It Is Finished
Oh. My. God.
17.04 pounds (sans pedals) in earth’s gravity.
Arriving next week!
Uncategorized
Once In A Lifetime
Cool.
And creepy, in an omen-like sort of way, that Venus’ passing coincided with Ray Bradbury’s passing.
Source: NASA Solar Dynamic Observatory.
Hat tip: Improved Clinch
Mosquito
Enter “mosquito microwave” as a search string, click a few top links, and you’ll see the current wisdom as to how mosquitoes avoid death by microwave. Before peeking my thought was, as small as a mosquito is, surely there must be a few molecules of water inside her, and when vibrated by microwave energy they would eventually boil, and the rapidly expanding gas/vapor would pop our summer pest wide open. Isn’t that how corn pops?
Evidently the standing waves in a conventional microwave exhibit some stochastic behavior. That is, the waves are not uniformly active on every molecule of water at every cubic angstrom of space at every instant in time. Explaining why food is unevenly heated, even with a revolving plate.
And why the mosquito that had found its way into our microwave yesterday evening when I put the beans and rice in for thirty seconds, evaded death. It was merely a stochastic luck of the draw. When I opened the door she flew out and flipped me the finger, like I had swatted her hard against my arm, which as every Alaskan knows is insufficient to kill an Alaskan mosquito. It only pisses them off.
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
I see, in New York it is no longer considered defamation to call somebody “gay,” thus it is not slander, and thus it is no longer illegal.
Fine.
But just try sneaking a Big Gulp past the Niggling Nanny State. Just try.
Roam
I was thinking about Rufus (aka Tan Man) yesterday during my walk with Lucy. The Happy Wife and I have spent, and continue to spend, considerable time in the company of dogs. I wondered how much I’d spent with Rufus, in terms of the miles we had walked together, including the times he ran/walked and I rode my mountain bike, during the 11.5 years he was with us. I made some conservative estimates.
First, I rounded his age down to 11 years, times 365 days/yr is roughly 4000 days. For a variety of reasons we didn’t walk with Rufus every one of those 4000 days, for instance when we were away on vacation or out of town for work. So again, very conservatively, let’s say 25% of those days we didn’t walk (or me ride) together — 4000 x 0.75 = 3000 days. Then, say the mean distance of the walks was 2 miles. This is harder to estimate, but it seems pretty conservative, because the trails we walk most weekdays at Kincaid Park (near our house) in just the last three years since returning to Alaska are all two miles or longer, and the trails we often walk on the weekends are longer still. Plus, when Rufus was younger, it wasn’t uncommon for us to walk together more than once a day, and being he was a youngin then he would roam a lot, covering more distance than I did on the trail.
So, 3000 x 2 = 6000 miles. According to Google maps, this is about 7% more than the driving distance (via I-80) from Los Angeles to Atlantic City, NJ, and back.
I was surprised by the result. That’s a lot of walking together.
And I wouldn’t trade a single mile of it.
Roam if you want to
Roam around the world
Roam if you want to
Without wings, without wheels
Roam if you want to
Without anything but the love we feel
— B-52s, Roam
Dude?
Transgendered Miss Universe Canada Contestant Takes the Title of Miss Congeniality
I wondered if the transformation was covered by the Canadian Health Care system. Or to reverse the transformation? Once this dudette tires of getting discovered and having his (her?) would-be amours flee the boudoir howling in terror.
In any case, the phenomenon has already been taken up by one of America’s great lyricists:
Pinus Nigra
Removed the remnants of death from the yards yesterday, and into the holes new life went. Three blue spruce, a green spruce, and a lodge pole pine, which we named “Ruff Ball” (aka Tan Man), causing Happy Wife and me to tear-up, again.
Death had come to the four pinus nigra we planted last summer, purchased from Lowes with a 1-year warranty. Shortly after planting the pinus nigra and anthropomorphizing them, we were talking them up to a man at a local nursery when he said, “Wait, did you say pinus nigra?” Why, yes, we did. Uh oh, he said, I’m afraid they love our summers but they won’t survive the winter. But wait, I’d said, the tag on the tree (I produced one from my pocket), look, right here, says they are hearty to twenty five below? Isn’t the cold that kills them, the man said, it’s the dry wind. So, wanting to prove the nursery man wrong we coddled the pinus nigra like newborns, through summer and into fall, and were duly impressed by their continued vitality — they had even grown an inch or two. We watered, fertilized, and mulched, then swaddled them in burlap when the snow flew. “See you in Spring!” we promised them. Death? Not on our watch!
Eleven feet of snow. April. Breakup.
Ever so carefully we unwrapped the burlap to reveal a most grotesque transmogrification. Evergreen had turned Everbrown. Once long straight branches were now freakishly retarded and twisted. The slightest brush against one caused coffee-colored needles to cascade like fallout. “What do you think, a chance they’ll make it?” I asked the Happy Wife. She looked at me as if I’d just told her I bet the 401K on double zero green.
I sawed each pinus nigra off at the ground because Lowes wanted the evidence to fulfill the warranty claim. The root balls were still frozen. I heaved the pinus nigra out of the Honda, wedged them between the bars of one of those big carts intended for lumber, and rolled ’em all to the Returns counter. Lady looks at me sort of puzzled and says, “You’re returning your Christmas trees?” I had to admit they did look like Christmas trees. Visa credit, $600.
Earlier this month I returned to the nursery and spoke to the man who said, “I remember you.” I humbly conceded to the Prescience of Pinus he’d been right. And then I proceeded to buy five trees off his north lot, hardy looking buggers that had wintered well.
Don’t you just want to hug it:
