An evening in Paradise...

An evening in Paradise...  Our evening started off very nicely, with a trip up Blacksmith Fork canyon to Hardware Ranch, to see the fall color (some photos from that ride below).  This drive was actually a lot prettier than the drive up Logan Canyon yesterday, and it is a lot easier here to drive slowly or stop in order to gawk properly.  Incidentally, all of these photos are taken on my iPhone 5 in the rain – something a 35mm camera would be challenged with unless you happened to have a rain hood.

After we returned from this drive, Debbie's left hand started to get quite painful.  The day before one of our cats (Koa) had bitten her left thumb.  This happened when Debbie tried to retrieve (from his throat!) a piece of plastic that he'd swallowed.  Last night the pain from the bite reached the point where Debbie felt like she needed to go to the emergency room.  So off we went, for another late night ER experience.  When we were called into a room, we noticed that the ER was very busy, with a knot of people outside one of the rooms in particular.  We saw sad, worried faces at first, and much urgency.  The ER staff was largely tied up dealing with this, and we waited for over two hours before Debbie was examined and treated.  Meanwhile, things must have gotten better in the room that was in focus – people leaving the room started looking less worried, then unworried, and finally, smiling.  We found out today that the person being treated was the woman in this story – an accidental gunshot victim.  Debbie got two injections last night: tetanus and a powerful antibiotic.  Now she's on a 10 day regimen of antibiotics, and hopefully that will be the end of it.  Next time (if there is a next time) one of us gets bitten by a cat, we're going straight to the ER...

Functional Java...

Functional Java...  In the bad old days before Java 1.8 (before lambdas, in other words), if you wanted to list the subdirectories of a given directory, you'd write something like this:

files = _node.listFiles( new FilenameFilter() {
    @Override    public boolean accept( final File node, final String name ) {
        return new File( node, name ).isDirectory();
    }
} );

That's an anonymous class declaration, complete with all the mess of Java wordiness that goes along with it.  Ugly, dense, and way too hard to understand.

Today I wrote one like this:

files = _node.listFiles( (node, name) -> { return new File( node, name ).isDirectory(); } );

That's a lambda in there: short, to the point, and easy to read.

I know it's a crazy simple example, and doesn't at all show off the power of lambdas or functional programming.  But anything that replaces the gobbledygook of the first example with the (relative) clarity of the second is a winner in my book.  Me like!

Dilbert...

Dilbert ... really cracked me up today :)

Pouring, it is...

Pouring, it is...  The skies just opened up here, with buckets of water sheeting down.  Up to this moment, the storm has dropped 1.8" on us – well ahead of the forecast.  The screen grab at right shows the radar image (if you look carefully, you can find the little ⊕ symbol that marks where Paradise is).  That red blob marks the intense rain, and the edge of it just hit us.  There's more to come.  North of us we see lots and lots of lightning.

At left is the scene outside our north-facing second floor windows.  You can see the choke cherries in the middle, just starting to turn color.  The rain isn't quite so obvious in the photo, but trust me on this: it's coming down cats and dogs.  Big ones!

We caught a break in the rain...

We caught a break in the rain ... late yesterday afternoon, so we piled all three dogs into the truck and headed up to “Tony Grove” Lake (in Logan Canyon) to see what we could see in the way of fall color.

Our route took us right past the Aggie's Creamery, so naturally we stopped in for an ice cream cone.  Debbie had a repeat: one scoop of chocolate, one scoop of espresso chip.  I tried something new: one scoop of maple walnut and one scoop of caramel cashew.  I couldn't get a comment from Debbie, other than “Mmmmmmmm” :)  Mine was outstanding – just the way I like it, with a subtle and not-too-sweet flavor of maple and caramel, and lots of nuts.  I did have one small problem, though: my server was on his first day at work, and didn't yet understand the physics of ice cream cone preparation.  It was all I could do to keep my ice cream situated on top of my cone.  He hadn't stuffed enough of it down into the cone to keep it stable.  I made it without dropping the ice cream, though.  That would have been tragic!

I also bought a half pound of “Aggiago” cheese, which I haven't tried yet.

The drive up Logan Canyon was full of fall color, mostly visible to us on the canyon's sides (as at right).  Mainly we saw the oranges and reds of maples, though there were also a few oaks, and up high, splashes of yellow from aspens (not quite in prime color yet). 

