Lots of Stuff

• Yesterday it rained all day but despite the rain, I went out and filled both window bird feeders. The one on the art room window had slid sideways a little and I moved it a bit because the little suckers wouldn’t go back on the same spot. Then I went round the side of the house and refilled Fred’s. Yesterday was also a visit from a large influx of grackles who perched on my feeder and inhaled the seeds! And while I was actually watching one of them do this, the feeder tilted sideways and slid to the ground! The funny part was that the small horde of sparrows who had just found the feeder again came looking and were fluttering outside the window obviously looking for it! Later on, Fred came and told me his had slid off the window too although he didn’t see it happening. Later this morning I will go out with paper towels and Windex and clean the outside of the now-dry windows and put the feeders up again.
• I am SUCH a creature of habit! I have  a little Firefox add-on program called Coffeecup which opens a list of all the different sites I look at every morning. Up until this morning, they have always come up in the order I put them in there but when I was poking around in it yesterday{actually, I was dropping the New York Times because I am not going to pay for it since I only pick here and there at it} and I noticed that Coffeecup gave me the the option to open these chosen sites in random order. So, I checked that. I was amused to discover this morning that I HATE not getting these tabs in the order in which I am used to them, So, I promptly unchecked the "random order" box!
• I had a horrible night last night. I was unable to fall asleep until about 4 am and then woke at 5, and 6 and finally got up at 7 am. It was one of those nights where I seem to be unable to turn off my brain.
• I was thrilled to find out that most, if not all of Barbara Hambly’s back-order books are now in Kindle form. I have some of these in very ragged paperbacks where pages are falling out. But now they are safe on my Kindle and I can enjoy them all again. I absolutely blew my resolution not to buy any more new books for the Kindle until I had reduced my To Be Read collection by 50%! But, hmmm, maybe not if I tell myself these are not NEW books since I have read them all before!
• The art class was interesting because in casual conversation with someone else, Teresa mentioned that she was now mentoring  artists and art work. I have been thinking about my art a lot recently. I would love to show and/or sell it but I know nothing about how one does this and even if my work is good enough to show. I need a mentor and I definitely would trust Teresa’s judgment. I also met Wiley, who is a fabric artist and one of Teresa’s other teachers and she mentors, too. So, I talked briefly to Teresa about this and she encouraged me to compose an email of questions. Next, I will  schedule some time with Teresa and find out what she can do for me AND what she does and what she charges. I think this will help me to get questions–lots and lots of them, answered, and if I can afford it, I may go the mentoring  route, too.
• Ok, the SAD light just clicked off. I had it set for an hour so now I need to go clean up the kitchen, make coffee for Fred and a cup of tea and some breakfast for me.

I am grateful for:

my SAD light to which I give credit for my renewed interest in painting.

"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment."

Marcus Aurelius