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Monday

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22
Nov 21

Seeing the big cats

We took my in-laws to the Exotic Feline Rescue Center. Really cool place with a great mission.

We provide permanent homes for exotic felines that have been abused, abandoned or for some reason have nowhere to live out their lives, while educating the public about these beautiful cats.

· We do not buy, sell or breed cats

· We do not allow public contact with the cats

· We give big cats a home for life

The EFRC owns approximately 260 acres of land in Center Point, Indiana where a staff of around 15 employees, as well as many interns and volunteers care daily for over 100 big and small exotic cats, give educational tours, sell and ship merchandise, construct and maintain enclosures, and many other tasks. We have cared for over a dozen different species throughout the years. There are just a handful of sanctuaries in the US that provide the same services that we do. We work and cooperate with many organizations including: Indianapolis Zoo, USDA, Louisville Zoo, Indiana DNR, US Fish & Wildlife and New York DEC.

Everyone loves visiting there. And if you’re ever nearby, you should definitely plan a few hours and make a visit for yourself. Here are a few pictures.

And more of those tomorrow.

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15
Nov 21

This went hours without a title, which is saying nothing

I was somewhat surprised and pleased to see the last of the day’s sun, and a fancy little glimpse about what was transpiring to the west. I stood on the top level of the parking deck on a not-too-chilly evening and watched the birds dance in the sky.

There’s a medium height campus building just to the right. A hotel-turned-sorority-house-turned office building which has been described as “a mixture of wit, whimsy, forgetfulness and hard deadlines,” and, if that miniature description is correct, regret.

The birds don’t care. The building affords them a nice big and flat roof with commanding views of the blocks around them.

And if the birds care about such things, they have a nice seat for the occasional sunsets so long as they stick around.

When was the last time you saw a giant flock of birds? Maybe it’s a migratory issue, maybe I am always just in the wrong places, but it might be predation or poison or cell towers or climate change. I remember a childhood filled with aerial armadas of birds flying overhead. Now they stand out in their very rare, and comparatively smaller appearances.

Another fortunate thing was that I got to the house in time to see the last of the burning sky.

And, of course, the cats, who are doing great. Phoebe needs cuddles.

Lots of cuddles. The joke is that I come in and she tells me she has been neglected all day and needs pets right now and, of course, that’s patently false. She gets playfully scolded for the fibs I’m applying to her pet-me-pet-me-pet-me body language.

Sometimes she curls up on me and I think about when we first got these guys. She was, for whatever reason, standoffish with me for many many weeks. I would tell her then that she was missing out on some great cuddles and she’d figure it out. And she did!

Poseidon never had that concern. He’s been needy and cuddly right from the start.

He’s quite in-your-face about it.

And as the weather gets cooler, he’s returning to form. It’s purely about body heat, I’m sure.

This is the last week of classes before Thanksgiving break. Things are speeding up, rather than slowing down. But before you go today, how about some sports talk?

Here’s The Toss Up, which is slashing their way through a great episode on the early part of the NHL season …

And this is a brand new show, the TV people and the radio people are producing a new simulcast project. We’ll have them work on the framing of the shots a bit, and maybe get a second camera in there eventually. And hopefully have them add some pep to their morning step.

That’s episode one. And another new sports talk show is being launched this week, too. That’ll make four sports talkers. Three of them brand new this semester. People do like to talk about sports.

More tomorrow, another show, a new podcast and more … but probably no sports.

adventures / memories / Monday / photo — Comments Off
8
Nov 21

Catching up through the mirror

Back to that maple tree I found at the entrance to the neighborhood on Friday. It’s still lovely, for now.

I’m just a big fan of that little batch of red right in the middle of the tree. This guy has character, and I should pay more attention to it through all seasons.

Because I like the smudge of colors in blurry photographs, this is how I’ll wind up remembering the tree:

And because this is my site — my name’s right there on the top, and everything! — here are a few more pictures of that tree.

It has a lot of character.

How can you not love that punk rock red?

Back to my backyard. I’m thinking of making a custom jigsaw puzzle. Would anyone like a copy of this one?

All of those leaves fell out of this maple. Like it sneezed, or brushed some crumbs from its coat.

