It's A Long Way To Mordor...

I might have mentioned a while back that I started a "Walk To Mordor" challenge, which simply means that I log the miles I walk until they add up to the distance Frodo and Sam covered on their way to Morder. That's 1779 miles, which is a long way for shrimps with fur on their feet to walk. After the two mile walk around camp I just completed, I now have only 1250 more miles to go. No fur on my feet either.

Tonight as I walked, the fog briefly rolled in before deciding to keep rolling. While the fog was at its thickest, I startled a coyote out by the dumpsters. Perhaps it was planning some sort of trick with the trash. It quickly scampered towards the forest when it saw me, pausing on the edge of the asphalt where the trail that leads down to our ropes course begins. At this point, I made my wounded squirrel noise to see how it would respond. It must not have been impressed, because in a blink I was staring at empty asphalt.

Better than running into a Balrog, I guess.

At the end of my walk, right outside the camp office, I noticed that a Black Widow was hanging out by the door. That's less unexpected than the coyote was. Black Widows own the place when the people are asleep. Coyotes just visit now and then, usually while nobody is looking.

Currently listening to: Savina Yannatou & Primavera en Salonico "Sumiglia"

A Decade Ago...

One of the reasons I have this blog is because so that I can browse through earlier posts when I want to be reminded of the little things that would otherwise be washed away by the tides of time. It's amazing how many seemingly significant things escape my memory completely. Sometimes I like to see what I wrote about on this date in previous years (I actually got one of those line-a-day journals as a gift around a year and a half ago, so there's actually some redundancy. Plus, I actually write in that one every day).

As for what I was writing about on this date a decade ago, I was worrying about working too much and having to split my sleep schedule, and laughing about ducks. Today, I'm lying in bed and listening to music after sleeping all of the morning and a bit of the afternoon. Later, I'll go get Willow and we'll have some dinner together. She has only a couple of more school days left before she officially becomes a fifth grader. Jeanine is uncharacteristically working on a weekday today.

I have two more nights of work at camp before the school year officially ends for me. Then, summer camp set-up week begins and we're up and running with summer madness.

Currently listening to: In Gowan Ring - disc 3 of the new reissue of "The Glinting Spade"

International Space Station, Plus Various Birds

One of my coworkers alerted me to the fact that the International Space Station would be visible this evening, right around the time the kids at camp would be getting into bed, so I juggled things and went down to the lower field in between ringing the warning bell and the final bedtime bell. My coworkers, those who hadn't already gone home already at least, were already down there watching, and the space station was just appearing above the hills to the Southwest. It was a bright point of light moving towards the Northeast. The thing that made it interesting was knowing what it was, so this little story is as good an illustration of the value of science as anything. Basic knowledge makes observation more interesting. I might bring this up while teaching a field class someday, and relate it to knowing about a certain type of plant or insect. A plant is just a plant and an insect is just an insect until more specific knowledge about its adaptations or usefulness is accessed. A light in the sky is just a light in the sky until it is revealed to be the International Space Station.

I saw a big bird being followed by a bunch of little birds this morning. They were all hanging out in the fog by the fence around the pool. It might be more interesting if I told you it was a mother turkey and her chicks. Further interest might be added if I related it to an earlier post where I mentioned seeing turkey courtship.

Later the same morning, I saw a small bird screaming at a large bird. Taxonomists place the two birds in the same family; Corvidae. The birds in question were a Stellar's Jay and a Common Raven. The Raven looked like it might have an injured wing, and the Jay looked like it might be about to have a little birdy heart attack. Eventually, both birds moved on, and I went home to sleep.



Our small birds are becoming slightly larger birds:

Temporal Acceleration

It's true what they say. "They" being people older than me. Each succeeding year seems to vanish more quickly than the previous one did. It has gotten so bad that I have to stop myself from saying things like, "I can't believe the school year is almost over!". I don't want to become one of those walking cliches like so many other people seem to have become these days. However I might choose or not choose to remark upon it, Summer looms ahead as Spring prepares to slip into our rear-view mirrors.

