Monthly Archives: May 2022

May 31, 2022 · 23:09

The Aliens From The Meteor Storm Stole The Trees!

I may have conflated a couple of trains of thought in that headline. Maybe.

But let’s look at the evidence! Very few meteors, so they must have been in stealth mode! If they were in stealth mode, there must have been aliens flying them! What would the aliens want to sneak in for? Well, big chunks of the neighbors’ trees are gone, so it MUST have been the stealthy aliens! I mean, what else could it have been? The evidence is all right there for those who would see it!

The meteor “storm” was a bust here in the west San Fernando Valley. It seemed clear enough, at least for this area. I could see stars down to at least Magnitude 3 or better once my eyes got dark adapted. I was outside from 21:30 to 22:20, fifty minutes total, and I saw:

  • 2 meteors from this event
  • 1 other meteor, not from this event – it was in the wrong part of the sky and going the wrong direction, just a random meteor crashing the show
  • 4 jets going into Burbank
  • 4 very high altitude jets headed southbound
  • 2 small planes toodling along just outside of VNY’s Class C airspace
  • An owl
  • An LAPD helicopter
  • 2 satellites headed eastbound

I also got a contact high from the clouds of cannibis wafting from several neighbors.

I was snapping five-second exposures the whole time, so there are something like 600 photos to flip through to see if I caught anything at all. In my copious free time…

Then I was up to almost 2AM finishing up some deadline stuff. So I was sort of hoping for a few extra minutes of sleep this morning.

Nope. CHAIN SAWS!!! At 07:00:00.000001 exactly!

The neighbors’ gardener’s tree trimming team was in, giving quite the little buzz job to the hedges between our yards and all of the big trees.

As these things go, I guess they did a decent job. But aside from the slightly better view of the sky over that way, all I could see was where the birds were losing their nests and habitat.

This tree out in the front is where all of the bluebirds have been for the last two years. At first it was one or two last year, but this year there are a couple dozen. Beautiful birds, bold blue and orange accents. Now? We’ll see if and when I ever see one again.

The trees in the back and the fence hedges were home to mourning doves, juncos, towhees, crows, hummingbirds, mockingbirds, and more. There are plenty more trees around and I doubt any birds were killed today, but there were undoubtedly many nests, eggs, and fledglings that got destroyed.

Stupid aliens. Stupid meteors.

Stupid sleep.

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Filed under Birds, Photography

May 30, 2022 · 18:17

MAYBE A Meteor “Storm” Tonight – MAYBE!

Posting this earlier than normal today so that some of you in the US and North America can get a bit of a head’s up…

You might have heard or seen some spectacular news report in the last day or two about a truly spectacular, amazing, mind-blowing, once in a lifetime Meteor STORM (OMG, Batman!! 🤩😲🤯) happening tonight. And it might be, so I’ll tell you what to look for. But I’ll also tell you that it might NOT be happening, and we simply don’t know. It’s a total crap shoot.

The short version – if you want, and if you have clear skies, around 22:00 PDT (01:00 EDT Monday morning), go find a dark spot. Get comfy and look for the bright star Arcturus. It’s going to be near the zenith (straight up) on the West Coast and a bit toward the west the further east you go. If you can find the Big Dipper toward the north, just follow the “handle” off about as far as the dipper is wide and the only real bright star in that area is Arcturus.

If you can’t find Arcturus, don’t sweat it! If the meteors come, they’ll be visible over a huge, wide swath of the sky. They’ll look like they’re coming from the general direction of Arcturus-ish, but if they’re there you’ll see them as long as you’re not lying face down, or asleep, or unconscious in some way.

These meteors will be fainter than other meteor showers, so don’t expect lightning-like flashes across the sky. They’ll be visible, but dimmer, and moving somewhat slowly. Almost like watching a jet passing overhead way up high, fading in, trailing along for a few seconds, then fading out.

The most likely probablility is that there might be 40 to 100 meteors an hour in a dark sky, which is only one a minute or so. If you’re not in a dark sky or if you have some haze, it could be a lot less.

