Just a little while ago we dropped Amy off for her first day of 7th grade. For the last day or so she has been incredibly excited and happy that school was about to start again. This morning she was absolutely bouncing off the walls. It is VERY good to see her this excited about school. She really likes this school. It was a good choice. As much as writing the check each month hurts, it is a very good place for her.

Her new iMac also arrived this morning, adding to the wall bouncing. She squealed and jumped up and down as I signed the thingy for the FedEx guy. We will unbox it after I get home from work tonight. I’ll spend the evening getting things set up on it and moving her stuff from Cronus. Tomorrow she will have her computer. And then I won’t have to share. :-)

It is now Labor Day. It is good to have a day off.

Of course, there is always lots to do, so I won’t be spending all the time sitting in front of the TV doing nothing or sleeping late. But of course there will be some of that. Perhaps a lot of that. :-)

Amy hasn’t chosen a name for it, but her iMac was picked up by FedEx in Shanghai at 8:05 UTC today and is now on the way. Woo!

As those of you who downloaded and listened to the podcast already know, our budgie Cheese was not in good shape over the weekend. He got sick late last week, but too late for us to get him to an avian vet on Friday, and none were open on the weekend. We got some treatment from a regular vet when he looked worse on Sunday, but they really didn’t have any bird expertise and couldn’t do anything of substance. We got him to an avian specialist Monday morning and they essentially put him in the bird equivalent of intensive care as they tried to figure out what was wrong. But basically with most birds, by the time they show any outward symptoms at all, they are in pretty bad shape. They hide the fact that they are sick at all costs, because in the wild, showing that weakness can be an immediate death sentence.

Cheese had shown some improvement Monday afternoon, but we got word this morning that he hadn’t made it through the night. As of this morning, the vet had not been able to determine what exactly had been wrong and it was somewhat of a mystery. I gather they are continuing post-mortem tests, but in the end the reason won’t really matter. (Although we are having Cheese’s companion Skittles checked out just in case it was something that could effect both.)

Cheese is the yellow and green bird in the picture above. I actually was unable to find ANY pictures of either Cheese or Skittles where they were not together. When we initially got them, the intention was to only get one bird as a companion for Nacho, whose cage mate Brain had recently died. (Thus the name Cheese… Nacho and Cheese… get it?) But even in the big aviary with 100 budgies at the petstore, the two of them would not leave each other alone and were inseparable. So we had to get them both. Seperating them was out of the question.

They would sit next to each other on the perch. They would huddle together when they slept. They would play together. The only exception was when we for a time had our old grandmother budgie Nacho in the cage with them. Cheese would sometimes snub Skittles to stay with Nacho. She was the matron of the family after all, and appreciated the attention.

Cheese didn’t really like us humans that much. But we liked him and he will be missed.

Especially by Skittles. They have never been apart, and now he has an empty cage.

I had sworn that we would not get any more birds. But we may have to rethink that. Budgies are flock animals and being by themselves isn’t good for them. We’ll figure all that out. But for now…

Goodbye Cheese. You were a good bird.

I really think I need to get into the breakfast habit. Basically all my adult life I’ve pooh poohed and ignored breakfast except on rare occasions. (Not counting breakfast food for lunch or dinner at Denny’s or the like… love that.) But breakfast at breakfast isn’t something I do on a regular predictable basis.

But today (and not just today) I rolled into work a little later than I like, then sat there at the desk useless for a few minutes before I realized that I really was quite hungry.

Went downstairs to the snack bar and got a cinnamon bun and a white chocolate mocha. I’m almost done eating it and am already feeling a bit better and like my brain is almost functional. I a couple seconds I’ll be able to be productive.

I should probably think about trying out a breakfast every day policy and seeing how it would work out. The problem is, of course having time for breakfast means getting up earlier. Getting up earlier means either less sleep or going to bed earlier, neither of which are all that exciting.

Oh well. The Cinnamon Bun is gone. Time to do real stuff.