Yesterday I decided (rather quickly) that I would drive up to Colorado to see  my mother and brother today. Last February, my younger brother had a rather complicated surgery, and then developed pneumonia at the hospital. Both my sister and I went out to be with him.

Luckily, he  had a wonderful recovery, so I was able to go visit him some time in early spring (April?) This time, my mother’s fiancé is in the hospital. She relies on him for almost everything, as she does not drive. I am going up to see if I can talk her into getting someone to help her around the house, who can drive her to her bridge clubs, shopping, etc.

Anyway, I am going up for a week, or maybe a little longer. My husband has set my laptop up so that I can get on the internet… with a T-Mobile “stick”>>> which is great, since my mother found that she was no longer using the internet, so she had it disconnected. Yikes! What’s a person to do without the internet?!? (I think my husband thought I would have “withdrawal” symptoms!) Since I will probably have a lot of time during the next week that will be dedicated to waiting, I shouldn’t have a problem keeping up with you all.

I remember way back in time, before I started using the internet, when I couldn’t wait to get up to the hotel room so that I could get organized and settled in for the night. Not so now! I think my husband might have been right about me having trouble with internet withdrawal symptoms>>> I couldn’t wait to get up to my room at the hotel so that I could turn on my computer… Forget hanging up my clothes or getting my toiletries organized. Get me my T-Mobile connection fast!

Warning: This entry has absolutely nothing to do with Mystery Books, Cozy or Non Cozy!

For the last few weeks, I have noticed the crowds around my bird feeder getting smaller and smaller. I thought that unfortunate incident with the Cooper Hawk might have had something to do with the diminishing traffic, but it has been at least a month since he/she used my yard as his/her private hunting ground.

I have mentioned that since Sprite (our beloved dog) is no longer with us, I moved my computer desk out to the kitchen. >>> Actually, I had my husband and son move my desk… but there’s really no reason to be that technical about it! I felt that as long as we have large windows in the kitchen, I wanted to be able to enjoy sitting by one of them – so that I could watch the birds at the feeders in our back yard.

Unfortunately, the Northern Cardinals, Northern Mockingbirds, and Carolina Chickadees don’t frequent our feeders very often, but we do have a whole lot of House Sparrows. But as I said, they seemed to have stopped congregating around the feeders a few weeks ago.

However, two days ago I found out why! I looked outside at the feeders and saw dozens of Sparrows out there. They were engaging in their usual activities, pecking at each other to get the best places at the feeders, spending a lot of time making sure no other Sparrows encroached on their “territory” (wasting time not feeding while doing their guarding!), and dropping a lot of seeds on the ground.

Last weekend I mowed the ground in order to mulch the acorns and leaves. >>> Actually, I had my husband mow… but again, there is no reason to be that technical about it! (The reason I mention this it to make sure you don’t think we had super long, over-grown grass.) Getting back to two days ago – I thought I saw movement in the grass, like the grass was sort of hopping and bopping. I got my trusty binoculars out (YIKES!!! I think bird watching with binoculars is the first sign of “old age”!!!) and there, amongst the short grass blades were the most adorable, little, itty, bitty Sparrows I have ever seen. They are so tiny you can barely see them, until they hippity-hop-bop while vying for the best location to get the bird feeder’s falling seeds.

It has been years since I took Biology, but for some reason I thought of Spring as the “official” newborn season. Of course, even though we are still technically in winter, our weather is so spring-like, it borders on being almost insanely summer-like. Either way, I am going to enjoy these little fellows… They grow up so fast…

The Cozy Mystery blog got a comment from Margaret that so interested me, I just knew I “had” to post it as an entry. Something rather similar happened to me years and years ago, when I asked my library branch librarian about a mystery reading group. Her answer dissuaded me from even looking into the one that our branch already had!

Margaret’s comment is as follows:

“Just curious if anyone had a similar issue. This is way off topic but, because of your great website and all the new authors and series I have discovered, I am so anxious to start a Cozy Mystery Book Club. I thought about how great this would be for my Library, get more people in and not everyone can afford to buy their books. I really don’t use my Library because I prefer to buy my books, this might make me use my Library more. Well, I approached the Central Branch of my County Library (a County of 146k people and a City of 66k) and was told “well we already have three book clubs”. The three clubs are historical, non-fiction and fiction. They wouldn’t even let me explain what I wanted, they refused to even listen. I would handle it all myself, just looking for space and a little advertising on the website to annouce the club. I am not sure what the problem is. Cozy Mysteries are such a large portion of Mysteries and Mysteries in general are so popular. I am a member of Sisters in Crime and my local chapter, and see the interest in Mysteries. I can not believe all Libraries are all so “clique-ish”. It seems if it is not intellectual enough they don’t want to recognize it. Very frustrating, I thought any reading was better than no reading. I thought Libraries wanted to promote any type of reading. Sorry for the rant, just curious to see if others have any Mystery Book Clubs at their Libraries.”

In my case, the librarian told me that the group comprised of a very few “old” people. She said that the turn out was so bad, that sometimes they didn’t even have enough to have a meeting. I know I should have gone ahead and tried it,  but at the time I already was a member of two thriving online mystery reading groups, so I decided to pass.

What about you all?

This will be my last entry for 2011, and I absolutely cannot believe the year is over!

I just want to take a minute to wish you all a Happy, Healthy, and Safe 2012!