Well, I'm going to have to read up on Orioles, and Phoebes too. Wow Lindac, a buzzard! Marlingardener, I'm happy to give your ducks a home during the summer months. It's good to share, you know! No hummers here yet, but they should remember me, so I'm hoping they show up soon. I'm very faithful to put out fresh food for them, even though I haven't planted their garden. I'm just barely moving myself after the winter we've had, and feel a little behind the times. Blueiris, I named ours Henry and Henrietta long ago. They're very comfortable dropping in (literally) and leaving again. It's always a pleasure. Oh wow. I just saw one of the little owls on the owl cam devour a small bunny, the entire hind quarters in three gulps. YIKES.

I'm pretty good at poker...better than my DH. But I have a great story about his luck. Back when we were first married and he was still in school and working co-op, he called me about a Red Cross benefit that he saw advertised. Admission was $25 per person. They were giving away a free trip at the top of every hour. I believe there were 3 or 4 trips total. I told him 'No, we can't go...it's just too much money for us right now'. An hour goes by and he calls me again and say, 'honey, we HAVE to go. I had Chinese for lunch and my fortune cookie said that I would soon be crossing great waters'. He sounded so excited, how could I say no. When we got to the event, the head of our local Red Cross was greeting people. My DH went up to him and introduced himself as he went on and on about how he was going to win. He told the guy about his fortune cookie. The man looked at my husband with this 'I'm not sure what to think of you...you nutball!' My DH was and is quite a social butterfly and at times very flamboyant with his stories. So, we hung out with our friends, had some beers and made fun of the winners who went crazy as their names were called and they ran screaming up to the stage. Around 10:30 I thought it was time to go. I had to work the next day and I was getting sleepy. I said, "Mark, we're not going to win...look, there must be over 1000 people here." And he held up his fortune and said, "there's still the trip to Ft. Lauderdale left and I'M GOING TO WIN IT". I rolled my eyes. We decided to find a table and play some euchre to pass the time. As we were playing we heard our last name (a very unusual ethnic name) and it dawned on all of us. We won the last trip! I got up and jumped up and down and probably screamed more than any of the other winners. DH went up to the stage waving his fortune cookie. You should've seen the look on the Red Cross guy's face. Total disbelief. Well, it makes for a good story. We had a grand time in Ft. Lauderdale....then stayed another 4 days in Lauderdale-by-the sea!

