elainegrey

I was curious about the weather that happened in Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas yesterday, happy there wasn't a headline about a tornado flattening some town on the NY Times. Ah-ha! https://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/archive/event.php?date=20240506  That gives an idea of the drama.

Oh, and it looks like the Associated Press  stories are just coming in -- presumably the Times depends on the news services for coverage. An AP story dateline Oklahoma city May 7, 2024 at 6:19 AM has reports of one death. I would like to see photos of the "apple-sized hail 3 inches (7.6 centimeters) " or as reported via CNN "hail report of 4 inches in diameter reported in Moonlight, Kansas." (Also, looks like the Times had stories, just not prominently, and from their own staff.)

The neat thing about this URL-- https://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/archive/event.php?date=20240506 -- is that the date can go back to June 1st 1999.

I like the using this mesoscale page to see the large weather systems: https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/md/ I like going to the national weather service to get past the breathless coverage of video reporters. I can google the acronyms i don't know.

Christine is being particularly thoughtful as we approach holidays, it seems. She encouraged me to buy one of the giant pomegranates at the grocery last week, and i have been enjoying the glistening red jewels with my breakfast since then.

I had a weird issue with firefox browser: i have apparently grown to depend on typing a code -- the title of a bookmark -- into the address bar and having it quickly populate with the details. Or type a domain and the familiar resource popped up. It stopped for a while, and i had some frustrating trouble shooting and even more frustration with a support form mis-fire that lost my careful documentation of all my troubleshooting efforts. It's back now. It felt like stumbling around in the dark without it; i am so delighted to have the efficiency back.

We expect a good bit of rain overnight through Wednesday: so glad. Not only is there a drought but i think a dead deer by the road might be stinking up the area. Wednesday i will go pick up my trees and shrubs and it looks like i will get to plant them in the rain. But it's not raining yet, here on Tuesday morning, despite the prediction. That's good because Christine is wrangling pets to the vet.

Because Luigi screams in what seems like pain when i try to work on his belly mats (which i have misspelled as "matts" on the photo for the vet), we are having him sedated and his belly and leg pits shaved. My hope is i can keep him groomed after this. I assume part of the pain is the pulling of the hair in the mats. I know this is ridiculous pet care privilege, but it is also spousal mental health care and relationship care because Christine becomes so agitated listening to Luigi scream.

( TMI sinuses )

"Hottest single days globally on record. Drawing on multi-source analyses from NOAA of daily global temperature that extend back to 1979, the Climate Reanalyzer website shows that July 3, 2023, was the warmest single day on record — only to be toppled by July 4, tied on July 5, and broken again on July 6...." -- https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/07/the-world-just-broke-a-stunning-slew-of-heat-records-why-right-now/

New York Times reported today stunning high temps in Florida and Gulf waters: "the current sea surface temperatures in the Florida Keys... are the hottest on record." Lake Okeechobee has toxic algae blooms. In early June reports that, "The giant sargassum blobs piling up on the Florida coast might harbor flesh-eating bacteria," are now ameliorated by a significant reduction in the seaweed on Florida's coast.

Otter 841 steals and attacks surf boards in Santa Cruz -- joining the orcas off Spain in ... protest? piracy?

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From Saturday's reading, just happened to read these in quick succession....

"The solution is not to give me the right to vote for president, I don’t want it; I want us to exercise our right to decolonization, to self-determination that is due to us and recognized in the international courts by the U.S. signing on to the U.N. Charter. That’s what I want. Don’t give me any more bones if you’re not going to give us freedom.” -- https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/07/magazine/guam-american-military.html

"We acknowledge that it is not the place of non-Indigenous people to define or decide the
priorities or realities of Indigenous people, and that "right relationship" requires respect for
Indigenous people’s autonomy and leadership." -- https://westernfriend.org/asheville-friends-support-indigenous-peoples

