Deer

It's been quiet most of the night, but I did get a visit from some deer. It was after the clouds had formed and obscured the moon, and had even settled to the ground, forming a thin fog that turned the distant trees to shadows. I heard the sound of small hooves clicking softly on the pavement as I stood on the porch. I kept to the darkest corner, and they approached. I heard the leaves being torn from the bushes as the deer browsed, and heard the damp mulch of decaying leaves under the wild plum give slightly under their weight, only a short distance away. Like the trees, the deer were only shadows, but I could make one out as it crossed the lawn. Several others were moving up both sides of the street. They moved gradually, stopping to browse on various plants or to listen for sounds beyond the range of my hearing. Perhaps they sniffed my scent on the air, but they did not start and run as they often do. All but invisible, they continued their progress beyond my house, and the other houses, until at last the soft clicking of their hooves died out. Then I went into the house, and saw that one of the cats had slipped behind the drapes to look out the window. I envied her the view she must have had through her cat eyes.

Public Notice for People Who Probably Aren't Reading.

Purging of some deleted journals has apparently begun.

So far, this is only happening on cluster one (Cartman) but it's coming to all the clusters in the near future. I know that several people on my friend-of list have old journals which they have deleted, and they might not be expecting them to be purged since LJ has done that so infrequently in the past. Well, they're doing it now, so if you have an old journal which you have deleted as a substitute for making all the entries "friends only," and you want to keep it, this is the time to un-delete it, at least until the process is over.

I suspect that purging might take place more frequently in the future, as there is a group of users (probably small, but certainly vocal) who have been complaining about long-deleted journals taking up space on the servers (not a serious problem yet, as far as I can see) and, particularly, about user names which are unavailable because they already belong to someone with a never-used or deleted journal. Personally, I hear the sound of a can of worms being opened, but apparently Brad intends to forge ahead with this project. I hope the flames don't get too high.