As we approached Tony Grove itself, though, things changed for the worse.  There are large areas of dead or half-dead aspen groves up there, and not a few dead firs.  We have no idea why that's the case.  Right around the lake itself we saw a bit of color, but truthfully nothing even close to the rather nice color further down in the canyon.  We walked the dogs up there (excited, they were!) and headed back home just before dark.  Where I walked the dogs, we saw this one lonely (and very late!) bloom on a plant I don't know.  Seems pretty weird to see this just a few weeks before there will be snow here...

To the readers who emailed me...

To the readers who emailed me ... about these floods.  We're not in any danger here in Paradise.  The floods are near the down of Hildale, Utah, which is 400 miles – a six hour drive – from Paradise.  That's about as far from us as you can get and still be in Utah :)

Many of the news reports on the flood neglect to add an interesting fact: Hildale is the Utah epicenter for Warren Jeff's polygamist version of the Latter Day Saints (Mormon) church...

Wow!

Wow!  We got 1.3 inches of rain overnight, and there's a lot more coming.  When this storm is over and the lawns dry out a little bit, I think I'll be putting away my irrigation pipes for the season...

It's raining in Paradise...

It's raining in Paradise...  It started last night, got intense a couple times during the night (the noise on our steel roof woke me up!), and we're expecting the most intense part tonight and tomorrow.  It's still dark here, so I can't read our rain gauge to see how much we got.

Yesterday afternoon we feasted on leftover chicken and dumpling soup, again with new dumplings.  It just keeps getting better as it sits in the refrigerator!  I'm looking forward to it again today – the perfect “rainy day food”...

Plans for LEO satellite Internet network filed...

Plans for LEO satellite Internet network filed...  Elon Musk's SpaceX has filed plans for a low earth orbit (LEO) network of satellites to provide broadband Internet service to the entire world.  This is a key step toward bringing the plan to fruition.  Funding seems to be assured, especially with Google's enormous commitment.  LEO satellites are vastly superior to the geosynchronous satellites used by existing satellite-based Internet service providers, for the simple reason that they're (much) closer to Earth.  This reduces the latency from awful (for the geosynchronous birds) to normal (for the LEO birds).

If Google and Musk pull this off, the world is going to suddenly get very much smaller, again...

Salmon in Paradise...

Salmon in Paradise...  Debbie and I took a drive last night to Cinnamon Creek, the main source of water for Porcupine Reservoir.  We'd been told by a friend that “the salmon were running” up the creek, a twice-annual event (once in September, again in October).  This was the first we'd heard anything about salmon in the local waters!  The video at right is not mine, but it shows the salmon run in Cinnamon Creek in 2013.

I did a little research into the topic, and discovered that the salmon we have here are sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) – the same salmon found in the northern Pacific Ocean – but part of a landlocked population that never makes it to the ocean.  These are called “kokanee salmon”, but are actually the identical species to the ones found in the ocean.  In our case, the population is based in Porcupine Reservoir itself, and they spawn up Cinnamon Creek (and perhaps some of the smaller feeder creeks as well, but I'm not sure about that). It turns out that Porcupine Reservoir is one of just three in Utah that were stocked with a sockeye population.  How Porcupine Reservoir was selected for that is something I'd like to find out.

When we got to Cinnamon Creek (after seeing some nice fall color along the way), we discovered that the trail down to the water was too rugged for Debbie to attempt on crutches.  So poor Debbie waited for me in the truck while I hiked down to see what I could see.  Here are some photos of what I found:

Precipitation in Paradise...

Precipitation in Paradise...  Starting today, we're due to get hammered by rain for the next four days.  The forecast is estimating a total of two inches, with the bulk coming tomorrow and Wednesday.

We're starting to see some fall color around us, at altitudes just a few hundred feet above the valley floor.  Our backyard choke cherries are just starting to turn, the first thing to turn on our property.  Debbie and I went for a drive on the road from Avon to Liberty yesterday evening, and saw quite a bit of fall color above us, and a little along the road.  Some photos:

Last night we had homemade sticky rice and mangoes.  The recipe we used resulted in rice that was much less sweet (and sticky) than the same dish when we've had it in restaurants.  I actually liked that better, but Debbie longs for the restaurant style.  We'll try that again.  We didn't have fresh mangoes to put on it, so we used canned instead.  They were ok, but not nearly as good as the real deal...

