23 June 06
Amateur Radio On The Football Pitch
I now have a reason to root for Ukraine (who joins Sweden, Holland, and Australia in my list of underdog favorites). One of their starting midfielders, Serhiy Rebrov, is a radio amateur. His callsign is UT5UDX and he likes to work radio contests using Morse code. He scored the second goal in Ukraine’s rout of Saudi Arabia four days ago. Ukraine now pairs off against Switzerland, the winner of lackluster Group G.
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.
20 June 06
Solar Power For Cats
We made aduki beans and barley in the solar cooker today for dinner. Before setting the cooker up outside, Diego and Charlie made sure to inspect the equipment.
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…
18 June 06
Garden Portable
I’ve just made a major upgrade to my ham radio gear, going from having only a handheld transceiver to a 100 W mobile HF rig with a portable antenna system. For now I’m setting this up near the garden. There is a group called HFPack that specializes in portable radio systems; what I’m doing is hardly as adventurous as most of their efforts but I’m calling this my garden portable setup.
Until I take my general license exam (not until I finish learning Morse code), I can’t get on HF bands, but I can now play on 6 meters (between 50 and 54 Mhz in frequency). This is exciting because if the ionosphere is cooperative, there is the chance to work some pretty distant stations, and the period around the solstices is the best time to do this. No such luck today though.
16 June 06
Hiatus
My friend Linda arrived today. We’re going up to the mountains tomorrow morning to escape the fearful heat that seems to have arrived all of a sudden and to look for the Hammond’s flycatcher, a dull brown bird that looks almost exactly like the dusky flycatcher which shares a similar, but not identical, habitat. (Marcel said this evening as we ran into him outside Pluto’s to be very careful to note the primary projections.)
This means I’ll miss most of the Saturday soccer, but I’m hoping to catch at least a bit of Sunday’s…
[Postcript: we saw at least three individual Hammond’s and one Dusky at Yuba Pass. Also a pair of evening grosbeaks flycatching over the parking lot there. No black-backed woodpecker, alas, but a wonderful fleeting glimpse of mountain quail and a nest, with eggs, of a Townsend’s solitaire on Chapman Saddle Road…]
16 June 06
Blackmailed
At work a project from several years ago came back to haunt us, and I was pressed into the fray to redo some of the analyses that a couple of my colleagues had done. Tomorrow this reanalysis is getting presented at a local planning meeting, and as usual this afternoon there was a flurry of getting materials ready. At about 5:45 PM one of my bosses comes in with a message from the ecology professor in my department who is leading the presentation to give me a whole new project. “Tell him that if he doesn’t make this new map I’ll send email to the entire ecology graduate group announcing that he’s read a book on feng shui for cats.” I stayed late and did the map.
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.
12 June 06
In The Field With The World Cup
I’m coming up with creative ways to follow the World Cup, not being one who can watch every match on TV. When Pica went into town yesterday to watch Mexico-Iran, I headed south on my bike to do my bird survey. No problem, the match was being broadcast on ABC Channel 10. I can pick up the audio for that on my radio by tuning to 197.75 Mhz. I managed to catch 3 of the 4 goals that way, in between looking for house sparrow nests. The commentary wasn’t that enlightening but it sufficed.
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.