spynotes ::
  February 12, 2007
Beak click on beak clack

Two whole days without posting. That�s unusual for me, although you didn't actually miss much. Saturday: yoga, AJ basketball, work, AJ to birthday party, more work. Sunday: newspaper-reading, family ice skating, AJ basketball, home repair projects, and work. There. Now you're caught up. Although there were a couple of nice surprises too, like the Smog tune fairlywell e-mailed me. And there were also a lot of crazy weird dreams, but good ones, mostly. Like the one last night where Mr. Spy, AJ and I were on a train where we had to stand on a balcony outside instead of inside the car. AJ was very excited to be there, but I was worried he was going to fall off. There was a very small woman in a long, painted dress speaking Spanish. When we arrived at the station, there was a sign saying, "Welcome to America!" and there was a big cake and candles and an accordion player. The woman got off the train first and bent down and kissed the ground. And then the rest of us got off and we all danced.

Things have been a little frantic around here and are likely to remain so until after AJ�s birthday toward the end of March. Between now and then we have AJ�s science fair project to finish and present, AJ�s first field trip, my conference, AJ�s birthday party to plan, and our vacation, which, since we�re staying with my parents, will fortunately require relatively little planning.

I�m trying to concentrate on one thing at a time. Today�s project is finishing a draft, however crappy, of conference paper number one (the one that caught the publisher�s eye) and sending it to a couple of people who have volunteered to give it the slash and burn treatment for me.

Meanwhile, I have been waylaid by a distraction in the form of six inches of snow, which is still falling in lazy flakes. After an all-family effort at shoveling the driveway, AJ and I went exploring, walking down the middle of the stream, which, with the exception of a small area around the spring in our backyard, is frozen solid. "Let's pretend the stream is the Arctic Ocean," he said. And so we did. We followed it out of our yard and around all its twists and turns, skating on our boots, until its arrival at the culvert under the street by the duck pond. We climbed over the culvert wall to check on the ducks. There were only two. We were slightly disappointed. But then all of a sudden, three more arrived. Two skied to a stop while the third swooped up in ever-expanding circles until he cleared the trees and flew off. The same thing happened over and over, the ducks flying up along the chain of ponds and landing in front of us on the water, the lookout duck flying off, apparently to round them up. We sat and watched and counted until there were 97 ducks. And then we watched some more. We watched ducks bathing and sleeping, their beaks tucked under their feathers. We watched two male ducks puffing up their breasts and splashing at each other until a female across the pond let out a loud quack and swam swiftly toward the males, butting one of them with her head until he was clear of the crowd.

We expect another 8 inches tonight and tomorrow, after which we�re supposed to return to the sub-zero temperatures of last week � today�s 25 feels positively tropical by comparison. It�s a good day for hibernation.

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