Gypsy Heritage, Itchy Feet

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20 July 2008 Starting up my own blog - check it out here. I figured it would be easier to update, plus folks can respond! 6 June 2008 It's all about the drama in my back yard this week. Yesterday the little sparrows that had nested in our birdhouse tried valiantly to get the baby to leave the nest. (Usually there are three or four babies per batch, but there seems to be only one this time.) Mom and dad spent a lot of time hanging out on the fence, calling to the baby to entice him out. Facebook friends can see cool photos I took of the whole process. We usually get three families of babies per summer in that birdhouse. It's exciting to watch the whole cycle - from the building of the nest, to the first soft cheep-cheeps, to the final day of liberation. Watching the little ones learn to fly and eat is pretty neat, too. At right is a picture of mom and dad trying to lure the baby out. 31 May 2008 An interesting little drama played itself out in my back yard this morning. I was working on building a pot of coffee when a flash of black and white caught my eye. A large magpie had come and landed on one of the lawn chairs. I was tickled to see one so close (yes, this Nature Girl even loves magpies) and was watching him with interest when I noticed the excited distress calls of fourteen little sparrows coming from the willow. They fluttered from branch to branch, chirping their little warnings, but the magpie remained supremely indifferent to them. He hopped around and picked at the bugs in my flower beds before flying away. After he was gone the noise gradually died down and now peace reigns in my back yard again. 10 May 2008 I have been working on our New Dawn Manuals website and am pretty tickled with the way it turned out. Have a look at it here! NDM is now offering new services, as mentioned in my previous post. This part of the business will be called Bright Dawn Information Services (I'm so clever, yet modest) and I'll be working on its website starting tonight. BDIS already has three clients! We're pretty pumped. 23 April 2008 Life is all about change and growth, right? Right. The bad news is that things kind of blew up at my place of employment. I wound up leaving it very suddenly, with much animosity between me and my former friend and supervisor. The GREAT news is that our own business has grown enough to keep me busy and Tom is training me in doing manuals. This will give me lots more time to play around with other things - AND - New Dawn Manuals will soon be offering new services, such as web design and virtual assistance. Watch for it. In other news, my dear daughter Holly (featured a couple posts down) has just gotten on with an airline company; which means Tom and I will be able to fly almost anywhere on parent rates! This is perfect for someone who wants to travel and then write about it. I'm so excited - trying to decide where to go first. Tom and I are planning a trip to Scotland in August, but I will really have to try out this new service long before then... 21 March 2008 I have decided I want to be a vagabond. My latest National Geographic Traveler magazine has an article about Rolf Potts, an itinerant vagabond. In the interview, Potts says, "Vagabonding is about long-term travel. It's about taking time off to travel deliberately. It's more than just a vacation, where you're escaping from a place. It's a time when people chase their travel dreams, those dream trips they thought they couldn't do. It can be for two years or it can be for six weeks. It's all very personal." Watch Nat Geo's interview with Rolf Potts here. 10 March 2008 Permit me to brag a little bit. My daughter Holly started up an online forum for Canadian runners called Runningmania.com. She's a runner and found that other forums she was frequenting would often limit the topics and products members could discuss, due to sponsorship obligations. Disgusted, she decided to strike out on her own. When she first set up the forum, it was on her own personal website and she enlisted family and friends to make it look like she had members. I am the proud holder of membership No. 3. (I should have been No. 2, but one of her friends got in just ahead of me!) Now, a couple of years later, she has over 800 members and has formed a tightly-knit community of runners from all over Canada and the world. Newcomers are warmly welcomed and daily discussions run the gamut from what kinds of shoes are best, to non-running-related topics such as recipes and local meet-and-greets. A lot of hilarity and camaraderie are evident in every thread. Well, imagine my amazement and pride when I learned that Holly was being featured in the Premiere Issue of Canada's very first running magazine, Canadian Running! It features photos of many of her "Maniacs" in their trademark orange T-shirts and a picture of Holly herself, though the latter does not identify her(!). Canadian Running magazine can be viewed here. 17 February 2008 I have finally figured out what I want to do with this website and it really isn't much different than it was before, when I was a proud mom, showcasing my offspring's pictures and accomplishments. Since I love to travel and then write about it, this will become somewhat of a travel blog. Eventually, my hope is to help make the world a smaller place and to show folks, especially women, that anyone can have adventures. Even you. So, this little site is once again under construction and, as long as I keep travelling, it will be for a long, long time. Upcoming trips: Orange County, CA, March 2008 Scotland, August 2008 Site created by Dawn-Ann (Kirkpatrick) Turner, © 2002 - 2013