Crankypants

So. Just got home after a 6-hour delay in Newark and a 16-hour door-to-door commute. Flying to Europe takes less time. Though I am certainly not saying that flying to Europe is better. Sigh. My comrade's flight was cancelled entirely. He spent the night in the Burger King in the airport terminal, because all the hotels were full, and the TSA security people kicked everyone out of his concourse for the night. I am lucky, by comparison.

And now, after being up all night, I'm going to bed.

Delay haiku

A dear reader pointed out that I never mention my travel. I don't often talk about work because it's the same every day, unless there's something amusing going on. I don't often talk about the actual traveling-on-an-airplane because it's the worst part of my otherwise-excellent job, and I try not to think about it. But. Since you asked.

Today, as with all
travel days, I will be stuck
waiting for a plane.

Last week I returned
home at 4 AM after
a five-hour delay.

It's not the flying
that bugs me so much, it's the
horrid long delays.

Newark is the worst
airport in America
for delays like that.

Tomorrow I sleep
Making up for sleep that I
didn't get this week.

At least my friend is
working with me on this job
so that makes it good.

Proof that Rosie O'Donnell is an idiot

As if her insistence that flames cannot melt steel (and therefore could not have brought down the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center) was not enough proof...

...Rosie O'Donnell has now posted a picture of one of her children on her blog, wearing a bandoleer of ammunition.

Rosie is clearly an idiot.

If she knew anything about firearms, ammunition, or bandoleers, she would have made sure the cartridges are pointed DOWN, not up. (You thought I was going somewhere else with this, didn't you?)

The reason for this is twofold:

• One, as you hold your rifle in your left hand, you reach down with your right hand, pull the cartridge toward you and out of its leather sleeve on the bandoleer, and then move your hand downward and insert the cartridge point-first into the breech (or the magazine well, as the case may be - bandoleers of this sort were used primarily with single-shot and lever-action rifles in the latter part of the 19th century). It's set up for economy of motion. You don't have to change your grip on either the rifle or the cartridge as you load.
• Two, since the cartridges are generally tapered from base to tip, you would necessarily want the wide end to be at the top, so that gravity will pull the cartridge down tighter into the sleeve. The way Rosie has her child wearing the bandoleer, the cartridges can easily fall out of their sleeves, especially while riding your horse against the forces of the evil imperialist American dogs (a la Pancho Villa).

Oh, and yes, I think that it's child abuse to dress her kid like a terrorist. But Rosie, who is notoriously anti-gun, is exempt from all rules or recriminations. She can do no wrong, in her own mind. So I'm sure it made perfect sense to what's left of her fevered brain to (a.) dress her kid up like Patty Hearst in the Symbionese Liberation Army and (b.) take a picture and (c.) post it for all the world to see that (d.) Rosie is an idiot.

But it's entertaining for sane people. I just feel bad for her child, who will probably have this picture follow her for years now as "that celebrity terrorist kid." She'll be scarred for life. Oh well. She can afford therapy. But if she grows up to kill Rosie in her sleep with an axe, remember, you saw it predicted here.

Pix from the weekend

We went to the Weeki Wachee Springs, a cute freshwater spring that gave rise to a nice little mermaid theme park back in the 1940s. This is the river that comes from the spring. It looks like pond scum on the surface of the water, but actually that's sand and weeds on the bottom of the river - the water is actually so clear, you can barely see it.

Fish in the river.


Dancing mermaids. They use air hoses, because their gills aren't very well-developed. (They're teenagers, after all.) The man who founded the Weeki Wachee Park back in the 1940s was a Navy diver in World War Two. He invented these air hoses - you have to bite down on it to draw air. When you let go, it self-seals so it doesn't spew bubbles. This avoids the necessity of a scuba regulator.

They are swimming in the freshwater spring, which is a huge natural pool about 200 feet across and at least 80 feet deep. There are fish and turtles and even the occasional gator swimming in there with them. The mermaids have to push the turtles out of the way sometimes, because they'll just float right up to you and want to help, like a cat. The spring feeds a river, which flows 12 miles to the ocean. Sometimes they get saltwater fish like mullet swimming into the spring. Saltwater fish can survive in freshwater, but freshwater fish can't survive in saltwater. I think these are freshwater mermaids.

A loop-the-loop.

Mermaids singing and dancing, celebrating Ariel's birthday. They actually lip-synch to the song, because they can hear it through the glass.

