Five years ago today, I posted the very first entry to this weblog. Before I began writing publicly here, I’d never been able to keep a journal for more than a month or so, despite wanting to. It’s had some slow spots (more so recently, of course), but there’s a steady stream of babble archived here now – my screen shows “Total Posts: 1596 | Total Comments: 1788”. Any day now, I’ll have someone brand new to write to. These past five years have just been a warm-up.

<a href="/cameraphone/archives/001676.html" title="The Elvis Wart "><img src="/images/legacy/weblog/cameraphone/images/200408071622/_t.jpg" alt="The Elvis Wart " width="120" height="146" class="pic" border="0" /></a>
(more inside)

<a href="/cameraphone/archives/001675.html" title="A Flock of Elvii "><img src="/images/legacy/weblog/cameraphone/images/200408071608/_t.jpg" alt="A Flock of Elvii " width="120" height="146" class="pic" border="0" /></a>
(more inside)

<a href="/cameraphone/archives/001674.html" title="Elvis! "><img src="/images/legacy/weblog/cameraphone/images/200408071605/_t.jpg" alt="Elvis! " width="120" height="146" class="pic" border="0" /></a>
(more inside)

“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we. " -- President George W. Bush, August 5, 2004

We’re now in overtime! Which is OK… my wife’s birthday is tomorrow, and having the young’un then would give me one less birthday to remember. I’m so bad at those. And many congratulation go out to Jason and Lysa Stiffler on the (early) birth of thier daughter Helena. I could say something about Jason’s need to finally come in ahead of me on something, but . . . I won’t.

Be warned: this is not for everyone. But a few of you might like to know that the soundtrack to Silence! Silence of the Lambs: The Musical is available for downloading. Even the show-stopping duet between Buffalo Bill and Catherine, Put the F’ing Lotion in the Basket , is there.

Help the scarecrows scare the crows in this beautifully done Flash game: A Murder of Scarecrows. And no… no baby yet. Any day now. No – any minute now.

There is a female golden eagle that lives down by the river on one corner of our property. I’ve only seen her once close-up, as she was atop an electric pole looking down on our chicken pasture (Golden Eagles generally don’t eat chickens, but she did seem to like watching them.), but most every day I hear her cries and see her flying high above the river. Golden Eagles are rare in this part of the country, and there’s an outside chance she’s really a Red-Shouldered Hawk, but I really think she’s an eagle. I haven’t found her nest (there are several of them in that area of the woods), but she has two young birds that are just learning to fly. I understand that’s rare, too – the hatchlings are hatched a couple days apart, and often the older will kill the younger as it is hatching. The mother has made a game of teaching the babies, namely hide-and-go-seek (or maybe Marco Polo). She flies up from the river into a patch of woods at the other end of our property, up by the house. There, she hides in the branches and makes her calls. The babies then leave their nest and try to find her. They listen to her, answer her calls, and fly a little closer. There’s a little creek with a line of trees that connects their nesting trees with the woods she’s hiding in, and they hop from tree to tree along the way. Last week, they stopped at nearly every tree to rest. This morning, they made the whole flight with only one stop. Once they find their mother, there’s a loud cacophony of screeches, the eagle equivalent of “nanny nanny boo boo, I can see you!”. Then, she flies back to the nest with the two of them following behind. The year has really rushed by, as I’ve been pre-occupied with getting ready for our own baby while still trying to keep up with the farm and of course my “real” job. I’ve had to cast aside many things to get done what I’ve needed to, but I’ve made sure to keep up with what’s going on on the land around us. I made sure to find this year’s fawn – when I first spotted it, it was no bigger than a house cat (only with longer legs). Now, it’s a little larger than our dog, and its mother leads it on walks through the protective thickets of blackberry brambles down to our pond for drinks. There are sights like this all around our place, and when I feel stressed and tired and sometimes maybe a little sad, just a look around is all I need to pick me back up. Everything is nearly ready for the arrival. We still need to turn our own house into a full nest and there are still some odds and ends to take care of outside the home, but by and large we are ready. Which is good, since our addition could come any day. Hopefully, though, not until late next week. Resources: Listen to the calls of 550 North American birds at eNature.com. Learn about the birds of Georgia from the Georgia Wildlife Foundation See a young fawn at someone else’s house. This entry brought to you by Schlake. So, Schlake says my webpage sucks when it’s not being updated, and postulated that maybe I wasn’t being rewarded enough to keep it up, so he sent me a complete collection of New Mexico Tech 49’ers money. A vintage set, too, that I made back in the day. The bills even have my signature on them. So, Schlake, thanks to your payment, I’ve witten a nice, long update. Maybe there will even be more right on the heels of this one.

<a href="/cameraphone/archives/001668.html" title="Fire trucks! "><img src="/images/legacy/weblog/cameraphone/images/200406272350/2_t.jpg" alt="Fire trucks! " width="120" height="146" class="pic" border="0" /></a>
(more inside)