Angry v. Placid v. Hungry Birds

I have been regularly filling the bird feeder in my back yard, and the hungry little ones have been cleaning it out completely in about two days.  The robins and cardinals seem to just chill out and wait for the little birds to knock a bunch of seeds onto the ground.  They seem to do this quite frequently, but I am not sure if this is an intentional altruistic effort  on the part of the little birds, or just sloppiness.


Maybe they are just SO EXCITED that this stupid woman keeps shelling out her hard earned dollars to buy birdseed for these wild creatures, that their exuberance causes them to be messy while eating.  Or perhaps they are throwing out the small round seeds to get to the bigger sunflower seeds, or other yummy morsels?!?

Waiting area on the power line - good thing they don't weigh too much!

When I put out a suet feeder the first fall we lived in SE Michigan, I put it in a place that I could see from the kitchen window that looks out into the backyard.  When no birdies were enjoying this free bounty, the nice lady at Wild Birds Unlimited suggested that I put it in a more private location where the birds would feel somewhat sheltered while nibbling on the fatty goodness.

So I moved the suet to a location underneath the pine trees, where I could not see it from the kitchen window, but the squirrels appreciated this new spot, as they could easily get to it from a secluded tree branch without alerting me.  Those buggers are quite healthy and fat, and they hang around sleeping most of the winter, so I didn't think they really needed any additional nourishment for a long migration south.

Last week I bought a shepherd's crook metal feeder holder, which can also accommodate a nice wind chime that we got for our wedding.

Perching room only!

Now I have noticed a few hummingbirds hanging around in the backyard.  They checked out the hanging feeder, but I think they were attracted by the sap in the pine trees, or the nectar from the trumpet vine on the side of the house.  Our composting also attracts a lot of tiny flies, so that is a good source of protein for those fast paced critters.

There are at least 4 on the feeder in this shot.

The angry birds are the ones I hear or see fighting in the trees.  I think the mating season is over for them, so I am not really sure that their problem is.

Makers v. Takers = Shakers v. Bakers

I was listening to Terry Gross on Fresh Air  within the last few weeks, and she was interviewing one of the stars of the HBO series "The Newsroom" John Gallagher, Jr., and they played an audio clip from the show.  The main stars are Jeff Daniels, Emily Mortimer and Sam Waterston, and their performances are quite excellent from my point of view.  Jane Fonda plays the big boss, and she does a great job of manipulating all her minions.  And the spouse will tell you that I have watched a LOT of television, so I might know what I am talking about in my review of this show.

They deal quite frequently with politics and public opinions in general, and the specific discussions of what they should feature on their nightly news programs are quite fascinating.

The audio clip I mentioned in the first paragraph had to do with the Makers v. Takers argument that Governor Mitt Romney tried to advance during his presidential campaign of 2012.  This is one of the most misguided statements that he made, though my favorite is still the Binders of Women comment during one of the debates.

[borrowed from http://www.whatamimissinghere.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/118899-47-Color-by-Eric-Allie-Caglecartoons-515x356.jpg]

While I was mulling over this comparison of who Romney believes are producers as opposed to consumers of public largesse is exactly backwards.  The makers are the people breaking their backs to actually support their families at little more than minimum wage (people like bakers and fast food employees, etc), while the takers are the ones shaking down the government for lower tax rates so they can keep more of their millions of dollars they make each year.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

Always keep the vermouth guessing!

I must confess that I am a big fan of Martinis.  Not the James Bond version with a crazy lemon peel and vodka AND gin, but the more pedestrian classic semi dry and dirty Martini with olives.  The little green fellows can be stuffed with either peppers, garlic cloves, some sort of yummy stinky cheese (preferably gorgonzola or bleu),  or if I am feeling more spicy, I will go with straight jalapeños or pickled okra.

I couldn't find a cool vintage advertisement from the cheap brand of vermouth I usually use, but this one was from my second choice brand.