The evening light on an evening walk. The Yankee has started running in her post-surgical recovery. Next Tuesday is four weeks, and we did an easy mile on Sunday evening.

I spent the rest of the weekend on the sideview mirror right project.

You see, our garage is shrinking, and for the second time my lovely bride has clipped the side with her mirror. The first time, eight years ago this month in our old house, she just shattered the glass, which, it turns out, was easy enough to replace.

Recently, she tore up the plastic mirror assembly. It hasn’t sat correctly since and the power mirror function was ruined. To use the mirror you had to hunch down from your normal driving posture. I wanted to fix this, because I like vehicle safety.

Buying the mirror was the easy part. I found a perfectly matched after-market mirror assembly for $39. It was black. (Her car is not black.) She did not want to drive around with a mismatched mirror. And neither of us wanted to pay a body shop for even a small job.

So I … got to paint the mirror. It started as shiny black plastic. I had to hit two stores on Saturday to find the can eight-ounce can of the matching stuff. I sanded the plastic. I applied three coats of primer.

Then I put on three coats of paint — lunar mist, is what the manufacturer calls it — and too much top coat.

Somehow, this is the first thing I’ve painted since childhood.

I found a seven-minute video on YouTube teaching me how to replace the driver’s side mirror. The length of the video encouraged me, because of course the actual process is much easier after the helpful mechanic over-explains it all. The process requires a flathead screwdriver, a socket wrench and three nuts and bolts.

Now it’s time for the two respective moments of truth. They came at me quick, almost too fast to process, let alone celebrate. First, I kept the glass clean from all of that paint. (I’d also only painted my thumb once, and made three small errors throughout the application process. We’re calling this a win.)

The next big victory was seeing the power mirror action working again. When she hit the garage it severed the cables inside the old assembly. The new assembly, of course, has its own wiring, which is in great shape. All I had to do was plug it into the car. And the mirror moves just as it should.

The paint job, for someone who never paints, isn’t bad. Maybe I’ll try to buff it down next weekend. Right now, it’s safe, and that’s what counts.

And that it matches.

I told The Yankee that I’m saving the old mirror for next time. But, hey, if you have to whack a mirror in this car, now I know how to do it. I built up a great deal of confidence in my ability to do the job.

Which makes me dangerous.

Like her backing up.

I also told her I’m cutting a notch out of the garage wall, like the old cartoons leaving a body silhouette when they went through a wall, so the mirror can pass right through.

IU / Monday / photo / podcast — Comments Off
1
Nov 21

Catching up

Another Monday closer to … whatever Mondays get you closer to. I suspect it’s a bit different for us all: the weekend, the next vacation, seeing the kids, a three-day weekend, existential dread, a trip to Disney World. We all have things for which we are marking off Mondays.

Saying spring, for me, is obvious and easy, and 21 Mondays away. Anything else would probably run out much longer.

The holidays! One could mark Mondays until the holidays. That’s a good one.

Being the first of the month, I did the monthly computer maintenance, updated files for the site, removed October stuff to make way for November material, put in the newest data for spreadsheets and similarly interesting stuff. I also ran across one of those “Things to watch this month” lists, and there are some things worth giving a try. One of them starts next week. So it could be that I am just marking Mondays until … next Monday. Incremental progress being more readily achieved than medium- or long range counts.

And no one wants to hear about your upcoming trip to Disney World on a Monday. Talk about your existential dread!

Here’s a podcast I recorded on Friday. As you have no doubt read around here, I find it fascinating when you find a scientist trying new techniques in their research field. In this case, some of the people working in the IU School of Social Work are using machine learning — data analysis that automates analytical model building — to study almost 30,000 cases using about 100 variables in a decade-long longitudinal study. It makes for some really cool innovation and, as is often the case, this is the beginning. So I’m getting you in on the ground floor here. Check out this conversation.

We’re in a fine spot with the podcasts just now. I rolled this one out today. I have one scheduled for Thursday, and another big one slated for some time next week. And there’s one I have already produced that will get published after those two. Sometimes you just get lucky with the timing of these things, I guess.

Let’s check out a few photos from the weekend, shall we?

