Thursday, June 30, 2005

RIP Tiki

Tiki the bright blue parakeet died overnight, and I am inexplicably sad! He was a lovely bird, and when I made kissing noises to him in the morning before I removed the cage cover, he would kiss back, flutter, chirp and ring the bell and spin the little toy that hung from the top of the cage. He was a pleasant little being, whom I always felt guilty about having in a cage, no more so than this morning when I found him.

As parakeets go, I've read and heard from bird breeders that 7 years is very old for a 'keet, and Tiki was well over 9 years old, so we were lucky to have his songs for so many years. But that doesn't make it any easier, and though people who don't know anything about pets can say, "well, it was only a bird," he was a lovely little pet, and we will miss him.

I noticed he was having trouble getting up and down from the perches in his cage the last couple of days, and over the last month or two he had begun plucking all his tail feathers. Last night when I covered him, he was sitting on the bottom of his cage, but he sometimes does that when he gets cold. This morning, he was in that same position, head down, no kissing noises... just a soft little ball of feathers.

I buried him in the woods behind our house so that he will be free where he was intended to be.
Fly, Tiki...

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Rocky Mountain Elk


Rocky Mountain Elk
are very large....
Having returned to the flatlands, I now find solace in returning by pictures and memories to the mountains of Colorado. Spring has sprung there, as well, everything is unusually green due to a healthy amount of snowmelt and rains this spring, the aspen are quaking and the elk are bugling. I'm not sure if the quaking is DUE to the bugling, but I'll take it regardless!

On mornings at home when there are puffy gray clouds on the horizon, I dim my vision and pretend I'm looking at cloud-shrouded mountains. Wisconsin is beautiful, and we marveled at how incredibly green it is, in spite of the just-left Colorado greenery. But there are no mountains, so we're starting a petition to get some here. We also saw a moose, which was a rare sighting according to the natives, and even took a picture of it -- but it was so far away that we could just as well tell people it was a Sasquatch!

We motored over Loveland Pass and through Eisenhower Tunnel and hiked a bit at the base of the Flatirons and around Chatauqua Park in Boulder, and had coffee at a bistro in Winter Park and lolled in a boat on Boyd Lake in Loveland. But the best part of any of it was spending time with lovely DaughterOne. The Colorado lifestyle has been good to her, and she to it. Her being there makes me miss not only her, but my youth.

We'll let you know when the Wisconsin Mountain Petition is ready for your signature...

Friday, June 10, 2005

Colorado...or bust...

Well, I have a new pet peeve. At least for this week. Whilst traveling along the byways from western Wisconsin to Colorado, we saw many, many huge motorhomes. These people obviously don't realize yet that gasoline is upwards of $2.25 per gallon. I suspect that our return trip will see many of them stopped by the side of the road, owners standing alongside holding signs that say "Will Wash Windshields for Gas," but I'm not stopping.

The motorhomes themselves aren't the real pet peeve--it gets worse. Most of these behemoths are dragging some additional vehicle behind them, for the purpose, I suspect, of escaping the scene when the motorhome runs dry. Many of these huge vehicles are pulling small dart-abouts, such as Volkswagen Jettas or Honda Civics, but just as many seem to be coming up to the pleasure of not only RV'ing, but four-wheeling as well. They pull such lightweights as Jeep Cherokees or four-wheel drive pickups. Sheesh!

But here's a real clicker. We passed one of these 40+ foot tin wonders that was pulling a king cab pickup--4-wheel drive, of course--but in the back of the pickup was a DISH Network satellite dish. At the next rest stop they pulled in behind us, and I wanted to see just who these people were. Then I wanted to slap them all. The 40-ish guy got out and walked over to get a map. The woman of the rig stayed put, as did the other occupants--presumably kids, but I couldn't see them below the level of the windows. I did see, however, the screen of the TV on which they were watching something animated. Somehow, "Dad! Let's go camping" didn't seem to mean the same as when we were kids, or when our kids were kids, which is a pretty short time ago.

