At least, a bunch of them! We’ve got something special going on Saturday, so as long as folks were coming into town…
So far it’s been a great game, the Kings up 3-2 after one period.
Time to scrape that ice!
And let’s start the second! Go, Kings, GO!!
Filed under Family, LA Kings, Photography
It was a good morning for playing this game!
Oh, to be a hawk and go dodging in and out of those fluffy white expanses just for the pure joy of it!
Filed under Photography, Weather
Getting things done, checking things off the list!
I know that there are vast stretches of this country where one of the two political parties has been working very hard for decades to make it extremely difficult for some people to vote. I understand why – it’s because they know that they can’t possibly win a free and fair election, they’re fascists who have to stay in power at all costs, and the ony way they can do that is by cheating or stacking the deck. That’s not a conspiracy theory, that’s documented fact. Just read the laws they’ve written and look at the gerrymandered maps that they’ve rigged up.
California’s the exact opposite of that and I sort of love it. When it’s time for voting, EVERY registered voter gets a ballot sent in the mail, and it’s easy to get registered. If you want to be kept in the loop on where your ballot is, sign up and they’re happy to overwhelm you with notifications. When they are going to mail out the ballots in a few days, I get a text, and email, and a phone call. Again when they actually do mail out the ballots. Again to remind me that the ballot should have arrived to remind me how many days there are to get it sent back.
Then when you put the ballot in a drop box (like I did tonight) you’ll get another round of texts, emails, and calls when they pick it up from the dropbox. And again when it’s scanned and counted.
Overkill, FTW!!
Every time I get even the tiniest little bit of annoyance or bother about it I think about Florida and Texas and Ohio and Mississippi and Georgia and I’m just fine with what California has going for it.
After dropping off my ballot, it was time to go donate a pint. I asked them to take only the blood that was saturated with those little hemoglobin H1C molecules and leave behind the ones that are still fresh and empty and happy. They smiled and nodded a lot, but I have suspicions about their sincerity.
The needle thing is fine, but I would really like to get back the arm hair on those patches where they yanked it all off while removing the adhesives. Yanked it off gleefully, I might add.
Filed under Health, Photography, Politics
It was a dozen years ago, a cross-country trip, somewhere on I-10 in Texas.
Big clouds. Bright white from a distance, convection reaching for the heavens.
Getting darker and darker underneath, heading toward black punctuated only by lightning. Lots of that, small hail, winds that might or might not have been a tornado or at least tornado-adjacent, and sheets and sheets of rain.
It was an experience!
Filed under Photography, Travel, Weather
My first clue was the song. I hadn’t heard it before and I couldn’t see any new birds around, but I could hear them (probably two, at least) flitting around in the trees off the back yard. The Cornell Lab Merlin Bird ID app (which is wonderful, highly recommended if this is your thing) now has a “Sound ID” feature which is fantastic. Whipping it out, it immediately ID the song as a Cassin’s Kingbird. A photo showed it to be bigger than the juncos and house finches, smaller (maybe) than a mockingbird, with a yellow breast.
An hour or so later, out in the front yard, I heard the song again and saw these guys.
Mockingbird-sized, yellow breasts, same odd song.
Bingo, a Cassin’s Kingbird. Actually, a pair. The yellow breast can be seen easily, despite the lousy, cloudy lighting.
Different body shape than the mockingbirds, smaller tail.
The beak is short and pointed, almost like a woodpecker’s.
And their song is quite distinct and interesting.
So, another new bird friend for the neighborhood. Hooray!!
Filed under Birds, Critters, Photography
It may be daytime, but often the moon’s still up there. Today it was 26 days old, rose at 03:11 last night, set at 16:35 this afternoon. But at 11:48 it was almost overhead and only about 12% illuminated.
Very low contrast, tough to see, and I probably wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been looking for a plane that was flying around in the same area. With my eyes set on focusing at a distance for the plane, the crescent moon just popped out of that blue background.
