WFH: Week Nine

How about some local fauna to go with the local flora? Anna's hummingbirds enjoy my feeders as well as my garden.

One bonus of spending all this time at home is catching sight of some less common visitors. I've spotted a single Bewick's wren and Nuttall's woodpecker this spring. California scrub jays are common, including one that briefly perched with a stem or twig that looked to be a good 15 inches long; they must be nesting nearby. The crows can be quite pesky. I wondered what set them off yesterday at 6 a.m., when I woke to the most raucous ruckus I've heard to date.

The house finches have been flitting about; they had been nesting in the attic (!) but disappeared after I moved into the house, many years ago. (And after a determined squirrel took up residence, counter-measures were taken to screen off all favored points of entry.)

Most days, I take a break to enjoy my lunch outside. Western fence lizards quickly scurry for cover in the bushes when startled. Honey bees busy themselves with the lavender in my garden, while the bumbling black carpenter bees have better luck with the red salvia. (They're too heavy for the pliable lavender stems; I wonder how they manage to fly, at all.)

Ten years ago this week I conquered Fremont Peak, a climb I have rarely repeated.

One year ago I celebrated Bike to Work Day with like-minded colleagues; this year, the event has been pushed out to September ... but we may still be working at home.

This week, I ventured out on my first bike ride in ten weeks.

My victory for the week was upgrading my Internet service. Over the past two weeks, it had degraded to the point of being unusable (upstream, 600 kbps). To head off an expected disagreement with my service provider, I invested in a new modem, first. So far, so good ... 10 Mbps upstream. [Yes, that sounds pathetic to those of you who live in places with modern infrastructure.]

This week's entertainment included the rarely-seen By Jeeves. Sure, it wasn't a critical success; but, you know what? It was goofy. It made me laugh. And I haven't laughed in a while.

The week opened with a confirmed 2231 cases of COVID-19 in our county, and closed with 2339 (a 4.8% increase).