Monthly Archives: November 2020

November 30, 2020 · 23:23

2020 Christmas Lights – Round Two

A number of factors are slowing things down more noticeably this year when it comes to putting up the Christmas lights.

First, I find that I’m feeling old. Maybe it’s just the effects of almost nine months of COVID lockdown that’s limited my physical movements, and the Thanksgiving week diet that’s put a half dozen pounds back on, but it might also be related to the percentage of grey vs black hair on my head.

Secondly, it’s just me. Way back when of course it was always a family affair with all three kids helping, and even in the past few years the Youngest Daughter usually came by for a day and helped since she still lives in LA. Naturally, again due to COVID, she’s not stopping by this year.

Third, it’s infrastructure! We’re renting instead of owning, and over the course of almost thirty years we had a lot of little hooks and nails and power cords and a routine that made even a much bigger display go up quickly. I can’t do that in a rented house, so I’ve created temporary attachment points for lights using nylon twist ties. That worked well for two years, but I’m finding that many of those nylon ties are breaking when I try to use them this year, so I have to take the time to put up new ones.

Finally, my decorations are getting older and more fragile even faster than my body is. I won’t put up strings of lights that have sections burnt out, and I’m finding a fair amount of the ones I put up last year that are failing this year. I don’t really want to go off to the hardware store to get new ones (COVID!!) so sorting through the bins of old lights and cobbling together new sets that all work is time consuming.

Oh, well. I guess it keeps me off the streets at night.

I did manage to get all of the timers set, went through the big bulbs along the roof line and replaced a few that had burnt out, and got several strings of lights out into the bushes and plants along the front of the house. I didn’t get to the big, bright strings that normally go over the garage (the big dark area on the left in the picture), mainly because I can’t find them yet. Maybe this next weekend.

In the meantime, it’s getting there, not terrible, just not finished yet. But I did get the full moon rising over the house last night, so that was pretty sweet.

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Filed under Christmas Lights, Photography

November 29, 2020 · 23:35

Put A Ring On It – Full Moon Edition

It’s a full moon tonight, and in and hour and a half or so there will be a penumbral lunar eclipse. Despite the big name, it’s not something that’s even likely to be visible to the naked eye. In short, the Earth’s shadow has a dark, inner part (umbra) and a much, much fainter outer part (penumbra) and the Moon will be going through a portion of that thin outer part. If I didn’t tell you it was happening, you wouldn’t know it by looking or noticing anything different.

Now, when the Moon goes through the inner, umbral part of the Earth’s shadow, it can be spectacular and the Moon can appear to get dark, turn red, or orange, or even dark brown and almost disappear for up to an hour or more. (See my pictures from the 2014 lunar eclipse here, and the 2015 lunar eclipse here.)

Nothing so dramatic tonight. BUT…

I took a peek just now, and there’s a very high, thin layer of clouds over SoCal. That means the moonlight is passing through a very fine layer of ice crystals, which makes a 22° arc all the way around the moon, sometimes known as a moon ring or winter halo.

It’s not a subtle effect and the sight is spectacular, but it doesn’t make for a nice crisp picture, especially with the full moon being so, So, SO much brighter than the ring. But the iPhone does a pretty good job of capturing it.

And with that, the four-day holiday weekend ends. Monday lurks, but at least we have an amazing, beautiful sight in the sky above us. And in twenty-four days we have the Christmas and New Year’s break with just a couple days of work over a ten day period. And in fifty-one days…

Hang in there!

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography

November 28, 2020 · 23:19

Wild Turkeys

We just had THAT holiday and most of us had some sort of turkey – and most of us are STILL eating turkey.

Turkeys’ range is known to cover most of North America east of the Rockies, but west of the Great Plains the range is spottier. The map actually doesn’t show them much of anywhere down in Southern California – but I have evidence that they’re here, at least in the San Diego / Mount Palomar area as of 2007.

The Mount Palomar Observatory with the world famous 200″ telescope is extremely cool to visit. I recommend it if you visit the Southern California / San Diego area.

The problem with getting down the mountain is that our brakes started overheating, and when they heat up they don’t brake. This is bad.