We're headed off for Debbie's hydrotherapy shortly. The doggies will miss their morning walk...

The origins of Scrabble...

The origins of Scrabble...  All new to me.  My family is amongst the addicted, as are many of our friends...

New Pluto photos are pouring in...

New Pluto photos are pouring in ... from the latest New Horizons data dump.  Astronomers are delighted at not only having all the amazing new data on Pluto (and its moons), but also at the unexpected nature of it.  Via APOD, of course.  Full resolution version here.

When I was a young boy (in the early '60s), first learning about and getting interested in astronomy, we knew almost nothing at all about Pluto.  The very best telescopic photographs of it showed basically a smeared dot.  No telescope existed that could collect enough light from Pluto for even the most basic spectroscopic study.  We knew almost nothing about it.  Now we are about to have vast amounts of data on the chemical composition of Pluto and its atmosphere, its magnetic field, its gravitational field, and high resolution photographs of its surface.  That's a lot of progress within one human lifetime...

A drug that cures your Hillary problems...

A drug that cures your Hillary problems...  Via my Macified, pistol-packing mama, who worries about me and wants me to feel mo' bettah :)

Morning in Paradise...

Morning in Paradise...  We had a lovely day yesterday.  We went grocery shopping, and then went to the Aggie's Creamery (part of the Utah State University) and got an ice cream cone.  Sugar cones with one scoop of chocolate and one scoop of espresso chip.  They were brains-fall-out good.  Several locals have recommended the creamery to us, but this was the first time we'd actually made it there.  Dang, that was good!

Which reminds me...  The Crumb Brothers that we so mourned when they went out of business six months ago has been resurrected!  A buyer was found, most of the old employees rehired, and the reopening is just a week away.  Woo hoo!

After returning from shopping and ice cream eating, Debbie and I made chicken and dumpling soup.  We modified a recipe we'd tried last week – adding mushrooms – and the result was a huge success.  We gorged ourselves on it in the afternoon, and put five one-meal containers in the refrigerator. 

This morning, the boys (Miki and Race) and I did our usual morning walk.  It was slightly overcast, but nice and cool.  For some reason we saw very few hawks today, which is kind of weird.  The dogs got terrifically excited at one point, but I never saw the reason why.  Most likely they smelled something enticing; perhaps a raccoon or a woodchuck.

Just a little while ago, I reheated a container of chicken and dumpling soup for my lunch.  I made some more dumpling batter and dropped it in the pot, as there are never enough dumplings :)  As usual, the soup was even better the second day...

Gold King mine blowout...

Gold King mine blowout...  The EPA finally released video footage of the blowout, which (as they've admitted) was entirely caused by their own incompetence.  The mine's owner tried to get the EPA to use a safer method, but failed – apparently because of the arrogance of the EPA administrators, who are environmentalist wackos, one and all.  They seem to believe that all mine owners are evil by definition, and don't listen to them – despite their typically vastly higher understanding of mining.  The same general thing happens in the oil industry as well.

This incident hits home for us, as this is an area we know well.  Watching the video, I recognize the impacted area; we've visited it often.  It's infuriating to think that the government is responsible for this – and I can't help but fear the results of the inevitably inept and corrupt health care bureaucrats after a few years of ObamaCare...

Morning in Paradise...

Morning in Paradise...  We slept in a bit this morning, as we had nothing scheduled for early in the day.  We had our tea and coffee in the morning twilight; by the time we finished it was civil dawn.  The Wasatch mountains to our east cause our dawns to be highly variable by season – as the point where the sun rises over the mountains moves north and south during the year, the height of the mountains change.  Right now, from our home, the southward movement of the rising point means that the sun is now starting to rise through a notch – and the sunlight hits us a little earlier each day, instead of later as you might expect when winter approaches.

As Miki, Race, and I walked this morning, we got to see this phenomenon first hand.  We started walking uphill, due east.  To our right (south) we could see sunlit fields in the distance (and some of the photos below show this).  These are fields that already see the sun through the bottom of that notch.  As the sun rose, the edge of the notch's shadow moved swiftly toward us.  In the space of five minutes of walking, the shadow moved about a mile toward us – until we were suddenly brightly lit by direct sunlight.  At that point we had some very long shadows, as you can see in one of the photos below.

