What's everyone up to right now?

[Foxaèr]

Momentarily heading to work to begin night one of my four day work week.

[Fireball]

Having a think about birds. One of the neighbors is raising lovebirds. He has an aviary in his back yard with a couple dozen strikingly marked birds. I love zebra finches and waxbills, but my wife is dead set against little birds, due to the mess that they make, as far as having them inside the house. I'm averse to having an outside aviary due to the cold that we can see here in the winter (maybe not killing cold for the birds, but I don't want to risk their lives on it).

[arewethereyet]

Having a think about birds. One of the neighbors is raising lovebirds. He has an aviary in his back yard with a couple dozen strikingly marked birds. I love zebra finches and waxbills, but my wife is dead set against little birds, due to the mess that they make, as far as having them inside the house. I'm averse to having an outside aviary due to the cold that we can see here in the winter (maybe not killing cold for the birds, but I don't want to risk their lives on it).

I had some zebra finches for a time.  That was my next foray into birds after some parakeets for the kids.

Now with a Quaker and an African Grey, I can say two things for sure...1)yes they are messy and 2)some birds, if well taken care of, live a long damn time.

We've had both our current birds somewhere around the quarter century mark.  The thing is that Chewy could live another 35-40 years.  Zeus probably has another 10 years though his plumage is gorgeous and I see no signs of him slowing down.

The odd thing I learned about birds is that there's more to the mess they make than the cleaning of spilled seed/food and the cleaning up of poop.  They are dusty...good lord are they dusty.  When new feathers come in the sheaths they are wrapped with is preened off to open the feather.  That preening involves pulverizing those sheaths into dust.  And then for Zeus there's the job of busting up new feathers on his head and the back of his neck that he can't reach...neither of us enjoy the task.

That said - I enjoy them both.  They can be quite funny and entertaining.  

At this point I am cleaning up after two birds, a cat, and three dogs so it's just what something that I'm used to.  If I'm not feeding a critter, I'm cleaning up after one or more.

[Gwaithmir]

I'm going over a list of minor repair/maintenance work for my carpenter to do next week.

[Duty]

I'm going over a list of minor repair/maintenance work for my carpenter to do next week.

[brewer]

A male house finch keeps coming to our sliding glass door, acting like it wants to come in.

I told my wife that it's here for her soul.

[Angrboda]

Recording the serial numbers of recently purchased hard drives so I don't get drives mixed up.

I live such an exciting life.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Pondering beef tips and mash for supper.

Boru

[Angrboda]

Waiting for baseball to start. I've got a new homemaker coming Monday. I haven't had one in a year. I need to prepare some, but not right now.

[Rev. Rye]

So, I currently have about 1/3 of the material I need to build the tenor Uke project. Fortunately, part of that third is the box. And, using actual sized photo templates of the soundhole and the box corners (with the pennies silvered out to represent the sixpence that will replace them), plus the crappy plastic bridge that came with the original Uke kit from last year, we managed to make a mock-up. 



Just imagine the tan parts blood red, specifially these shades and tints of blood red:

and that’s basically what I imagine it’ll be like.

Of course, the strings, the pickup, the latches to keep it closed, and the actual box corners, sixpence, neck, and bridge are currently in the mail, though some parts seem to be closer to me than others (the sixpence specifically are to arrive from Dorset.)

And the rest of that third I currently have? They’re the string tie beads I mentioned in my post where I announced the project.