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

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

Some Weeks You’re The Windshield

…and some weeks you’re the bug.

Again, as with the root canals, know that it could be so much worse doesn’t really help make it better.

The good news is that the immediate problem that led to it not starting or running will only cost a couple hundred dollars to fix. It’s all of the other critical stuff they found that’s going to cost ten times that.

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Filed under Paul, Photography

If You Have Your Health

I’ve explained to the endodontist, who really does seem to be a nice guy, that it’s nothing personal, but I truly do hate going to see him.

I took this while I was waiting to start. 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.

But I asked, and the doctor’s assistant DID agree that I looked cool with the glasses on. That was important.

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Filed under Health, Photography

Be Grateful

I stepped out this evening late and caught a beautiful sight, the three-day old crescent moon just disappearing behind the trees and Castle Peak.

Because of all of the smoke in the air from the brush fires everywhere, the moon was a vibrant orange color.

I wish I could get the iPhone images to show that off.

Why should you “be grateful?” Well, aside from all of the usual reasons (i.e., even with all of the normal day-in, day-out BS we deal with, it could be so, so much worse), there’s the fact that if I hadn’t seen this and taken a couple of quick pictures to share, I was going to share a goofy selfie that I took while in the endodontist’s chair today for the second of three root canals in a three week period. (Not fun, not feeling so good tonight. Growing old and being the mature, responsible adult character sucks.) Trust me, a beautiful, orange, crescent Moon is so much better to look at than a drooling idiot wearing a bib!

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography

What’s Missing?

Vermont has lots and lots of stone and it’s been used as a building material for a couple hundred years now. In Springfield, my old home town, you can find stone walls like this everywhere.

Look at all of those wonderful nooks and crannies! As you know if you’ve been reading this site for any length of time, around here anything like this would be filled with lizards! In Vermont, where it’s covered in snow and ice and sub-zero temperatures for big chunks of the year, there wasn’t a lizard to be seen.

But life will fill any ecosystem. I finally spotted an occupant – a chipmunk! Cuter than your average lizard I guess, especially since we humans do seem to be partial to mammals when judging “cute,” but I missed my little “Freds” and “Bubbas.”

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Filed under Critters, Photography

Two Honkin’ Huge Panoramas From Ascutney

Normally I post reduced sized files on this site, just because I’m paying for storage space, I’ve been posting for a long time, and I don’t want to use up all that I’m already paying for. But today, because I love these two images so much and want to share them with you so badly, I’m going to give you the full-sized files of the two panoramic views I took from the top of the observation tower on Mount Ascutney three weeks ago. Where normally I’ll post files between 1MB and 2MB in size, these are 16M and 17MB files. Click on them, blow them up, go looking at them in all of their glorious detail.

This covers about a 300º field of view. On the far left, the microwave towers are to the southwest of the observation tower. Moving to the right in the image, we’re looking toward the east, over the Connecticut River valley into southern and central New Hampshire. You can see all of the ski trails on Mt. Sunapee, and the small town is Claremont, NH. Moving to the right hand side, the Franconia Range of mountains is visible in the far, far distance beyond the foreground northern shoulder of Ascutney. On the far right side of the image we’re looking back to the west into Vermont.

Again, about a 300º field of view, so there’s a lot of overlap between this picture and the first one, with the view to the west on the far left of this image and the far right of the upper image, the microwave towers to the south in the middle of this image, and the view to the east into New Hampshire on the far right here.

I could have sat up there with a pair of binoculars and a backpack full of cameras all day long.

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Filed under Panorama, Photography, Travel

Golden

It’s been a couple of years since I last had grilled cheese sandwiches. Not for lack of desire, but all of those carbs don’t fit into my current diet, and I’m good at adulting, even when it sucks. Tonight there was a request.

It was good to see that I hadn’t lost my touch. The sandwiches were “Golden!!”

As I’ve stated at least once before, this is how family tradition dictates that grilled cheese sandwiches be served in the household. When I was a kid, my mother would usually burn one side of the sandwich, and I mean she would char it as if with nuclear hellfire, and then she would serve it with that side down on the plate and hidden. By the time I was a teen I had caught on to that attempted ruse and I would ask that the sandwich be presented on the spatula (as above) for inspection, then flipped over onto the plate for review of the other side (as below). The best sandwiches, thousands of which I made for my kids in their youth, were “golden!!” and full of gooey, cheesey wonderfulness.

I would occasionally char one, but at least I was honest about it. And to this day, even though my kids are grown, we’ll occasionally proudly pass around on the family group chat pictures of a particularly nicely done grilled cheese sandwich.

These traditions are important.

 

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Filed under Family, Photography

Are We Still Doing This?

Democracy, that is. We’re hip deep in fireworks, which is a good thing. Whereas democracy seems to be on shakier ground.

These are actually from an international competition in Montreal in August 2009, but “close enough for government work!”

 

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Filed under Fireworks, Photography, Politics

Firefly

I’ve gone off at length about the joy of seeing hundreds if not thousands of fireflies in the woods out behind the Hartness House every night when we were in Vermont. We don’t have fireflies in SoCal – except for one big one tonight.

Named more for the SF series and movie, this was the 5th launch of the Alpha launch vehicle from Firefly Aerospace. You can see the orangish trail coming up behind the palm trees on the right, lit by the Sun somewhere far over the western horizon, while above the telephone pole on the left you can see the second stage heading south to orbit (it got there successfully!) with the just separated first stage falling back behind it, venting excess fuel.

Up close, the “V”-shaped exhaust from the second stage is clearly seen as it heads uphill, while the first stage is at the center of that “butterfly” of gas behind it. One or both of the two small dots might be fairing halves that were jettosined to save weight after the rocket got out of the atmosphere.

Not perfectly seen here, but we got a decent “jellyfish” effect from the exhaust plume expanding and glowing in the sunlight in the dark sky after sunset.

This launch looked different from the SpaceX launches we see once a week or so now. The SpaceX Falcon 9 is a much bigger rocket with more engines and exhaust, but this was a nice launch to see, very pretty! Congratulations

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Filed under Photography, Space

Bunny Bunny

There are several of these little critters around. Normally they’re not out until it’s dark, but I surprised this guy just after sunset.

He froze at first and I tried to be conversational, but as soon as I moved he was off like a bat outta Hell, under the car, through the roses, and into the neighbor’s yard.

The joke’s on Bunny Bunny – they have astroturf. Good luck getting dinner over there!

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Filed under Critters, Photography