Today is our wedding anniversary! It kind of sneaked up on us. We didn't even realize that we had reached our 52nd anniversary together until we were on our morning walk. Oh, of course, we had both been thinking about it for sometime earlier. It's just that this morning it suddenly dawned on us that the day had arrived. So we went out for breakfast to a cozy little restaurant in Santa Rosa. Here we are fifty-two years ago:
MONTEREY
Last week we traveled with our Daughter Gretchen down to Monterey to visit the Marine Aquarium there. It was especially interesting to watch the feeding frenzy when the fish were fed. Lots of fish and fowl, otters and seals and sea lions, not to mention the huge old turtles. It was a fun trip.
On the way down, we stopped in Salinas to visit the new John Steinbeck Museum. It whetted our appetites for Steinbeck's works. I think Dickie's reading his "Cannery Row" again right now. I know I picked it up for her from the library a few days ago.
We also drove around the famous golf courses in the Monterey/Carmel area - Pebble Beach, Spy Glass, Poppy Hills and Cypress Point. That's where I caught this guy grazing away near one of the greens.
OUR KILLDEER
I promised to let you know how things went with the third killdeer nest on our local school grounds. They hatched! Not sure what happened to the other two, but we saw two of the baby birds again this morning being carefully shepherded by the adult birds as we walked by. This is a picture I took a couple days ago.
That's about it for now. We've been experiencing some fairly warm weather the last few days, although it's cooler again today.
It finally happened. After only six months of operation on my relatively new computer, my 160-gigabyte hard drive crashed. For many years this was always somebody else's problem. I knew it could happen, but it never happened to me. I've had hard drives that lasted five, six, seven years, but not this time. This time I got caught. And how! I hadn't backed up my financial data or my photos in the past several months, so it all went up in smoke. I hated to lose some of the pictures and it was no fun recreating the financial data, but I'm finally getting back to normal. Dell Computer was quick to send me a new hard drive and a technician to install it, but I had to re-install all the software myself and there were a few glitches along the way.
I lost a few e-mail addresses, too, so, if you changed your e-mail address in the past six months, I'd appreciate it if you'd send me the new one. It would save me a phone call or the resort to snail-mail in your case.
One good thing that came out of all this was a slimmed down, cleaned up hard drive. I'm a pack rat when it comes to old files, programs and messages. I'm sure I won't ever miss 95% of what I lost in that regard. It's not that I didn't have enough room in this 160-gigabyte monster, but there was a lot of useless clutter that I'm sure I'm better off to be rid of.
In any case, be warned! You could be the next one to run into something like this. Back up your data, if it's important to you. You never know how soon your hard drive will bite the dust. I didn't!
THOSE KILLDEERS
Would you believe, our killdeer parents have returned for a third batch of offspring? Well, we can't actually be sure that these are the same parent birds that made their nest in this spot the first two times this spring, but it sure looks like it. These birds have now chosen the exact same spot three times this year. Earlier it was always so wet and rainy that we felt sorry for the adult birds sitting there protecting the nest. Now we wonder how they can stand the heat and why the eggs don't fry on those rocks when they're not protected.
This morning, when we walked by, this bird was sitting on the nest. It looked suspiciously like she might have something more than eggs to cover, but we kept our distance and hope to discover the truth on another day. Here's mama (or papa, as the case may be) doing her thing:
So keep tuned, we may have further news shortly. If so, I'll get a shot up close and personal with my new telephoto lens, a Canon 70-200 mm L that arrived today! I can't wait to try it out. Till then, here's a shot I took at the Farmer's Market on the town green last Sunday:
