Thingy-de-resistance...

the pinnacle of my ability with a needle (outside of my heroine addiction-kidding, ma) this took FOREVER, but it turned out pretty well. i hope you like it. (yours will cost $150) the fish was pretty easy, but the scales were murder- you can see they gradually become smaller (less impressive)

(Seriously, $150)

Congratulations Joy&Jeff

Meg's best friend joy gave birth to her first child today, Mikayla, at around 1145a. so congratulations to her and jeff, and i'm sure they'll be incredible parents.

new shirts

i made these a few weeks ago, but i wanted to wait until annie got hers before i posted them. shame to ruin the surprise. but the baby is for her and my nephew (you heard it here first folks, the smart money is on genetics, its gonna be a boy) i made the heart one for meg, which premiered in a previous blog and the owl one i made for myself.

late night confession

so in my earlier post i may have glossed over, somewhat, the releasing edgar thing. maybe i'm crazy, but i feel aweful about it. i took him out hoping that the other birds would accept him, but when he flew they mobbed him and knocked him down, to the ground and then into the tree, and continued to harrass him. when i had him on my hand i assumed that was it for the day and was taking him back to the car when he flapped into the tree. he is a pretty tame bird and i worry that without a group of other birds to learn wild behavior from he will starve or worse. i know this seems silly, but he was my pet, and i raised him from a baby. when he was in the tree he was hunched down in his "defensive/hiding" posture, he was scared, and when i shook the branch hoping he would fly to the ground, he took off, was mobbed, and i lost him. chances are he is in a tree hiding, and probably sleeping now. i went back to the cemetery and the park across the street from it 6 times since i let him go (around 2pm) and looked and listened but never saw him. plenty of crows, but they all flew too adeptly to be edgar. it has bugged me all day, and is now keeping me up. i feel horribly guilty. i want to believe that he will be fine, but i can't , and i know it is my fault. sorry this isn't a happy post with lots of pictures, but i wanted to get this off my chest.

Goodbye Edgar

Today I released my friend and long-time crow, "Edgar Allen". at first he took right off, he wanted to stretch his wings, but promptly ran out of steam and plopped down to the ground. oh, i thought an appropriate place to let him loose was the cemetery near the house, and there was a murder of crows wandering around the lawns.


so after the video of the initial release, i went over and picked him up. he talked to me a bit, and i walked around with him on my hand for a little while, when the other crows heard him they rallied around and circled us overhead, it looked a little like, well, how the devil is represented in some films, a swirling vortex of black birds calling overhead. edgar took off again, this time into a tree, and from there to who knows. i hope he will be okay, i hope he finds food and water, and i hope he falls in with the right crowd, you just hear about crow gang violence so much in the news. he's 4 now, he should be old enough to make the right deciscions.

godspeed Edgar

zoo folk

last weekend we went to the san diego wild animal park. it was only the second time i had been. we had a great time, it was pretty warm that day but it didn't seem to bother the animals. had a good time, highlight was definitely the lorikeet aviary. but the bird show was pretty good too. the petting zoo was full of lazy dear, and we rode the conservation carousel. the bighorn sheep liked meg.

feeling like i belong

so yesterday, after finding out about my less than stellar performance on my first cal-clueless test, i got my acceptance letter for cal state long beach. not a big shock, but its better than a rejection. so thats where i'll be this fall, officially.

just thought you should know.

nate's manly new hobbie:

so lately while i watch tv, i have been, for lack of a butch-er word, embroidering. basically just trying to make a plain tshirt look a little cooler. i started with some simple geometric stuff but lately i have been branching out. i did the swallows first and was pleased with the results so i went again and did the anchors. but last weekend i was particularly inspired, i made a heart. it took 3 colors and 2 different sizes of thread, and ~6 hours and i am so proud of the results.

some things you might have missed...

i'm lazy, that's why.

meg and i went to solvang, i guess it was three weeks now. which was nice, but what was better was "ostrich land". between solvang and buelton on the west(?) side of the road, is a few acres and a hut devoted to ratites (specifically ostriches and emus) and there must have been 70 of them, and you can feed them, take pictures, and not too much else. but it was a cool way to spend 15 minutes of your day. the males (black and white) were incredible, massive things with amazing feathering. you can see the underwing and upper calf is not feathered to release body heat.

in other news, for the first time in history i barbequed something other than hotdogs or hamburgers. i treated the wife to a tri-tip steak the other night, it was pretty good. i had to put mine back on the grill for a half hour when i discovered pink in the middle, but otherwise it was a nice meal, and meg said hers was perfectly medium rare (ewww!)