Monday, December 22, 2008

Solstice



Three days of steady snow, and now we see the sun again. 14 degrees out when I walked the dog her daily mile.
Yesterday was the winter solstice. This morning I took my annual sunrise at solstice shot -- that's the middle one and you may have to click on it to find the gleam of sunshine. I tried to line up the window edge with a tree because one of these years I'm going to map everything and figure the exact point on the compass where the sun rises on that day, and maybe that will help. Then I took the shot of the chimney, which faces North -- how often does it have a big patch of sun on it right at sunrise? Oh, and yes, that little patch of green at the bottom is my "green marble hearth" -- 5 marble tiles to extend the hearth. I'm very fond of them. They get all warm when the insert is going full blast.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Winter water



The pond does interesting things this time of year. It was barely hard enough to walk on around Thanksgiving, but I didn't go far as it seemed dicey. Then it thawed all of a sudden night, then froze, thawed, etc. Thursday night we had the heavy rainstorm that was an ice storm elsewhere (the top of the hills around us, for example) and then it was in the teens last night and now there's a perfect sheet of black ice.

My newly acquired overbite is bothersome. An orthodontist tells me if I let him knock a few molars out there would be room to re-align the upper teeth with the lower teeth -- the lower jaw is evidently shorter than it used to be. I'm going to get a second opinion before embarking on what he projects to be a 2 year project. Until we get a good treatment plan in place my broken teeth remain as is, so I can only chew in one small area. Every new appointment requires a 2 week wait. Things proceed slowly. The rehabilitation on my wrist is coming along, I'm probably at about 50-70% of where I used to be in terms of strength and flexibility.



Sunday, October 5, 2008

If you look closely at this photo you'll find two bluebirds. We see them maybe once in the fall and once in the spring. They're very pretty. You can see the foliage is pretty now, too. The maple in front of the house shed its leaves early, perhaps due to a large crop of seeds to disperse.

The basement renovation is coming along bit by bit. The perimeter drain is done and exits out of the walls at either end so the water should run out by gravity. Better get some critter covers for the exits though! The electrician and plumber have been in and corrected various creative solutions of old that weren't to current code. The walls and ceilings are free of old and mildewed sheetrock and ceiling tiles, and the smell is giving way to that of new lumber as the bathroom gets rebuilt.

And I'm slowly healing from my fall (broken jaw and wrist), feeling a little more human as the days go by, a little less stunned. 3 weeks down, 3 to go, more or less. Then we'll see exactly how my teeth fared. I'm a bit tired of the liquid diet but tonight's mushroom soup puree was pretty good.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Lost Cat


Lia-Boy, aka White Paws, aka le Sultan, aka Cary Grant, disappeared on Tuesday (July 29th). Mostly likely prey to a coyote, which happens rather frequently around here. He was a great love of mine, and is sorely missed. He was 10 last April.

This is my last photo of him, from June 25th.

City-living has a sinister side; so does country-living.


Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Friday, May 23, 2008

More on spring flowers


OK, those are mustard, honeysuckle, choke cherry, and Golden Alexander. I was stuck on the later. Zizia Aurea, "leaves 2 to 3 times divided" was what clinched it. Not many plants have variable numbers of lobes/divisions. Didn't get a great shot, but you can see it to some degree.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Spring meadow flowers



Can you identify these flowers? 4 from the lower meadow this morning. Click on the images to enlarge.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Spring. Earth Day.


Spring is coming along; the forsythia is in full bloom, the red maples are red, and the sugar maple is showing life for the first time today.

Yesterday was Earth Day. Michele drove the speed limit, to the ire of her fellow drivers, and took her lunch to work. This inspired me to turn off the electric power for the day, with the exception of the refrigerator, freezer and one phone. The house got very quiet. Can one 'hear' electric power? I was faced with a lack of water, and broke into our very dusty cache of spare water in bottles and jugs. It takes 3 quarts to wash a kitchen floor. I did not attempt to wash the flannel sheets by hand. After a bit I thought that the solar water heating panel wasn't working without a pump, and turned that on. Michele came home and thought of turning everything back on, then noticed how quiet the house was. She turned on the main water pump and electric supply to the water heater. We had dinner and talked until we couldn't really see each other, then took the dog for a walk. (Normally we tend to split, she to the ABC news on tape, and me to my internet reading). Then we read for a bit, she got in bed with a flashlight and a candle and I sat next to the kerosene lamp. Altogether in 24 hrs we used 9 kwh, instead of the usual 30 or so.

