Como Esta?

Flirtatious: Que Pasa hombre? Habla llama?

Real Mood: Beastly

Prediction: Lance Armstrong will win le Tour de France, and the 2005 Australian apple crop will be a good one.

Sometimes I'm serious, but not very often. I'll typically let you know ahead of time. My tongue has been in my cheek for most of my life.  

Sometimes I exaggerate, but not too much. If, for instance, I told you there was a llama in our backyard that thinks it's a cow you might wince. But it's mostly true. Lately it's been hanging out with the equine crowd as well. The poor GAL to my knowledge (her coat is so scruffy I can't tell for sure) has never known another beast of it's own species. Outside of a quick glimpse in a horse tank, she probably has no idea how homely she is. Anyone who read my Christmas letter two years ago MAY remember the girl. No I'm not the TV anchor who says, " as I'm sure you'll remember what we told you five months ago."  I don't expect you to remember her.  Peggy calls her Dolly Llama, and I prefer the name Como Se Llama. We asked for help coming up with a compromise name and got some pretty good ones. My friend Mike LeClaire suggests "Hey Stupid." We'll continue to take suggestions if you're inspired.  But hurry up because if you've been following this soap opera, that field you see will be a four lane road soon.  Who knows what will happen to Como Se.

I kind of feel like Dr. Doolittle this week. Ever since I started whining about the impact of development on wildlife, the beasties have been showing up in unheard of numbers. And while they haven't been talking to me,  they've been posing for the camera. We hadn't seen a single hummingbird  here for almost two years. The past two days I've cranked off over two hundred frames of the little devils.  I've just shared a few of the fauna snapshots I've collected with you. I even had a spider pose for me inside this web he wove that looked like a tornado.  I wonder if I wrote here that I'd like to see the antelope herd one more time, if they'd stop by.  That would be cool. I'd even be willing to brush up on my antelopian if they'd agree to one last visit.

Guess what now that we have air conditioning? I think you probably got this one.  The temperature dropped 15 degrees outside and it rained. And some of the cumulus prognosticators around here are thinking the monsoons aregoing to be pumping some wet in here for some time to come.  But we don't care. I predicted there would be no buyer's remorse, and that came true. We love this air conditioning thing. Let it shine, let it rain, let it snow, just keep letting that ac blow.

I'm going to wrap this up a little early tonight so you can spend some time with Dolly. Don't stop at the picture above. There are more.