[borrowed from http://rlv.zcache.com/martini_rossi_torino_vermouth_bianco_vintage_ad_poster-r14507a846fa4418ab0ae50ad40295e1c_ez7u_8byvr_512.jpg]

The meaning behind the title of this blog involves anthropomorphizing my bottle of vermouth and assuming that it can sense which bottle, gin or vodka, might be joining it in the shaker.  When I want it to be really perplexed, I delay a few minutes before grabbing the gin or vodka out of the liquor cabinet.

Why do I attribute sensation to a bottle of spirits?  Why do I try to figure out what the cats, fish or turtles are thinking?  Kind of relating to the crazy way my brain works.

Salute, salud, skol, kam-pai or whatever toast you may prefer!

Oh yeah, never drive a motor vehicle or boat under the influence.  Stay safe out there!

lawnmowers and leafblowers

Most of our neighbors have their lawns mown by professionals (read teenage boys employed by landscape companies), and thursday is the day that has been chosen for the days on the right and left of us to get their lawns manicured.

Now that I am retired and get to sleep in on weekdays AND weekends, I am greeted in the mornings of nearly every thursday (except those with torrential rainfall) at 8AM by a symphony of lawnmowers and leaf blowers.  Those do not bother me as much as the nasty high-pitched weed whackers they use instead of the edgers which take more time to operate effectively.

The whackers make a bunch of grass bits and the blowers follow them up pushing those clippings back into the lawn.

octopus pants

My dad has not played golf in years, but I do sometimes enjoy watching or playing a good round on a lazy sunday.  OK, truth be told, I have probably never actually 'played' on a sunday, other than smacking some balls at the range.

I started watching the coverage on NBC today after getting my political news fix, and the commentators were laughing about the octopus pants that were going to be worn by one of the top players:  Billy Horschel

[borrowed from the golfer's twitter feed]

They just made a joke that the pants weren't working very well for him, and they might soon become calamare.  I think they are confusing an octo-dish with one actually made of squid, but at least they were fairly close......

Black and white, right and wrong, etc.

cardinal fish pic borrowed from Seegrest Farms' Facebook page

I don't think it is just because I chose a career mostly dominated by law enforcement that I see things in a very ON or OFF fashion, I have always been that way.  When you come to a fork in the road, you either have to turn left or right, going straight won't work, unless you have a tank or something like that.

In applying fisheries or safety regulations, the person is either in compliance or not.  I realize that there is grey area.  Sometimes the humans who are interpreting the laws do not see things the same way as the ones who wrote them in the first place.  My job for four years in Alaska was to interpret the intentions of the regulators, fishermen and scientists, and explain to them how the laws they wrote would actually have to be practically enforced by a 20 year old kid with a gun who spent the whole night before on bridge watch and had potentially lost their lunch in the drink on the way over to the fishing boat.

[Losing your lunch (and I have unfortunately done that) is much easier than losing a coded radio or a clip of ammo:  MUCH LESS PAPERWORK!!!!!]

We have recently been going thru some of our artwork that has been in the same storage boxes since before we left Massachusetts in 2006.  Kind of like getting new birthday presents that look somewhat familiar to old birthday presents.  I get excited, like a kid in a candy shop, waiting for them to be unwrapped and anticipating what they might be........

Is it the print of the watercolor of the Boston Aquarium montage of African cichlids???
Is it the Winslow Homer print that I got during college of one of my favorite works from the Art Institute of Chicago?
Is it the amazing small photo of Ana Purna that Andy's friend Scott took while on a trip to India????
Or is it the wonderful oil painting of sea grass that my grandfather Milton painted on Martha's Vineyard in the 1960s???

Each one has their own story and memories all wrapped up in it.

When we found the 8x10 glossy of me on the field at Fenway wearing the 2004 World Series replica ring and one of the biggest smiles I can ever remember breaking out on purpose while IN FRONT OF and not BEHIND the camera (where I would much rather be....), I immediately blurted out - "That goes in the sports cave in the basement!"

