25 June 06
Living Room Full of Half-Full Bottles
My mother left today. Left for Maine. We all went up to Mosquito Ridge Road last night to look for owls. Heard spotted, saw-whet and flammulated but saw none of them. We didn’t get home till about 1:30 pm; she’d been up nearly 24 hours.
My brother has put her on the red eye to Boston this evening in Seattle. I am left with a living room full of the things she removed from her house yesterday morning the movers didn’t take but she couldn’t take, either. We have enough laundry detergent for a year.
Her presence will linger here for a few days as she starts this next chapter in her life.
The self portrait I’ve done today and will post here tomorrow has me looking at my reflection in the kitchen window. It’s dark out. I look tired and feel conflicted. I look like a child, I think, in the drawing. It’s sort of how I feel.
22 June 06
Less
I weighed in at Weight Watchers yesterday.
I now weigh forty pounds less than I did the first time I attended a meeting, right after Thanksgiving and right after I went to the doctor having dropped a big bottle of water at work.
For now, I’m stopping. The trick is going to be trying to stay here… thanks to everyone who’s sent encouragement along the way.
19 June 06
Squids and Oysters
Nevada Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has just been elected primate of the Episcopal Church. She was raised a Roman Catholic and graduated in marine biology with a doctorate specialization in squids and oysters.
Now THIS is someone I’d enjoy chatting with at dinner. While eating calamares, perhaps?
Here’s another self-portrait, in honor of the self portrait marathon. If I look football fatigued, it’s because I am…
14 June 06
Still Waylaid
Sorry, everyone, it’s going to be a long month.
Spain beat Ukraine today 4-0. The passing was flawless, the set pieces (wot, Spain?) executed perfectly, and then there was that beautiful flowing final goal.
Meanwhile I’m trying to fit in a few self portraits and get at least a little laundry done before a friend gets here on Friday for the Hammond’s flycatcher. She’s, um, not into soccer.
11 June 06
Waylaid
I was heading over to my friend Barbara’s this morning to watch the Mexico-Iran match. Barbara was in Southern California seeing family and Numenius was off doing his breeding bird atlas.
My ride took me past Ali Baba. Open, it said, at 8:50 am. I stopped my bike with a screech and got off. Watching a match in a room full of Iranians was too good an opportunity to miss! (I go to Ali Baba for lunch every Thursday: spinach special.)
The match ended badly for them, 3-1, but it was a wonderful time. The first half was excellent. Wouldn’t it be good, said a student, if these commentators knew anything about Iran.
I almost said, but bit my tongue, wouldn’t it be good if they knew anything about soccer. (It was televised on ABC, which, contrary to my expectations, did NOT interrupt play with advertising. But the commentary was still, predictably, horrendous.)
There was one other person in there besides me who was not obviously Iranian: a woman whose boyfriend was. She was bug-eyed. Welcome to the world cup, lass.
9 June 06
Footie Here We Come
As everybody in the civilized world is aware (the United States on the other hand remains largely ignorant), the World Cup begins in about 10 hours (0 days 9 hours 53 minutes according to the countdown on the BBC World Cup site. ) Pica gets quite excited about the event, although with neither telly nor broadband it’s hard for us to follow the matches live here. We may end up watching some of the matches at the several restaurants here that promise to show them on their TV. Does this mean we’re headed to Little Prague at 5 in morning Saturday to see England-Paraguay? Maybe.
11 May 06
Here Comes Whole Earth
The Whole Earth Festival is back in town tomorrow. Unfortunately I’ll miss most of it since I’ll be spending the weekend at a class in San Francisco, but I’ll get a quick tie-dye fix tomorrow at lunchtime…
28 April 06
The Lure Of Morse
Since we’ve gotten into pandemic preparedness mode here, I’ve renewed my interest in radio. Several years ago, I got my technician class amateur radio license, but haven’t done much at all with it. The next step after the technician class is the general class license, which allows you to transmit on shortwave frequencies. One requirement for this license class is passing a Morse code receiving test, which takes a good bit of study, though the copying rate of the test has been reduced to a very slow 5 words a minute.
Despite its antiquarian aura, Morse code is very practical in the land of ham radio. Basically, it’s an incredibly efficient way of getting a signal out to the world if you don’t have much transmitting power or a good antenna setup. Since we live in a very small house and can’t exactly be erecting a 40’ antenna tower, that kind of describes my situation for the foreseeable future. There’s also the appeal of going lightweight and portable, as the Adventure Radio Society folks do.
5 words a minute may do for passing the test but it is not acceptable for actual communication. I’ve started studying using the Koch Method, where you start out learning two letters at a reasonably fast rate (15 wpm overall, with each character coming in at 20 wpm), and then add another letter when you master the characters you have so far. It’s aural reflex training—you bypass thinking about the letters (“oh, dot-dot-dot, let’s see, that’s ‘S’, right?)
Anyway, good Morse code operators routinely defeat expert texters in text messaging contests. If I ever get a cell phone, it’s going to be a Nokia Series 60 job, which is readily programmed (happily even in my favorite programming language, Python), so somebody has even whipped out a Morse texter for these types of phones.
22 April 06
Rubber Ducky Washing
Picnic Day was today; there was no rain. I calligraphed certificates for all the junior ducky washers (in the absence of a real oil spill, the vet students had covered the ducks in paint) and we moved along to see the Dachshund races (the Doxie Derby).
Instant replays ruled out any controversy on the part of overzealous doxie owners and there was the usual assortment of sausage dogs—well over half—who wandered off, distracted, never getting to the finish line. The Rec Hall had at least 4,000 people in it while we were there.
On to the baseball, where the Aggies were getting soundly thrashed by Cal State Long Beach, and a trip to the Memorial Union for a cup of tea. It’s so hokey. It’s so fun. It’s so… Davis.
20 April 06
April
Floods? Check. Taxes? Check. Ceanothus? Check. Kingbirds? Check. What’s left? Picnic Day!
Once again drawing about 50,000 people to Davis this Saturday with a good chance of rain, the Doxie Derby followed by the cockroach races and about 400 other events will keep us busy. This year we’re going to try and get both our soil and water tested by volunteers from the department of Land, Air and Water Resources. We have only sampled a tiny portion of it in the six years we’ve been here, but it’s a good portion.
If we don’t get rained on I may do some sketches. And the Aggies are scheduled to play Cal State Long Beach at baseball so we may end up there… Our outing to Raley Field last Sunday was rained out.