Walking out to the car this morning, I got a few within-inches flybys from a bird. I figured they’d probably recently built a nest in the tree next to the driveway, which maybe I could relocate before they got too settled. Well, turns out it’s a little late for that. After returning from Peets, I noticed a dead baby bird on the sidewalk and a few feet away a live bird that appeared to be a fledgeling (or a near fledgling). The branch where the nest was located stuck out over the sidewalk; apparently, two youngsters fell out (or were pushed out? Insert conspiracy theory here).
The parent birds weren’t happy about the situation, buzzing around and squawking at me. I disposed of the deceased fellow, hoping that we could all move on from that sad chapter. The remaining little guy didn’t appear to be doing well; his wings didn’t appear to be developed enough to fly, and I’m not even sure if his eyes were open. He would take a few steps, then kind of topple over and lay there awhile…seemed like it was a struggle for him to stand up. Not sure if that was because of his age or being without food or water for too long on a hot sidewalk. That coupled the jackass stray cats that roam our neighborhood (the ones that piss on anything and everything in our yard, including all of our doors), the little bird was not in a good situation. Erin went online and found a few sites with info about what to do about baby birds. While she was doing that, I stuck in umbrella above him in the bush so that he didn’t get roasted in the sun.
Erin’s research indicated that handling baby birds will not cause their parents to abandon them (I guess they don’t give a damn what their young smells like). Fortunately, the nest wasn’t too high in the tree, so I got out a step ladder, put on some gloves, and set him back in the nest. Later in the day, we could see the parent birds bringing food to the nest, so I’m guessing that he’s OK for now.
(Click for larger images)
Update: I’m pretty sure that the birds are Northern Mockingbirds. Evidence: distinctive white bands underneath wings (not visible in my pictures), common “dive bombing” behavior when anything gets near the nest, and their tendency to never shut up.
If I had to pick one restuarant in San Diego that I would eat at exclusively, Mama’s Bakery & Lebanese Deli would be a top contender. I was preparing to write a review, and decided to find a link first (entertainment pages of local site, etc) when I came across this review by a San Diego food-oriented blogger. A flogger?
mmm-yoso sums it up pretty well (with lots more pictures than I have). I agree that the garlic chicken wrap is a big draw, though the chicken shwarma and manakeesh ultimate are exceptional as well. Note: you must really like garlic to enjoy the chicken wrap. I love it, but then again, I thought that my meal at The Stinking Rose didn’t have enough garlic.
Here’s a picture of Poncho hanging out at Mama’s.
When you say “dog beach” in San Diego, most people immediately think of the one at Ocean Beach. While there are a lot of nice folks in OB, there’s also a trashy element that I can do without. Coronado Dog Beach is much cleaner, more picturesqe, and the sand! Oh, the sand. It’s nice. Folks there are pretty nice as well (actually, the majority of people are pretty friendly at all of the dog parks I’ve been to).
Poncho’s play behavior is different at the beach than at non-beach parks. He wants to play keep-away/wide-receiver coverage with dogs who are trying to play catch in the water. Many dogs do not enjoy this sort of thing; they are there to get that ball, damnit, and don’t need some other dog chasing them and yapping at them while engaged in that mission. If we’re lucky, we’ll find some dogs who don’t mind the barking and interference, and everyone is happy.
I like the gadgets. I used to be more impulsive about buying them, but I’ve developed more discipline; I usually put myself on a “waiting period” to decide if I really need something or not. For the last few years, I’d been running with a Reebok brand heart rate monitor. It worked fairly well, but after several years of use the sweat took it’s toll on the buttons, making it harder to operate. After doing a fair amount of research, I decided to get the Garmin Forerunner 301, which has a heart rate monitor and a GPS. The really cool thing about the GPS is that you can download your runs to the computer, allowing you to track your progress (or lack of progress) very easily. It makes it harder to convince yourself “yeah, I run 2-3 times a week” if you’re actually only running 4 or 5 times a month. The unit itself is a little bulky (you wouldn’t want to wear it for anything other than exercising) but the user interface design is nice, and the GPS works pretty well for it’s price point (about $214 when I bought it, now selling for less than $160!) From second to second you’ll see a certain amount of fluctuation (e.g., your pace might jump from 8:00 mile to a 9:30 mile) but you can still get a pretty good sense of how fast your running.
It comes with “Training Center” software that is suprisingly good. Most software that comes bundled with these types of devices is pretty crappy (like the horrible horrible movie making software that came with my Panasonic PV-GS150). The GPS display in Training Center is certainly the weak point (the maps are pretty crude) but there is a solution for that (which I’ll get to later). The graph display is great, and is somewhat configurable. What’s really nice is that Garmin frequently releases new versions of the software that enhance exiting features and add new ones. That’s pretty unusual, in my experience, given that their not making any additional money from the software after the initial purchase of the unit that it’s bundled with.
Garmin customer service get high marks as well; the display on my first unit died after a few months. I was able to return it for a new unit with no hassle (didn’t even need to send them the original receipt).
My biggest complaint is the heart rate monitor. The monitor in my cheap Reebok set (less than $100) worked pretty much flawlessly. For some reason, if the Garmin unit loses the signal from the transmitter on your chest, it has a hard time synching up with it again. I found that if I go into the wrist unit’s menu options for the monitor and select the “restart heart rate scanning,” it will usually synch up within a few seconds; however, it’s a pain to go through the menu options to do that when you’re in the middle of a run. Why can’t the unit re-synch without my intervention? It doesn’t always do that. Most runs it’s able to maintain the link for the entire run, but every once and awhile it seems like it just can’t hold the link.
Other than that minor annoyance, it’s a great training aid and motivator (if your like me and you love charts graphs and tables), especially now that it’s come down in price so much. I think the price drop is due to the release of new Forerunner 305, which is supposed to have a better GPS (is able to maintain an downlink in areas with obstructions like lots of trees or tall buildings), and a sleeker design. It’s quite a bit more expensive than the 301 (over $300); I’m happy with the 301 for now.
Who am I kidding? Let’s just pretend it’s not, and say that it’s just me writing about stuff from time to time. There’s always a good chance it will be something about my dog.
Here he is galloping at the local ballfield. I get the impression that some people are intimidated by his appearance, but it’s so hard for me to see. He’s not that big (55 pounds) and is a huge cupcake. We were fortunate to get a dog that doesn’t seem to have much of a prey drive (though he does have a big play drive). He’s quite respectful of that cat (and will lick the cat if I start to pet the cat). He is aware that he’s bigger than the cat; if the cat gets in his food, he rushes over and delivers a silent cease-and-desist order. Trillium ambles off, pretending to not know why Poncho is mad-dogging him.
