6 February 06
Reference Point
I finally took down the coordinates stamped in a benchmark set by UCD in 1991 on the northwest side of the bridge of Putah Creek and converted them to latitude and longitude values. This is so I can do GPS accuracy experiments—it’s a difficult thing to know precisely where you are on this planet!
5 February 06
Boots
I’ve been wearing my new hiking boots in the house to try and break them in. I’ve never done this thoroughly before… I think it may have made all the difference in my blisterability.
Yesterday it was gorgeous despite warnings of rain. We hiked up Cold Canyon to sketch Gray Pines. I wore my sister’s old hiking boots, not wanting to push it too hard with the new ones. I have high hopes though.
The shooting stars were in bloom, there was coyote sign everywhere, and the grayghost pines grew out of the hillside at odd angles…
I’ve made some prints of the needles as well as some sketches. I’ll try and upload these tomorrow.
Later: uploading prints of gray pine needles
4 February 06
Why We Like Shopping At The Coop -- Part 2
After returning late this afternoon from a sketching hike up Cold Canyon, we stopped by the coop to pick up salad for dinner, and ran into Fernanda near the checkout stand. We took our groceries out to our car, and saw that there was a silver Honda Element parked next to our green one. The license plate on the silver Element read “CMPGNLO”, and it had a license plate frame labeled “Campagnolo”. On the back window, there was a sticker saying “Aerodynamics is overrated”. Not surprisingly, there was a bike inside.
3 February 06
Mugged by a Rooster
Our landlords are getting back tonight after a week away. Their idea about how to tend to the dogs during a Hawaii vacation (three pound large dogs plus Sadie their son’s pound terrier) is to leave a 50-lb bag of food, opened, outside along with gallons and gallons of water. We’re to check them every so often, make sure there are four, and maybe refill the water containers.
Don Gallo the feral bantam rooster has grown used to his morning walnuts cracked by the landlord outside their front door. (The entryway’s a MESS.) He’s been crowing more and more insistently all week.
I went out to get the paper yesterday morning. He followed me—stalked would be a more appropriate verb—all the way there and back, getting ready to pounce in some roosterish attempt to wrest walnuts from my person. We had a face-off; I had a large box and the newspaper; he wasn’t fazed off at all. He dances on his toes and scrapes his wings on the ground noisily in threat. I escaped with my life, locking the door behind me.
Reminds me of when Bsag was mugged by a duck.
[Addendum, Feb. 4th:: Bingo one of the large pound dogs showed up last night barking. We put him in with the others. This morning we discovered a half-gnawed jackrabbit paw outside our front door. Bingo would be hard pressed to catch one of these hares but someone else might have and he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth…]
2 February 06
Blogging For Pigeons
A group of scientifically-inclined pigeons in San Jose will be starting their own blog this August 5th.
1 February 06
Why I Like Shopping at the Coop
Because a third of the way through your list which you left on the counter but can pretty much remember you run into Susan who messed up her knee but still wants to go for a bike ride and by the way could you please send me any info on the wildlife programs she says and we yuk it up and then up shows Warren the Arboretum Superintendent and Susan says hi Warren and I say Warren I was just going to call you to ask you about gray pines like specifically how did the Native Americans use them and he says oh have you seen the painting of them on the wall over here and we all say botany botany here in the coop and he says they ate the seeds but you’d need exactly the right kind of groove on a rock so they don’t smash and then they cooked the whole cone when it was green but then his cellphone goes off and he says they didn’t use them as cellphones and then in the checkout line there’s Julie and she says you didn’t come to my chocolate tasting event tonight and I say well no I’m doing Weightwatchers but just then Numenius slaps down a Chocolove Dark with Orange Peel on the belt and we all laugh and complain how after forty nothing quite works right but chocolate makes it better.
31 January 06
Were I a Sculptor
At the intersection of 3rd and F downtown here in Davisthere is a sculpture of two joggers, clad in shorts and t-shirts, running in opposite directions, with index fingers pointing up and forward. In times past this sculpture was the subject of serious debate in the City Council: people were worried that somebody would be impaled on one of the fingers.
Since it is 2006, it is time for the sculpture to be updated. Instead of two joggers, picture two students walking past hauling overloaded teardrop-shaped backpacks, holding cell phones glued to their faces, oblivious to each other and to the world.
30 January 06
Endings and Beginnings
Teju Cole comes offline tomorrow, having lasted just the month of January. If you haven’t had a chance to read it, don’t wait a minute longer. Lagos is your destination. You will rarely see better writing than this.
Meanwhile, the white-tailed kites outside my office have built a nest in the tall pine just above the railway track. The female is incubating by now, I think. It doesn’t stop the male from mating with her, though. He “kip, kip, kips” about with his wings in a steep dihedral, almost unable to stay airborne—the merest hover. They are some of the most beautiful birds on the planet. I’ll try and sketch some of this.
29 January 06
Coyote Corridor
We went over to REI in Sacramento today to hunt for a pair of hiking boots for Pica that don’t give her blisters. We brought our bikes along and afterwards went for a little ride along the American River Parkway. On the parkway there is a bike trail that runs along the river about 32 miles one way from Sacramento up to Folsom. We’ve been quite remiss in never having ridden on it the almost seven years we’ve been up in Davis. Conveniently, REI offers easy access to the parkway so we rode from its parking lot up along the trail up to Cal State Sacramento and back. Just when we were returning and on the other side of the levee from REI, we heard, perhaps howling at a train passing by, two coyotes! This sort of thing makes one a believer in wildlife corridors.
28 January 06
Sister Spa
While Numenius was installing Tiger, and my mother and brother were browsing in an independent bookstore in Calistoga, I wallowed in mud with my sister-in-law. “No mudpies,” said our cheerful attendant, leaving us in the company of a rubber ducky and a rubber froggie.
Rain here. It was a perfect day for a mudbath.