No, I wouldn't, for several reasons.  Just in general I prefer not to rely on medications and the like if there's another alternative.  This isn't to say I wouldn't take something prescribed for me by a doctor, or that I won't swallow the occasional aspirin (or equivalent) if I have a headache.  But as an example, I prefer to shield myself from sunburn with light, long-sleeved clothing and a broad-brimmed hat rather than sunblock.

Also I don't think a pill would have the same psychological benefits as actual exercise.  I realize I'm not exactly a shining example for anyone else, since I myself don't exercise nearly enough...but I'm willing to live with the consequences of that.  Actually, in the past couple of months I have been getting myself to exercise in the one way I do enjoy:  swimming.  Which has the added benefits of getting me out of the house, and a sense of accomplishment, neither of which I could get from a pill.  And I'll bet you anything it's cheaper, too.

A demonic cat sticking its tongue out.

Probably Indian, but Chinese would run it a close second.  IIRC I discovered Indian food in college and had a "Where have you been all my life?!" reaction.  Indian also has a good number of vegetarian options...though Chinese stir fry is probably healthier overall.

I probably shouldn't have done it... asking rahirah for the various Tower/New Hope timelines, that is.  Now I find myself wanting to go back there ... only it can't be done.  The holt itself is in the process of closing down, and though I'm still in touch with many of the people I particularly liked working with, they've all moved on to other things.  About all I can do is maybe finish up an unfinished story or two, which is what I'm working on now.  (Specifically "Walking Wounded," if anyone's interested.)

In the meantime, all of my non-Tower/New Hope ElfQuest stories are now up on fanfiction.net, 13 in all.

Let me also take the opportunity to wish sillymagpie many happy returns of the day!

So I've decided to post at least some of my old ElfQuest stories on Fanfiction.net.  Digging out the stories themselves -- from old files, old binders, old zines ... has been kind of a trip, and has made me a bit nostalgic, too.  I think the stories hold up pretty well, myself.  We'll see what other people's opinions are, perhaps.

So far I've posted five stories, including my very first ("Heartstrings"), and the only one of mine that used characters from the original series ("The Rebel").  I'm going to hold off on posting any Tower Mountain/New Hope stories for now, since I know rahirah is considering a separate archive for them.  But there are still a number of others set in holts of various degrees of defunctness.

Anyone who would like to check them out, try www.fanfiction.net/u/2006070/Margaret_Dean -- and have fun!

I spotted an appropriately festive bird this morning:  a male Western Tanager!  Brilliant yellow, with a scarlet head, he obviously didn't mind being admired as he sat in a tree right next to the road and preened himself.

We usually think of colors that gaudy on tropical birds.  Indeed, tanagers do spend their winters in South America ... but while they're in the tropics, they don't look like that.  For the winter they molt into an inconspicuous olive, only donning their dazzling red and yellow when they come north to breed.

Makes you feel special, doesn't it?  :) 

Well, that's what it said on the bumper sticker:  Keep Santa Fe Dipherent.  Ha, thought I.  That's a word I've never seen before.  I'll look it up when I get home and know that I'm learning something.

Got home, looked it up, and found it wasn't in the dictionary.  Tried Google -- then felt silly for not realizing that the odd word was simply an alternate (stunt) spelling of "different."  Ooookay...

...but what if if hadn't been?  If "dipherent" were an English word on its own, what would it mean?  Well, let's see.  Obviously it would be an adjective since -ent is an adjectival ending.  The "di-" at the beginning suggests a Greek derivation with the meaning "two."  That leaves "pher", and since the only word I could think of with that string of letters in it was "pheromone," I looked that up.  Turns out that "pher-" comes from the Greek "pherein" meaning "to carry."  So "dipherent" means "double-bearing" -- probably in some technical sense, since it's the sciences that tend to spawn fancy Greek-derived terms.

How's that?  And would anyone like to try refining the definition, or coming up with their own?

Though I didn't think about it, today is the first day of spring, so perhaps a particularly good bird walk is appropriate.  I spotted both White-crowned Sparrows and an Evening Grosbeak, both birds I've seen in Santa Fe before but not on the "usual suspects" list.  Official Bird of the Day has to be the Curve-billed Thrasher, since one of them was sitting and singing in a tree right outside the front door, and then I spotted several more on my walk, some singing, some not.  Twenty-three species in all, which is on the high end for my Santa Fe neighborhood so far.  But the biggest thrill was when I spotted a pair of Bushtits constructing their nest (which is more or less the shape of a fluffy tube sock).  Now that I know where it is, I can keep tabs on how their nesting goes.

