At least until next semester.
The time to begin tearing down my somewhat extensive room setup has come. The way I set my room up means there’s a lot of extra work at the beginning and end of the school year, but I think it’s definitely worth it!
I’ve already posted some on my summer internship at Wycliffe, but I’ve got more details now:
I’ll be spending this summer in Dallas working for Wycliffe Bible Translators as a programming intern. They’re going to put me on the core programming team for a piece of software called FieldWorks Language Explorer. It’s basically an electronic dictionary-thesaurus that will make translation work much faster and more accurate than it’s been in the past. The techie details are: C#, Visual Studio 2005, Extreme Programming, and Pair Programming.
I’m really excited about this summer! I get to work in exactly the sort of programming environment I was hoping for on a really cool project, and not only that, but the end result is that more people will have the Word of God in their own language! I’m very thankful to God for giving me such an amazing opportunity, and I pray that I will allow Him to use me to accomplish great results.
If you want more information about this or would like to be a part of what I’ll be doing this summer, take a look at my Support Letter.
Sleeping in followed by birding, what better way to start a Saturday?
Just before crossing the street in front of the assembly building, an enormous bird flew out of one of the trees. It took me completely by surprise and was gone before I had a chance to dig my binoculars out of my backpack. I did manage to see a red tail, so I’m guessing it must have been a Red-tailed Hawk.
I followed the usual route behind Phys Plant but without much luck. Just as I was getting discouraged, I saw a flash of brown behind the pond that I didn’t recognize. I tried to follow it, but it was too fast for me too keep track of. However, while trying to find out where it had gone, I happened to see a Mourning Dove that I wouldn’t have otherwise. It was high in the branches of a pine tree, and it very cooperatively sat still for me. I’d seen Mourning Doves before but only briefly, so it was nice to get good look.
I moved on to behind the soccer practice field where I got the best view I’ve ever had of a Blue Jay. It was having its lunch, and I watched it for several minutes. It would sit on the top of one of the soccer goals, locate an insect on the ground, casually fly down and pick it up, then return to its perch and enjoy its catch.
The Blue Jay eventually moved on, and then I saw what I think the brown flash earlier must have been. A brown bird with a white belly and white ring around its neck crouched in the middle of the grass soccer field. Every so often it would give a call, fly up for a while, and then land. I’d never seen one of these before, so I once again took some mental notes, hoping to get the colors in the right order this time. A quick search on Whatbird once I got to the library allowed me to identify it as a Killdeer. Not exactly rare, but I was still pretty pleased at being able to figure that out on my own.
The Brown Thrasher nest I’d watched being built a few weeks ago was close, so I decided to check in on it. I found the nest, but neither its occupants nor their eggs were present. Does that mean the eggs have already been laid, hatched, and the young birds left, or would they wait this long after building the nest to lay the eggs?
I decided to swing by the front of campus, hoping to perhaps get another look at the Loggerhead Shrike I’d seen on Wednesday. Amazingly, there was one sitting in the very first pine tree I came to! It refused to give me a good profile view, but I’m quite certain that it was the same kind of bird I saw last time, and it definitely matches the pictures I saw of Loggerhead Shrikes while trying to identify it earlier. That also means that I was dyslexically colorblind. Loggerhead Shrikes have a grey head and white belly. :-)
The final sighting of the morning was a group of what looked like European Starlings. But their wings were very brown instead of the black I’ve been used to seeing. Everything else about them still looked like Starlings though. Were they Starlings or something else?
Yesterday, I needed to go to the Post Office to mail a monstrous stack of letters. I decided to walk instead of drive, hoping to see something interesting on the way. There were plenty of Mockingbirds, a few Robins, and several groups of Common Grackles. But the real treats were on the way back.
While waiting to cross an intersection, I got a good look at a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher that was sitting on a power line. I’d already seen two earlier this morning on my way to class, but now I had time to stare. I’m still just as amazed by these crazy looking birds as the first time I saw one on my first morning birding excursion with Courtney. At first glance, their tail looks comically long, but they manage to be extremely graceful in flight.