For almost everything that we unwrapped I knew exactly where I would want to put it, based on either the subject matter, where the frame or colors would work best on which walls, or just where I wanted it based on how I wanted to feel in each room when I saw it.  Black or white, cut and dried, simple!

Retirement party by the lake!

19.7.2013 *

Please don't type the info above into your browser.  It will just get confused about what you are looking for.  It might actually think that your are trying to ping some server.......  You can put "ping" in your browser if that is confusing as well.

If you are one of the lucky folks to be invited to my retirement ceremony (invites will be snail mailed in early June) those inscrutable numbers and symbols announce that I have secured the location for the big retirement ceremony extravaganza!!!!

If you would like an email or snail mail invite to this long awaited event, please send the appropriate info and the number of attendees in your party to retire@aquagal.us.  This will give me a better idea of how many of my buckaroos from my final few active duty paychecks on the catering for this event.

There will be another party at the hacienda a few blocks away, if you cannot make a during the work day event.  I am also going to try and accomplish a Google+ hangout video presentation of the event for those who are unable to travel to the motor city area.

Hope you can make it!

p.s. *- the numbers represent the day.month.year of this exciting event.  If you don't know which lake I live near, then you probably aren't going to get an invite........  Hint:  this picture should help you to make an educated guess!

tracking preferences......

I like to track things:  baseball stats; my weight; the location of my keys; the travelings of my friends and family on Google+ or Facebook; etc.  I am a little bit concerned about people tracking me in an unwanted fashion, but not overly so.  My conduct at work and home has been tracked by my employer for the last 22 years, so maybe that level of government interference does not bother me.

As I was watching some news this afternoon, the confluence of two separate political issues about to be debated this week struck me as odd.

If we are to believe the lobbying done by the NRA, gun owners do not want a gun registry because they are afraid the government is going to come to their houses and confiscate their weapons.  Maybe this happens frequently in other countries, but it really hasn't happened in the USA for the last couple of centuries.  I don't have a crystal ball or a time machine, so I suppose it is within the realm of possibility, but I feel that eventuality is highly improbable during the remainder of my life.  And I plan to live the greater part of the next half century if possible.

I am also making the assumption that some of those same people who don't feel the government should know the contents of the armories in their homes should INSTEAD be spending its time tracking people illegally in this country with a system called e-Register so that they cannot legally work.  Employers would have to use the e-Verify system to confirm that the people they are about to hire are actually here legally.

This really doesn't make any sense to me.  They want big brother to crack down on small business people and increase their costs of providing whatever service or good is produced by their enterprise, and potentially spend LOTS of buckaroonies deporting, detaining or tracking people trying to enjoy the American dream, but keep your hands off my AR-15!

My interpretation is that they believe they should be able to sell or give that privately to ANYONE they choose without having to confirm that they have a legal right to own a gun, much less the mental wherewithal to use it for non-nefarious purposes.

As a non-gun owner but member of the military, I however have to sign a scary looking legal form attesting to the fact that I have not been convicted of any misdemeanor domestic abuse offenses which would make me ineligible to possess a gun.  The Lautenberg amendment to the Appropriations Act of 1997 made this necessary and retroactive.  Even if the offense was reported on your entry documents before you joined the service, that one conviction (if it has not been overturned) will cause you to be discharged from the military because you are not eligible to possess a firearm.

I have been out of the gun-toting business for a few years (they just keep me tethered to an iPhone these days) but I still would have been kicked out of the service for committing such an offense decades earlier.  I am certainly not condoning any form of domestic violence, but I find it interesting that some members of the military and law enforcement professions have been fired for committing (and properly reporting) these offenses before they were employed.

Bio-rhythms

As I sit in the spouse's office watching his screen saver make goofy fluorescent tentacles float across the screen of Big Mac, it strikes me that we have spent much of our marriage on the crests of different waves.  It is 0236, and despite not drinking ANY caffeinated products today, I cannot get to sleep.  Yes, I should have gone to the gym after work rather than going home and feeding the fish and turtles, but even if I HAD been more active today, I don't know whether I would actually be asleep right now.

