Lunch

Sometimes it comes in a jar.

Lynn & Riley

Today is the last of the 70 degree days, at least for a while, so I took a stroll around the ‘hood just to be outside in the nice air. I had just gotten back from my walk when I encountered two new neighbors, Lynn and her Labradoodle named Riley.

Riley is from Australia. He has a number tattooed inside his ear, which is an Australian thing. Lynn said that in Australia, dogs are tattooed inside the ear and are given a microchip (in case they lose the ear, I suppose) before they leave the country.

Labradoodles are a hybrid, not a breed. Therefore their characteristics can vary from dog to dog. They are often used as guide dogs or service dogs. Riley is a therapy dog. Lynn and Riley visit an elderly home twice a month and the old people really enjoy seeing him and petting him. It’s probably a mutual thing.

I petted Riley but he seemed completely unaware I was there. I suppose being around people so much in his therapy dog career has made it impossible for him to get too excited about meeting one more person. But, welcome to the neighborhood, Lynn and Riley.

 

(After looking at these photos, I think it’s possible that the reason Riley is oblivious to me is because he can’t see me.)

Thanksgiving

This is the week when turkeys all over America must be asking themselves, “Why me? Why wasn’t I born an armadillo? Millions of armadillos are not eaten every November.”

It’s Thanksgiving Day. Again. I awaken in utter darkness and lie still for a long while until I’m sure I won’t be getting back to sleep. Then I look at the digital clock beside my bed and see it’s 4 AM. I went to bed late, so waking at 4 AM is not good. The hours pass until at last darkness gives way to a predawn glow. I get out of bed and move to the living room sofa to lie down. I’m thinking maybe I can fall asleep for an hour or two, but there is no more sleep for me. This is so typical.

I get up from the sofa and sit down at the computer. I see a friend is online and we chat for a while. Then I fix breakfast. After breakfast, I sit at the computer again and tinker with my website design. Not this website … my personal website. Around 10 AM my neighbor Sally knocks on my door. She wants her ice cream, which for mysterious reasons is in my freezer. Then she leaves to go to her mother’s house.

At 11 AM I drive to Walmart. I thought most people would be traveling or preparing to eat at this time of day. But Walmart is surprisingly busy, considering the day. (But not as busy as it will be tomorrow.) I pick up some food items, including a frozen pizza. Pizza will be my lunch. No turkeys will die to feed me. A pepperoni had to die, but it was a tiny one, and probably deformed anyway.

Back home I nuke the pizza in the microwave oven and enhance it with a sprinkle of red pepper flakes. It tastes hot, salty, and greasy, my three favorite flavors. But according to a recent decision by Congress, I’ve just eaten two servings of veggies. I decide members of Congress must know what they’re talking about; after all, they’re in Congress and I’m not. So I pat myself on the back for choosing to eat a healthy meal. For a moment, I wonder how many members of Congress will follow their own Congressional thinking and have pizza with their turkey.

Around half past noon, my neighbor Kim phones me. She’s on a rant involving her mother and corn pudding. Talking is not required on my part. After the corn pudding rant, she switches topics and tells me her ex is trying to gaslight her, and a new rant begins. I listen to her for a long while, throwing in the occasional, socially mandated, “uh-huh”, “uh-oh”, and “huh!” to demonstrate that I’m still awake. After an hour, I remember that I’m neither married to her nor dating her, and I interrupt her monologue with, “We’ve been on the phone an hour, and I have things to do.” It’s the conversational equivalent of going from sixty miles an hour to a full stop in half a second, and it gets the job done. I’m off the phone.

I would describe the rest of my Thanksgiving day, but I can see all of you out there, eyelids getting heavy, heads nodding, a little drool trickling down chins. And I’ve heard you muttering the occasional “uh-huh”, “uh-oh”, and “huh!” Well, okay then, I’m outta here. I have things to do.

Adiemus

Adiemus, the opening track on the album Songs of Sanctuary by Welsh composer Karl Jenkins, is performed here by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, with lead vocalist South Africa-born British singer Miriam Stockley.

