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!!
I’m not a superstitious person by any definition, but the way bad shit has been coming for the last month or two (deadlines, the World, this stupid tooth, etc…), you can’t be too sure.
But tonight – might that possibly be the slightest glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel for the #1 stressor in my life right now?
It’s possible, but I’m not going to get my hopes up. There have been several times in this process where I thought I was doing well and had others explain to me in some detail why I WAS WRONG. (It still might have been a “them” thing more than a “me” thing, but it was depresssing either way.)
Now, while there’s still a day or two of work to do to finish Phase One, enough of the work has been completed and submitted so that I’m not feeling absolutely crushed and hopeless. I’m still going to have to work through all or at least most of the weekend to complete Phase One, and there will be more work coming when Phase Two starts, and there’s probably a Phase Three to follow after that, but it’s like a triathalon. At least I’m getting to the end of that first event. Maybe. Until Monday comes and “they” decide to crush my soul again just because they can.
Things are cloudy and the view is murky – but that might be a ray of light peeking out. (Photo from the 2017 total solar eclipse we saw through high, thin clouds somewhere in southeastern Nebraska.)
It’s a “good” feeling in the sense that my head knows it’s for the greater good, the long term goals, blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda… Meanwhile, I’m physically exhausted and sore. It’s a good match for the mental exhaustion. It feels like… It actually reminds me of about Mile Twenty of running a marathon. “The Wall.”
At least I’m not thinking about my sore tooth. Mind you, the tooth still hurts. But I’m not thinking about it.
I don’t want to break my current streak of 300+ days of posting every day, but there are a couple of things going on that are just a bit all-consuming going on, and my new and exciting dental adventures on top of it!
That leaves very little time to think great thoughts, take great pictures, and cogitate on the wonders of the universe. So, you may get a lot of these “quickie” Proof Of Life posts for a couple of weeks.
I finally got into the dentist today and, as expected, there are two primary options – Bad and Worse.
Bad = tooth extraction and replacement with a fake on a post. Sounds painful, but it’s a one day thing, probably.
Worse = crown lengthening, which I had done last summer when I had three root canals, turned out to be worse than a colonoscopy, very unpleasant and painful. And even if we do that, the odds are good that we’ll need to do the extraction and replacement anyway within a year or two.
Sometimes “bad” is “better.” Fun and games next Friday.
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 