A Potentially Mobile Blog

Right now I'm sitting on my couch.

Have you stopped sweating yet? Are your goosebumps gone? Exciting news like that often takes hours, if not days, to process and get past. Wait . . you mean you're not thrilled by that? Huh? You don't even get why I mentioned it? Duh, people, I'm on the computer AND the couch at the same time! That's right, our brand new spring green Dell laptop arrived Tuesday afternoon, so I now have the potential to blog, chat, and otherwise compute on a very mobile level. And I plan to do precisely that. Heck, even if it's just here on the couch, upstairs on the bed, or outside on the back porch. More importantly though, I'll be able to stay connected on Mandi's days off, which have been more and more frequent lately.

This new "toy" comes at a perfect time for more reasons than that, too. As you may remember I interviewed for a spot on our Homeowners Association's Board of Directors last month. They chose someone else for the position, but that didn't stop the Board from asking me to take on a role involving the community's fledgling newsletter. I'm leaning strongly toward accepting the responsibility, although I haven't committed to it yet. One of the reasons for my hesitation is that the leadership of CharlotteAreaDads.com has also asked me to participate in the creation of its monthly newsletter. While I don't expect that to require a ton of time on my part, I just have never been a fan of the "over-promise then under-deliver" mentality. I'd rather make sure I can do everything well before spreading myself too thin. I really enjoy the writing aspect of both opportunities, which is why I'm leaning strongly toward accepting both roles, but I don't want to neglect my other responsibilities (including this blog) in order to fulfill them. So we'll see. I'll keep you posted.

As for my other endeavors, here are some quick updates. In addition to the new computer, we took the plunge on a new printer yesterday. We'd been putting it off until the computer arrived, at Mandi's insistence, and we finally made it happen yesterday. We chose one that will print photos, has a flat-bed scanner, and is much more modern than our old HP OfficeJet. That being said, we've got no more excuses to slack off on the recipe page. We got organized yesterday and I'll be spending some time this afternoon further updating the list.

The bird watching has been slowed somewhat lately, at least in terms of adding new species to the Big Year list. We've taken some trips recently to go searching, and we've seen a lot of birds on many of them. But aside from the Ruddy Ducks I identified at the Coddle Creek Reservoir Tuesday, nothing new has been added to the list. On the bright side, Mandi's dad loaned me his 60mm spotting scope (which was crucial in the Ruddy Duck ID), so I've at least got a little better shot of adding some of the waterfowl I've been missing . . just gotta get my butt out there and look for them. There's something about stopping on the side of a 55 MPH 2-lane highway to spot ducks that makes me a little nervous. But if I'm going to make 150 species the wintering waterfowl will need to be a priority . . so stand by for updates.

And finally, because I know you've all been dying to hear, the newspaper article I mentioned in the "Fish Wrapper" post last week ran in Thursday's Charlotte Observer. For those of you who did not receive a copy via the US Mail, here's the link to the online version of the story . The photos which made the story very interesting in the actual paper are absent online, but they used the photo of the Great Blue Heron that I included in "The Fish Wrapper", and it looked really good in print. Avery was so excited about the article that she took a copy in for show-and-tell at school, and it apparently was a big hit with her classmates. So that's all for now, but I may be back online later this afternoon with an update on the recipe page.