Vernal benchmark
Friday, 27 January 2023
Well, now, that looks like spring. Early spring. And it is. Plus, sunset was after 6pm.
Musings
Oh, well
Thursday, 26 January 2023
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.
Inflation index
Wednesday, 25 January 2023
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.
Love a parens pair
Tuesday, 24 January 2023
Meet nandina, an Asian species that looks pretty here this time of the year, with the red tinge in the leaves. I learned about nandina when I worked at a plant nursery in Oregon, as it didn’t grow in the upper Midwest. Don’t eat the (toxic) red berries (not pictured), though.
Incubation
Monday, 23 January 2023
Quite a while back, early in the Covid lockdown, I hypothesized that certain vehicles had not been moved for a very long time, based on the sediment deposits beneath them and other clues. [Those were the early days of working-from-home and grocery deliveries and other activities that allowed people to stay home and still survive.]
This car, however, seems like it has been not-moved for far longer than just since Covid. What a fine microenvironment for mildew and mold! (Ick.)
Ta-dump, ta-dump
Sunday, 22 January 2023
It was rainy-wet all day, yet we managed to find a window without much drippiness, just mistiness. Which is manageable.
But we were not alone.
Follow the Fagus
Saturday, 21 January 2023
Here’s today’s tree identification tip. This time of the year, if you see a tree with dry, beige leaves like this, it’s a beech (Fagus spp.). In spring, the new buds will push off the old leaves, meaning they stay on through the winter. Like this.
We were not robbed
Friday, 20 January 2023
Those factory shrink-wrapped, one pound ground meat containers aren’t my favorite way to buy ground…beef, usually…because the grind is waaaay too fine and the meat has been mixed and crushed into the package…all of which change the way the meat cooks, as for burglars.
Sometimes we buy beef this way (usually if we’re in the UP), but more often it’s bison. Once or twice it’s been lamb. Today, we had an option we never had before: venison. From New Zealand. And this is it: venison burglars.
The meat still had texture isses from the super-fine grind and the compaction packaging, but I kept thinking: much lower cholesterol. So, yay!
NatHist hypothesis
Thursday, 19 January 2023
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.
Atmospherics
Wednesday, 18 January 2023
Last evening’s fog was around all night, then got denser when the sun loomed this morning, and hung around all day. Lotsa fog. This was Monday, a no-fog day.