Happy birthday, hobbitblue!

And many happy returns. :-)

I woke up to Nicholas standing in the window and hissing angrily, whihc turned out to be because an adult fox was passing by outside! He or she looked to be in pretty good shape (beautiful coat and tail) but in a good deal of a hurry. Since it's clod and sleeting outside, I can understand that. As I watched the fox trot quickly down out hillside and across the stream, I hope it was headed to a nice warm den somewhere.

beautiful!

The sleet has changed to heavy snow. It's lovely!

a date!

So, I chatted with the lady in question and arranged a date for Tuesday evening. No idea how this will go, especially as I feel terribly clumsy and awkward about what sorts of things to say and when, but she sounded glad I called and happy to make a date, so still positive overall.

I think one of the things that I do worst at in dating is chat. I'm not good at compliments--I get the impression I make too many of them. And I think maybe I sound too eager and hopeful. *sigh* This is all so difficult.

Another thing I suck at is compartmentalizing. I feel as if I should be able to take all the "I met this person and she's really cool and she seems to like me" stuff and store it in a drawer and go do other things. But instead I keep thinking about the person, recalling conversation to glean facts, wondering about her and what she's like, and so on. *more sigh*

In other news, C&M and I went out to the bookstore (for cards) and the hardware store (for a new snow shovel and birdseed). The birds are very happy about the birdseed! The juncos, doves, cardinals, a chickadee or two, and and a nuthatch have been bustling around eating away. Forty pounds of seed should last for a while! :-) It was funny: all the seed is kept on shelves in the outside yard of the store, and when I went back there to look, a huge flock of all sorts of birds rose out of the shelves and flew off.

OK, off for tea and a little telly before doing some chores.