Thursday, February 22, 2007

Blue water, this weekend, and general blah blah blah

Word of the Day:
hypnagogic \hip-nuh-GOJ-ik; -GOH-jik\, adjective:

Of, pertaining to, or occurring in the state of drowsiness preceding sleep

Better grab a cup of coffee. Boring post ahead.
My absence last night was due to a board meeting at RAPTOR that ran late. They always run late. Man, those people can talk!
But I like the meetings. It's a time that I can sit back and learn things.

A blue day:

great blue heron overhead
A great blue heron flies over Lake Isabella.
blue water
The ever-so intelligent park service has added "Aqua Shade" to the lake. I know that because I saw the empty box by the boathouse. This stuff is supposed to inhibit growth of water plants. Well, that's good! We don't want the ducks and geese to have anything to EAT, do we????
blue water fountain

pretty ducks and geese
This one made me do a U-Turn:
Jeff-Gold Star billboard
I would never have looked twice at this billboard, except that one of our board members is the guy on the billboard. Gold Star (a local chili place, Cincinnati-style chili) has a new ad campaign for their corn dogs, and Jeff somehow is on billboards and the commercial. I was warned in advance that he was on these. Otherwise, I would not have known it was him.
Good dog. LOL

Upcoming events: This weekend is the Ohio Ornithological Society's Owl Symposium at
Hueston Woods. RAPTOR has been asked to be a participant and bring our owls to show. So it has been a logistical nightmare, figuring out when I will get the birds, pack the one car we have working, maybe or maybe not get a hotel room to stay the night... Thankfully, a lot of RAPTORites are coming, too, so Marc, our president, is bringing our paraphernalia and I am bringing the birds. So I now have to figure out if I will get the owls tomorrow and let them spend the night with us, or get up at zero-dark-thirty on Saturday morning to get them and then drive over an hour to the symposium in the bleary hours. Jeez...
The highlight of all this is that I will get to see Julie and Bill, Phoebe and Liam, and the irrepressible Chet Baker. To throw more into the mix, Julie, Bill and a friend from Oxford are going to do a set Friday evening at the lodge, and I really want to see that. So maybe I could go to that, then drive over an hour back home, fall into bed, get up at 4:30 am and THEN get the owls and drive over an hour to the symposium. GOD.
It is going to be a fun time...surrounded by expert birders, getting to hear Denver Holt speak, and I get to show off our beautiful owls. I am bringing all of them: The two screech owls, the barred owl (god help me) and my favorite owl, the great horned.
So, that's been where my head is for the past few days.
Junior update:
Junior is better, eating and gaining weight. It has been decided that he is NOT to be released again. He will become a program bird. Not for us, because we are allowed only one GHO on our permit, and we already have my Big Momma:
show us your hooters
I love that bird. She (I THINK she is a she...she's certainly heavy enough to be a female) has been at RAPTOR for 8 years, and has done many, many programs, and is just a big pussycat. Nothing bothers this gal.
Oh, and check out the comment section from my last post. Geoff and Pam have been going back and forth about Geoff's book. I adore all of my blogger gals, and Pam just makes me smile.
Love ya, Pam!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Meetings always get in my way also! That's great you will get a chance to see Zick and BT3!! Too bad it wasn't in the tropics instead! Looks like they had a wonderful time there! Keep up the wonderful raptor work your doing! Great seeing those birds help with environmental conservation.

Anonymous said...

Love you too, Susan!! You know I do.
Awesome, phenomenal sounding weekend coming up!!!! OMG - to see Julie & Bill and Phoebe & Liam and Chet Baker and to hear Julie & Bill perform would be enough to keep me awake all night!! Please enjoy you time and let us know *all* about it!
Fake blue water - that's just plain sickening. Esp. to kill plants.
Sorry the corn dog looked like something else to me at first, but then you *know* how my brain functions! LOL!
I hope you have a great time, and I'll be thinking about you!

LauraHinNJ said...

I somehow missed that you RAPTOR had taken Junior in - guess that's a good thing that he will have people to coo over him.

Mary said...

Susan, you have a lot on your plate but all of it sounds YUMMY! Seeing Julie, Bill, Phoebe & LIam and the infamous Chet Baker would be the highlight of all! I hope your weekend is everything wonderful. I love your owls. You must have a lot of arm strength to hold them like that.

Susan Gets Native said...

Mon@rch:
I am jazzed about seeing them again. I met them last summer, when we were traveling near their neck of the woods, and they were cool enough to make us dinner and visit with us.
I love taking "my" birds out to the public. I have never presented to hard core birders, so it should be extra fun.

Pam:
You are so dirty minded. I love that!
I will be all blogilicious about my weekend, no worries.

Laura:
Yeah, Junior was captured a few times to weigh him and it turns out that he was NOT hunting on his own, at least not enough to survive. He was living on what the volunteers were feeding him. So now, he is in a warm mew and I stopped in to say Hi, and I swear he talked back to me!

Mary:
I am looking forward to that full plate.
When I started this gig, I began carrying around a 3 pound weight with my left arm to build it up. Now I could crack walnuts with my big ol' bicep.

Anonymous said...

I'm so jealous you get to work with these birds, esp. Big Momma. She's beautiful!

I didn't knwo you could order books before they are published! Cool beans. Just think- Geoff could get up to 10,413 before the book even hits the store. And now I'm very curious about this tale of American history.

I like the vole. I don't know what to making of the hunting corn dog billboard.

LauraHinNJ said...

Susan, I'm glad it was for that reason, rather than the idea of him being imprinted. Feels better somehow.

Anonymous said...

I guess I, too, missed the part where Junior had to be brought back in. I'm sorry he wasn't doing well on his own, but I think the reason was he was love-sick. How could the poor owl be any good at hunting when he was in love with Susan? He had inter-species nookie on his mind all the time!

Speaking of sick minds, I saw a similar Gold Star sign, and I, too thought it looked like... Well, this being a "family" blog, I can't say exactly what I thought it looked like. But, it didn't make me want to go to Gold Star!

~Kathi