Thunk
I was having tea with my mother today, when something scared the bejabbers out of us when it hit the window next to us. My first instinct was that it a snowball, as my brother frequently throws them at the windows to scare people. But the snow is gone. So it must have been a tennis ball. But who threw it? Was it actually a bird?

I went outside, and indeed, there was a woodpecker, motionless, on the ground under the window. Actually, it was breathing. When I approached it, its eyes were blinking. It was stunned, but otherwise fine. He had only managed to break the top of his beak off.

Still, the bird lay motionless. So, we picked him up and held him for a while. Eventually, we placed the woodpecker on a branch in the back yard. He sat there for about an hour, then went on his way.

This is the sort of thing that I didn't think actually happens in real life. Hopefully the little guy is alright. Either way, it made for some fine bird photography without the expenditure of a big lens!

Quarter-Century and New Phone
So I turned a full quarter-century old last week. I thought it was a pretty big deal until I went to the Hallmark store to get a card for my buddy Raf's 25th birthday, and they don't have those. They have cards for just about every other year, except twenty-five; anniversaries excepted. So, in that spirit, it's just another year, another tax season. I can keep counting. I'm bald; mid-life crisis averted.

Nonetheless, I had a pretty good get-together at Patty's Pub.

In other news, no one has been calling me for a while. This is because my cell phone has been dead for a pretty long time. It is surprisingly difficult to find a good replacement for my six-year-old Nokia 3390. I had a few spares, but one was given away and the other didn't work. While I finally managed to fix the broken one this week, I still opted for a new phone. Fido doesn't carry any phones I like, and their list prices are upwards of $300 for most models. The criteria is simple; I want a Nokia, no flip, no camera, with a keypad that has normally-shaped buttons, and not larger than the 3390. Not easy.

I ended up finding and buying a unit that fits my criteria on eBay. It's the Nokia 6200. It's a few millimetres smaller than the old phone in every dimension, has a good square-shaped keypad, and nothing fancy. Hopefully it will work as well as its specifications look.