Nine months along!

No, we are not expecting, but when we arrived home last week we found a bundle of 'joys' on our doorstep, shaky health, flaky finances, quaky car and broken blog. I am happy to say we are in the process of finding homes for all those problems.

John is getting over his cold. I have gotten inhalers for asthma. It seems to flare up rarely, maybe all the stress? The id theft was minor and months ago, so hopefully that will just go away with vigilance now that we have reported it.

The dealership just called to say the new transmission seems to have fixed the problem with my Rav4. The car would balk going in reverse up hill, not a good trait to have on a narrow mountain road with an ominous puddle ahead. At first, the mechanics swore there was nothing wrong with the transmission because no lights were lit up on their testing machines. They convinced us to replace the engine mounts, the clunking was still there. Now the clunk is gone. We just hadn't thrown enough money at the problem.

Last night, my email from Google said that a human had decided I wasn't SPAM. Nice to know. I am back in the blogosphere! Some of my recent posts will be out of order while I catch up.

Why the title? Our friend, Roy Poucher, did a big year in 1998 and came in fourth. Yes, that was the year Sandy Komito set the record. Roy blew out some car engines, his business suffered, he ate LOTS of meager meals, he went to some wonderful places and met wonderful people. Along the way, he met a girl who would join him at various hotspots and rare bird sightings. That made the grueling process a lot less grueling. Now that we are in the midst of a big year, we really admire Roy for hanging in there.

At the beginning of John's big year, Roy warned him that September (THE NINTH MONTH) is the month many big year pursuers drop out. John has been looking up some of the fairly common birds he has yet to get, kind of discouraging. It is tough to warrant traveling to a spot for one bird that you will see only if you are really lucky and the bird is still there. John does have some pelagics scheduled and a trip to Louisiana with Dan Lane of Wings. Maybe the coming winter will be more normal and drive out some of the birds we missed because of the mild winter that started the year. Maybe rarities will show up where ever we go. Maybe I will try to go along on most of the rest of John's search parties. I can help him see and hear, make sure he eats three meals a day, and that we have somewhere to sleep each night. Maybe we will keep plugging away until the end of the year.