Will WordPress post a GIF? More to the point, will it show it animated?
One way to find out.
For the record, I stand corrected from last night. It hasn’t been 80 years since D-Day, it’s only been 78.
For the record, “Come From Away” was utterly spectacular, amazing, emotional, hilarious, astounding, and anyone who knows me at all will know exactly which song, and which line in that song, hit me like a gut punch.
Let’s not do today again, okay?
Filed under Paul, Photography
So much time being spent looking backwards this weekend.
Forty years ago, in 1984, so many classic movies came out. Blade Runnier. E.T. Poltergeist. The Wrath of Khan. The Thing. Tron. Ghostbusters. The Last Starfighter.
Eighty years ago tonight and tomorrow morning, the largest armada in world history left England and hit the beaches in Normandy. Omaha. Sword. Utah. Gold. Juno.
I’m wondering if I’m thinking so much about the past because there’s so much about the future that’s so scary.
But face it we must.
The clouds? They don’t care.
Filed under Paul, Photography, Weather
Taking a breather to watch the clouds and feel the breezes, here comes Hawaiian Airlines Flight #5 from Las Vegas to Honolulu, climbing up from the horizon like a bat out of Hell at 40,000 feet and 437 knots.
Then it’s back over the top, past the moon, off toward the Western horizon.
Filed under Flying, Photography, Weather
Going somewhere? Great! It’s good to get out of the house. Properly masked and vaxxed and boosted, of course. It’s still nasty out there.
Wait! Do you see the hazard?
Remember to clear the area around and under the car. Unless, of course, you’re a heartless, evil, vile, MONSTER!
These two I call LongTail (on the left) and StumpTail (on the right). They like to hang out under the wheels, so make sure you get them to run off into the bushes before you back out and squish them flat!
LongTail is jittery, so they’ll take off when you’re halfway down the driveway. But StumpTail is getting used to us and also hangs out a lot on the front porch, right in front of the door.
I try to avoid stepping on them there, but they tend to not want to run off these days, especially if they’ve laid claim to one of the really good, warm spots in the sun. Which is fine, I’ll step over them, but they sometimes wait until the foot is up before darting off right to where it’s going to come down. This leads to that whole stumbling, falling, tumbling across the lawn thing which the neighbors and the crows find so funny.
Maybe that’s why they do it…
Filed under Critters, Photography
And just like that…they’re gone! All of them! Lucy, Ricky, and the Four Amigos!
By Sunday they were getting rambunctious, and too big for the nest. The two with spots in the nest hunkered down and hid when I came out, but these two just froze and hoped I wasn’t a predator.
Monday they were all back in the nest for a while, but looking very fully grown-ish.
More to the point, they looked fully covered in feathers, which is sort of important for that whole flying thing, which is in turn sort of important for that whole bird thing.
Yesterday they were noisy as all get out, bothered by the chain saws and racket from next door. There was some occasional wing flapping and squawing, but last night it looked like they were all there. I had been keeping an eye out for anyone who might have fallen out and ended on the ground, but didn’t see any problems. I figured it might be a week before they flew off.
WRONG-O!
This morning when I got up it was immediately obvious that something had changed. No heads popping up looking for breakfast in bed, no squeaking and whistling, no hovering parents. Nothing.
I waited until this afternoon but then check it out up close and personal. The nest is vacant.
A couple of times this afternoon I saw a group of six fly down, do some feeding on the lawn, and then fly off. Was it Lucy, Ricky, and family? Maybe, maybe not. Who knows?
As before, I’m going to assume that things happened the way they were supposed to and we now have a gazillion and four common house finches flitting about the back yard. If thing’s didn’t happen the way they were supposed to, well, that’s above my pay grade.
There’s another nest up on the other side of the porch that still has chicks growing and chirping, but they’re behind a speaker so I can’t really see them. One of these days it will grow quiet and I’ll know why.
And if I remember correctly, finches can have a couple of nests and broods per year, so we just have to wait and be patient for the next round. It won’t be long.
Filed under Birds, Critters, Photography
I may have conflated a couple of trains of thought in that headline. Maybe.
But let’s look at the evidence! Very few meteors, so they must have been in stealth mode! If they were in stealth mode, there must have been aliens flying them! What would the aliens want to sneak in for? Well, big chunks of the neighbors’ trees are gone, so it MUST have been the stealthy aliens! I mean, what else could it have been? The evidence is all right there for those who would see it!
The meteor “storm” was a bust here in the west San Fernando Valley. It seemed clear enough, at least for this area. I could see stars down to at least Magnitude 3 or better once my eyes got dark adapted. I was outside from 21:30 to 22:20, fifty minutes total, and I saw:
I also got a contact high from the clouds of cannibis wafting from several neighbors.