Meanwhile I made a list: manual laundry machine (I read about these somewhere), solar shower, alternatives for food preservation, light, solar power for computer/iPod, humanure compost system, dish washing set up, radio, oven. Fix the upper well for easy access. Water tanks. But am I looking at emergency preparedness or current civic duty in light of global warming?

Today I'm really enjoying this electricity business.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Pix


The other day a lot of weather came through that was a lot more like summer. We woke up to thunder and lightening, and the whole sky flashed orange and then red with the lightening. Later I realized it probably had to do with the rising sun. In the evening we saw a rainbow.

Monday, March 31, 2008

Craigslist; laptop batteries

I hooked up with one of my employers via Craigslist.com (worcester) and realized how useful it is.  Once we posted a size 24 wedding dress for free and it found a new home within the week. 

Today I'm listening the Personal Computer Show from March 26th.  That's one of my podcasts from WBAI.  They're conducting an interview with the CEO, Jim Buckmaster.  Craigslist has 24 employees and gets 10 billion page views per month!  He says that while they do make sure they run a financially solid business, their underlying purpose is to maximize the social good that they can do at the site, and to be as useful as they can be to as many people who want or need the service.

On another topic, there was a big fire in Korea at a factory (LG Chem) which produces many of the backup batteries for laptops.  Turns out there are some very tight supply lines for computers so when something like this happens it can really affect a lot of people.  

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Letter to the Editor

Look, my first ever letter to an editor.

To the Editor:

Waking up Easter morning to a taste of Swiss chocolate, I am reminded that our economy is still quite intact. The cocoa beans were grown in Africa, the sugar in South America. Making the bar of chocolate required complex machinery and expertise born of years of schooling. The end result: an Easter treat at a cost of what I earn in about 5 minutes.

Change is on the horizon. Oil and natural gas production is leveling off, and the costs of extracting what's left are rising steadily, plus the competition to use these materials is growing. Our local economy is going to evolve quite soon into quite a different beast.

We need to look around a little further than to question whether to buy a Prius or a car that runs on diesel. Used anything plastic today? Eaten anything not grown locally? Most of our food is entirely dependent on oil and related products -- not just to transport it or run the farm machinery, but to supply all the fertilizers and pesticides. Don't forget the toiletries, medicines, synthetic fibers, or the energy embodied in anything made of metal in your home.

We need to take the time to understand the ways cheap energy and petroleum-based materials are intertwined with the world we live in: the layout of the land, how we do our shopping, where we go for medical care, what the roads are made out of, how far away our loved ones live. The amount of cheap energy available to us equates to each of us having few hundred personal slaves doing extra chores. The resulting disposable income (aka extra energy) has enabled us to fund education, a big government, $500 billion international expeditions, and a fancy entertainment industry. The energy in a gallon of gas, at a whopping $4, is equal to about 120 hours of human labor.

Let's enjoy the chocolate, and everything else we take for granted, but at the same time let's begin to envisage a world radically different, and plan accordingly. It can all work out for the best, but only after many of us awake to what we have, what we could or will lose soon, and what the alternatives will be.

Rebecca Hyde
Woodstock


Wednesday, March 12, 2008

New York




Going to NY tomorrow.  I'm starting to get that not-quite-here feeling.  Oof.  Took some shots today of Meera playing with Michele in the field.  Meera can run really fast now.


that's the part 1 link and here's the part 2:


The later makes a surprisingly convincing case for the possibility of ramping up a full-scale societal effort to actually reduce atmospheric carbon levels below today's levels.  He's pretty sure that with levels as they are today the arctic ice cap will melt within a few years, followed quickly by all the Greenland ice, and much of the northern permafrost.  Altogether too many positive feedback loops which our species would be better off avoiding.  



Monday, February 4, 2008

Recent Travels


Been on a trip to this city in the mountains, where everything was made out of big thick blocks of stone, and the streets were cobblestones, and there were lots of mysterious, heavy doors in thick walls, made out of old, heavy wood or ornate metal.