Thursday thoughts

1) Birds and other critters -- We have had a number of pileated sightings, including another sighting of three at once. One of them has become a regular at the bird feeder. Maybe once the weather warms up a bit more and the bugs are out, he will stay away. They are not particularly rare birds, but they are shy so we are lucky to see them so much.

On the way back from Reedsburg, I think I saw a couple of bufflehead ducks the other day. There have been lots of cranes around, too, and the red-tailed hawks are certainly surveying the areas around here.

I have yet to see a live deer, but I have noticed three dead alongside the roads. And a huge raccoon a couple of days ago.

2) Politics -- "All politics is local." Well, locally our friend Debbie Kinder was re-elected aldersperson in Wisconsin Dells. Although our mailing address is the Dells, we actually live in the Town of Delton (NOT the Village of Lake Delton, mind you), so we didn't get to vote for her. She won by only eight votes -- 69 to 61. As you can tell, this election really brought out the voters.

Our friend Tom Baker up on Christmas Mountain was elected to the Town Board for the Town of Delonna. Barb says she's not sure he's happy about it, but it will give him something else to do for a while.

The hot state contest was a supreme court election, and the advertisements on both sides were amazingly nasty. A local woman wrote to the Baraboo paper that she was so offended by the tone of the campaign that she exercised her right to write in Judge Judy. I wish I had thought of it myself.

3) Employment -- I began work yesterday at the bookstore. Orientation, really. It seems a pleasant enough place. Today I went in to the law office to do Evelyn's billing and a few odds and ends for Joe. They asked me to cover a couple of days later in the month when Joe will be in court and Evelyn will be out of town. Since I don't know my bookstore schedule yet -- one of the joys of working hourly like this is that your schedule constantly shifts from day to day and week to week -- I told them either Tom or I would do it. Fortunately he is available those days, which is a surprise given how busy his schedule is for a retired dude. Tomorrow I will put in four hours at the bookstore and a couple after that at the library.

And that's the news here in the vicinity of Lake Deltonbegon.