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

Random Old Photos – July 20th

Sherman, set the Way Back Machine for 2014! From the date, I’m guessing we were on our way back to Springfield for the 40th high school reunion, but this time instead of flying direct into Boston and driving north, we flew into Burlington via O’Hare and drove south.

One of my favorite places in the Burlington Airport is this pedestrian bridge between the main terminal and the parking garages. From here you get a nice view of the gates and runways (it’s not that big of an airport, a small fraction of the size of someplace like LAX or ORD, and even smaller than someplace like MCI or SAN) and to make it comfy for you while you’re waiting and watching planes, they have this row of extremely comfortable rocking chairs to use.

If you’ve rushed to get ready for your flight and hustled to get there early and have time to kill and unwind, or if you’re worn out from a long flight in and just need to breathe before your brother-in-law from Monteplier gets there to pick you up, it’s a perfect place to kick back and watch planes.

It’s almost enough to make it worth changing planes in Chicago or Newark to go into Burlington instead of Boston.

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Filed under Flying, Photography, Travel

Sunset – July 19th

Two days ago I had cloudy “skyscape” photos and noted that by sunset they were gone and “we just got a nice gradient effect. Nice, but not spectacular.”

This is what I was talking about.

Lots of color, but very subtle hues. Pastels, not “Holy crap!” reds and oranges painted on dramatic cloud shapes.

Trees and human infrastructure silhouetted against the fading light. It’s a refined taste.

One of the things our Forever Home will have will be a nice, comfy bench or swing facing west so, gradient or clouds or anything in between, I can go out and chill and relax and breathe and watch the sunset.

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Filed under Forever Home, Sunsets

If You Have Your Health – Part Deux

Nine days ago I had my second root canal of the last four weeks, and commented that, “I would have liked another photo with my mouth full of clamps and tubes and tools and drills and hoses and all of that nonsense, but they were busy.”

Today I had my third (and please, dear, sweet, Baby Jeezus, let it be the last) root canal of the last four weeks, and some odd stuff happened.

I not-so-miraculously hit every single traffic light as red for miles and miles (all the way from Fallbrook to Winnetka eastbound on Victory for those who know) on what is supposed to be a route with the lights synched. I saw another butt-ugly Cybertruck. (Is there any other kind?) I wound up following a huge pickup truck flying a huge flag for a certain Presidential candidate, making we pray for a can of lighter fluid or a flamethrower. (Why does the orange-colored dude have blue flags? Doesn’t that clash?)

The first two root canals took 40-45 minute and were more annoying and uncomfortable (once we got past the initial “numbing procedure” involving all of those nasty needles in places I don’t want needles) than anything else. Today’s dental session was just under two hours and there were some nightmare moments as the endodontist hit a live nerve several times, causing me to levitate out of the chair sort of like Sigourney Weaver in “Ghostbusters.” Actually, more like Linda Blair in “The Exorcist,” I’ll never be as stunningly gorgeous as Sigourney.

However, before that part of the experience, something came up and the endodontist had to step out for about ten minutes for some sort of emergency with a patient in a different office. When this happened, his assistant stayed with me to make sure that I was taken care of, but then she left as well.

Leaving me unsupervised. A tactical error on their part.

To answer the age old question, “YES! While 99.99% blind, in considerable discomfort, and with a fair amount of equipment and tubes and this thing in my mouth, I CAN figure out how to get my phone out of my pocket, unlock it, open the phone app, turn the camera around, and start taking selfies!” And no, it wasn’t until just this second that I considered what I would have done if I had dropped the phone when I couldn’t get up to retrieve it, thanks!

And for the record, the top edge of that blue plastic sheet that’s right under my nose? It spent most of the two hours TICKLING my nose and making me want to sneeze and cough and choke and convulse.

Do I know how to have a good time on a Thursday afternoon or what? (Still more fun than watching ANY of the RNC.)

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Filed under Health, Paul, Photography

Skyscapes – July 17th

Lots of nice, pretty, high clouds today – no rain for us.

I was hoping we might get a colorful, gorgous sunset with these clouds around to be a canvas for all of the colors, but they were gone by then, and we just got a nice gradient effect. Nice, but not spectacular.

We all could use a little bit of spectacular right now.

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Filed under Photography, Weather

No Context For You

It was daylight! (Sorta) Why is it so blurry? (It’s handheld.)

1/25 second exposure?? It should have been no longer than 1/250 second at most, and 1/2500 second wouldn’t have been unheard of.

Oh, yeah. That really makes that much of  a difference?

Huh!

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Filed under Birds, Photography, Travel

It’s Going To Get Worse Before It Gets Better

I’m talking about the world, folks, US politics specifically. We have a long way to go before the November elections and even if we get a best case result out of that (I’m eternally optimistic, but I remember 2016…) it’s going to be insane and chaotic.

So, again, here:

Go find a place like this! There were birds and fish and trees and grass! Turn off your damn phone! (These pictures were taken with a DSLR, not my phone.)

