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Kinda beat. I didn't really expect to be doing quite that much of the work myself. I was really going to offer expertise/assistance on their new installation.

Kinda strange when you're sitting at your desk one day, like you always do, and the next day you're leaning off a catwalk with an air ratchet, working on a conveyor twenty feet in the air. You wonder, how does this happen?.

My knees and feet are killing me. Was kneeling and squatting on metal catwalks, to work on conveyors that were not much higher than that. And we were working just underneath one of the loudest machines in the place. I would have liked earplugs, but then I wouldn't have been able to hear anyone. As it was, I had to continually ask people to repeat themselves. I started to get hoarse within a couple of hours. And on friday it was ninety degrees out. I wonder what it was up in the catwalks.

I got to my hotel at midnight. Had to be at the plant at 7:00, so had to get up at 6:00 (and that was a time zone ahead, so it felt like 5:00. Probably got five hours of sleep. Not good. So, five hours of sleep, raw throat, plus a couple of plane rides makes me nervous.

polls

LiveJournal hosted its millionth poll today.

http://aurafox.livejournal.com/185575.html

birds

Saw a flicker tonight. Flicking around the back of the house, looking for bugs in the grass. I wasn't sure what it was, at first. Looked like a woodpecker, with the large beak, and the red patch on the back of its head. When it flew away, I saw the white patch on its rump. Turns out they are in the woodpecker family. Haven't noticed any of those in years.

I saw a Baltimore oriole a few weeks ago. I hadn't seen one of those since I was a kid. This was the second one, actually.

When the dandelions were up, there were a lot of goldfinches around. I'd see them standing on the stalks, pecking at the seeds. Very light birds, apparently. It was difficult to pick them out from the yellow dandelions.

Cyn's been tracking the growth of some baby robins, in our bushes out front. See here.

I saw a dead bird last week, when I was mowing. Small and reddish.

There have been more crows than usual around, lately.