As a result of a co-worker with a sore back, I spent the last week working days at our site in the Cupertino hills. The kids were from East San Jose, and for the most part, were excited to be surrounded by trees and hills instead of concrete and glass, doing things many of them had never gotten a chance to do before. Our main site was host to kids from a similar socioeconomic demographic. One kid at the main site apparently pooped his pants and tried to blame it on somebody else. Now, that takes some creative thinking! Some things you've just got to own up to though. Personal accountability seems all too rare these days. It's a concept I always stress when working with kids. I'd hate for them to turn out like most of their parents have.

The week before that I was on vacation. I had intended to only take half the week off so I could go to Baltimore for a four day metal/hardcore festival called Maryland Deathfest, but we're encouraged to actually use our vacation time before the end of the school year, so I just took the whole week off. Baltimore was fun, and I'll write about it on my music blog when I feel like it. In the meantime, here's me having a book-geek moment at Edgar Allan Poe's original gravesite:



At home, the chicks are growing quickly, and it's kind of nice to hear them constantly peeping in the other room. Outside, the squirrels have figured out how to get into the bird feeder, and the snails are no doubt plotting an overthrow of the garden beds. We've got copper tape (aka snail kryptonite) around the beds, which so far seems to be keeping the plants safe. The same can't be said for the plants that have the misfortune to be outside the beds. Willow's beans were stripped to the ground in no time, as was the Yerba Buena plant I planted.

This Friday, I got a chance to sit on the other side of the dreaded "job interview table" because I was part of a three person panel charged with screening out/whittling down the number of job applicants for one of the new permanent positions at my job. Half of the applicants for the position already work with the three of us, so it was interesting having to interview my own co-workers. It was all very scripted though. The other applicants were all good too, although predictably my co-workers came out on top due to their more specific job experience. I wonder who will get the position...

Tomorrow I'm back working nights for a final week before the school year ends and preparations for summer camp begin.

Currently listening to: Excruciation "Last Judgement - First Assault" double LP

Chicks!

The coop is assembled and awaiting the moment our new chicks are big enough to move outside. Jeanine and I took a trip into the hinterlands of the extreme East Bay to buy a trio of little fluffballs - two Americanas and one Australorp. Right now, they're inside where it's warm.

Here's the coop:



And here's Henrietta the Americana, checking Facebook moments after using my keyboard as a toilet:



Currently listening to: incessant peeping.

Bats and Birds

It's well into Spring, and the days dawn with an onslaught of birdsong. This morning, as I was outside listening, bats circled my head as they prepared to call it a night. It's weird hearing the morning birds while being surrounded by bats. In amongst all of the bird sounds was the amorous gobbling of an excited turkey. I wandered over to the edge of camp in an attempt to spot him, but saw a small rabbit instead.



It wasn't until later that I saw him in all of his glory, doing his best to impress a female who shut him down pretty quickly by nonchalantly wandering off. I almost felt bad for him as he strutted around in all of his finery with his strangely ineffective tail feathers fanned out. Maybe his gobbling was off-key or something.

Earlier, the toad who lives out by the parking lot was hanging out on the walkway, waiting for unwary insects. World's cutest ambush predator.



Behind me, a box containing a chicken coop awaits our attention.

Currently listening to: Dark Dark Dark "What I Needed"

Where Does The Time Go, and What Does It Do When It Gets There?

I feel like I've adopted a life of indolence lately. Everything is running smoothly and great big chunks of weeks and months just slip by. The good thing about this is that I'm happy, but the bad thing is that I feel like I haven't done anything truly creative in eons. I've been more or less ignoring this blog too.

I haven't been completely slothful, of course. Things are growing in the garden, and there is always other yard work to be done. That's suburban living for you. Yesterday marks our one-year anniversary of getting handed the keys to our house. I thought about blogging about this then, but my slothfulness got the better of me and we went and saw Iron Man 3 instead. It was pretty good.