On the eastern slopes of the Wellsville mountains, to our west, we could see big swaths of fall color, especially the reds of the oaks.  It seems a bit early for that, but the locals tell me that the onset of fall color varies as much as six weeks.

We saw lots of birds this morning.  The hawks are still hanging around the barley fields, waiting for the low-IQ voles to poke their heads up and volunteer to be hawk breakfast.  At the most distant point of our walk, we flushed a group of grouse.  I didn't recognize the species.  There were perhaps 10 adult birds and 7 or 8 juveniles.  As we walked downhill past a row of weeds at the edge of an alfalfa field, I spotted a bright red bird, roughly sparrow-sized, 100' or so in front of me.  I couldn't see any details about it, and it was only visible to me for about 5 seconds, so I have no idea what it was.  I don't know any red birds here, so it has to be something new to me.

Some photos from today's walk:

Another crazy person...

Another crazy person...  This time, though, it looks like it might actually be reasonably safe.  Still looks crazy, though!

A marvelous spoof...

A marvelous spoof ... of pretentious hipsters...

Another person reacting to...

Another person reacting to ... those magical “glasses” that let color-blind people see colors again...

Dawn has some much better photos...

Dawn has some much better photos ... of those bright spots on Ceres, but the cause of them is still a complete mystery.  What they heck are they?  NASA has a poll going to let you cast your prediction.  I voted for a salt deposit...

Modules are coming in Java 9...

Modules are coming in Java 9 ... read all about it!

When I initially started programming in Java, almost 20 years ago, I made a long list of the “missing features” the language had.  I lost that list a long time ago, but modules were one of those missing features.  Each version of Java has added at least one of the things I had on that list, and with Java 9's modules (assuming they make the final cut), I can't think of any more things I had on that original list that are missing.  But ... now I'd make a new and different list, and there are plenty more things I wish Java had.  Probably the the top thing on my new list would be a way to access raw network packets.  I can dream, can't I?

Memristors for sale...

Memristors for sale...  I check every few months to see if you can buy one, and now you can!  They're not on Digi-Key, yet, but at Knowm $220 will buy you a part with eight of the little beasties on it.  Looking at the data sheet, they're still a little challenging to use.  This part is aimed at researchers, so that aspect doesn't matter quite so much as it would if they were aiming at design-ins for mass-produced systems.  Still – they're real!

Another day, another hydrotherapy session...

Another day, another hydrotherapy session ... and Debbie continues to do well on them.  The therapist today told her that it was time for her to start easing back into “regular” physical therapy, where she's bearing her full weight on her (formerly broken, and much-abused) knee.  That means he sees progress – great!

We celebrated by going out to Herm's for breakfast.  With both had their southwest steak and eggs: steak marinated, rare, and delicious; an avocado half, salsa fresca, and eggs poached in circles cut from bell peppers.  Instead of potatoes, we got fruit cups: blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, grapes, orange, and peach.  Yum!

Comet 67P...

Comet 67P...  As seen by Rosetta on August 30th...

Some beautiful underwater photos...

Some beautiful underwater photos ... all in black and white...

Twenty years...

Twenty years...  That's how long Amazon has been selling books now.  It's also how long we've been buying books from them, as we were amongst their earliest customers – I placed an order just a few days after their online store first opened.

Here's one interesting little chart I stumbled across: the top 20 all-time best sellers on Amazon.  I'm surprised that the earliest publication date for any of these is in 2006.  There are only a few of these that I've read: Harry Potter, and the Larsson books.  I bought "Gone Girl", but haven't read it yet.

Morning in Paradise...

Morning in Paradise...  This morning Debbie had physical therapy for her lower back pain.  The doctor and the therapist (Wess G.) both told her that this lower back pain was a common consequence of having an injured knee.  Because she's walking cock-eyed now, and using crutches, her back muscles are all bent out of shape, and letting her know by screeching at her.  They didn't do what we expected, namely exercises.  Instead, they treated her back with TENS (electrical stimulus), heat, and ultrasound.  Debbie said she felt like a wet noodle when she was finished – but her back felt great!  We are going to try to do the TENS at home (we have a little machine for that), along with the heat.  If that doesn't work out, we'll schedule her for this therapy a couple times a week.

