PEACHFRONT SPEAKS

Recent entries july 4, 2018 - 2018-07-04 the triangle continues of courtney, boobear, & nyota - 2018-07-03 Cookie so cute telling, "Hello" to sparrows - 2018-07-01 lovebirb in love - 2018-06-30 wren with fluffffff - 2018-06-24 Read my new book, The 10 Best Things You Can Do For Your Bird at Amazon or at many other fine distributors like Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, and more. By public demand, and after a delay of an embarrassing number of years, I've finally put my notorious essay, Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman, free on the fabulous internets. A bibliography of my published books and stories. Here's a simple card-counting FAQ to get you up to speed on the basics. Here's the true story of the notorious DD' blackjack team, told for the first time on the fabulous internets. No other team went from a starting investor's bankroll of zero to winning millions of dollars. A Sadean take on Asimov's classic Three Laws of Robotics can be found in Roger Williams' NOW REVIEWED ON SLASHDOT!!! The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. Adult readers only please -- explicit sex and violence. For updates on the "Dead Tree Project" and other topics, you may visit the official fan site, Passages in the Void.. My Bird Lists -- My Louisiana State Life List, My Yard List and, tah dah, My World Life List. HEY! What happened to the Peachfront Conure Files? The world's only OFFICIAL Peachfront Conure site now features free peachfront conure coverage, including a magazine length Intro to Conures previously published in American Cage-Bird Magazine, now free on the web. I offer the best free Peachfront Conure information on the internet. If you have great Peachfront Conure info, stories, or photos to share, contact me so I can publicize your pet, your breeding success, your great photograph, etc. on my site. Thanks.

d.c. discount trip part 4: the trip goes profitable 2011-10-21 - 8:15 a.m. all photos � 2011 by elaine radford look mickey by roy lichtenstein, east wing, national art gallery Sunday, October 16 We had cleverly timed our monuments crawl for Saturday in order to avoid the huge crowds of the main dedication on Sunday. Since it was another beautiful day, we made use of the Metro to head for the National Zoo. A sign told the story of how the pesky squirrels had been collected for a bounty back in the day, until the squirrels were nearly extinct, which made it necessary for Ontario to ship down some of its black squirrels. Oddly, the first squirrel I saw in D.C. was one of the descendents, and I remember thinking, that looks like a Canadian squirrel, but it's the only one I saw. Random cuteness: The male Kori Bustard saw something and suddenly doubled in size. Maybe he even tripled in size. What a ball of fluff. We looked skyward but never did figure out what frightened him so. It must have been way up there. Babies born at the zoo included such diverse species as the Wattled Crane, Lowland Gorilla, and the two Andean Bears. However, the Andean cubs were over a year old, and a few of the people in the crowd were grumbling that they weren't really babies any more. We timed our walk so that we could visit the Bird House during the keeper's talk. Many of the birds are quite elderly, including the beautifully plumaged male Fairy Bluebird who almost flew right into me. He's over 20 years old and can't see too well any more, the keeper explained. The Sun Bittern made a nice display, flaring its spectacularly marked wings to keep the other birds away from its prize treats. They have a sort of overhead obstacle course for the Orangutan to walk around on, and the Orangutan I watched was a pure ham. He posed for the cameras and even faked a fall, catching himself with one hand, just to hear the gasps of awe. A very sad story posted in the Reptile House about the efforts to save the frogs on the east coast of Panama. Apparently, all of the other frogs in Central America are gone now. The fungus arrives and supposedly eliminates half of the species within months, with the others lingering for varying but presumably not very long amounts of time longer. So they are gathering up the species of eastern Panama, where the fungus has not yet arrived, in hopes of at least preserving the Central American frog species in captivity. This effort might be more inspiring, rather than just depressing, except for the other signs here and there about on-going efforts to preserve the bird species of Guam, extinct in the wild and gathered up to breed in small zoo populations...but still with no place to go. I remember when they were gathered up in the 1980s. There was no other choice. They would have been destroyed to the last bird if left in place. But they still haven't figured out what to do about the introduced snake that destroyed the birds, and if they can't figure out how to get rid of a snake, how on earth are they going to figure out how to conquer a fungus? It's most upsetting. More of that very late brunch special at Kramerbooks. Instead of the