Plans are afoot to populate the yard with chickens. More on this as it happens. In the meantime, we have a new Sandfish to hang out with. Willow named him Mr. Snout. He eats crickets and, surprisingly, bananas. Like our other recent reptilian acquisitions, he prefers to spend his time with a few inches of substrate over his head, which means that we don't see him unless we go digging for him.



Currently listening to: Eitarnora 3" DVD (from the special edition of their CD, "Tall Grasses and Black Ash")

New Additions To The Menagerie

The wind is still with us, but now it has been joined by rising temperatures. The air is bone dry and the night is moonless, sparkling velvet.

I often joke that one day I'll learn to say "no" when somebody offers me free reptiles, but my will power hasn't asserted itself yet, so I now have a new pair of Kenyan Sand Boas, given to me by one of the teachers who was up at camp last week. This is the second pair of reptiles I've been given in the last year. What next?

Currently listening to: Steven Stapleton & David Tibet "The Sadness of Things"

Suddenly It's April

I'm back working nights after a week in the field. My daytime shifts were reinvigorating, like they always are. We had a bit of rain during the all-day hike, but not enough to dampen spirits. The Rattlesnakes are back in the chaparral in their usual abundance, and so are the turkeys that have been hanging around for the last couple of Springs. I found a small Gopher Snake in the garden too, and a Mountain Kingsnake, so tiny it was almost worm-sized, was discovered near the bathrooms by some cabin leaders.

It's windy this week, and the redwood tree near the boys' bathroom is leaning at a precarious angle and roped of with caution tape. At home yesterday, our yard was littered with avocado branches, and there were reports of power outages around the Bay Area.

Alex is up at camp this week as a cabin leader, although he'll be heading over to our other site in a couple of hours. He is also learning to drive, which makes me feel old.

Right now, the morning birds are kicking up a fuss outside, and the last couple of bats are fluttering around in preparation for bedtime. In 20 minutes, I'll wake up the campers.

Nightwalking

I've been logging many miles at night, simply by walking in circles around camp. Each loop is only .13 miles, so I have many loops to complete in order to walk an appreciable distance, but with headphones on and stars overhead, the time just flies by. In fact, I'm often overcome with an intense feeling of joy as I walk, especially when the music perfectly meshes with the sparkling darkness. Plus, I get to indulge in my other favorite pastime, looking for critters. At the moment, my nocturnal discoveries are usually either deer or amphibians. Tonight, I rescued a lethargic newt from the swimming pool. Earlier this week, I saw this little fellow:



Currently listening to: Carol Anne McGowan

Spring Springs

Spring has arrived early and borrowed an hour from Autumn. It's light late and dark early now, and the green scent of growing things hangs heavy in the humid air.

In a fit of consumption, Jeanine and I bought new cars. That's right. Cars. Plural. Her old one had a potentially expensive oil leak, and my nineties-era mini-van has been accumulating annoying problems for a couple of years now, not to mention its gas mileage, which would have forward-thinking folk shaking their heads if I revealed it here. As for the annoying little problems, the combination of a broken air conditioner and not being able to roll down the driver's side window did much to encourage my wallet to emerge from hiding. Hopefully we'll both be set for quite a while now.

Our thoughts have been turning to the garden beds out back. I sunk some sprouting garlic bulbs into the soil recently, and today, Jeanine planted tomatoes and a lemon cucumber plant. I'm planning on adding some peppers and maybe some oregano.

Recently, a nocturnal visitor added this:


It's nice to know that owls occasionally visit the yard. I'm sure the local rodents would disagree though.

Currently listening to: Bohren & der Club of Gore "Midnight Radio"

Strangely Stretching Time

Suddenly, more than a month has passed without so much as a peep (or would that be a plastic-y "click" of the keyboard instead?) from me here.