After we got home, the boys (Miki and Race) and I went for our walk, but much later (and warmer!) than usual.  The “feeling” about the walk was completely different than a walk in the early morning hours.  Very little wildlife was about.  Things looked hot and dry.  Dogly tongues were hanging.  We all like the early morning walks mo' bettah...

Debbie's doing a home exercise routine now, and when she's done we're headed up to Jack's for lunch.  Pizza and lemon cake, that's the ticket!

Morning in Paradise...

Morning in Paradise...  No walk this morning, dang it!  We headed up to Logan bright and early for Debbie's hydrotherapy session.  That went very well, as the first two did.  Then we came home, Debbie launched into her exercise routines, and I did some postponed chores inside the house.  Just a slow day in Paradise.

Slower than usual, actually.  In the town of Paradise itself (a quarter mile south of our home), the road is being repaved.  This has slowed down the traffic flow considerably, as there are flagmen and one-way-at-a-time procedures in place.

Yesterday I started writing some code for the first time in quite a long time.  It feels a little odd, but I can still do it :)

The way we word...

The way we word...  Via my cousin Mike D.:

Words and Phrases Remind Us of the Way We Word    By Richard Lederer

About a month ago, I illuminated some old expressions that have become obsolete because of the inexorable march of technology. These phrases included "Don't touch that dial," "Carbon copy," "You sound like a broken record" and "Hung out to dry." A bevy of readers have asked me to shine light on more faded words and expressions, and I am happy to oblige:

Back in the olden days we had a lot of moxie. We'd put on our best bib and tucker and straighten up and fly right. Hubba-hubba! We'd cut a rug in some juke joint and then go necking and petting and smooching and spooning and billing and cooing and pitching woo in hot rods and jalopies in some passion pit or lovers’ lane. Heavens to Betsy! Gee whillikers! Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat! Holy moley! We were in like Flynn and living the life of Riley, and even a regular guy couldn't accuse us of being a knucklehead, a nincompoop or a pill. Not for all the tea in China!

Back in the olden days, life used to be swell, but when’s the last time anything was swell? Swell has gone the way of beehives, pageboys and the D.A.; of spats, knickers, fedoras, poodle skirts, saddle shoes and pedal pushers. Oh, my aching back. Kilroy was here, but he isn't anymore.

Like Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle and Kurt Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim, we have become unstuck in time. We wake up from what surely has been just a short nap, and before we can say, “I'll be a monkey’s uncle!” or “This is a fine kettle of fish!” we discover that the words we grew up with, the words that seemed omnipresent as oxygen, have vanished with scarcely a notice from our tongues and our pens and our keyboards.

Poof, poof, poof go the words of our youth, the words we've left behind. We blink, and they're gone, evanesced from the landscape and wordscape of our perception, like Mickey Mouse wristwatches, hula hoops, skate keys, candy cigarettes, little wax bottles of colored sugar water and an organ grinder’s monkey.

Where have all those phrases gone? Long time passing. Where have all those phrases gone? Long time ago: Pshaw. The milkman did it. Think about the starving Armenians. Bigger than a bread box. Banned in Boston . The very idea! It’s your nickel. Don't forget to pull the chain. Knee high to a grasshopper. Turn-of-the-century. Iron curtain. Domino theory. Fail safe. Civil defense. Fiddlesticks! You look like the wreck of the Hesperus. Cooties. Going like sixty. I'll see you in the funny papers. Don't take any wooden nickels. Heavens to Murgatroyd! And awa-a-ay we go!

Oh, my stars and garters! It turns out there are more of these lost words and expressions than Carter had liver pills. This can be disturbing stuff, this winking out of the words of our youth, these words that lodge in our heart’s deep core. But just as one never steps into the same river twice, one cannot step into the same language twice. Even as one enters, words are swept downstream into the past, forever making a different river.

We of a certain age have been blessed to live in changeful times. For a child each new word is like a shiny toy, a toy that has no age. We at the other end of the chronological arc have the advantage of remembering there are words that once did not exist and there were words that once strutted their hour upon the earthly stage and now are heard no more, except in our collective memory. It’s one of the greatest advantages of aging. We can have archaic and eat it, too.

See ‘ya later, alligator

None of this was gobbledygook to me. How about you?

Dinner in Paradise...

