Notes from a small town girl....

...becoming a famous film star

My daughter likes and needs physical exercise to feel her best. The last couple of years she has fulfilled her exercise requirement by running. She now has a new love - off road motorbiking. She tried it because her 5 year old son started to ride and she thought this was something she could do with him and they could learn together. Personally, I don't see the appeal - the bikes are very loud, big (her bike is 240 lbs), they need trailers or trucks to haul them around, you can't ride them around town, they are expensive, they always seem to need oil changed and other maintenance
All these things haven't discouraged her at all. Even when she comes home covered in bruises because her bike fell over on her or exhausted from pushing it out of a mud bog she is happy and energized. This weekend she entered her second race. Mr Spooksister and I traveled 2 hours away to the event at the top of a mountain. My daughter was not 'into' sports when she went to school so this was the first athletic event that we had ever seen her in. It rained all the way there and I was not sure that she would race in those conditions. The trails would be extremely slippery and all the obstacles even harder than normal

See for yourself....

I bought a new computer almost 2 years ago. The old CPU has been sitting in my basement waiting for disposal. I like to recycle as much as I can but was concerned about remaining data on the hard drives. I googled for a solution - apparently you can download programs to overwrite and essentially destroy the data. But this would have involved hooking the computer back up to all it's components, going online, finding software to erase the data etc etc etc. Way too much trouble. So, instead, the CPU has sat and gathered dust. Today, I decided to deal with it once and for all. To heck with wiping out data, I would physically remove the two drives and smash them. I like smashing stuff, it's the best part of renovating Getting them out was the easy part. Trying to destroy them was something else altogether. First I tried every screwdriver in my ample collection to remove the cover. No go. So then I thought I would rip off the computer boards so that they wouldn't be usable. This wasn't easy but bit by bit with some pliers I did the job. I thought I would just put what was left in the trash but then went online once more to see where the data is actually stored on these things - I'm not very computer literate. Apparently people that know how, can successfully retrieve info off 'destroyed' hard drives. So, I removed the drives from the garbage, took them down into the workshop and proceeded to try and pry the covers off with a claw hammer and a screwdriver.

Needless to say, this was harder than I thought possible. Hard drives are hard. Now I've decided to just toss them in the garbage and if someone 100+ years from now excavates the landfill that they end up in and wants to look at my pictures or my meager banking information, I hope they have a good laugh

Months ago, my favourite sister made a post on her blog about a live streaming Eagle nest cam on Vancouver Island. I marvelled about the technology that allowed me to view real time footage of a nest. One of the things baby eagles are good at doing and do a lot of, is poop. They are good little eagles and poop over the side of nest. This is great for the nest but bad for a camera that is secured at the side of the nest. Before too long, the lens was smeared, making viewing difficult and eventually impossible.

But now, I was addicted and needed my eaglet fix so I went searching the internet for another eagle cam. I found a wonderful site, even better than the first, the Hornby Island Eagle Nest cam. A resident of Hornby Island, Doug Carrick, has carefully observed the eagles on and around his property for years. He always wondered what was going on up in the nests and could only make educated guesses. Eventually he applied and received permission from the authorities to place a video camera up in one of the big fir trees which was home to a nest of eagles. This pair of eagles has nested in that tree for years. Doug actually placed 2 cameras there, one at nest level surrounded and protected by bark and the other one higher up. From his house he can control the cameras so that viewers can get either a close up or wide angle look into the nest and the activities going on. Well, if I wasn’t addicted to nest viewing before, I certainly was now. From a newly hatched eaglet to an almost full grown fledgling, I watched every spare moment I had. On the streaming website there was a live chat that went on involving multiple viewers. There were usually 70-80 people at a time signed in to the chat area and upwards of 600 people viewing like I was. It was absolutely amazing to watch this tiny eagle grow from a little fluff ball to a bird larger than it’s parents. The viewers named it Phoenix and you would have thought it was one of their own children from some of the comments that were made. Anyway, we were all awaiting the day that Phoenix would fly for the first time and were anticipating the date to be mid July.


Coincidently, I made a little trek to the coast to bring a noisy kitty back to her mistress, my own sister,San. San had her lap top open and running, probably in ready to make some clever post on her blog. I sat down at the desk and asked if she wanted to see what had been occupying so much of my time lately? I brought up the Hornby Island nest site and much to our dismay, saw that everyone’s favourite eaglet was taking her last breath. It was heart wrenching to watch. Apparently the viewers realized that she was in distress and there was a rescue effort mounted by the Mountainaire Avian Rescue group. Unfortunately, Phoenix collapsed before help could get to her. The following day, her body was removed with some difficulty (imagine climbing an 80 foot tree) and it was taken to the mainland for necropsy. Preliminary findings state that she died of acute bilateral mycotic pneumonia.
I never thought I would be affected by the death of one bird this way. I know that it is part of nature and that it happens more frequently than we all know but still, it is a loss. I find myself going back to the live cam site every couple of days to see if the camera is still live, and it is – just pointing at an empty nest. Off to the side of the screen is the chat room with 40+ people still discussing wildlife and their own personal lives and so gathering comfort and friendship from one another and it brings me hope for the world when the community can share in the life and death of one creature.

My three and a half year old grandson wanted to go see Santa. He has never been keen on the whole idea before but he's older now. He'd been asking my daughter to take him for a few weeks. They chose a date that the Mall wouldn't be busy and off they went - my daughter and her husband, the three year old, his almost two year old sister and the new baby. You can guess what happened. The only one brave enough to sit with Santa was the one fast asleep....

Ho Ho Ho