Always one in the crowd...

While most of the daffodils are primed and ready for their spring bloom, usually early to mid February since we've lived here, there is one bunch that is getting a head start on the others.  Looks like they wanted to show off a bit :)

Pretty in Pink

After a recent storm I found some pink insulation on the deck outside---weird as I know that the attic vents have screening on them to prevent this regardless of how much wind we have.  We also have fiberglass batting and not the loose, blown in type of insulation.

 

Closer inspection at the very peak of the house shows a bit of the pink stuff laying across one of the attic vents.....a long way up there!

Hanging the camera out the window in my office (aka bonus room) shows that we've had uninvited company---and some attic work to do before it warms up.  Appears that our friendly neighborhood squirrels needed to insulate their nests for their soon to arrive kids (oh joy).

Bustling up to the feeder

Our usual morning rush hour crowd at the feeder.

The male gold finches are beginning to turn "gold" to impress the ladies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Goldfinch

Illuminating Fan-tastic Repair

 We've had some on and off (literally) problems with the light fixture on the ceiling fan in the kitchen.  Bulbs would work, then stop and restart for no reason.

Close inspection showed that the ceramic lampholders looked heated---it's been here for 20 years but I was still surprised as we've only put 40 or 60 watt lamps in it.

Once the fixture was disassembled, 4 of the 5 lampholders were really, really bad.....and the 5th wasn't far behind.

The worst lampholder had wiring with burned off insulation.

All bright and shiny now :)  Will monitor the temperature as I suspect the heating may be with dimmer switch.

Getting ready for warmer weather

Most people rake leaves in their yard.  With all the trees on our property I've tried different ways to remove the leaves from the pool cover before taking the cover off.  This year's method looks very promising and relatively less labor intensive from previous years.

Time to upgrade....

In the good old days, hard drives either gave the death rattle right before they bit the dust (which preceeded rapid floppy disk backing up) or just failed altogether with no notice.  The new drives, paired with the operating system, now have the audacity to tell you they don't want to work anymore.  This hard drive is named Apollo and is installed on my desktop and has been online continuously for over 3 years.  He is imaged and backed up on Cronus which I'll probably be using soon to create a new C: drive.