Author Archives: momdude

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About momdude

Space cadet | Family dude | Photographer | Music lover | Traveler | Science fiction fan | Hugo Award nominee | Writer | 5x NASA Social participant | KC Chiefs fan | LA Kings fan | Senior Director of Finance & Administration for ALS Network | Member & former staff Finance Officer at the Commemorative Air Force SoCal Wing | Hard core left-wing liberal | Looking for whatever other shenanigans I can get into

The Moon’s Back!

Well, actually it’s front, since that’s the only side we see from here…

Tired and stupid Dad jokes! Because I’m a tired and stupid dad! (Why does “tired and stupid” sound correct but “stupid and tired” doesn’t?)

And ZOOM! It’s not just for tired and stupid working from home meetings any more! The Moon’s that tiny little crescent near the horizon? So, ZOOM!

It’s amazing, it’s back here (more or less, for various values of “here”) every four weeks! And it’s much more fun to see here in the evening than it is to get up pre-dawn and see it curved the other way about six days earlier. (Or twenty-two days later.) Pre-dawn astronomy is only for particularly special events, like comets, or eclipses, or once-in-a-lifetime alien mothership visitations!

 

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space

It’s Seen Better Days

…but then again, so has the country that it represents.

This is the same flag that had started to shred back in October with the wind storms that came through. At that point, leading up to the election, it was my opinion that things were pretty messed up and getting dangerous in the United States, so I left it like that as a symbol of the country’s condition.

Since then the wind has continued to shred and wrap, much as the political winds have. Today, of course, that culminated in the second impeachment of a lower-than-whale-shit waste of protoplasm who never should have been within 100 miles of the White House.

But assuming that creature doesn’t do something truly insane and is allowed to do so by enough evil cult sycophants, in 6 days, 14 hours, 9 minutes, and 11 seconds (there’s an app for that!) I think we’ll be in a much better place (albeit with a metric shit-ton of work ahead of us!). I’m sure there will be some champagne, and I’m sure I can swing a new flag as a symbol of that new beginning.

But for tonight, we’re all still hanging on by a thread.

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Filed under Castle Willett, Photography, Politics

Coping

As has been noted, there’s a ***LOT*** of bad shit going on right now. How are you coping?

I have a few things to share. Note, these are not guaranteed to get you through the work day – probably quite the opposite so far as getting work done if you’re working from home. But they might let you get through to the other side more or less sane, as opposed to exploding.

  1. OK Go videos – go to YouTube or wherever, there are dozens, each one more amazing than the next. No special effects, just astonishing creativity. And most have “Behind The Scenes” or “Making Of” or “Outtakes” videos to accompany the official video.
  2. Cornell Lab FeederWatch Cam – these are the folks who made the wonderful Merlin app that I use and have talked about for IDing birds that wander into our back yard. When I was looking for something different to have on as “video noise” at my desk earlier this week I stumbled on this. WONDERFUL!! Small birds such as sparrows and chickadees, whole flocks of mourning doves, at least two types of woodpeckers, cardinals and blue jays, and the occasional squirrel dropping in like Death From Above. (I suspect the squirrels are jumping in from an off-camera tree that might be a good leap away, so it’s nearly a suicide mission for them, but there’s SO! MUCH! FOOD!)
  3. LabPadre – LabPadre currently has seven cameras set up around the area of the SpaceX testing facility on the Texas coast by South Padre Island. If there’s no actual testing going on during a given day it’s a little boring (but makes great wallpaper and white noise) but when they’re testing (and they’re testing a LOT these days) there might be a static fire engine test or even a flight for one of the prototype Starship spacecraft. The next static fire is probably late tomorrow afternoon, the next big flight is probably coming up later this week? This weekend? First thing next week? It depends on when they’re ready and when the weather cooperates. Still cool to see spacecraft the size of the Space Shuttle stack being churned out by the dozen for testing and occasional destruction while testing. But when they talk about having crews on the moon in 5-6 years and on Mars in 8-10 years (actually those are my estimates, they’re saying half that time) I don’t doubt them.
  4. Hundreds of Hummingbirds – Birds stop coming around after sunset and sunset comes early in Ithaca, New York these days, so when they go to night vision and the only thing moving around are the mice (which I’ve never seen in the feeder, since they can’t jump as far as the squirrels can), there’s a site here in the LA area that has set up a buffet for dozens and dozens of hummingbirds, and there’s always a line waiting for an open spot. The colors and iridescence and amazing flying ability of literally dozens and dozens of these beautiful creatures is something I could watch all day.

