Happy Birthday to Marlena Davis, Nine Years Old, On a Gray Day with Drizzle

Happy Birthday Marlena

8:15

Awakened at 6:00 by the gosh darn duck, quacking out our bedroom window.  I went downstairs to scare him away so he wouldn't wake Evie, but he had moved on.  It's about 64 degrees out now but there's a freeze expected tonight, so a big weather change is coming our way.  Listened to Mike Mc Grath's You Bet Your Garden, and he talked about the brown bats, how they will have disappeared by 2012 because of a white fungus.  He had an expert on from Akron University, who is doing research on this problem.  She mentioned that bats eat mosquitoes like we eat popcorn, just a snack.  Actually, their main food are moths, eating up to 2700 hundred on a good day.  The reason fungus spreads is that brown bats tend to hibernate in large colonies, as many as 5000 at a time, so it's easy for one bat with a fungus to pass it on to the rest.  It was suggested that putting up bat houses, so they might hibernate in smaller groups, might have some effect on slowing down the plague.  Interesting morning listening for once.

Purple Martin House UP

After our foray into the Cleveland area yesterday, we just relaxed here at the lake, as I watched the NCAA tournament games and Evie played Words With Friends, complaining periodically about her letters.  We had a great pasta sauce with mushrooms for dinner, using Rao's Pasta sauce, expensive but quite tasty.  It was fun to see Ohio State beat Syracuse, especially after OU lost yesterday.  Today's games  have Kansas playing, Tommy's favorite team, so I will watch them beat North Carolina, I hope.

Today is Marlena's birthday, Tommy's daughter, and she's nine years old.  We have not seen them since Thanksgiving, so it's exciting to think about our visit to KC in mid April.  It's time to hit the road for a few weeks.

Today, I assume we will walk the CI, our usual Sunday morning walk, come home to my favorite meal of the week, eggs, toast, and bacon, then watch more b-ball.  Tonight, at last, Mad Men returns, so we anxious to see that show begin after a year and a half hiatus.