Oh, crap, look at the clock. I’m still here – that has so many potential interpretations, both good and bad…
Have some more pretty cloud pictures, it’s all I have time for at the moment.
A New Apple Variety
Well, new for me, at least.
I like apples. I like variety. I like having a variety of apples!
I’m no Chuck Wendig – his social media and his website have had hundreds of posts about heirloom apples and apple snacks and everything related to apples for years and years. (He also writes some pretty awesome books! And was the guy behind all of the “Flash Fiction” prompts and posts about ten years ago.) But he has an advantage, living out in the Pennsultucky region where there are hundreds of family orchards growing heirloom apple varieties.
Here in California they’re 100% paranoid about importing fruit flies and other pests, so none of those fruits are allowed. You can’t go get them and bring them in, you can’t get them by mail order, you can’t have someone send them to you. You just get the five or six varieties in the chain grocery stores.
This one was new this week. I tried it today. Nice, I liked it! Mostly sweet, but a little bit of tang to it. Hard, not mushy. Huge, nice color.
Let me know if you see any Wild Twists and try them. I would like to hear what you think.
Is this the biggest news or the most important thing that happened today? No, not even close. But a lot of the big stuff is bad and worse. This was a good thing. Some days you need to pick your victories wherever you can find them, regardless of size.
A win is a win.
Filed under Paul, Photography
Evolution Of Some Weird Clouds
This probably doesn’t mean much, but I thought it looked cool, and I’m easily amused. And it’s my site, so I’ll post whatever I want.
At 11:52 we came out of the restaurant where we were having our normal Sunday morning breakfast and I saw these odd clouds. It was striking how the three in a row each had such sharply defined edges on the side facing us. Almost like lenticular clouds, but those tend to form over some sort of object (like a mountain) that’s sticking up high into the atmosphere. These were out beyond the dry river bed.
They caught my eye, looked weird, I took pictures.
Fifteen minutes after that, at 12:07, we had gotten to our grocery store and this whole cloud mass had shifted over toward the Sun and started to merge into one blob, but still with the sharp edge on the side closest to us. Plus there were some airliner contrails.
It still looked weird, I took more pictures.
Groceries obtained, as I was emptying the car and bringing the grocers in at 12:49, the cloudy mass had stretched out into a wide pair of arms that looked a bit like one of the later “Star Trek” ships, maybe the Enterprise-D or the Titan. There’s the saucer section and bridge right beneath the Sun, with the body and engine nacelles off in the distance and stretching off to the right…
I looked cool and weird. Guess what I did?
Filed under Photography, Weather
Hesperia Christmas Lights 2025 – First Dark
The first night without the lights up is always a sad one. Something’s missing.
The good news, as always, is that five or six days spent putting lights up only take a day or two to take down. Gravity helps.
There was a moment of awe and joy in the whole painful (literally) process. At one point, up on a ladder in a semi-precarious position, on a cold (high 40’s) and windy (15-20 knots with gusts to 30+) afternoon, I noticed a mass of crows headed overhead. I stuck my head out from under the roof and directly overhead, probably not more than 100 feet or so, were two absolutely gorgeous red-tailed hawks circling and hovering in the winds. The image of the crows scrambling to intercept the hawks immediately got compared in my mind to Battle of Britain images of the Spitfires scrambling to climb up to do battle with the German bombers.
The hawks however had another strategy. They caught a thermal and went into a tight spiral in it, their wings never flapping, just cruising up in the jet like they were in an invisible elevator. In less than five minutes they were mere dots in the sky, hundreds of feet up, where the crows couldn’t climb to get them.
Spectuacular, a great treat! I used to watch red-tailed hawks (and other kinds of hawks) at our Scarborough house. It’s such a relief to see them here as well!
Now if we could just get some juncos migrating through…
Filed under Birds, Christmas Lights, Forever Home, Video
Hesperia Christmas Lights 2025 – Last Light
Normally I might have spent last weekend, i.e., first full weekend of the new year, taking down Christmas lights. But last weekend was pouring rain again, and I’m not THAT stupid. Most of this week has been dry, if cold and windy as hell, so this weekend will probably be dedicated to getting that task taken care of.
So, a little bit windblown, here’s last light. (It’s 23:45, windy, and 33° out there – the things I do for my “art”!)
