Pam and I tonight, talking about my whining about my hurt arm.
Me: I can always find something to bitch about.
Pam: I know (heavy sigh)
Me: Thats my superpower! Bitching!
Me: ooooh, wait, thats lame, you get the cool super power – salamander sense. I get the bitch power.
/Pause
Me: Wait, that doesn’t sound good.
Me: Note to self: Never go to prison when you have the bitch power.

Heh, it was funnier at the time.

An email I sent to a guy at work, who was asking about Chattanooga.

Chattanooga

I can’t praise the walking bridge enough. It ends on the North Shore, at Coolidge Park. We typically park for 2-3 dollars in a covered parking area beside a bank on the north shore, just up from the end of the bridge. You can park at Coolidge Park itself for about four dollars. Its rare, very rare for us to visit Chattanooga and not walk the bridge. Its one block up from the Aquarium. We will park and walk down to Cheeburger cheeburger (over a mile). Cheeburger is often too crowded to visit, however (it is similar to a fuddruckers/five guys).

The Delta Queen hotel is in Coolidge Park.  http://www.deltaqueenhotel.net    We stayed there one night for my birthday, two years ago. Very nice – we would do that again. The rooms however, are the same size they were “back in the day”, which means tiny.

We always visit http://www.mckaybooks.com (Mckaybooks) too. Its the only used bookstore I know that stays crowded. Prices are only decent – you have to be look at them closely. Many times you’ll get better prices elsewhere on popular books.

Our first overnight trip together, we visited http://terminalbrewhouse.com, right next to the Chattanooga Choo Choo. Afterwards we went to the Choo Choo, and caught frogs out of their garden ponds. (Getting a lot of stares, but hey, we didn’t care).

We often eat at City Cafe – http://www.citycafemenu.com   Its low brow (our favorite type of eating place) but decent. http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/109/854460/restaurant/Nikkis-Drive-Inn-Chattanooga    - Nikkis is another low brow place, but with killer (large!) shrimp and good bacon wrapped chicken livers.

We’ve only eaten at http://www.arethas.com Aretha Frankensteins once, but it was good. It has a tiny kitchen, and can easily be overwhelmed. Pam fell in love with the Belgian Waffle.

For a good cheap zoo, the Chattanooga zoo is worth its admission (8 bucks or so). Its not a great zoo, but it is a good zoo. They have two brother Jaguars who are in their prime, and are two of the prettiest big cats I’ve ever seen. The macaws are right there too, which I like.

http://state.tn.us/environment/na/natareas/laurelsnow/  - We’ve only been to Laurel snow once (its an hour or so North of Chattanooga) but we will eventually return.

We love the Chattanooga area, if you can’t tell.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/frogbelly/sets/72157623998107885/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/frogbelly/sets/72157626845675216/

Of the 25 or so Pink Ladyslippers in my front yard, two are in bloom.

And, a wonderful blog post about Tumble-turd (aka dung beetles).

Friday night we spotted three very pale yellow low flying fireflies in the yard.

http://news.yahoo.com/teenagers-social-media-terrorism-threat-level-hard-assess-131320139.html

The way law enforcement agencies approach online activity that appears sinister is this: “If you’re not a terrorist, if you’re not a threat, prove it,” he says.
“This is the price you pay to live in free society right now. It’s just the way it is,” Mullins adds.

That is the scariest quote I’ve read in a long, long time. If that is the way things are, then we do NOT live in a free society.

Today the wild birds are very, very active. Just looking out the windows I’ve seen two Scarlet Tanagers, a phoebe, two Goldfinches, and a Pileated Woodpecker feeding on a branch on the ground. Thats an interesting thing about Pileated Woodpeckers – they spend a lot of time on the ground, feeding on fallen leaves. Supposedly they eat a lot of carpenter ants, so my guess would be that they are after those.

The goats are active too. The heavy rains yesterday knocked a bunch of leafy twigs to the ground, and they are all going to town on those. Lots of happy goats out in the pasture!

gelid |ˈjelid|
adjective
icy; extremely cold: the gelid pond | figurative : she gave a gelid reply.
ORIGIN early 17th cent.: from Latin gelidus, from gelu ‘frost, intense cold.’

So, I need to get over to Pine Log to check out the Silverbell tree. But, thats secondary. Given how hard they are to germinate (acid? really?) I’ll bet that in the wild, their seeds go through the gut of something and get a greatly increased germination rate.

Second, We noticed the pink ladyslippers in the front yard for the first time this year. They are up!

We spent quite a few minutes learning a new call (to us) for the Eastern Towhee. Mind, its the birds signature song, so that is more indicative of our ignorance than anything.

It remained unclear if the bombs were the work of a homegrown or foreign threat, but in Washington, both President Obama and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel called the attack terrorism.
“Any time bombs are used to target innocent civilians, it is an act of terror,” Obama said Tuesday morning.

From Fox news.

And, not true. A terrorist attack is when innocent civilians are deliberately targeted to make, or draw attention to, a political statement. Obama might regret making the statement above, because there are quite a few drone attacks overseas which would qualify – meaning that he is stating that the U.S. is making overseas terror attacks. Which I’m reasonably sure he doesn’t mean.

Pam and I have diametrically opposed views on Greyhound (bus line). I think that everyone should take a long greyhound trip at least once in their life. A comedian has a skit that we each cite as our reasoning “I’ve seen a man punch a nun. I’ve seen a baby drinking beer. I tell you, I’m never taking greyhound again!” I’ve taken two trips via greyhound – to Missoula Montana and back when I was 18, and to Forth Worth Texas (well, somewhere in Texas. Not sure where now, exactly) a decade or so ago. Both of these trips left out from Atlanta, Georgia. Its a different world.

As Pam says, its intensely uncomfortable. Which is a huge part of the reason to DO it. Its a valuable experience.

How not to make friends on greyhound.

So, yesterday April 9th, 2013, we also heard Purple Martins (I think the first for the year) and saw a hummingbird visiting the feeder left up from last year. Which promptly got cleaned and replaced…..

I got some bee pictures out front at work, of bees working the holly bushes. There were several different types (and I’ve now learned how to distinguish carpenter bees).

Speak of the devil… I stepped out of the house this morning, and heard the lovely twitter of chimney swifts. So, they are here! And, as a search of my blog shows, they aren’t late either. They are right on time……