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hobby / Monday / photo — Comments Off
8
Feb 21

Photos to start the week

This weekend we received a red-bellied woodpecker as a backyard guest.

That’s just what they’re called. He didn’t explain the discrepancy. (The red crown distinguishes the gender, by the way.)

Look at this little guy:

One of his friends gave me my best photo yesterday, bird division:

Of course the cats like the birds. They have strategically placed spots with great sight lines of the menagerie taking place just beyond their reach and on the other side of the inexplicable transparent walls.

What must pets imagine of glass, and us?

Anyway, Phoebe is taking a break from the bird watching. She has the most intense relaxation face you can imagine:

Last month we noted that Poseidon likes to watch car chases with us. Apparently they make Phoebe a little more nervous. She couldn’t watch last week’s historic car chase.

Poseidon, meanwhile, has found himself a hammock bridge. Like he needed the help, or a new place to sleep:

Last night he decided to have a bit of water fresh from the mountain stream.

Better than the several bowls he has available to him.

More tomorrow. Check out the Instagram account that Phoebe and Poseidon run. Keep up with me on Instagram, too. And don’t forget my Twitter account.

See you there!

hobby / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
15
Dec 20

We had a visitor

I was having lunch when The Yankee sent me a text, from upstairs, to look out into the backyard. Her office overlooks the bird feeders in the backyard, and the maple tree that guards them. And, in that tree, a patient sentinel sat, this red shouldered hawk who watched them come and go.

Anyway, he stayed for a while, and I had the opportunity to observe him from our upstairs raptor blind. Enjoy!

Probably he was looking for one of the critters that sneak up to eat seeds on the ground. There are a few squirrels and at least one chipmunk and who knows how many moles. This hawk doesn’t want moles, but I’d like him to give them a shot.

I took 33 photos. And these are the best ones.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a good shot of him flying off. He went in a hurry.

And he went without a snack.

But we did enjoy the visit.

I hope he comes back soon.

Hope you do, too. There could be a menagerie around here.

hobby / Monday / photo — Comments Off
30
Nov 20

The week with bad titles

I’m sure this is some sort of king of the kitchen thing. Some sort of dominant cat of the kitchen island thing. Something I shouldn’t indulge — especially since he likes to jump to attack, who knows if he’s developing a penchant for leaping down to attack.

But he looks handsome doing it, so I guess that makes it OK.

Anyway, it’s Monday, so we check in on the cats and, as you can see, Poseidon is doing just fine. That’s a new posture for him. I hope it doesn’t take. That’s my breakfast and lunch seat, not his.

I will let him take naps in it at other times, however.

Phoebe is great, too. As you might know — or, if you have pussycats in your pad, you might have instituted something like — our failed rule about cats on the counter. Poseidon we’ll just shoe-shoe him off a counter. Or we’ll spray him with a nice little water bottle — which he actually loves, so you see, failed rule. Phoebe, however, we just pick her and hold her, which is a fate worse than nail clipping. But! We have the world’s greatest jailhouse jaguars and legal lions. They quickly found the loophole.

And we let this stuff slide. Any animal that can do the leg work on something like that deserves your approval.

Anyway, another Monday, another week. This is usually where I put something about the weekend’s bike ride(s) and so on. We did ride, a simple, basic, usually kind of ride, and it was cold. So I took no photos because retrieving my camera from within several layers of kit and two pairs of gloves seemed too risk at the time. But it was a nice ride.

And then I also worked on one of my little wood projects:

I’m toying with the idea of making a bowl. Everything, but the bottom, is coming along nicely. I’l; figure it out. In the meantime, it gives me a reason to stand in the garage next to a familiar bit of pareidolia.

It’s a perfectly natural phenomenon, seeing faces in things. It’s only weird if they answer you back.

Not to worry. Mr. Garagey is more the silent type.

cycling / hobby / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
24
Nov 20

Taking these days off seriously

Slept in. Went for a bike ride. It was gray and damp, just a bit of a chill. The Yankee had to do 35 minutes. I forgot to ask about the training idea behind 35 minutes. It takes about 35 minutes to get warmed up.

Anyway, I rode today in just some long cycling pants and a wind breaker and gloves. No gaiter, no gilet, just hoping body heat would get me by. After, you know, warming up.

I never know how to figure out cool temperatures on a bicycle on a chilly day. What is the right amount? And how can I carry the things I shed if I put on too much stuff?

And what’s too cold?

Let’s rephrase that. What’s too cold for the used, not-advanced, non-technical-at-all, cobbled together cold weather kit I have?

Anyway, we did her easy 35 minutes and I followed her back to our neighborhood and then did a bit more, at least as much as the remaining ambient daylight would allow. It was just 16 miles or so, and I kicked myself for not going out earlier. I learn a lot by kicking myself.

Strava tells me I set a PR on one little hill. You turn onto a path and go through two traffic barriers and a small parking lot and then up the road into a nice little suburban neighborhood. It’s a popular hill for cyclists because the bottom has a nice quiet bike path and the top opens up into going any number of directions. Just before I turned onto the path from one direction another rider started up it from the other. Before too long he was standing out of his saddle, dancing on the pedals as they say. I just sat still and stayed in the big ring and passed him, somehow.

I passed someone on a hill. I’m not even riding well, but I got over that hill nicely. Strava tells me I set a personal best on that segment. That’s fine motivation.

In the evening we talked to our friend in Canada, you don’t know her. Maybe you do. She’s a brilliant scholar and we’re all friends and I listened to her and The Yankee talk about future research and tried to occasionally contribute something to the conversation.

I also made some progress on new pocket squares this evening. It’s a two-step project, and after I finish the second step I’ll have 30 bright new colorful options to choose from. I’ll be cleaning up the bits of cloth and stray strings for months. Just in time for spring! A wonderful thought! Snow is in the forecast for next week.

cycling / hobby / Monday / photo / video / woodworking, sorta — Comments Off
9
Nov 20

A Monday post about Sunday

We went for a bike ride, because that’s what we do, and because it was an abnormally beautiful weekend day. Just the sort that is intent to try to trick you into thinking this is what the whole fall and most of the winter will be like. It won’t be, and that’s a shame. And I can’t get that out of my head, and that’s an equally big shame.

Did I mention it was a great day? Ridiculous. It was 80 degrees, far beyond what anyone here would expect, which is also a shame.

Anyway, we were going out to the lake, but changed our mind to take a slightly different route. Different roads, different traffic — only yelled at twice, by a dude that, feeling he didn’t get it right the first time, decided to let us get by so he could pass us and yell again — and different views.

It was described to me as a nice, easy ride.

I looked down at one point because my legs notified my brain that I was turning over ridiculous RPMs. We’re talking maximum watts, and I’m torquing the handlebars for all they were worth. And that’s how I found myself in a sprint, at 26 miles per hour, just to stay on the Yankee’s wheel.

We were also climbing a hill when that happened.

Down on the causeway:

And a bit of video somewhere between here and there …

Anyway, yesterday was a lovely day for a ride, and we enjoyed it. And we look forward to the next one. (And it better be 80 degrees again!)

I also got to play around with part of this wood carving project I started on Friday:

This is just a test piece. I’ll use a longer piece to create the scoop-bowl volume I want here, and I need to figure out some way to handle the bottom of the bowl. It’s quite rough in there, as you can see, and I’d like to clean that up without having to buy even more stuff. I think this is becoming a scoop for dry cat food, which was the suspicion I had from the beginning. And that needs to be 3/4s of a cup. But if I can get the volume right, smooth out the insides of the real piece and thin the sides and shape the bottom, I’ll have a nice piece.

Or just something else that never works quite the way I intended.