Poor Little Roadrunner Never Bothers Anyone

I had my most painful night in a long time last night, maybe not the worst since my gall bladder came out five years ago but certainly in the running as my worst intestinal pain in a few years. Tonight I'm better, as long as I don't, you know, go near a bathroom. We'll see how it goes.

Once I got past the worst of it around 4 AM, I slept in until a friend called (word to the wise, people; don't call me weekend mornings except in dire emergencies), and somehow managed to get to sleep again for a few more hours after that. When I did get up, one of my tasks was to drop John off at a place that was looking at his Alero, which had failed emissions because of a software glitch(!) in its onboard computer (OBC). When John discovered how long I've neglected getting the oil changed in my Eagle Vision, he insisted that I rectify that today. So I did.

The place I usually go predicted a 40-minute wait, so I took the car to another location further east. They predicted a 30-minute wait, and there were no unoccupied chairs in their waiting room. So I took a walk while I waited, and promptly saw this:


That,my friends, is a roadrunner, actually in the road for once, checking out a car as its driver waited for the traffic light to turn green. I doubt the driver ever saw the roadrunner.


I followed the bird across the street, down the block and into a parking lot, where it came upon something to eat. I thought at first it was french fries, but when I actually saw the remains up close it looked more like salad. The backdrop was magnificent, but I couldn't manage a closeup of the roadrunner and a good view of the mountains in the same shot. I also suddenly had severe trouble with my camera as I took shot after shot. The camera dutifully focused and set the exposure, and then produced images so thoroughly overexposed I thought for a while that they weren't pictures of the world outside the camera at all. But they were. I finally got it working again by turning it off and on, but I missed some great shots of the roadrunner when he ignored me about ten feet away. Got to replace the camera!

This is a cropped image to get him big enough to actually see. Cute fellow. Big for a bird, but reasonably sized for a roadrunner.



Tonight I got involved in a bunch of L'Engle-related stuff on Wikipedia. So now it's late-late-late again, and I still have to wash dishes and my hair (not at the same time). Good night!


Karen

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