Boolie

Which Way Forward, Part I: The Gathering Storm

I’m reading what is far and away my favorite book, Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird. A while back I decided to read it when I was ready to start writing again, and I’m about at that point.

I had started a novel back in November 2005 (for National Novel Writing Month). It’s a fantasy book, all animals, with the main characters loosely based off of pets I’ve had in my life, plus one animal to represent myself. Really all of the characters reflect who I think I am, wish I was, or am afraid I could be.

I shelved it for a while while I worked out some major plot points and decided what would happen after this part of their story (so I won’t have one of those “Oh wait, Vader should be his father” moments when writing the story that follows).

The characters have been daily companions of mine for the past couple of years, bouncing around in my head, and it’s time to put their story into words. The problem is, I love coming up with the story, but am not so fond of the writing itself. And I like editing even less. But this is something I want to try, as I don’t know how good (or bad) I will be, and there’s only one way to find out.

The biggest obstacle is time. What do I give up to find the time and energy to write? I had considered cutting back on wildlife watching and hiking, but I think that’s the wrong direction to go.

I may have stumbled across the right idea, which is to shut down my web site and use the time I spend writing it for real writing. I could move this blog to a hosted site, and a subset of my pictures to some place like Flickr. The money it takes to run the site could be funneled into photography gear or travel.

I’m a bit hesitant however as I’ve had the site in one form or another going all the way back to my grad school days. Ironically, it was a lot more fun in the early days, even though my photography was terrible and my scans of my negatives even worse. Yet the web was a smaller and friendlier place back then and I got a variety of nice emails from people in all walks of life.

A retired park ranger who was overjoyed to stumble across pictures of a park he used to manage. Couples from around the world who were reminded of places they had honeymooned years ago. Mothers and grandmothers who enjoyed the wildlife that they wouldn’t otherwise get to see. A police officer who liked to look at the images when she needed to relax from the stress of her job.

I rarely get email these days, and personal email even less. A quick search on Google and Yahoo revealed that there are some educational sites linking into mine, but I suspect that the number of visits is pretty small.

I haven’t tracked my site’s statistics in about 10 years, as I write the site for myself — it’s improved my photography by forcing me to organize and critique my pictures. And while that’s still true, some of the photography tools that have emerged the past few years can help with that with less effort.

I’m going to run Google’s analysis tools this month to see how the site is actually being utilized, and then I’ll make a decision on the best way forward. In the meantime, I’ll probably drop the “What’s New” page, to see how much that simplifies things.

Today’s title is a nod to one of my favorite Monty Python episodes, the Golden Age of Ballooning.

I Bow To The Master

This picture of Sam is from his first week with us when he was still quarantined from Scout. He was too tired to play, but wanted to play too much to go to sleep. When he got like this, I’d lay down on the bed and then he’d climb into my lap and fall asleep, but then I couldn’t get anything done as moving would disturb him.

He reminded me of our dear departed Templeton. Sometimes when we were playing Crinkle Bag (his favorite game), Templeton would be so tired that he literally wobbled on his legs as he tried to stay upright, his head bobbing as he tried to keep his eyes open.

Sam seems to have at least one other of Templeton’s traits, as several times I’ve seen Sam climb into my chair if I get up to go get something. Templeton was the true artist when it came to chair stealing, often going so far as to lure me out of the chair in the first place and then doubling back to hop up into the seat and take my place, looking at me with the purest innocence.

At first I thought he preferred the one chair over the other in my office, but he’d do it with both chairs. Then I thought he just wanted the one I had warmed up, and perhaps there is some truth in that. Sometimes, though, I think he just wanted to prove who was the master.

As if I needed the reminder.

Happy Birthday Miss Scout!

The queen of the house turned seven years old yesterday (March 25th). Her mother was feral and Scout and her siblings were born under the house of a friend of ours. She’s slept me on me just about every night since we brought her home. We definitely got the pick of the litter!

This picture of her is from May of 2001, her first month with us. I had a hard time photographing her at this age since she didn’t want to leave my lap when we were playing, but the scratching post gave me a good opportunity. I’d put a little furry mouse on the top and she’d come flying across the room and jump to the top to grab it. On this occasion she knocked the mouse off with her flying attack so it’s not in the picture.

Upside Down

I’m the one who’s upside down in this picture, I was laying down on my back on the hardwood floor and waited for Sam to lean over from his window seat and look down. He likes sleeping on the seat, he’s sometimes there when I come home from work and he certainly seemed to enjoy watching me work in the flower beds the other day.

A Moment of Grief

I had President’s Day off a couple of weeks ago and the weather was unusually warm, so after heading up to Ridgefield in the morning and working outside in the afternoon, I cleaned out the inside of the Civic and prepared to wash the outside. Realizing I had forgotten to replace the broken hose in the front of the house and with it too late to go hiking, I decided to let the cats out into the backyard for a little bit.

