Speaking of the impressive physical feats that birds accomplish, this one has always been very impressive to me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar-headed_Goose They actually have different adaptations in their red blood cells that allow them to fly at extremely high altitudes.
In more local bird news, I saw a bird in our yard that had a lovely pink breast. Google tells me it may have been a house finch. Other than that it's the usual robins, sparrows, and cardinals around here.
Dagmar, unless you're on a deadline, I'd say take your time to buy a house. I think if we hadn't had a set move-out date from our apartment we probably would have kept looking longer than we did before buying our house, but we basically had the option of renewing our lease for another whole year or moving out when it was up.
Megan, I hope you can get your car fixed soon!
Re: last week's thread about mani/pedis, I had my nails done for the first time when I was 20, and I've probably only gone maybe three times since then (one of which was for my wedding). I played violin and piano all though high school and college, in addition to typing a lot, so I like keeping my nails very short. Sometimes I'll slap on a coat of polish at home, and very occasionally have them done at a spa in conjunction with a massage or something, but I don't really like going to nail parlors for the same reasons others have already said. I'm terrible about keeping my nails up in any case -- once I put polish on it basically just gets chipped and flakes off, then I pick at it until my nails are a giant mess, then finally if I'm not too lazy I'll just remove it.
Our weather has gone from the 9 inches of snow a couple weeks ago to 70 degrees and lovely! We spent some time this weekend sitting on our back deck with Carter. He also appreciates having all the windows in the house open so he can sniff.
I'm working from home today and Carter was very upset that the meter reader was coming through the neighborhood. He pretty much ran from window to window barking his head off with all his fur standing straight up for 20 minutes.