Things to do

1) Come up with a workable “class” to teach on Saturday at Cold Canyon as part of our training. It’s only 20-30 minutes. I am wavering between birds (hard to see in the canyon for anyone, frustrating for novices), sketching, or calligraphic gesturing of plants that they will have had a good chance to look at by the time it’s my turn. Any ideas?

2) Finish laying mulch on the gardens, such as they are. The flagstones are nearly in.

3) Make fences for both gardens. (It’s blowing very hard outside now and I wish I had gotten to this earlier. However, the plants seem to be establishing well so maybe it’s alright.)

4) Come up with a Christmas card idea before November 1. I know I should call it a holiday card but if I did I wouldn’t make one, simple as that. (It has to be easy to produce because of 7, below. I am thinking of a linocut print this year.)

5) Defer my copperplate learning to the spring. My online teacher is very unresponsive and has never given me information about how to pay her, so I’m going to bow out of this one easily.

6) Persevere with my urging of coworkers to stop leaving candy on counters at work, which has started to creep back with Halloween approaching and threatens not to depart until well into the New Year. A distressing encounter with a bowl of Candy Corn (which I don’t even like!) on Monday triggered a grovelling plea from me yesterday. They seem to have taken it well enough. When you have a sugar addiction, it’s probably best to be very clear about it.

7) Write a 50,000 page novel during the month of November as part of National Novel Writing Month. (It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to get done.) I’m doing this to try and get a big monkey off my back. I have the suspicion it doesn’t do that; the monkey just gets more clingy, but I have to try.

There, see now. If I start to seem a little crazy be sure to let me know.

Things to check off:

The red-breasted flycatcher, this evening on Putah Creek. First lower-48 record. [John Sterling’s photos of this bird can be found here

[PS: Make that a taiga flycatcher (split from red-breasted), first mainland North America record. It wasn’t seen today, as far as I know.]