Category Archives: Critters

January 3, 2025 · 23:33

Office Visitor

I knew it was around – the cries have been loud and distinctive. But now it’s started to land repeatedly and lounge around in the small trees right outside of my 1st floor office window.

It’s a gorgeous looking red-shouldered hawk. (The yellow tint comes from the coating on the outside of the windows.) From this viewpoint it was maybe twenty feet away.

It’s other spot is in this tree about thirty-five feet away, up in this spot where the main trunk splits. Here it’s about twenty feet in the air, high enough so it’s not bothered by folks walking by on the sidewalk below.

Beauty!

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Filed under Birds, Critters, Photography

January 2, 2025 · 22:32

A Welcome Sight

The holidays are over, it’s a work day, we’re back in the office, it was a day full of “challenges” (no felonies – I’m a winner!) and when I came out after a looooooong day…

So are the 90% of folks who ignore this sight the odd losers, or is it the 10% who are standing there in the parking lot staring for ten minutes?

Mathematically I know what the answer is, but this is a philisophical question, not a numbers question.

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Filed under Astronomy, Critters, Photography, Sunsets

December 30, 2024 · 22:39

Spurge

As 2024 comes to an end, the lawn plagues continue. While the gophers continue to rule in the front yard (the landlord sent over an exterminator but I think that he fed them instead of killing them), in the back yard the weird red plants are back again.

The grass in the back has never come back after the two-year drought when we were forbidden to water it at all. But in the last month, along with the annual return of the juncos (blessed be their return!), the weird, bright red ground covering has grown back.

The PlantNet app on my phone IDs it as likely being Spotted Spurge (or Green Creeping Spurge, or Ridge-Seed Spurge, or one variant called “Kiss me quick”), Euphorbia maculata L.. 

Wikipedia says that it’s considered a weed and has sap that is mildly toxic. Whatever. Any port in a storm. At least something’s growing back there.

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Filed under Critters, Flowers, Photography

December 29, 2024 · 22:40

Alaska Airlines Flight #668

Just after sunset, northwest bound from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico to San Jose, California.

Cruising along at 38,000 feet and 382 knots according to the FlightRadar24 app.

(Image from FlightRadar24)

I’m thinking I would much rather be going from San Jose to Puerto Vallarta than the other way around, but I guess you have to come back home at some point.

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Filed under Critters, Photography, Sunsets, Travel

December 27, 2024 · 23:48

Liminal Time

We all know what it is, that time and space between Christmas and New Year’s, when especially in terms of work and our daily lives and schedules, we’re all just sort of drifting freely and aimlessly.

What day is it? What day of the week? Do you know without checking your phone or smart watch? Even when it tells you, do you believe it?

Did you have one day off this week, two, or more? Did you have off last weekend, work Monday, off Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, yesterday was a toss up, back at work for one day today, off for two more days this weekend, back for one day on Monday, then do it all over until next Thursday when the new work year smacks us like a wet mackeral across the face? Or did you take three or four strategically placed vacation days and end up with two full weeks off?

The pressure of Christmas decorations and cards and presents is all gone, but it’s days before we can celebrate the New Year. Even the old ways are gone, when we could lean on the NFL schedule with games on Thursday Night, Saturday, Sunday, Sunday Night, and Monday Night while the NBA filled up Chrstmas Day – all gone with games (including my beloved Chiefs) on Wednesday, Christmas Day, and damn near every other day all week.

Chaos, pure and simple.

Tonight I realized that the chaotic space-time continum disturbances were working in reverse, leaking upstream into the physical systems that I was using to keep track of my position in the timeline. I have my meds set up in advance for convenience, and I can also use them as a reminder of where I am in the week. Unless of course I’m so wacked out that I forget to take my meds, and then this simple system starts giving me inaccurate feedback.

I might be doomed.

I blame 2024. Stupid fucking 2024.

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Filed under Critters, Deep Thoughts, Paul, Photography

December 26, 2024 · 22:44

You Can’t Take A Bad Picture Here – December 26th

There are places on the planet where it is damn near impossible to take a bad picture, no matter your equipment, skill level, or whatever. I’m sure there are folks who somehow do manage to screw it up, but they’re in a different class from us mere mortals.

For example: Brussels

I was here on my European trip that was part of my Pepperdine University EMBA program. (We also went to Prague, which I absolutely loved! See that “Search” box up there in the upper right?)

These first couple of pictures are from the Grand Place, filled with a zillion statues as well as a ton of great places to eat and drink, plus other shops.

I felt very protected from demons and devils here, lots of saints slaying them over most doorways.

There was incredibly ornate stonework and statues at every turn, which I was obsessed with.

The details and sheer number of these statues was overwhelming.

