Another Week: Number 86

The construction noise from Mitchell School on my corner seems to be picking up as the new school year approaches. There’s more activity out front. It starts in the five o’clock hour before sunrise, and it now includes Saturdays. I try to keep in mind that these are plenty of good-paying jobs improving our infrastructure and enhancing an educational facility for our local young people.

I tested out my voting abilities at Mitchell School on Tuesday morning in Wisconsin’s partisan primary and it seemed to go pretty well. One thing I don’t understand is how signing a digital screen with my fingertip can possibly be compared against my hand-penned signature on file. You have to figure some legislator had an in-law in the signature pad business.

I’m not sure what the deal is with my local hummingbird(s). I see a bird occasionally, but not on the almost hourly basis of previous years. Construction noise could be a factor — but so could all the other bird traffic at that utility pole, which also holds my Nyjer/sunflower feeder. The finches and sparrows and chickadees and cardinals and mourning doves have been flocking to that feeder and draining it, so I bought a shepherd’s hook and on Wednesday, I moved the hummingbird feeder to my living room window where the hummers might have more peace.

Minutes after hanging the saucer on the new hook, a female was already checking it out — but since then, visits have still been sporadic. I’m not sure what’s going on, but they know where the sugar water is if they need to gas up for their post-Labor Day flights back to Central America.

Also on Wednesday, I cut some more brush in my backyard and took another carload to the dump.

I watched the US women’s basketball team win their thrilling gold medal game against France. I tuned in to see the Indiana Fever beat the Phoenix Mercury as the WNBA season resumed, and watched the Chicago Bears win their pre-season game against the Bengals.

I walked 3.58 miles this week.