You know, this whole time change thing is getting ridiculous.  Do you realize that so-called "Standard" Time now only covers a third of the year (November through February)?  Not much of a standard!  I don't see why they don't just shift the clock ahead an hour and leave it that way permanently.  I doubt it'd make much of a difference in the winter anyway, and then we wouldn't have to worry about the shift anymore.

This time it wasn't Twisted Bill (though I spotted him today also), or the female Yellow-Shafted Flicker I saw a while back.  This one was a male Red-Shafted... almost.  He had the red mustache mark, and when he flew, his wing-linings were the usual salmon color, but he also had some traces of red on his nape, though not a crisp, clear crescent as you'd expect on a full-blooded Yellow-Shafted.  But presumably he has some Yellow-Shafted genes in him somewhere.  I think I'll call him Patchie.  He won't be as easily spotted as Twisted Bill (who shows up very nicely in silhouette, even at a distance), but he may provide further data points on seasonal movement (or otherwise) in flickers.

While it was a bit colder this morning than it has been for the last few days, and while I know that other parts of the country are still getting snow and ice (and we could very well yet get more in Santa Fe, come to that), the birds are definitely getting ready for spring.  More of them are starting to sing -- or drum, in the case of the flickers; my current project is to learn to distinguish the calls of the White-winged Dove from the Eurasian Collared-dove.  (I already know Mourning Dove, thanks!)

And then there are the Bushtits.  On my bird walk today I'd spotted a Mountain Chickadee and was standing still observing it.  Along that stretch of road on one side, along the top of the slope, was what they call hereabouts a coyote fence, i.e. a tall fence made of vertical poles with the bark still on.  While I was watching, a female Bushtit alighted on the side of the fence, and when I focused on her I could see that she was collecting fibrous lichen from the fence.  When she had a beakful, she flew up and over the fence; then a few seconds later, a male Bushtit arrived at the same spot, also collected a beakful of lichen, and then he flew up and over the fence.  I don't know what that suggest to you, but it certainly looked like nesting behavior to me. 

(A quick consultation of the Birds of North America Online -- to which I have a month's trial subscription by virtue of having participated in the Great Backyard Bird Count -- confirms that yes, Bushtits do start nesting this early.  And it's quite an elaborate nest, too...)

I've actually had this game in mind for a while, but today's score was so awesome that I decided to make it official.

The game is pretty simple:  when you go out birding, keep track of how many different species you see before you spot a House Finch.  Or, if House Finches aren't as common in your area as they are in Santa Fe, substitute another suitably ubiquitous species, i.e. one that you're pretty well guaranteed to see any time you go out.

Anyway, my score today was twelve, which I expect to be a personal record for a long time to come.  Though as the season advances, who knows?

Another amusing incident on my walk today:  the flickers are actively drumming on the electrical poles, as I noted both yesterday and today.  Then a little farther down the street, I thought I heard another one, looked up...and found it was a raven sitting on top of the pole, making the same sound.  Now I'm wondering if this was actual mimicry or just a Sound Ravens Make Sometimes.

I'd have to say that today's Bird of the Day was the Canyon Towhee, because they just kept on popping up.  Certainly not the most spectacular bird I saw today; a Canyon Towhee is a dust-colored bird with only a couple of rusty patches.  And not the most ubiquitous either; that distinction, if you can call it that, almost always belongs to the House Finches.  (My motto is, "You're not going to see every bird every day.  You're not going to see any bird every day ... except maybe House Finches.")  But they turned up several times at widely scattered locations along my route, so I think they qualify.  And I like them anyway.

It isn't officially spring yet, but the weather's definitely taken a turn for the warmer today, and the birds were responding.  They're beginning to sing, so I can start learning the songs of species I couldn't learn in Maryland.

The one I pegged today was the Spotted Towhee: two or three chirps and then a higher-pitched rattling trill.  At the same time, it was nice to hear a good old Mourning Dove, as well as the White-winged and Eurasian Collared varieties.  I'll get the latter two sorted out eventually.

And on another upbeat note:  while a full-time job continues to elude me, the freelance proofreading continues steady.

My unusual bird sighting of the day was a flicker -- and no, it wasn't Twisted Bill, though I spotted him yesterday (which meant that he went into the Great Backyard Bird Count, although not by name).  This one was a female, and she was a yellow-shafted flicker.  No mistake -- she had a red patch on the back of her head, no "mustache mark" (therefore female), and though she was perched so I couldn't see the underside of her wings, I could see the yellow edging on her tail, rather than the salmon-red of the red-shafted variety.  The yellow-shafted variety is usually considered the eastern form -- I'm sure that seeing one this far west isn't unknown (and a quick check through Google confirms that), but it's the first time it's happened to me.

