Hi! I am going to start this smile with a sad story. We lost our cat Albert last week. You can read here. Albert has not been healthy for literally years, and the last few months… anyway, we already had an appointment to see kittens at a shelter on Saturday, so up we went.
Anyway, here is Alexander.
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He is about 8 months old, very sweet and gentle. He quickly got past the barriers we put up (lol) and explored the entire house. Our remain cat, Grace Kelly, has not warmed up yet, but he’s super interested in her. The dogs are super interested in him! But he isn’t ready quite yet…
Hi all. Odd week all around, both here at home and out in the world. Some things were, well, we’ll ignore them for now, while others were worth a smile or two. Thinking of that, if you need a smile or two, just click some of the links below!
I spent last week at my place down on Cape Cod. I also took Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off of work, so had a little “Spring Break/Vacation!” I did the usual things that I do when I am on Cape Cod. I kayaked several times, I took walks in the woods and by a saltwater marsh. I took walks on my favorite beach, including going out onto the sand-flats at low tide, ran by the beach (the access road next to the beach, but not on the actual sand), and other things.
It was a nice, relaxing week. i got plenty of air and sun :) It was a great get away.
It has been a strange week. Let’s pull ourselves away from all of the bad news and think of some of the good. On the space front, not only did NASA fly a helicopter on Mars, they have flown it a total of three times so far! And there was another successful commercial “humanned” launch to the space station this week.
After work on Friday I took a walk down on Cape Cod. At one point there is a dam with a small fresh water lake on one side and a tidal river on the other. There is a herring run beside the damn, but the tide was too far down for the fish to climb the ladder. in fact, the tide was super far down. A great egret was in the middle of the river, so I hid behind a tree to try to get some photos (if a great egret sees me pointing a camera, it will always fly away, even if I am very far away).
I was up against the tree and heard a noise above me. Before I figured out what it was, an osprey sparing from a branch above my head and dove almost straight down into the water beneath me. It went in only about 10 or 15 feet way (3 to 5 meters). It emerged from the water with a fish (herring/alewife) and flew off. I was taken so much by surprise that I forgot about my camera. I did try to get a few photos as it flew off, but none came out. When I looked back, the great egret had a fish as well! I thought the fish was too big, but, after dropping it, repositioning, it swallowed it whole.
I also saw a flock of comerants feigned on herring a little later in the walk.
All together, it was a great walk, and the birds were all happy and well fed!
That was my smile for the week, being up close and personal to large birds feeding on herring.
What made you smile?
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Come on, I’m sure you smiled at least once last week. Why don’t you share it? I hope you can join in!
Here is list of “rules” and guiding ideas. If you don’t have time to read it right now, just remember that this is an exercise to spread positivity. Don’t smile about the misfortune of others. Don’t smile in a way to excludes others. Make sure a 12 year old can read it.
To join in, write a post to share your smile and then leave a comment on this post with a link to your smile. Or, if you prefer, do a pingback to this post (pingback = have a link from your post to this one) (Note – pingbacks have been very inconsistent – please leave a comment :) ). You can post any time until next Sunday evening (to be simple, I will say midnight GMT, which is 7 PM Sunday for me). Next week I will compile all of the Smiles and do a separate post of them on Monday morning just before the smile. (I will shoot for around 7 AM EST).
Hi all! This is another week with a lot of good things happening, yet also some tragedies, like what is happening with Covid-19 in parts of India right now. Despite the dark times and the bad news, people out there have had plenty to smile about. Want to know more? Just look at some of the smiles below. maybe read three or four. Or all of them!
This last week was a bit strange. Not a lot happened, good or bad. i stayed very busy and just did normal things.
For the most part.
However, I did go get my first vaccine shot. It was quite the adventure, because of driving in the snow (!). Yes, snow in mid April! But I got it done, so half way there. You can read more about the driving adventure (snow, slush, etc.) on my coffee share post.
That was my smile for the week, getting my first vaccine shot.
I was on Cape Cod at the end of last week and had quite a few smiles. I’m going to talk about two of them.
I took a walk in the woods by a saltwater marsh on Thursday afternoon. The alewife (a type of herring) were beginning to run, and the osprey were well aware of it. I counted over a dozen up in the air at once! There were times I could hear an osprey hitting the water every couple of seconds – Splash! Splash! Splash! I had my camera and took hundreds of photos. Unfortunately, their big feeding area was around a bend in the river, so I couldn’t see very well.
I haven’t had time to go through the photos, but here is one:
Quite a few smiles this last week.If you are feeling sad over deaths, cyclones, volcanoes or, of course, pandemics, just read below for a smile or two!
