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entmaiden
Forum Admin
/ Moderator
Jul 25 2015, 2:55pm
Post #26 of 34
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I was thinking about you this week. I chatted with some people from Quebec, and it made me think of our weekend in Montreal for the Just for Laughs festival. Good times.
Hope the kids stay well, and NZS gets better soon. 
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Dame Ioreth
Tol Eressea
Jul 25 2015, 3:18pm
Post #27 of 34
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Maybe there's something left behind the bar? It's almost noon but it's 5 o'clock somewhere, as the song goes.
We are in the midst of the "in-betweens". In-between Girl Scout Camp and Boy Scout Camp. Otakon and Marching Band Camp. It seems like all the camp stuff happened at odd times so that we really couldn't get everyone together to go to Canada this year. I will miss it. It takes us 4 days of travel there and back for 5 days there but it's worth it. We just can't cobble together those 9 days. We'll be dropping off and picking up my some at STEM Boy Scout camp though and it just happens to be near Monticello so we're making a weekend of that.
Here's to summer!
_
Heed WBA when building blanket forts.
ITLs don't get enough FAS. :)
Where there's life there's hope, and need of vittles.
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
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swordwhale
Tol Eressea
Jul 25 2015, 3:24pm
Post #28 of 34
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so I had to post a link on my wordpress, thanks!
Then I had brainfarts about owls... and the stuff I learned as a wildlife rehab volunteer...
Barn owls, as anyone knows who read the Guardians of Ga'Hoole, are Tytonidae, everyone else in Owl World is Strigidae. (GOG is, by the way, an excellent middle reader series of books, a talking animal fantasy which actually addresses some pretty deep issues... the film was fun too, and gorgeous).
If you were an owl: here hold these two softballs up to your face (we did this is educational programs with our wildlife rehabber). These are your eyeballs. A human-sized owl would have eyes the size of softballs. Good thing owls only weigh a couple pounds. Their eyes are still too big to move efficiently inside their tiny little skulls, so they just turn their heads. 270 degrees. Because they have 14 vertebrae in their necks. Mammals... all mammals... including giraffes and those weird antelope with the reeeeeeealy looooong necks.... have 7. Except manatees, they have 6 (yes, they do have necks). Sloths have nine.
three rings for the Elvenkings, seven for the Dwarf Lords in their halls of stone, nine for mortal men...
SQUIRREL!
Owls, we were talking about owls. I wrangled owls for a wildlife rehabber. 1000 psi pertalon tip. Yes, we wore heavy welding gloves to carry a screech owl, which weighs about the same as a can of tuna. They can still poke a hole in your arm. Iris, who looked like Mad-eye Moody in the Harry Potter series, would crash into the side of the flight cage defending the young owls next door. They weren't her babies, and she had been raised by humans, and was handled by humans often in lectures ... she still flew at us defending those young owls.
Sure Owen, you can safely wrangle those horse-sized raptors in Jurassic World...
Owls are symbols of wisdom. This is mainly the fault of Athena, Greek Goddess of Wisdom, whose sidekick and totem animal was the owl. Actual owls are as smart as they need to be. Ravens, crows and parrots tend to do the kinds of things we associate with brains, like use tools, language, recognize faces, imitate flushing toilets and explosions, and make us crack nuts open with our cars.
Owls are the stealth fighters of the bird world: their feathers have a fuzzy velour finish on top, and frizzly edges. You can flap a hawk feather by your ear and hear it buzz with wind. the owl feather you do the same thing with will be silent.
Barn owls are not only tytonidae, while every other Pennsylvania owl is strigidae, barn owls are the only ones that are countershaded rather than camouflage colored. Most owls sit, waiting, blending in with the tree branch. Barn owls fly out over tall grass meadows, their darker topside making them hard to see from above (larger owls might atatck them, and crows and other songbirds might harass them). Their pale undersides make it hard for prey on the ground to see them against a pale evening sky. The white, heart shaped face is basically two radar dishes, directing sound to the not-at-all-evenly-placed ears. They can tell precisely where the mouse rustle is coming from.
And then there was Barnie. No derpy purple dinos here, just a true descendant of dinosaurs. A half pint barn owl with a permanently injured wing. He resided with our wildlife rehabber and served as a lecture bird, allowing kids and others a closeup connection with the natural world. He would shriek like a roomful of third graders, and hiss like an old 50s TV left on after all the stations had gone off the air. If you opened his cage door, he would leap at your face, causing you to duck, at which point he would hop/flap out, run under the huge freezer (where the owl and hawk food...ie: dead mice and chicks.. was kept) and make us move the whole thing to extract him from behind it.