"In 1946, eight United Nations member countries including the United States created a list of their territories “whose people have not yet attained a full measure of self-government,” in accordance with the U.N. Charter’s principle of self-determination. Guam is among the 17 that remain there today. Delegates from the Guam Decolonization Commission regularly travel to New York to appear before the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization to bring attention to the failure of the self-determination process. Testimony is given by the Guam delegation, the U.S. government delegation and an independent expert, and results in a draft resolution. Every time the Guam delegation requests the United States allow a U.N. fact-finding mission to assess the colony’s trajectory toward self-determination, the request is denied." - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/07/magazine/guam-american-military.html

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Uganda and anti LGBTQAI legislation: https://www.pym.org/chester-meeting-minute-ugandan-lgbtqai-community/

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I had misread the temps on Saturday and covered the berries i could for that evening, but it was low 40s. In the past seven days, the coldest was Monday's low in the early morning at 39°F (almost 4°C). We've had some balmy days, too.

My brother was in town for Tuesday, so he, my Dad, and sister L-- all came over for lunch. Christine had ordered pizza and salad, i assembled additional salad greens from the garden, and we had a glorious repast in the orchard -- the phlox and violets all blooming in purples and pinks, the green grass, the bright blue sky. And the apple trees blooming. That evening i went over to my sister's and i had a lovely dinner with her family, Dad, and brother N.

So, Thursday's high was 87°F (30°C) but with the humidity felt like 90°F. No thank you. I mowed after work, as it seems the heat just made all the plants burst forth, weeds and grass included. I was so very very ugh after. (That is: sticky, eyes stinging from the salt from all the glowing i was doing.) Thunder was booming away, but the storm cell passed from the west to the north, slipping by us. We are promised rain for the next two days; good since we have slipped into abnormally dry.

Assuming the insurance prior authorization comes through, i'll be recovering from surgery this time next week. The silence on that insurance process is frustrating. The work leave administrator is similarly FUBAR. I force myself to shrug and move on (after a quick note to the doctor asking for status).

The autumn color around the house does not begin with bright splashes of color. When i think of planting things, fall color is on my list. Taken all together, the leaves are thinning and there's a yellow like late afternoon light in the leaves - -and sometimes it is late afternoon light, and sometimes it is the leaf change.

The dogwoods that survive are a dull burgundy dotted with the bright red berries. I am sad about their slow decline, but... maybe someday i'll buy some disease resistant selections or hybrids. There are plenty of redbud seedlings here, though, so i'll focus on bringing those up as spring color.

The tulip poplars -- not poplars but tall, straight hardwood timber trees that reach majestic heights -- are dropping their leaves. The leaves turn yellow, here and there, dappling the tree, as early as August. Many are freckled brown; i assumed this was some fungal issue, but apparently it's part of the leaf change. They turn dark brown-black soon after they hit the ground in the yard here, and i rake them up to return the yard to a more cheerful state. Free mulch.

The black cherries and the elms also start loosing leaves in dull browns. The cherries pass through unexceptional yellows.

The apple in the front of the house lost its leaves in the late summer to the pressure of the cedar rust.

The spice bush though -- its leaves turn a clear yellow. I haven't noticed any spice bush berries. Maybe i should go forage.

Friday after work and Saturday i have done very little. I think my brain just needs a break. I let it wander through the geologic history of Mount Rogers in Virginia, marveling at the age of the billion year old Cranberry Gneiss. Billion. With a B. From before oxygen filled the atmosphere. I would love a small statue or something to touch to treasure such a connection bact to that time. Oooh, well, if it was Scotland i was holding on to: https://www.gneiss-things.com/heritage

I met with my coach on Tuesday. I don't think i went to a particularly fragile place, but it exhausted me.

Wednesday Christine and i did the grocery run to a shiny brand new grocery: i think i had fantasized too much about a store like the new Safeway in Menlo Park. We are still in the middle of nowhere. There were no surprising delights compared to our usual grocery store. I expected the better selection of "Hispanic" food. My sister had raved about the vegetarian options but it didn't seem significantly different. There was less selection of tofu, but the Field Roast brand sausages were present.