Scout is an old hand at backyard time, but it was the first time for Sam and Emma. I quickly realized I wouldn’t be able to keep a close enough eye on both the kittens to make sure they understood that they were to stay in the yard, so I gathered them up and dropped them inside while I let Scout stay out a bit longer.

Turning from the door and seeing Scout alone in the yard I was overwhelmed with the thought that Templeton wasn’t there. A sudden wave of grief hit me and I was thankful Scout didn’t want to stay out long. The grief passed quickly, but it was so strong and so unexpected that I felt it physically long after. Every day during the warmer months, we’d go out back when I came home from work, so we spent a lot of time together there. Back inside, I was unable to concentrate on anything and eventually went up to take a bath and not think about anything.

The cats came up when they heard the tub filling up, they always look at me like I’m half-insane for intentionally submerging myself in water. They took turns sitting outside the bathroom door and sitting beside the tub, waiting for me to come to my senses and get up out of the water.

Emma and Her Bib

Back when we first discovered some bumps on Emma’s chest, she was rewarded with a trip to the vet and got the affected area shaved so we could treat it. She was also awarded this lovely bib to make sure she didn’t aggravate the area. This is what the bib looked like after two weeks, as you can see Emma didn’t think it quite the state of high fashion and often removed it on her own (the picture there shows the bib when new). I didn’t photograph the underside, even though it looked much worse, as some of that damage was done by Sam during their roughhousing.

Emma has been a rather shy subject so I’ve ended up with more pictures of Sam than of her. The only way I got her to sit still long enough for me to drape the bib over her legs was to play String with her (you can see the shoestring under her foot and trailing out of the bottom left corner of the picture). She stopped for a moment trying to figure out why the string had stopped moving while I moved the bib and snapped her picture. You can also see part of the shaved area on her chest.

The bumps went away with treatment and now we’re in the slow process of waiting for her fur to grow back.

Little Mister Sunshine

Little Sam hasn’t seen too much sunshine in his young life with us (I mean that literally, not figuratively) but last week we had a spate of sunny days and he discovered the joy of sleeping in sunbeams.

Frost

I arrived at Ridgefield at sunrise but only had an hour before needing to head home to take our cats Sam and Emma to the vet. I thought the refuge would be fogged in given the heavy fog when I crossed the Columbia, but the refuge was clear and a lovely frost coated the meadows. I wanted to take advantage of the frost since it is not typical here, so I continued around the refuge until I found a good subject.

This female juvenile northern harrier was sitting in the large meadow at the end of the auto tour. I’d never gotten harrier pictures I’ve been happy with, so since she was a ways off I put the 2X teleconverter on my biggest lens and hoped for the best. She’s all puffed out in the cold looking a little larger than she is, and you can see the ring around her face that helps give harriers an owlish look. As she grows older, she will develop streaking down her chest and her eyes will turn from dark brown to yellow.

Creature of the Shadows

Friday as we were about to leave for work, the rising sun created this shadow on our living room wall of Sam sitting on the window seat. I grabbed the camera for a few quick shots before heading out the door.

He and Emma had a good visit to the vet today, he charmed them right up until it was time for his vaccination and then he let out a pretty good howl. Emma has recovered nicely from her bumps, she had some darkened spots on her skin that we were afraid might be the phage but which turned out to be a harmless reaction to the bumps. Whew!

Scout is still struggling a bit with a respiratory infection that she got from the newcomers, her left eye started bothering her so she went to the vet last week. The drops have cleared up the eye nicely and hopefully she’ll beat the virus for good pretty soon. Fortunately she never learned how to take her medicine from Templeton, she’s not happy about it but she takes it pretty readily most of the time.

And despite the germ warfare waged against her, Scout has really warmed up to Sam and Emma. She actually instigated some roughhousing with Sam today, she’s snuggled with him for a while but this is the first we’ve seen her initiate play. All three of them were crammed into my window in the afternoon when I opened it up to enjoy the warm weather, the birds and squirrels provided good entertainment for the trio, who all got along happily despite the cramped quarters.

Is It Morning Already?

I had the chance to photograph this rough-legged hawk over several weeks as she was often hanging out near the auto tour at Ridgefield, but I wasn’t happy with the close-up shots as the skies were always a dull gray overcast. I arrived at sunrise on Saturday morning specifically with the hope of photographing her under clear skies, so I ignored all of the other animals at the refuge and headed straight to where I had seen her last. Thankfully not only did I get my blue sky but she was waiting on a sign post near the road. There was little traffic at the refuge at that hour so I had the chance to watch her for some time. She eventually let out a large yawn in the beautiful morning light, and I was very lucky that she turned back towards the sun when she yawned so that the sun illuminated her mouth.

I laughed to myself thinking that I wasn’t the only one who thought it was awfully early in the morning to be out and about.