mallets and bluebirds and egg whites

This morning the Dark-Eyed Juncos flitted about the crape myrtle tree in the back yard. A House Sparrow sat on the fence, enjoying the morning sun.

At lunch, I walked to Potbelly for the t-k-y skinny and baked chips. Then I walked in Travis Farm Park, where I got a great set of views of an Eastern Bluebird.



After work, I put on a podcast and drove to Bob Woodruff Park. As I began to walk, I looked about six feet away. An Eastern Bluebird stood in a small tree.



I also saw an Eastern Phoebe, s well as several other birds.



My wife was meeting this evening with the nice retired architect/salesperson at our home, to get some design tips. I stopped at Denny's for a bit of dinner. I had egg whites, wheat pancakes, and grilled ham. The food was really good.

When I got home, all sorts of tape measuring and aesthetic notioning was going on. Beatrice proved to disapprove of tape measures. I took her into the bedroom and threw her favorite toys--a stuffed red lobster and a stuffed giant carrot.

I read that our very red-state local county voted for Ted Cruz in the Republican primary. My neighbors in this town are by and large nice people but most of them and I share no political opinions.

I saw that Puppy Linux revamped its website. It looked good. I like Puppy because it is lightweight, quirky, intuitive-but-intuitive-in-a-different-way-than-Debian/Ubuntu and more Mennonite than megalith in approach.

I am thinking about my next music recording. I want to do something with Audacity and a hand-held recorder as my only digital tools. I imagine creating samples with a tiny wooden hammer and then using pitch shifts and effects to create a set of songs. When I knew a lot less about what I was doing than I know now, I created some primitive recordings that way. Now I could do something much more fun.

March is stereotypically kite weather. The warm, windy weather here lives up to type. Kite weather is something I like here. When I first lived in Mesquite, some 28 years ago, I loved that a local middle school over in Balch Springs featured kite-worthy breezes nearly 12 months a year. Even windless July days had enough wind to get a kite aloft.

I've been intrigued with the step-counting by my Google Fit app. I don't hit the proverbial 10,000 steps a day. I hit 3,500 to 6,000 on weekdays and 12,000 to 16,000 on weekend days. Over time, I suppose I should move up to average 10,000 a day, but it will never be a linear 10,000 per day, I do not think.

I'm noticing, too, how many more steps I get when I am walking by myself bird-watching than when I am on a bird walk. On a bird walk, things move more slowly. More birds are seen. But fewer steps are taken.