"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
Our other children
Both hummingbird chicks have flown away. The bicycle hook nest is empty. A friend told me new chicks sometimes come back to the nest at first. We observed that with one of the chicks from an earlier hummingbird nest in June. I remember thinking, “Surely that bird should have learned to fly by now,” and then right before my […]
One of our hummingbird chicks flew away yesterday. As of this morning the second on is still in the nest. This was our second storage hook hummingbird nest of 2014. The mother hummingbird is wary and flies away when she sees us. The chicks don’t know any better and stay calm when we’re around. This particular nest […]
Our grandson Quentin is here for his annual visit. His parents ship him down on Southwest Airlines. He flies on unaccompanied minor status: his parents take him to the gate at Las Vegas and we meet him at the gate in Tucson. This is the last year he’ll have to be escorted to and from […]
I saw a commercial for implantable contact lenses on TV last night. If “implantable” means what I think it means, what does “contact” mean? Contacting the inner surface of your eye, looking out? Why not just “implantable lenses”? Sort of a Six Million Dollar Man kind of thing, or am I thinking of The Terminator? The thought […]
When you’re leading a formation, there’s a wingman to your side, just behind your shoulder. You don’t normally turn your head to look at him (it’s his job to look at you), but you can see the nose of his jet in your peripheral vision. When I walk from one end of the house to […]
Friday, 13 days after it hatched, one of our hummingbird chicks left the nest. I think I saw it go … as I walked underneath the nest that afternoon I saw something fly away out of the corner of my eye. I thought at first it was the mother, but when I looked up at the nest only […]
Hummingbird update: here they are this morning, eight days old: Their beaks are beginning to elongate, and they’re definitely plumping up, judging by how crowded the nest has become. We never see mama bird feeding the chicks, but she’s obviously hard at it when we’re not watching. And the patio floor is covered with her droppings […]
When people say they want the homeless problem to go away, I wonder if they know what they’re really asking for.