Good Morning Friends!
Oh what beautiful Birthday greetings!!! Thanks my friends. You have put so much love and joy into my day already!!!
Cherie- the Bromeliad "candles"
Barb- the Flower collage
Diane- the passion flower as well as the email greeting
Bev- the first Rhodo for the season
Sara- the wish for sand between my toes and safe travels ( not long now!)
Donna- the lovely field of pink flowers
Carolyn a lovely birthday poem. ( I did get a surprise this morning! Don got me a travel printer to go with the new laptop he recently got me. Now I will be all set for keeping up and even printing!)

Today it's just the last minute things and final clean up in the house so I have a clean house to come home to. I am doing better than most years as I have papers stopped, mail to be held, clothes set out on guest bed just needing to be packed, Don is giving the pups baths, etc, etc.

I will try to post here and there, maybe even post some pictures of places and things we are seeing. But I plan to enjoy my time away with no stress or worries. If any of you get a chance to check out my nests ( Ozark, Hellgate and Dunedin) I would appreciate that greatly. I will let the other TA's know I will be away too.
We have 3 active chicks at the Ozarks that are outgrowing their nest rapidly. I worry about a repeat of "Tink" with one of them.
Hellgate's Dad never returned so we are hoping that Mom finally selects a new mate and the season begins.
Dunedin is a simple nest as very little is going on. Just making sure chick is getting food. He and Mom spend most of their time sitting and watching traffic to the right of the nest and golfers on the putting green to the left!
Who knows.... if you happen to be watching... you just might see me and Don visiting the nest. I'll try to post the day we go there.

Gotta run now. Once again thank you for the wonderful Birthday Greetings! I'll try to plop in later today.
Love and hugs to y'all!

I'm back. Don't When I am working or playing on the computer, I always have the TV on in the office. After the morning news was over, I just never changed the channel to hunt for anything else. "Wild About Animals" came on and everything in it made me think about some or all of you. They had a segment on a Avian Rehab facility in Charleston, South Carolina-Jean and Barbara, then another wildlife preserve in South Carolina. Not sure what area of the state. They said it was little know, but they had 2 bears (Diane) as well as many other animals. Then they went on to therapy dogs (Carolyn & Bev). Shows how they are chosen and the requirements. They showed one who goes to the library to let children who are bashful about reading in public read to him. He just sat contentedly listening( Donna with your love of children and teaching). Then he went to a hospital to visit. They even had one who if I understood correctly would stay with someone healing from surgery or sickness. Since all of you are such animal lovers, I guess it really made me think about all of my friends on this forum.

One other thing I forgot to mention in my novel this morning. Do you remember Mason the Tornado Dog? Yesterday was the 1 year anniversary of the terrible tornadoes that tore up so much of central Alabama and blew Mason away. Dr Lamb, the vet for the clinic where my son is a vet tech had him at Fox 6-our local TV station for an interview and to let people see how well he is doing now. He is back with his family and going great. All day yesterday on our local TV as well as the Weather Channel they were showing footage from a year ago. There were many tributes to all the survivors, people who helped and memorials for the ones who didn't survive it. There were events and concerts in all the areas, some to raise money to continue rebuilding. It was a very horrible day a year ago and there is still much work to be done to get many of these cities and family back to normal.

One more thing. The TV is really interesting today. There is a commercial that has come on twice this morning. A man and woman sit down in their seat in a theater. She asks him where their son is and he indicates he thought she had him. Moment of panic, then they hear a piano playing "twinkle, twinkle little star" and teh curtain open. She is pushing him to go get the son, but in just a moment a man comes on the stage and reaches his hands around to the keys on both sides of the boy and whispers "keep on playing". He plays an accompaniment to the boys simple one note at a time song. When it is finished they both stand up and bow to much applause. It is an advertisement for encouraging children. Wonderful.

Now that I have written 2 novels in one day, I'll go away for a while(probably). I haven't heard or seen anything else from my little chipmunk. Hopefully he is happy back with his family and Scardy won't find him or any of his friends or kin again. EDT: Opps I spoke too soon. Stephen just told me there is a chipmunk in his room. He heard it about 8am, but is just now getting up. So I have reopened the doors and hope he runs out. If any of you have any ideas about getting him out, I'm open for suggestions. I just hope this is the same one I saw last night and this morning. to all of you.

Sara I hope that the chipmunk is soon outside to STAY.

Diane the mule deer were about 3 miles from me. We had mule deer in the neighborhood all the time in the late afternoon and early morning hours until the coyotes were so numerous. We see signs of them once a week or so. They like the backyard for some reason. There were about 8 of them on that hillside. Some you could not see as they were resting in the bushes.

The Osprey at the Boulder fairgrounds have 2 eggs now. They have more stuff in that nest.



Jean have a wonderful trip and please keep us posted on all your osprey and eagle sightings.

