Night of the Unrest at the Aerie.

Bad night for sleeping.

• Knee pains and back aches from the yard work I was doing yesterday.Caused me to do a lot of tossing and turning and twitching. Getting older is a bitch, but it beats the alternative.
  
• Heavy downpours (but no T-storms) that rattled the trees and washed away a lot of the soil in that pile I have to sift yet. Looks like it's more stone than dirt now.
• Wind rattling the bedroom door because the window was open.
  
• A bird smacked into the window at 5 AM--the only window without a screen because that's where the air conditioner will go when we get back from Milwaukee next week. Rattled the window pretty good but there's no body on the ground.
• And Terry snored. (She says I did too, but you never hear your own 'cause you're asleep.)
  
• Then there's the chorus of bird calls at the same time. Loud and varied. If I didn't know some of the culprits, it wouldn't have been so bad, but laying there trying to both get back to sleep and identify the species doesn't work.
• And, finally we come to the cats. I knew they were going to get their favorite for breakfast (Friskies Tuna & Egg), but how did they? And what's with the 5:45 wake-up call? Come on guys! You are going to sleep 80% of the day. At least let me have a couple hours during the night.

Just waiting to see if there's going to be anymore rain this morning and if the pile of dirt/stones will be dry enough to go through a 1/2" hardware cloth mesh. Clay tends to clump up something fierce when it's wet.

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[UPDATE: The pile turned out to be 1/3 stone, 1/3 clay and 1/3 water. Not a good combination for sieving. Heck it stuck to the rake and shovel and I've got enough in the lugs of my boots to fill a 6" flower pot. I moved three wheelbarrows of this heavy mix just to get it out of the way. Then I called it quits.]

Man! I hate when that happens!

"Early to bed, early to rise" is not a saying steeped in wisdom. It is a curse!

I went to bed early last night for no good reason other than there was nothing to watch on TV and I was bored with surfing the net and seeing much of the same-old same-old. I did a crossword, read a couple of chapters in a Jim Butcher novel (Academ's Fury...it's Book Two in the series) and turned off the light just shy of 10 PM. Then, damn it, I woke at 3 AM for no particular reason and just could not fall back to sleep.

At 4 AM, using his ECP (Exceptional Cat Perception), Chester started to yowl at the door so I gave up and got up, got dressed and headed down stairs. Fed the cats their breakfast (tuna!--maybe Chester read the can) and heated up a mug of coffee. Then the lights went out--literally--three times in half an hour. Power loss was just long enough to cause the electrical clocks on the microwave and stove to start blinking and require resetting each time.

Once everything got back to order, I built up the fire in the fireplace and restocked the wood supply next to the hearth. Then I settled down to look at the web. The problem with getting up so early is that there's no one else up and all the posts are from before you went to bed. Except for those folks out in Alaska who have just gone to sleep when you woke up at 4 AM EST.

Checked Rev. Paul's site and Brigid had a new post at her's all about Revenge. Then I went over to the Yukon Quest site to see what was going on.

Michelle Phillips scratched at Dawson City. A little over 400 miles into the race, she was down to just 8 dogs and had the toughest part of the trail yet to go. Once they leave the Yukon River at Circle City, things get, shall we say, bumpy--and very, very steep.

Hugh Neff is the current leader. He left Dawson City at 3:35 AM local time a good three-and-a-half hours ahead of Hans Gatt. (Dawson City is a 36 hour mandatory rest so it's pretty easy to see who is ahead of whom at this point. Still, lots of time left and distance to go.)

It's now approaching 9 AM and I've had two mugs of coffee (approximately four cups total) and I'm ready to either get really active or take a nap. The problem with either of those two options is...well, four cups of coffee. Can't get too far from the toilet. (Coffee's fluids, like beer, are only rented.) Can't get to sleep. (Decaf is for sissies. Black. Strong. Unadulterated. The only way to drink coffee.)

Aarrrgh!

I didn't realize that, "Early to bed, early to rise," was a curse. I hit the hay early last night and found myself wide awake (sorta) at 5 AM this morning. It was a shock to the kitties that I came down stairs at 5:30. They enjoyed their tuna breakfast just the same.

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I shoulda held off on the shoveling yesterday afternoon. There's another inch or more on the ground so far this morning and it's still snowing.

And my back is complaining.

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Made it to Anchorage in my photo safari so far. That's only about a third of our trip and I've already selected 300+ photos for our presentation. Gonna have to do a lot of pruning to fit into a one hour time slot!