The disappointment, that i wasn't expecting, plus general foot and -- sigh, i have to admit after getting a massage at the office in Ohio i'm having lower back pain -- lower back pain sent me into the dumps on Wednesday. Probably also Hurricane Ian distractions didn't help.

I think i am on the up-swing from those lows. Yesterday my third order of a standing mat has produced something i can use at my desk. I also ordered one of those wooden foot roller/massagers; it arrived. Between using both yesterday, my feet feel better this morning.

We lost power last night due to falling trees. The UPS my CPAP is plugged into woke me up, beeping. Power was restored a few hours later and i was only slightly disturbed as Christine woke to turn off lights. We've a day of tropical storm winds ahead, so there will be more power outages.

I'm chatting with Woebot, an AI cognitive behavioral therapist. It's actually less chatting than "choose your own adventure" style interaction. It's OK so far. I am open to the very very cheerful messages; i don't know how well this would help someone really struggling. There's a tool box included; i'm not sure if those will be as helpful as the pre-order PDFs i receive as a "be patient for the late delivery" of the ADHD Anti-planner .

In an unintentional collision of efforts, i am signed up for "Developing and Implementing an Outward Mindset" from Arbinger Institute, which i read someone post as "a scam to extract large sums of money from corporations to teach employees the golden rule." There is a fair critique that it is really oriented towards the privileged, where less privileged folks really do have external forces that hamper them while more privileged have much more control over their choices. By definition. So telling a CEO that they are responsible and in control of their mindset instead of blaming others for issues is very different than telling a line worker the same thing. I am in the same class as my new exec director and a number of engineering colleagues, so i no longer think that this is a waste of time: the chance to be present in a different context with them will be nice.

Lots of mindset changing there.

Must go call in sick for a few hours because i don't want to interact and i am running late and my sister is urging me to be a little more prepared for power outages.

20131112 Mom in Monterey Bay

Sunday was blissfully rainy: i can't remember when we last had a whole day of rain. I'm sure it was this past winter, but it doesn't come to mind. I edited a number of photos of mom with the latest version of Lightroom. Wow, it sure has come a long way in sorting out the focal object from the background. I had another photo of my parents watching the sunset, side lit, and i was easily able to select them and increase the exposure on them so they were no longer dark silhouettes. I was shooting "to the right" -- over exposing the image -- so i had the pixels to do it, but correcting the image years ago would have been a painstaking labor. Not so now.

I think looking at photos of family continued my blues to some extent -- it's had me aware of how separate i've been and continue to be. It's harder for me to remember how hard it was for me to be around Mom now.

I also did some sketching while sitting with Christine on the porch -- i look forward to getting the new colored pencils. Although the yellow over blue communicated green, it still looked like an old fashioned print with a misregistration of the color layers. Also, tall pine trees are tall. I am pretty sure that even at two grids wide and twenty grids wide, the tree sketch had shorter proportions than reality.

And then i did math! I want to fit three color wheels onto a page 20x33 units and needed to figure out the maximum radius. A radius of 5.5 (diameter 11) would clearly fit, but wouldn't be the maximum. I used trig! And solved a quadratic equation! OMG actual math! (Answer is a radius of 6.3.)

The next thing i am working on is how to draw the wheels. It's easy to divide the circles into 12 using the protractor and geometry, but it puts a line on the vertical axis: there is no "top" wedge. Is it worth the bother constructing a different axis than the dot grid on the paper? I invite your thoughts as to the "top" wedge of a color wheel.

I suppose i could have ridden the bike under the umbrella last night, but i'd started a novel and wanted to finish it: the fourth book in Bujold's Sharing Knife series which i had started years ago.

Executive function amok.

No better or worse, i suppose, just different.

More snow (or ice or sleet or freezing rain). This hits the day before Dad heads to Florida and care of my mom is switched off between my sister, B-- the hired companion, and briefly me. The sub freezing Saturday (sorry to complain about what is probably nothing to people who live in colder climes) was going to be when i got the bare root trees really planted. I "heeled them in" in the vegetable plot (more or less, i wonder how important the angle of repose is) on Monday. I still have fences to make to protect all but the sweet bays from the deer.

