I am definitely getting too old for this shit. Which in turn bothers me even more than just being tired like this.
It’s a viscious cycle. Or a viscous cycle, could go either way.
One of these might not fix me, but we can’t be sure without trying, right? This was probably Clay Lacy’s – there aren’t a lot of Staggerwings around, and fewer in this color.
Freakin’ GORGEOUS aircraft!
Filed under Flying, Photography
A statue in front of City Hall in a small city in the Czech Republic, Pardubice. 2016 I was there with my Pepperdine EMBA class, to visit the Foxconn computer factory there.
Kings, Cardinals, Bishops, cherubs, who knows what else. An article I found on the top twelve things to see in Pardubice includes City Hall, the bright white building in the background, but doesn’t mention anything about the statue in front. The “new” City Hall building dates to the 1890’s so one could assume that the statue is of a similar age.
As much as I would truly love to get back to Prague (and also see Paris, Rome, Vienna, Athens, Barcelona, and a couple dozen other European cities), I’m not sure that a repeat trip to Pardubice is high on the priority list.
Filed under Art, Photography, Travel
A small alien creature appears, vaguely cartoonish. It explains that it needs help, it’s building a dictionary to be used in translation of English to Galactic Standard. Please define “blue.”
Sort of like this, minus the tree?
Filed under Photography
Tonight we’re back at the Ahmanson Theater, probably for the final time for a while.
This is the last performance in this year’s program, and with the anticipated move to a Forever Home up in Hesperia or Apple Valley, we are not planning on renewing our subscription. If there’s something we absolutely HAVE to see, we can get tickets for a single performance and drive down to the big city for a weekend. (Ditto of course for hockey games, football games, baseball games, concerts, plays at the Pantages, etc.)
The Music Center here is about 2-3 blocks from City Hall and the areas where the ICE protests were earlier in the month. To no one’s surprise, despite the grotesque, horrible, and bald-faced lies being spewed by Faux News and ICE and the lower-than-whale-shit chucklefuck in the White House and all of his evil cult minions, LA did not burn down, there isn’t chaos and warfare in the streets, and the streets are not full of bodies. It was boring, except for the traffic getting into valet parking due to all three theaters being live tonight, along with the Disney Concert Hall across the street.
Enjoy your weekend, stay safe – I peeked at the news and it’s getting insane out there. Literally.
Filed under Entertainment, Los Angeles, Photography, Politics
Routine has its advantages. Knowing what day of the week it is. Knowing what day of the month it is. Knowing what time of day it is.
Take away some weekends, throw in a holiday on a Thursday, have a dental surgeon poking holes in you and tearing things out and drilling things in on a Friday afternoon…
And I’m clueless. I just want to reboot, reset, sleep for about 72 hours and figure out where I’m starting over when I wake up.
Still here. Still one foot in front of another. Enjoy your weekend! Hot rumor is that it’s summer!
I still really need to get Photoshop installed on the new computer so that I can clean up the dust spots…
Loud, evil, jet black minions. My evil army, to do my bidding!
Crows! A half dozen of them, they spent all day making quite the racket out in the back yard, hanging out and taunting the two dozen mockingbirds that were cooperating in mobbing them. (Yes, the crows will find the mockingbird nests and eat their eggs, so there’s some justification for the animosity.)
I was out for a break and eating a snack (cheese) and they flew down to sit on the fence to watch.
I didn’t have enough cheese to share, so I went in and got grapes. They LOVE grapes. I threw a couple dozen out in the yard and then went back inside. They all pounced as soon as I shut the door.
I will continue to feed them and train them to come when they see me in the yard. Once I have them linking my appearance to food and coming to the yard, I’ll start to train them.
I hope by the time we get to that point I can figure out something specific that I want to train them to do. Otherwise it’s just pointless.
Which would be ironic, but probably appropriate.
Filed under Birds, Photography, Video
Tomorrow’s a day off, a holiday?
Yeah. Right. And I’ve got this bridge to sell you.
Maybe I’ll at least sleep in late. Dreaming about being here, if I’m lucky, and not having semi-conscious stress dreams about Excel files and reports that don’t balance.