So, there are a few ideas. Of course, turning off Twitter and Facebook and picking up a book or listening to some music are always an excellent idea, and if you have the opportunity to safely get out (take a mask and wear it!) and walk around the block or take a short hike through the woods or around the pond, that would be best of all.

What coping mechanisms or favorite distracting and/or entertaining sites have you discovered?

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Filed under Entertainment

Hibiscus Aftermath

A few weeks ago I posted pictures of the hibiscus flowers that I had taken while putting up Christmas lights. Now that the lights were taken down, I note that the flowers did what all flowers did. And, I guess, all Christmas light displays as well.

The focus and depth of field is just a bit odd on a couple of these photos.

I like it though – let’s call it “different” or “unconventional” instead of “wrong” or “bad.”

I think that’s a lot of us today – exhausted, drooping, trying to hold on, a little bit off, fading, just trying to get by another day. That’s not wrong or bad – it’s just different. As so many have pointed out, and I’ll echo, be kind to yourself these days. There’s a lot of bad shit and it seems to be getting deeper fast – it’s okay if the best you can do is just the best you can do. And remember that everyone else’s Hell is 100% – cut everyone some slack.

Except for fascists and Nazis. (You know who I’m talking about.) Fuck them.

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Filed under Flowers, Photography, Politics

No Context For You – January 10th

I hope your weekend was calm and relaxing. Somehow I don’t think the week ahead will be, on so many fronts.

I don’t think I’m really giving you the finger – think of it more as sharing one with you by accident.

Breathe.

Try to stay calm.

Try to stay safe.

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Filed under Photography, Politics

The Night Returns – 2021

I’ve pointed out before that the first night after the Christmas lights come down is always a melancholy and bittersweet one. This year the task of taking down the lights was made more “exciting” with a bit of wind. I decided to take it with a bit of good humor.

Not to worry – nothing bent, nothing broken, on either me or the BBQ.

It’s amazing that it takes about three days for me to put up the lights and about three hours to take them down. I’m sure there’s some mathematical theory that explains that, probably dealing with chaos theory, increasing entropy, organized vs disorganized eigenstate vectors, or some such jargon. It just always seems weird to me.

And so, at the end of the day (literally) we’re left with just the porch and garage lights and Orion rising, partially hidden by that giant tree in the back yard.

 

 

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Filed under Christmas Lights, Photography

Buckle Up!

Wow.

I’ve still been busier than God all day – running an accounting department for a non-profit with an eight-figure annual budget means that this time of year is juuuuuuuust a bit hectic to begin with. And then the news alerts keep coming in making my phone sound like a pinball machine…

Here’s something I read from someone I trust (over on the social media side you’ll recognize her as someone I’ve been following and re-posting for about five years or more) and it explains a lot of what’s going – it’s an Extinction Burst.

So the next couple of weeks, i.e., the next eleven days in particular, could get very “interesting.” And by “interesting” I mean that there’s a chance that it could get “dangerous.” Even if it doesn’t come to that, it will most certainly be stressful and there will be moments when our lives might fill up with anxiety.

Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other.

Be smart. Be safe.

Breathe. Drink water. Get some exercise.

If you find yourself getting sucked into the crazy, it’s okay to turn it off. Listen to some music. (Probably not “Hamilton” or “Le Miz” right at the moment, if you know what I’m saying.) Read a book. Bing “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist.” (There’s probably crying involved with that, but it’s the good kind.) Watch the Chiefs march toward back-to-back Super Bowls.

