soon after this he would climb onto the sun-and-moon Kleenex box I keep pens and pencils in and chew down its sides then try to climb onto the pens to summit the little speaker there. He has not so far shown an interest in my box of Alice in Wonderland stationery or the little book of American Impressionism. See the wee pewter knight that his left foot is pointing at? That little dude lives on the floor, mostly. Blake hurls him down.

Not in the picture is my pint glass of water from which Blake would soon request a drink by pinging it with his beak. I never shared my cup and plate with my dogs, though. Dogs have spit.

And note the pathetic tail. Cockatiels aren't meant to have a forked tail like the least flycatcher or whatever is the state bird of Oklahoma that I'm too comfortable right now to look up. The feather he's chewing is one of what should be two longest center feathers, flanked by five others on each side. My bird's defective tail is another reason he's a snake's lunch. But he has impossibly cute yawns.

I took some pictures around town Saturday. For months, a restaurant on Evans advertised a "hamb steak breakfast." I thought "hamb" was a perfectly reasonable misspelling, a logical extrapolation from "lamb." Since I considered it a waste of film, I never photographed it, and now that I wouldn't consider it a waste of pixels, it's gone.

Also the fundy church between here and CostCo had a big hand-lettered sign in red, "Sinners Welcome Here." By the time I got around to photographing that--I think the disappearance of "hamb" drove me to it--that sign had been replaced with a printed black one. More professional, less fundy, less fun. No picture.

The following two are just about across the street from each other on Leetsdale. I pass between them, a Scylla and Charybdis, every morning on the bus. The psychic's been there less than a year; the building's looked like that since we moved here 4.5 years ago.

This cracks me up. Couldn't the psychic foresee that the signpainter would mess up and therefore hire a different one? Isn't perfect spelling the first thing a psychic gets, since it's so obvious? And the order of the times might be deliberate, but why? Wouldn't most people be interested in the future more than the past? And if you want to be taken seriously, why the cartoon wizard? The windows around the corner to the right are bordered by little pink neon bulbs.

I maybe should caption this "for entertainment purposes only."

This building has housed at least three different businesses in four years. It's got a prime location at the junction of Leetsdale and Alameda (that's "Alameda Avenue" (which has no trees)--Boulder has "Table Mesa Boulevard"). I think the reason no business can thrive in this place is that it looks like a Confederate Army uniform. If someone would paint the place blue, the next business might have a chance. ("Moderno Furniture," the name on the wall, doesn't match the faded-out name on the awning.)