Baby birds (to be)

Oops. Looks like I accidentally went on a two-week hiatus. Plenty of stuff going on, lots to report on, but somehow didn't. I think it's mostly due to my participation in a conference last week, a well-known conference in my field where I was a plenary for the first time in the US. It was me and three other plenaries, all of whom, unlike me, are full professors (I think I may have mentioned this before), and I was nervous as anything in the weeks leading up to my big talk, and had a bit of a nervous hangover for a few days after, I think. Anyway, writing and editing and entertainment energy was kind of focused on that. (It went well, for those of you wondering by this point. I had a major crisis of faith about 10 minutes before I went on, at which point I decided I had gone off the deep end and should rewrite the entire talk, which is a little further afield than my usual stuff. But soldiered through and the response was really positive, more positive than anything else I've done to date, I think. Which is, of course, based in part on the selection-and-elevation principle -- my talk was better and more meaningful and more worth paying attention to because I was rock-star-esque (and really, I mean -esque). It had been pre-decided that what I had to say had Merit, and so it was easy for my listeners to decide so at the time. Even so, all the nice things people said made me really quite happy.)

Anyway, I'm mostly recovered and doing a lot of "get it together" type things this weekend. Like the sweeping and mopping and cleaning and subsequent major rearrangement of clothes. And cooking and going to comedy shoes. I have no music player these days other than my computer (must get iPod like object and a dock, really, what am I in, 2001?) and it doesn't quite reach all the way to the kitchen. But I have been doing kitchen cleaning to the lovely music of mourning dove wingbeats and the sweet song of this little birdie here, which at some point who can tell these tiny brown birds apart? I have given up.
Little Brownielet and its partner (although I'm only seeing one at a time) are tantalizing Fatty, who is spending a lot of time on the ledge of the kitchen window staring up and out, by means of flying frequently from the roof across the way (pictured above) to the gutter pipe just above and to the right of my kitchen window in order to build a wee little nest.
The mourning doves, meanwhile, work mostly in a pair, and are building a nest just next door, in a slightly less scenic perch.
Yes, that's my next-door neighbor's air conditioner, and the nest is lodged between three gatorade bottles (empty, and stored there why?) and what look like empty electronics boxes.

I am excited for the onset of baby birds! (In main part because I am not Colliculus.) Soon they will be chirping right above my kitchen window. "But Pangea," you say, "so early. Won't that bother you?" But please do not forget that I am already up. And even if I'm not, maybe they'll drown out the horrible and nearly endless throat-clearing-and-spitting regimen that I can hear around 6 every morning from the Russki apartment downstairs. Feh. Compared to that, chirping birdies will be a delightful change of pace. My one concern is that the stairwell between these two nests is my main way to go down and do laundry, which is in the basement downstairs. Will I end up with angry and defensive birds dive-bombing me as I innocently attempt to pass just below? Or can we all live together in peace? Only time will tell, I guess. Plus I'm not going to count my mourning doves before they are hatched...