Nattering Nabobs of Negativism

Spiro Anew ended up to be a waste of space but he did turn a phrase.

Dana has the habit of turning on CNN or its noisy ilk in the morning while she immerses herself in Facebook. To each their own. I'm not usually around in the mornings so it doesn't directly effect me.

There's a great line in Harrison's 'Beware of Darkness', one of my very favorite songs of all time that says:

Beware of greedy leaders
They take you where you should not go
While Weeping Atlas Cedars
They just want to grow, grow and grow

I'm told by a number of interpretations that this refers to ignoring the noise and continuing to thrive. If that wasn't true before it is now.

Fortunately I've got some quiet sound playing in my office and the Nattering Nabobs are far away, sonically at the small end of the telescope.

It did actually get cold here too. So my joy at yesterday's 70 degree morning was short lived. It is below freezing and pickleball is delayed to 12:30 where it will be ever so slightly warmer. I'll likely go just to get out of the house and run around on the playground. But pickleballs are made from plastic and, when cold, plastic cracks. This time of year the game is measured by how many balls crack and are tossed away. I'll be taking a couple of old ones I have.

Tiller has already done its job this year. I've plugged in the numbers as they are verified and we need to spend $100 less per month than last year to break even. I plugged in last year's numbers and this year's income and it doesn't match. There are some places we can do better and I'm hoping that the money put into cars will pay off this year.

One eye opener was that we spent about $4k on pets this past year. A chunk of that was for a sitter service while we were in Florida last spring but their food cost was mostly rolled into groceries and does not appear in the $4k figure.

Meanwhile, back at the Ranch I received this email just now:

With a heavy heart, I wanted to let you know Duke went into cardiac arrest yesterday he passed last night. I was with him holding his paw. I just wanted you to hear that from me.
Rhonda

RIP, Duke, my favorite tripod.

Too cold for pb soooo.....

The wind is about 16 MPH and the temp is around 34. Wind chill at the PB courts is around 23. NOT interested. There are some of the group that is going to play but I bowed out.

Which leaves me with a project that I've been working at a pace of the slow TV train video.

Build bird house number 2. Check

Mount it on the fence outside my window. Check

Set up Wyze cameras to watch... in progress




Here is the picture from one of the cams:




It is actually not too bad. I removed the screen but was still worried about the glare. I think I put it up at the worst time for glare so maybe it will be OK. If the glare ends up being too much, I'm thinking about making another small house to put the camera in for the window ledge on the outside. These are indoor cams and I'm not wanting to spend the money right now for outdoor cams or a pinhole one for the birdhouse. If/when the birds actually use the house (Dana recommends VRBO to advertise it) I'll reconsider. But for now I'm going super cheap and easy.

I'll at least clean up the inside ledge and figure out a way to mount the camera I end up using so it looks decent. Run the wires nicely and such.

If you are interested, all that stuff to the right of the birdhouse is barbed wire.  My wife is a Texas girl and confuses barbed wire with decorations.  Fortunately I keep control of the Christmas tree.  This is her collection she put outside my window so I could enjoy it.