Saturday, February 5, 2005

#132 Glorious Turkeys Galore

There's been a flock of 24 wild turkeys in my front yard almost all day every day for several weeks.  They're getting used to me now, and when I go outside they just saunter toward the woods and lurk near the first trees waiting for me to leave (lurky turkeys).  They scratch the snow away, especially on the sides of the driveway, looking for munchies.  I'm debating buying some cracked corn for them.

They're HUGE!  Some of their footprints are eight inches long.  They're not gracefully shaped, but when the sun shines on them, their black feathers are iridescent.  I keep watching for dropped feathers, but I guess it's not molting time.  Also, none of the males have spread their tails, either (I love when they do that) - not "impress the hens" time either. 

Black feathers.  Hmmm.  When we were in school and made Thanksgiving decorations, we always made the turkeys medium brown.  These are definitely black.

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There's an SCA event in Kingston today, where there will be music, dancing, and food.  I really want to go, if it were tomorrow I would definitely go, but I've got all kinds of problems today.  It's from 10 to 10 or something like that, so I still might make it.

 
 I bought a necklace from a guy in China.  He doesn't take PayPal (online payment), so I've been trying to pay him through BidPay.com - buy an international money order with a credit card, and they deliver it to the recipient.  For some reason, BidPay has rejected three attempts, with no reason given, although I can figure out from the status page that my credit cards go through ok.  The only explanation I can come up with is that his invoice is in British Pounds Sterling, and BidPay operates only in US Dollars.  I converted pounds to dollars to enter the amounts, but that makes my numbers not match his.  I can send a paper international money order on Monday, but our little village PO doesn't always have them, so it may require a trip to Kingston.  Blech.

To top it all off, AOL keeps bouncing, and between bounces Windows stops responding to the mouse or keyboard (which I suspect is the fault of AOL), and when all that manages to stay up, my connection drops.  I've been restarting something about every 40 minutes.

I've noticed that whenever AOL has a new release available, the old one starts breaking.  Like they don't ensure that the new release on their end is downwardly compatible with those of us still on the old release.   Guess what - I'm on 9.0, and there is now a 9.2 available.  I hate to upgrade when I don't have to, because just after Jay left, I upgraded and lost all the stored mail - which chronicled his illness and treatments, and my address book.  All gone.  Bad experience.  Upgrades forevermore approached with caution and crossed fingers.

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