Squeeze every three to five seconds. Relax. Don’t move your arm. Let me know if you’re feeling any discomfort.
Try not to clot until we tell you to. You’ll be done in 10-12 minutes, then you’ll get cookies & OJ.
And have fun out there!
Bye, January! At least you weren’t 2023! But that bar wasn’t set real high now, was it?
Hello, February! A big game is coming! An extra day!
In 29 days… we return to Arrakis.
In 68 days… the Sun disappears. (For 4:24 at least.)
Filed under Health, Photography
A bit of frustration (nothing tragic, just…annoying) led to a headache. I didn’t want to take any Excedrin since I’ve got an appointment for tomorrow evening to donate blood again, so I tried just breathing for a minute.
No lotus position – not unless someone’s going to call the paramedics to help me up and unbend me when I’m done. Just some guided deep breaths, a few muscles being forced to unclench.
An app brought up an image – and I had been there. Fushimi Inari in Kyoto.
While my body is here, dealing with *waves hands wildly at all of THIS*, for at least a few minute my spirit was back among the torii gates and the rain forest and the mist.
It helped.
Filed under Photography, Travel
SpaceX has gone from a handful of launches per year to just under 100 launches in 2023. They plan to have well over that this year, with even more next year. While most of those launches are out of Florida where they have a couple of launch pads and two landing zones and two drone ships for recovery of the first stages, the launch cadence out of Vanednberg up the coast from us is going up as well.
Last year there were 28 launches out of Vandenberg by my count. For 2024 there are plans to have 50+, or basically one a week. Unless it’s cloudy (which happens, and they’ll launch anyway in many of those cases) I can easily see any night launch. The daytime launches are a little tougher to see from this far away.
The problem is that the times will change as launch windows come and go. With the Starlink launches there are generally multiple launch windows in a day, so if something isn’t quite right (the vehicle, the weather at the launch site, the weather at the landing site, etc) they can wait an hour or so and then try again.
Yesterday the first launch opportunity was just after sunset and would have given a spectacular “jellyfish” effect as the exhaust plume high up in the atmosphere was illuminated by the Sun far over the horizon while we were all watching from darkness. Unfortunately, that window got passed up.
The good news is that the launch went off about three hours later, and it was magnificent to watch.
The bad news was that I had to lug the tripod & camera gear back up the hill from the “good” viewing spot about halfway down. That location lets me have a much more clear view of the western horizon, without the palm trees across the street from our house being in the way. On the other hand, I did get to see a great sunset!
There will be a lot more opportunities this year to get a sunset jellyfish launch. I’ll be ready!
Filed under Photography, Space, Sunsets
Yet another excellent day for Chiefs fans. We were underdogs, playing on the road against a Ravens team that had a better record, was the #1 seed, and on paper should have handled us handily.
That’s why they play the games. They made several mistakes, we didn’t, and we won 17-10.
That was our sixth straight AFC Conference game, and we’ve won four of the six to go to the Super Bowl. Four Super Bowls in five years? I’ll take it!
Now the preperations start for our Super Bowl party. We’re hoping for an eclectic group from family, some of my co-workers, and some of the Long-Suffering Wife’s former co-workers. It should be fun!
The Chiefs Kingdom flag flies at Castle Willett. This will be exciting, win or lose on February 11th.
Filed under Castle Willett, KC Chiefs, Photography, Sunsets
The Christmas lights are down.
There were no falls off of ladders. There were no falls off of the roof. There were no ladders (large or small, but more notably the former) tipping over onto my head. (Narrator voice – “These are all things that have happened in the past, but we do not speak of them.”)
I did get a nice view from the edge of the roof, looking to the north-west-ish, toward Simi Valley (just beyond those hills just to the left of the tall trees next to our driveway) and Ventura County (just beyond all of the other hills on the left and center).
As always when working near the roofline at this corner of the house, I’m extremely cautious and careful about the power line coming in.
No touchy the sparky ‘spoldy wire!
Next year – in the forever home!
Filed under Castle Willett, Christmas Lights, Photography
We’re close to the end of January, but there are still loose ends and fiddly bits left to deal with from 2023. You might have noticed that it’s been just a tad crazed here in terms of time commitments for the past few months, but with a whole slew of big deadlines met for both me individually and for the amazing team that I’m lucky enough to be a part of, this will be the first weekend in a while where I can “relax.”
If by “relax” you mean “dive into the stacks and stacks of housework and life things that have been shoved onto the back burner since Thanksgiving.” No pressure!
