Wednesday September 27, 2006 5:20 am Lethbridge Sunrise 7:25 Sunset 19:20 Hours of daylight: 11:55

A. Morning Musings

6:10 am It is +7 C at the moment. The forecast is for a high of + 20 C.

From rear window	South patio
Both images taken at 8:40 am

I am feeling alert and energized this morning. The first task is to add a new chore to my list: building a bathroom vanity cabinet. The one in our spare bathroom is falling apart. It is made of particle board and it simply isn't strong enough. I should be able to keep the doors and drawers, but I need to buy some 3/4" plywood (likely with a birch veneer) and will then build a new cabinet using the same specifications as the current one.

My weight is down 1 to 189. Walking and reduced portion size is my mantra. Perhaps a little exercise should be added, but I don't want to become over zealous.

For my model trains, the next step will be to re-lay the ground cover sheets that I saved from my previous attempt at a layout. That should only take about an hour. I also need to do some background reading on how to design a realistic yard for assembling trains. The basic idea is to have a train arrive in the yard, then have a switching locomotive disassemble the train and reassemble to cars to form a new train, and finally have the mainline locomotive leave the yard with the new train.

B. Plan

Immediate
Health	Walk & exercise	1 hr
Chores	Build new bathroom vanity cabinet
Model Trains	Lay ground cover over layout tables	1 hr
Puzzles	The Orange Puzzle Cube: puzzle #9
Technology	add keywords to iPhoto records	1 hr
	Purchase MindMapper software for Mac
Birds	Add September birds to North American data base	1 hr
History	Continue reading "Citizens"	1 hr
Literature	Continue reading "The Custodian of Paradise" by Wayne Johnston	1 hr
Later
Chores	Investigate water softeners for home
Technology	Read manual for cell phone
	Make notes for chap. 4 of "Switching to the Mac"
	Begin reading "iPhoto"
	digital photography - learn about using the various manual settings
Literature	Read "The Art of Living" by Epictetus
	Read "The Song of Roland"
Mathematics	Larson "Calculus"
	Read "The Computational Beauty of Nature" Chap 3
	Gardner "The Colossal Book of Short Puzzles"
History	Watson "Ideas"
Model Trains	Build oil refinery diorama: add ground cover
	Assemble second oil platform kit

C. Actual/Notes

8:35 PM We had another gorgeous blue sky sunny day so we left early for the Crowsnest Pass to do a combination sight-seeing, bird watching and genealogy research. All three were successful. The bright sun on the golden yellow aspen was spectacular. I was able to identify a Merlin (at a cemetery), a Western Wood-Pewee (a new lifer), a Wilson's Warbler (boy was she active and fast!) and an American Kestrel. Getting a photo of the Wilson's Warbler involved a fair degree of luck and lots of tries. Here are a few images:

Merlin	Western Wood-Pewee
Wilson's Warbler	Hillcrest cemetery (Frank slide in background)
yellow	Foothills near Waterton

I cannot think of a better way to spend a day (particularly a Wednesday). It is also reassuring to see that there is a negative relationship between my early morning plans and what we ended up doing for the day.

D. Reflection