BUT…

There’s this chance…

These meteors are dust and debris left over from a comet named 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann, which disintigrated in 1995. That cloud of debris comes near our orbit about the time we’re here and in past years it’s been more of a “miss” than a “hit,” so it’s been a pretty minor meteor shower. You wouldn’t know it was happening unless you were looking for it and had a really dark sky.

But some of the astronomers tracking such things think there MIGHT be a possibility that this year we’ll go right through the middle of this cloud tonight. It’s an estimate based on a LOT of information with significant error bars, but there’s a chance that it could pay off.

For me, the worst case scenario is that I might spend an hour or so sitting out in the evening breezes and watching the skies, listening to the mockingbirds, coyotes, police cars, and jets going into Burbank. Not the worst fate. But if it pays off…

Some estimates are that, instead of 40 to 100 meteors an hour, we could have hundreds if not thousands.

So maybe you can go out, maybe you can’t. Maybe you see thousands of meteors – more likely you might, maybe, see a handful and get bitten by mosquitoes.

Put on some bug spray, just in case!

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Filed under Astronomy, Space

May 29, 2022 · 23:28

Long Weekend

It’s a three-day, holiday weekend in the US, but I’m not sure that has anything to do with the stars aligning and loading up the social calendar. Maybe. I don’t know. I think that’s well above my pay grade.

Last night we were back at the Ahmanson Theatre, this time for “Hadestown.”

Utterly spectacular! From the first words out of Hermes’ mouth to the last toast to Orpheus, I was totally enraptured. It was an absolute delight.

(Panorama – click to see full sized.)

This afternoon we went down to the sea in Redondo Beach to meet friends for lunch.

I only had a few minutes before lunch to wander around the marina with camera in hand, looking for the storks, seagulls, pelicans, and harbor seals that I could see and hear off in the distance. I didn’t really find them. But there were boats. LOTS of boats.

Holes in the water that you pour money into.

But cheaper than planes. (But planes are better and worth it!)

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Filed under Entertainment, Los Angeles, Panorama, Photography

May 28, 2022 · 17:29

Getting Crowded In The Nest

I managed to catch the finchlings all peeking out at once today. It’s getting crowded in that nest.

“MOOOOOM!! He’s touching me!!”

That explains so much of the noise coming from that direction.

They’re also looking more like birds with feathers and everything avian instead of weird, naked, pink squirmy things. Should we start a pool on which one flys first and when? I think it will be the one on the right, and probably about Wednesday this week.

It’s a lucky shot to catch them all. Normally these days they’re like cartoon birds. All four heads pop up in unison, take two seconds to look around to see if dinner is incoming, see me, and then pop right back down. It’s hilarious.

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Filed under Birds, Critters, Photography

May 27, 2022 · 23:16

You & Me, Little Flower

What a rough week! Too many things that are absolutely infuriating and totally out of our control. Frustration, anger, rage, hopelessness. Now, just a Friday afternoon quest to retrieve the trash barrels from the curb before they get hit or stolen or otherwise manage to turn the routine into yet another crisis.

But wait! Do you see it?

The lawn’s already turning brown because of water restrictions, but there! All by itself!

Did no one tell this seed (probably from over on the other side of the yard) that growing and blooming here was stupid and futile? That it’s going to die and probably quickly?

The hard, cruel driveway is right there, the car wheels can roll right over this little dude, the grass is dry and dying. You’ve made a horrible mistake!

Yet there it is, a tiny bit of beauty and grace, as glorious as a dozen roses in its own way, defying the odds with no fucks left to give, trying to grow anyway.

No – no one told that seed that the world’s a horrible, hard, deadly place where it’s almost impossible to even survive, let alone thrive. Not knowing better, it’s putting down roots and doing its absolute best every day. Maybe it doesn’t even survive the night, given the rabbits that roam and prowl the front yard, eating the young, naive, succulent flowers. Maybe the drought will claim it in a few days. Maybe I’ll forget it’s there and roll that right front tire straight over it on Sunday.

