Dream Big, Little Man - Sunday 8/17/2008

Rocky chats up the metal hen in the living room.

You go, boy.

Two Birds In the Hand - Saturday 7/14/2007

So that's better than how many in the bush?

Gus is young, but he's already ready for his close-up.

Iced Tea Day - Wednesday 7/4/2007

It's definitely an iced tea kind of day in Southern California.

This nice little pitcher is from Don Hall's Factory restaurant in Fort Wayne, IN. When you ordered a beer you'd get this 24 ounce pitcher and a glass (not the one pictured). Same thing at the Old Gas House restaurant, where we used to go a lot.

The first time Hydra and I went out with my dad and mom for dinner, we went to the Factory and Mom commented on the cool pitchers.

Hydra disappeared for a few minutes and then came back with four pitchers...he'd bought one for each of us to take home. It was a funny moment. A little much, but very sweet. I used to use mine to serve a yogurt dipping sauce for fruit. (Do they still use these there or at the Gas House, I wonder? Deb?)

My recent facination with different kinds of water carafes (I took many more photos of them in France than I posted here) prompted me to pull this one down from the shelf today. I plan to sit at the library table, in the air conditioning, and look out at the sunny yard.

We gave passing consideration to the idea of going to our little town's 4th of July parade, but when we saw the forecast of 106 degrees, we let that go. It was already 80 on the shaded side of the house when the parade started at 9:00 a.m.

See? I told you Gus was tiny! Rocky's only about 4 inches tall, and he towers over the little guy!

They're sitting on Hyda's guitar stand and Rocky is singing to Gus.

Meet the Newbie! - Saturday 6/30/2007

He's tiny!!

We knew he was little, but he's about half the size of Rocky. He's just three months old. That's why his eyes are still completely black and he has little black bars almost all the way to his beak.

Hydra and I have been thinking about adding another budgie to the flock for a few months now. We flirted with a Timneh African Grey last weekend, but that's a whole 'nother magnitude of commitment. We feel/hope that Rocky will be happy to have a friend to help him herd lattice balls.


We just picked the Newbie up today and haven't named him yet. We've always had flight-related names for our budgies. Rocky's named for Rocket J. Squirrel. Lindy was for Charles A. Lindbergh. Ridley was for test pilot Jack Ridley (Chuck Jaeger's wingman). And our first bird, Bogie, who was an incredible joy and got us hooked on birds, was named for a combination of things including an unidentified aircraft (which should have been spelled bogey).

We have it narrowed down to a couple of aviation/spaceflight related names. We're thinking either Gus, after astronaut and Indiana native Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom (I'm from Indiana) or Boomer after the Australian flying hunting tool and Australian fighter plane the Boomergang (budgerigars/parakeets are originally from Australia).

Comments? Other suggestions?

Rocky, aka the Oldbie. We are trying to remember exactly how old he is. Time to check through my pre-blog journals. He's a playful little sweetie.

Where'd Everybody Go?

E & G from my writing group came up for the day today. We wrote for 2 1/2 hours, hiked, had lunch, talked…and played ball with my budgie, Rocky.

He ran back and forth across the table, tapping on the ball, chattering in his musical little voice. He’d throw a ball off the edge of the table, then run over to look at where it fell. He gets a kick out of people picking up stuff for him, and G & E were both good playmates.

They left about an hour ago. Rocky’s still sitting quietly on the table. Awww.