Sleep well, y’all!
Filed under Photography, Travel
Brussels, Cathedral of St Michael
I always will remember how the final, desperate, last chance, for all the marbles weapon that the humans put together against the aliens in “Footfall” was named Michael after the avenging archangel.
Never an avenging archangel of death around when you really need one.
Filed under Art, Photography, Travel
There was a SpaceX Falcon9 launch (with Starlink satellites) at 20:36, with sunset having occurred at 20:09. It was clear and I expected a spectacular sight – I was not disappointed.
Click on them – enjoy the full-sized files!
The rocket rose just to the right of the mountain, seen through those trees and headed toward orbit. The white exhaust plume is from the first stage, which cut off (MECO = Main Engine Cut Off) just behind that far left tree. You can see the rocket coasting and the second stage firing just above and to the left of that point.
The second stage, along with the Starlink payload, is headed to space and well above most of the atmosphere at this point, so the exhaust expands out in a cone behind it. The bright dot just behind and below it is the first stage, falling back toward the drone barge waiting for it off of Baja.
Behind it, the plume was being pushed around by high altitude winds and still brightly lit by the Sun, even though it was well after sunset here on the ground. A launch like this always leads to a ton of calls to 9-1-1.
Finally, as even the eastern-most parts of the plume fell into darkness, the western-most parts were still lit up but were starting to turn orange with the sunset.
I think I got a pretty decent view of the launch on video. It’s long, about 15 minutes, since I let it run, hoping to hear the sonic boom about 12-13 minutes after launch. (Spoiler: I didn’t hear the sonic boom, but the front yard sprinklers did turn on and I had to run for it to stay dry. You can stop watching the video after about the 8:45 mark, unless you want to see me scramble.)
Falcon9 shows up over the hill at about 3:43. MECO and stage separation happens at 4:29. At 5:35, in the plume behind the second stage, you can see three dots. That’s the 1st stage, and the two fairing halves, all falling back to be recovered and re-used on a future flight.
Another thing to look for is the reentry burn of the first stage. It can be seen starting up just to the left of the street light pole from 8:11 to 8:34, the first time I’ve ever seen it from here, over a hundred miles away. In this burn, the first stage slows down as it starts to hit the top of the atmosphere, reducing the heat and structural stress on reentry as transitions from falling to flying down onto the drone ship. Spectacular!
I’ve seen videos taken from the High Desert, Hesperia, Victorville, and Apple Valley, where folks there can still see these launches, even another hundred miles to the east. It will be interesting to watch for from that new viewpoint when we find the Forever Home.
Filed under Photography, Space, Sunsets, Video
You want to talk about an actual invasion of Los Angeles? Here! The freakin’ gophers are killing my yard from below!
This spot of lawn has a couple of recent mounds on the left, and three or four of them on the right. I was standing there in the middle of the two spots, minding my own business, middle of the day, and not five feet from me another chunk of sod shifted and that buck toothed little bastard stuck its head out, wished me a Happy Father’s Day, flipped me the bird, stuck out its tongue, and vanished.
I proceeded to thoroughly perforate the ground out for a couple of feet in all directions, finally leaving the pitch fork buried deep in the central tunnel opening, but I have no idea if I got him. I have no way of tracking him or knowing where he’s at down below. It could have seen me, mocked me, and then been 100 yards away two houses down the block by the time I grabbed the Pitchfork O’ Death. Or it could have been three feet away. I’ll never know.
Yes, I have become a cartoon character. FML!
Filed under Critters, Photography, Sietch Willett
 | Ronnie Willett on Fine Feathered Friends –… |
 | berich56 on Wispy With A Chance Of Straigh… |
 | Jemima Pett on War Board Review |
 | momdude on Above Average Sunset & Cre… |
 | Frederic Paulussen on Above Average Sunset & Cre… |
| Jemima Pett on Proof Of Life – Febrary… |
 | karen bear on iPhone 17 Moonrise |
 | Praveen Yadav on Evolution Of Some Weird C… |
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 