Nothing weather-related to report. Instead, here are a couple of catsman-related items.
I told ordenchaz about cz_moon and J's eclipse-related train trip to Indianapolis, including layover in Chicago. I told her that catsman would have described (over lunch) the exact route of the Chicago-Indianapolis leg, and more importantly would have explained what railroad company built the line long before it was part of Amtrak. This would likely include a list of mergers throughout its history. Truth.
On Tuesday I told catsman that I felt the need to make a playlist of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff concerti, as I can't keep them straight. The standard ones, right? I then vocalized a bit of one, and he told me it was Tchaikovsky.. but which one?
I told him about the Rachmaninoff theme used in Somewhere in Time, but couldn't remember the exact source. Google, and yeah, I should have known: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, variation 18.
The Story and the Engine exploits the introduction of the Pantheon to tell us a magic realist story. It is more restrained than the likes of The Giggle, The Devil's Chord and Lux and, I would say, the better for it. It exploits the magic to focus in on the people, their interactions and their history. It's an oddball episode that plays it straight.
I did have to watch it twice to figure out what was going on, and I'm not sure even now I quite understand why the Doctor was so angry with Omo, but it then it repays rewatching. It is also, of course, something contextually very different from anything Doctor Who has done before.
I'm very pleased that the casting of Ncuti Gatwa gave Doctor Who the push?/impetus?/excuse? to do a story like this, something that takes us to an Earth-based time and place beyond the somewhat UK/European focus of most of the series history. I'm also very pleased that so much effort went into treating the material respectfully - not least getting a well-respected Nigerian-born playwright to produce the script - though I somewhat suspect that getting a well-known playwright on board (at, I believe, Ncuti's suggestion) came first and the rest followed from that.
I think I need to watch it again at least once to decide what I really think about it, but I think that in a good way and I am looking forward to my next rewatch.
Rain and thunder woke me up about half an hour after I went to bed. That's all! The electricity didn't go off. Dodged a bullet, as they say, for the second night in a row. (Looks like Reed Timmer, stormchaser, is in Sioux Falls, SD today.)
It's still hot and sticky, though it's supposed to cool down a bit this week... but be smoky. Lightning strikes, wind, that does it.
Today I was struck by the ridiculous things I need to start/finish/deal with in my apartment. All I can say is Crikey!, and that's not even my dialect!
This morning was absolutely gorgeous! The fog threatened slightly but burned off instead. So much more bird activity than I've seen for weeks! I had so much fun. When I got down into the dip not long after dawn I noticed two suspicious lumps on a branch of a tall snag, two fledgling Great Horned Owls! Whom I almost certainly heard eeping down slope five days ago. Owls leave the nest long before they can fly, climb up to a branch, and wait for their parents to bring food, but I really don't know how they got to that branch. It was very high and its tree is very dead, so no cover and not a potential nest tree. Possibly the tree next to it? Great Horned Owls use old raptor or crow nests and the tree is rather near the trail for those species to nest in, wand when I heard them a few days ago the sound seemed further away. I just don't know enough. But they weren't the only very cool birds. The north end of the trail was great: three Wilson's Warblers moving around like Bushtits, two Wrentits in the elderberry again, California Quail and two sort of Towhees on the trail below, and hummingbirds! The probable Allen's Hummingbird was very active, chasing the local Anna's (and maybe another Allen's?), landing on twigs in the sun so that he almost glowed, and making his distinctive twitters. I wonder how long he'll stay? ( The list: )
No Common Ravens! None down at the Bot Garden, either. I wonder where they're off to? I sat only a short while in the Garden, submitted no list, but it was American Robin Town. Mostly flying back and forth between the lawn and the trees, still feeding young I guess, but there were also a few teenagers around, and I got my first good look at a full-sized but still spotted Robin in a long, long time.
