Saturday, March 24, 2007

Keeping Busy

Tip of the hat to my mom for passing this one along:

Working people frequently ask retired people what they do to make their days interesting. Well, for example, the other day I went downtown and went into a shop. I was only in there for about 5 minutes and when I came out there was a cop writing out a parking ticket. I went up to him and said, “Come on, man, how about giving a retired person a break"? He ignored me and continued writing the ticket. I called him a “Nazi .” He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having worn tires. So I called him a “doughnut eating Gestapo.” He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first. Then he started writing a third ticket. This went on for about 20 minutes. The more I abused him, the more tickets he wrote.

Personally, I didn’t care. I came downtown on the bus and the car that he was putting the tickets on had a bumper sticker that said “Hillary in '08."

I’ll add this technique to my file of retirement tips…

I try to have a little fun each day now that I’m retired. It’s important to my health.

Bluebirds!

Each spring the Western Bluebirds return, to mate, nest, and raise the next generation. For five or six years we have kept “bluebird boxes” — next boxes of exactly the right size, shape, and hole to attract them.

This afternoon, while walking the dogs, I saw a male bluebird — resplendent — in our front yard, perched on a tree that used to be near where one of our bluebird boxes was attached to the trunk of a pine tree. This particular box had fallen off sometime in the winter, and I had not yet put it back up. In my imagination, that bluebird was reproaching my sloth. So I went back into my workshop and came back with some good, long lag screws and a wrench, and I hung the box back up.

As I walked back to our house, I turned to look for the bluebird — and he was already perched on the bluebird house! I think it must be the same male that was here last year…

Rain and Flowers

Thursday evening we had quite a dramatic display of weather — thunderstorms, lightning crashing all around us, and several periods of very intense rainfall. Downpours are very uncommon here, so when it started really coming down hard on Thursday, we interrupted our activities to watch the show. Lea (our oldest field spaniel) is terrified of thunder, so the poor thing spent an hour or so trembling in fear. We humans, though, were just delighted! My weather station recorded 7mm — just over a quarter inch — of rain in a single 14 minute period. That’s a rate of 29mm (over one inch) per hour — a veritable sky-gusher by our normal standards. I cannot recall such an intense rainstorm in our entire history living in Lawson Valley.

This morning the skies are clear, the temperatures are very pleasant, and the humidity is a very pleasant 30%. Jim Barnick, our friend and neighbor, stopped by for coffee and to ask for some help unloading his gigantic new gas grill. His property abuts ours, and is directly uphill from us. I decided to bring my camera along and to walk back to our house by walking through the chaparral that lies between us. His property is cleared up to (and slightly across) the border with ours. Years ago, I cut a rough road in the upper part of our property; it gets to within 60 or 70 feet of Jim’s cleared section. So “all” I had to do was bushwhack through 60 or 70 feet of chaparral. That took me an hour! Still, it’s always interesting to see what the condition of the chaparral is, and I can’t imagine better weather to do it in (bushwhacking in the summer heat is nearly unbearable).

These three photos are taken from just about the highest point on our property. The rightmost one catches an interesting phenomenon quite nicely. See that bright patch near the center (click on it to get a larger version)? That’s a manzanita, but it’s no different than the other manzanitas all around it. It is bright because those particular manzanitas are where my shadow fell — meaning that the sun, me, and the manzanitas were all aligned. The manzanitas, like many plants, constantly move their leaves so that they expose themselves best to the sun. When things are all lined up like this, that means they reflect a lot more light back toward me than other manzanitas would (because I’m not lined up with them and the sun). This morning the effect was enhanced because we had some dew overnight, and the little beads of water on the leaves also acted like retro-reflectors. The blue flower is a ceanothus that was lit up, but right beside a shadowed rock that made a nice black background. The white flower is a lemonadeberry, which is a kind of sumac. This plant is most notable for always having luxurious green foliage, no matter how severe the summer droughts are.

These photos are all of the same ceanothus that’s in the upper part of our cleared yard. This individual is particularly beautiful this year, and here I’ve caught it from several directions and distances…

California...

Simi L. passes these along…

You know you’re from California if:

1. Your coworker has 8 body piercings and none are visible.

2. You make over $300,000 and still can’t afford a house.

3. You take a bus and are shocked at two people carrying on a conversation in English.

4. Your child’s 3rd-grade teacher has purple hair, a nose ring, and is named Flower.

5. You can’t remember … is pot illegal?

6. You’ve been to a baby shower that has two mothers and a sperm donor.

7. You have a very strong opinion about where your coffee beans are grown, and you can taste the difference between Sumatran and Ethiopian.

8. You can’t remember … is pot illegal?

9. A really great parking space can totally move you to tears.

10. Gas costs $1.00 per gallon more than anywhere else in the U.S.

11. Unlike back home, the guy at 8:30 am at Starbucks wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses who looks like George Clooney really IS George Clooney.

12. Your car insurance costs as much as your house payment.

13. You can’t remember … is pot illegal?

14. It’s barely sprinkling rain and there’s a report on every news station: “STORM WATCH."

15. You pass an elementary school playground and the children are all busy with their cells or pagers.

16. It’s barely sprinkling rain outside, so you leave for work an hour early to avoid all the weather-related accidents.

17. HEY!!!! Is pot illegal????

18. Both you AND your dog have therapists, psychics, personal trainers and cosmetic surgeons.

19. The Terminator is your governor.

20. If you drive illegally, they take your driver’s license. If you’re here illegally, they want to give you one.

Speaking as a 35-year California resident, these are all plausible. A few resonated particularly with me: 1 (except it wasn’t a co-worker, it was a Starbucks staffer I called “Metal Woman"), 7, 10, 14 (several local TV stations actually start special coverage days ahead of any prediction of rain, however slight), 15, and 16.