Loud, evil, jet black minions. My evil army, to do my bidding!
Crows! A half dozen of them, they spent all day making quite the racket out in the back yard, hanging out and taunting the two dozen mockingbirds that were cooperating in mobbing them. (Yes, the crows will find the mockingbird nests and eat their eggs, so there’s some justification for the animosity.)
I was out for a break and eating a snack (cheese) and they flew down to sit on the fence to watch.
I didn’t have enough cheese to share, so I went in and got grapes. They LOVE grapes. I threw a couple dozen out in the yard and then went back inside. They all pounced as soon as I shut the door.
I will continue to feed them and train them to come when they see me in the yard. Once I have them linking my appearance to food and coming to the yard, I’ll start to train them.
I hope by the time we get to that point I can figure out something specific that I want to train them to do. Otherwise it’s just pointless.
Yeah. Right. And I’ve got this bridge to sell you.
Maybe I’ll at least sleep in late. Dreaming about being here, if I’m lucky, and not having semi-conscious stress dreams about Excel files and reports that don’t balance.
I always will remember how the final, desperate, last chance, for all the marbles weapon that the humans put together against the aliens in “Footfall” was named Michael after the avenging archangel.
Never an avenging archangel of death around when you really need one.
There was a SpaceX Falcon9 launch (with Starlink satellites) at 20:36, with sunset having occurred at 20:09. It was clear and I expected a spectacular sight – I was not disappointed.
Click on them – enjoy the full-sized files!
The rocket rose just to the right of the mountain, seen through those trees and headed toward orbit. The white exhaust plume is from the first stage, which cut off (MECO = Main Engine Cut Off) just behind that far left tree. You can see the rocket coasting and the second stage firing just above and to the left of that point.
The second stage, along with the Starlink payload, is headed to space and well above most of the atmosphere at this point, so the exhaust expands out in a cone behind it. The bright dot just behind and below it is the first stage, falling back toward the drone barge waiting for it off of Baja.
Behind it, the plume was being pushed around by high altitude winds and still brightly lit by the Sun, even though it was well after sunset here on the ground. A launch like this always leads to a ton of calls to 9-1-1.
Finally, as even the eastern-most parts of the plume fell into darkness, the western-most parts were still lit up but were starting to turn orange with the sunset.
I think I got a pretty decent view of the launch on video. It’s long, about 15 minutes, since I let it run, hoping to hear the sonic boom about 12-13 minutes after launch. (Spoiler: I didn’t hear the sonic boom, but the front yard sprinklers did turn on and I had to run for it to stay dry. You can stop watching the video after about the 8:45 mark, unless you want to see me scramble.)
Falcon9 shows up over the hill at about 3:43. MECO and stage separation happens at 4:29. At 5:35, in the plume behind the second stage, you can see three dots. That’s the 1st stage, and the two fairing halves, all falling back to be recovered and re-used on a future flight.
Another thing to look for is the reentry burn of the first stage. It can be seen starting up just to the left of the street light pole from 8:11 to 8:34, the first time I’ve ever seen it from here, over a hundred miles away. In this burn, the first stage slows down as it starts to hit the top of the atmosphere, reducing the heat and structural stress on reentry as transitions from falling to flying down onto the drone ship. Spectacular!
I’ve seen videos taken from the High Desert, Hesperia, Victorville, and Apple Valley, where folks there can still see these launches, even another hundred miles to the east. It will be interesting to watch for from that new viewpoint when we find the Forever Home.
You want to talk about an actual invasion of Los Angeles? Here! The freakin’ gophers are killing my yard from below!
This spot of lawn has a couple of recent mounds on the left, and three or four of them on the right. I was standing there in the middle of the two spots, minding my own business, middle of the day, and not five feet from me another chunk of sod shifted and that buck toothed little bastard stuck its head out, wished me a Happy Father’s Day, flipped me the bird, stuck out its tongue, and vanished.
I proceeded to thoroughly perforate the ground out for a couple of feet in all directions, finally leaving the pitch fork buried deep in the central tunnel opening, but I have no idea if I got him. I have no way of tracking him or knowing where he’s at down below. It could have seen me, mocked me, and then been 100 yards away two houses down the block by the time I grabbed the Pitchfork O’ Death. Or it could have been three feet away. I’ll never know.
No, I didn’t attend any of the “No Kings” protests today, as much as I would have liked to. Other priorities, sadly. As noted before, this whole “responsible adult” thing sort of sucks, big time. Not a fan!
It would have been a nice day for it. First day in a few where it wasn’t either “clear and a million” with nothing but blue skies, or hazy and cloudy and grey.
The contrast was much nicer.
Philosophical point – doesn’t the classical description of Heaven sound incredibly boring and dull after about a week? Sure, having anything you want any time you want it with no stress, no worries, no pain, would be fantastic for a while. But for eternity? YAWN!!
Work deadlines, forever home house hunting, starting to pack for the move, filling out mortgage application paperwork, the news, the world, the Mango Mussolini & his cult, skunks, gophers… It is enough to get on your last nerve and dance on it a bit.
And when you finally think that maybe, perhaps, against all odds, you might be keeping your nose above water, the Universe says, “Yeah, right! It’s cute that you think that!”
I’m trying to keep it in the proper perspective. It’s not cancer. I wasn’t hit by a car. The Long-Suffering Wife and my kids are all fine. But, on the other hand – JEEZ LOUISE!!
Those of you who have been reading a while will remember that last summer was a freakin’ festival of fun in a dental sense, with three root canals and all of the accompanying crowns and fillings and EXPENSE and *PAIN*!
Eating breakfast this morning I felt the “pop!” and the “crack!” (no “snap,” but I might have missed that in all of the excitement of the moment) and sure enough, there’s a huge chunk of tooth that’s gone walkabout.
I’m not in absolute agony, thankfully, but it’s tender and sore and I’m going to assume that absolute agony is in the on-deck circle just waiting for it’s turn at bat any moment, so as busy as this week already was going to be, I’m going to need to figure out how to squeeze in at least one and probably a couple of dental appointments.
Using a phrase I think I learned from the esteemed Jim Wright online (“Stonekettle”), “Which god’s dog did I kick? And how do I apologize?”
This too shall pass. But then again, they say that about kidney stones, and I’ve had them a number of times and I never want to have them again. Just like major dental work.
I wasn’t expecting rain today at all. No clue that it was in the forecast. So when it started, I double checked. It wasn’t in the forecast!
My first clue that there was weather in the area was the thunder and lightning showing up in the Friends of Big Bear Valley video feed. Outside, seventy miles away, it was moving in.
A few minutes later, the rain started here. It was a desert rain, HUGE drops hitting hard, but not a lot of them.
It was also really dry, extremely low humidity, so the drops hit and evaporated almost immediately, leaving the “rain freckles” effect for quite a while before it actually looked wet.
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 