Dinner in Paradise...  Debbie whipped up a magnificent meal for us this afternoon.  The main course was Ora King Salmon, recently available in our grocery store.  Debbie baked it in a mayonnaise, dill, and Peppadew Pepper sauce, and the result was spectacularly good.  We first ran into those Peppadew Peppers on a pizza at Jack's, and fell in love with them there.  The mild versions really are mild; I'm practically allergic to hot spicy foods, but I love these things.

Along with the glorious salmon, we had carrots cooked in balsamic vinegar and a little brown sugar.  Very nice, they were.  And finally we had rice, but rice ever so much better than we usually make it, by traditional stove top methods.  On the strong recommendation of Megan McArdle, we bought an automatic rice cooker – and this afternoon was our first attempt to use it.  That first try produced two (dry) cups of rice cooked to perfection, fluffy and light and delicious.  Also, better than anything we've ever cooked ourselves on the stove top.

What a meal!

I'm now starting my food coma recovery...

Morning in Paradise...

Morning in Paradise...  The dogs (Miki and Race) and I took our morning walk a bit late today.  Because of that, we met up with Roger R., tending his garden and starting to harvest some delicious looking beets, tomatoes, and corn.  While Roger and I were catching up, our neighbor's dog Annie came trotting up.  I'd never seen her on this road before, so that surprised me – and then I got a bigger surprise: our neighbor Alan L. and three of his kids (Zac, Nic, and Allie) were out for a jog and walk.  We all ended up talking for a half hour or so, while the dogs played with each other and the kids.

It was an absolutely gorgeous Cache Valley morning, feeling like a crisp fall morning (it was 38° on the thermometer).  We didn't see much in the way of wildlife; the hour and all the human activity chased it off, I suspect.  The scenery and the pleasant walk was more than enough, though.  The dogs were unhappy when I turned around.  They weren't nearly as enthusiastic about returning as they were when we were outbound :)

Around the grounds in Paradise...

Around the grounds in Paradise...  I've been working outside this morning, moving sprinklers (perhaps for the last time this season), attaching the backhoe to my tractor (in preparation for tree planting this coming week!), and cleaning up some messes.  As I did so, I spotted a couple interesting things.

First up: some teasels in bloom.  This is way late for them to be blooming, but these particular plants had some special challenges: I've mowed them down three times during the year, each time before they had a chance to go to seed.  This time they put up very short stalks (only about 14" high, instead of the usual 3 to 5 feet) and bloomed.  They don't have much time left in the season, and somehow they must know it.  What they don't know is that tomorrow (or maybe even this afternoon) they'll be mowed down again.  Teasel always blooms in this peculiar fashion, with a band of bloom that moves down as time goes by.  The top most parts of these have already bloomed; the bottom are yet to bloom (assuming I didn't mow them down).

Next: wild rose hips, growing near the irrigation canal on the east side of our property.  We could collect dozens of bushels of rose hips.  If I liked rose hip tea, I'd be set for life :)  People around here generally think of wild roses as more-or-less a weed, but we like them.  We like the blooms, the fruit, and the birds they attract...

Morning in Paradise...

Morning in Paradise...  This morning feels like a fall morning – it was 38° when we got up, and it was about 50° on our walk.  The forecast is calling for a high of 72° today.  A great day for working outside!

Our morning didn't start all that well.  When I got up and went out into the kitchen, the first thing I saw was a pond of pee.  Then the smell hit me.  This is the second time this week that Mo'i couldn't wait until morning, so I guess it's back onto the diaper for him.  He's been doing so well for months that we've gotten very used to it.  Now it looks like we're back to the dealing-with-old-doggie-urinary-problems regime.  Oh, well...

Miki, Race, and I took our usual walk.  We saw lots and lots of big hawks today, and for some reason no smaller ones.  I didn't see a single vole – pickings must be getting lean on those barley fields.  The big hawks won't let us get close to them, and I don't take my binoculars on our walks, so I don't get all that good a view of them, darn it.  We did get pretty close to a pair of fence-perching meadowlarks this morning.  No song, though.  Some photos from this morning's walk:

Just got back home...