There are pull-outs and rest stops for just this sort of thing, so we stopped for a few minutes to let the brakes cool. It’s a heavily wooded area and after a couple minutes, on the other side of the road, I noticed movement in the bushes.

Naturally, I grabbed my camera, crossed the road, and hoped it wasn’t bears or something hungry and fanged. It wasn’t, it was a flock of wild turkeys.

They were off in the bushes, moving in and out of sunshine, so it was tough getting a good photo. There were seven or eight total, and the coloration on them was astonishing. Their feathers were iridescent when the sun caught them.

So believe it or not, there are wild turkeys in the Southern California mountains. I have proof, and now so do you!

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Filed under Astronomy, Critters, Photography, Travel

November 27, 2020 · 22:53

2020 Christmas Lights – Round One

As much as I had thought about starting Christmas lights a week or even several weeks early this year (because 2020 = SUCKS while Christmas lights = anti-SUCKS, in case that wasn’t obvious), the intentions might have been good but the work load and that whole “only 24 hours in the day and that’s the LAW!” thing sort of ruled that out. But now it’s after Thanksgiving, the normal time for starting to put up lights, in no small part because there’s a four-day weekend, so off we go!

I got up about half of what’s normal for this house over the last two years, but it’s the harder half with almost all of the roof lights and ladder work done. The lights that still need to go up go into those bushes and ground cover and that’s pretty straightforward and quick. (I hope!)

Plus there’s a 13 day-old moon rising, one day away from full!

Still need the lights over the garage door, but let’s hope it’s quick tomorrow and Sunday. Remember, if you aren’t blowing circuit breakers, you can still put up more lights!

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Filed under Castle Willett, Christmas Lights, Photography

November 26, 2020 · 22:33

Thanksgiving 2020

What an odd holiday this year.

On the one hand, I have so much to be personally thankful for – family whom I love, our health (so far, and let’s keep it that way), a job with a great team where I find challenges and rewards and wonderful folks to work with, and overall a great many things capable of bringing me joy.

On the other hand – well, read the headlines. We seem to have dodged the worst of the political nightmare if we can make it another 57 days without an outright catastrophe, but it will take decades to repair the damage that the last four years have inflicted. And the COVID numbers continue to skyrocket with another 57 days before we can get an actual adult in charge. And, well, everything else.

This year we did not meet up with our kids or in-laws as we have every year in the past. There was not a huge bird or a full table or a house full of laughter and jokes and football and parades. There was just a lovely dinner for two.

We set up Zoom meetings with the Long Suffering Wife’s family back east and then with our kids and in-laws out on the Left Coast. We relaxed and picked up the mess as the wind was howling (35 mph at times with gusts pushing 50) but overall it was a relaxing day, with a long weekend ahead to put up lights and start the Christmas celebrations.

I hope you and your family had a safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving. And if you’re not in the US, then he, it’s Friday!! Celebrate along with us.

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Filed under Castle Willett, Photography

November 25, 2020 · 23:29

Random Old Photos – November 25th

The seed thought for tonight’s random photo generator brainwave was, “What was I doing ten years ago?”

Wandering around down by the waterfront at a UC Berkeley facility after a storm, apparently.

WHY was I at Berkeley? That’s a long story. Let’s say that I was chasing wild geese and still getting a pay check for doing it. But it was interesting.

Have a safe Thanksgiving tomorrow if you’re in the US. I hope you’re able to stay home if possible. Missing Thanksgiving dinner sucks. But not nearly as much as being intubated, being a “long hauler,” or being a statistic.

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November 24, 2020 · 23:50

Paranoid Much?

I just got an email, not even spam, a legit email apparently, from DFW Airport, “Clean, Safe and Ready for the Holidays.”

Okay.

Aside from their need to use the Oxford comma, I have to wonder why I’m getting this. To the best of my knowledge I’ve never subscribed to anything asking for information on DFW. Yes, I’ve flown through there many times – who in this country who’s flown more than a handful of times has not? It’s a hub for just about every major airline except Southwest. And while it’s possible (I guess?) that at one point when I was there I logged onto a public wi-fi network or looked up a terminal map (that place is freakin’ HUGE) and inadvertently gave permission to get notifications and ads, why have I never seen anything from them before? I didn’t check, but I don’t think I’ve been through there in at least three or four years.

