What did I learn?
tl;dr version – a 30-minute job turned into a six-hour job and today I’m sore as hell after lifting too much, stretching too much, and doing all sorts of contortions that my middle-aged body isn’t used to.
And it’s almost Monday.
Hitting the new week running…
Filed under Castle Willett, Paul
First of all, with our extremely territorial male Anna’s Hummingbird, that bar isn’t set real high. He’ll chase off any other hummingbird that comes near the two feeders he can see, and he’ll almost always buzz my head if I go out and stand near one of them.
Today I was out in the back for over six hours, working on what I had hoped would be a half-hour job (don’t ask, I feel like I’ve been beaten with a stick) and during the course of that ordeal I ended up noticing that these flowers on the vines there (morning glories of some sort? I think I looked it up once, but I’m too damn tired to go find it right now) were in bloom, so I took pictures.
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!
Right by my ear, then off to one of the feeders. “I wan’t threatening you, no, honest! I was just going to the feeder and didn’t notice you there!”
Yeah, right. Mark my words, one of these days I’m going to end up in the ER with a live, trapped, pissed off hummingbird in my ear and I’m going to have to explain it to some poor, beleaguered nurse who won’t believe a word I say.
(Okay, I went and looked it up. They’re Lavendar Trumpet Vine flowers.)
Filed under Birds, Flowers, Photography
What an amazing film.
It’s Oscars season, and various cable networks are showing award winning films from past years. In this case, Turner Classic Movies, and “All That Jazz,” one of my all-time favorite films.
As I do almost every time I see this film at home, especially when the theme is “The Oscar Winners,” I have to check and see why it didn’t win the Best Film award, or why Roy Scheider didn’t win for Best Actor.
Oh. Yeah. THAT year.
“Kramer vs. Kramer” swept a slew of the big awards. Best Picture, Best Actor (Dustin Hoffman), Best Supporting Actress (Merryl Streep). Fair enough.
What else was up for Best Picture?
“Norma Rae,” with Sally Field winning Best Actress.
“Breaking Away”
“Apocalypse Now,” which begs the question of how did “Kramer Vs Kramer” beat THAT film??!!
I never saw “All That Jazz” in the theater. Still haven’t, would love to, will have to make a mental note to catch it some art house here in LA.
“Not my kind of film” would have been my first thought having seen just the trailers and previews. I still don’t remember why or how I watched it, I was probably bored and it was the best thing on. I just remember watching it on cable way, way, way back, when HBO was just a wee lad and something of a novelty.
It was okay. I liked it pretty well, but I was confused as hell. Who was the lady in white, played by Jessica Lange? I liked the energy, the weird story, the passion, the music, but I was a little bit lost. But I like weird.
And then…
At the very end, I GOT IT. (Maybe I’m a slow learner. It wouldn’t be the first time, nor the last.)
I had to watch it again from the beginning as soon as possible, knowing now what I hadn’t known the first time through. And I was blown away. And watched it again. And again.
Now it’s one of those films that I’ve seen so many times, but I still see something new every time.
If you’ve seen the film, I hope that you love it as much as I do. If you haven’t, it’s a great time to see it for the first time. It’s wonderful.
It’s Oscars time.
Filed under Entertainment, Movies
Before dinner I was taking a break for a few minutes, sitting out in the back yard in that white chair out toward the edge of the drop off down the hill.
The sun was warm, it was quite pleasant, probably about 70°F, the strong winds of the last several days gone. I sat for 15-20 minutes, skimming social media on my phone and enjoying the weather.
Sitting very still, apparently.
At the edge of the hill there’s a little terrace, about five feet down, with a set of steps over on the right, by the ice plant. Down the hill, along the outer edge of that terrace, there’s a chain link fence, that may or may not define the edge of the property. (There are a couple more chain link fences running parallel to it horizontally along the ridge, but no way to get down there and just ivy and weeds covering the hillside. I rent, so I don’t care where the property ends, but it could also be at one of those fences.)
I heard something hit the chain link fence and then wiggle it. I had my suspicions.
A few second later I saw movement at the edge of the yard, above the terrace and just four or five feet from me. Whatever it was had hit the top of the wall behind some of that tallish, decorative sage grass that grows there so I couldn’t see it and it couldn’t see me.
I stayed very still.
And around the corner of the clump of grass came my suspect.
(May or may not be the actual squirrel.)
I expected it to bolt, but noooooo! It started to creep forward toward the yard behind us, oblivious to my presence. For about three feet. Then it froze.
Probably no more than an inch or two from my sneakers, it didn’t even raise its head, just moved its eyes, almost in cartoon fashion.
(Yeah, that’s the attitude!)
I still hadn’t moved, but quietly said, “Something I can help you with?”
Friends, I will bet anyone $5 that if you go examine where that critter was standing you will find a little pile of squirrel shit.
