Today was the day for my annual performance review. It is always a little worrisome when the boss asks you to find a private room somewhere in the community where the two of you can discuss it in private.

Our regular rooms were unavailable. I suggested we just meet over a tailgate in the desert, but he vetoed that idea.

Afraid I might get upset and leave him out there in a ditch somewhere?

Ended up in the Scout room in our town's library building. Wife still has a key, although she hasn't had a meeting there in probably five years. And then lunch across the street at our famous Mexican restaurant.

The waitress asked if we knew where to find owls in town.

Really.

Yeah, I know exactly where to find owls. Gave her directions to their nest. Surprised no where had told her by now. Another gal, with her little baby, joined in the conversation, excited about the two owlets she had seen earlier that morning.

And mentioned the cattle egret still being in town.

So, after lunch, we made a quick pass past the owls. Only two owlets to be seen. We parked directly below them. They're close to fledging.

Then we had to patrol town looking for the cattle egret. Seems my boss has never seen one.

Really.

I found that hard to believe, too.

Found the egret back by the school. But not in the yard. Perched on the waist-high chain link fence around the yard.

Next to the street. As in, less than 2 meters from my window. Let us park and ogle him for several minutes before he hopped down onto the grass to hunt and eat.

The gal from the restaurant with the baby came by, too. Looking for the egret.

If I'd have known this was going to be such a hit, I would have taken the boss out to look at owlets and egrets before we discussed my work appraisal.

Evening was spent at the annual spring cleaning of our youth group's sponsor's century-old lodge building. Not much to actually clean on the outside, so we (I) opted to dig the trash and debris out of the grate covered window wells.

These are large enough to put a person or two in, and lined with the century-old rock walls. After jumping in and raking leaves and trash out, we came to realize this chore had not been done in some time. Found a school report for a kid that one of the leaders knows. From when he was 7 years old.

He just finished his Junior year in high school.

A lot of the organic debris was composting nicely, creating a good layer of soil on top of layers of plastic bags and styrofoam cups. The tops of the glass windows were barely visible in a couple wells. Imagine our surprise when we discovered those were double windows, with a full-sized second pane buried below the first.

Joked that we might find Big Nose George if we kept digging deeper.

Needless to say, it was an immediate shower when we got home.

Was taking advantage of Andrew's latest Diaryland benefit, trying to download a copy of this journal, when the wife came in. And saw my gender test results in this entry. And she naturally wanted to try the quiz herself.

Okay, she's predictably female. Eighty-some percent. But near the androgenous part of the spectrum.

Then she went on to try the Sex Test.

Now we have been fairly open with each, I thought. But a few of her answers were surprising. Especially her answer to the question "15. How many people have you had sex with?"

You see, her answer was one more than I knew about.

Delay of game. With a fair amount of whining and wheedling, I got the essentials. He was what she calls a 'mistake', someone to forget. Well before we were engaged.

I will not go into details, of course. I can't say nothing like that ever happened to me. (Although it hasn't.)

But I also can't say I hadn't fantasized about that sort of thing happening to her.

'Cause I have.

Quite an enlightening little survey.