The sweet bays are less likely to be devoured. Probably more like i saw out the window a week ago: a deer walked by, ripped a leaf off the hellebore, and then spat it out and kept going. If it had tasted good, i'm sure the deer would have kept eating. The hazels and the southern crabapple - a native - are more likely to be eaten to the ground.

Anyhow, i want to garden, but snow and cold (i may still get out, depending), then next week plus is Mom care. And Dad's departure on roads that may be black ice? Yikes. Worries.

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Christine woke with a panic attack and migraine. It's not unusual. It's so unfair. I can't imagine how hard things must be without the magic of, "I'll go to sleep now and things will seem better in the morning."

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I made a coconut milk daal and a tomato based aloo matar for dinner last night. I miss having a local Indian restaurant, and i think to the blink of time we lived in proximity to an Indian restaurant that delivered -- oh, the Kashmiri Naan and the tandoori shrimp -- but I have been managing to fill that gap. Store bought tandoori paste enlivened sheet pan cauliflower and tofu a week or so ago, and there's store bought naan that is a decent compliment. It probably helps that i haven't had restaurant Indian food for a while. I'm not buying curry powder or garam masala because they seem to mostly have spices i already have.

I'm out of mustard seeds - the last time i cooked all the ones i had grown in the garden. I still have coriander from the garden: that seems to have established a good volunteer community. I've bought cumin seed to grow. The guides for growing it have some seemingly bizarre advice, "When planning to grow cumin it is important to understand that each plant produces a small number of seeds. If you wish to grow large quantities of cumin, you will need to calculate how much space you require to produce an adequate crop" or worse, "Each plant only produces a few fruit and each fruit only contains one seed, so there needs to be a large crop to collect a useable amount of seed."

Have these people met dill and coriander? Wtf Fruit?

I mean, if i was making enchilada sauce from scratch every few days and then curries on the alternate days, yeah, you need LOTS of cumin. But i really suspect that 90% of the garden guides are written by people repackaging some other source and here is an amplification of some error. I don't think it's confusion with Nigella, which i did find in other sources.

I've bought fresh dill seed and fresh cumin and i am planting them all in waves this year because i am guessing that the seed doesn't keep that well? And if this fails, i will buy a dill plant and let it go to seed. And if that fails, i will give up on dill (and not bother with caraway and cumin). I will be thankful that somehow coriander aka cilantro took up in my soil and that i can enjoy it. I am also going to buy a lovage plant as my seed starts for that have failed. And i'm putting rabbit fencing up or paying someone to do so because that's the other possible cause of failure. Well, then there will be the caterpillars. I do remember them devouring a few plants the first year.

Anyhow, there brain, you have spent your time chittering on. I hope we can Get Stuff Done Now. (Like replies to everyone's helpful git messages.)

I'm feeling a little dislocated in time and task. I got some things i was procrastinating (retreat prep) on underway, but others remain. I feel guilt on the retreat prep: not enough outreach, and now it's a month away.

The "snow fall" -- really accumulated sleet -- lingers around our house. We're on a north slope, with tall pines to our south: passive air conditioning, i joke. In the early spring, when others have flowers, i remind myself that i appreciate it in July and August. Because Christine loves snow, i am happy it lingers here. I suspect today's rain will wash the remaining bits away before the new accumulation occurs.

Best moment - i was in the yard with Carrie under a cloudy moon when i felt like a spotlight was cast upon me. The clouds cleared and the full moon on the snow was so very bright.

