Weekender #24

• Weekly birb update: unfortunately, Handsome myna birb hurt his foot on Monday. I have no idea what caused this injury. Myna’s do a lot of their daily activity by foot, so this is bad news. He’s been hopping around on one foot and flying short distances when he can’t run to something that’s further away. I’ve been trying to keep an eye on it by using my long lens camera and taking daily photos. It’s hard to tell if it’s getting better or not, but he still can’t stand on it as of Sunday.

• In happier news, here are some great birb photos from the Audubon Photography Awards. I really enjoy reading the stories that accompany the photos each year.

• It’s almost the middle of July and the summer is disappearing much too quickly. Audra spent the weekend cleaning the house and did quite an amazing job of it. We both have an incredible amount of paperwork to sort through and most of it probably needs to go into the shredder.

• Now that things are opening back up, Audra and I went to our first movie in over a year and half. Marvel’s Black Widow was finally released, and as we usually do, we go to the showing the day before premier day (usually a Thursday night showing). I didn’t have any expectations for Black Widow as we’ve known about it for at least two years and it’s been delayed over and over. Like most of the MCU movies, it was entertaining and a good watch. If you’re a fan of the MCU, it’s worth it to see. If this is Scarlett Johansson’s swan song as the Black Widow, it was a great send off compared to her actual fate, and I’m glad that Marvel finally produced this movie. It’s a shame that they allowed movies like Red Sparrow and Atomic Blonde steal their story line.

• This week, I enjoyed listening to Richard Marx - Stories to Tell: Greatest Hits and More, which seems to be a collection of hits that have been re-recorded. Some of the tunes are just as good as the originals and some have been re-arranged. There are times when artists re-record their music and the result is worse for it. That’s not the case with the 2021 re-recordings. The best part of this collection are the demos of Should’ve Known Better and Endless Summer Nights, which sound like they were recovered from a cassette tape. Listen: Apple Music