Like the title of this blog suggests, life continues. Nothing of great import has occurred. The usual temporal momentum sweeps us all along. Willow is now 10, and Eva is now 12. The weather has been dry, and I haven't been inspired to write much. Perhaps soon.

Currently listening to: Sun City Girls "Torch of the Mystics", on YouTube of all things. So this is how the kids listen to music. Give me my record player any day.

Get Back To Work!

I'm in the middle of my first work night of the year. It's cold outside, and forecast to be colder by the end of the week. The kids are all in bed, and I'm managing to stay awake somehow, mostly through the constant application of literature, music, and film, although I haven't watched any DVDs yet tonight.

I still haven't written down any vows or resolutions for the new year, and there's a good chance that I won't get around to it at all. That doesn't mean that I won't improve myself in any way, it just means I don't feel the need to make it official. That said, I've set myself the task of besting my monthly walking mileages from last year. This means that during some months, like this month, I'll really have to spend a lot of time walking, and on other months, like June (during which I only logged 10 miles in 2012) and December (during which I only logged 4), I'll have it relatively easy.

By the end of the month, I'll probably regret having logged 74 miles last January. We'll see.

Currently being kept awake by: Tom Waits "Paris At Midnight"

Night and Day

At the beginning of my holiday break, I was having trouble readjusting my sleep schedule. My goal this school year has been to stay awake all night at camp, not because I've suddenly become masochistic or anything like that, but because my boss told me I had to. She did say I could sleep during my one hour break, but I decided against doing that because it really isn't enough time to bother with. The drawbacks are that I now sleep most of the day during the weeks I work nights, and as mentioned above, having trouble readjusting myself to a diurnal schedule during the weeks that I don't. During the first week of the holiday break, I spent several days falling asleep early, and then waking up somewhere between 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning and not being able to get back to sleep for hours. I eventually slipped back into a diurnal schedule, but that will change next week when I go back to working nights. I might actually start taking my allowed naps at night to see if it makes a difference. I still have a few more daytime days though.

We're heading over the hill to Felton tonight to see Marissa Nadler. If we're lucky, we might see some meteors, since the Quadrantid Meteor Shower is happening at the moment.

Currently listening to Celer "Without Retrospect, The Morning"

More Numbers...

The four digit number on the calendar now ends with a "3" instead of a "2". To celebrate this annual changing of the numbers, lots of people blew things up and/or got so shit-faced last night that they temporarily forgot their names. Some people even died. As a society, why do we celebrate relatively meaningless events in obnoxious and occasionally lethal ways?

I've already posted how many pages I read over the past year, but forgot to mention how far I walked. It's not quite as impressive as either the number of pages I read or the distance I walked in 2011, but here it is anyway: 432.36 miles. I'm going to have to improve on that this year.

Wishing everybody a meaningful 2013.

Currently listening to: Neurosis "Through Silver In Blood" from their excellent show last night. Check it out here.

Final Day of the Year

I always spend the final week of each year reflecting on our planet's most recent journey around the sun. This particular circuit around Sol was a good one for me, primarily because this year Jeanine and I bought a home together, and then got married. Also, for the first year since 2009, nobody in my family died.

This is my 61st blog post this year, at least on this site. I only managed 28 posts this year on my music blog. Still, 89 separate posts is a fair amount. This has been my main creative output this year, and I still feel like I could really be increasing my creativity in other ways. Something to look forward to over the coming year! On the consumption end of the spectrum, I figured out that I read 15,090 pages this year. That's slightly over 54 books, and doesn't count any online or magazine reading. I can't really compare that to previous years, since this is the first year I've been nerdy enough to sit down and figure it out.

Christmas went well, and the kids were happy (which is really what this holiday is about, isn't it?). There were plenty of colorful lights in our neighborhood too, and we got some good rain last week. As I type, it has gone back to being cold and dry, with no rain in the immediate forecast.