[borrowed from http://test.classconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/643/flashcards/20643/jpg/28-13_katushika_hokusaki.jpg]

Spouse is usually the one sitting up for hours after I have hit the rack, but not today.  Right now he is sawing logs, most likely flanked by cats, while I sit in the dark composing this blog.

I am a little particle of water on the crest of the wave in one of my favorite Japanese woodcut prints like the one pictured above, while he is slumbering somewhere near the summit of Mount Fuji (or Fuji-san, for those more familiar with this classic volcano peak).  Or maybe he is one of the guys in the tiny rowboats being thrashed back and forth by some troubling dreams......

Problem is that he doesn't usually remember his dreams, whereas I rarely go a night without remembering at least a snippet of one dream.  That is, of course, when I am actually able to keep my eyes shut to have those dreams.  Well, better give it another shot right now.

The lost episode

We have added another Apple product to the long list of electronic devices in our home.  The Apple tv device will allow us to spend countless more hours on the couch.  Hmmmm......  Not sure this was the best move, in retrospect.  We may actually cancel the costly uverse account, so that might be a good tradeoff.

I was lobbying for a Roku (as I am on an Android kick lately), but I lost that battle.  The Spousal Unit (SU) was right, the Apple tv was incredibly easy to install, and it has a slick interface.

[borrowed from http://chicagomaroon.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/DowntonAbbey.jpg]

I went to bed early last night, and I got up early to find that SU had downloaded the third episode of Downton Abbey from season one.  For some reason, our local public TV station did not buy that episode from the BBC, and it created lots of confusion in our household.

First I blamed it on the DVR not recording that episode.  These mistakes sometimes happen when the tv programming info is not completely accurate.  It happens quite frequently when a sporting event goes longer than scheduled.

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then the replays of season one came out, and I was sure that we would be able to recover the lost episode, with all the critical scenes when Lady Mary sleeps with the Turkish diplomat.

Tonite is the final episode of season three.  So sad, but at least Game of Thrones will be airing new episodes soon!

Who is in charge?

My husband and I have watched WAY too much of what I would call "News-o-tainment" in the last 6 years.  Given that we are on the left of the political spectrum (in the USA), the bulk of that viewing is centered around MSNBC.  We can spend 2+ hours a night watching this stuff.  I call it stuff because the big issues are discussed by the various commentators one after another.  They all take a slightly different spin on these similar stories, but the major nuggets are still the same.

They are most often discussing craziness inside the Beltway, but all the studios are in NYC.  I started to wonder why they are all in New York when a lot of the stories they are covering are happening in between Maryland and Virginia.

Right now I am watching a segment of "UP with Chris Hayes" where they are discussing what is dragging down the economy.  I must admit that I like TV programs that make me think about things more deeply (as long as they are not messy emotional things.........)

So I had a revelation about why this is, and it has to do with these two guys pictured below.

borrowed from http://www.thegmanifesto.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/bull-and-bear.gif

"Politicians need to understand that governing by polls is a real problem," said Paul Krugman.  He might not have said problem, but I am too lazy to back up the DVR and figure out what the actual word was.  The message is still the same though, and that is that the fiscal cliff was a figment of the overworked amigdullae of certain politicians who think that the stimulus was a REALLY bad thing and the members of the media who like to make things sound more dire than they actually might be.

There was no way that Wall Street was going to allow our nation to default on their debt.  It just wasn't going to happen.

Hence the title of this blog.  Are the legislators in DC really controlling the course of our nation's finances, or is it the two animals pictured above, known for their fury and hibernation, respectively.

Think about it, and please leave a comment if you would like to engage in some political debate!

cool customers

Yesterday was quite fun (exclusive of the TWA 800 flashbacks) but draining.  I participated in an ice rescue exercise in Ohio which simulated the crash of a commuter airplane into Lake Erie.

