Quickie

- My eyes have (mostly) recovered from Saturday's readathon. But it reinforced a thought I had a while ago. I can sit and read fiction for hours (and did), but can only handle nonfiction in much smaller, shorter chunks. I've been struggling to finish several good books because of that. So, rather than read the depressing news websites at lunchtime, I'll pull up whatever book I'm currently working through on Amazon's cloud reader. Nonfiction only. We'll see how long it takes to move through a book that way.

- For those of you following along, the final red tailed hawk has hatched. Less than an hour ago, in fact. The two older have a habit of pecking at each other once the mom has fed them enough. It's kind of funny to see, as when they start, Big Red ruffles her feathers, steps forward and sits on them. That's one way of ending an argument.

- The city made an "error" on the property assessment calculations that just about gave me a heart attack when I opened the letter on Saturday. The "error" dropped the assessment an additional 28%, after the prior year's 24% drop (which was a good thing, bringing values back within spitting distance of the actual market value). It seems the error was made only on our condo association, but that's 88 units they would have heard from on Monday.

- While I was on vacation I cashed in the latest batch of reward points from my credit card. The intent was to use them (visa gift cards) to finance some of the purchases for the patio, but I left the redemption too late to use them. Ah, well, they should just about cover the purchase of plants at the local greenhouse, should it ever get warm enough to plant anything outdoors. And dry enough - I don't really want to plant in mud. I think I've settled on a mini-hydrangea bush for one urn, begonias for the second and a tomato plant of some sort for the third.

- Rumor has it that Saturday will be dry, the only such day for the next week or so. The plan is to take advantage of that to - wait for it - wash the patio concrete. Until that is done, it's pretty silly to assemble and put out the deck box and side table. Those items are taking up valuable space in the living room. If I work quickly, I should be able to pressure wash the patio, AND assemble and put everything out. Just in time for the next round of rain.

- I'm excited for the new "guest teacher" classes my local quilt shop posted for September and October. The teacher is a machine quilting whiz (and also a practicing OB?GYN surgeon) and they are offering an advanced class. Woo hoo! Whilst googling her, I found out that the upper Midwest machine quilting show is being held about forty minutes from home. The eventual retirement plan includes offering quilting services on a long arm machine. What better place to scope out available machines than the vendor mall at a show dedicated to all types of machine quilting?