Category: General

Not Our Cat (and other wildlife)

We looked out the window one day to see the neighborhood cat sleeping on the bench in our backyard.  The cat is a bit jumpy, and won’t let me get anywhere close, so I can’t read the tag to get its name.  Our yard is completely fenced, so this is a nice quiet, safe space to sleep if you’re a cat.

Unless these guys show up:

We’ve seen deer on the cemetery side of the fence before, but this was the first time we’ve seen some in our yard.  The chain-link fence you see was put up by the cemetery (as far as we know).  Our fence (to the left and right) is wood (as seen in the cat photo above).  Either way, the fence is 5-6 feet high, and it’s not like these two crawled underneath somehow.

We had one hummingbird feeder outside the kitchen window, and it gained so much traffic that Denise added a second one a little farther away.  These hummingbirds are very entertaining to watch.  They will chase each other around and chirp at each other loudly (surprisingly loud for such tiny birds).

This was taken at Minto-Brown Island Park, where we walk all the time.  We think we’ve heard an owl near the house, but haven’t seen one there yet.

COVID Hair

We got our first COVID vaccines today!  Finally!!  Today was the first day we were eligible (because we are SO young).  The past year hasn’t been too big of a deal, because we are retired and we live far away from friends and family.  We miss traveling and sitting in restaurants.  And we miss our friends and family too.  We obviously go to the grocery store, but mask up and keep our distance.  We also get take-out and go outside for an occasional walk.

Over the last two weeks we’ve been hitting refresh on the web pages at the pharmacies to make appointments to get vaccinated, and managed to strike gold for today.

Now we have to wait 4 weeks to get the second shot, then another 2 weeks before we are as protected as we are going to be.

That means 6 more weeks before I can get a haircut.  This is what happens when you don’t cut your hair for 14 months:

When the pandemic first hit, everything was closed down.  By the time people could go get hair cuts again, I still didn’t feel comfortable spending 30 minutes in close proximity to another human being (other than Denise of course).  Then at some point, my hair got past the length where I could put it in a pony tail, and I figured I’d just wait until I got the vaccine.  So I let it grow (and grow, and grow…)

As you already know, this isn’t the first time I’ve had long hair.  But now I’m left wondering how I put up with it before.  Man, it’s annoying.

 

Oregon Coast (Whale Watching?)

On December 30th, we took at day trip to the Oregon coast. Gray whales travel along Oregon’s coast, heading south in December, from Alaska to Baja.  This was supposed to be the peak week to view them.  The problem is that the whales are about a mile out, and well, mostly under water.  So they are hard to see. Unfortunately we did not see any (Can you call it ‘whale watching’ if you don’t see any?).  But the waves were cool to look at, some 15 feet high.

Maybe we will go back out in March when they return from fun and sun in Mexico; they are supposed to be closer to shore then.