There's a Chicken on the Path

It's been unbelievably hot here, so all I did this weekend is try to stay out of the sun. I'm not used to this; this near the ocean it's usually temperate all year round. It's not like I live in the desert or the Inland Empire. The tiny brick pond I have in the back yard died a couple of weeks ago and now has about an equal weight of water and mosquito larvae in it, so I daren't go outside after dusk anyway or I'll be eaten alive. Getting anything done inside this weekend proved to be far too much effort too. I did manage to code up the Timewave Zero article but just doing that amount of coding and cross checking took about as much effort as getting a man on the moon.

Nights are spent putting Raccoon-B-Gon on the roof to prevent them from falling off the beams and crashing through the mosquito netting into the atrium. Raccoons are as sure-footed as iguanas, i.e. they are not sure-footed. They fall out of the sky like little angry bears on a weekly basis. I can hear them outside at night – they whistle like Clangers calling the Soup Dragon and rustle through the undergrowth.

Work is so far this week is without significant incident. I shouldn't speak too soon, though. It can turn on a dime. I have San Juan Capistrano swallows, as in the famous song, diving around my windows and the window ledges are full of bright red finches having little bright red finch arguments/love fests with each other.

Occasionally, one of those gigantic California crows lands nearby and gets mobbed by an angry finch parent or two. One of the chicks fell from the eaves a few days ago and the office cleaner told me about it - There's a chicken on the path! Are chicken and chick the same word in Spanish?

Sometimes I'd like to start an ESL class at work. Unfortunately my keenness lasts only about as long as working out the first lesson plan and after that I'm exhausted. And knowing Human Resources, attempting to teach folks useful English would bring the wrath of the diversity group down on my head. I wouldn't want that.

In case you're wondering, I would very much like to go to Chinese-as-a-second-language classes if someone decided to reciprocate. Tagalog and Spanish, not so much.