This and that.

The cats let me sleep in until 7:30 AM. When I rolled out of bed I found the ground dusted with snow and the morning temperature of 23 degrees turned out to be the low for the day. It got "up" all the way to 33 degrees this afternoon but the sun never made an appearance. The winds were blowing out of the northwest at a pretty steady 20 MPH with gusts into the 30 MPH range so it felt a good deal colder whenever I stepped outdoors. With snow flurries much of the day, it sure didn't feel like baseball season. More flurries are forecast for tonight and again on Wednesday night. Wednesday's high will be about the same as today's--the low 30s. We should be getting back to near normal on Thursday although the forecast is for a little below the mid-50 average temperature.

Terry called from her mom's to say she's sick as a dog. She felt fine when she left here and right through her dinner party with her friends but woke up during the night with chills and vomited several times. It could be a flu or it could be food poisoning. She had to cancel her luncheon date with our daughter and curled up beneath the covers all day eating nothing but mom's chicken soup. She'll stay with her mom again tonight and, if feeling better, will come back to the Aerie Wednesday afternoon.

I kept the fire going in the living room all day to raise the house temperature to a toasty 70 degrees. Our propane delivery yesterday was for just over 110 gallons which isn't bad for the entire month of March. (Propane heats our home and hot water and runs the dryer and stove. January we used about twice that amount.) I guess you could consider that a sign of our impending spring.

I spent the day scanning 35mm slides into a digital format. Most of today's slides came from 1979 and 1989. You might say I went back in time 20-30 years. Some pictures from my days at Seton Hall (graduate school) and then from a family vacation up through Wisconsin (Hayward's Fishing Hall Of Fame), Minnesota (Duluth and the iron mine country, Grand Portage) and circling back through Canada along the northern shores of the Great Lakes Forts William and Henry on opposite ends of that stretch).

All I can say is that my picture taking back then was really poor. The worst thing about using film is that you have to wait to see the results so if your traveling, for instance, if you screw up a shot, you wouldn't know it until you got home and got the roll developed. When you see the results, it's way too late to go back and take it over again. Today, with most digital cameras, you get instant feedback and the cost of "development" is negligible.

Scanning slides can be a tedious chore. Especially when you're not sure you want to save a particular slide. I say scan them all and be safe. Getting the slides dust free is a task too. Even stored in the original little boxes from Kodak, they still have dust, water marks, finger prints or scratches from previous viewings. The dust can be removed with a camel hair brush and a small puff of air. The water marks and finger prints are almost impossible to remove and forget about the scratches. They are there to stay.

I've now scanned around 1000 slides and haven't even started on Terry and my two big cross country trips of 1976 and 1993. Each of those have their own separate boxes and the slides probably total over a thousand easily.

Aaaahh, Spring!

It's spring time and the weather is acting like a yo-yo. Up and down, up and down, repeat.

Yesterday turned out to be a glorious day after the showers and 40 mph winds of Saturday. Not a cloud in the sky all day, nary a wind to be found and temperatures soaring into the mid 60s. Of course that changed after dark.

Clouds moved in after sunset but still the gibbous moon was shining brightly hen I went to bed at 10 PM. At 3:30 AM I woke up to the sound of heavy rain (and Terry getting up to take care of her beeping, battery depleted cell phone). Then at 4:30 AM Julie started caterwauling at the door and when that didn't get us up, she banged against it. She gave up after 15 minutes. Chester didn't start until 6 AM but he didn't give up--so we did.

Monday morning it was still drizzling and the temperatures had dropped to 40 degrees. The rain would stop but the sun made only very brief appearances when the clouds couldn't keep their act together. And despite the clouds coming out of the south, the temperature got no higher than 45 degrees all day.

Terry took off for an EGA (Embroiders' Guild of America) meeting in Horseheads around 9 AM then she headed off to New Jersey and a party with her lady friends in the Garden State Chapter of SAGA (Smocking Arts Guild of America) tonight. She'll stay at her mom's tonight and tomorrow night, taking our daughter out to lunch/dinner (im not clear on this) on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, I'll be watching carefully to see if we get the 1+ inch of snow that's forecast tonight and/or the snow showers predicted for Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. The high tomorrow will be around 40 degrees--maybe. Then Thursday were back over 55 again and a reasonable day. They say we'll get showers on Friday and temps in the high 40s. Saturday brings a chance of showers and mid 50s again.

The occasional warm, sunny days interspersed with the rain has brought a change in the scenery. I raked the lawn and spread some fertilizer a few days ago. I don't know if the fertilizer has been washed away, but the grass that's out there (and there are lots of bare spots) is turning bright green. You can see it in the fields down below, too. Or at least you can see it on those fields that were cut/cropped close last fall. All of a sudden they are switching from brown to green. You can almost stand on the deck and see it happening.

The shad bush trees are starting to bloom and the red maple buds are going to burst open any second now. The latter are already showing quite a bit of red. Most of the farms that had buckets out to collect sap from their sugar maples have pulled them for the season. It's not cold enough at night and the trees are starting to produce bud sap which has a different and very inferior flavor. You can still see places where they have the plastic tubing up draining into large containers, but most of that will be spilled or go into animal fodder with little boiling to thicken it until they get around to pulling the tubing and its taps (spiles?) from the trees.

Oh, another sign of spring: The Mets won their opening day game today, beating the Cincinnati Reds 2-1 behind 5.2 innings of 3 hit ball by Johan Santana and 3.1 inning fo no-hit ball by Sean Green, J.J. Putz and Francisco Rodriguez. Dan Murphy knocked in both NY runs with a solo home run and a ground out. On a negative side, the Mets had 9 hits and got 7 walks yet only scored 2 runs? What's up with that?

