Too Nice To Be Inside - Quick Catch Up

Falling behind on some things here, so here is a quick catch-up post.

BS called to see if I wanted to bike on Wednesday and we had a great time riding from Bird Point (Seward Highway mile 99) to Girdwood and back on the bike trail made from the old road that clung to the cliff and I was always behind an RV going up at 15 miles an hour. Much better as a bike trail.






Bear scat-
terd
along the trail








On the way back we stopped at the view point that looks up the valley. We'd seen gulls and a raven harassing an eagle on a tree top, but I waited too long to get my camera out of my pocket trying to get closer. It flew off and over us before I had it ready.



But we did watch the green-violet swallows. In Thailand I gave up on trying to identify the swallows. They fly too fast to catch in the binoculars and would never land where I could see them. But this one in the tree was sitting in the sun with the green and purple iridescently brilliant. But of course it turned around when I was taking the picture.






There were a couple of free to use binoculars at the rest point, so I tried out my camera in the eyepiece.





The tree trimmers came by Thursday morning. We'd planted trees long ago to have a screen between us and the neighbors, but the birch have gotten so tall that we're getting less and less sun in the yard. I've read the Cooperative Extension pamphlet on why you shouldn't top trees, but Scott Gage promised to do it in a way that wouldn't kill the trees or look weird. He said those rules of trimming came from the midwest and east where they had 100 year old oak trees that people wanted to top and people get carried away with the rules. Anyway, they did it so well that the before and after pictures are too hard to tell what they did.




And last night we went to see episode 3 of midnight soap scum. I thought last week's episode better. It seemed there was less satire and more farce last night. I still don't know why the swimming pool scene was there, but maybe it will be revealed next week. There was a program this time so I can recognize some of the actors that particularly impressed me. Rebekah Franklin is close to Tina Fey in her spot on

portrayal of Sarah Palin. Steve Deloose, well, I've never met him out of character, so I don't know how much he's acting here. But his character of Phillipe-Auguste is a kick. And Mama Rose Mary, the narrator is my favorite. She takes over between the scenes. Last week she had a huge blond wig and red outfit. Last night, despite the relatively normal dark wig and Alice in Wonderland dress, her incredibly bitchy and attention needy persona made her the star of the show for me. (People who were there will all agree, because they know if they don't, she'll embarrass them in front of everyone next week.) She's on the far left in the picture.