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Most likely because I am a bit congested, my voice recognition software thought that when I said March 2 I had really said parsec. I corrected it, and I thought, that would be a cool way to start a letter. Sort of like “Captain's log 64,000,000,000 parsecs northwest of earth.” Another missed opportunity!

It got cold again this week, and is even colder this weekend. A few days ago they were predicting today would be our coldest day yet this winter (5° C.; 41°F), but now they are predicting 8° C. (46°F), which is actually much better. Also, you can see it hasn't really gotten very cold yet this winter in Alabama. We were also supposed to get snow flurries, but if we did I didn't see them.

We finally got a new birdfeeder, because the old one leaked. So I had birdseed I had been waiting to put out for a least a year I think. I put it out and for a long time I hardly saw any birds (only house finches). I started to imagine that the birdseed was spoiled and that every bird that ate some died. That would explain why it wasn't getting used up very fast and why I didn't see very many birds around. Perhaps I was depopulating the neighborhood, I thought. I'm still not sure, but right now there's a house finch at the feeder and a cardinal on the ground below it, for what that's worth. And it's been two weeks, and the house finches are still eating the birdseed. If it was lethal, like Mick Ronson said music was, you would think even house finches were smart enough to stop eating it. So this has been my excitement for the week.

Our contractor could not work at his usual weekday job for two days, so they came out here and worked on our porch roof. Maybe that's why they're not here today, when I normally expect them. In any case, they are ahead of the schedule that we had discussed. This is good, because when they get to 90% completion the bank will send us the rest of the money. We need that money to pay for the last part of the work. As spouse put it, now it is starting to look like a real porch.

I went to one of spouse's schools for read across America, and read to about 75 students (in four groups); I was there most of the morning. I read some Dr. Seuss stories and some scary stories (fantasy & horror, then). They seemed to like both kinds, and some kids laughed out loud during the Dr. Seuss stories. It's the school where spouse works in the afternoon and she said many of her students told her about my visit. The librarian and one of the teachers told her that it went very well, although perhaps they would have said that no matter what happened. Short of hospitalization or fire of course. Some of the scary stories I read weren't really scary. Perhaps people were more easily scared and more naïve 50 years ago. I know they are more used to bloodshed in literature nowadays.