Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Quick update: still at Mom's, feeling a little bit better most days than the day before, occasionaly worse (as with migraine); nagging cough has me a little concerned ... but I slept eight consecutive hours last night -- unusual for me, and quite welcome. Last-minute scheduling wound up getting me to my brother's in-laws' Christmas party on the 25th, where it was really, really good to See People, though I was exhausted to begin with (getting ready to go out tired me -- bleah) and much more so by the time my mother wanted to head back (much earlier than I usually leave). Hyperacusis made the echoes echoes echoes of grownup and child voices talking over and around each other uncomfortable -- every so often I had to change rooms just to get a different annoying combination of echoes -- but I was still glad to be well enough to be there, and to see folks. My brother was talking about getting a 4-track cassette deck for working out musical ideas in scratchpad form, and wondered aloud whether he was thinking a bit behind the current technology. I told him about mididisc recorders and showed him Audacity on the Mac. (A bit of a startle when I said something about it also running on Windows, and he said, "This isn't Windows? I didn't know there were any operating systems other than Windows." Obviously this is not the same brother who recently got an Ubuntu netbook and went from worrying whether he'd be able to do all the things he's used to under Windows (a week before it arrived) to whispering, "I'm not sure I'll ever be able to go back to using Windows" (after using it for a couple weeks).

Need to get home, to grab an acoustic guitar for HCB rehearsal Wednesday, if nothing else. Also very bady need to get to a nail salon.

When I got up today, my mother, bird book in hand, called my attention to a raptor sitting atop a utility pole in the back yard. We haven't been able to determine for sure what kind it is -- she found a few photos that looked close, but most of the almost-matches are for birds that aren't found around here (Maryland, US; about halfway between Washington and Annapolis) according to the books.

Anyone recognize it?

She said it was here yesterday as well -- she'd seen it on the ground, then flying. It has a white front (it had its back to me the whole time, but Mom had gotten a better look). She also said that my brother (the now-Ubuntu-Linux-user brother, not the guitarist brother) had also seen it several times in the past ... but when I showed the photo to him he said it was a different bird; that the one he'd seen was a red-tailed hawk. (Could this be a red-tailed hawk at a different stage of maturity?)

The photo to the right links to a much larger version. Alas, it's not as sharp as I'd like, but if it shows up tomorrow I'll try to get a better shot of it.