Route 153

6BY2: Quarterly Report July 27, 2017

Seriously, I couldn’t have posted this July 1? Life has been too ridiculous lately. Second quarter: eastern phoebe, American woodcock, Wilson’s snipe, Carolina wren, belted kingfisher, brown-headed cowbird, osprey, yellow-rumped warbler, pine warbler, tree swallow, chipping sparrow, northern flicker, great egret, Cooper’s hawk, black vulture, yellow warbler, northern rough-winged swallow, eastern towhee, blue-gray gnatcatcher, snowy egret, fish crow, surf scoter, long-tailed duck, common eider, common loon, great black-backed gull, double-crested cormorant, house finch, broad-winged hawk, rose-breasted grosbeak, chimney swift, warbling vireo, barn swallow, brown thrasher, gray catbird, black-and-white warbler, indigo bunting (May 6!), yellow-bellied sapsucker, house wren, common yellowthroat, Baltimore oriole, bobolink, white-crowned sparrow, chestnut-sided warbler, American redstart, blue-winged warbler, ovenbird, northern parula, veery, ruby-throated hummingbird, eastern wood-pewee, American bittern, eastern kingbird, ring-billed gull, spotted sandpiper, red-eyed vireo, cedar waxwing, hermit thrush, green heron, glossy ibis, willet, Nelson’s (sharp-tailed) sparrow, great-crested flycatcher, wood thrush, scarlet tanager.

The most exciting of these for me was the American bittern. Before May 19, I had only seen one once, ever—and suddenly there were two!—and had never heard one in the wild, which I did, at last, the following day.

Year-to-date count: 115. (2012: 102. 2013: 162. 2014: 102. 2015: 120. 2016: 104.)

Yet More 153s July 27, 2017

I tend to see them in bunches. I saw one immediately after posting the last batch. When I work out, as often as not I glance down at the 1:53 mark. That said, it seems I often glance down at exactly 12:34 too. So here is my latest collection:

• On March 29, Joe posted about Relay for Life at 1:53pm.
• On April 3, I got this stat from FitBit, kind of buried in a bigger number, but: 72,215 total steps, 19,153 more than last week.
• On April 10, reading for work: “For example, in 2010, the International Association of Diabetes and Pregnancy Study Group (IADPSG) recommended that a universal 75-g, 2-hour OGTT be performed during pregnancy and that the diagnosis of GDM be established when any single threshold value was met or exceeded (fasting value, 92 mg/dL; 1-hour value, 180 mg/dL; or 2-hour value, 153 mg/dL).”
• On April 24: Does glancing at the clock at 1:53 pm count? (This happens quite a bit too.)
• On April 25: Adding up my disparate bits of time working on a job during the day, I came up with 1 hour, 153 minutes (which is really 3 hours, 33 minutes, but that’s where the notation started).
• On April 26, reviewing a manuscript, I find this endnote: “Ed Shenk, Fly Rod Trouting (Stackpole Books: Harrisburg, PA, 1989), 153.”
• On April 26, as I ended a quick follow-up call with a new, very impressive author, I noticed our conversation lasted 1:53.
• On April 29, when working on finances, and dividing a total amount of money I need for something by the number of pay periods I have to save for it, I got 153.36/pay period.
• On April 30, on a search for our public radio station’s coverage of Trump’s first 100 days, the short newscast that came up first on the page (local headlines, it turns out) was 1:53 long.
• On May 1, working out on elliptical, watching the first episode of a show, I feel that it’s dragging, I wonder when the hell it’s going to be over, I check the remaining episode time on the remote—1:53. (I made it through.)
• On May 11, during another workout, watching Flight of the Conchords (that’s for you, Mali), I paused it at the end of my workout to mark for next time, with 1:53 left in the scene.
• On May 15, my reflexologist was telling a story about living in New Jersey—which exit? 153.
• On May 15, I was watching Santa Clarita Diet and trying to figure out how I knew the actress Grace Zabriskie—wasn’t she on Twin Peaks?—and IMDB lists 153 actress credits for her.
• On May 19, I printed out an email I’d written to an author for my files, which I apparently sent at 1:53 pm.
• On May 21, Comcast alerted me that among the channels I am no longer receiving is 153. Not that I have any idea what that was.
• On July 6, in working on finding references for a recently deceased author, I find A. E. Eaton, “A Revisional Monograph of Recent Ephemeridae or Mayflies,” The Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, 2nd Series: Zoology (Part III [vol. 3, no. 3, April 1885, 153–230]).