Take-off and Tantrum

Penelope cuddling with C (above) and playing in my hair (below).

It was a gusty day. I should have known better, but after prying the feathereds off of their beloved hammock, I walked over to claim my lone Braeburn apple off of my youngest apple tree. Penelope spooked Kawi, and Kawi leaped from my shoulder, but instead of hitting the ground, was swept upward by a tiny zephyr.

The real object is to keep your eye on the bird to find him once he lands. Fortunately it wasn't too far away, and I snatched him out of the neighbor's rose bush while he nibbled angrily at my hand for daring to touch him without his consent. I walked into the kitchen and snipped off his grown-out lift feathers without the normal formalities of covering his head so that he wouldn't see it coming. He screamed as if I was killing him. I then stopped by the pharmacy, so I took both birds with me.

While waiting in line, Kawi informed me how angry he was at me. As the girl rang me up for my Rx, Kawi  angrily rapped on my shoulder with his want-to-bite-you face.
"They are so good to sit there like that. Are their wings clipped?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. I just clipped this one's wings, and he's still a little upset at me."

 Kawi then let out a string of profanities that only five-month old Penelope understood.

"Oh, he really is mad! How funny!" the cashier said.

Kawi is a total ham, so I said, "He probably just needs a good distraction. Kawi, show us your wings!"

He suddenly forgot to be mad at me and showed off his wings with every ounce of flair he had in his saucy little self, delighting the cashier, and himself with all of the attention.

A Few Words for the Birds

If you happen to be among those who have noticed my absence, my condolences for having survived my temporary posting famine. Since we last chatted, followed by some froth over DC, I believe it was? much has taken place. C completed his final classes and has a paper left to write. He also received his first appointed position. By appointed, this means that he did not apply for the job. Someone chose him as the best man for the job, and I am inclined to agree. We have made a few interesting purchases lately, but one must wonder if discussing purchases may be perceived as vain or bragging. Let it suffice to say that this technology junkie is currently not fiending for any specific item.

We received a new member of the family. It happened something like this:

I drove to the farthest reaches of the universe to find an electronics store that had a very specific item in stock, and as I drove through the parking lot I heard a tiny voice calling me from an enormous pet Walmart. Of course, we both know that pet Walmarts are readily stocked with only four types of critters: fish, reptiles, rodents, and birds. I saw her sitting against the back of the glass window, a few of the bars unprotected by plexiglass. I immediately knew that a forest of tiny fingers had been her daily scenery, while bigger hands tapped and palmed the glass, driving her into a world of unrequited hermitude. Her only Conure-counterpart was so aggressive and loud that he didn't stand a chance, but this tiny one...

"We haven't really been able to get her out of the cage." She said while thrashing and struggling for several minutes, and finally prying her feet off of the bars. The moment she landed in the palm of my hand I knew we had an understanding, and she was the sweetest thing in the world. By the time I walked into the electronics store she had cuddled up under my pony tail and didn't move a muscle. She cooed pleasantly, quite content with her people-catch. All the way home she cooed and cuddled. You don't know what it's like to have an angel on your shoulder until you experience a sweet little bird rubbing its face up and down along your cheek, adoring you. I only hope she stays this way, because she is ten times messier than Kawi, grumpy as he might be.

In other news, I finished a class, and am currently only enrolled in ONE CLASS!!! This is miraculous. My year of madness has taken its toll on me. I am grateful for all I am learning, but I decided that it's about time for a break from school. It has been a heavy year. If it were one of those reading and writing and analyzing classes, I could absolutely soar through a degree like that, but programming is another creature entirely.

The smallest action in programming has so many details, and yet there is something beautiful about it. It reminds me of some magnificent craftsmanship. I look at a fine watch, and the craftsmanship and detail involved in creating that item, and then look at a beautiful line of code in the same way. I think, wow! How did they fit so many actions into that tiny line of text? I am in awe at well-executed code. It is the difference between a finger painting and a Monet, but then, I feel the same way when I see a user-interface that is pristine and elicits no cognitive friction from its users (translation: I love to see software that doesn't make people feel dumb and is easy to use!)

