Saffron

Since I live with so many cool beings, I thought I would highlight one of them from time to time.  My goal is to do so once a week, but since I'm still really struggling with time management/keeping up with my responsibilities, I can't make any promises.

I wanted to start with Saffron, because she's lived with us longer than any of the others.  We're not sure how hold she is.  She was an adult of unknown age when she came to live with us. A former colleague had a sister who no longer wanted to keep Saffron, so she came to live with us almost 16 years ago.  She's an Indian Ringneck dove.


She has a very sweet disposition, and a call that sounds like she's laughing.  You can't help but to smile when you hear her "laugh".  She enjoys spending time with her other dove friends, Cypress (mourning dove) and Valentino (white dove).  She gets along with all of the birds, guinea pigs, and rabbits, who she shares the room with.

She's a very messy eater (as are the other doves), and uses her head and feet to throw seeds out of the dish.  A good portion of her food ends up on the ground or the bottom of whichever cage she eats in.  She likes her nightly fruit/veggies, but will toss those around also. If you notice the walls in any of the pictures taken in their room, you can always see little dots/splatters, which occur when they pick up a juicy morsel and shake it, causing juice/small bits to fly off and stick to the walls. These pieces tend to stick like glue, so I periodically steam clean the walls (which of course only stay clean for about 20 minutes or so).

She's definitely slowing down, and I can see the signs of aging. She no longer holds her wings sleekly and firmly at her side--they sag a bit and are a bit rough at the feather tips. She doesn't fly as much as she used to, though she does still fly.  She has never been ill or had to see a vet, and she's still quite healthy at her advanced age. She spends more of her time on lower surfaces than she used to, which is understandable, and her new favorite spots are both within a couple of inches of a feeding station, which allows her to starting throwing food around and making a mess the minute I put the full dishes down.


She has also always been very intrigued by the green light on my camera. Some of the animals notice it and some do not, but she always notices it and watches it. 

She is such a sweet bird and so integral to our family that I get a little panicky sometimes when I think about her age. Their average lifespan is 15-20 years, and my fingers are crossed that she will make 30.

Bounty

Alexa (Lexi)

I've survived the first two weeks of the semester (almost--one day of classes left this week), and so far things are going very well (other than being back to my not sleeping patterns).  The first week of classes is exciting--meeting the new students, starting a fresh new semester--but not particularly fun.  I have to spend way too much time going over syllabi and other boring administrative-type tasks and way too little time coding.  The second week we start coding a bit, but by next week, we'll jump in with both feet and spend the rest of the semester in that mode.  That's when it really gets fun.  

I have women in my programming classes!  Yes, that's womEn, not womAn, because I have more than one woman in each of my three programming classes, and my classes are a bit more diverse than usual.  I'm quite excited about the diversity, as I think it makes for a better class.

Mimosa (Mimi)

The animals and I are still suffering from my back-to-school withdrawal.  We have gotten used to being together all the time, all summer, and this summer I was even more of a homebody than usual.  I struggle with being gone from them for so long.  I will adjust to it, but right now I'm still feeling sad and guilty when I leave them every day.  

Last week I pushed myself far, far out of my comfort zone and participated in a Flashmob, performed by faculty for the students.  We learned the dance on Tuesday during our staff orientation day, and then practiced at home with the video until our performance last Wednesday.  We invaded the commons, which was packed because of the free food SGA provided, as zombies and danced to Thriller. I'm not a fan of zombies or Thriller, but I do love to dance and we had a ton of fun practicing and stressing out over getting the steps right. I almost backed out about 20 times, but I knew my colleagues would curse me forever for such cowardice, so I forced myself to stick with it. We pulled it off, and though it was great fun, I'm fairly sure it was NOT pretty.  I had visions of my students breaking out in uncontrollable giggles for the remainder of the semester, after seeing me make a giant ass of myself (a la Elaine's employees after seeing her very special dancing on Seinfield--a classic!), but no giggles so far--at least not to my face. :)  The video has been posted on Facebook.  Ugh.

In addition to the crunch of prepping for and returning to school and learning a dance, I have been trying to keep up with the garden, which is incredibly bountiful right now. I'm trying to stay ahead of harvesting and either using or freezing the produce.  We've been eating very well, and enjoying a bumper crop of eggplant.  Fortunately, we all love eggplant, and it is so versatile that nobody minds having it 2-3 times a week, because each dish is completely different (eggplant "bacon" is great in wraps, miso-glazed eggplant, eggplant lasagna, eggplant & chickpea curry, black-eyed pea & eggplant curry, eggplant curry burgers, roasted eggplant & other garden veggies in a peanut-lime-sriracha sauce, etc.).  I'm going to really miss eating most of our meals directly from the garden, when the season ends!  

We grew an experimental batch of Timothy grass this year, and since it went very well, we'll be growing much more next year. The rabbits and guinea pigs go through so much organic Timothy hay that we'd like to grow some of our own. They enjoy eating the grass, too.  I've been hanging small bunches of grass in the house in an effort to determine the best means of making hay (haha).

We don't eat much pasta anymore (wheat!), but I made this Mac & Cheese recipe, which allowed me to use a bunch of cherry tomatoes from the garden.  It was delicious--out of this world! M rated it one of his top three favorites, so I'll definitely make it again. We have tons of cherry tomatoes this year, so this will be my go-to dish for using them up.

I managed to make the best salsa I've ever eaten but I didn't use a recipe and will probably never be able to recreate it exactly. I went out to the garden with a basket, picked everything that was ripe and could be used for salsa, roasted about half of the veggies and left the other half raw, and threw it together in the food processor. I only have 1.5 jars (of 3) left and will then spend the rest of my life chasing the dragon to make that magic again. Why oh why do I not write down my experiments?!? This is not the first time I've done something like this, and I'm annoyed that I've done it again.