Hey, watch where you drop that thing!

Ariel saves her love from drowning.

Ariel dances with her love on her new legs. But she surrendered her voice in trade, to Ursula the witch. I loved "The Little Mermaid" Disney film, but my wife hated it because the movie's message is "You have to give up who you are in order to get what you want." I can see her point.

Buh-bye! Thanks for swimming with us!

Posing with Mermaid Danielle. Danielle was the "picture mermaid" today. She didn't have to swim and get all wet. And her metallic fish-scale bra was beautiful - I don't think you're supposed to get it wet.

Now, I could not get away with this, but she can.

Ducks!

Elephant ears (Colocasia spp), or "gator flags." They're named that because where you see them, gators are also likely to be. None today though.

Art festival last weekend. Honestly, I don't know how some of these people survive going from show to show, hawking their wares. Many of them are retired and have nothing else to do. Some are hardworking artists... others are just looking for a cheap way to make money. This isn't it though.

Thunderstorm a'comin'. Actually it didn't even rain. Prevailing winds blowing from the shore keep the rain clouds perpetually at bay, a few miles inland.


Plane for sale.

My daughter popping away with a .22. Every girl should be familiar with guns. Guns are the great equalizer against rapists, murderers, and drunken football players.

Do not attempt this at home.

My daughter found this little dress on sale for $5 dollars. She's such a good shopper.

Sunset.

My daughter just HAS to be the center of attention.

Tortoises and armadillos

This morning, there was much crashing around in the underbrush near our house. Suddenly two adult armadillos came charging out, chasing each other and rolling around in the yard. Either they were playing, mating, or fighting - it's hard to tell with an armadillo. But they were very cute to watch.

We went to a water park far away north of our part of the jungle today. On the way, we saw a baby tortoise crawling across the four-lane highway. Just as we spotted him, the car next to us hit him, and flipped him up and across the lane. The driver behind us saw this, and swerved to the side of the road to get out and grab the tortoise before someone else hit him. I hope he managed to get the tortoise. Poor thing.

On the way home, we spotted another tortoise crossing our highway, this time a full-grown one. He was sitting right in our lane, terrified, with his legs and head retracted. I swerved around him, thinking someone had already hit him, but he was fine. So I screeched to a halt, backed up in the breakdown lane (I HATE when people do that, but my wife wanted to save the tortoise) and she got out and ran back and carried him to the side of the road, in the direction he had been heading. Then she got back in and we left. I hope we helped him survive another day.

So. Enough do-gooding for one day.

Hotel haiku

Isolated in
this sterile room not my own,
my thoughts drift elsewhere

Distant voices speak

half-heard words drift down the hall

and out the window

Outside, cool breezes
drift through the forest, stirring
fireflies from sleep

A thousand miles off,
laughter and family fun
echo without me

The news in haiku

Mayor Bloomberg says
he's not a Republican.
But he never was.

Jailed heiress crying
amid a media storm
gains no sympathy.

The stench of petrol,
the crackle of a Taser.
Flames quell the perp's screams.

Sparkles

I was walking outside tonight, and I began to see sparkles in my vision. My first thought was, "Oh crap, I have a detached retina!"

(Sometimes knowing lots of trivia can be a bad thing.)

Then I thought, "hmmm - must be reflections of streetlights off my glasses." But turning my head this way and that did not dispel the flashes.

Then one flashed right in front of my face, bright enough to read a newspaper by. And I realized that they were fireflies, or lightning bugs, or Photuris pensylvanicus, as I think this local species is. They produce bioluminescent light in the 600-nanometer frequency (yellow-green, I think), with an efficiency of 96 percent (all light, no heat, which helps make sure that the firefly doesn't burn up). Luciferin, a bioluminescent pigment, glows brightly in the presence of oxygen when it's catalyzed by luciferase, an enzyme. So the firefly "breathes" through a tube in its abdomen and exposes the luciferin pigment and the accompanying luciferase enzyme in its abdomen to oxygen, making the luciferin glow. Some species of firefly even flash in patterns which are coded to be read by other units of its species.

I have not seen fireflies for years and years. They are not common in the West because it's so dry out there. And they're not common in the jungle because it's too darned hot down there. But here, in what remains of the thick forest of the Northeast, they're everywhere.

It's beautiful.

