I did something nice for myself and bought a beautiful new bird feeder to hang outside my home office window and it's so nice! I can watch the little feathered lizards fight with each other and scatter seed all over my once beautiful porch! The chickadees look like caped villains. It makes me very happy. 

It's funny how bossy and bratty they are with each other, even (especially!) birds of the same species who are almost certainly family groups. My crows are exceptionally polite with each other and seem to have a very deliberate hierarchy even about who gets particularly special treats like chicken and who should just limit themselves to peanuts. When I give them eggs, the one who knows how to crack them works on it while the others patiently wait, and then they all take turns dipping into it. 

Well, after another week of working nights and barely getting to exercise, the last release is almost out the door. I have some kind of horrible scheduled fun with my team tomorrow, and then I'm planning to do a lot of blowing off of work until it's time to be done for the year. 

I need to clean the pumpkins off the porch, sweep up the leaves, and get the last of my Christmas stuff up and looking okay. I was also thinking of going to TJ Maxx to buy my team socks for our holiday thing tomorrow. However - on my second straight week of working into the 11pm hours with no help or support from my teammates who signed off at 4 - maybe I am less inclined to play Santa Claus. I'm also wondering how festive we will all be feeling since our holiday gettogether will be right after our retro for what was arguably the worst release I've ever been a part of where half my team just literally hadn't done their work until the day off. Fun and festive!

My release 2.0 went out this afternoon, and my PM told me to "sign off and literally go have a drink" so I got about three dusky miles of running in the graveyard, with the moon rising overhead in a very pretty way. It'll be full in Gemini on Saturday. The sky got bright and pink and backlit a gorgeous sparrow hawk as the sun was setting. She was perched on one of the dead dogwoods, but when she saw me so close and looking at her, she flew off into the pines. My crows are usually long past in their roost this late in the evening, but one single crow came down right almost on top of me in the darkness and scared me so bad that I yelped out loud.