It was overcast but not cold, and the sun came out by the time we were walking back from the Lake. The Swainson's thrushes only sang a couple of times, but I was at all times surrounded by them making their other calls. We could hear the Olive-sided Flycatcher from the parking lot, and I heard one Black-headed Grosbeak and one singing Warbling Vireo. Wonder if it was same one as three days earlier. But the biggest surprise was a singing Western Tanager, just one or two phrases but their tonal quality is unmistakable. ( The list: )
In the afternoon U and I went down to the decommissioned Alameda Naval Air Station, where the Least Tern colony is, to see the Caspian and Elegant Tern colony. The ranger in charge of the Least Tern colony offered her volunteers the opportunity to drive out with her to where we could see the birds far, far better an U and I managed a few weeks ago. She let us get out of the car at one spot but we got closer with the car as a blind. We saw adults and fledglings of both species and heard and distinguished their amazing calls. I think she said there were about 200 birds there, not a lot as these colonies go but really fun to watch. I'd certainly never seen either species as well as we did then.
Two Doctor Who companion outfits for your delectation and delight! Outfits selected by a mixture of ones I, personally, like; lists on the internet; and a certain random element.
Apparently more than 20,000 homes lost power last night in the Cities alone. (Over 70,000 in Minnesota as a whole.) I didn't hear a storm! It must have gone through farther north, as there's no damage in my neighorhood.
However, storms are expected overnight... cross fingers against an outage! I'm going to recharge my laptop, iPad, and Kindles - and make sure have a flashlight in my bedroom. :-) I have a weather radio (that I have to crank), and my CD player has a powerful rechargeable battery and includes an FM radio.
I've slept much better the last few nights, as I gave in and used my AC. Last night I left the window open - luckily, no rain came in! (see above)
On the book side, I'm deep into The Fate of the Day, the second in a trilogy on the American Revolution, by Rick Atkinson. I started to find it truly absorbing about midway, on the build-up to the Battle of Saratoga.
Videos: I'm nearly through the first season of Without A Trace. The season finale is powerful, so I'll need to plan the best viewing time.
It was Suzy's birthday today so we went out for lunch at the Christmas Hills Raspberry Farm Cafe. I had already decided on my second course so I opted for a very light first course (soup). My chosen dessert was a Croffle:
The Persian Fairy Floss had me stumped but it turned out to be a slightly lighter version of the usual candy floss. And yes, I had the caramelised banana with it and happily paid $28 for a dessert. The verdict? Well, it was quite nice and I finished it all, but croissant dough is meant to be fluffy and airy, not compressed in a waffle iron. I think it would have been better to have normal waffle mix and offset it with more berries (one raspberry and two strawberry quarters were a pitiful offering). Still, it was a lovely day and a nice outing.
We had a mini disaster last night -- we had heard an odd thump during the evening followed by one of the cats running down the hall and thought nothing of it. About an hour later Suzy went to the bathroom and discovered it had turned into a sauna. Apparently one of the cats had managed to jump on the hot water tap for the bath, which wouldn't ordinarily have been terrible but the bath is covered in a board to allow for litter trays and access to the cat flap in the window, so the water had accumulated and then spilled over. We usually have blocks under the taps to prevent this but they have disappeared. Very luckily for us the water had only just started to seep under the bathroom door, so the hardwood floor is undamaged. The bathroom floor is thin hybrid vinyl that should never be used in a wet area and we were going to replace it anyway, so I'm not really fussed about that.
Fixing the immediate damage took most of our stock of bath towels. We put the exhaust fan on and ran it all night, so everything is surface dry now, but I suspect that there was some seepage into the walls and floor. It only has to last another year or two, though, since it will be gutted and renovated once we have the extension built. And of course, now we have three loads of towels to wash.
I was very sad to read this morning that Tom Lehrer died on Saturday, at the grand old age of 97. I grew up with his songs (and those of Flanders and Swann) and I still kick myself that I never got the box set in the early aughts. However, I find that he most generously gave all his works into the public domain a few years ago so I can download them and enjoy them all over again. I've never been able to pick a favourite. If absolutely forced, I might say The Vatican Rag just because it's so catchy, but they are all good.