I cannot imagine taking out a third mortgage to buy a house on wheels, so the kids wouldn't have to go outside or leave the TV or satellite stations at home in order to go "RV-ing."

Stay home. Save the rest of us from the fumes of your exhaust, the inflated gas prices that occur when demand is so high, and out of the way of other travelers on the road. You can find the same amenities right in your own home without even having to pack!!

Thursday, June 02, 2005

Micro House in the Backyard just doesn't sound as rustic...


Little House on the Prairie...actually on a hill; actually MICRO house. The getaway in the backyard serves as a great place to read, listen to the rain, or HIDE!! There's a lawn swing and a fire pit close by... Son One calls it the "Mom Shelter," because he can usually hide out there, and we won't find him. At least, until he told us that...

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Arthur Andersen exonerated...everybody gets their job back?

The news is out: Andersen Consulting has been exonerated by the courts. I yawn because this announcement is akin to the apology that appears on page 300 of the local rag after it is discovered that a mistake was made in a huge front page story days before.

As you may recall (unless you've been in a coma for several years), Andersen was charged with obstructing a federal investigation--or some similar language--because it destroyed records the government could have used in the case it was building against Kenneth Lay over the Enron debacle. So while Kenny was living off the interest from investing the funds of his employees' retirement and investment funds, waiting for the Justice Department to find its legal pads, the Andersen firm was being scuttled. A shame, really, for a well-known and respected international firm. Luckily, according to this article in the Pittsburg Post-Gazette, some of the former Andersen employees were finding that their connection with the firm was not viewed as a negative by their future employers. See http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05152/513591.stm for the whole story.

However, I suspect that there are more than a few Andersen alumni who believe the Supreme Court decision was too little too late, as in the New York Times story, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/01/business/01audit.html. Can't say I'd blame them. The reversal is from a three-year-old conviction, and no doubt bittersweet news for most of the employees affected. So does this mean that Ken Lay et al will will take all the responsibility?

My good friend NS used to work for Andersen, and while she tired of the international jet setting of the job she had and decided to work for peanuts in the public sector, she maintained many friends and contacts at Andersen, so she was privy to a lot of the happenings and feelings that were sweeping the company.

Today's news reported that 28,000 people lost their jobs at Andersen. NS insists that is a gross misnomer, insisting that the 28,000 may have been just the domestic side of the job destruction. Not that 28,000 jobs isn't a staggering figure, but when you take into account the international employees as well as the folks beyond employees who also lost their jobs, the numbers become numbing. The actual number of people that lost their jobs is 82,000 or more -- 54,000 outside the U.S. Because of a Justice Department mistake. Oops. Sorry.

Where are these people now? I certainly hope they haven't banded together to form their own country of mercenaries. If they have, we are screwed.

Memorial Day brings sunshine, green grass, and blue skies!


Finally, on Memorial Day 2005, the northern Wisconsin landscape is looking green and lush...and the plants are growing in the perennial gardens, and the smell of lilacs is wafting across the valley!

Getting closer to the end of a project...


There are any number of ways to make the landscape ready for seed! While Spouse was running around the countryside looking for a drag to pull behind the lawn tractor, Son One was being creative -- dragging two old tires behind his four-wheeler was as effective (if not more so) at smoothing out the lumps.

The day before, however, Spouse had once again chopped through the phone wires. Luckily, he cut through some that had the week before been replaced by our friendly local telephone cable guy. I was glad that they had left some dead wires behind for him to chop up, lest he start in on the live ones!!

So the shed that was buried has now been excavated from the tundra, and the last steps are taking place before the seeding. There has been a lot of dirt moved, a lot of hours spent, and a lot of equipmenet moved in and out of the yard over the past several weeks since this project began. It's a good thing we live in a farming community where there are all sorts of toys for grown boys to find and play with. The massive dig has produced no valuable artifacts (unless you consider old phone lines and electrical cables 'artifacts'), but it has produced a shed which will be free from the onslaught of spring thaw streams next year.

Now, on to the next project. Maybe the construction of the 30 foot lighthouse I've been hinting at for years won't seem like such a big challenge after this last project...