Mood.
Anger is an energy.
Author Archives: momdude
The Winds, She Are A-Howlin’
49 MPH?
Sounds about right! And here’s what it sounded like…
Those wind chimes will be working overtime. I guess it will be a stress test on the workmanship in the new nest out on the patio that those house finches built.
Filed under Castle Willett, Weather
By The Mailbox
On a day which featured a truly ugly and horrible thing along with all of the usual crap, it was a surprise and a small joy to find these next to the mailbox when I got home:
If they’ve ever been there before in the eleven months we’ve lived here, I’ve been blind to them.
Which may in fact be the biggest takeaway. It’s possible that they only bloom for a few minutes a day around sunset, or that they only bloom for a few days every year…
…but I’m going to go with the probability that they’ve been there before, but I was busy getting the mail and ignoring the flowers that were six inches from my feet.
I did not stop to smell them – one thing at a time. (Plus, they’re not roses. I don’t know what they are, but they’re not roses.)
Thinking tonight of those who are having much shittier days that I did.
Filed under Castle Willett, Flowers, Photography
Big Black Fred
This guy was sunning himself next to the trash barrels when I went out this afternoon:
I’m actually surprised by what the photos show him to look like in detail. From where I was standing and taking the pictures (about ten to fifteen feet away with a big telephoto lens) he looked to be solid black.
As you can see, he’s got a much, much more detailed and not quite as dark scaling pattern.
He was also pretty calm about standing his ground – I’m guessing that he’s pretty comfortable with the environment around the trash bins and the ivy and bushes immediately behind them, so he knew that he could get to cover very quickly. Most of the other lizards I see in the “new” house sun themselves more out in the open and are pretty skittish. This guy let me step up to within about seven or eight feet on this picture before he boogied.
But he was back out quickly after I dropped off the trash – I saw him back out there just a couple of minutes later. Something besides the sun had his attention.
Filed under Castle Willett, Critters, Photography
No Longer Charred
You might remember that we had a major brush fire here back in November. It left tens of thousands of acres blackened and charred.
Then came the rains that caused mudslides, flooding, and rock slides as the denuded hillsides had nothing to hold the soil.
But life is cyclic. (Life is also “psychotic,” but we’re going for upbeat and cheerful tonight, so work with me here.) The plants that covered those hillsides have evolved over millennia to have their seeds survive those brushfires – some even require it occasionally. And all of that rain followed by our current bouts of warm weather lead to…
Five months ago, these hills were black and smoking, not a single green or living thing in sight. Our house and the west end of the San Fernando Valley is beyond those hills about four miles. The fire had started up there and then headed straight south, coming down over these ridges, jumping the 101 Freeway into Agoura, then south through Mailbu to be stopped only by the Pacific Ocean.
You can see the trees that may or may not ever recover. These must have a chance because the crews have already cut down hundreds of them that were totally gone. But while the trees may take years to come back and recover, the grasses and weeds come back much faster. Everything out here is now covered in yellow mustard flowers and purple sage.
It’s hard to see in the shadow and backlighting, but those darker areas are all purple sage, much like the ones I’ve shown you in our front yard. It’s gorgeous.
Of course, we’re still on that aforementioned cycle – all of this growth will turn brown in July, and by November…
Filed under Flowers, Los Angeles, Photography
Mottled Sky
I liked the texture on the underside of this cloud layer a few days ago – not quite mammatus clouds, but there’s a bit of that sort of structure, especially in the lower left above the palm trees.
Simple pleasures. Better when shared.
Filed under Photography, Weather
A Bittersweet Anniversary
Have you ever had a feeling, a tickling at the base of your brain, a twinge in the gut that means that there’s something that you’re supposed to realize, to remember, to be aware of, but for the life of you it’s just slipping away in the fog of confusion and stress? The knowledge that you’re sure there’s something that you should be having an “A-HA!” moment about, but instead your brain is just spinning like a kitten chasing its tail?
What am I forgetting? A birthday? A meeting? Some sort of deadline?
Not necessarily a “sense of impending doom,” but rather a void, a memory that got forgotten before it could be remembered?
