Monday, August 25

We are now officially empty nesters. Sunday we dropped Molly off at MSU.

First day kindergarten.

First day of college.

What better way to spend a nice Sunday afternoon than caught in the crossfire between pandemonium and mass confusion? Traffic gridlock that would make New York City proud. Lots of people in a long wait for elevators that could only carry small loads at a time. Molly rode her bike there but we had a van full of the stuff a girl needs to start college.

The out-the-door line waiting for elevators.

Luckily Molly was on the first floor, and three doors from the lobby. We could have been in and out in minutes had we not bought a futon for her room. The assembly directions were written in what appeared to be some version of Uyghur. The illustrations in no way resembled the pieces in the box. It took us four tries but we eventually got either a futon or a medieval torture device put together. Maybe it’s both.

Molly was putting her stuff away and I was buried in futon assembly when I heard a male voice say the old pick up line, “Hey this was my dorm room.” Before I could look up or say anything he added, “30 years ago.”

In addition to getting Molly off to her new life, we have been busy with a host of other somewhat mundane things. Like work and teaching. So busy that we couldn’t go chasing the incredibly rare black-headed gull that was down at Pte. Mouille for a couple days. I started teaching two classes as adjunct that I didn’t expect to be teaching. I had told the program director I would be out of the country for over two weeks during the semester but he scheduled the classes anyway. I could have cancelled the classes but several people needed them to graduate.

I did get out a little this past week. Things are slowing down dragonfly-wise but I did experience what must have been a new hatching of common green darners. There must have been upwards of a hundred of them buzzing round one corner of a field in Riverbend Natural Area. This was pretty cool. Bird-wise I finally got a yellow-billed cuckoo for the year. Reports of migrants are filtering in so we got to make some time to get out there. Might be easier being empty nesters.

CGD showing how camouflage works.

Eastern tailed blues getting frisky.

White-faced meadowhawk. Common, but still kind of nice.