January 8, 2021 · 23:45

Buckle Up!

Wow.

I’ve still been busier than God all day – running an accounting department for a non-profit with an eight-figure annual budget means that this time of year is juuuuuuuust a bit hectic to begin with. And then the news alerts keep coming in making my phone sound like a pinball machine…

Here’s something I read from someone I trust (over on the social media side you’ll recognize her as someone I’ve been following and re-posting for about five years or more) and it explains a lot of what’s going – it’s an Extinction Burst.

So the next couple of weeks, i.e., the next eleven days in particular, could get very “interesting.” And by “interesting” I mean that there’s a chance that it could get “dangerous.” Even if it doesn’t come to that, it will most certainly be stressful and there will be moments when our lives might fill up with anxiety.

Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other.

Be smart. Be safe.

Breathe. Drink water. Get some exercise.

If you find yourself getting sucked into the crazy, it’s okay to turn it off. Listen to some music. (Probably not “Hamilton” or “Le Miz” right at the moment, if you know what I’m saying.) Read a book. Bing “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist.” (There’s probably crying involved with that, but it’s the good kind.) Watch the Chiefs march toward back-to-back Super Bowls.

Oh, yeah – wear your mask. Stay home whenever you possibly can. Isolate. Wash your hands. Don’t forget that in addition to the attacks on our brains and our psyches, there’s a pretty significant attack on our physical wellbeing going on.

I want all of you here, healthy, probably happier, on February 1st. And December 31st. And onward.

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Filed under Health, KC Chiefs, Paul, Politics

January 7, 2021 · 23:18

Hair

Because I’m still too irate to speak rationally about yesterday’s events (i.e., the attempted coup at the Capitol by the “President” and his cult) to speak without massive amounts of screaming and obscenities (which I prefer to keep off of this site and use on social media instead) I’ll instead blather on for a few seconds about something else that’s been catching my attention the last few days while my brain is trying to revolt and not hear any more horrors.

Hair.

Now, one might think that given my preferred hair style, i.e.:

…and the way I accomplish it in these now nearly ten months of quarantine and lockdown:

…that hair wouldn’t be that big of a deal. After all, how hard could it be to just buzz it down to fuzz? (“BUZZ FUZZ!!!” Sorry, Paul’s brain is experiencing issues…) You cut it all down to one uniform, short length and it all grows back and stays pretty uniform and then at some point you repeat the process.

Right?

Apparently not.

There are either some assumptions in there that I’m not figuring out or my cranial follicles are conspiring to make me insane. Since the rest of the Known Universe is demonstrably working to make me insane, I suspect the latter.

But, what in hell am I talking about?

Well, first of all, let’s talk about the hair around my ears. (And you thought this was going to be boring!) That’s usually my number one indicator of when I need a new haircut since when it gets long enough it starts to tickle and bother me. Now, just a couple of weeks after a haircut, when I was very, very careful to buzz everything down to a uniform length, the hair above my right ear is long enough to be tickling and bugging me – but not my left ear or anywhere else. In fact, it’s still pretty short everywhere else.

Then there’s this SPOT up near the top of my head where out of nowhere in the last three or four days it’s had some kind of bizarre growth spurt and it’s about three times longer than anywhere else. I know for a fact that it was all cut when I last conned the clippers but now out of the blue it’s just almost freakishly long in this one little patch.

WHY? I thought that the pace of hair growth would be pretty uniform, but that’s apparently wrong. Or, again, conspiracy plus Universe equals insanity.

And don’t even get me started on my eyebrows. I believe it was John Scalzi who once referred to his as the “Thufir Hawat starter set.” That’s the track I’m on.

Is it an age thing? Am I doomed to spend the rest of my years unexpectedly sprouting in odd places?

Whatever. Maybe I’ll just start shaving it entirely again. I tried that once and found that it was bizarre (particularly the part down at the end, the incident with the towel) and too much work to maintain. But faced with this madness, it might be the lesser of two evils.

And why are there always only two evils?

Wasn’t this better than talking about politics?

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Filed under Paul, Politics, Random Blatherationings

January 6, 2021 · 23:53

Did I Miss Anything Today?

Just yelled an obscenity as I realized it’s 23:52 and I haven’t posted today. I’ve been hunkered down with year-end and month-end deadlines from Hell.

Did I miss anything today? Anything exciting going on in the world?

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January 5, 2021 · 22:59

Supersaturated

It’s been a day. And a week. And… Just keep expanding out from there, I guess. Between the holidays and work and the hangar and feeling like I’m being nibbled to death by ducks and ***LIFE***…

Breathe. Slowly. Relax…

Those meditation apps like HeadSpace and Calm want you to get into your zone and feel a golden light filling you, as you’re present with every muscle and bone and fiber in your body, the light filling you up from your toes to the top of your head and then your being feeling as if you’re being suspended from a golden beam of light coming out of the top of your head…

There are days when all I can think about is how much I wish that golden beam was a twenty terawatt laser so that I can start melting things to slag. I’m not sure if that means I should give up on meditation those days, or if I need to spend eight or nine hours doing it. Could go either way.

Now I know how a supersaturated solution feels.

I’m sure tomorrow will be better. This, by the way, was not AT ALL what I sat down to write.

Go figure.

(Video from North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics)

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January 4, 2021 · 23:15

It Was A Marvelous Night…

…for…

And yes, I did.

The Moon was a day or so past full last Wednesday and there was a high layer of clouds covering the sky. Through that cloud layer the bright moon cast a moonbow, a bit of which I was able to catch in this image. To the eye it was almost a full circle around the moon, but not the 22° halo that you get through a high layer of ice clouds. This was much smaller and had much more color to it. Different phenomenon.

