Happy Birthday to me.

  An important year milestone for me.  I've outlived my dad.  I was born not only on the 13th, but on a Friday, the 13th.  No knife-men in scream masks though.  I'm going to celebrate and make tomorrow special by doing what I do every day:  going through this wonderful routine of life.  Maybe I'll check deercams, take photos and splurge by buying some good deer corn.  I bet the redhead gets me coffee in the morning, just like every morning!

Update: Maybe I'll get some of these gold pants.

Update:  I measure time from the first of the year more than from birthday to birthday.  Even Camp Perry to Camp Perry is more of a marker.  When I was in a struggling through a long a miserable marriage I used to ask myself if things were better or worse than a year before at Christmas, New Year, Birthday, anniversary, et.

  Important to keep a few milestones in sight.

Update:  As Ansel Adams used to say, if you are going to get old, then get old as hell!

Update III:  If you want to know your station in life, check your birthday presents.  Mom made me a chocolate cake, daughter called and Taco Wacco sang me happy birthday and gave me a buttermilk pie at lunch.

Daily deercam

  She isn't bringing her fawn in yet.  Tiny tracks just downstream to the left.

  Healing.  Might have the fawn on the ground somewhere close, though she mostly comes at night.

  I've got a beaver-cut walking stick I pulled out of the dam when the beaver were working.  Bark-stripped wood of the right weight and length.  I stick it in the leaves at the end of the trail next to the parking slot.  The beaver that cut it is dead and his bones scattered and the raw wood of the stick has faded grey.  Everything changes.

  My privacy is about to be interrupted.  The museum is going top build a path and observation deck in the next month.  Today I went out while they were marking the site and approach and while they turned the maps and elevation charts I checked the cam.   396 photos on the card.  There are tiny fawn tracks along a sandbank 50 yards downstream but no fawn in the files.  Yet.

  I put out the last of this sack of crumbly corn and took a long wandering walk downstream through the steaming woods.  It's hot if you move in there.  Every leaf that is going to grow this summer has grown and is busy cycling water vapor and CO2.  There were some little owls who flew away from me in ever-expanding arcs as I walked the far fork of the creek.  No turtles in the deep pools.  The back fence neighbors had dumped cut up trees on the back of the museum land within the week.  Animal sign everywhere.

Update:  I'm assuming that using my super-tracking and finely honed observing and hunting skills I could find these fawns stashed close under the edge of a fern.  Just hate to disturb the does.  Too much fun photographing them.  Gotta be some bucks around, but I think this creek corner in the brush is just big enough for these does to hide in and use as a nursery.  It's not prime buck habitat.  No rubs.  Not on the way to or from anywhere important to a whitetail.

James Lileks: The Bleat

  Just added James to the blogroll.   I've read him about as long as I had internet access.  He used to be referenced by Instapundit all the time.  Cool guy.

Town deercam

  Cat-cut doe looks better every time.  I think this fawn is still onboard.

  Traffic sounds from all around.  I never see a sign of any other person, so I imagine she is spotting the other doe.

  She just got up.  Creases across her haunch is a bad case of twiggy bed-butt.  Younger doe.  One of her distinguishing marks is the white mark on top of her back in front of her tail.

  Nice looking deer.

  Both does coming in.  Crows and squirrels getting fat.  I walked down along the creek to to see if I could spot any of my big turtles in the clear water.  Instead I jumped the younger doe and she spooked into a spot between me and the highway.  I backed out carefully and got in the car and left.

  742 files of the does coming and going.  No fawns on cam yet.

Daily Deercam

 Michelle Obama expression on a doe.

  This should be an OK buck.

  Twin Buck fu.

  Buck Twins again.

  Lake deer.  Getting buggy down there.  A cute little cottonmouth was coiled up on the clay bank at the creek crossing.  I let him sit.

I'm down with this

  The anarchist in me is down with flashmobs, food court musicals, sound of musics in the central station, T-Mobile in the mall, et.  MC Hammer on Sunset is just too cool for school.

  Thanks Hotair and Rachel for keeping Hammertime alive.

  Until Death takes us, we better be dancing!

  Update:  Anonymous commenter says this was a commercial deal.  So was this.  I'm still down with that.

 

Air France Black Boxes: the over and under.

  Lost.  Water miles deep.  Mountains under there.  Huge debris field.  Rough seas.  Clock ticking.  Probably never be found.

  Bull.  The US Navy has arrived.  I predict they will fetch those black boxes off the undersea floor in a day or two.  Who the heck do you think they are dealing with?  The Tenerif Armed Forces?  The Peruvian Coastal Patrol?  The Joint Naval Forces of the Turks and Caicos?  Hell's Bell's, this is the US Navy we are talking about.  Some ensign remote apparatus driver will have them stuffed in a stainless steel basket before you can pipe Davy Jones out of his locker.  Book it.

