…not the band but the visitors eating bugs in my lawn.
Yard birds
So it goes
Like Vonnegut said, “So it goes.” Poo-too-weet!
Clouded Aurora
After I watched the new Top Gun talkie, I checked the data in my aurora app while I was still in the parking lot. It looked good[1]The Bz reading was ‑11, where the further into the negative, the better; I usually see a decent show if it’s at ‑4 or so., so I hurried home, grabbed my gear, and went out of town.
Unfortunately it was cloudy to the north. I set up anyway, hoping the clouds would move off, and started snapping photos.
Long story short: the clouds didn’t move off. I gave it about 45 minutes, and then packed up and went home.
Here’s a timelapse of about 20 minutes’ worth of my attempts. Each frame is a 10-second exposure.
And here’s a handful of my favourites from the photos I got. (I think I caught a meteor in the first one, on the far left.)
Footnotes
| ↑1 | The Bz reading was ‑11, where the further into the negative, the better; I usually see a decent show if it’s at ‑4 or so. |
|---|
Happy birthday, dad
You’d be 76 today.
7×7
I had the day off today. I took a broken chair and ottoman to the dump, I did laundry, I talked to my mom and got texts from my sisters, I wrote a few hundred words, I went for a 2‑km bike ride (first of the year!), I enjoyed the heck out of a Guinness chocolate cake my wife got for me at Chez Angela, and I taught/studied a couple foot/leg throws at judo[1]sasae-tsurikomi-ashi (lifting/pulling foot block) and hiza-guruma (knee wheel) .
I’ve had worse birthdays.
Footnotes
| ↑1 | sasae-tsurikomi-ashi (lifting/pulling foot block) and hiza-guruma (knee wheel) |
|---|
Semantle
I’m really only saving this for my own recollection. I managed to “win” Semantle on my first try (27 guesses but it’s still a victory).
| # | Guess | Similarity | Getting close? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 27 | surgeon | 100.00 | FOUND! |
| 26 | surgery | 61.15 | 988/1000 |
| 18 | procedure | 44.05 | 890/1000 |
| 16 | proctologist | 41.20 | 844/1000 |
| 17 | proctology | 37.50 | 722/1000 |
| 15 | zoologist | 28.61 | (cold) |
| 23 | procedures | 25.75 | (cold) |
| 5 | zoology | 16.66 | (cold) |
| 12 | zoo | 14.00 | (cold) |
| 22 | procedural | 12.90 | (cold) |
| 8 | ambergris | 12.20 | (cold) |
| 13 | zoom | 10.33 | (cold) |
| 3 | [expletive deleted] | 10.31 | (cold) |
| 4 | an | 9.07 | (cold) |
| 24 | task | 8.14 | (cold) |
| 14 | zoomer | 7.36 | (cold) |
| 25 | tasks | 6.16 | (cold) |
| 6 | ontology | 5.91 | (cold) |
| 7 | zealous | 5.78 | (cold) |
| 19 | processor | 5.21 | (cold) |
| 21 | produce | 5.02 | (cold) |
| 1 | latter[1]the previous day’s word | 2.83 | (cold) |
| 11 | pork | 2.66 | (cold) |
| 20 | process | 1.95 | (cold) |
| 9 | feldspar | 1.38 | (cold) |
| 2 | sparkle | 1.35 | (cold) |
| 10 | noted | 0.32 | (cold) |
Footnotes
| ↑1 | the previous day’s word |
|---|
In dreams
I dreamed of summer last night, bike riding. When I woke up it was ‑33 before the wind chill.
Le sigh.
Smitty’s Eggs
This weekend was, more or less, the fifth anniversary of my dad’s death. So we went to Smitty’s and had eggs Benedict, and then I bought myself a very JJ parka.
Hallowe’en Tally 2021
OK, it’s 10 pm and I’m turning off the light. I guess the rest of these chocolate bars are our delicious problem.
The List:
- 2 goth teens
- 2 witches
- 1 Wheat King
- 1 strawberry
- 1 jack-o-lantern, very excited that we were handing out full-size chocolate bars
- 1 skeleton
…for a total of 8, which I think is our lowest count in 22 years of living here.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I think there might be a Coffee Crisp with my name on it.
Autumn Trees
North of ACC.
I can’t decide which I like better. Do you have a preference?
Just people, like you and me
We’ve been watching episodes of a PBS show called My Grandparents’ War, where celebs like Helena Bonham Carter and Kristin Scott Thomas trace the histories of their grandparents’ experience in WWII. Tonight we saw one featuring Mark Rylance, and there were a couple quotes that stuck out to me. I wanted to record them before I forget them.
Mark Rylance, walking in a cemetery for war dead in Hong Kong (where, but for the grace of God / random chance, his grandfather might well have ended up), mused that he keeps hearing people talking dispassionately about war, as though it’s some kind of natural event. But, he pointed out, war is fought by people. Just people, like you and me.
Later, he met with a Japanese historian who has studied the POW camps that the Japanese ran in Hong Kong. He asked her why she chose to study the camps—a heavy question, considering some of the atrocities that had been explored earlier in the episode. She responded, “History doesn’t repeat itself. People repeat it.”
Just people, like you and me. Let’s be careful, OK?