morgaina | Reading

It's not-quite-spring; therefore, my life is focused on dirt and its many problems. Weeds, grasses mostly, are on the eradication list. The wet winter, which I am already starting to miss, sprouted every. single. grass seed. Also, the dirt needs to be fed and, in some cases, fluffed. All tedious, but necessary, jobs.

Other than gardening, life centers on birding. Hard to explain the attraction to people who aren't into it. Birding gets me outside, hiking around, and taking photos of birds, some of which are nice and sharp.

Which leads me to my current great sadness. My beloved camera has issues. All the SLRs and the first DSLR had no problems, and they were all treated the same way I treat all of my gear, which means they got dropped, banged into things, and ignored for months on end. This one started draining batteries in hours. For a long pelagic birding trip, I usually take two batteries, the heir and a spare. Then, I took three, which wasn't that much of a surprise as the R5 is notorious for its power consumption. I drew the line at four, especially as the camera was noticeably warmer than it ought to have been. It's now somewhere in SoCal for repairs. Canon's support was very, very good. Between email and chat, they walked me through a lot of ways to check what's going on before it was clear the camera had to take a trip. While I await more information, I'm obsessively refreshing the update screen.

Currently reading: The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan The text is a little tedious, which is offset by her beautiful drawings.
Movie rec: Nuremberg on Netflix. Russel Crowe is fantastic as Goering.
Series rec: Tehran, a very gray espionage series about Mossad inside Tehran. AppleTV