Old blog: http://www.lilitu.com/wordpress/
New blog: http://lilitu93.wordpress.com/

Not really hard to guess, I know. I, along with zillions of other people, got Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince today. I haven’t started reading it yet, but I am planning to later today.

I’d meant to reread the other five before I started this one, but I was distracted reading other books, especially the latest Kim Harrison and Sherrilyn Kenyon. I’ll probably do what I did with Order of the Phoneix–reread all of the older books after I finish the new one.

His family have set up a site at CaringBridge, and I’ve signed their guestbook. If you have any interest at all in electronic music, please visit this site and pay tribute to one of the great musical instrument inventors of the 20th Century.

I had my husband call my parents early in the morning their time, just so they’d find out we were OK before they saw the news. They were already worried by a call so early, but it was better that than a panicked call once they turned on CNN.

A friend of mine in the US called my folks to see if Tony and I were OK. Even though I didn’t get to talk to him, I’m very glad he rang. He was first person I called after my parents on 9/11, as he lived near DC. I found out he was actually planning on going to the Pentagon that day and just hadn’t made it there. I didn’t have any near misses like that today–I no longer work in Central London, and today was the first day I was glad of that–but I’ve heard similar near-miss stories on the news.

For those of you who have been hurt or have had loved ones hurt, I send my depest sympathies.

I’m going to finish this post now, as I don’t know what else to say, and I’m worried anything else I’d say would be trite.

This photo shows Tony stroking the baby pigeon we named Monster. It was taken yesterday.

Today we we woke up, and s/he was gone. We think maybe a crow got him/her.

R.I.P., Monster.

I’m still leaving up the Pigeon Cam, though it’s not too exciting right now, but Hattie and Sid have started beaking again (pigeon kissing). Also, it looks like they are rebuilding the nest. We’re figuring out ways to keep their nest a bit more covered, so that birds flying about won’t be able to see the babies if they decide to lay eggs there again.

Both Tony and I are really sad that neither baby made it. Even though there’s hardly a shortage of pigeons in London, these were “our” pigeons, so to speak, and, although they weren’t our pets, we’ve grown attached to them since they’ve been living on the balcony. Let’s all wish them more luck for their next attempt.

The other baby that was half-hatched died while hatching. Poor thing. The body is still in the nest, however.

The other baby has grown so much–it only hatched Thursday, and look how much bigger it is already.

Both baby pigeons have hatched. One hatched two days ago (we think), and the other hatched yesterday (when this picture was taken).

For more pictures of the babies, see this photo set on Flickr, and don’t forget almost real-time pidge action at Pidge Cam 2005.

At the moment, the site is beta–we’re testing whether our connection can handle updating it every 30 seconds, plus the site needs some design lovin’ before I’ll promote it beyond this blog. But I wanted to give my loyal readers the chance to see it right away.

Please take a look at it and let me know what you think. For some reason, comments on this blog have now become moderated–I think the spam filter is being overzealous–so don’t panic if any replies don’t show up right away. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it’s better than having 100s of spam comments for poker and viagra.

A pair of pigeons have made a nest in a planter on our balcony. They’ve laid two eggs and are taking turns sitting on it. Squabs should be hatching any day now.

This picture was taken a few weeks ago before the second egg was laid. Pigeons lay a pair of eggs, one a day or so before the other, and they sit on their eggs for about 18 days before they hatch. So any day now, we will have squabs to photograph.

I’m also setting up a pigeon web cam–I’ll be posting here with more details once the cam is up and running.

Last year, my husband and I decided not to buy a real tree but instead to buy a fake tree. Not just any fake tree, mind you, but the tackiest, most fake tree possible. At first we considered a fibre-optic tree, but they are much too common now and just aren’t kitchy enough.

When I saw this pink tree at Argos, I knew I’d found the perfect tree for us. And we already had the perfect angel to go on top of a pink tree—Hello Kitty.