The Sun

If our eyes could see extreme ultraviolet light, the sun might look like this to us. This is the last 48 hours of the sun's activity, recorded by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. The movie is updated every 30 minutes. Solar activity is recorded at a wavelength that allows us to see magnetic field lines (made visible by particles spiraling along them) created by disturbances on the sun's surface. Also available are movies of the sun recorded at various other wavelengths of light.


For more data go to http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/

Courtesy of NASA/SDO and the AIA, EVE, and HMI science teams.

The Juicer Lives

Sometime during the 1990s I made a short-lived attempt to eat healthy. I bought a cheap juice extractor, used it for a while, and put it away. I don’t remember why I quit using it. Probably, it was more time and trouble than I thought it was worth. But then, back in those days I probably wasn’t suffering from metabolic syndrome: spare tire, overweight, A1C bumping against the upper limit, high triglycerides and low HDL, and prehypertension. Gosh, it sounds bad when I say them all at once like that.

Recently I watched a movie titled “Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead” about an Aussie businessman who was, well, “fat, sick, and nearly dead”, and who decided to come to America and drive from coast to coast while consuming only vegetable and fruit juice for 60 days. The film was inspiring and I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to lose weight and/or get more healthy. Not that I wanted or needed to go on a juice fast for 60 days, or 30 days, or even 10 days. I just wanted to get better nourishment into my diet.

So …

Banjo Player

I was watching a PBS program on the history of the banjo when this image of an old advertisement from an 1843 newspaper flickered across my TV screen.



Hahahaha ... The much-admired banjo-player and whaaa... ?!
I think the “melodist” was Joel Sweeney, an early blackface minstrel performer. Oh, how times have changed.

Autumn

It’s here. Fall. Autumn. The autumnal equinox has arrived. The sun’s journey across the sky sinks slowly toward the south now, little by little each day. Daylight is short and getting shorter. Dawn arrives later; dusk arrives sooner. The autumn sun is still hot but losing its intensity. Brown and yellow leaves litter yards and fill gutters. The day can be warm – even hot – but the nights are chilly – or downright cold – and sometimes there’s frost in the morning.

Today is a chilly, gloomy day, a dreary day. The sky is overcast. Rain fell last night and this morning.

As I was driving home from a doctor appointment, a traffic light stopped me in front of McDonald’s. I looked through my window and saw a hawk soaring above the restaurant, no doubt lifted upward on currents of warm air from the fryalator. That fryalator stays busy. Maybe it was a French fries-lovin’ hawk basking in the rising grease fumes. It’s all part of autumn.

I haven’t turned on the heat yet. Well, that’s not quite true. I turned on the boiler for two nights when the temperature was forecast to hit freezing. I wasn’t cold; that’s not why I turned on the heat. I was a little paranoid about frozen pipes. I turned on the boiler so that the radiator pipes would warm the crawlspace. It was an abundance of caution type of thing. It’s still too early in the season to seriously worry about frozen pipes.

The overnight temperature is supposed to hit 37° F tonight; the high tomorrow is supposed to reach 55°. But in 3 or 4 days the high will be back to 70° and the low will be 50°. Autumn can’t decide whether it wants to be the end of summer or the beginning of winter.

Autumn is nature tapping you on the shoulder and whispering in your ear: “Get ready, cold whether is around the corner.” Autumn is your reminder to finish your outside jobs. Paint that board on your house; wash your car; put up weather-stripping; seal the air leaks around that window air conditioner.

Autumn is the season for outdoor parties, for sitting with friends on hay bales around a bonfire, browning hot dogs and marshmallows, talking and laughing until someone leans back too far and does a slow motion roll right off their perch, and just generally having more fun than is natural.

Autumn is the remembrance of long ago high school football games, and trees with fiery colors, and outdoor walks wearing long johns under your jeans and a hoody zipped up over your shirt. Autumn is hot chili and pumpkin pie, and switching from iced tea to hot cocoa, and herbal tea at bedtime.

Autumn is Nature pretending to die so that, come Springtime, it can be reborn, revived, resurrected. In this way, Nature speaks to us. If we listen, if we hear, we may understand something very important about our own reality.

Or perhaps it’s not important at all.