Lots of adrenaline flowing even though it was not a real emergency.  Everything went pretty well other than one first responder who was injured when she slipped on the ice and fell.  That was a firefighter who did not have ice cleats on.  Bad move when you are try8ing to pull a heavy aluminum skiff across slippery melting ice.  I was so excited to put on my drysuit and play in the cold that I left my cleats up in the building, but I took tiny little steps and wasn't pulling anything heavy.

Here are a few good pictures of the event from the Coast Guard's visual imagery database:

overhead shot from a Dolphin helicopter

coasties waiting to be rescued

amazing what you can do with a chainsaw!

I know it looks like a banana, but this inflatable we call the Skiff-Ice.  You blow it up with a scuba tank.

These are all from the short haul part of the exercise, where the rescuers walk out on the ice to recover people in distress.  The ice here was not very thick, so it could not support the weight of the airboats.  The long haul location was in Sandusky Bay to the south, where the ice was much thicker.

If you check out this site, you can see more of the pictures from the sunny day near USCG Station Marblehead.

Odd / Even Conundrum

I used to have a thing about not liking odd numbers, but I think I am gradually getting over that.

I was born in an even year, most of my graduations occurred in even years, I got married in an even year......  I think you get the picture.

It wasn't until I met my friend Chris that I started to think more favorably about odds.  I mean, I had friends in school that were one year older or younger than me, but one day Chris made a funny statement that I HAD to follow up with more questions.

We were at some work meeting, and she was chatting away with some CAPT that she had just met, and they really were hitting it off; in that electric way where you can almost complete the other person's sentences, and they laugh at most of your "new person" jokes.  [A "new person" joke in my book is one that you can tell someone you just met, without much fear of offending them.]

I didn't really interact much with this CAPT during the meeting, but at lunch Chris mentioned, "I could tell that he was an 'odd year' before I even asked him!"  When pressed for more information, she explained that at the USCG Academy the odds and evens have a strong affinity for one another.

I guess it is similar to my all girls Catholic high school experience, where each member of the new freshman class get a junior to look out for them.  OK, there is some hazing involved, but nothing too serious.  The nuns make sure of that........

I think that the hazing Chris went through was a bit more significant, and it was coming from the 'evens' who had been there one year longer than she had.  The second class 'odds' were the ones making sure that the 'evens' didn't get out of hand with the new fourth class cadets.

She went on to explain things I can't even remember the specifics of, but it was something along the lines of, "You can always tell an 'even' by their {add desired characteristic here}."  I started to think back on all the Academy grads I had run across during my career, and if I knew what year they were commissioned, I tried to decide if they fit the picture Chris was painting.

Sometimes it made sense, and other times it didn't.

It reminded me of the reversible polyester pinnies that we wore during soccer or field hockey scrimmages in college.  They were not as nice as those pictured below, but they allowed us to easily switch teams so the coach could try out new combinations of players together.

[borrowed from http://bceagles.cbscollegestore.com/store/Vendor396/fullscale/rsz_bc_league_womens_pinnie-c.jpg]

Ours were gold on one side, greyish on the other, so the common chant was, "Gold is great!  Grey is gross!"  Luckily both those words started with G, so it was easy to switch the order around if you got moved to the 'dark' side of the force.  If it was too cold to just wear the pinnies over our sports bras or t-shirts, we wore our sweatshirts inside out, or rightside out, as the case may be.

I cannot remember what the chant was for sweatshirt weather.  Maybe it was, "Gray is great!  White is weak!"

[interesting change in spelling I made of the colour in that last quote, as the President of the University was Dr. Gray during my time there.  I wonder if she was ever passing by Stagg Field and heard us chanting??????  Did she think we were talking about her?]

But, as usual, I digress.  The point of this blog is that a leopard can change its spots more easily than you would imagine, and even an 'even' like me can finally make piece with the 'odds'!