Just got back home ... from our outing to Maddox Drive-In.  That was quite an experience, and I mean that entirely in a good way.  It's very reminiscent of the way drive-ins used to be, about 50 years ago.  You drive into a parking space that's under an awning, to protect you from sun and rain.  A few seconds after we parked, a young lady came out to see what we wanted.  I ordered a cheeseburger with (homemade!) root beer, and Debbie ordered a “half basket” of chicken (three pieces of fried chicken, with fries, gravy, and a roll) and some iced tea.  We paid with a credit card – a modern enhancement :)  A few minutes later our meal arrived (on a window-mounted tray), and every last bit of it was delicious.  My cheeseburger was a thick patty of excellent beef, a molten slice of cheddar on top, a perfectly grilled bun, and all the right trimmings.  The fries were outstanding.  Debbie's chicken, she reports, was delicious, and she ate all of it.

After we finished, Debbie spotted one of the servers walking by with a gigantic chocolate ice cream cone.  Neither of us had much room left, so Debbie ordered some chocolate ice cream in a dish, and we figured we'd split it.  Well, our server came back with close to a quart of ice cream.  We decided we'd eat it on the way home, with Debbie feeding me spoonfuls at a time.  I thought we'd be throwing away most of it.  Oh, no, we weren't – because after we tasted the first spoonful we both decided that this ambrosia wasn't going to go to waste.  As I write this my belly is distended from eating large quantities of chocolate ice cream on top of a big meal.  I still can't believe just how good that stuff was!  Right to the last bite we were both eagerly slurping it down.  They make the ice cream at Maddox, and it tastes like it.

The bill for that entire meal, including the ice cream and a generous tip for our server, was less than $22.  By today's standards, that's one heck of a deal.  We'll be back to Maddox Drive-In, for sure!

In just the nick of time, I tell ya!

In just the nick of time, I tell ya!  I would have thought that California politicians would find it challenging to top the level of lunacy they've displayed in the past few years.  Looks like I was wrong: they've done it.

If the Democrats actually do this, do you suppose that would get a majority of Californians to vote otherwise?

Oh, of course not.  Instead, probably they'd elect even more of these wackos!

We escaped that bastion of bonkerosity in just the nick of time!

Steve McIntyre is back at it...

Steve McIntyre is back at it ... shredding bad climatology and exposing truth wherever he can.  I'm not sure why there was a hiatus of a few months, but I'm glad to see him back on it...

“Why A Woman Can’t Be More Like A Man.”

“Why A Woman Can’t Be More Like A Man.”  That's the headline on Megan McArdle's piece about recent research that adds to the body of scientific evidence showing structural and functional differences between the brains of men and women.  It's an entirely typical McArdle piece: insightful, illuminating, and funny.  Her conclusion:

So if we find out that women's brains really are different from men's, in ways that are driven not by the environment in which they are raised but the hormones suffusing their brain, we're going to need to start by rethinking the ways that we identify sexism in the first place -- and then start thinking about what sort of remedies might be appropriate. This is going to be an even longer, messier negotiation than the one we're having now.

Especially if science tells us that women are just better at understanding complicated stuff like science. Men, the benighted darlings, will just have to trust us.

Megan McArdle is a national treasure. Her existence gives me hope for the future of this country...

Morning in Paradise...

Morning in Paradise ... usually means a morning walkie with Race and Miki, and it did this morning, too.  Lots and lots of hawks about, all still hunting the voles exposed a few weeks ago when the barley was cut.  I think the vole population is now down to about 10% of its peak level, and now there are ever more predators focused on ever fewer prey.  Things are not looking good for the voles, much to the delight of all the farmers around.

A couple photos from our walk (sunflower and alfalfa in bloom, respectively):

After we got back home, I placed my tripod sprinklers in a new location for the day.  Since I've equipped all my hoses with quick-connect fasteners, this job has gotten much less tedious – no unscrewing and screwing of hose connectors required!  Also, the new tripods I bought a few weeks ago are working just great – they're sturdy, stable, and put the sprinkler up high where it can cover more ground. 

I made myself a nice light breakfast with a variant of my garbanzo bean salad.  This time I used a can of garbanzos, a tomato, about half a bottled roasted red pepper, two dill pickles, and a couple teaspoons of Duke's mayonnaise.  Yum!

Debbie and I are going to try a new place to eat for lunch: Maddox Drive-In, in Perry (just south of Brigham City).  This is run by the same people who run Maddox Ranch House, where we've had a couple of fine beef meals.  Today I'm going to have me a cheeseburger and some homemade root beer!

The roundabout way to Mantua...