Update:  The Brazilian Navy?  Are you kidding me?  I wouldn't send them out to fetch a floating bale of marijunana.  Are they sober?  I'm sure they are wearing thong speedos with great tans.

Daily Deercam

  The cat-cut doe.  Healing nicely.

  She hasn't dropped her fawn yet.  She and the younger doe are both hitting the corn pile, but never at the same time.

  Just hit the Tyler Museum of Art site-saw the younger doe leave the cam area for the second consecutive time.  The older doe is on the cam as well, healing nicely.  Doubling the corn.  Hope to see the fawns this week.  Lots of waist-high ferns along the creek in this area.  Perfect places to stash a youngster.

The connected life

  Obama, Bush or Clinton on a post.

  This joke started with an image I made that was used by Borealis Press of Surry, Maine selling notecards nationwide.  It's been told about Clinton, Bush, and now Obama.

  I assure you, there is no Texas tradition of balancing turtles on fenceposts, now or ever.

Obama Beach and the Mayor of St-Lo

  Obama had been to Indonesia....as a muslim student, and maybe Hawaii, depending on who you believe, but never to Europe or Britain.  I know he is a constitutional law professor...but do you think his education MIGHT be just a little light in US and world military history?

  Probably the first US president who has never seen The Longest Day, much less Saving Private Ryan.  Or fired any type of military firearm.  He's a babe in many matters.

  So, after wowing the Muslims with his coolness in Cairo and undercutting the Israelis, he gets to go on a walking tour of Buchenwald with Elie Wiesel and then on to Normandy.  President no-clue gets to tour the graveyard and battlesite.  Can you imagine touring a German death camp with a survivor?  I bet at some level, it freaked out his uneducated coolness.  

  Here's to learning about the world.

Update:  Obama is back in DC, Michelle and the girls are staying to shop an extra day.  Today is the anniversary of the assault.  By this time of day, the troops were moving off the beaches and going inland, but not very far.  It would take Operation Goodwood to break out of the hedgerows.  And they had to take Carentan, and pay proper homage to the Mayor of St Lo.  Then beat the Germans back and trap them before they got through the Faliase Gap.  Waverly Wray did his part. 

  Think Obama knows even ONE of these names?  Or cares to?

Congrats! It's a fawn!

  The younger doe.  See those ribs and that dent in front of her hindquarter?  Compare with earlier shots several posts down.

  Baby has arrived.  On the 3rd or 4th. Wednesday or Thursday.

 Smoke 'em if you got em, you're all godparents of a healthy whitetail fawn born on TMA property and stashed somewhere close!  Mom looks fine.  Going to double the corn.  She was at the cam site when I drove up.  First time to ever see her with my own eyes.  She left, but not in a panic.  The baby has to be somewhere on the hillside across the creek .  Older cat-cut doe not on cam.  She must have her own thicket.  Across the road perhaps.  

  Let's get a drink!

Update: This is in a busy part of Tyler, Texas, a city of 100K.

Update II:  I claim these deer as Christians, NOT Muslims.  Just saying.  Methodists, probably.

Update III: Looking at past cam files, I think the fawn was born between 2-3:30 on Thursday the 4th within 100 yards of the cam.

Shoot 'em up Saturday followed by Stupidity Sunday.

  Three bucks for a Sunday Dallas Morning News.  Wonder how much longer until this paper is gone forever?  Fun to breeze through, but I wish I was paying with Obamabucks instead of real money.  Wonder if I can get a stimulus grant to read this thing?

  Having a cup of coffee and minding my own business at Cafe Tzza with the redhead....when I hit Parade Magazine.  Stoopid.

  SO hard for a liberal mind to understand the world.  Gosh!   Why can't we just outlaw those horrible guns and end this terrible violence!  Can't everyone see it would be best for the children?

  SO hard.  The dangerous point is that they crank this idiocy out without a flinch or thought.

  Saturday at Panola: a better day.  193 offhand at 200 yards.  That's a 94 and a 99.  Nothing out of the black.  Since it was Panola, three guys shot better scores.  30+ shooters.  Four or five High Masters and Distinguished pins all around.  At 600 the rifle shot really well.  No stuck cases since I used brass sized by RVO.  192X7 at 600.  Had a late 7 and one 8.  Ruined a good score and finished with a 779X23 out of 800.

  Had two shooters along, one an 18 year old military policeman shooting the first highpower match he had ever heard of.  Lotta new folks shooting at Panola.  Be very afraid if you are Parade.  If you are the Dallas Morning News you can kiss your ass goodbye.

Update:  As a recycling fool with a deer-track sized carbon footprint, I dropped the paper by mom's.  Just put the two kids 176 .223 cases in the tumbler.