I found this lovely little plaza with a statue at the top for Cervantes (IYKYK) and below, Bela Bartok. (If you don’t know who Cervantes or Bartok are, or who’s on the Cervantes statue, go to Wikipedia and while you’re there, sign up to make a monthly donation, even if it’s only for $5 or $2 a month. I just did, for $25/month. Why? Well, check out who thinks that Wikipedia should be shut down because it’s “woke”…)

Interior of the Brussels Basilica. I might not be a church-going guy, but I’m a sucker for amazing architecture and stained glass!

St Catherine’s Cathedral exterior.  Spectacular churches everywhere.

Parc de Bruxelles. Lots of parks and green spaces, all with tons of statues (old and new, ancient and modern), busts, fountains, and lakes. I took hundreds and thousands of pictures of them all.

 

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Filed under Critters, Photography, Travel

December 24, 2024 · 23:52

Eclectic Ornaments

Yesterday I pointed out that we put hundreds of ornaments on our Christmas tree, from a wide variety of sources. Here are some close ups.

There are two UC Irvine ornaments here (both I and one of my daughters went there) and the blue one half seen at the very top is from UC Davis (other daughter). The clear, crystal ones on the right are the annual ornaments from Sporty’s, showing a different airplane every year. In the upper left and lower right are a couple of “stained glass” style ornaments that I got even before I had kids, from a “dollar store” back when my first wife and I were dirt poor for a first Christmas together. They’re among my favorites. Finally, there’s a big, fat ass, cartoon polar bar and cub from ghod alone knows where.

Three bubble lights seen here, a couple more Sporty’s airplane ornaments, another stained glass ornament, and at the top, a hand-made Pokemon ball that one of the kids would have made in school twenty-five-plus years ago.

Same as above, plus an ornament from an trip in the last couple of years, a moose from our Winnipeg trip last year, and a very odd little art deco space capsule with an astronaut on an EVA.

More all of the above, plus a gold foil Wright flyer aircraft that I picked up at the Smithsonian Air & Space museum when I was back there about five years ago for my fifth NASA Social.

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Filed under Christmas Lights, Critters, Photography

December 23, 2024 · 23:53

How To Assemble Our Christmas Tree

It’s a fake tree, and it’s probably 10+ years old, but it still is holding up at least as well as I am, so who am I to judge?

Stack the three sections. I don’t remember this many of the built-in white lights being out last year. I would love to troubleshoot and repair them, but fixing these light strings is the bane of my existance. Probably more on this some other day.

Start putting on strings of colored lights. Six strings of mini incandescent lights is something like 450 lights. Nice!

Add two strings of bubble lights. I do so love me some bubble lights! Reminds me a lot of when I was a kid. The ones today are (fortunately) far less flammable than the ones we used in the 1960’s.

Finally, put up the stockings and the skirt, and add literally HUNDREDS of ornaments of all kinds. Some are new – we get one every time we take a trip. Some go back to before the kids were born. A lot of them are the Sporty’s annual ornaments with a different airplane every year. Some are of the “baby’s first Christmas” sort of thing, some are just stupid and goofy.

It’s chaotic and insane looking, but it’s ours!

 

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Filed under Castle Willett, Christmas Lights, Critters, Photography

December 22, 2024 · 21:56

First Sunrise After Solstice

It’s not totally true that I’m never up in time to see the sunrise, but you CAN bet that if I am, I’ll be heading back to bed ASAP.

Oddly enough (or NOT) you can also bet that no matter what the cause or my condition, I’ll be carrying my phone and/or a camera. (I’m okay with that…)

This being more or less a “PG-rated” site, I won’t describe my condition in detail. But it was just like five hours after the precise moment of the solstice, and it was mostly dark but the lighter parts of sunrise were pretty, so… Surprise!

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Filed under Critters, Los Angeles, Photography, Sunsets

December 21, 2024 · 22:52

Winter Solstice 2024

And now the Sun returns, slowly, day by day.

At the top of this image, dead center, just below the top edge, is Venus, the brightest object in the sky except for the Sun and the Moon.

And, of course, a slice of our Christmas lights, a tradition begun over hundreds and thousands of years of civilization, to celebrate holidays for many religions around this time of year, all having some sort of theme about light. Coincidence that they all have a theme of “light” and occur around the time of the shortest daylight hours and longest nighttime hours? Yeah…right.

We might know that Venus is so bright because it’s covered in endless clouds of carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid and we understand its orbital mechanics as well as the exact reasons for the Earth’s seasons and the timing of the solstice, all things about which our ancestors would have been clueless, but it doesn’t change the way we feel about the short days and long nights.

Whether caused by something we did angering the gods or by the 23.44º axial tilt of the Earth, Happy Solstice!

(Please don’t anger the 23.44º axial tilt of the Earth! We have no idea where that path leads!)

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Filed under Astronomy, Christmas Lights, Critters, Photography