So maybe it’s random. Maybe it’s innocent. Maybe they bought the subscriber database from Aviation Week & Space Technology (I’m a subscriber) and they’re doing a spammy email blast. Maybe.

Or maybe…

I got a phone call this morning from one of my co-workers about something I needed to look into since she’s gone. She was at DFW, transferring planes. Does the cell phone + computers + internet + Amazon/Apple/Google/IBM group AI know the origin of that call and flag it with that data in turn being cross referenced with advertisers and spammers?

Probably not. PROBABLY not. I know there are a lot of whacked out conspiracy theories out there and all, but c’mon! How paranoid do you want to be?

But if we have our family Zoom Thanksgiving and one of the kids mentions a video game and I don’t even have a game console and don’t play video games at all and I’m not researching it for any gift ideas or anything else even remotely connected to it and then I get an email from them…

I might start to get suspicious.

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Farce

November 23, 2020 · 23:27

Monster Movie

He tweeted this, she finally did that, and at last over two weeks after everyone else on the planet with any contact with reality had declared Biden to be the election winner, we’re starting to see the transition given the green light. It’s insane that it took this long, and it appears the attempted coup is still going to be played out until the bitter end by the cult, but it’s another big step to being where we can exhale at last and realize that in fifty-nine days it might actually be over.

But…

Maybe it’s just PTSD. Maybe we’ve just had our emotions and fears assaulted for four years and we’re not capable of being hopeful and upbeat in an honest and healthy way. Or maybe we’ve just seen this plot in too many horror movies.

But even after you’ve blown the Terminator up, he comes back. Even after you freeze him in liquid nitrogen, the thaws. Even after you crush him in machinery, he just pulls off an arm and keeps coming. Even after you blow that honkin’ huge hole in him and drop him into the pit of molten metal…

Is he really dead?

We’ve done all of that. We’ve killed the monster, dismembered the body, buried each small piece in a deep grave covered in salt and holy water with a wooden stake through it, and…

…why is there still twenty minutes left in the movie? Or, in this case, fifty-nine days until our new Attorney General can start serving arrest warrants?

When do we get to relax? Oh, right, we can’t, there’s COVID…

SHIT!

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Filed under Politics

November 22, 2020 · 23:59

Mile 25

When you run the LA Marathon and you’re near the end, there’s a check point at the 40 kilometer point, which is essentially at Mile 25. There’s a little over a mile left, you’re near the coast (having started at Dodger Stadium and wound through Chinatown, downtown LA, Hollywood, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Century City, and finally Santa Monica) and if you’re running a good race you know that there’s a huge sense of accomplishment waiting around the bend, and a chance to rest following that.

BUT… You can’t let up. You have to finish strong. If you’re running your good race and you want that great time and you want to meet that goal that you’ve worked on for months and months, you need to keep up the pace and earn that rest.

Sunday night, especially this Sunday night before Thanksgiving, remind me of that feeling. It’s been a tough year in many respects and there has been a LOT of work put in on so many fronts. But I can’t let up yet – this next weekend there will be rest.

Here’s to a short week and a long weekend to come.

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Paul

November 21, 2020 · 23:38

A Small Spot Of Splendor

It’s so hard these days to keep looking for beauty, wonder, and splendor in the world around us. We’re bogged down with some serious existential terrors, and those are the GOOD days! But it’s still out there – we just have to remain open to it.

While we may note the exceptional sunsets (remember the skyline of the old house at times?), let’s not overlook the ones that have just a little bit of that colorful glory, a small spot of splendor far off in the distance, vanishing with the light.

We’re used to everything being spectacular on rare occasions and bland (at best) the rest of the time, but if we look closely, we might find that oddly fluorescent and vivid bit of the world around us, and be enraptured by it, if only for a moment.

We don’t have to know what causes it, whether it be a missed bit of timing or location, or bemoan what might have been a missed opportunity for more. We just have to be happy in that moment because it’s beautiful and we got to see it and be part of it – there’s plenty of time to be miserable and overwhelmed the other 1,439 minutes of the day.

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Filed under Photography