Actually, the Mets winning on opening day is hardly news. As it says at the link above, despite losing their first eight opening day games, they have the best record in baseball ever for opening days. They are 31-17 on opening days. It's September when they seem to have trouble.

Freakin' Amazin'!

Rep. Murtha Wants $134M In Earmarks
"Pennsylvania Democrat Asks for $20 Million for Clients of Firm Under Investigation"

A flurry of federal investigations and news articles about Congressman John Murtha’s funding requests and campaign contributions has not stopped him from asking for $134 million in earmarks for his district this year, including $75 million for defense spending.

The man is a lying piece of dog excrement, one of the few who can truly be called an "ex-marine", and yet, he must have testicles the size of a VW Bug. Brass ones.

Then again, to do anything different from what he's been doing might be construed as a sign of guilt, so perhaps he felt he had to keep on milking the cash cow or be gored by the bull.

Why do we do this?

Today was the first Saturday Morning Bird Walk at Hills Creek State Park. My local chapter of the Audubon Society provides the walk leaders (usually that's Gary and me). After two days of pretty heavy rain followed by strong (40 mph) winds over night, we hoped that there would be a break this morning. Well, it wasn't raining, but it was windier than ever. And it was out of the north so it was cold. Just 38 degrees, overcast and dreary. I think both Gary and I were hoping no one else showed up so we could go home and get some hot coffee. Even the park ranger who usually accompanies us was a no show. Something about getting married or some such nonsense. However, two women form the area did show and we felt compelled to do our part as leaders, especially since one was a new birder.

As might be expected when the wind is howling, birding was difficult. All the little guys kept their heads down or deep in the pines where they were less likely to get blown away. All the water fowl hugged the shoreline (usually the far shoreline, of course) so as to avoid the white caps out in the middle of the lake. Only a few Canada Geese, Mallards, Wood Duck, Crows and two immature Bald Eagles were seen in the air. The Crows and Eagles seemed to be enjoying themselves as they surfed the air currents, tilting their wings from side to side and even performing some aerial acrobatics.

All I know is I was glad I wore my wool socks, flannel-lined jeans and had some hand warmers in my pockets. Still, my fingers got cold every time I had to lift the binoculars and/or make an entry into my notebook and my eyes were constantly tearing up from the wind.

In 2+ hours we managed to identify only 16 species. Here's the list:

Location: Hills Creek State Park
Observation date: 4/4/09
Notes: Very,very windy morning that started at just 38 degrees. Overcast and sunless. There were two immature Bald Eagles. At least one carried food (a frog or small fish?) as it glided around the coastline of the lake.
Number of species: 16

Canada Goose X
Wood Duck X
Mallard X
Ring-necked Duck X
Common Merganser (North American) X
Horned Grebe X
Bald Eagle X
Mourning Dove X
Eastern Phoebe X
American Crow X
Tree Swallow X
Black-capped Chickadee X
American Robin X
Song Sparrow X
Dark-eyed Junco (Slate-colored) X
Northern Cardinal X

This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org)

Life with sister

Just sent this link to my younger sister and said that something must be wrong with the study.

Having a sister makes you happier and more optimistic, say psychologists

The opening lines of the article:

Growing up with at least one girl in the family also makes people more able to cope with their problems, according to the study.

Daughters tie loved ones closer together and encourage them to communicate their emotions more effectively, the researchers believe.

Well of course you become better at coping with problems...I mean, you've got through childhood having a sister around, didn't you?

And as for bring the rest of the family together...It's us against the she devil! (Just kidding sis! Really!)

Actually the article is kinda sweet in a saccharine sort of way. And, as they usually do, it beats up on the brother...a bit.

Might be time to start biking...

This was just sent to me by my older cousin in the Tampa area. Now, I know he lives in a relatively flat area (unlike the terrain here in the Northern Tier of PA) and so I believe him when he says he intends to start bicycling more. However, I do not think this regimen will help him lose weight if he uses his new bike.

To all our concerned Friends;

Don't you think it's time we all became more physically active?

Beginning this April, I (and a few friends) will be riding 5 miles every day.

If any of you would like to join our Bike Club, please let me know and we can make arrangements.

I think it would be appropriate to ride somewhere between 4:00 and 7:00pm.

We can call it happy hour, if it will make you say yes.

I have enclosed a photo of my bike.

Aaaarrrgghh!

Okay, this is what the current project is supposed to look like:



It will not look like that at all. Somewhere along the way, probably at the very beginning, I cut all my strips of oak, walnut and cherry 1/16 of an inch too wide and didn't sand them down to the proper width.

Now 1/16th of an inch doesn't sound like much until you realize the compounding of that error by gluing four strips side by side and then cutting them on a 45 degree angle. When these angled strips are the 7/8ths of an inch they are supposed to be but the original strips from which they were constructed were 15/16ths wide...Well let us sat that it puts everything out of whack with no easy way of recouping.

If you look carefully at the picture above, you'll see that the finished piece has a large central, eight-pointed star. Each of those points is composed of a large diamond made up of the glued strips I spoke about. The measuring error, compounded far more than the interest in a simple savings account at the local bank, resulted in the diamonds not being...well, diamond shape. Oh, they may look like they are diamond shaped but they are not symmetrical. I can start putting the diamonds together and it doesn't look bad until I get to numbers 7 and 8. In fact, Number 8 will not fit into the slot left for it.

So... It looks like I'll have four square coasters (the corner designs) and eight ALMOST-diamond shaped wall hangings for now. I will be ordering more wood (it's too small to call "lumber") and will be trying my best to not screw up the next time.