May 4, 2026

Where: around my complex

When: 1:00 pm

Bird Species: American robin, house sparrow, downy woodpecker, white-breasted nuthatch, blue jay, American crow, pileated woodpecker, northern cardinal

Things I Thought About:

• I think my strongest emotional connection to Star Wars these days is Mitch and Nick on Doughboys saying, "One quarter portion;" that makes me laugh every time.
• Finally, a day when people can talk about Star Wars on the internet.
• I personally left The Rise of Skywalker perfectly happy with how it all turned out. Once one reads the opening crawl and decided to say "Okay, I guess??" it's a satisfying movie. Whatever other problems there are, Rey and Kylo's relationship is not one of them. I liked all of that just fine.
• I thought The Last Jedi was fine. It was fun to see Han again. I didn't see two of the three prequels. Return of the Jedi is my favorite Star Wars movie.
• I think maybe I don't care too much about Star Wars.
• Although I did have the Bespin World playset as a kid, where you send Han down in his white shirt and he comes back up in carbonite, and I cared about that toy a lot.
• You spend all of your lunch break chasing a pileated woodpecker all around in the woods behind your buildings, but then you get a shot like this and it's all worth it.

• Two years ago, I ran the second 5K of my life on May the fourth, absolutely on the verge of collapse, surrounded by people in Yoda ears and full Darth Maul masks. The force of gravity was very strong that day, anyway.
• I don't think I could run a 5K at gunpoint now. What I mostly remember from that race is that I was slower than the first time I ever ran a 5K, and that there were a bunch of barn swallows flying around under the bridge and I kind of still wish I had stopped for a while.
• I can take a comp hour at the end of the day to go to the lake and walk around in the beautiful sunny air, but I think I will take the comp hour to just sit on my patio and finish my book.
• Out of nowhere, this author dropped the sentence, It was, in the end and once again, so bloody difficult to be alive. Which was a hell of a thing to read at 7 am. Really sets your day up for success.
• I guess I hate pileated woodpeckers now? Update your spreadsheets accordingly. I almost had him, but a squirrel started chittering at me and he flew away through the chain link again. Squirrels are fucking cops.

BOTD: the blue jay. I have nothing pithy to say here, I just thought that was really nice shot of a blue jay, and a really nice blue jay to see.

The birds in this complex hang out in the ravine, where there is a massive amount of shade cover (part of why it was so hard to focus on the woodpecker) but this giant tree trunk with a smooth, peeling end was lying in patch of very bright sunlight. First a white-breasted nuthatch landed on it, for just a second, and then the blue jay came in and startled it away. He looked genuinely like he was in a white spotlight, like he had landed on stage at a tech rehearsal before they had finished adding the gels. He stopped, did a little soft shoe, took a bow, and left.