We had clear skies Saturday morning. It was not to last:

It got pretty dynamic the rest of the weekend:

Here’s a random tree I shot on our Sunday walk. This is the obligatory “No matter how many pictures of autumn leaves you take, you can never capture the real sense of autumn in a photo” photograph:

Maybe we’ll be able to do so on a later version of smartphones, but there’s just something about the sound of leaves and the smell of the air and that odd sense of happy optimism you can’t get into a photograph, yet.

Saw this guy, too, the banded woolly bear caterpillar:

This is the larval stage of the Isabella tiger moth (Pyrrharctia isabella). It is found throughout the US and southern Canada, anywhere there’s plant growth. But you’ll also find them well into the Arctic. Soon, this caterpillar will literally freeze. It’ll thaw out in the spring.

In some places, this caterpillar is a weather forecaster. The wider the brown band, the milder the winter weather. But that’s just folklore. The bands seem to have to do with genetics and age of the larva with respect toward the molt.

Places in Ohio, North Carolina, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and New York have festivals, costume contests, weather predictions and more. The one in New York started in 2012. If that little guy is going, though, it better get a move on.

Like the new little section-break banner? It was time to add a new one to the new rotation, so we’ll give this one a try for the week. And speaking of leaves, I have updated the theme on the front page of the site. Here’s a hint:

And if you click that image you’ll go to the front page and see the whole show. It looks quite nice, and should get us through the next few Mondays.

See you Tuesday! If you have some more time to kill right now, however, there’s always more on Twitter and check me out on Instagram, too. Speaking of On Topic with IU podcasts, and, oh hey, did you know that Phoebe and Poseidon have an Instagram account? They do.

Monday / photo / podcast — Comments Off
25
Oct 21

Welcome to the last week of October

Here is a photo from a few days ago which I never shared. Shame on me. This would have been on a late afternoon walk, on a Monday.

I know generally where it is, but not the precise plant — that’d be taking a day’s notes a little too far, if you ask me. Somewhere nearby, though, on Saturday, another bush was showing off.

Hopefully some critter comes by and eats the berries soon. I don’t know that they’ll last much longer.

Anyone know what this is?

It is a clasping hinge for my china cabinet. My cabinet has four doors, and each door has two of these mounted inside. A little spearpoint is attached to the door and it slides through those spring-loaded rollers and that’s how the doors stay shut.

Anyway, the original piece broke last week. Looked around online. I found a lot of similar pieces that wouldn’t fit, and this guy which looked as if it would almost perfectly fit. When it arrived I was able to make it work without a problem. I’m assuming the patina on the clasp’s finish will catch up, eventually, not that anyone notices. My grandmother bought this china cabinet for my mother decades ago, and it has been handed down to me. This is the one piece I’ve had to replace on it. And I’d like to keep it that way.

We don’t always dine at the matching table, but when we do, it’s nice to think of the memories that come with that furniture. All the card games and board games and family meals and life lessons and good jokes that have come along where that china cabinet and table are a set piece. And now I’ve put a small little bit into it, too. No one will ever know, no one ever needs to. Sometimes it is more than enough that a thing has happened.

Which is an awful lot to say about plastic fatigue, an hour or so scrolling websites and a two-screw installation. But that’s how our dining room rolls.

We got our flu shots yesterday. Set up an appointment in the morning. Walked right in on time, a woman asked us the “Have you been sick?” questions for surely the 1,400th time that day, and waved us on to the next point. Someone pointed us to an open table. We walked up, a young woman scanned the ID cards, her colleague administered the shots. It was very easy.

There were no lollipops. I am writing a complaint email tomorrow. Just as soon as I have feeling in my upper bicep again.

Just kidding. Feels great. Even the bandage did a great job, showing off some quality 21st century adhesive staying power.

Also, should you get a flu shot? I asked that question of the university’s chief medical officer last year in the context of masks and social distancing. (Do you remember all that?)

On Topic with IU · On Topic with IU — Quick Hit – Flu shots

That still seems like sound logic.

As to the masks, the county we are in voted last week to extent their indoor mask rule through November. NO one at Lowe’s today got that memo. It was much better at some of the other places I had to go. I feel as though I spent all day going from store to store, mostly because I did.

Look, here’s a picture I took outside of Kroger, at the end of the day, on my third venture out.

That’ll do. Catch ya here tomorrow for more Catober and some other fine stuff.