Attention, shoppers! If you take a half-gallon of fudge ripple ice cream from your supermarket's freezer case and then remember you are on a diet, don't leave it to melt on the rack where the tabloid magazines scream "Tom Cruise Marries Alien!" Likewise, in a department store, if you suddenly realize that a pink poncho will be passe in a month, don't fling it over a display of men's socks and walk away. Nor should a four-pack of 60-watt light bulbs be wedged between the boxes of fettuccine and ziti. For a few minutes, pretend I'm your mom -- your shopping mom: Were you raised in a barn? Will you never learn to pick up after yourselves? Stop rolling your eyes and look at me when I talk to you! Listen up: More and more of you are not putting things back where they belong when you go shopping. It happens at high-end and low-end and everything-in-between stores. It occurs in supermarkets, clothing stores, toy stores, stationers and any place where merchandise isn't too heavy to lift. It even goes on at the Gap, despite clerks -- only those with eyes in the backs of their heads are hired -- who attempt behavior modification in customers by pointedly refolding polo shirts milliseconds after they are mussed. It occurs even in bookstores, where, as in libraries, there are often tables or carts with posted pleas to place unwanted books on them so that people who know exactly where they should be shelved can do so. Still, you'll find a John Grisham tome next to "101 Ways to Cook Cauliflower." Especially during sales, the dressing rooms of department stores look like pigsties -- clothing in dumping grounds on the floor or falling off hangers and hooks -- because customers won't even return them to collection racks at the mouth of the dressing room so employees can restock them. Don't make the excuse that everybody does it. What if everybody jumped off a cliff? Would you? Experts who study what is called "shrink" -- the term for inventory loss due to shoplifting, employee theft or error, and damaged or "distressed" items -- estimate that less than 1 percent of all shrink is caused by shoppers who act as though they are royalty being shadowed by a maid. (A major grocery chain has about $500,000 worth of shrink a year, according to recent studies.) This number would be higher if alert shoppers and employees didn't see wrongs and right them, says Larry Miller, president of Trax Retail Solutions in Scottsdale, Ariz., and national director of the National Supermarket Research Group. Miller estimates that shoppers (acting as mothers the world over do) or store employees rescue about 60 percent of dumped grocery items. "Most people don't look at a pound of ground beef sitting on a grocery store shelf and ignore it. They take it back to the refrigerated meat section," Miller contends. "This has always been a problem, and it occurs at all stores no matter where they are," says Barry F. Scher, vice president of public relations for Royal Ahold NV's Giant Food LLC chain. He notes that the cost for supermarkets is especially high when the item involved requires refrigeration or freezing. Even though employees are instructed by managers at various times during the day to scout for misplaced items, perishables most often have to be thrown out because it is not known how long they've been sitting around. Scher says that Giant stores don't have staffers dedicated to performing the task called "shop backs" but that it takes employees away from other duties. "Stores also lose out because the stock isn't where someone can find it and sell it," says Jon Schreibfeder, president of Effective Inventory Management Inc. of Coppell, Tex. This means that, to be confident that they have enough of any product, managers must overstock items. Schreibfeder, whose company advises retailers on ways to control inventory, says that although the practice isn't nearly as large or troublesome as shoplifting or employee theft, "we talk about the [dumping] problem continually" with clients. Schreibfeder's prescription has been to have his clients schedule regular "stock straightening" for several times a day, especially when the store isn't busy. He also said a retail customer in Bermuda learned that nothing works as well as a departing ship in making people evacuate a store, leaving stick deodorant next to the asparagus. "A cruise ship would come in and the passengers would begin shopping. They'd find they were running out of time and would leave stock scattered everywhere," Schreibfeder recalls. He and his employees helped the store employees realize that they should scurry to round up misplaced products in between dockings. He also advised the owner to mark shelves that were most often victimized by shoppers and to have employees combing those prone areas. Schreibfeder says it's conceivable that, down the line, radio frequency identification (RFID) might be able to beam out an all-points bulletin (APB) to store managers, saying, in effect: "I'm over here -- and I'm defrosting!" to help in the roundup. Both Schreibfeder and Scher are inclined to be soft on consumers who dump products thither and yon. "People these days think they are too busy. Everybody's in a rush," Scher says. But Dorothea Johnson is unforgiving. Johnson, founder of the Protocol School of Washington and an etiquette teacher for 40 years, says we all must put things back because it is right and proper and is a tiny thing we can do to keep the world from chaos. She can think of no excuse for not returning merchandise to its shelf. Practicing this daily has the side effect of increasing self-esteem, she says. "Oh, you see, not putting things back is not being mindful of the next person who comes along. Although salespeople are trained to watch out for such things, I always put things back. I can then tell myself I did the right thing," says Johnson from her home near Portland, Maine. Even parents who spend the livelong day harping on children and spouses about tidying up can slip up now and then and ignore their inner Miss Manners. The other day, in a fit of fitness, someone left a pound of bacon next to a mound of tilapia packages after glancing about the store furtively to see if anyone was looking. But do as I say, not as I do. And don't run with a stick in your hand. You'll poke your eye out.

I don't carry loose change in my pocket - I have a zipperd plastic purse that'll carry a good bit of change. Actually, the pants are somewhat aged, and the othe day my knife slid down the leg and out the bottom. A hole had appeared, large enough to let the knife go free. I left the change purse, for it was smooth and larger. But the next day, the hole was larger, and I feared that I'd lose the change purse ... ... so moved it to another pocket. And, Drat! Wouldn't you know that those are the pants that never had even one, let alone a pair of pockets in the seat, in the first place? Got the needle and thread out that night and sewed up the hole - it was a double seam, with the loose ends of the first seam tucked back inside the second. Stronger, and less wear and tear, that way, I think. Hey - why am I telling this story on myself? Here I was telling about how much more durable the coins were, that they'd almost never wear out, etc. ... ... and then Don claimed that, though they might not wear out quickly - they were tough on his pockets. And here I am proving his point. But - the pants are rather aged (sort of like their owner), so one can't really expect the pockets to last forever unscathed. Have a lovely week, everyone. ole joyful