We’re just days away from the winter solstice. With a few wind storms and a little bit of rain, there are so few leaves left, even here in Southern California.
That blue sky and most of the remaining leaves will be gone as our first large rain storm moves in tomorrow. We need the rain, desperately.
I’m looking forward to the solstice and the lengthening days again.
Filed under Photography, Weather
“Siri, show me my ‘unimpressed’ face.”
Wait, the phone can create GIFs? How did I do that?
More importantly, how do I turn it off?
Filed under Paul, Silly Shit
No tripod, an impulse picture since it was suddenly clear-ish. A little haze and the ever-present LA light pollution so there’s some washout, but not too bad.
Click on it to blow it up! Taurus (shaped like a “>”) at the top, Orion between it and the treetops. Can’t miss it.
43ºF out there – brisk!
Filed under Astronomy, Photography
And it got cold! I know we’re not talking about Vermont cold or Minnesota cold, but low 40’s, upper 30’s for SoCal is COLD.
We got a bit of rain this morning, a bunch more expected Monday and Tuesday, but this evening most of the clouds were breaking, the sunset was pink, the moon was bright, and the Christmas lights were on.
Not bad. But cold.
Filed under Christmas Lights, Photography, Weather
We’ve seen this guy before, back in April.
But while I’ve heard him once in a while, I haven’t seen him before early November.
It’s our friend the downy woodpecker, small, black and white with some spots.
I read something the other day that they’re the smallest North American woodpecker. This one’s not a whole lot bigger than a house finch.
While the bigger woodpeckers can make quite a racket, this little guy is pretty quiet. I could barely hear him from twenty feet away.
If you hear a loud, hammer-like sound around here, it’s probably one of the ravens, wanting to know when I’m going to feed the squirrels so that they can swoop in and steal dinner!
Filed under Birds, Critters, Photography
The directory said “2004/Dirty Paul.” I knew exactly what photos they were, even 17+ years later.
The old house wasn’t on a slab, there was a crawlspace under the house. Not much of one, maybe 18 to 24 inches, sometimes less, sometimes a little more. Fortunately, there were not a lot of spider webs or other critter-spoor down there. But it was dusty as hell.
I would end up down there once every couple of years for some plumbing or other problem and it was a pain. Getting in was only accessible by a teeny, tiny portal, maybe 18 by 24 inches, and that was at the bottom of a knee-high wall surrounding the portal and the screen door covering it. Getting in was a real contortionist trick, as was getting out. Immediately inside were some of the larger drain pipes from the two big bathrooms, so it was a really tight squeeze.
Moving around in there was also a royal pain, crawling on my belly, not even able to get up on my knees to crawl. As you can see, I was not in the finest of physical shape at the time (not that I’m any freakin’ Adonis now, but at least now I’m about 40 pounds lighter) so by the time I had been under there a few hours I was sore, sore, sore.
This particular day I believe that I was running coax cable for internet and cable TV. I had drilled holes in the floor in all five of the bedrooms, as well as the kitchen and living room. Then I dragged a drill underneath the house, drilled out a hole though the foundation into the family room/den at the end of the house (where the internet & cable hookup was), and started dragging cables. LOTS of trips from, each room to the portal to the family room. Hours and hours under there.
I got done what I wanted to and we did like having internet and cable in each room on a nice, high-speed, secure, wired connection. This was before wi-fi was real fast or reliable, and in a 3,300 square foot, one-story, ranch-style house, wi-fi always pretty much sucked over about half the house once you got away from that end. (That, of course, got fixed and upgraded a few years later, but at the time it was a big deal.)
Nevertheless, when I finally crawled out, exhausted, one of my kids was there with the camera. (None of those apples fell very far from that tree!)
At least my hair was still dark!
Filed under Castle Willett, Paul, Photography
A simple photo, a couple of slapdash visual effects (isn’t “slapdash” a wonderful word?), and 23:30 desperation searching for inspiration turns into…whatever.
