The dogs woke me up at 6 this morning per their usual lake vacation routine. Buddy the troll then proceeded to bark to either go out or come back in at least 10 times over the next hour while I tried to nap on the couch. That would have been fine if I hadn't stayed up til midnight reading. Pip just sat out on the lawn soaking up the sun.
While I was trying to doze, a shadow caught my eye, and I looked out to see a bald eagle sitting in one of the trees on the lake shore. I got a pretty good video of it, and rushed back inside to upload it to YouTube, but then discovered I forgot the recharger base for my HandyCam. So, you'll have to wait until Tuesday to see the eagle.
I think he was actually checking out Buddy to see if he could manage to fly with a 17 pound troll in his claws. After going in and out so many times and ruining my nap, I almost held him up so the eagle could take him away. Soulmate would have disapproved strenuously though.
One more gripe on the HandyCam: it's a great little camcorder, with a huge built-in HDD and a 6 hour battery, but to recharge it or to download video to the laptop, it requires a stupid plastic base instead of a simple USB cable. Sony has been around long enough to invent a really handy camcorder, but apparently not long enough to make it easy to actually work with the footage.
Oh, yeah, I forgot that there's also a "Memory Stick" slot on the HandyCam so I could download the video that way, if only I actually had a memory stick or a memory stick slot on my Toshiba. Everybody else in the entire world uses SD cards, but Sony's quirky like that. Some of us remember Beta versus VHS.
On a much more somber note, I read this in the NYT this morning about the quake in Sichuan province. It would seem that finding adequate funding for schools is not just an American problem. I suspect that if we lost something like 10,000 students in a natural disaster because their school buildings collapsed as a result of poor designs, we would see a significant rise in spending on educational infrastructure in a hurry.
While I was trying to doze, a shadow caught my eye, and I looked out to see a bald eagle sitting in one of the trees on the lake shore. I got a pretty good video of it, and rushed back inside to upload it to YouTube, but then discovered I forgot the recharger base for my HandyCam. So, you'll have to wait until Tuesday to see the eagle.
I think he was actually checking out Buddy to see if he could manage to fly with a 17 pound troll in his claws. After going in and out so many times and ruining my nap, I almost held him up so the eagle could take him away. Soulmate would have disapproved strenuously though.
One more gripe on the HandyCam: it's a great little camcorder, with a huge built-in HDD and a 6 hour battery, but to recharge it or to download video to the laptop, it requires a stupid plastic base instead of a simple USB cable. Sony has been around long enough to invent a really handy camcorder, but apparently not long enough to make it easy to actually work with the footage.
Oh, yeah, I forgot that there's also a "Memory Stick" slot on the HandyCam so I could download the video that way, if only I actually had a memory stick or a memory stick slot on my Toshiba. Everybody else in the entire world uses SD cards, but Sony's quirky like that. Some of us remember Beta versus VHS.
On a much more somber note, I read this in the NYT this morning about the quake in Sichuan province. It would seem that finding adequate funding for schools is not just an American problem. I suspect that if we lost something like 10,000 students in a natural disaster because their school buildings collapsed as a result of poor designs, we would see a significant rise in spending on educational infrastructure in a hurry.
BTW, as usual there is no actual communication from China regarding Katie's welfare in the quake's aftermath, but given that she's almost 700 miles southeast of the quake's epicenter, she probably got shaken up a little, but nothing more. As long as she wasn't attending school in one of the poor kids' buildings...
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