To finish, here is a photo of Verya from a couple of nights back when she was curled up with her favourite toy:
And here is one of Venus from this evening. Her tail is getting fluffier by the week.
Memories from seven years ago: the Durbar Room at Osborne House. This was Queen Victoria's summer home on the Isle of Wight, Italian-villa style, designed by Prince Albert.
The Indian (South Asian) motifs in this room is plasterwork. It looks like it's made of meringue!
I visited Brighton and the Isle of Wight several months before j-wat and doogie were in Brighton for a conference. I didn't know until later that j-wat was inspired by my travel talk. They visited Rottingden, Osborn and Carisbrooke Castle, too!
j-wat especially liked the Durbar Room, as did I.
Durbar = an Indian princely court, or princely/viceregal reception
There's blowing fog and then there's blowing fog that's been dripping off the trees so long and so abundantly that the trail is muddy. I parked before dawn and started down, knowing that once I was past the stretch that gets a direct blast of wind I'd be fine, but the mud potential on that trail is unlike anywhere else around, and it was packing onto my shoes almost immediately. Plan B this week was to walk out Nimitz Way a bit, which was fun in part because it had been a very long time. Wet, but fun, though in those conditions my ebird list is very short. ( The list: )
The surprise was hearing a Western Tanager, but the most fun were the California Quail. One large covey that was foraging in the trail contained at least two teenagers.:)
No proximate chainsaws but there was a guy on a mower clearing the edges of Loop Road. I can't think of a good reason for this. Tilden doesn't need to look like a city park. Fortunately Loop Road after the bench is not amenable to that treatment so I just kept going. The south end of Jewel Lake Trail is a little-used connector back to the service road and the Visitor's Center with an open glade and a bit of a creek, a lovely place to sit and listen. I recall a bench but didn't find it so I sat on a step for a bit before climbing back up to Loop Road. The bench at the the top of the Little Farm did provide a Black Phoebe, a bird I hope for up there but don't always see. ( The list: )
The Olive-sided Flycatchers and Western Wood-pewees are still here, but I was surprised by a Warbling Vireo singing at the foot of Laurel Canyon. I expect they were passing through, since the song was a little different from the songs I heard earlier in the summer.
Picked this up because I kept seeing it being described as literary SF – with that classic complaint, "no plot, hated the protagonist," that often signals a novel that may interest me. It's the tale of a depressed, isolated telepath in New York City in the early 70s who's gradually losing his powers as he enters his forties.
A reviewer on Reddit dismissed the novel as a clumsy metaphor for impotence. Having read it, and read a little about Silverberg's career – he had been churning out multiple novels per year before temporarily deciding to retire from writing in 1975 – I'm now 95% convinced that it's in fact a slightly less clumsy metaphor for the retreat of literary inspiration. Which makes it somewhat more interesting. Isn't fiction really, in some ways, based on the ability to see into other people's minds?
Not a great novel, but it has its moments. Very much of its period and setting, in both the good ways and the bad ways.
I'm pretty sure I'll be letting my hair go grey, this year. (To which various of my acquaintance will say, At Last!)
I used to have very long, heavy hair, which was dry and sun-damaged. When I got it cut (I mean, the big one) my stylist suggested that I try a color treatment. It's blended to match my natural hair color, and is not chemically-based. It gradually fade with shampooing over about 8 weeks. I also got a partial foil, to replicate the streaks that I had in my hair naturally
This all means to say that it was not initially done for covering any grey - which I did not have at the time. I now have gray/silver coming in at my side-part, by the time I'm ready for a haircut.
I still like the color, but I realize that I've moving past it. No, there isn't a horrible contrast with my complexion. (Not like, say, old rock stars with dyed dead-black hair!). It's just probably time to go natural, and see what that looks like.
