On Monday, I returned to school after having been away for several weeks. Winter break isn't all that long, but it seemed long to me because I didn't go anywhere this time. I usually travel somewhere during the breaks. Nowadays, I am concerned about saving money for retirement, and besides, I didn't want to have to adjust time zones, so I decided not to go on vacation over the winter break. Over the break, my father and I went exploring the neighborhood.

For quite a while, perhaps several years, a local place, which is called a farm (but has other things, for recreation, like a swimming pool and a golf course), had been under renovation. Sometime in 2009, the changes were done and it was reopened to the public. It was the first time I had seen the place since before it had closed for the renovating. In fact, I hadn't been there for many years, so it was like going there for the first time, practically.

It turned out that two bocce ball courts and a volleyball court had been built. There was also a trail, leading to a place that actually was like a farm (there were farm animals, like goats, cows, and I believe I saw a pony). There was a swimming pool, but it was closed because it was wintertime. It was nice to see the creek with water in it...It's depressing in the summer since the creek tends to be dried out. One of the parks near my house doesn't have water in the ponds either. My dad says that the people of my town dried it out on purpose to try and drive the birds away.

Speaking of birds, the place where I live is really infested with them. My house has birds, which is nice (though some of them look just like the finches I saw at the petshop...). But the park has many Canadian geese, which should not be; the geese already ought to have migrated by now. There's also seagulls and a few crows. My school also has this problem, especially after it rains. I like the birds, except for one time when a seagull pooped on my math homework.

When my mom's friend's family came over to our house, on New Year's Day, the TV was turned on and I started flipping channels. (There seemed to be several Educational Programming channels...Hmm.) Eventually I reached a channel where exceptional moments in music were being played, and so my mom's friend's daughter said we might as well stop there. Some singer (I forgot her name, unfortunately) was singing when a bird flew by and pooped diagonally onto her mouth! It was disgusting. But that bird had good aim.

I was pretty freaked out because I saw a dead bird today. It was pretty well squashed, something disgusting on it as well as blood... It seems like another bad sign. But it could just be my imagination. There is a lot of roadkill nowadays.

Birds aren't the only animals all over the place, though. There are also plenty of squirrels. I have some in my backyard. My mom pointed one out to me, so I ran over to the window to see. It began digging up the grass and apparently found something to eat - perhaps a nut? Then it started eating, before holding it in its mouth and climbing up the tree. The squirrel looked pretty fat. It was a greyish one (maybe that's because of the winter, it could have actually been a squirrel with brown fur). I had seen a black squirrel earlier which was quite a bit skinnier than that one. It didn't find anything to eat in my backyard. I guess the early bird - or squirrel - doesn't always get the worm (nut).

That nut looked kind of like an acorn. Was that from my yard? Or a neighbor's place? Or somewhere far away, like near my school? There are plenty of acorns there. I've always thought acorns were cool nuts. I would like to make some acorn mush, or acorn pancakes, but I'm not sure how. And what would it taste like, anyways? D:

Labels: 2010, acorn, birds, blackberry farm, bocceball, break, creek, death, explore, food, neighborhood, nuts, poop, roadkill, seagull, singer, squirrels, television, water, winter

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