Owls are cool. Good thing they only weigh a couple pounds.
PS...stay cool by jumping in a kayak and falling out of it...
keep calm and open paddock 9
Na 'Aear, na 'Aear! Mýl 'lain nallol, I sûl ribiel a i falf 'loss reviol...
To the sea, to the sea, the white gulls are crying, the wind is blowing and the white foam is flying...
Member of Manure Movers Local 101, Raptor Wranglers & Rehab, and Night Fury Trainers Assoc. Owned by several cats.
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Greenwood Hobbit
Valinor
Jul 25 2015, 7:45pm
Post #29 of 34
(220 views)
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Not much chance of it being too hot here at the moment - funny old summer, it is, Preciousss... Shade (preferably that of a tree) and cool drinks will be deployed, if cooling off becomes necessary at any point! Yesterday some friends and I yarnbombed some trees around our local shops - a little encore to the large community initiative that brightened up last winter. It's good fun, and the kiddies love to see it.
Cheers all, and may each of you have a pleasant surprise of some sort in the week to come!
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cats16
Half-elven
Jul 25 2015, 7:57pm
Post #30 of 34
(217 views)
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Those darn Kiwis and their backwardness. 
Thanks! *sigh* One more year of school and I'm out with the rest of you all in "reality".  
Happy weekend to you, as well! Hope you get over that sick bug soon.
Join us every weekend in the Hobbit movie forum for this week's CHOW (Chapter of the Week) discussion!
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Kimi
Forum Admin
/ Moderator
Jul 25 2015, 8:15pm
Post #31 of 34
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It's years since I had flu, but the memory is an evil one. It's a horrible disease, so debilitating.
I saw an item in the paper about the National Show and wondered if you were there. Your birds are doing really well!
The Passing of Mistress Rose
My historical novels
Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there?
- A Room With a View
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Kimi
Forum Admin
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Jul 26 2015, 3:36am
Post #32 of 34
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That chestnut coat absolutely glows in the sunlight, too.
She has a lovely gait, and is very willing, but she does get a little frustrated with me at times when I send mixed signals. :) I'm not the world's most courageous rider. But when I manage to relax we go really well.
Mr Kimi has gently persuaded me to take things a little slower over the weekend, so only an eight-hour work day yesterday. :) At this rate, though, I think it'll take me about three weeks to do the second draft - which is a good deal shorter than the three years I've spent writing it!
Some parts get heavily re-worked, others not so much. I'm basically taking a sprawling manuscript with parts where I've written it two ways to see which turns out best, or sections full of notes to myself because I've realised that a character's actions mean I need to go back and change earlier events (I do have a plot outline, but my characters sometimes treat it with no respect at all :)), or I stumbled upon an obscure piece of information that means I have to change the timeline... etc, etc; and coming up with a readable manuscript, ready for beta-readers. Exhausting at times, but a weird sort of fun, too.
Going from second to third draft should be easier, although it depends how much comes out of the beta process.
The Passing of Mistress Rose
My historical novels
Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there?
- A Room With a View
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dernwyn
Forum Admin
/ Moderator
Jul 26 2015, 5:22pm
Post #33 of 34
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"hot totty". 
Your chickens are putting on quite a show - great to hear about them doing so well! I've just spent a couple days admiring my sister-in-law's Buff Orpingtons, the originally bought a dozen hens plus a rooster for getting rid of the overabundance of ticks in their yard, but those beauties are laying an egg a day, and they're such sillies to watch! She carries a plastic baseball bat when she goes out to the coop or garden, the rooster gets really nasty.
Here's hoping the kids stay healthy!
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"I desired dragons with a profound desire"
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dernwyn
Forum Admin
/ Moderator
Jul 26 2015, 5:39pm
Post #34 of 34
(194 views)
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*pokes behind bar* I'll get the kettle on for tea.
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Can't Post
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Rainy here today! Got in last midnight from a whirlwind trip to Maine for a sister-in-laws' 60's birthday barbecue. 19 family members made it, and being Down East of course we went out Friday night for a dinner at a local seafood shack on the water. Broiled fresh haddock, mmm!
But I'm getting older and "feeling" the driving. An hour-and-a-half each way to see my Dad on Thursday, six hours up to Main on Friday, and six hours back last night...ouch. Fortunately we went at times which avoided the worst traffic. (And accidents. While northbound in Maine we went by a southbound rollover which must have just happened...and we learned later that rubbernecking drivers behind us caused an accident which shut down the highway and caused a 20-mile backup.)
So did you get out to see a movie, Altaira?
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"I desired dragons with a profound desire"
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