Buy it where it's cheap

I'm flying Continental regularly into Newark (EWR). I'm not a huge fan of Continental, because they generally don't go where I usually need to go, and therefore I don't fly them regularly so I have no mileage status. This means I usually get crammed in the back of the plane. On the upside, Continental still serves something that could pass for food, whereas most other airlines don't anymore. But I digress.

Usually I ride Boeing 737s, which are not long-haul overseas aircraft. Yet when Continental serves their complimentary beverages mid-flight, the Diet Coke cans are often made overseas. Like, WAY overseas. Like, Caracas, Venezuela. Or Pune, India. You wouldn't even notice half the time, except that sometimes the Coke tastes a little odd, and of course, comes in strange sizes, like 330 milliliters instead of the normal 355 ml/12 ounces.

I find it strange to be drinking flavored, carbonated water from the other side of the planet, canned and shipped around the world to be consumed during a routine mundane commuter flight. I'm guessing that Continental just buys cases of the stuff wherever it's cheap, and they bring it back in any empty space in the hold that they happen to have.

It's just another symbol of the global economy. But I still find it strange.

Beach babes

My darling daughter Alyssa is visiting us. She gave me a wonderful Father's Day - hugs and kisses and even a cool perforated grilling pan and a cookbook! And a wonderful e-card (I didn't know anyone used e-cards anymore). Having her visit us really made my Father's Day special. It's one thing to be "Dad" to a bunch of cats. It's another thing, a wonderful thing, to be "Dad" to a daughter.

I told Alyssa that I'm glad I landed her as a daughter while skipping the whole diaper stage. I am truly lucky. ;-)

Hunting for shells.

A hunk of granite that my geologist wife found. Granite is unusual in this area, to say the least.

My girls out on the sandbar, more than 100 yards from shore. You can swim out there, then stand up, and the water's only up to your knees. Sometimes there are big shells out there. The last time I found one, it was a big lightning whelk. I picked it up, and the whelk was still in there, looking at me. So I put him back.

Rosie's first day out

I took Rosie (my new Glock 36 pistol, chambered for .45 Automatic Colt Pistol) out for her first day shooting. I named her after Rosie O'Donnell, who, like my gun, is brainless and has a big mouth. Since Rosie O'Donnell crusades against guns (though her bodyguard carries a gun - isn't that hypocritical?), I thought it would be appropriate to name my newest toy after her.

My Rosie shoots very well. At 12 yards, after scoring a one-foot-wide group (terrible), I managed to shrink the next group down to four inches. The gun is capable of better, but I have to get used to it. The recoil is not nearly as bad as I expected. I expected it to be vicious, since the .45 ACP fires a big bullet, and the pistol is very light (13 ounces, more or less). But because it's a low-pressure cartridge (21,000 PSI, I think), it's more of a thump and less of a wrist-snapping crack. The key, as with all Glocks, is to keep a very stiff wrist, and don't "ride the recoil." If you do, you're asking for a jam or a failure-to-feed (FTF). Rosie didn't jam once during her outing. Glocks don't, normally. That's why I have two of them. I never thought I'd like a polymer-frame pistol, but Glocks are AWESOME. Buy one today!

This is my "daughter" Alyssa. She's visiting for two weeks. And she's a good shot with the Browning Hi-Power. I'm glad she's on my side.

"F*ck The Police" - part 2

So, I found an interesting article on MSNBC (MSNBC is not any more trustworthy than any Main Stream Media (MSM) network, but occasionally they have interesting stuff) about The Police tour. It gives a good rundown of their albums and how their music changed over the years. It also says I should go see them because it's the LAST CHANCE I'LL EVER HAVE.

Bah. I refuse. Again, if they had NEW material, I would be interested. But since they're just playing old material, it smacks of money-grubbing, of just raking in the bucks so they can retire. Good for them. I'm not contributing. I already contributed by buying all their albums years ago. I don't need to do it again.

Wildlife photography

I should really just call this blog "Wildlife Photography and Home Repairs." Oh well.

Here's a big great blue heron (Ardea herodias). Isn't he cool? He's standing on the tip-top of a dead palm tree. Under him, a red-bellied woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus) is climbing into a hole in the tree. Mom's bringing breakfast to the babies.

She's peeking out... and then whoosh! Off to find another berry for the babies.

