The Great Back Yard Bird Count

We had an interesting ice sun dial this morning in the bird bath.  I have no idea how this happens, given that we have something called gravity all all.  But somehow water began to rise, reaching out like that one part in the movie "The Abyss," and that's where it froze in place literally.  I'll have to look up the science behind this, because it's fascinating on a molecular level.

Anyway, this morning we were participating in something called "The Great Back Yard Bird Count," which apparently has been going on for some time.  Basically, you spend a minimum of fifteen minutes counting birds in your back yard, and maybe taking pictures too.  Mom and I were taking a few pictures of our back yard birds in this short window of time.  Below are the pictures we submitted of all the regulars that show up for a free snack.

We could identify all of these, but there's this other visitor we have that we're not quite sure of.  We have our thoughts as to who it is, but we have yet to nail that part down.  Anyway, we submitted what we had, identifying each and participating online with thousands and thousands of others.  It was fun, actually!

This afternoon, we went over to Nana's place to visit.  There was a time for crafts in the craft room, and I sort of got my hopes up that there'd be a teacher or something, guiding people along and that together we could all make some unique thing.  However, there was just a note that said, draw something on these index cards and you can send it to your friends and family.  There were markers and colored pencils there. Maddie and I stayed in the room, and created these Valentine's Day cards for Nana:

We stayed for a little while, actually.  Long enough to head back down to the lobby for "Frozen Hot Chocolate Day," another great mystery of the universe.  All these frozen mysteries today!  Actually, this was just hot chocolate that was frozen.  It was basically a pudding, but Maddie and I shared one and it was delicious.  Nana gulped hers down pretty quickly.  

After our visit, we were off to the movie theater, which is less than five minutes from her place.  Mom, Maddie and I saw "Ant-Man:  Quantumania," and realized for the first time that "QUANTUMANIA" has the name Ant-Man hidden within it.  The movie wasn't bad at all, in fact we all enjoyed it.  I think it did well to honor Hank and Janet, giving them really significant parts.  I'm not sure about this Kang the Conqueror villain though.  While initially intimidating, his army that he apparently trusted to do some great things was rather ineffective against some unorganized Micronauts.  And speaking of Micronauts, when I was just a lad, I had a LOT of those Micronaut toys.  It's all coming back to me now, and I'm not sure what happened to a lot of it, but I do know I kept some of the figures and still have them in my basement somewhere.  Sadly I didn't see any of the ones I have in the movie, but the Micronauts were a big deal back in the day as toys, and it was neat to see them on the big screen.

Movies these days are so lengthy.  You go there and with trailers and all that, you wind up spending a lot more time there than you think.  Also, money.  I mean, a medium popcorn is $9.22 or something like that. And it's the size of a lunch bag.  And a medium drink is $9.50 or something like that.  It's bigger, roughly the size of both your kidneys.  I mean, how can you not miss part of the movie when drinking that, given that you have to race out to the bathroom.  It's like having a Pepsi IV attached to you.  So yeah, $20 for a popcorn and a drink.  Maddie has discovered lately that she can't eat movie popcorn anymore, as it gives her a headache.  We thought it might be the butter added, so we got the medium size and avoided the butter.  But still, the headache started to threaten her, so she backed off on the popcorn, letting Mom and I have most of the bag.  Maddie loves popcorn at home, so there must be something in these ingredients.  Perhaps we'll have to sneak some homemade popcorn in next time.  Regardless, I know a pretty decent way to save $20 every time we go to the theater...

Anyway, tonight we got home and it was later.  We watched a really cool short episode of "Star Wars Visions," and then it was time to head upstairs to get ready for bed.  We read from the devotional, and then from the Discworld afterwards.  And then it was time for some sleep!  These blankets feel so great to be under with the cold weather outside!