Maybe…not.

You’ll only know if you try. And if you’re going to try, why not give it 100% of your being with every effort, the better to improve your odds of actually succeeding.

You and me, little flower. Just doing the best we can.

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Filed under Flowers, Photography

May 26, 2022 · 23:53

As Panic Sets In

The news is a nightmare and keeps getting worse, when I try to listen to some Depeche Mode on my phone I find that my music library has been corrupted somehow, I try to watch the baseball game and find that my cable box has fried and probably taken everything on the enclosed DVR with it, I’m under some considerable time pressure at work, it’s late, I’m exhausted, I don’t have anything to write about tonight, I’ve got less than twenty minutes before midnight, desperation is starting to set in, I’m searching my computer and picture directories frantically…

…and I find a set of photos labeled “Raccoon Sex.”

You just have to trust the process.

These are obviously from the old house, where raccoons where either a feature or a bug.

Panic averted – buy hysteria isn’t far away.

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Filed under Critters, Photography

May 25, 2022 · 23:56

Finchlings

Lucy & Ricky’s little brood are growing quickly. Over the past week-ish…

Thursday, May 19th

Saturday, May 21st

Saturday, May 21st

Sunday, May 22nd

Tuesday, May 24th

No chicks were harmed in the taking of these pictures! That’s sort of why they suck, I can’t really see what I’m taking pictures of, I can’t focus, and I can’t take more than one or two at a time. I’m waiting for Lucy and Ricky to clear out, jumping up on the lawn chair, sticking the camera up there against the rafters and sort of kind of having the lens pointed in the right-ish direction, and desperately jabbing at where I hope the camera trigger button is and hoping for the best.

But now they’re starting to look like birds. And they eat ALL FREAKIN’ DAY LONG.

Ricky & Lucy must be exhausted.

 

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May 24, 2022 · 23:39

Doomscrolling Respite – May 24th

I think too many of us spent too much time doomscrolling today. It was easy to do, there was so much high quality doom.

So, stop it. At least for now. At least until you give yourself time to breathe, to process, to allow your blood pressure to come back down.

I’m not saying that ignorance is bliss, but at a certain point you’re like Leeloo at the end of “The Fifth Element” when she finds the encyclopedia entry for “war.” When you get to that point you’re no good to yourself, your family, or anyone else.

Instead, here are some pictures from a hike up Mount Ascutney in southern Vermont in 2009. There’s a really “funny” story about this particular hike … but it will wait for another day.

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Filed under Photography, Travel

May 23, 2022 · 22:21

Squirrel Tsunami

I had mentioned somewhere a few weeks back (here it is) that the squirrel population seemed to have exploded. Spring! Love is in the air! Or at least, hormones!

We have one squirrel that lives in the big tree on the left in the back yard, and another that we’ll see often coming up from the pines on the hill in back. Sometimes, rarely, there’s a third that comes over the chain link fence from the neighbor’s yard on the right. But a month ago I saw two adults leading two tiny squirrel babies through that jungle gym of pine tree branches back there, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before I saw the whole group.

Along with a handful of finches, mourning doves, and a couple of juncos, they were decimating the bird seed that gets put out every day. Curiously, there was also a rabbit way off in the far corner, under the bushes. We used to have them all of the time, but didn’t have any for months and months.

The compression on photos sort of sucks, so here are the four of them highlighted.

I will say that when I first got up there were three of them out there. This was an hour or so later, and while it might be likely that it’s the early morning three plus one other, one of these days I might walk out and find seven of them there.

It could happen!

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May 22, 2022 · 23:40

No Context For You – May 22nd

Buried in the details, distorted, obscured, a clue to an event, a date and time, a place. But would even Sherlock Holmes be able to worry it out? Poirot? Colombo?

I’m sure they would.

“Just one more thing… Does tequila go bad over time?”

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