Well, there is much more to share, but let it suffice to say that with four hours of sleep last night, I will sleep undisturbed tonight. Photos and videos will have to wait, since my eyelids won't hold up much longer, but check back for the cute video of Penelope massaging her own head with her foot.

Chicken Run

Last night we ran to Walmart to purchase an SD card for my camera. I was just finalizing the sale in the electronics section located at the back corner of the store, when a voice came over the intercom,

"Right now in the deli we are offering roasted chickens for HALF-OFF! You'd better hurry, because there are only ELEVEN left!"

C blasted out of the electronics department like a bullet out of a gun, running as if his life depended on it. The  clerk looked up with a perplexed face. "I guess he REALLY wanted some chicken!!!"

I, knowing him a little better than that, just started laughing. C is more than happy to be the crazy man running through Walmart to fight for a roasted chicken just for a few laughs.

My Days are Numbered

I sit in the hammock, listening to Kawi whistle Addams Family whilst admiring his image in my shiny computer lid.

Eight strands on the hammock have broken. The Lazuli Buntings used to swing on the frayed ends for entertainment, but now they just sway in the wind, framed by the gaping hole they left behind. If I had a wooden leg, this would be rather convenient so that I could stick my leg straight out in the middle of the hammock. Sometimes I can get my pillow to span the space if I sit with my head on that end.

I attempt to spend time every day in the hammock so Kawi can feel like a real little bird in the open air. The cold days are coming where he will watch the winter birds from the window and wonder why we can't join them. The worst part is when I walk down the stairs toward my office and he ruffles his tail in excitement because he thinks we are heading out the back door. It's the one place he seems completely at peace, and so we'll lick the plate to gather the last few morsels of these tepid days.

This weekend I spent hours trying to get a program to run. It is frustrating not having someone to ask a simple question when I am unsure what the problem is. My professor took three days to respond to my question, and today I finally learned what went wrong: This line:
temp = buildList;

should have looked like this:
temp = buildList();

That was all. A simple mistake, and hours of anxiety and feeling like I must be a terrible programmer, all for an empty parameter indicator. Argh. I don't feel like a crappy programmer anymore. I felt like someone who wrote a great program; so great that the one tiny error hid itself so well that I overlooked it again and again. The error it kicked out was that the pointer was wrong, so I went through every pointer with a fine toothed comb. I read pointers and watched tutorials to see if I missed anything, but couldn't find anything wrong or different...only to find out that it wasn't a pointer problem at all.

I know none of that makes sense, but I have enlisted my friend Bynki to help:

No? At least entertaining?

Enjoy the last scraps of your warm days, wherever you may be.

Opus d'Élan Vital

Writing is my music, and my canvas whereon I capture the palette of my imagination. Life breathed into my tender nine-year-old mind when my pen conveyed me to a place where thoughts became words, and words became images. Writing has since been the phantom gatekeeper of my most magnificent reflections and most poignant introspections.


Photography is my magic. It captures moments of time that someday will transport me to the past and bring to mind all of the beauty I have experienced with those I love. Life is my toolbox. It is the surgeon's instrument with which I craft my future, and sculpt my eternity.


There are times in life where we have filled our days with meaningless acts and thoughts until we lose our own identity in bland, consuming emptiness. When at last we open our eyes to see a vast expanse of desert before us, those once meaningful things melt away in the hot sun of reality and our true self steps forward. Perhaps long forgotten, and long silenced, it straightens, the dust trickling off of its magnificent form. It breathes in the empty air, and when it exhales, life begins anew.


We realize that our greatest captor is the captive who also holds the keys to our freedom. Somewhere in the clouds of unhappy measure, we created a cage of expectations and fear of disappointments, thereby submitting to a massive granite yoke carved out by our own hands. We are free to place it on the ground and let another assume its load. The weight has hung so long upon our shoulders that our veins seem to have grown through it, feeding it whilst we starve, heaving it whilst we sink under its pressure.


