This is Hob.  Already knicknamed "Hob-goblin" and "Hobbes."

We adopted her this afternoon.  Her right eye looks a little weird because it's watering.  She has herpes.  That's actually not unusual in a cat, especially a feral-adoption.  In most cats, it causes watering eyes and sneezing, etc.  Then it goes dormant, and is frequently never noticed again.  Hob (and her littermates) are unusual in that their symptoms are more likely to return.  This is especially true when under stress.  Being adopted is stressful, so she's showing symptoms.  She's also contagious, because of the sneezing.  (Humans and Dogs can't get Feline Herpes Virus.  The other cats are vaccinated against it.  She's isolated during introduction to the other cats, anyway.)

I suspect she'll be a handful.  She's as insistent, demanding, and vocal as Tabby (much pleasanter voice, though).  She's also athletic (she escaped to the top of a display rack during her adoption and is capable of deftly jumping to a person's shoulder).  Looks like Nicole has her lap cat.

Everything I do to the house is new to me.  I'm not a carpenter, a plumber, an electrician, etc.  I'm a home-owner.  One of these days, I hope to pick a first-instance of a task that isn't the most-difficult instance in the house.

The current project is the upstairs hall and stairs.  Current task within that overall project is the bathroom door at the top of the stairs.  The plan is to replace this door (and the other 2) with sold-core pine doors, stained to a reasonable approximation of the new flooring.  The previous hollow-core pine door was annoying because it wasn't hung plumb.  It always fell open, usually forcefully.  Turns out the door wasn't plumb for a reason.  The wall isn't plumb.

Petsmart in Okemos has a good-sized pond in front of it.  This morning, it was occupied by a few dozen Mallards, and Nicole saw a Great Blue Heron.  I couldn't see the heron, so I walked over to the edge of the pond.  Shortly after I saw the heron, a bird flew over the pond . . . and hovered.

It was a lot bigger than a hummingbird.  As it hung there, I recognized the characteristic long, thick, wedge-shaped beak and crest of a kingfisher.  In retrospect, I suspect it was a Belted Kingfisher, but I'm not certain.  This was only the 2nd kingfisher I've seen.  Anyway, this is good-sized bird -- like a foot long, or so.  Hovering.  After 10-15 seconds, it dropped straight down into the pond, beak first.  It came out almost immediately with a fish (something light-colored, anyway) in it's beak.  I lost it as it flew away.  Still, amazing to watch.

If you follow the link, there's a brief description of the Belted Kingfisher's hunting (fishing?) technique.  It's exactly what I saw.  There's also a recording of Belted Kingfisher sounds, which match what I heard.  For those reasons, not to mention that the size & general coloration match what I remember, I'm pretty sure we saw a Belted Kingfisher doing its thing.  And Nicole, who is not a bird-person, got to see it too.  It was cool.

Current audiobook is The Man Who Knew Infinity, a biography of S. Ramanujan.  Until his genius was recognized, Ramanujna was generally without a job.  When he finally found his first patron, he was asked what he wanted.  His answer was "leisure."

At this point, the author explains that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, "leisure" didn't mean "free time," "time to chill," or anything like that.  "Leisure" meant "freedom."  But not any kind of freedom; specifically, it meant freedom to pursue something.  What Ramanujan requested was a job, a stipend, a scholarship, something that would allow him to live while pursuing his mathematics.

I'm not sure this concept still exists.  At least, I doubt it exists in American English.  It seems to me that we have 3 types of time: Work, doing nothing, and hobbies.  Maybe it's just me, but I think Americans believe one should either be working (defined as something that earns pay) or resting from work (i.e., passively absorbing entertainment or sleeping).  We do have hobbies, but those aren't important.  They certainly don't rise to the level of a pursuit.