The roundabout way to Mantua...  We had a little four-wheeling adventure late yesterday afternoon, and it led to the best viewing of peregrine falcons we've ever had.

We started out heading south from home, through Paradise and Avon and on to the (dirt) road leading over the mountains to Liberty.  We didn't go more than two or three miles on that road, though, as we turned right (west) on a intersection that our map said leads all the way to Mantua.  After passing through a gate we climbed for several miles, finally reaching a pass that gave us the view above.  The lake is the Mantua Reservoir, and through the gap to its left you can make out (in the glare) the northern reaches of Brigham City.

There were several routes available to take at that pass, and none of them are marked.  The majority of the traffic takes a branch that goes to a private home and is gated off.  The road that continues through bears to the right of that branch, and is apparently little traveled – it was kind of rough :)  For the next couple of miles or so, it headed steeply down through a series of rocky switchbacks.  If it's wet or muddy, that section could be challenging.  Yesterday was neither, and we had no trouble.  Once down on the bottom, we crossed a wide and fairly flat valley, quite pretty, and chock full of peregrine falcons.  They were by far the most common bird there.  At some points we had 10 or so of them doing their tricky acrobatic flying all around us.  We saw lots of them perched on fence posts, including one with a half-eaten mouse that gripped the fence post with its knees while hanging onto the mouse with its claws.  That was exciting for us, to see all those beautiful falcons!

After we crossed that “Falcon Valley”, we headed down a draw an into Mantua's valley.  The photo above left shows some pretty lighting we saw on the way down.  Mantua has an unlikely pronunciation: MAN-uh-way.  How they get that pronunciation from that spelling is beyond my ken, but the locals all insist that's correct.

It was a very pleasant evening drive for us: some real four-wheeling, a bazillion falcons, and even a few deer thrown in for good measure.  We'll be doing that drive again, for sure!

I don't really like Krispy Kreme donuts, but...

I don't really like Krispy Kreme donuts, but ... I think I'd still be unhappy, and I'd immediately suspect Michelle Obama...  Via my lovely bride:

Morning in Paradise...

Morning in Paradise...  Yesterday was Debbie's 12 week followup visit with her knee doctor.  He pronounced her fit for full weight bearing, as she can tolerate it, and told her to get on with the physical therapy to build up her muscles again.  He also gave her a referral for more physical therapy, to help with her lower back pain.  She's going to be working out a lot!  Debbie also had her second hydro-therapy session yesterday, and that went very well indeed.  So yesterday afternoon, by way of celebrating, we headed for Salt Lake City for an early dinner at The Red Iguana.

After our last experience with an excellent “special”, the first thing we looked at was the specials (which are different every day).  There were three, and they all sounded great!  Debbie picked the baby back pork ribs, which she pronounced delicious (in between yummy noises).  I had a chile relleno special, with a roast poblano pepper in a light egg batter (no grease in sight!), stuffed with a spiced (but not spicy hot) mixture of ground beef, corn, pine nuts, and raisins.  That was, hands down, the best chile relleno I have ever had - brains fall out on the table good.  We topped it off with flan, excellent as always.

Then Debbie had the brilliant idea of trying the State Liquor Store in Salt Lake City, thinking that it might have more selection.  There was a beer she wanted to get (Epic Brewing Intermountain Wheat), and I was looking for a decent cognac.  A quick Google Maps query showed us that the State Liquor Store was less than a mile away, on the same road as Red Iguana – perfect!  We tootled on down there, and discovered that it was four or five times the size of the Logan liquor store, and had all the things we wanted (and more).  So we headed home with very happy bellies, and loaded down with a fine selection of hootch.  Yay!

This morning I took our usual walk with Miki and Race.  It was a particularly beautiful morning: blue, blue sky with just a few puffy clouds, temperature 64°, humidity 35%, dew on the ground, all the dust tamped down by a light rain last night.  It's hard to beat this for walking!  We took a loop route, and just as we started back we were joined by two very happy, crazy-friendly Springer Spaniels.  They stayed with us all the way home.  One of them had a tag with a partially readable phone number, so I locked them in the back yard and tried to contact the owner.  As I was doing that, Debbie called up to tell me that the dogs had escaped the back yard, and were tearing off for parts distant.  Oh, well.  So much for the idea of helping them get back home.  We're hoping they're smart enough not to get hit by a car.

Now we're off to do some grocery shopping...