Musings

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

Shingles. The nerve ganglia problem. Painful. I’m hoping I’ve dodged it, or am in the process of doing so.

I received shot number one today. I rubbed my arm all the way home from the pharmacy; hope that’ll make the shot-spot less painful. However, the shot-giver (nurse?) said the second one is worse. I plan to rub my arm even longer for that one.

Posted at 7:25 PM | Comments Off on Oh, well

Admittedly, I have only a teeny dataset, yet based on it I am proposing an index for inflation. It’s based on coins found on the ground in public areas (not by cash registers, silly, that’d be biased). The index is based on frequency of finds and value of the coins, I guess divided by the time spent looking. Plus, consider change over time. Change…heh.

This past week’s data: two quarters in four days. That’s frequent, considering I spent less than five hours outdoors in the last week.

When I was a kid, we found more returnable bottles than coins. Two cents? I can’t remember what we got for them. And, if we found a coin, it was almost always a penny. However, I didn’t spend much time on sidewalks, and rural roads are still not places to find coins, even today, I’m pretty sure.

Conclusion: inflation.

Posted at 8:56 PM | Comments Off on Inflation index

This is an oversized splat. No robin did this. I found it this morning early-ish.

Add this data point. In the dark of the night recently we’ve heard a hootie owl holding forth, and the sound seems like it’s just above our bedroom.

To recap, the splat fits with noisy hootie owl, and the walkway location fits with being above our sleeping heads.

Posted at 9:28 PM | Comments Off on NatHist hypothesis

The moon’s been bright on recent clear nights, but I’ve been sleep-stumbling too much to try for a photo. Here’s a flower from last year’s lovely 15 Jan.

Posted at 8:51 PM | Comments Off on Time shift

Our azaleas sport brown, curled leaves after the seventy-ish hours below freezing we had recently. I thought a picture would be too depressing, so here’s a pansy from exactly one year ago. BTW, today’s high was 26° below yesterday’s high of 70°.

Posted at 9:03 PM | Comments Off on Adjusting

I encountered this machine today, fortunately in a display case not my ophthalmologist’s office. I was so enthralled by its elegant form that I didn’t even look for a label to determine what it was designed to do.

Posted at 8:38 PM | Comments Off on Eyes have it

Feeling genuine? I hope so.

Feeling safe? Hope so, but it’s tough if you’re near the Cali coast.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Feeling?