Poem for Friday

Wild Thing
By Judith Viorst

I went for a walk in the sun without wearing my sunscreen.
I went out of town without making a reservation.
I placed my mouth directly upon a public drinking fountain, and took a sip.
I didn't bother flossing my teeth before bedtime.
I pumped my own gasoline at a self-service station.
I ate the deviled egg instead of the cauliflower with low-fat yoghurt dip.
I bought, without reading Consumer Reports, a new dryer.
I left my checking account unreconciled.
I know that the consequences could be dire,
But sometimes a woman simply has to run wild.

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My day involved food and more food. I had lunch at Bombay Tandoor with and a mutual friend where many fannish matters were discussed, even though each of us has a different primary and secondary fandom...we have common pain over the atrocity of Highlander: The Source, though is the only one of the three of us who has actually seen it. I read enough hilariously scathing commentary in other people's journals that I didn't even go looking for a copy, thinking I should probably save myself that misery when I haven't even watched all the episodes recommended to me yet. But now we are thinking we might have a Misery and Woe Viewing and try to come up with a drinking game to make the movie tolerable.

Then, after a chaotic afternoon of helping younger son finish his Chrysler Building project, testing him on his spelling words, attempting to get him to finish the rest of his homework and trying to send his best friend home to work on a Stonehenge model for the same science project that he had not even started, all while attempting to work on my mother's birthday photo album that isn't finished yet, we went to Tower Oaks Lodge for dinner with my parents. My mother wanted to eat in the Tack Room and was quite adamant about this even though I prefer the more rustic rooms with views of the woods. Everyone got seafood of one sort or another except older son, who prefers burgers; I had grilled salmon on apple walnut salad, a combination that initially sounded a little weird but ended up being excellent.


A little injured screech owl new to Meadowside Nature Center (they were having a contest to name it) does not yet seem used to its cage.


Here are the two screech owls side by side. The one in the right-hand cage is asleep in the lower right corner.


The larger injured raptors live outside. Here is a hawk...


...and a bald eagle, which had many dead mice in its cage laid out for lunch but appeared to be annoyed at the wild birds visible just outside near the bird feeders.


A little blind chipmunk lives inside in a pile of gerbil-type shavings.


And in the artificial pond in the artificial cave, a turtle.

Friday I have to review the tiresome "The Last Outpost" and get at least one article written or I will probably lose my gig at TrekToday. Funny how I am the only one capable of writing news for the site except when there is really BIG news worth reporting. And Friday night hopefully I will finally get to this week's Rome. We are recording Edward Scissorhands right now and I haven't seen that in forever, so shall work that in sometime too. But in really important news, I discovered that Doctor Who season three premieres the weekend we get to England, so like the very first episode of the latest iteration, I get to watch that there!