I still have another week off. Tonight, I'm heading up to Oakland to see Neurosis play. Happy New Year's Eve to all.

Currently listening to: Misery "Lore"

Deluge, But No Doom

Willow has now ceased to worry about the world ending. A big sarcastic "thank you" goes out to the media and popular culture in general for scaring kids (and gullible new age adults) everywhere.

I've worked my last night of 2012, and now I'm back on a daytime schedule for a couple of weeks. Sometimes it's easy to make the transition, and sometimes it is hard. Take for instance this morning: I've been awake since around 2:30. It wasn't so bad though, because there was a thunderstorm to keep me occupied. The rain was pretty ferocious at times too, pelting the roof and gurgling in the gutters. Every so often, the room would light up, followed by the distant rumble of thunder. Eventually, I gave up trying to go back to sleep and got up. Currently, I'm watching the sky shed darkness as a seemingly endless stream of crows glides by overhead. A couple of them have alighted on nearby power lines, and one is attempting to wake up the neighborhood. They seem to like the persimmons on the neighbor's tree. So do I, and since many of them hang over the fence into our yard, we have a good supply.

Currently listening to: Crows, the burbling of the fish tank, the gurgling of the gutters, and the ringing in my right ear (I think I have a touch of tinnitus, possibly precipitated by a Wovenhand gig a couple of years ago).

Incinerated In Our Atmosphere

Last week ended with a really spectacular Geminid meteor shower. Every other time I've gone out during a so-called meteor shower, I've seen maybe one or two meteors. This time, I saw at least thirty. Thursday night at work, I was out behind the camp buildings with some of the teachers, facing the darkened field. The sky was mostly clear, and sparkling with little blinks of flaming grit. We didn't stay out for too long at a time. It got too cold to stand in one spot, so occasionally I went back in to warm up. The teachers eventually went to bed, but I stepped back out every hour or so and watched some more. One more reason to love my job.

This week is the last week of camp before the holidays. I'm reading "The Neon Bible" by John Kennedy Toole. For years, I thought that "A Confederacy of Dunces" was his only book, but no, he wrote this one too, when he was only 16. I was a bit dubious about starting it, but I needn't have worried. It's quite good. It helps that it's written in the first person, and that the character is a kid. Being so close to the age of the character, he managed to capture the voice of the protagonist quite well. Too bad Toole chose to end his own life.

Currently listening to Michael Tanner/Plinth "Witch Elder" I've been discovering too much good music online lately, so much that I'm starting to feel overwhelmed by it all.

Friday Agenda

Friday Agenda, originally uploaded by Corbie.

You can lead kids to water, but apparently it's hard to prevent them from drinking.

I don't usually make it to the Friday meetings at work, but I often get a good laugh out of the agenda items. This one was no exception.

Currently listening to: Crippled Black Phoenix "Live In Bern 2012 A.D."

Calisoga Bunk Mate

Calisoga Bunk Mate, originally uploaded by Corbie.

As we wait for the third of three storms to hit, I'll take advantage of the calm between the storms to bring you this little photo of a poor, misunderstood creature who was just trying to come in out of the wind and wet.

This particular Calisoga Spider figured he'd warm himself by crawling into the bottom bunk. He probably considered that since he is such a handsome fellow, the fifth grade girl already occupying the bunk would welcome him.

This turned out not to be the case. Like the frog and the beetle I'd had to evict from the cabin earlier in the week, I had to convince Mr. Spider that the woodshed was a comfortable alternative. I walked around with him for awhile before I had time to get him down there though, since I still had to oversee bedtime for the campers.

I hope he is happy in the woodshed. Like other members of the infraorder Mygalomorphae, he breathes with book lungs, which due to their placement on the underside of the abdomen, make it easy for him to drown in a relatively small amount of water, so letting him go outside in the middle of a storm wouldn't have been very nice.

Currently listening to: William Basinski "The Disintegration Loops"