The multiple lines of lights along the roofline did just fine, even with unbelievable amounts of rain and winds gusting at times to 65+ knots. The stuff up in the maple tree came down (at least partially, like here) almost daily when there was wind. And there’s always wind.
I think the wind took down two of the candy canes next to the driveway, but that’s mainly because I figure if it was Hissy, ALL of the candy canes would have been pulled loose or snapped. At least we didn’t have any rabbits chewing on the wiring this year! (See 2024, 2023, 2022…)
In this corner by the garage the wind swirls and spins, so next year I’ll have to remember and find a better way to keep these lights up in the trees and not on the ground.
Already planning and looking forward to next year!
Filed under Christmas Lights, Forever Home, Photography
Stained Glass – January 8th
Because who couldn’t use a tiny little reminder that beauty still exists in the world, especially in light of the horrors going on all around us?
All images from Brussels Cathedral.
Filed under Art, Photography, Travel
Proof Of Life – January 07th
Between today’s news, yesterday’s news, the news of the last year, the news of the last ten years, life, the universe, and everything, simply starting to scream is high on my list of things to do. I’m just not sure that I could stop.
I did get a haircut, and I can hear train whistles. I guess things don’t TOTALLY suck.
Tomorrow might be better. That possibility is what gets me up every morning. And prevents a 5150 hold. Well, that and Diet Coke (my caffeine substrate of choice).
Filed under Deep Thoughts, Paul, Photography, Politics
Fast, Lacy Clouds
It was a matter of layers.
I was wondering what made that straight line splitting the lower layer of lacy clouds – probably a small plane, but it could be something natural. Or a really freakin’ huge bird…
The solid clouds were pretty stationary, and up at probably 3,000′ or so. The thin, lacy ones were much lower, probably about 1,000 feet or so, and moving like a bat out of Hell toward the north.
Keep looking up! Keep your eyes and your soul open to some of the ordinary and beautiful things up there.
Filed under Photography, Weather
Proof Of Life – January 05th
THERE WAS A GIANT, YELLOW BALL OF LIGHT IN THE SKY TODAY, ALL DAY LONG!
There were still a few clouds floating around, but for the most part there were lots of blue areas and the giant yellow ball of light. When I stood in the yellow light it was warm and comfortable.
When I stood in the yellow, warm light I didn’t want to curl up in bed and cry any more. (Okay, let’s get real, two seconds of reading the news made me want to curl up and cry, yellow warm light or not, but that’s a different topic.)
Maybe if we say nice things and make small sacrifices on a rudimentary altar, nothing fancy, just a chicken or two, then the giant yellow ball of warm light will come back tomorrow.
It will be my friend. I think I will name him “Ra.”
Filed under Photography, Weather
The Brain Freeze Strikes Back
I did my usual picture and a couple hundred words of drivel last night and was NOT expecting this morning’s reaction to it.
First, to explain – when I publish one of these daily bits of 100% human-created content (no AI here, and there never will be, well, unless I’m sharing so that I can point and laugh and mock) it goes out to about 770 email subscribers, onto my website, and then to Facebook, Mastodon, Spoutible, Bluesky, Threads, Tumblr (no one was more surprised that I even HAD a Tumblr account than I was!), and Linkedin.
This morning I got an automated email that said that I had a comment posted on my post on Linkedin. (Insert my surprised face here.)
Reacting without taking time to ponder (about two seconds) I was amazed that something I said had violated a LinkedIn policy. COOL! But what was it about brain freeze that had triggered them? I mean, they’ve been fine with all of the times I’ve suggested that our “President” and his evil minions engage in sexual acts that are physiologically unlikely and would require far more contortionist capabilities than I’ve ever given any of them credit for. But they’re upset about brain freeze?
Maybe it was the comment about how we might be living in a simulation that has bugs in the programming and brain freeze is one of them? Did I accidentally stumple on one of the great secrets of the universe and now Big Ice Cream (or its overlord, Big Universal Bug Tracking Customer Support) was going to have to disappear me?
However, after that two seconds of amazement and amusement had passed, I began to suspect that it might simply be fake, a phishing attempt of some sort. Wouldn’t “LinkedIn security” have at least one follower? Is that link even to a valid address?
Huh! Imagine that! I didn’t even know scammers were trolling in Linkedin. I’m happy that Linkedin is aware of it and on top of its game.
On the other hand, isn’t that exactly what Big Ice Cream would want us to think? This might not be over…
Filed under Farce, Social Media
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 