Planetary Temperatures

Just for fun, I looked up our planetary highs and lows for the next few days...

Highs – Needles, California
Fri	Sat	Sun	Mon	Tue
114° F	115° F	116° F	114° F	109° F
Lows – Vostok, Antarctica
Fri	Sat	Sun	Mon	Tue
-104° F	-106° F	-117° F	-94° F	-106° F

No reincarnation without permission?

This is absurd. It seems the Chinese government has banned Tibetan monks from reincarnating without permission.

Eclipse and Other Things

Eclipse

Last night there was a total lunar eclipse, viewable from the western hemisphere. It started at 1:51 AM, and finished somewhere around 4:55 AM. Around 3:30 AM it was full, showing a dark disk in the middle of the moon and a red border from ambient light. Looked cool. It's strange to look up in the sky and see darkness where the moon is supposed to be. It'd been some 35 years since I'd seen a total lunar eclipse. I tried to get my nephew interested in watching it, but he said he'd seen one on TV via special effects, and went to bed.

Cats

Darren & Corrii are gone, so I stopped by today to check on the cats. They have a recirculating water fountain, which was gurgling. Seems the cats had been thirsty, so I refilled it. I also filled up their food dishes, played with the cats a while, and stole Corrii's last Drumstick from the freezer. :) I'd also re-seeded the porch, for the birds. Soon as I put the birdseed down, and shut the door, stellar jays and a pigeon showed up. Bastards. Heh, before I'd opened the door, however, there were a bunch of junkos hopping around, wondering where their food was. :)

Gardening

I pulled out the cantaloupes, and tossed 'em. It hadn't produced a single cantaloupe larger than a baseball, so I didn't see the point in continuing to water it. I'm planning on doing the same with the watermelons, once I find the resident praying mantis. It lives in the watermelon vines and I don't want to yank them out while it's in there -- don't want to squish it. I'll try relocating it to guava tree, or one of the other yard plants.

Taiko

July 4th, I'd signed up for the September taiko course at SJ Taiko. It's a 12-week course, but was full. I've been put on the list for the January session.

Grapes out, passion flowers in

I've had grapes in my front yard for about three years now, and they've done very little. Each year they produce a handful of bunches, all about the size of raisins. I've decided they're pointless, since they produce little and are deciduous (and hence don't cover the porch during the winter).

So I pulled them out Tuesday, and today picked up a purple passion flower...



It's only a couple feet high at the moment, but should look amazing once it begins to consume the front of the house.

Docent training

I've applied to become a docent at the San Francisco Zoo. I've been making annual trips, and know my way around the zoo pretty well by now. When I was there on Saturday, a docent suggested I apply after overhearing me telling my cousin about the emperor tamarins, and where the kangaroos could be found.

Docents are required to volunteer ten hours a month, which doesn't strike me as particularly difficult. I could spend a couple Sundays a month up there, talking about the animals. Could be fun -- I haven't done anything like it before.

Birthday happenings

At Tuesday's D&D game, Darren arrived with a Caramel Nut Nirvana ice cream cake from Cold Stone. Mmm, yummy! Julie brought me some ginger chews, candied ginger, and ginger snaps from Trader Joe's. Double yummy!

Fun Weekend

Saturday, we went to the San Francisco Zoo. Myself, Darren, Corrii, Ed, Julie, Brendan, Chet, Renee, Carl, Maggie, Aaron, and my cousins Karen and Steve. We started with the giraffes, then moved on to the lemurs, the monkeys, the meerkats, the raptors, the penguins, the big cats, the little cats, the grizzly bears, the polar bears, the kangaroos, the koalas, and the exit.

Yes, grizzly bears! It's a new exhibit, featuring two grizzlies found in Montana. This is the first time I've seen live grizzlies, having only seen pictures of them before. Their pen is enormous, and probably one of the best designed habitats I've seen at the zoo.

One odd thing about the giraffe house, we noticed the giraffes were hovering rather than wandering around the savannah habitat as they usually do. Turns out a baby giraffe was born the night before -- hence the hovering of the adults.

And, there are two new emperor tamarin babies. The first time I'd visited the zoo there was only a male. Last year, they'd acquired a female. Now, there are babies. Very cool.

There also appeared to be a joey hopping around the kangaroo habitat.

Sunday, Darren, Corrii and I went to see Stardust. Fantastic film! I highly recommend seeing it. The Princess Bride has long been my favorite fantasy adventure film. Stardust had a very similar feel, and easily comes in second to The Princess Bride. "Uh, Mike... remember The Lord of the Rings? Yeah, but it's in a category of its own. Best epic fantasy adventure. :)

Happy Birthday to me!

Happy Birthday to me!
Happy Birthday dear... me!
Happy Birthday to me!