I've had people tell me that I take decent pictures. I like taking pictures of animals and objects rather than people. I suppose I could be a halfway decent wildlife photographer. But there's a rookery near my house where all the hobbyists (and some professionals) go to take pictures of water birds. They line up all in a row, each in their identical photographer's vest, carrying a big digital SLR camera (usually Nikons or Canons) with a honking big telephoto lens on it (400-600mm). They're all pretty much wearing the same clothes, carrying the same equipment, taking the same picture of the same stupid bird. They even look alike - they're all in their 50s and 60s, short graying hair (even the women), paunchy, wearing glasses. It's kinda creepy.

I don't want to be like them. I will stick to my lone-gunman method of photography, with my little Nikon S4. It's small, it's slow, it's only 6 megapixels, but it does the job.

Creature Comforts

You have to watch "Creature Comforts" on ABC, 8:00 PM EST Wednesdays. It's a remake of a hilarious British show by the same name. It features real life interviews with people, but instead of people, they're claymation animals. It's a hoot and a half. But I think it's funnier with a British accent. It's always a visual pun because whatever they're talking about is made funnier by the animal who's speaking. For example, several people are interviewed about flying. Many of them are birds. The one who's the "expert" is a robin who's all bandaged up and missing a leg. Another is a seagull who's flown five million miles and is really sick of it. A penguin describes (badly) Bernoulli's principle (air travels faster over the wing than under it, creating lower pressure above and higher pressure beneath, pushing the wing upward), which is funny because of course penguins can't fly. Then there's a discussion about art. A dog talks about printmaking, and you see his dirty footprints all over the floor. A group of dogs playing poker talk about the pop art painting, "Dogs Playing Poker."

It's a scream. Watch it.

That FREAKY glowing moth

Am I the only one who's weirded out by that glowing luna moth on the commercials for the sleeping pill Lunesta? A big glowing moth flies in the open window and lands on these unsuspecting people and slowly fans its wings while they sleep.

That just CREEPS ME OUT. "Close the f*cking window!" I want to yell at the TV. If some big glowing bug flew in the window and landed on ME, I'd blast it with my Acme phaser in a heartbeat. Stay the HECK off of me, you big bug. Yeeesh. (shudder)

Last week's dinner out

I figured out that the bathroom was blocking the signal from the hotel's wireless router to my computer. So I'm sitting in the kitchen to upload. ;-)

We had a nice dinner last week at a big old hotel, which I think was someone's house when it was built before the crash of 1929. My friend and I had to borrow dinner jackets because for some reason this hotel thinks you're supposed to dress up for dinner. Helloooo, that's SO twentieth-century.

Buncha boats on the Navesink River.

Writers are not a bunch you'd want to blunder into in a dark alley. Or a lit one, for that matter.

Boat race! Their spinnakers are out - those are the colorful parachutes they've deployed over the bow. Spinnakers only work when you're racing with the wind. If you're tacking against the wind, you can't use them. They're big and a pain to furl up.

Sailing class. Every night they putter around on the river.


The town. My building is in this picture somewhere, but I can't find it.

Some pix

I'm having trouble uploading through this tiny bandwidth on a wireless network that (I'm sure) was pieced together with baling wire and a couple of "D" batteries.


Spanish moss.




Skywriters over New Jersey.

Elevator Action

In the bargain bin at Electronics Boutique (now abbreviated to EB Games), I found "Taito Legends" for $4.99 this weekend. It features many of the famous Taito arcade games from the early 1980s, including "Space Invaders," "Phoenix," "Super Qix," and of course, one of the only games I was ever good at, "Elevator Action."

In "Elevator Action," you are a spy who starts on the roof, and has to work your way down through a high-rise building infested with enemy agents, going into certain rooms (marked with red doors) to steal documents, and get out of the building via the basement. You hitch rides on elevators going up and down. While you're in an elevator, you can control its direction but not its speed. So it's a balancing act of keeping your enemies at bay while dodging their bullets, using a known quantity (the speed of the elevators).

It's a fun game. No blood, no gore, easy to learn but difficult to master. A very simple premise, really.

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Today a former client called and wanted me to come back. They wouldn't accept anyone else but me, but they only wanted me for about 10 hours a week, working from home. That was kind of them, but really, anyone could have done this work, it didn't have to be me, and it was rather silly for them to request me (or any of us) part-time, when they know we have to be billable full-time. So they said "no" when we offered them someone else who was equally qualified, and who was home on the bench (unbillable). Sigh. We tried to help them, but they wouldn't be helped. Oh well.

