Musings

Back when we were on the road, I captured this image of our road-stained vehicle, rimed with slush-melt blotches and all types of grime. And salt.

Then, a new day…today…

…and an hour at the car wash, with the two of us vacuuming, polishing interior windows, and, especially, brush-mopping the exterior. Then, we rode through the proper automated car wash…and discovered in the process that the cheapest cleaning option has jumped from $4 to $8. Still a good deal, I’d say.

Posted at 6:37 PM | Comments Off on Transformation

I heard the breaking news from MSU right before I went to bed last night…made and makes me sad. Personally, during my MSU years, I spent very little time on that part of campus. I daresay that decades later, my spouse spent far more time in the Student Union than I ever did; he was using the internet. For work.

For our fancy ❤️-appropriate dessert, we comparison-tasted two mint-chocolate chip ice creams: Breyers and Tillamook. I enjoyed both. I thought the chocolate, the mint, and the ice cream…all were tastier in the Breyers. I would be happy consuming the Tillamook, however, if the Breyers wasn’t available. [I’ve had several other brands…typically not minty enough, and with wimpier chocolate.]

Posted at 7:28 PM | Comments Off on 💘 day

Sometime in the night, I heard the tiny tink-tink of icy snow. As the light arrived, the branches of the trees carried a new outline of white.

However, soon the temps rose, snow left the branches, and surfaces became slushy. Once, I even caught Mr. Sun out (not sure why the clouds appear so dense and grey). Overnight, temps will drop below freezing, to rise once again—to the high 30s, meaning Return of Slush.

Posted at 8:19 PM | Comments Off on Day of change

Breakfast pączki. Tis the season.

Then quiet chatting over pecan shelling.

Out for a walk, we found this pair of venerable birches. I think of birch pairs as not terribly uncommon; I don’t know why there’d be a propensity for pairs in this species.

Finally, we had a two-pie dinner. Chicken pot pie for our entree, and cherry for dessert. With a side of cole slaw and another of sauteed boc-choy. We are living well visiting here, and being treated like royalty.

Posted at 8:39 PM | Comments Off on Ps ending with pi

Murky, rainy day…so this photo is from one year ago, on a much sunnier day…although you can’t quite tell that. Trust me.

I just read a NYTimes article reporting that bears rub up against trees so that the tree-bark resin/sap gets in their fur and acts as a tick repellant. These bears are I’m not sure where, but it seems rather northern, like Poland, and the trees include beech trees.

I hypothesize this model doesn’t work for southern bears, as leaning against southern trees (e.g., pines) is a good way to get chiggers. Now chiggers are not ticks, but, personally, I’ll take neither…critter infestations of the skin are…ick, yuck, and no thanks.

Article: “Bears May Rub Against Trees for Protection From Parasites” by Rebecca Dzombak, dated 1 Feb 2023.

Posted at 8:11 PM | Comments Off on Natural history

The other night I had a dream that we went snorkeling from a boat, and they let us off to look around under a roof that provided shade. Very weird. I looked around the “reef” and discovered that it was molded concrete. It was not pretty, but there were critters scooting around that if they had been in the air would have been relatives of pill bugs and millipedes. For a while I was offended that they took us to a concrete formation that I thought the dive company was passing off as “real,” but then I got used to it.

Posted at 9:19 PM | Comments Off on Of all things

I ran upstairs to go out on the balcony to get a shot of the moon without glass or reflections marring nature. Upward bound, I turned the phone on and tilted it in readiness to make a fine horizontal shot. I opened the door and stepped out turning and raising my phone, framed the photo and clicked.

And the phone, in all its Tim-Apple wisdom, activated the flash. And, no surprise, the image was smudgy crap.

I quickly turned the flash off and tilted the phone up to get the elusive moon through the cloud cover. My luck was gone gone gone. With the moon. As you can see.

Posted at 9:39 PM | Comments Off on Tech “love”

I went down a deep rabbit hole for most of the afternoon in locating Pottery Neolithic archaeological sites on the southern Sinai peninsula. Archaeological sites can be notoriously difficult to locate (or not), so that’s not surprising…in general. Fieldwork on several of the sites was decades ago, then repeatedly mentioned in later articles and comparative reports, so you’d think the locations would be…not so mysterious. Not.

In the process of this “digging” (forgive me), I came across Saint Catherine’s Monastery. Before the monastery and Saint Catherine, this is where, some say, Moses saw the/a burning bush. Of course, digging deeper, there are several proposed locations for the Moses/burning bush event.

Now, the Catherine is Catherine of Alexandria, who had the misfortune to be born before Romans accepted Christianity but in their territory, and, not surprisingly, she was tortured for her faith. She died about AD 30, or so the story goes. Although she seems to have remained in the Alexandria area (western Nile delta), somehow the Sinai location perhaps 600 km to the SE had Saint Catherine relics, as, they say, her body was found in a nearby cave. Wow; lots to swallow there.

Look how much I learned without ever finding the exact location of Ujrat el-Mehed (the PN site), although I did figure out the general area. Heh. And in the process found (on GooEarth) the ruins of Gebel Abbas Basha, dating to, as I recall, the late 1700s.

See: rabbit hole. Or, perhaps more truthfully, a whole darned burrow complex.

Posted at 10:10 PM | Comments Off on All about scale

IMHO, four small apartments with rehabbed interiors and exteriors are still four small apartments. Someone is rehabbing the buildings in this complex very slowly, one building at a time. I do not know why they decided to keep the building footprints just as they are.

However, I am glad these units (which must have relatively modest rents compared to nearby single family homes) are in the neighborhood.

Posted at 9:42 PM | Comments Off on Diversity maintained

Well, now, that looks like spring. Early spring. And it is. Plus, sunset was after 6pm.

Posted at 7:09 PM | Comments Off on Vernal benchmark