There's going to be a bit of below freezing weather, and all the greens that haven't died or been eaten by rabbits, i've brought in. I just ordered rabbit fencing. I want to plant my seeds, but know it will all be mown down by the critters. I heaped the pine straw around half of the fava bean plants (to see if it makes a difference). I piled some more on where the dahlias are and the lemon grass. I don't think the lemon grass will make it. The dahlias -- maybe? I can't remember if they survived the severe winter in 2017-18. The other winters since we moved here have been mild.

https://mrcc.purdue.edu/AWSSI/chart.html?stn=RDUthr

(For US locations, this average winter severity calculation is a nice way to visualize winter weather effects. See also https://mrcc.purdue.edu/research/awssi/indexAwssi.jsp)

MLK day: went to a zoom workshop on voting rights

Tuesday: took Mom to the Nasher Art Museum to get her out from under all the construction going on (new flooring in the first floor bedrooms at M&D's house, easier to clean and roll a wheel chair on). It's the first time she and i have been out together, just us, since her stroke. The accursed pandemic has kept her so bound in.

I feel like i'm feral when i sit down at a table: i knocked a drink over.

Next step, getting oriented to her church so i can take her there.

A sense of weariness comes from that trip -- i dunno if it was all physical or grief at seeing her so stoke crippled. She noticed a custom plate on a car at a stop light. It makes me realize how present she really can be. It's hard to know how much is going on in her head, between the aphasia (she can't communicate well) and memory loss (she really can't remember some things, including things where she had such mastery and expertise, and things that happened long ago). When she gives confused responses to questions i know the answer to, i can't tell if it's communication, or if she really didn't remember or understand what happened to her just a few days prior.

Yesterday: a no drama birthday for Christine, who turned off everything and just didn't respond to people reaching out. Yay. Last year was over the top with her sister getting all overwrought.

Lots of random snippets

Before last night, I did not understand why i am so cold. I don't recall it being so hard to shift to being comfortable, indeed, i recall being delighted that it was finally not hot and humid. It does remind me of how -- before the wonderful shade tree was cut down -- our Mountain View apartment's concrete walls held a cool. I would be cold (we didn't run the electric baseboards in that place, but counted on the heat from the surrounding units or a space heater) then step outside to find it wonderfully balmy. Monday, in the sun, it was also quite pleasant outside. Christine and i had afternoon coffee on the front porch.

Last night we used the feather comforter. HA! I did not realize how important being toasty all night was to being warm the next day.

Tonight we might have frost. Nov 7 is the average date of the late quartile first frost so we are still within the bounds of normal for the date.

My Monday day off did not produce significant yard work, but i continue to putter with progress. I did get the bulbs i'd ordered from Old House Gardens in the ground. I hope the lily bulbs -- the native Lilium superbum in particular -- all settle in. I finally planted the fava beans. Weeding the area where the sweet potatoes might have grown was depressing as i could hear and see the seeds falling from the stilt grass. I've decided that i'll wait for the frost to kill the sweet potatoes, then burn as much of the stilt grass in place as i can -- the annoying weed isn't that flammable but surely the application of the weed flamer could encourage it to burn. (It apparently has a high silica content -- which is why it is "unpalatable" and the deer ignore it.)

Wednesday night i tried fried smelt. And... yes, that was something new. I'm thinking a few of the fish might have been just a bit too big to be really enjoyable. They did have the heads removed and were cleaned out, so that was good. Carrie thought they were the best thing ever. I suspect that hot from the fryer they would have been even better. I might order them again. This goes with my curiosity for what smoked mullet tastes like, and wondering if i could enjoy small inexpensive fish more regularly. I dunno. I have had sardines linger in the pantry for years.

We had a Carolina Wren caught by Marlow that we rescued, too late, and it died. The next day my sister had the same with their young car. Wednesday evening, driving home, we thought we hit a bird but when we got home it was a small, dead bat caught under the windshield wiper. I witness their deaths and hope i can also create a space for critters to thrive. I found several Eastern worm snakes while raking leaves over the weekend, and we continue to rescue anoles and skinks from Marlowe.

Edward has had a cold and we did get some antibiotics for him, but Christine gets terribly distressed by the force feeding of the liquid meds down his throat. We stopped after i squirted it down his throat and possibly in his airway. He's much better, but i worry about not doing the full course of antibiotics. If i could hold him and dose him that would be better, but he is a very big cat. Well, i will try not to worry and maybe next time i will be a little better at dosing.