"F*ck The Police" - a great song, but I don't feel THAT strongly

I am a huge fan of The Police. They were one of my favorite bands when I was a teenager, but they broke up before I ever got a chance to see them in concert. Now I am old enough to have a teenager of my own, and The Police are back on tour. And I find that I don't care.

It would be one thing if they had a new album to promote. It would be nice if they weren't charging upwards of $150 per ticket. But they don't have a new album, and they ARE charging upwards of $150 per ticket, and I am having a vision problem - I just can't see paying that kind of money to see some 50-somethings play songs that are twenty-five years old. As much as I love The Police, I just can't shake the feeling that they're just doing it to mine a rich demographic of people who are nostalgic for the past, and who are willing to pony up exorbitant sums to enjoy that nostalgia at 110 decibels.

I'm not willing. I have every album that The Police ever recorded, and all of their singles and demos and premixes and remixes too. So I will just content myself with those. I could buy all of their material again for the price of one ticket. As much as I love them, it's not worth it.

But DEVO? Hmmmm. That is a separate discussion.

Attack of the antlion

Since I have moved to the jungle, I have noticed little round pits in the sand of our yard, about the size of a silver dollar. I always thought they were just pits left from heavy raindrops from hitting the sand. Silly me. Today I watched an ant fumbling around in one of those pits, and something was down in the bottom of the pit, trying to get the ant! I couldn't see what it was, but it was under the bottom of the pit, and as the ant struggled up the sides of the pit, that something would flip a little spurt of sand up at the ant, and trigger a little landslide that would bring the ant back down to the bottom of the pit.

This went on for a few minutes, until my darling wife fetched a twig and held it out for the ant to climb up on and out of the pit, which it eventually did. The unseen antlion fell silent and still, waiting for its next victim.

I knew about antlions, but I have never seen one. I suppose that I still haven't seen one, but I have seen the results of its work.

Wednesday haiku

The DVD skips
in my drive again, and it
restarts the movie

My attention slips
and wanders, to people who
are far from me now

my daughter soon comes
from far away, smiling, with
flowers in her hands

I look forward to
swinging her round and around
hugging her tightly

We'll rush into the
summer rain, laughing out loud
like schoolchildren do

Structural glass

The client where I'm working has a truly impressive office building. They use structural load-bearing glass in very creative ways. I've never seen glass structures like these.

These are two glass bridges in the parking garage underneath the building where I work. Aren't they cool? They're lit from beneath, so you're walking on light. And yes, the floors are glass. Frosted non-slip glass. They're very sturdy. I tested them.

This is a frosted-glass floor in the center atrium of the building, with a glass staircase that rises three stories, and a three-story glass wall-fountain behind the staircase.

This is a cross-section of a glass step. It's three layers of three-quarter-inch-thick clear glass plates laminated together, with a frosted-glass plate on top, framed with a steel reinforcer edge on the bottom. These are quite sturdy as well - I tested.

Glass stairs lit from below.

Glass stairs from above, looking down toward the lighted floor.

Pretty wood paneled walls.

Stainless steel faucet fixtures in an angled granite trough. And the pieces de resistance -


Stainless steel again! Oh-so-stylish. Now you've seen EVERYTHING on a blog, haven't you?

Funny-lookin' words

Another blogger (http://oriental-arabesque.blogspot.com/) had a quiz about being single. Ever look at a word you use every day and say, "that's a funny-looking word"? "Single" is one of those words for me today. "Single" seems to call attention to something that is so commonplace as to not be noteworthy at all. Like "sky". It's always there. It is the natural state. Being partnered is an unnatural state, illustrated by the fact that not many animal species mate with the same unit season after season, and almost none (except black vultures and a type of anglerfish where the male and female actually physically grow together into a single unit) are strictly monogamous. (see http://www.wonderquest.com/animal-mate-for-life.htm)

I am happy in my unnatural state, though. I spent a long time "single." It's important to spend a good deal of time that way, so that you appreciate not being so. But it's also important to find a mate before you start liking being single too much. I know several people who are that way.

Sittin' on the dock of the bay

We are working in a nice spot. We currently work crammed into a 15x15-foot room. There's normally four of us, but this week there's six, and sometimes eight people in this office. It gets very warm during the day, because it's an interior room with no windows. I have to go into the lunchroom where it's cold, to catch my breath and wake up.

But our building is right on the Navesink River. It's very picturesque. Lots of boats and such. It's a ritzy area, apparently, but still small-town.

