18 December 04
Christmas Bird Count
Tomorrow is the Putah Creek Christmas Bird Count. I’ll be joining about 40 other people scouring a circle which is about 15 miles in diameter, trying to count every single bird in our area.
Today was foggy all day, which doesn’t bode well for raptors or anything other than possibly waterfowl. Tonight we heard geese flying through the dark and the fog, honking to keep in radio contact. We’ll be taking our radios too…
17 December 04
Two Lumps
As it’s catblogging Friday, here’s a cartoon featuring two cats who seem awfully reminiscent of certain ones we know. Definitely fun.
16 December 04
Oil Spills Near the Solstice
The ship that is breaking up off Unalaska has my colleagues on alert; if a lot of oiled animals start coming in and they need a vet, somebody’s going to have to work over Christmas.
The problem is, there are only six hours of daylight. The spill seems not as bad as feared, and it’s possible they’ll blow up the ship and release the oil in a controlled manner, as long as they get good weather, which is in short supply in the Aleutians in winter, along with the light.
Long nights. Getting off work and it’s already dark. My brother and sister-in-law who live in Juneau get this darkness thing a lot worse than we do, yearn for the snow because at least it brightens up the long darkness.
The darkness, though, makes the light so much more welcome when it returns. I’m not sure I’d enjoy the tropics with sunset at six year-round. How then can you drink cocoa?
Written for the Ecotone’s Solstice Place.
15 December 04
Feliz Cumpleaos!
My Spanish class ended yesterday with a set of skits all about where should we go on vacation. My group portrayed a family: let’s go to Hawaii! No, I want to go to Alaska. No, Alaska is cold and boring, I want to go to Disneyland. Then Mom said, no, that’s no fun for the adults, instead let’s go to Iguazu Falls, it will be very educational. After crunching out his finances on his calculator Dad concluded: why I know someplace that’s much cheaper and just as fun, and we can drive to in our car. Let’s go to San Jose! We can stay at the grandparents, we’ll go to interesting places like the Center for Beethoven Studies, we’ll eat at fine restaurants like Appleby’s and Olive Garden, and we’ll go shopping at Border’s and Pottery Barn. Vamos a divertirnos!
All of which reminds me: tomorrow is Beethoven’s birthday. He is turning 234 so wish him a good one!
14 December 04
Letters of Complaint
Inspired by Natalie of Blaugustine’s recent complaint regarding some boots she’d bought that didn’t, um, work out, I decided to send in a letter of complaint to Canson, a French paper manufacturer whose American subsidiary is based in South Hadley, Massachusetts.
The substance of my gripe is that some layout bond paper I bought for calligraphy is defective, or rather every other page is. This every other page bleeds when ink is applied. I won’t go into the paroxysms of how this feels when you’re trying your hardest to render the perfect Roman capital “Q” and it fuzzes out like wine on cotton wool, but basically I’m not happy. I have suggested in my “letter,” above, that this might have been a fluke, a bad pad of paper. I’m not going back to Berkeley to try to return it; you can’t buy this stuff in Davis or even Sacramento.
My hope with such a missive is that they’ll fix it, or at least be aware that we’re going to notice if they start cutting corners, quality-wise. At worst they’ll throw it in the bin, but I’ve been gentle: maybe they won’t.
Maybe, Natalie, they’ll give me store credit?? Hah.
13 December 04
Apple Hazelnut Mix
A recent addition to our traditional breakfast of nine-grain cereal, cooked with some sort of fruit and nut gorp, dried apricots, figs, and prunes. The hazelnuts make it very yummy.
12 December 04
Tajine
It’s been foggy here, the kind that sets in for days. Although we got out a little it’s the kind of weather that hunkering down was invented for. My outing last night to Rite Aid produced my first pair of reading glasses, probably two years after I should really have bought some—in preparation for lots of reading. About time: I have a stack of books by the bed.
Today I made my first tajine, a North African stew with dried fruit (ours featured apricots, prunes, and mangoes, which we had to hand). Although we don’t own the beautiful earthenware pot which gives the dish its name, it turned out quite well. Served over couscous with harissa. The house is full of tangerines, a splash of color in our now monochrome world…
11 December 04
Yagi at Rite-Aid
We were on crow duty today, meaning that after sunset we head to the University Mall at Russell and Anderson, turn on the radio, and see how many of the crows are in place roosting in the parking trees, endangering cars and passerbys below. Not that we needed it for checking at the mall, I played with the yagi for the first time. We parked across the street at Rite-Aid, since Pica had to run inside to pick up some stuff. A few observations: the yagi has lots of poky bits. Watch out for pedestrians before you do 360-degree twirlings. The mulched area between the sidewalk and the parking lot proved to be a good spot to turn around in. Second, don’t hold the antenna by the handle, but grasp it in the middle. Your wrist will be happier for it. Finally, be glad you don’t have to visually track down every crow (11 so far). That would take a while.
All crows were accounted for, including our friend 594, who was near our house this morning. But a couple weren’t at the mall, but were flying somewhere else. In particular Crow 113 was somewhere to the south. Since our route home took us that way we stopped about a third of a mile south and checked again. This time the strongest signal was to the west, towards the nearby dorms. We figured 113 was off on a balcony partaking of a keg or two.
10 December 04
Nature and Culture 180
We went this evening to the final presentation by the undergraduate class for Nature and Culture 180—each student had made an artist’s book following a week up at Sagehen in the Truckee River watershed in September. In this class they have written a scientific paper, done creative writing exercises, and made paper from lichens and other natural materials in addition to their final project, the book.
The resulting pieces were surprisingly varied in form. At left is Stacey McCulloch with her piece, Looking Through, featuring an aspen branch with knot-eye. The quality of the work was very high. I hope this means there will be more in the way of book arts in Davis…
Nature and Culture is actually an undergraduate major here. If I were considering college at this point in my life it’s something I’d definitely be interested in doing. No more useless than the degree I actually got (Spanish/French), and from what I can tell, a very great deal more fun.
9 December 04
More Crow Tracking
We now get to play wildlife biologist. The lassies who are tracking the crows at Pica’s work have an extra yagi antenna which we get to borrow. (A yagi is a directional antenna, looking something a TV aerial, that can be used for radio location purposes.) Previously when we hear the crows go beep——beep on our radio all we could do is say the crow is within a quarter-mile of where we are, but now we’ll be able to home in on him. Schlepping around the antenna we’ll look official, or is that suspicious, as well.
One sad note is the lassies relocated the transmitter for the only magpie they have caught so far: it was amidst a pile of feathers.