Naturally, it turned up too late for the Great Backyard Bird Count, which took place from Feb. 13 - 16.  I went out and counted all four days, and I did manage to record most of the species I've been seeing in the neighborhood since October.  I also think I managed to recruit more participants on Monday.  Doing a little PR is always nice!

So I'm reading the newspaper this morning (The New Mexican), and there's this article about how consumer spending is way down because people are (understandably) saving their money in these hard times.  Unfortunately this sort of behavior, though sensible from an individual's POV (hey, I'm doing it too) does nothing to get the economy going again.

There is, however, an exception.  Folks on one of my mailing lists were discussing how if you have Borders gift cards, you should spend them now in case Borders goes under, and I just read a friend's LJ post in which he talked about how he and his partner went on a weekend spending spree with all the gift cards and certificates they got for Christmas.

So I'm wondering...  Instead of a standard tax cut, or a tax rebate like the Bush administration sent out, how about issuing tax credits/rebates for households as a use-it-or-lose-it debit card?  Basically saying, "Here's X amount of money, now please go spend it before the year is out!"  Presumably you could use it at any business that would take any other debit card, which would include supermarkets, clothing stores (necessities, IOW), but not your savings account.

It seems to me that would brighten people's lives a bit, and also inject money into the economy where it's hurting.  OTOH, I am a dunce about economics in general, so there may be a major flaw in this plan.  But it can't hurt to throw it out for discussion...

Well, there were a lot of them, many tied up with having a president who can speak, but there was personal, private pleasure in the musical number played by the quartet of violin, cello, clarinet and piano, as a part of the ceremony.

I've had a special fondness for "Simple Gifts" for a long time.  Those Mythopoeic Society members among my LJ friends may think of "Dare, then, the measure of the Dance," the Society anthem.  Those of you who participated in Tower Mountain (I know there are at least two of you) may remember my using some of that anthem's lyrics as an epigraph for "The Dancer at the End of the Line."  What you may not realize is that I always associated that tune and its original lyrics with New Hope.

And wasn't that what New Hope was all about?  Starting over, hard work, unity and strength in diversity.  That's what I was trying to say all along, that sang in the quartet, that was in our new President's speech.

Joy.

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Grab the book nearest you. Right now. Turn to page 56. Find the fifth sentence. Post that sentence along with these instructions in your LiveJournal. Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Okay, looks like the closest (i.e. on top of the stack, and assuming my game notebook doesn't count) is the Castle Falkenstein core rulebook.  So we get:

"Two-inch talons backed with immense strength can easily dismember a horse; you're not going to be any problem."

(Part of an introduction to Falkensteinian Dragons.)

Next?

I recently got from Amazon a neat little book on animal tracks of New Mexico and Arizona.  Since we had a couple of inches of fresh snow this morning, I took it out with me on my bird walk.  Sure enough, I was able to (at least tentatively) identify the delicate stitching of marks along the upper end of our road as the track of a kangaroo rat. 

Pleasing as this was, it made me think of several occasions when I've seen articles or letters in birding magazines about why people watch birds.  The usual answers involve things like how beautiful they are, the symbolism of flight, et cetera.  Now, I'm just as appreciative of the beauty of birds and the symbolism of flight as the next birder, but I also suspect there are entirely practical reasons why amateur naturalists all over the world have chosen birds to focus their attention (and binoculars) on.  In a word, they're visible.

Consider the difficulties of the mammal watcher.  Many mammals are nocturnal.  Most of them are secretive.  Almost all of them are cryptically colored.  And by and large, they do not want you to see them.

Most birds, by contrast, are diurnal, like us.  Since they can fly, they don't need to be as assiduous about hiding themselves as mammals do, however maddeningly elusive they can still be at times.  They can get away with being brightly colored, perching on branches in the open air, and singing.  It's just a lot easier to see birds.

As a quick statistic:  while I was living and birding in Maryland, as I noted in a previous post, I recorded over 130 species of birds.  Over that same time, how many wild mammal species did I see?  From memory -- squirrels, rabbits, woodchucks, deer, red fox, beavers (in the river), one possible sighting of a muskrat (ditto), rats, house mice (in our house unfortunately), and a shrew or two caught by our cat.  If you count roadkill, you can add raccoon and opossum.  That's what, twelve?

Here in New Mexico, I'll carry my little book and keep an eye out for animal tracks, but by and large I think I'll stick with the birds.