I've been thinking about this for a year or so. There's a new twist: the salon where I get my color (not Avant) had a fire recently. They should re-open next winter, and in the meantime their stylists are moving into a number of spaces. My colorist Ann will be in a building west of downtown that is, I might say, quite tricky to drive to.
It feels like the right time. I should email her, though. I may move back to her (for cuts) after Deb retires from Avant - Ann is considerably the younger. We'll see!
It's been very cold and wet the last few weeks so we haven't got nearly as much done in the garden as we had hoped. The second shed is up, the wood shed is up (it almost lost its roof in last weekend's storms) but the carport and greenhouse are still languishing. Our contractor is still unable to work and his apprentice isn't able to do the same range of tasks (well, he is an apprentice). Our next door neighbour had a minor injury and is off work for a couple of weeks but we are hoping to get his advice and maybe supervision if we try to erect the greenhouse ourselves. At least we got a load of wood delivered and into the shed without it getting completely soaked.
We have been trying to get electrical and plumbing supplies to the sheds but while the electrical work will be relatively easy, plumbing is proving to be extremely difficult. Suzy has rung several plumbers in the area but only one was able to come out and look at what we wanted done, and then he turned around and said he didn't have time to do it (which, given that we have a four-month window, just means he doesn't want to do it). We could get it done as part of the extension works, but the whole aim is to get plumbing into the sheds as soon as possible so we can move our washing machine and dryer there before the current laundry is demolished. We are getting the ground survey done next week, so we will ask them if they know of any plumbers.
The poultry seem to be thriving, even in the rotten weather. We went down to Hobart in mid-June to get another five guinea fowl -- apparently they need a group of six or more to be happy and the original two latched on to the newcomers immediately and do appear to be happier. Suzy found a fresh egg on the porch today so I need to finish her egg apron soon. She is eyeing one of the roosters for donation to our other neighbour's cooking pot, since he is being a bully to the chicken with the deformed foot (naturally, Suzy is very fond of the lame chicken and calls her Gimpy).
Vanima ended up having eight teeth removed by the vet due to severe calcium loss -- it seems it is a common consequence to inflammatory disease, not anything in her diet or medication. She had already been on wet food only so that continued for a couple of weeks and now she can tolerate some dry food but we make sure she has access to soft food in case her gums are sore. Her temper hasn't improved but I've pretty much given up hoping it will. She is a cranky girl and will remain so as long as she has to share me with other cats.
We had the state election last weekend but due to Tasmania's very complicated voting system (it's all quota-based, like the Federal Senate elections) we won't have a result until early August. Most predictions are that neither major party will have enough seats to form a government, so it's up to the Greens and Independents to decide whether they will work with Labor or Liberals. If we end up with the Liberals in power again I'll be annoyed because it will mean two months of disruption and many millions of dollars in electoral costs for no change.
You're invited to join me in SPACE (Signum Portals for Adult Continuing Education) online via Signum University to talk about all five books in The Hunger Games series! The first module has been confirmed to run in September 2025.
What lessons do the Capitol and Districts have to teach us? What warnings should we heed? What road leads from here to Panem? Over the course of five months, participants in these SPACE modules will read and discuss a modern classic of dystopian storytelling, The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins.
In this hybrid series, each week will include one lecture and one live discussion. The lectures will examine the inspirations behind, allusions in, and questions posed by that month's novel. In live discussions, participants will share their insights on, interpretations of, and reactions to the story. Together we will consider why this series has spoken to so many readers and explore how its messages remain relevant today.
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ordenchaz about cz_moon and J's eclipse-related train trip to Indianapolis, including layover in Chicago. I told her that catsman would have described (over lunch) the exact route of the Chicago-Indianapolis leg, and more importantly would have explained what railroad company built the line long before it was part of Amtrak. This would likely include a list of mergers throughout its history. Truth.