I was snapping five-second exposures the whole time, so there are something like 600 photos to flip through to see if I caught anything at all. In my copious free time…
Then I was up to almost 2AM finishing up some deadline stuff. So I was sort of hoping for a few extra minutes of sleep this morning.
Nope. CHAIN SAWS!!! At 07:00:00.000001 exactly!
The neighbors’ gardener’s tree trimming team was in, giving quite the little buzz job to the hedges between our yards and all of the big trees.
As these things go, I guess they did a decent job. But aside from the slightly better view of the sky over that way, all I could see was where the birds were losing their nests and habitat.
This tree out in the front is where all of the bluebirds have been for the last two years. At first it was one or two last year, but this year there are a couple dozen. Beautiful birds, bold blue and orange accents. Now? We’ll see if and when I ever see one again.
The trees in the back and the fence hedges were home to mourning doves, juncos, towhees, crows, hummingbirds, mockingbirds, and more. There are plenty more trees around and I doubt any birds were killed today, but there were undoubtedly many nests, eggs, and fledglings that got destroyed.
Stupid aliens. Stupid meteors.
Stupid sleep.
Filed under Birds, Photography
It’s a three-day, holiday weekend in the US, but I’m not sure that has anything to do with the stars aligning and loading up the social calendar. Maybe. I don’t know. I think that’s well above my pay grade.
Last night we were back at the Ahmanson Theatre, this time for “Hadestown.”
Utterly spectacular! From the first words out of Hermes’ mouth to the last toast to Orpheus, I was totally enraptured. It was an absolute delight.
(Panorama – click to see full sized.)
This afternoon we went down to the sea in Redondo Beach to meet friends for lunch.
I only had a few minutes before lunch to wander around the marina with camera in hand, looking for the storks, seagulls, pelicans, and harbor seals that I could see and hear off in the distance. I didn’t really find them. But there were boats. LOTS of boats.
Holes in the water that you pour money into.
But cheaper than planes. (But planes are better and worth it!)
Filed under Entertainment, Los Angeles, Panorama, Photography
I managed to catch the finchlings all peeking out at once today. It’s getting crowded in that nest.
“MOOOOOM!! He’s touching me!!”
That explains so much of the noise coming from that direction.
They’re also looking more like birds with feathers and everything avian instead of weird, naked, pink squirmy things. Should we start a pool on which one flys first and when? I think it will be the one on the right, and probably about Wednesday this week.
It’s a lucky shot to catch them all. Normally these days they’re like cartoon birds. All four heads pop up in unison, take two seconds to look around to see if dinner is incoming, see me, and then pop right back down. It’s hilarious.
Filed under Birds, Critters, Photography
What a rough week! Too many things that are absolutely infuriating and totally out of our control. Frustration, anger, rage, hopelessness. Now, just a Friday afternoon quest to retrieve the trash barrels from the curb before they get hit or stolen or otherwise manage to turn the routine into yet another crisis.
But wait! Do you see it?
The lawn’s already turning brown because of water restrictions, but there! All by itself!
Did no one tell this seed (probably from over on the other side of the yard) that growing and blooming here was stupid and futile? That it’s going to die and probably quickly?
The hard, cruel driveway is right there, the car wheels can roll right over this little dude, the grass is dry and dying. You’ve made a horrible mistake!
Yet there it is, a tiny bit of beauty and grace, as glorious as a dozen roses in its own way, defying the odds with no fucks left to give, trying to grow anyway.
No – no one told that seed that the world’s a horrible, hard, deadly place where it’s almost impossible to even survive, let alone thrive. Not knowing better, it’s putting down roots and doing its absolute best every day. Maybe it doesn’t even survive the night, given the rabbits that roam and prowl the front yard, eating the young, naive, succulent flowers. Maybe the drought will claim it in a few days. Maybe I’ll forget it’s there and roll that right front tire straight over it on Sunday.
Maybe…not.
You’ll only know if you try. And if you’re going to try, why not give it 100% of your being with every effort, the better to improve your odds of actually succeeding.
You and me, little flower. Just doing the best we can.
Filed under Flowers, Photography
The news is a nightmare and keeps getting worse, when I try to listen to some Depeche Mode on my phone I find that my music library has been corrupted somehow, I try to watch the baseball game and find that my cable box has fried and probably taken everything on the enclosed DVR with it, I’m under some considerable time pressure at work, it’s late, I’m exhausted, I don’t have anything to write about tonight, I’ve got less than twenty minutes before midnight, desperation is starting to set in, I’m searching my computer and picture directories frantically…
…and I find a set of photos labeled “Raccoon Sex.”
You just have to trust the process.
These are obviously from the old house, where raccoons where either a feature or a bug.
Panic averted – buy hysteria isn’t far away.
Filed under Critters, Photography
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We Love The Stars Too Fondly 