What we are is free; as free as our choices allow us to be. Our minds know no bounds. There is no moment when our hearts are unable to feel more, nor occasion when the mind is completely full, and yet not every morsel of knowledge is equally weighed. There is no brick of wisdom so broad, so immense, that we cannot consume it one grain at a time, despite the fact that so many minds are rather fed upon the spun sugar of petty platitudes. Minute by minute, hour by hour, we consume and are never full, while wisdom and truth wait patiently in the wings for a time when our minds are unclouded long enough to see them there.


The mouths of the mind are the eyes and the ears, opening the windows of the soul to the outside world. Through them we gather the soup in which our hearts simmer, the marinade that flavors our marrow, and the fragrance of our thoughts. We are the magnum opus of paragraph, millieu, and picture, pieced together over a lifetime, our souls consuming the very things that they would become.

Redefined

I believe that there is a point where we look backward to find that there are pieces of our lives we wish we could recreate somehow, and after we have mourned the loss of what might have been, we must find the courage to move forward and redefine our course. Sometimes that requires looking into the mirror of piercing truth to perform the necessary surgical soul-searching, and then biting through the pain of reconstruction to become what you are truly meant to be.

Washington, DC Sights

DC happened a little unexpectedly this last week, and yet, here we are. First let me say that the record-breaking heat combined with the 85% humidity has been stifling. My creative juices have been boiled in my head until they refuse to flow at all, and the only things flowing are the rivulets down my back. Still, I managed some pretty spectacular shots on an evening outing. 

The first thing I saw, of course, was the Metro, where I had to decide what a short trip meant in order to purchase a pass. I also managed to break countless "rules" like eating on the Metro. It wasn't until much later that I figured out why the young man next to me raised his eyebrows when I pulled out my Trio bar for a bite. The "horizontal elevators" were rather long. The shot below is about half-way down.

Nobody talks. They just sit and play with their iPhones, or stare off in the distance, so it wasn't hard to take this shot. Nobody noticed...

The National Archives was first on my list. I located a Civil War soldier in C's ancestry.

We took the Metro under the Potomac to Arlington, but all we saw was a breeding pool for mosquitoes, and learned not to visit without Deet. Apparently they escort you out at 7:00 PM, which is when we arrived. I tried to convince C to stand in front of this monument since he is both steadfast and loyal, but he refused. I decided that all of that humidity and heat sure doesn't seem to add to cheer and merriment.   

The following evening we did get to see the Obama children sweep past in the secret service motorcade while I poked my camera through the fence to catch the above shot of the White House. Darn distracting White House. C was able to visit with a group that had cleared him ahead of time. My unexpected visit didn't allow for the required 30 day advance background check. 

On to the National Monuments, the light was fading in the sky, so my job as a photographer became a bit more difficult. The lighting in the above pond turned out rather nice though, and we did see - dum-ta-da-da!!! Fireflies!!! 

This shot of the Lincoln Memorial was one of my favorites. I finally was able to take one that didn't just have duck-bottom in it since it seemed to be the ideal feeding time. Of course, the one below turned out rather nice with the twilight back-lighting.

Do you know what it takes to get still images with a 5 MP digital hand-held with no tripod? The night shots were next to miraculous, but what you don't see here are the twenty other shots of each monument that turned out blurry. This far-distant Washington Memorial was one of the most difficult, taken at the Lincoln Memorial while lying on the marble floor in my white capris, trying to relax enough to keep it steady while the shutter stayed open for several seconds. I showed it to a woman who had tried the same shot for several minutes and finally gave up. I knew it was decent when she said, "D***! You're good!" I must also give recognition to C who sat on a very hot spotlight to help me get this shot. I always did think he was pretty hot stuff!!!

The Lincoln Memorial really is a work of art. White marble is extremely difficult to work with, since it is so soft. I am always so in awe when a sculptor executes a work like this with such precision.

The Vietnam memorial was powerful and touching, considering so many were identifying old friends and family members, even at the late hour we were there. They searched with the light of tiny flashlights, took rubbings of the names, and took photos with their hands resting over the names of loved ones.

The above shot shows the marbling in the Washington Memorial. Apparently the lower part was built prior to the Civil War, and finished after. It's apparent where the break is in the building.