Barb sounds like you have been out and about again.

Bev hope you are having a nice weekend.

Cherie was good to hear from you.

Carolyn enjoy your warm weather.

BBL

JEAN HAVE A WONDERFUL VACATION.. WE WILL MISS YOU..

HI everyone... I will post soon...busy here right now..

Good Evening friends......

Sara No suggestions, I find you have to catch it yourself and put it out.
You made my day.

Bev, happy dreams of settled osprey nests.

Jean, safe fun trip.

Donna, loved your mule deer.

Barbara, sweet dreams also (whenever you actually go to bed).

Good Night buddies.....I wrote a poem which is at poetry corner about a stuffed animal on the White Rock nest - it was a hoot and the poem reflects that.....enjoy!
carolyn

Good morning friends. Just wanted to plop in and give you an update on my unwanted pet. I think the chipmunk has left the premises. Hopefully!!! We're thinking that when Stephen heard him in his room and opened his door and he ran out. That's when he visited me in my office, then I ran him out of the open door. Neither of us has heard from him or seen any signs of him since then. Just hope he isn't being quiet and hiding just to reappear later!!! Scardy Cat is in withdrawal since he no longer has free rights to come and go. He has to ask to go out then hope I notice when he wants to come back in. He has lost his key to my house!!!! But that's what happens when you break the rules. No telling how many new pets he could bring in while no one is here for a few hours since he seems to be a good hunter!!!

Off to Briarcliff in a tad and I should be getting the revised lease back this morning from the attorney for the big space upstairs. I'll have to read it (8 pages) to make sure it is still correct then meet to sign it. Then the real fun begins. Construction. The owner of the bulding whose office is upstairs is taking over a space at the bottom of the stairs and making it into a reception and conference room. This way if anyone can't go up the stairs, they can meet downstairs. In conjunction with that, we will remodel the 2 restrooms downstairs which are very dated since they were built in the 30s and were not remodeled when the upstairs was all done. The new tenants will have the front 1/4 for the upstairs (1200 sq feet) plus taking over the current reception area (250 sq' and remodeling all of it. I'm sure I'll be in the middle of all of this. And the lease on the new downstairs space on the front fell through, so I have a sign back up in it. That one is on the main street and should rent fast.

Tomorrow morning between 8-10 I have to meet Charter at one of my clients to get her phone system changed from AT & T, saving her about $120 a month. Then at 1:00 business meeting with another interior decorator. World slow down and let me catch up!! I'm supposed to be out of town this weekend going to Tupelo, Ms for the "Blue Suede Cruise". A car show in the town where Elvis was born. Jane's husband didn't want to go, so she and I will be going to that one, unless something happens. I will be nice to get out of town.

Hope everyone has a great day and a wonderful week. Don't know when I will have time to write another novel, but will be checking on y'all, so behave

Hi Friends.. I have the boys here.. but i heard from Jean.. they arrived safe and sound.. she said to say hi to all of you.. she is unable to get on the forum right now..

HUgs Bev.....


Sara... So happy your guest is gone....

Good Evening Friends!
I think we are all settled in at the old fisherman's cottage we are renting. It's a lovely little place and very cozy for Don, me and the pups.With two bedrooms, a living room, dining room, kitchen, bath and a little piano room, we certainly have lots of space to move around.
We had a few problems coming down. First was "Jill" our GPS. Five miles down the road, she decided to freeze up. Don checked the manual and followed all the suggestions for getting it to unfreeze, with no luck. Fortunately we knew the route as far as Jacksonville, Fl, but needed a refresher of the couple routes we had to switch over to get to I-75. We did try every now again to reprogram "Jill" and finally decided she just didn't want to go to Florida! As a result we had to use the old way of checking the route with a map!
When we got to the house and got things unpacked, Don started up both of our laptops. The place was supposed to have WiFi, but it must be a dinasaur router. If we got connected, it would freeze or boot us off in seconds. I couldn't pull up any cams, and so I had to resort to my I-phone for emailing. When we travel, Don brings along a spare WiFi router in case we run into a place that doesn't have WiFi. Good thing he brought it along this time too as he was able to disconnect the one here and set his up.Now we are able to connect and stay connected!

Today we just walked across the street to the beach and walked a little .... Yes Sara, I enjoyed the sand between my toes! We ran to Sams for some items we will need for two weeks, and then just got all settled in.
This evening we went to the Brown Boxer Bar and Grill for dinner. It was such a nice evening we sat out on the open deck and enjoyed the guitar player who sang a lot of Beach songs as well as Jimmy Buffet songs. Now we are back at the house and will soon be heading to bed to be ready for another morning walk on the beach and whatever strikes our mood for the day. Good Night Friends! I'll plop in when I can.
Love and hugs to all!
Bev and Carolyn I can't thank you both enough for watching my threads. It is so nice to be able to enjoy our vacation and not have to worry about them!