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space
Yesterday there was a photo that had a handful of good memories combined with a significant number of less-than-good memories. Today’s the opposite. So many good memories of that day, the only down side being missed opportunities, things that could have made it better but which I’ll never get back.
Still, the good memories are overwhelming. Vermont. Kayaking with a very dear friend. Loons. Listening to their distinctive, haunting cry at sunset, watching them in the Northeast Kingdom. The peace of Molly’s Falls Pond.
We all need more days like that.
Filed under Photography, Travel
The point may vanish, the parallel lines converge, but the memories (a few good, a few more horrific) remain.
If I knew then what I knew a couple hours later, let alone what I know now, years later, would I have followed these rails? Or was the good worth it in the balance? Was the bad blown out of proportion? Maybe this was a sign (or maybe a portent) and I’m still not seeing the message?
That’s the problem with not having any gods, reliable oracles, or accurate psychics to lean on. Some answers would be great, but they’re nowhere to be found. The unknowns are winning.
Stupid universe!
Filed under Deep Thoughts, Photography
Those vistas horizon to horizon of golds and reds and oranges and the occasional evergreens mixed in? Maybe up in the Sierras, but not down here in the the brown, desert wastelands.
One of our fruit trees (which has NEVER had any fruit on it) is kinda sorta maybe turning a little. Most leaves are turning straight to brown, but a few are giving it the old college try. (I don’t know what old college they attended.)
If you’re fond of building a huge pile of leaves in the front yard and then running full speed and diving into them? Here you might get a big enough pile for one of the popcorn fence lizards to take a dive into, but that’s about it.
Filed under Photography, Weather
It seems obvious to me that we’ve had another clutch of lizard eggs hatching in the back yard.
On Friday I was taking a lap around the back yard (my watch had bitched at me) and I stopped when I saw this guy sitting on the side of the garden edging surrounding the big tree.
He seemed to have a greenish tint which I don’t recall having seen recently. Most of the newer lizards are either black or a light sandy tan color.
Just as I was starting to move, I spotted this guy as well.
Also with that green tint, this one off to my left instead of my right.
You can see them both here, their heads sticking up and “eclipsing” the brightly sunlit top surface of the edging material. One’s just in from the left edge of the picture, the other just before the right.
Leaving them to their peace and sunshine, I took just two or three steps to get to the other side of the big tree and found two more on a different piece of edging. Can you see them both?
Exhibit “C” is on top of the edging at the left in the bigger picture.
Exhibit “D” is on the side of the edging, right where the shadow from the roof cuts across the yard.
Still not moving, I looked over toward the patio, near where the trash cans are.
There’s Exhibit “E,” another of the Sandy Tan Clan.
In addition to all of these, when I shifted my feet two others darted from the dirt right by my feet and off into the tall desert grass growing there. That’s seven that I saw, which makes me suspect that there were more that I didn’t see.
These guys are all maybe two inches to two and a half inches long, tops. Out in the front yard, Gandalf and his siblings or sidekicks are all about twice that size. In turn, the driveway lizards that used to hide under the car (haven’t seen them in a few months) were about twice that. Of course, out in the garage (one sighting last year, with another siting in the garden by the front door once) is the household alligator lizard, who’s at least three or four times that, pushing 18″ or more the last I saw him. (The “popcorn” lizards, Gandalf and friends, and the driveway lizards are all Western fence lizards.)
Thinking about the hatching of the little guys, I’m surprised that it’s happening now. It’s going to be getting cooler very soon, and while it’s not snowy here at 1,050 elevation in SoCal, normally the lizards find a hole and hibernate through the cloudy and cool months until it’s time to warm up in spring. These little dudes will have very little time to put on some weight and size (assuming they don’t get eaten themselves) before it’s time to hibernate.
Time for “Fat Lizard” Week!
Filed under Critters, Photography
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