The squirrel levitated at Warp Factor 8 over to the big tree back there and then sat about 15 feet up, clicking and chattering at me. Obviously, this was all my fault!
I couldn’t have caught or chased it to save my life. I was laughing too hard.
Gotta keep that chair there and spend more “quiet time” reading there. Who knows what or who might drop by next?
Filed under Castle Willett, Critters, Photography
I absolutely love the color on this one.
It’s just sitting by the driveway, all alone, minding its own business.
A few days, maybe a week, ten days tops. and it goes from OMG to DOA.
Sort of the definition of “transient,” but holy wow, how glorious for those few days.
I wonder if there are creatures or beings who look at we frail humans and think the same thing of our three score and ten.
Filed under Flowers, Photography
For Christmas I got a wonderful little thingamabob, a night light that projects “aurora” on the ceiling.
“Aurora-like” might be more accurate, but it’s lovely and I like it a lot. It’s sort of like a kaleidoscope in night light form, constantly shifting and sending out varying curtains and streamers of red, blue, purple, and green light all over the ceiling.
The blue spot on the right is from the night light built into a fan. Combined, it’s quite the effect.
It’s not nearly as bright as this makes it seem – we do need to sleep, after all. But the lights are quite visible, especially when your eyes get dark adapted, and it works well as a night light (which is, after all, its original function) when my middle-aged body has to wander out of bed several times a night.
Very pretty. Very peaceful. Very relaxing.
And I’m a lot less likely to break a toe at 3:13 AM! We’re all happy about that.
Filed under Art, Paul, Photography
It’s spam. It’s phishing. It’s bullshit and potentially dangerous.
And it also seems to be more clever than the run of the mill spam and phishing trash that’s out there today, flooding our inboxes and spam filters. You know…
Stuff like this is easy to spot as spam and trash, even when the odd one slips through and ends up in my inbox instead of the spam filter. Lots of emojis, a gazillion different fonts and “clever” misspellings to try to get through the spam filters, all trying to get you to click on a deal that’s just too good to be true or a mindless threat to catch the unwary.
But these!
…it seemed quite plausible that there was a new app folks were using and it just was being incorrectly flagged as spam! I could have mistakenly clicked on either of these!
Except for one teeny, tiny little detail.
Both of the friends mentioned are deceased and have been for a while.
Maybe I got “lucky” in that the clever little bot in question picked two friends at random (I’m assuming it scraped my friends list and my birthday from Facebook) who were highly unlikely to be sending me birthday greetings from the Great Beyond. Maybe you won’t be so lucky.
So, beware the “BirthdayApp” spam. It’s working hard to try to fool you. I don’t know exactly what it does to you if it gets you to click on it, but I really hope you don’t find out the hard way.
Another nice thing about being at the Giltinis game at the LA Coliseum yesterday was that the Coliseum is just a couple miles south of Downtown Los Angeles, next to the USC campus. And for plane watchers in SoCal, downtown LA is where the big jets coming into LAX from Asia, Hawaii, and the Pacific Northwest all are finishing up their downwind legs (from west to east) and turning base (toward the south) in the landing pattern. See that green line?
(image from FlightRadar24.com)
So sitting in the stands at the Coliseum (the green square just south of USC on the map) it’s easy to watch a string of jets, many of them the big trans-Pacific jumbos, descending through 3,500 feet and making that big right turn overhead.
What a nice afternoon! The only thing better for plane spotting is to go down to LAX and watch them land!
Which sounds like another great idea for some sunny day soon!
Filed under Flying, Los Angeles, Photography
I went to my first professional rugby game tonight, the LA Giltinis hosting the San Diego Legion.
A fun game, with the Giltinis winning 26-13. I only understand the big picture on the rules and I’m totally ignorant of about 99% of the nuances and fine details, but it was still a fun experience!
The Los Angeles Coliseum has hosted two Olympics, the LA Rams, at one point way back the LA Dodgers, and for decades the USC Trojans. It seats 93,607 currently. The Giltinis drew maybe 2,000 today, so it’s an interesting experience in a stadium that big.
It was a fun day.
Filed under Los Angeles, Panorama, Paul, Photography, Sports
In case anyone else hasn’t been paying attention (and I know you all have, right?) SpaceX is still launching Falcon 9 rockets like nobody’s business. And that whole thing about reusability?
(Image from SpaceX)
Tonight’s booster launched, flew, and landed for the TWELFTH time. A dozen. And in a few weeks it will no doubt go for number thirteen.
There are multiple other boosters in the fleet at eleven flights, with others anywhere from three or four on up. I haven’t checked, but I think there about ten or so boosters in the fleet, with new ones being added every now and then.
Later this year there are three Falcon Heavy flights scheduled. Those are going to be spectacular.
SpaceX is sending astronauts to ISS, as well as cargo.
And then there’s also the whole Starship program.
Keep on trucking. The road to space is opening.
Filed under Space
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