There were folks swimming and kayaking and fishing. (And waiting for the eclipse on this particular morning, but let’s focus on the big picture here, folks!) You can do that too.

It will lower your blood pressure and make you less likely to stroke out. Which would be a really stupid way to go, especially since it won’t make one iota of difference to the evil bastards that are screwing up the world. So stay calm, live to a ripe old age, and if necessary, do it to spite them!

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Health, Photography, Travel

Happy Bastille Day

Not because I’m French, or speak French, or have ever even been to France. (Someday…) Nope, just looking for any reason to celebrate, and having peasants rise up, overthrow the monarchy, and start beheading nobility sounded like a perfectly good cause today.

I thought that the Tour de France was finishing today, but apparently it’s next week, on the 21st. But Wimbledon finished today, along with the Copa and Euro soccer tournaments. And MLB wrapped up the “first half” of its season, with the All-Star break and other festivities starting tomorrow. So that gave me lots of things to do other than pay attention to the news.

These guys made excellent role models for that plan, not caring one whit about the news and all of the stupid things that humans are doing. I suspect they would be happier if we would stop cooking the planet as we’re in the middle of another long summer heat wave, but even after we manage to destroy ourselves, they’ll do just fine I suspect.

They’ll miss the two-quart buffets that I keep putting up, but those will disappear when we move to our Forever Home. I have no idea if future inhabitants of this house will bother to feed the hummers, but I can only worry about so many things, and that’s outside of my pay grade. I’ll probably leave the feeders and if the next tenants/owners want to take up the task of refilling them periodically, great. I’ll be feeding a new group of avian minions about 100 miles to the northeast. I hope. Someday. Soon. Maybe.

 

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Filed under Birds, Critters, Forever Home, Photography

In Need Of Calm

Time to step back, take a breath, and let some of the adrenaline burn off. Let’s go to a happy place.

Mount Ascutney in Vermont, of course. Maybe a third of the way up the trail from the parking lot to the summit, still on a reasonably flat stretch, there’s a spot where the tree canopy opens up and it’s sunny and the ground is covered in ferns.

I always make a point to stop there for a while. It’s quiet and beautiful and very, very green.

There are insects and bugs flitting about and I could hear birds (cardinals), but other than that it was dead quiet. I was lucky – while I was there, no one else was hiking along the trail to interrupt my reverie.

Behind me to the left the hillside climbs very steeply and there are some “small boulders the size of large boulders,” and through the trees you can see the mountains off in the distance (looking toward New Hampshire and the Connecticut River to the east, I think, maybe?).

Even if we can’t go to the “Ascutney Sea of Ferns” in person tonight, perhaps we can go there in our heads for a while and leave CNN, NYT, WSJ, and Twitter behind. They’ll be there when we come back, but in the meantime, our blood pressure and anxiety levels can drop back down to safe levels.

I’ll see you on the trail!

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Filed under Death Of Common Sense, Photography, Travel, Video

July Sunset

It’s been a while since we’ve had a really pretty sunset.

For weeks now it’s been “clear and a million.” Sometimes we’ve had some smoke in the air to give things an orange hue, but for the most part it’s been unspectacular.

Today we have some moisture and humidity coming in, so there are clouds and some variation to the sky.

It was very nice. If only we could get some rain out of these clouds, or better yet, rain and a thunderstorm.

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Filed under Photography, Sunsets, Weather

Mystery Neighbors

Literally overnight it looks like two new and strange bird nests have been assembled under the eaves of the roof outside of our front windows.

I’m guessing that they’re bird nests because they’re connected up underneath the eaves and I don’t know what other kind of critter might be doing that.

I’m guessing that the one on the right is more complete. It’s not 100% clear to me what they’re made of – some kind of grass, but I don’t recognize it as anything growing nearby.

The one on the left seems only partially finished, but it’s the same design structure. I didn’t see any birds (or any other critters) around either nest, even though I was looking for them once I noticed that these were there.

What’s so surprising is the speed with which they had to have been made. They’re not subtle, I saw the long strands hanging down from inside the house, and on the outside they’re ridiculously obvious. I didn’t see a thing on Wednesday, even when I came home from the gym about 19:00, so this ALL had to get done this morning, assuming they didn’t work at night.

I ran the pictures through Google Lens to see if it could ID anything, but came up blank. I also looked on a couple of bird sites, including on the Cornell site, but found nothing. In simply describing “basket-type bird’s nest made of grass” the main hit was for orioles, and I have seen the large black & yellow hooded orioles around, but I don’t see any way these nests, as big as they are, could accomodate them. They’re big birds, almost as big as crows or ravens.

I did get one site that said that possibility was a Black-headed Junco nest, and I know we have those in the yard and the size makes more sense, but that’s a tenuous clue at best.

I’ll keep my eyes open and see what happens.

Does anyone recognize the nest design or have any clues to share?

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Filed under Birds, Critters, Photography