Oh, yeah – wear your mask. Stay home whenever you possibly can. Isolate. Wash your hands. Don’t forget that in addition to the attacks on our brains and our psyches, there’s a pretty significant attack on our physical wellbeing going on.

I want all of you here, healthy, probably happier, on February 1st. And December 31st. And onward.

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Filed under Health, KC Chiefs, Paul, Politics

Hair

Because I’m still too irate to speak rationally about yesterday’s events (i.e., the attempted coup at the Capitol by the “President” and his cult) to speak without massive amounts of screaming and obscenities (which I prefer to keep off of this site and use on social media instead) I’ll instead blather on for a few seconds about something else that’s been catching my attention the last few days while my brain is trying to revolt and not hear any more horrors.

Hair.

Now, one might think that given my preferred hair style, i.e.:

…and the way I accomplish it in these now nearly ten months of quarantine and lockdown:

…that hair wouldn’t be that big of a deal. After all, how hard could it be to just buzz it down to fuzz? (“BUZZ FUZZ!!!” Sorry, Paul’s brain is experiencing issues…) You cut it all down to one uniform, short length and it all grows back and stays pretty uniform and then at some point you repeat the process.

Right?

Apparently not.

There are either some assumptions in there that I’m not figuring out or my cranial follicles are conspiring to make me insane. Since the rest of the Known Universe is demonstrably working to make me insane, I suspect the latter.

But, what in hell am I talking about?

Well, first of all, let’s talk about the hair around my ears. (And you thought this was going to be boring!) That’s usually my number one indicator of when I need a new haircut since when it gets long enough it starts to tickle and bother me. Now, just a couple of weeks after a haircut, when I was very, very careful to buzz everything down to a uniform length, the hair above my right ear is long enough to be tickling and bugging me – but not my left ear or anywhere else. In fact, it’s still pretty short everywhere else.

Then there’s this SPOT up near the top of my head where out of nowhere in the last three or four days it’s had some kind of bizarre growth spurt and it’s about three times longer than anywhere else. I know for a fact that it was all cut when I last conned the clippers but now out of the blue it’s just almost freakishly long in this one little patch.

WHY? I thought that the pace of hair growth would be pretty uniform, but that’s apparently wrong. Or, again, conspiracy plus Universe equals insanity.

And don’t even get me started on my eyebrows. I believe it was John Scalzi who once referred to his as the “Thufir Hawat starter set.” That’s the track I’m on.

Is it an age thing? Am I doomed to spend the rest of my years unexpectedly sprouting in odd places?

Whatever. Maybe I’ll just start shaving it entirely again. I tried that once and found that it was bizarre (particularly the part down at the end, the incident with the towel) and too much work to maintain. But faced with this madness, it might be the lesser of two evils.

And why are there always only two evils?

Wasn’t this better than talking about politics?

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Filed under Paul, Politics, Random Blatherationings

Did I Miss Anything Today?

Just yelled an obscenity as I realized it’s 23:52 and I haven’t posted today. I’ve been hunkered down with year-end and month-end deadlines from Hell.

Did I miss anything today? Anything exciting going on in the world?

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Filed under Paul, Politics

Supersaturated

It’s been a day. And a week. And… Just keep expanding out from there, I guess. Between the holidays and work and the hangar and feeling like I’m being nibbled to death by ducks and ***LIFE***

Breathe. Slowly. Relax…

Those meditation apps like HeadSpace and Calm want you to get into your zone and feel a golden light filling you, as you’re present with every muscle and bone and fiber in your body, the light filling you up from your toes to the top of your head and then your being feeling as if you’re being suspended from a golden beam of light coming out of the top of your head…

There are days when all I can think about is how much I wish that golden beam was a twenty terawatt laser so that I can start melting things to slag. I’m not sure if that means I should give up on meditation those days, or if I need to spend eight or nine hours doing it. Could go either way.

Now I know how a supersaturated solution feels.

I’m sure tomorrow will be better. This, by the way, was not AT ALL what I sat down to write.

Go figure.

(Video from North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics)

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Paul