Priorities

USA Today (which I would like to think that I would never pay for, but which is in fact subsidized by the nightly rate that I pay my hotel) had a tear-jerker story about low-income workers who eke out a marginal living on $10 or $11 an hour (still a princely sum to most of the rest of the world, it's important to remember). This mother of four children had a choice to pay her utility bills, or buy a prom dress for her daughter. Guess which one she chose. Prom dress.

One thing I have learned from observing humans is that often, people are poor because they consistently make what I would call "bad" decisions, like buying frippery instead of necessities. Observe what many Hurricane Katrina victims did with their FEMA debit cards - bought cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, prostitute services, and so on. In the example of the poor mother buying a prom dress, my wife said that of course this woman would buy a prom dress, because it's for her daughter, for prom, which is very important to a girl. I'm male, and I never went to prom, so I don't understand. It seems to me that paying your debts is more important than paying for a transient, meaningless event. But, I'm an alien. I often don't understand why people do what they do. To me, things are often black-and-white, and I'm criticized for it occasionally. But, things can all be assigned a weight or a value. Then you just weigh them, see which way the scale tips, and act on it.

Apparently prom dresses are much heavier than they appear.

I remember a time...

...when I was driving through a little town in Texas in the early afternoon, getting ready to fly home, and suddenly a beam of golden sunlight shone down on me, shining right through the metal of the car, and through me. It was as though both the car and my body were transparent, suffused with this golden sparkly light that somehow was not just light, but was love. God's love, penetrating me and laying my soul bare beneath an unblinking, yet gentle scrutiny. It was the most amazing experience. I will never forget it.

This sunset reminded me of that.

Beach walk

I've always gotten a kick out of this sign. I wonder what the animals who live on this dune think of it. Perhaps it would help if the sign was lower to the ground, where they would be more likely to see it and read it and heed it. Ha.

Big waves, for our neck of the woods. These were caused by Tropical Storm Barry.

It was low tide. After the storm, the beach was polished clean and as wide as a football field. That's unusual.

The water from Tropical Storm Barry came up and over these steps. You can see where the plastic sheeting under the sand has been laid bare.

The waves from Tropical Storm Barry eroded the beach BEHIND this raffia rock. That's bad. The rock was placed there to hold the beach and keep it from eroding. I don't think it's working.

This is the bloom stalk of a century plant (Agave americana). It grows twenty feet in the air when the plant blooms at the end of its life. The plant dies, and the bloom stalk spreads seeds for new century plants to grow.


Driftwood wedged in the rocks. We pried it loose and took it home. It was quite heavy - a two-by-eight-inch board, perhaps eight feet long. We thought it was cool.


Black skimmers (Rynchops niger). They fly just above the surface of the water, occasionally dipping their lower beak into the water and scooping up glass minnows.


A washed-up palm tree. You can see how shallow and small a palm's root system is.


I suck at plant identification, but I think this is beach bean (Canavalia maritime). Plants are my wife's thing.

If indeed that was beach bean, then this is a lone plant all by itself, trying to grow.
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Resuming yesterday's train of thought - In mining, it is (or was) customary to yell "Fire in the hole!" before setting off a dynamite charge. I had forgotten. I still like "Fore!" better.

The bones of the hydra

The hydra (one of them, at least) is defeated. Here are its bones, along with my tools of battle. The foot-long blade on the reciprocating saw really helps to dig down through the dirt and hack up the tubers that grow just below the surface. We had a couple of trash-cans full of these, plus a couple of other buckets' worth. This is about one-quarter of the stuff that we dug out of the ground. Horrible stuff. I'm going to apply for a dynamite permit. Digging it out just takes too long. I forget - do you yell "clear!" or "fore!" when you're blasting? I'm not sure - I will have to look it up.

More pix later.

Marching into battle unarmed

This weekend my mission, should I choose to risk marital strife by NOT accepting it, will be to attack and defeat, once again, the vicious cat's claw vines in the yard. They are growing like mad, perhaps (coincidentally) because this is the growing season. My darling wife snipped one off the other day...yesterday it had sprouted TWO new heads, and then by last night, it had grown ten inches in one day. I'm not kidding. Ten inches. And yet she still refuses to let me buy a flamethrower. Sigh.

Anyway. Sans flamethrower, I will gird my loins with suitably heavy leather clothing, and wade into the thicket to do battle with the hydra. We shall see who prevails.