Something about the date. April 4th. Oh-four, oh-four.
Early morning, April four
Shot rings out in the Memphis sky…
No, that’s not it, but we’re on the right track. I know that’s today, but this is more personal.
Finally…
On my desk I have a digital picture frame that scrolls through a couple thousand favorite pictures every day. I miss about 90% of them because I’m busy, but it’s okay because they’ll roll back around in a few hours. But I happened to look up at this one.
Ah. Yes. Four-four.
But that didn’t seem to be all of it. So I looked up the file.
April 4th. 2009. Ten years ago today.
I had been out on the tarmac alone, tying down the aircraft and finishing up the routines following the flight. But I wanted to just be doing a happy dance and had no one to share it with. Some poor stranger wandered by and I grabbed him and asked if he could take the picture for me. He was gracious enough to accommodate me.
That paper? That the FAA certificate that says that I had passed my check ride. I was now officially a pilot.
That was one of the best days of my life, a memory that no one will ever take from me. Not on a par with the birth of my kids or my wedding day, but as far as personal accomplishments go, it’s up there with graduation days, finishing marathons, arriving in Europe or Asia for the first time…
Why is it bittersweet? Because things changed, and no matter how much I want to be in the left seat “up there going somewhere,” the fact is that I was only an active pilot for a little over thirty months after this picture was taken. It’s been over 7 1/2 years since I’ve flown, and barring another drastic change for the better, it’s unlikely to happen again soon. Despite the fact that I spend an inordinate amount of time hanging around planes on the weekends with my CAF gig.
So, thanks, subconscious! There’s no doubt that’s an important one and I guess I’m glad that it didn’t go by unnoticed and unheralded – but maybe I could have passed on this one.
Filed under Flying, Paul, Photography
Darkness Is Coming But Spears Of Sunlight Linger
The hills of Southern California are covered with houses.
(And the streets are lined with billboards for cannabis dispensaries, but that’s a rant for another day.)
As the sun sets in the west, the hillsides to the east often find that ONE house that’s lined up perfectly, its windows acting like mirrors to reflect the fading rays of the sun right into my office window.
Like a one-day beacon, this particular house shines. Tomorrow, perhaps a different one.
A week later, that first house is just another semi-illuminated dot on the hillside.
But another house has stepped in, while the first house is no doubt shining bright in another office to my left or right a few windows or a few blocks away.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that this change from day to day is proof that the Earth and Sun are moving in relation to each other. No doubt a careful measurement of the changes from day to day across a tall office building would allow you to calculate that movement and predict the Sun’s position.
If you don’t have a handy twelve-story, steel and glass edifice handy, you could always just use large stone monuments. What’s that sort of thing called again? A “henge”?
And so the darkness comes again. But as has been noted, “We love the stars too dearly to be fearful of the dark.”
Filed under Los Angeles, Photography
No Context For You – April 01st
I have no clue – it’s on my phone and was taken at 19:07 tonight. All I know is that my personal Rorschach Test sees that big thing on the left with a decidedly Georgia O’Keeffe vibe going on.
I’ve been enjoying my Bose wireless headphones quite a bit, pretty much on a daily basis for at least an hour or two once I get home from the office. The batteries will hold a full charge for close to a week at that rate (about 20 hours total is what they say, and I’m finding that to be pretty accurate) but I usually charge them overnight before they get too depleted.
Until last night.
One feature of these headphones is a little robot voice that will tell you what the battery status is when they’re turned on. (I think the little voice will tell you a couple dozen other things, like if there’s an incoming phone call and so on.) Last night, I found that when the battery starts to get low, you’ll get spoken warnings once the battery is down to about 10%.
I kept going since I was on a roll with a project. I got another warning. Or two.
Then I heard, “My battery’s low, please recharge me now.”
And all I could think of was Opportunity’s last message. “My battery is low and it’s getting dark.”
A headphone’s simple warning about battery status shouldn’t leave you wanting a pillow fort, hot chocolate, and some alone time.
Filed under Deep Thoughts, Paul, Photography, Space
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 