Teenagers

The other night, I was heading home from work around midnight. The town streets were dark and quiet - no cars, no people.

Until I rounded a corner. On the street ahead, I saw them - three gangly adolescents standing in the middle of the street, long legs shifting as they jostled each other. I slowed, but they made no effort to move, just looked over their shoulders at me and continued their teenaged conference.

I wondered if I should honk the horn once, just to remind them I was there and needed through, but I didn't know how they would react. Would I give them a fright? Would they turn on me? There was no one else around to help me if I made the wrong choice.

As I pondered my next move, they gathered their collective wisdom and with a bit of shoving and bumbling, began to slowly move ahead. They proceeded through the stop sign and down the next street at an amble. I followed slowly so they wouldn't feel threatened, smiling at their awkward gait, those long limbs and tiny hoofs so deceptively frail-looking beneath white tails . . .

Yep, those were adolescent deer wandering through town in late evening. They're not just in peoples' back yards, they're everywhere. 

And just like people, they travel in preferred groups, the older males together, the moms and babies born this year together, and the adolescents together. The last group always make me smile, they're so much like their human counterparts - unsure of what their goals are or how to get there, apt to stand around shuffling their feet, and slow to react to cars with the right-of-way.

I only wish I had a video, or even a photo, to share with you.

A meme will have to do instead.

I hope your week brings you some smiles too.

Lee Has Moved On

I am feeling very fortunate today; the storm has passed and is heading to Quebec. My roof is no worse than it was two days ago, my trees are still standing, and I had no interruption of power. As far as I'm concerned, that's a trifecta of good luck.

Other parts of Nova Scotia have had downed trees and loss of electricity, but overall our province was spared. New Brunswick was hit harder, and I can't find any news reports on how Prince Edward Island was affected but significant damage was not expected. (Maybe Marie, our blogging friend in PEI, will have a report on this later.) 

The storm is heading for Quebec now. It took a westward turn and that is what helped us here in NS and also those in Newfoundland.

I know that our good fortune is someone else's misfortune, however. I hope the storm wears itself out quickly.

For now, I will not have to worry about my hair falling out like it did after last year's Fiona.

This guy is my spirit animal:

I hope you have a good week, people. Thank you for all your comments and good thoughts on my last post.

Waiting

Update - Saturday 5 pm local time:

I still have power, although many Nova Scotians do not. There wasn't very much rain here either, but there were storm surges along the southwestern coast. New Brunswick seems to be bearing the worst of the storm.

The wind is picking up here, but in bygone years, this would just be a windy day for us. However, we'll see what tonight brings. The weather watch says: "Lee will continue to impact the region tonight with rain or showers, strong winds, and high waves along the Atlantic coast."

It's hurricane season again - check out this post if you want a refresher on what happened last year in my region - and tonight folks are bracing for the effects of Hurricane Lee on Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and, later, parts of Newfoundland.

This year, my home county should escape the worst of the wind and rain. But I feel for those living where the hurricane will make landfall (particularly southwestern NS). 

And I'm still worried about even the lesser winds and their possible effect on my patched-but-as-yet-unreplaced roof. (The new roof was supposed to happen in late summer, which I guess we're technically still in, but due to rainy weather the roofers are behind schedule, so now I've been promised "before winter".)

Since the trees are still fully-leaved, the wind will tend to cause more tree falls and therefore more damage to power lines, and power outages are expected.

So, if you hear from me even less than usual, it might be because of the storm.

But I'll update you as soon as I can.

 

WordPress is a Puzzlement

Long ago, I set up a WordPress blog so I could post comments on other peoples' WordPress blogs, and also because I thought I might use it to post pictures of my cats, other cats, maybe all kinds of animals.

It's called catsandotherwildlife and I haven't used it except as the previously mentioned magic key to leave comments on other WordPress blogs.

Well, the magic is gone. Half the time when I try to comment, it automatically signs me in as "catsandotherwildlife" and half the time it uses "jenny_o". Even when I click on "change name" and type in jenny_o, it posts my comment as catsandotherwildlife.

And sometimes it posts showing jenny_o but when I refresh the page it says catsandotherwildlife.

As if that isn't enough, if I go back a little later to the same post, it will say jenny_o again.

I can't figure it out and it's driving me crazy.

Today I tried to comment on Diane Henders' entertaining blog (go here and see her latest post!). I changed my signature to jenny_o but it showed up as catsandotherwildlife. When I tried to leave another comment (or reply) to explain who I was, the "post" (or "reply") button was greyed out and I couldn't access it even when I refreshed the page.

What in Sam Hill??? ....

Thoughts, anyone?

In the meantime, if you have a WordPress blog and receive a comment from catsandotherwildlife, you'll know why. And who.

It's just me, being hijacked by WordPress's persnickety-ness.

Clearly, Blogger doesn't have a monopoly on that :)

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May the Comments gods smile on all of us . . . but don't get your hopes up, folks :)