great backyard bird count

this sounded fun to me. I heard it mentioned I think on the martha stewart show. I am gonna count my birds next weekend.
http://www.audubon.org/gbbc/index.shtml

This does sound like fun, Steph. I don't know one bird from another, but I'll take a stab at counting them next weekend.

Thanks, it does look like fun. I graduated from Cornell, so it would be especially fun for me. I can tell most birds that come here, not all.

Polly, this is getting uncanny. I almost did my PhD at Cornell, but ended up getting married and staying in California instead.

Add that to our dysfunctional mothers, our friendship with Pirl, our Aunt Helens, and our inability to breathe anywhere near Clorox.

ha ha ha ha

Are you my smarter sister?

No PHD here, I got my MSW from Cornell.

Probably not smarter, and here's the proof: I ended up getting a doctorate in comparative theology at the Jesuit Seminary in Berkeley. I would bet anything that the MSW is a lot more useful than the DTh. I can't even take advantage of the "doctor" title to make reservations at restaurants because I'm afraid I'll be expected to save people who start choking.

Is there a Doctor in the house? Nope. Very funny.

My MSW got me nowhere but a low paying stressful job that I quit after 10 years. I worked as a Caseworker supervisor in Childrens Services. A horrible job, and God bless anyone that can stick with something like that. Then I took a job that only required a bachelors, and loved it for 27 years.

Did you ever teach in the theology field? Actually I guess I don't know what most theologians do, other than teaching and counseling.

Everyone in my program was a priest. It actually started out as a practical joke of sorts. The chairman of my department at S.F. State said I couldn't get tenure without a doctorate. After falling in love with the comparative literature doctoral program at Cornell, I didn't like any of the ones on this coast. U.C. Berkeley's was seriously inferior and Stanford wouldn't even let people into the doctoral program if they already had a master's from any other college. They liked to put out an unadulterated, 100%-Stanford product in those days. The chairman said the doctorate could be in anything at all, so I applied to the Jesuit Seminary and told them I was a woman and an atheist, and they were so intrigued by my nerve that they gave me a full scholarship.

You are just so interesting Zuzu.

Was UC Berkley the place to be when you were in college, or was that at another point? I can recall everyone in my school wanted to move to California and go there. And at least one did.

Yes and no. It depended on your world view, not to mention your fashion sense and feelings about personal hygiene. Can you tell I didn't go there? I went to S.F. State and Fordham.

I misunderstood. I thought when you said Berkeley, you meant UC Berkeley. I grew up in the hippie era, and that was the hippie place to be. One of them, anyway. I actually applied and got accepted there.

Yes, I did mean that going to UC Berkeley was a matter of ideology, fashion sense, and personal hygiene preferences. The Jesuit Seminary was in Berkeley, but it was part of BTU, the Berkeley Theological Union, which was only loosely connected to UC Berkeley.

I was 24 when the hippie era started and I had already gone through a Beatnik stage in the late 1950s, so the hippie thing was old hat to me.

I saw a lot of finches today.

Torrents of rain kept me inside all day, Steph, but I heard lots of birds. Does that count?

I had 6 different species of birds, a ton of squirrels and some rabbits today at the feeder.

wow I wish it would rain hard again. I really wanted my soil to leached of all the salts, from having to water all year. We had no rain last year.

I am hoping to see a hawk at least once this weekend