The pleasures of sitting out on the patio this morning included sitting very still while watching squirrels and birds mere feet away (if only your fingers are moving, it seems like animals don't notice you much), breaking up an incipient fight between neighbors' cats, and going into the house to get a water spray bottle to mist over a tiny little spiderweb hanging under the patio umbrella so I could see it better.

And just now there was a sparrow chasing a bumblebee....

Timelies all!

You can add me to the Marylanders. I'm in Montgomery County.

There's a good anti-war music video here.

There's a great swing song called "The Big Noise From Winnetka" by Bob Crosby and the Bobcats. It has no lyrics, just someone whistlingand it's awesome.

Bob Crosby was Bing's brother and he had a successful swing band.

Argh. I ordered a book from Amazon. They tried to deliver it once, and although the standard procedure in my building is for the mailman to leave packages in the main office, and this one did not need to be signed for, it was marked as "Recipient not available" and brought back to the post office. I called the annoying voicemail system and asked for them to redeliver it. Just checked the tracking number, and as of yesterday, it was in Cleveland.

I want my book!

Something of a meara:

I have to go walk around the corner and order Allyson's book from my local indie bookstore (owned by the very nice woman who is awesomely cool but knows nothing about SF&F, sigh). Also, I got a couple of people respond to my pimping post with a promise to buy the book, so yay!

ita, much migraine-ma to you. I've been thinking a little bit of trying to get my SCUBA cert. I should have done it in Thailand when I was there 10 years ago, but I wanted to spend the time climbing instead. Now I'm kicking myself, since it would have been cheap and fast. The water here is too cold for me to be interested in much diving here, but man, it would be awesome to go to Belize or Fiji or somewhere and dive.

HMOG how cute is Noah? Adorable!

I ran this morning and it was a crap run, I even cut out a half-mile of it, but it was redeemed by the fact that I bumped into one of my climbing pals at one intersection of trails. Of course the fact that he was in the second hour of his 16-mile run wasn't all that good for my self-esteem. Ah, well. I've got 10 years on him, and at least I'm out there in the hills.

Has anyone else had trouble getting onto LJ this morning? Is it down for some reason?

Yes, I have. No, I don't know how come. But I wish I hadn't just written a big post!

There's a great swing song called "The Big Noise From Winnetka" by Bob Crosby and the Bobcats. It has no lyrics, just someone whistling and it's awesome.

Bob Crosby was Bing's brother and he had a successful swing band.

Au contraire, Scrappy fair. There are lyrics to it. In fact, you can see the band doing a version with lyrics in the movie Reveille with Beverly which I nabbed off TCM not long ago. Ann Miller stars as Beverly the G.I.'s favorite deejay. Every time she plays a song the camera focuses in on the spinning record and then it irises out to what is basically a video of that song. It also has "Take the A Train" by Duke Ellington, and a super skinny Sinatra in a tux singing "Night and Day" accompanied by an entire orchestra of women, all making flirty eyes at him. Lots of great early Mills brothers too.

Recommended!

Also, my favorite version of "Big Noise From Winnetka" is an instrumental version, with lots of whistling by Cozy Cole. Swings like a mofo.

The lyrics:

Big noise blew in from Winnetka,
stole each girlies heart and then,
big noise blew in from Winnetka,
big noise blew right out again.

Girls were sighing, their boyfriends crying,
their hearts were breaking when,
big noise blew in from Winnetka,
big noise blew right out again.

But I wish I hadn't just written a big post!

Oh, that sucks, Erika. But I'm glad it's not just me!

Has anyone else had trouble getting onto LJ this morning? Is it down for some reason?

Huh. I was just about to chime in with woe, but it looks like it's back? Maybe. Could explode again.