Saturday, June 6, 2009

Leaving the Nest

Several years ago, as older daughter made her move to Raleigh, North Carolina, DH and I began preparing our younger daughter for leaving the nest. We wanted her prepared to live on her own once we made the move to Tennessee.

Recently, a robin built a nest on the elbow joint between the gutter and downspout near my bedroom window. Momma robin laid her eggs and then spent the next two weeks sitting there incubating them. Three babies hatched from those eggs.

It's been two weeks now since they hatched. DH and I have followed their progress and been fascinated by mom. After a week, she no longer sat on the nest. I'm sure those little beaks are sharp! Today, two of the fledglings left the nest. My thought after only seeing sporadic trips by momma and daddy robin today to feed the fledgling is that they are preparing it to leave the nest too. I can't wait to get my backyard back and not worry about dive-bombing parental robins!

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Mechanics

No, not the guy on Jackson and Scott streets who can fix about anything, I'm talking about mechanical/electronic stuff.

1. Problems with Cable. Since the switch to digital cable, we've had problems with one of the public TV stations and the sound. First it was on one TV and then the other. Actually, the sound would start up on the one TV and then just die off. On the older TV, this particular station had no sound whatsoever. And it seemed to happen randomly. Well, I finally figured out. First let me say, that my DH is not mechanical. I'm barely mechanical, but I do manage to keep our electronics running. Recently the older TV needed a new remote and DH routinely hits the wrong button to turn it off and then you have to start putting the codes in again to get it to work right. On the newer, digital TV, there are lots of little buttons and we often pick it up backwards and hit the wrong button to turn off the TV. That little button turns out is the MTS button which controls mono, stereo or Second Audio Program. Yep. It was on SAP, and once I switched to stereo, the sound was just fine.

The little hamster in my head was turning the gears of my mind and I thought, what if that is set on the old TV too? Sure enough, SAP was set on that TV too. Both are "fixed."

2. The second problem was for some reason our icemaker stopped making ice. Sure there is water running, because the water dispenser works just fine. I hope that I figured out that the ice that was frozen to the dispenser was keeping the icemaker from filling and making and dispensing ice. I started to hear a pop, whirr noise and knew that wasn't running properly. Sure hope that the ice frozen on the dispenser was the problem otherwise, the repairman is going to get a call first thing in the morning.