Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Been having a hard time writing lately. Beside the usual laziness. We have just plain been busy. Some of it good, and some of it not so good.

On the up side, the mid-Michigan version of Spring has finally come our way. Gray and rainy, but at least the temperatures are above freezing. And the plants and animals are responding appropriately. Trees and plants seem to have blossomed out overnight. The migrating birds have been coming through and the nesters are setting up shop. We have gotten out a few times in the past couple weeks, even though the conditions were less than ideal. Our warbler count is mediocre but, a couple days ago we got an orange-crowned warbler. That one was a lifer for both Lise and me. This morning we got a least bittern, a lifer for Lise. I’ve gotten two lifers this season, the orange-crowned and the yellow rail. Lise has gotten those two, plus the least bittern.

Eastern bluebird checking out the accommodations.

Standing guard.

White-crowned sparrows migrating through our yard.

House sparrows. Common, but still handsome.

Fat boy the groundhog and a progeny sitting on our brush pile.

A red squirrel in our yard. Can you tell it’s a lactating female?

As a graduation present we threw a Cajun shrimp boil party for Molly and her friends. A bunch of work and a bunch of fun. Think of a pot of boiling red liquid that has among other spices, a one-third cup of cayenne pepper. Filled with potatoes, corn cobs, sausage and of course, shrimp. Eight pounds of shrimp. Along with a pile of other food and refreshments. I think we have kept some breweries in business. A good time was had by all, even the vegetarians.

I’ve also been busy doing things for Mid-Michigan Land Conservancy. I’ve served on the board for a number of years now.  We have always been an all-volunteer organization, but we have pretty much maxed out what we can accomplish as volunteers. I’ve taken on a fundraising project to get staff for the organization. Grants for organizational capacity building are tough to get. Foundations are much more likely to fund the purchase of a property because that’s a very tangible outcome. Hiring staff just isn’t as glitzy as buying a nice hunk of dirt. Fundraising is not what I would call my area of expertise, but we just got word that a foundation has awarded us a $20,000 challenge grant. Which means they will match, up to $20,000, any other funds we raise.

Now the not so nice stuff that needlessly eats up time. Like the automatic Windows 10 operating system upgrade. The one that has the nice messages like, “You’re going to like this”, “Just leave everything to us” and “This will make you much safer on the internet”. Apparently, Microsoft’s way to make me safe on the internet is to make sure my computer will not turn on. It’s a genius approach when you think about it. If you can’t turn on your computer, you can’t get on the internet, and the internet can’t hurt you. The real pisser is that you must go on the internet to find out what’s wrong and how to fix it. After a couple days of troubleshooting, trying fixes, and a lot of swearing, I finally got it down to what is called a sihost.exe. error. This is not good. A sihost.exe error is like trying to go ashore from a cholera ship. Nobody wants you and you’ll probably die before it gets better. At best they’ll burn your body to keep it from spreading.