Entirely satisfied with my results, I headed toward the library to finish up some research. But there was still one last surprise. A patch of white and black caught my eye in a pine tree near the front of campus. I saw a strikingly colored bird that I didn’t recognize at all. I made some quick mental notes before it flew away and hoped that I’d be able to identify it later. A number of searches on Whatbird didn’t turn up anything that made sense, so I gave my description to Courtney to see what she could come up with. Assuming my memory is dyslexically color-blind (was it a white head and grey belly or grey head and white belly?), we were able to identify it as a Loggerhead Shrike. From the description on eNature, these little guys are surprisingly brutal; they impale their prey on thorns or barbed wire! I’m looking forward to seeing more now that I know what to look for.
On Thursday, March 30th, I skipped my last class of the day and headed to the Dallas Ft. Worth airport with Bubbles. We were off to Alaska to see Igloo get married! What made it even more fun was that Igloo didn’t know we were coming. We met Abu, Aduma, Randy, Igloo’s family, Susanna’s friend Kara, and a very surprised Igloo at the airport in Anchorage. Then, we went to Igloo’s house where we stayed up way too late talking. It was great to be back together with that group of 41ers.
The next day we went out hiking around the area where Igloo used to live. Antares, one of Igloo’s friends from Anchorage came with us. At one area we found a particularly steep hill with deep snow, and Igloo and Antares decided to teach us about “Dive Rolls.” Dive Rolls were something they invented because they were too poor to go skiing. You basically throw yourself forward onto the slope in a sort of front flip/somersault and then as soon as your feet hit the ground you spring them back out again. This results in an incredibly stupid looking flopping movement down the hill. It looked so dumb that the rest of us almost didn’t do it. But, after some discussion, we decided to anyway. It was incredibly fun!
After that, we picked up Sean (another one of Igloo’s Alaskan friends), traveled to a remote location, tromped through some snow around a creek bed, and shot guns. Before this, I’d only shot a .22 a few times, so it was something of an experience. I started with a .22 lever action, but also got to try out a 12-gauge shotgun and a .44 magnum revolver (which had some serious kick to it). We would have stayed longer, but it we were already going to be late for the wedding rehearsal.
The wedding was beautiful. I still can’t believe that Igloo is really married; just a year ago, I was rooming with him! Many congratulations to both him and Danae!
Abu and Randy were groomsmen, and Aduma, Bubbles an I played the part of fire-wielding ushers. Danae wanted each family that came in to have a lit candle to place on the steps to the stage, signifying their involvement in the wedding. I lit the candles, and Aduma and Bubbles showed people where to place them.
We did our best to decorate their getaway car. There were several enormous balloons (36 inch diameter!) that nobody seemed to know what to do with, so we stuffed them in the car. We also put smaller balloons, ribbons, and flower petals inside, and did some work with dry-erase markers.
Before long, the happy couple was off to go to their honeymoon, which Igloo said was going to be Quebec to hunt alligators and elephants. The pastor said he knew where they were really going, but wasn’t allowed to tell.
While we were driving back to the house with Igloo’s dad, he stopped alongside a mountain to let us look around, briefly. Of course, we couldn’t leave it at that, and climbed all the way up to where an avalanche had come through. Great view.
He also drove us part of the way up Mt. Baldy and said we had a few minutes to look around there as well. Just like before, we took a lot longer than we were supposed to, but it was well worth it. We followed a trail up to a radio tower with an impressive view. Instead of following the trail back down, we noticed there was a rather steep incline that lead almost straight back down to the car. Why walk when you can slide?
Sunday was our last day there, and we were really hoping to be able to climb a mountain. But, after we’d been to church and eaten an amazing meal at the house of one of Igloo’s relatives, there just wasn’t enough time to fit it in. But, we still wanted to climb something, so Antares and Peter took us to a butte close to where we we had eaten. They started to lead us up the trail, but it was really flat and easy, so Bubbles had the great idea of just going straight up to the top instead of following any trail. That made the journey significantly more interesting. There were a number of reasonably dangerous places where slipping could have had bad consequences. Climbing up slippery snow, or trying to hold onto rocks with moss on them while your fingers are numb is difficult. I’m definitely glad we went that way though; it was great!
After the obligatory summit photos, we started back down. We didn’t go the way we came, but we didn’t follow the trail on the way down either. Instead we ended up in someone’s pasture for a while, climbed through barbed-wire fences, went through some woods, and then got back on the trail.
Awesome day.
Awesome trip.
Hi there. My name is Curtis Hawthorne, but most of my friends call me Fjord.