WHAZZAT??!!

I'm sitting in my recliner with my laptop when suddenly a thunderous rat-a-tat-tat-tat echoes through the house.  Holy crow, is  someone out there with a machine gun?  My heart is about to jump out of my chest and adrenaline has me panting with fear.  There it goes again - from our roof?  Is there some nut on our roof?  Whattinhell is going on?  A third time, brrrat-ta-tat-ta-tat.  The rhythm is familiar.  And then I realize what's going on.  A woodpecker is drumming on the metal rain cap on our chimney.  He's telling all the other male woodpeckers that he's a big tough sumbitch and this is his territory.  I'm perfectly content that he should claim this area, but damn, that noise echoes down the chimney!  Cats are headed under the bed, just in case, and I startle every time he starts in.  Hope he meets a nice girl and settles down soon.

One of the consequences of this hundred-days-cough DH and I have been through, is lingering lassitude. So we haven't done anything worth blogging about.  I have been recording and relishing more TV lately.  "Downton Abbey" is worth rewatching repeatedly.  I'll go through it once just for the hats. And again for the various accents.

 And I am hooked on "Face-Off" where professional make-up artists compete in challenges to create various characters.  I love seeing how they accomplish the technical aspects, and I love coming up with my own characters to meet the challenges.  Last week, they created comic book superheroes.  I came up with Sonic Mama, a sculptress who shapes, textures and cures polymer gel using sonic waves which she produces with a variety of flutes.  Of course, sonic waves can also be used as weapons.  Certain sub-sonic frequencies can make humans loose bowel and bladder control.  There's a good way to stop a hold-up.  Or how about finding the frequency to jam cell-phone transmission so a terrorist can't send the signal to trigger a bomb?  Sonic Mama is middle-aged, terribly artsy-fartsy-Birkenstocky, and she has had her ears enhanced to amplify her abilities, so the character would have great, shell-like ear prosthetics, gray braids, and a tie-dyed peasant dress with an apron of various flutes hanging close at hand.  Think Marvel or DC comics would be interested?