NASA introduced the 2021 astronaut class, otherwise known as “Astronaut Candidates” or ASCANs. Ten fine, wonderful, and über overqualified individuals, some or all of whom will in the next five to ten to twenty years walk on the Moon or even Mars. I watched them with bittersweet joy as they were introduced, excited to see them and truly looking forward to following their progress as they pioneer the road forward off-planet, along with all of the other current astronaut corps which I’ve followed for decades.
Bittersweet because that was the course I had dreamed of since I was about five years old. I’m starting to think that maybe I won’t get my shot at it. I’m not giving up hope, but there comes a point when you realize that you’re down by 10,000 points and there’s only a couple minutes on the clock and it’s 4th and about four miles. The odds are thin and getting thinner. But, as Commander Peter Quincy Taggart was known to say:
Filed under Paul, Photography, Space
tl;dr – too many cross-country road trips as a kid crammed into the back seat of a station wagon with nine (or more) other people, “license plate” games to keep sane, now have a “January baby” vehicle, so every year I have a little head game going on to see if I can be the very, very first one on the block (or in the city, county, or state) to get the new DMV registration tag for the license plate with the new color for the next year. See? It’s a sure fired sign that I’m “easily amused.”
So here’s this year’s demonstration that I still have a pissed off and bored ten-year-old trapped inside my head.
Welcome to the 2023 Pregame Show!
Filed under Paul, Photography
The tl;dr version – GO SEE IT!! Go see it in the theater if you can! Go see it in IMAX if you can conceivably find a way!!
I know you may think that it’s not in IMAX any more – check again, and do it quick. It was out of the IMAX theaters for a while when “Eternals” came out and bumped it out, but at least in the Los Angeles area it’s back for anywhere from three to five days only, depending on the theater. Check IMAX theaters in your area, but if you didn’t get a chance to see it in IMAX on its first run you might have a reprieve.
A funny thing happened when we tried to see “Dune” in IMAX when it was first out. Things are really super busy (big surprise…) and I kept putting it off until our son pointed out that it would only be out a few more days before it got bumped by “Eternals.” I pushed some deadline work around and got tickets for the final showing at our local IMAX. But when we got there we were told that the theater was having technical issues and the show was canceled.
We went back to the front desk (we had bought our tickets online) and got a refund, as well as four passes for any future shows. As much as I would have really liked to scream and yell and raise hell about it all (I was REALLY disappointed), screaming at a minimum-wage teenager working the night shift at a movie theater isn’t going to solve anything. They were doing their best, it was just a shitty situation for everyone involved, and we went home.
Then I heard about this “encore” engagement for just a few days. I went onto the “Dune” website, looked up IMAX showings, and was told that the nearest theater was in Toronto. The one in Canada. But in a few days, that would change. It’s just for a couple of days – my guess is that on Thursday there’s another big blockbuster opening up in IMAX, but in the meantime, they’re slipping “Dune” back in. (“West Side Story” perhaps? “Spiderman” next week? Whatever.)
Take a shot. Find a theater near you. Go see it.
If it’s not already the greatest film I’ve ever seen, it’s at least in the top ten.
So utterly fantastic.
I’m going to need some time to sort it all out. And probably a few more viewings.
Go.
See.
“Dune.”
Filed under Movies
Not sure what random chance dredges this up, but from about 48 years ago here’s one of my high school football games.
The odd thing is that I’m not even sure who was taking the pictures. There are photos of me on the sidelines, so it wasn’t me. It’s my film, and the way it’s cut tells me that I developed and printed it. And I know that I scanned the negatives a few years back. So it’s not someone else’s pictures. But I wasn’t the photographer.
My family never came to any games, so it wouldn’t have been them. A friend? Maybe.
Anyway, you can rest assured that we lost. We were 0-8 that season. THAT much I remember!
Filed under Photography, Sports
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