I think that the 2023 Christmas cards will remain unsent. I’ve kept thinking up clever lines for the seasonal letter to explain why the cards came out just before Christmas, or just after, or just after the New Year, or for MLK day, or now for the 20th anniversary of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers landing on Mars… But let’s face it, that’s several days of work and while deadlines have been met, I’m not on vacation. There’s a serious chance that “later” at this point means I would be lucky to get those cards in the mail by Valentine’s Day. The cards and postage and everything else got purchased – but they’ll all save for next year. Maybe with a little bit better planning I can get them out on a more timely basis.
The Christmas lights got turned off last weekend (or was it two weeks ago? yeah, I think maybe…) but they still need to get taken down. Last weekend was both pouring rain and eyeball deep in budget final drafts. Tomorrow is suppose to actually be sort of nice. Nice before a series of storms move in and both of the next two upcoming weekends look rainy, so tomorrow those lights come down.
We’ll know on Sunday if my beloved Chiefs are going to our fourth Super Bowl in five years and also if we’re having a Super Bowl party in two weeks. If we are, the preparations need to get underway.
So… “Relaxed.” But it’s a completely different sort of busy and stress. A lot of grunt labor, not mental gymnastics and detailed financial analysis. Put on some tunes, see if I can get my earbuds to stay in, make sure I don’t fall off of any ladders.
And as for the last couple of years, while taking down the Christmas lights and packing them away, I’ll be wondering if I’ll be re-arranging them and putting them up next year outside of our “forever home.”
We can hope.
Filed under Castle Willett, Christmas Lights, Photography
Just a touch after sunset, so there’s just a hint of pink still showing in with the grey. (And I’m talking about the cloud, not my skull…)
But what really struck me about this tiny little bit of aerial condensation was how it was out there hovering over West Hills.
All. By. Itself!
The sky was about 99% clear and cool, but right *there* conditions were right to start forming a cloud.
I wish it luck! I sensed that it had grand ambitions. It was going to grow up to be a thunderstorm, a cumulonimbus monster topping out at 50,000 feet, pummeling the Midwestern plains with baseball-sized hail and attacking the landscape with lightning and thunder like Thor on a three-day bender!
Truly, the sky’s the limit!
Filed under Photography, Weather
This would make a great jigsaw puzzle. A big one, with like 2,500 pieces.
What would be even better would be to have the time to put together a tough, complex, 2,500 piece jigsaw puzzle. Then you could throw away the puzzle and spend all of that time reading, trying to make a dent in that “TBR” pile that’s big enough to be gathering it’s own collection of OSHA safety hazard violations.
A guy can dream…
Filed under Art, Photography
It’s been a busy few months…
Being in charge of an accounting department, the nature of the beast is that it’s one deadline after another. Monthly financial reports, annual budgets, audits, tax returns. It’s an endless cycle.
There are ebbs and flows. And as with wave motion in physics, sometimes the waves overlap, synchronize, and add together and you get hit with a monster.
Today was that deadline for me and it got met. Barely. As in, emailing out reports at 10:10 for a 10:15 meeting. But it’s good work, solid, everyone’s happy. The nature. The beast.
The feeling afterward really does feel like finishing a marathon. It might not be a triumph, might not be your personal best time, might not even be the time you trained for – but you finished.
From 2010, the first endurance event I ever tried, the Avon Walk in Santa Barbara, a marathon (walking, not running) on Saturday and a half-marathon on Sunday.
I feel like I should be scarfing down bananas and Gatorade…
Tomorrow the next race starts, the next turn of the cycle. As always, working toward smoothing out the troughs and crests, looking for some smoother sailing. But being ready to burn the midnight oil and go to Red Alert when the shit hits the fan.
There will be shit. There is a fan.
This is known.
Filed under Deep Thoughts, Paul, Photography
Deadlines tomorrow, hours and hours and hours of head down, shoulder to the grindstone, nose to the wheel, not even sure what day of the week or time it is.
Thank god my watch beeps at me occasionally, so I can go, “Oh, shazzbatt!”
Fortunately, I have a steady supply of photos of me being goofy or wearing something bizarre or silly, be it an odd hat, sweatshirt, or a giant CHIEFS! onesie.
Having no sense of shame or embarrassment is the gift that keeps on giving!
Filed under KC Chiefs, Paul, Photography
 | berich56 on Wispy With A Chance Of Straigh… |
 | Jemima Pett on War Board Review |
 | momdude on Above Average Sunset & Cre… |
 | Frederic Paulussen on Above Average Sunset & Cre… |
| Jemima Pett on Proof Of Life – Febrary… |
 | karen bear on iPhone 17 Moonrise |
 | Praveen Yadav on Evolution Of Some Weird C… |
| Jemima Pett on Why Is There Brain Freeze… |
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 