Random Wednesday: Birds, eggs, swine and wool.

1. We saw the egret on the shore of Beach Lake on our way out for dinner tonight. Of course, it's so dark at 6:30 now that I could only tell the difference between the egret and the Canadian geese by the length of the legs.

2. Evidently someone didn't approve of the kind or quantity of candy we handed out on Halloween. I was going to run out with Kira for a quick walk before I started powering through the thirty dozen things I needed to get done tonight, when I saw the egg splattered all over our front wooden porch. I am Not A Happy Camper. It took three big pitchers of water and the scrub brush I use when I wash out the litterboxes to get it off. I'm feeling the strong urge to kick the ass of every parent I know; who lets their kid out the door with a handful of raw eggs? What the hell did they think the kid was going to do with them? And why didn't they raise them better in the first place? I never would have egged someone's house as a kid because I was taught to respect other people's property -- and my mom would have knocked me into next week. (kidding)

3. I had a sore throat and a cough yesterday, and felt like death warmed over Monday night. Today I'm still tired, but the sore throat is gone. I'm praying it was just allergies aggravated by the groundskeepers at work, and not the swine flu trying to lull me into a false sense of safety.

4. Speaking of H1N1, we're on the waiting list with our doctor's office since the beginning of October, but we can't even get the seasonal flu shot right now. Since M had a heart attack in March, both of us have asthma and I have a history of pneumonia, I'd definitely like to get the vaccines this year.

5. The only positive thing about laying off so many people in my office: there are fewer people to catch the crap from their kids and bring it into the office to share.

6. I'm reading a bunch of blogs about keeping warm in the winter to come, and many of them recommend dropping the temperature in the house to 55 degrees F. I'm sorry, 55 degrees is too cold; if I want to wear a hat, gloves and winter coat, I'll go outside. I am more than happy to wear wool socks, long-sleeved tshirts and polartec fleece, and turn my thermostat down to 65. That's damn well enough.

7. I had knit group last night, and for the first time took only one project -- my second Christmas stocking. I didn't take the book with the large Scandinavian rose pattern in it, however. So I didn't have the chart, didn't have a backup project, and ended up ripping out five rows of knitting so I could throw in a pine tree pattern I did have with me, just to have something to knit. This is why I should always have a purse sock in progress; I need to start carrying one again.