I wonder if what qualifies as a copyright violation? :)

Watchmen

I've just started reading Watchmen, after seeing an open casting call for some of the characters that appear in the book. While I do look like one of them (the Nixon advisor whose name eludes me at the moment -- I haven't gotten that far into the book yet), I doubt I really have a chance to get into a movie, though it would be cool. :)

Anyway, I cracked open the book and recognized it. I may have thumbed through it before, but am pretty sure I hadn't read it yet. Heh, I'd been harassing my nephew about hoarding the book in his room (it's his copy I'm reading), so he put it on my desk and has been harassing me the past week for not starting it yet. But hey, I'm reading a Java book and was in the middle of Brother Odd, the third book in Koontz' Odd Thomas series.

I like comic book films, though many of them suck. Sin City was bad ass, though I where it's concerned I should use the term graphic novel, rather than comic book. I should probably save the latter for Spiderman and The Fantastic Four.

Speaking of graphic novels, I haven't yet seen 300. Kaylin picked it up at the video store Tuesday, but I didn't want to watch it on my piddly little 27" screen (less when the film runs in wide-screen). Instead I opted to wait for a viewing at Darren's place, on his uber home theater. It'll be sweet viewing in HD.

Feasting on Asphalt

If you haven't seen Feasting on Asphalt, I highly recommend getting Season 1 on DVD from Netflix, and watching Season 2 on the Food Network.

It's an Alton Brown series, where he and his crew ride cross-country on motorcycles (Season 1), sampling road food from Georgia to California. They avoid all chain food and more mainstream restaurants, in favor of diners. It's a fascinating program. In Season 2, which premiered this past weekend, they started in Venice, Louisiana, and will be following the Mississippi River northward.

So far this season, they've been sampling Cajun cooking. Gumbo, grilled alligator, crawfish, andouille, bread pudding, ice tea. They stopped at an alligator ranch, as AB was curious to see how they're raised. Turns out they're fed frozen nutria.

In Season 1, they ate a lot of BBQ, stopped at a custard place on Route 66, visited a tea house, and even ate a brain sandwich. Yep, a brain sandwich. In Indiana, I think it was, AB sampled a deep-fried pig brain on a bun -- sorta like a hamburger. Only more of a grey-matter burger.

Gardening

Back in April, I planted a garden for the first time since I've been in the house. I already have two orange trees and a lemon, and last year planted a cherry, an Asian pear and a guava. The guava didn't do well during the winter, but it's coming back nicely. I need to remember to cover it next winter.

Anyway, in April I planted watermelon, cantaloupe, pumpkin, strawberries and corn. Today I harvested my first batch of corn -- ten ears. I boiled up one, and it was good. Small, but good. And small is the point of this post.

My ears of corn are considerably smaller than the corn bought in stores. The kernels are smaller as well. And it's not just the corn. A couple weeks ago, one of the watermelons split open. I brought it inside, but away the exposed portion of the meat, and ate it. It was very good. And today I noticed one of the cantaloupes was ripe (i.e. the rind had turned yellow). I picked it and, like the watermelon, it was good.

But they were all small. The watermelon was about the size of a softball. The cantaloupe, the size of a baseball. And the corn are anywhere from 6-8 inches.

I don't know if it's something I did wrong, or whether the large corn and melons in the store are the result of selective breeding. I'm going to have to chat with the folks at the nursery to find out. Maybe I didn't put down enough fertilizer, or feed them enough during the growing season. Dunno, it's the first time I've grown anything on purpose.

The orange trees are littered with fruit during January and February. They're orange in December, but are too tart to eat. They seem to need the rain to sweeten. This year, since we didn't have much rain, they didn't grow very large, and were all small. This winter, I plan on watering them regularly if there's no rain.

The melons and corn I have to water daily, it's been so hot. The strawberries and lemon, as well. The lemon tree is potted, and has about eight unripe lemons on it at the moment. The strawberries seem to give one fruit every few days, which is a little disappointing. There are three pears on the tree right now, all immature. I can't wait 'til they're ready for harvesting. I wonder if their growth'll be stunted as well.

Today I noticed a pumpkin. It's about the size of a grapefruit, and is still green. I looked around and saw several others, all fairly small, the largest maybe the size of an apricot. Good to see they're finally starting to grow.

Oh, I forgot to mention the apple tree. I don't know what kind of apple it is, but it's never borne fruit larger than about an inch across. Oh, and in the front yard are grapes. Unfortunately there were only three bunches of grapes this year (none last year), and it would appear as though some animal got to them. I went outside one morning and all the grapes were gone.

When I planted the garden, I also put a bunch of praying mantises out there to keep down the bugs. There only seem to be a few left, where I put down dozens. (I'd picked up a couple of egg sacs from OSH. Only one hatched.) The largest mantis I've seen recently is just under two inches in length. Supposedly they'll reach six inches. It's funny when I'm out there watering the watermelons, it sits on one of the leaves and watches me. I put my hand near him last week, end he crawled up onto my finger and stared at me. Funny little critters.