3 April 06
Isn't There Supposed To Be A La Niña?
Or that’s what NOAA tells us. You’d never know it from the weather these past few days. I paddled my way to work this morning, and we’ve had 0.80 inches of rain in the past day. It all evens out though—we’re not that much over normal for the season (as of yesterday, 0.40 inches over the normal to date of 17.47 inches).
2 April 06
Cold Canyon Watercoloring
We got a quick trip in before the rain arrived this afternoon. I find I’m a very impatient person and will never manage this fiendishly difficult medium, but it was a good time…
1 April 06
Opening Day Minus One
We’ve just started watching the Ken Burns baseball series, thanks to DocRock who has kindly loaned us her set of DVDs. The season opens tomorrow, with the defending champions the Chicago White Sox playing the Cleveland Indians. Most of the teams start their season on Monday. The A’s get right in the thick of battle, taking on the New York Yankees at home on Monday. I’m excited about the prospects of the A’s this year—it’s a young, enthusiastic, and strong team. I’m not so cheered about the state of the Giants, who were ailing last year, and haven’t gotten any younger. Their closer, Armando Benitez, is already on the DL.
Assuming it isn’t pouring, we’re going on a watercolor outing up at Cold Canyon tomorrow. Accursed daylight savings time also starts: the only good aspect of which is that the cats will be waking us up for their breakfast an hour later.
31 March 06
Moving On
I’m at my mother’s on the Northern California coast. There are boxes everywhere. This afternoon I went through twelve photo albums cataloging my youth. And my brother’s and sister’s. Choose what you want, she said. The rest’s going in the trash.
She’s moving to Maine to be near my sister and the grandkids. It’s the right time to move, while she can still make friends, start a new life.
I’m thinking not having her around’s going to leave a little hole in mine, though…
30 March 06
Triple Play?!
The baseball season is almost here! This evening we joined Barbara and Susan to go see the Sacramento River Cats play in an exhibition game their parent major league team the Oakland A’s. The rain held off and we only had light drizzle to contend with. The game went as such exhibition games tend to go, with the A’s winning 5-1 behind their strong starting pitching of Rich Harden. The River Cats gave a good accounting of themselves, their pitcher Shane Komine holding off the Oakland bats until the 4th inning.
The most dramatic play occurred in the top of the 7th. Pica had gone off to the box office to pick up tickets for the game in a couple of weeks, and left me with scoring duties. The first play was a fairly solid single by Mark Kotsay, followed by a squibber for a hit about three feet in front of the plate by Marco Scutero. The next play I notice is a fly ball caught in mid-left center, followed by a relay to second base, followed by a throw to first base catching the running off base. And the River Cats start leaving the field, the inning over. Umm—I either profoundly messed up on the scoring, or I just saw a triple play. Barbara and Susan both thought it was a double play, though they didn’t think two people were on base. But when Pica was returning from the box office, she ran into another friend, who asked oh, did you see the triple play? No, she hadn’t, alas.
29 March 06
Spring
Many thanks to everyone for their kind blogday wishes.
Baseball’s coming! If all goes well and the weather cooperates, we’ll be seeing the A’s take on the local River Cats at Raley Field!
I need to shake the dustballs off my scorepad, find some suitable warm clothes to wear, and the like.
Update, March 30: at left is a copy of a Benin mask-portrait of the Queen Mother, who died four years ago today… I especially like the hat.
28 March 06
Maps For The Sky
Judging from the date on the map, sometime in 1976 I acquired a 1:1,000,000 scale world aeronautical chart covering California and the Southwest. (This was probably at a stop at the long since closed Nut Tree, which was a popular roadside restaurant off of I-80 in Vacaville. It was next to an airport and also sold aviation goodies). Aeronautical charts are great fun to look at, but I don’t have any others. But now there’s a site that lets you browse aeronautical charts online—SkyVector.com. It’s good for planning imaginary flights!
(From The Map Room.)
27 March 06
Feathers of Hope Turns Three
A week and a bit after Cassandra Pages (it’s how I remember to look for this date, apart from the anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, which is mostly why we started blogging)...
26 March 06
Our Solano County Bird Square
The Napa-Solano Audubon Society recently put out a call for volunteers for their project to develop a breeding bird atlas for Solano County. In these atlases, the study region is broken up into grid cells that are searched for bird species that breed therein. I have been interested in participating in such a survey for some time now, and since we live in Solano County (though the extreme northeastern corner of the county), this is a good chance.
We have been assigned a 5 km by 5 km grid block directly south of us, in easy bicycling range of here. This block is a uniformly flat stretch of farmland. Today was our first real outing into the grid block (I took a look yesterday, but it was too windy and starting to sprinkle). It’s not sufficient just to record the presence of a bird species: instead we need to find actual evidence that the species is breeding, such as sighting them at or around a nest. We had no confirmed breeding species today, but did have three probable species, the best sighting being a pair of white-tailed kites displaying near a farmhouse. The season is just beginning, and we’ll have many more forays to come.
25 March 06
Gobblers in our Field
They don’t belong here. They have been introduced by Fish & Game for hunters. They are wreaking havoc on oak woodland ecosystems. But I do love to see them…