no longer stray cat

Sad news for me, happy news for them: we found the cat’s owners.  They lost their “Cookie” way back in April!

juvenile mergansers, terns… and the taxonomy page

Went to Rodeo Beach, and ran into something lucky at the lagoon there…

a course of steady reading

Just wanna give a shoutout to A Course Of Steady Reading, the blog that’s pretty near the whole reason why I launched this on WordPress instead of anywhere else.  Here’s a typical recent post.

Those people who read Aphra in isolation because they “have to” or think they “should” come away unimpressed; while those who read her in context understand what a big step forward she represents.

The author has also added to the betterment of mankind with And You Call Yourself A Scientist!, my favorite amateur B-movie review site.

stray cat

A stray cat is wanting to move in with us!  He’s well behaved, and clearly accustomed to indoor life… but he does tend to disappear during the daytime and only come back in the evening.

We’ve made a flyer to stick around the block, and we’ll be doing due diligence with trying to find a proper owner, but I think he’s starting to like it here.

bad webcomic of the day

posing to the left

George W. was a conservative who got elected by posing as a centrist.  (And got re-elected only because of Al Qaeda.)

Barack is a centrist who got elected by posing as a liberal.  And who now seems to be getting ready to resume that pose for re-election.

What does this imply?  That both of them know perfectly well that though conservative policies may be favored by their cronies and backers, they were never what the voting public wanted.

jobs

Today, for a birthday present, I got a job interview.  And shortlisted for a second interview, as I learned when I got back from it.  The funny thing is, both of these are jobs that I’m really not that well qualified for, whereas the ones that really fit my skills have been completely ignoring me.

sierra birds

We went back to Sierra Hot Springs Resort, near Sierraville, for one day. After that we went to Kings Beach, on the north shore of Lake Tahoe, for a day. Which turned into a day and a half (permitting us to rent sea-kayaks) due to an Amtrak delay, which then turned into a six hour wait in Truckee due to even more Amtrak delay. I don’t much wanna take Amtrak any more.

But anyway, at Sierraville I was finally able to get good pictures of the white-faced ibises.  Or is that “ibes”?  And also, verify that they were in fact the white-faced ibis, not the glossy ibis, despite the lack of any white on any of their faces.

hummy tungy

an anna’s hummingbird sticking its tongue out at me:

animal park in Oregon

With two major vacation trips last year, I never did get caught up going through all the pictures I took.  I got back to one batch of them today… here’s a not-quite-monochrome rendering of a set of capybaras.

also, here are some lions.