crab cake sandwich, I had a filet oscar with crabmeat, poached eggs, filet mignon medium rare, with a holandaise sauce. DH had a plate that seemed to feature bacon and sausage, which I'm sure is all very low carb and health-oriented...except for that Strawberry Mimosa! The day was winding down, but I wasn't ready to let it go. I dropped DH off in the sports bar and walked down to the National Art Gallery. I took a spin around the sculpture garden and then a quick visit to the East Wing, where the contemporary art lives. Finally, as the museums were closing, I walked through a tunnel of light to get to the West Wing and then out the door. The tunnel of light had tiny white lights instead of all the different colored lights of the DTW tunnel of LSD, and it wasn't nearly as long, but it was still a cute effort. abstract painting, 780-1, 1992 by gerhard richter, who was in the news this weekend for selling a painting at auction for over $16 million, which is pretty good for the post-crash economy, i have to think Finally arrived at the bar where I sipped the Bloody Mary special and watched, with some disgust, as the Saints proved once again that they can't win a ball game if I'm watching. They nearly caught up...but that's because that touchdown and field goal happened as I strolled up the steep flight of steps to the ladies room and then back down again. Monday, October 17, 2011 Not much to say about today. I had a first class upgrade but I gave it up because they asked for volunteers, and they'd already accepted DH. We got $400 apiece for allowing them to give our seats to somebody else and going back through a connection in ATL instead of on a nonstop. We also got $12 each in vouchers, $6 each for lunch and dinner, which isn't quite enough, but it's better than a KITN. We landed at MSY at 5 PM, four hours later than our regularly scheduled flight, so we didn't really need dinner anyway, and we just put our coupons together and got one dinner to go -- it took both coupons to buy ONE dinner with no drink. Ouch. Delta sent me a survey today asking me about what happened, and I told them that I was happy with everything except that the meal vouchers don't cover the cost of the meals and that there are not nearly enough seats for everyone to sit down in the gate area at DCA. But I made sure to mention that the gate agents were terrific at handling an overwhelming situation, with multiple oversold flights and TWO airplanes scheduled for the same gate, which is what caused the DCA-MSY flight to be delayed. Even if we hadn't been bumped, we would have lost an hour anyway, thanks to the gate mishap, so we're pretty happy that we volunteered. At ATL-MSY, they again asked for volunteers, but alas and alack...we were standbys there and had no seat assignment, so we had no seat to sell. I almost wanted not to get on, because I had an assigned seat in First Class on the next flight out, but a bunch of people somehow disappeared at the last minute, and they put their volunteers back on the plane and then told five of us standbys to just get on and take any seat we saw. So I ended up in a window. Ugh. But lucky DH got the last aisle. It's a short flight anyway. After all the exercise, we both bought a bottle of Woodford Reserve, so Delta got back $14 from us, so you can say that we really earned $781 for flying to Washington, since our original tickets cost $5 apiece plus 50,000 SkyMiles that DH had earned from Amex. Wheeeeee! I was thinking it's just that DH is lucky, because I haven't been able to score a bump in ages, and the last time was ANOTHER award trip, this one to Quebec, and also with DH. Maybe, as traveling companions go, poor old IMOM is just plain unlucky, I was thinking. However, this can't be true, or if it used to be true, perhaps his luck is changed, for he flew out Tuesday as a mere Silver Elite and not only got upgraded to First Class but somehow got an upgrade for his mom to First Class as well. Hmmm. The various museums and the zoo are free, and we walked or used the Metro instead of any cabs, so we really had a great trip on a budget, even though I'm a little surprised at the lack of Pomegranate Martinis in D.C. Maybe I'm just a little too Vegas... Needless to say, after the success of this trip, in which we actually go profitable on transportation plus hotel, I'm fired up again about bumps, credit card points, and all the other cheap tricks for making travel pay its own way. Oh, and I just found out that Chase has awarded DH the points he earned for trying their credit card, so that's a check for $310 that's supposed to be wandering our way in the not-too-distant future. On the down side of the hustle, I was also informed that my mystery shopping program is getting shut down by the new owners, so I have at most two shops left, November and December. Hey, that $15 a month was my Christmas turkey money. You win some and you lose some, but (knock on wood) at the moment we're mostly winning. back - next All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2002-2017 by Elaine Radford