Better for dancing.

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Weather

January 3, 2021 · 23:20

The First Monday After The Holidays

Not my favorite.

Monday’s can be problematic in general, as they are for many folks. Shifting gears from “relaxing” and “fun” for two days back to “working” and “stress” is a grind, and grinding gears is bad on your transmission. For me the normal Monday isn’t as terrible as it is for some, but that’s only because I tend to work a good chunk of the weekend as well, so I tend to only get a full weekend off about one out of every eight or ten. Not necessarily a better solution.

I forced myself to take a couple of days off during these back-to-back four-day weekends. Football has been watched, food (way, WAY too much food!) has been enjoyed, books have been read, a few chores around the house have been taken care of. But behind it all, lurking, no matter how much down time I take, or force myself to take, is the knowledge that I have the “to-do” lists from hell waiting for me.

Year-end, budgets, upcoming audits, deadlines up the yazoo – it will all be there first thing tomorrow. The next two to three months will be frantic, at best. Trying to put five pounds of pickles into a two-pound pickle bag, time management wise.

Of course, we continue to have the ongoing additional stress from COVID (still healthy! wear your mask!! STAY HOME!!!) and the political “Charlie Foxtrot” situation. There’s a reason that Kaiser Permanente was giving away a year’s subscription to the Calm app. We need it.

As Frost said, “no way out but through.” Just as true, he said:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   
But I have promises to keep,   
And miles to go before I sleep,   
And miles to go before I sleep.
Smart dude, that Frost guy. Keep breathing, keep calm, read some Frost.

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January 2, 2021 · 23:17

No Context For You – January 02nd

It was a GREAT song!

 

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January 1, 2021 · 22:02

Starting 2021 With A “Visitor”

Trigger Warning – If you’re creeped out by bugs & insects, you probably don’t want to read the rest of this. I hope you had a great New Year’s Eve and a wonderful start to 2021. We’ll see y’all tomorrow!

If you’re not creeped out by bugs & insects, scroll down below the filler.

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Happy New Year!

We were watching the live feed from Las Vegas (ugh!), hit the end of the year on the Left Coast, kissed, champagne, fireworks going off outside. We were going to go out into the front yard and watch the fireworks, but the sprinklers had turned on at midnight, so we went out into the back yard instead. As soon as the sliding glass door was opened, I saw something moving slowly away from the door across the concrete.

Too cold and late for any lizards (or snakes, which worry me far more) and way, WAY too slow for a mouse or vole, I thought it might be a beetle of some sort. We used to get them at previous houses , large beetles that lived on the oranges and citrus and would occasionally end up near the house. So, in the midst of the fireworks (and probably some gunfire) and a howling wind, glass of champagne in hand, I did what I would always do in any such circumstance.

I whipped out my phone to take a picture.

That’s not anything I had ever seen before. For scale, it’s probably at least two inches long.

I generally don’t mind bugs and spiders and tiny crawly critters as long as they’re not actually dangerous and as long as they don’t spook me. (Something crawls onto my arm when I’m not expecting it and I’ll scream like a little girl and squish the shit out of it.) Crickets and grasshoppers are fine, beetles, most spiders, and so on – no problem! (Black widow spiders and brown recluse spiders, both of which can mess you up? Kill them with fire!!!)

This not-so-little dude freaked me out.

After a brief “WTF??!!” moment, my rational brain got back in control, so rather than turn it into a greasy spot on the porch (and on the bottom of my shoe) I nudged it off into the bushes and went about watching the local explosions.

Today I did some research – it’s a “Jerusalem Cricket!” (I’ll name this one “Jiminy.”) They’re native to the American Southwest and Mexico, somewhat related to crickets and grasshoppers, but don’t fly and don’t jump. They’re actually nocturnal and slow (confirmed) and generally live underground and eat animal droppings. They don’t sting, they’re nonvenomous, and while they will give you a bite if you’re stupid and pick it up and bother it, the most likely outcome of picking one up is that it will “play dead” and wait for you to get bored.

So, good choice to re-locate it to the bushes and not squish it! Starting the year with good karma.

As I hope you are as well. We’ve got a couple of days to get into the 2021 groove before the full work week starts along with all of the political bullshit in the US, as well as watching our British friends come to grips with the reality of their Brexit “adventure.” Keep breathing, wear your masks, stay home as much as you possibly can because no matter how well-intentioned or well planned you think your gathering might be, it’s not, and the consequences can be truly terrible.

So a l

 

 

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Filed under Critters, Photography

December 31, 2020 · 23:30

Adios, 2020

Don’t let the door hit you where the good Lord split ‘ya!

But with the Great Conjunction gone and the new year on the doorstep, it’s time to try to capture a moment, before the lights come down next week and while Orion and the full Moon are where I need them to be.

Be safe tonight – we’ll see you in 2021 for a better year.

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Filed under Astronomy, Christmas Lights, Photography

December 30, 2020 · 23:44

The Great Conjunction – December 30th

I had none of this planned. It’s simply worked out that way. I don’t know if it’s a sign. It might be. Probably not. I’m not sure I believe in signs. I’m not sure I don’t.

Getting pretty low, moving faster now. Any earlier and it’s too light. Any later and they’re down in those trees.

One last look before we move on and see what 2021 has to offer. Io and Europa are in the upper left but so close to Jupiter that you can’t really spot them. A bit of haze in our atmosphere tonight and the resolution disappears. Callisto and Ganymede in the lower right, with Saturn a billion miles further away.

(Image from Sky & Telescope JupiterMoons app)

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