Apparently the crow who hangs out in the tree outside my window has a lot of friends. They were having a little crow party in the tree this morning...must have been two dozen of them, all caw-ing their little feathered butts off at 7:00am. I love animals and all, but, good lord. Two dozen crows can make a hella racket when they set their minds to it.

As a result, I stopped trying to sleep in, got up, and made some coffee. Naturally, the second I started drinking my first cup, they all flew off, laughing at me. Oh well. If prior experience tells me anything, that same group of loud-mouthed birds will be doing the same thing every morning for the rest of the spring/summer. So much for trying to get some extra sleep during my weeks off.

On the other hand, getting up early is not a bad thing. I do have about a thousand things on my TODO list, many of which have to be done during regular business hours. Today I get to go to the bank to order new cheques, call the movers about a moving date and final estimate, call the cable-modem people about getting service set up at my Montreal apt, go to the FIDO store to get an earpiece (blood/brain barrier and all that) and arrange for a Montreal-local phone number, call Quebec Hydro about ensuring I have electricity when I move, pay my current cell/power bills, and go find some nice person who can tell me if I can actually purchase appliances without ruining my life for the next 6 months.

Fun fun fun.

I should also really start gathering boxes so I can start packing.

In other news, I've decided that I'm actually happy I purchased a digital camera. For a while there I was thinking "good god, how could I have spent that much money on such a silly toy". But the digicam + the gimp is allowing me to play with photography again without having to spend a zillion dollars on photofinishing. I must have taken over 100 photos yesterday, which would have cost about $100 for processing. Overall, the camera has pretty much paid for itself in terms of processing costs already. And, since the only place I really display photos is on the web, I don't need to worry about resolutions and all that (although I do always take high-res shots in case I decide to print/frame something eventually). I've got to get a cd writer so I can start archiving some of these...my harddrive hates me at the moment.

Once upon a time I wanted to be a professional photographer. On the other hand, once upon a time I also wanted to be a geologist, an architect, an archaeologist, an ancient-history scholar, a linguist, a social theorist, a visual artist, a poet, and a novelist. I've stopped trying to actually plan my life, and tend to pretty much go with the flow these days. I've found that if I make plans, they never work out, so instead of subjecting myself to inevitable disappointment, I've succumbed to the Tao and just take things as they are.

Be the river. It's much less stressful.