Gloria has stained glass class on Wednesday mornings. She gets up earlier on Wednesday than most other days. I recall all the years when I was still working and she was already unable to work. Many alarm clocks don’t sound off with a frequency I can hear. Gloria would very patiently set the clock on her night stand and let it wake her so that she could wake me. That’s one of the reasons I get up earlier than I have to when she has to be someplace. There are other reasons as well. The dog usually needs to be drained by 0630 and will start trying to wake Gloria although early morning is one of my turns to drag the dog. She and I hike out to the road for the newspaper and to see if Loki has successfully kept the free world safe from cats, yet another night.
Tuesday nights I set up a crock pot of oatmeal, the steel cut we both like, and we have that for breakfast on Wednesday mornings. Today, we had some fresh strawberries that added a nice texture and taste to the oatmeal. We’re planning on going to Greeneville for haircuts today. If I can find some suitable pork cutlets I’ll fix pork with bean sprouts in black bean sauce for dinner.
Loki, a seven year old German shepherd/Norwegian elkhound mix, is a female we rescued. She was being used in a women’s prison training program in North Carolina. Loki is an uncommon name for a female dog as Loki; the Norse god responsible for mischief was male. However, in the legends, Loki often went disguised as a female in order to work his nefarious schemes. Our Loki is not at all mischievous. She does have some quirks of her own, as do all dogs. This far into the relationship with her, she still exhibits new, or new to us, behaviors from time to time. We were told that her name was “lucky” when we picked her up. Neither of us like that name for a dog. But “Loki” seems to be sufficiently homophonous for her to learn and associate the word with her. It works when she want to hear us.
The trees are continuing to change. The view along Cassi Road, looking north toward Mike’s showed some good color this morning. It was still slightly misty when I took this image and the sun had not topped the ridge to the east as of 0945.
.jpg)
Today’s imagery is from a cell phone camera. Quality suffers accordingly.
By the time Loki and I completed our morning walk the sun had crested the ridge and the field to our west was in sunlight. There are two turkeys grazing in the sunlight. Image quality makes it hard to pick them out from the grass and the brush in the background. Imagine trying to pick them out in the darker woods at dawn or at dusk.
They’re both in the center just below the brightly-lit patch of grass. I have a hard time seeing them in this image and I know where they are. The tree line in this image is about 100 meters from the road’s edge, the bottom of this image. They are extremely wary creatures. I was about 75 meters from them and the low volume noise my cell phone makes to imitate a camera’s shutter was causing them to alert. Had the dog and I approached any more closely, we’d have watched them head back under cover very quickly.
There is an exciting event taking place on our moon this coming Friday 9 October at 0730 EDT.
Project LCROSS will impact a Centaur boost vehicle on the surface of our moon in order that follow-on spectral analysis can search for the presence of water by flying through the impact debris plume. The follow-on science package will sample, analyze, and relay data to Earth before it also impacts the moon in the Caebus crater, close to the lunar South Pole. Some news releases predict the event to be visible from earth. In good viewing conditions it may be possible for people with back-yard telescopes to view the impact. NASA will broadcast real time feed from the follow-on impactor. They may also be able to provide live feed from an 88 in telescope in Hawaii.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/overview/index.html
This is the stuff of dreams, still. I’ll drag my body out of bed before I have to and watch the live feed or see if the moon is visible in my small telescope. When I was in grade school, even before grade school; Walt Disney used to bring Willi Ley and Werner Von Braun into our homes to talk about three stage rockets to reach the moon and a wagon wheel space station. We had no real national plan to reach the moon until the USSR lofted Sputnik into orbit. Then the realization that the Soviets had a working ICBM jolted us into the space race. We created instant heroes of the 7 Mercury astronauts. My mother would never have supported skipping school. However, she allowed me to go into school late in order to watch any Mercury launch that happened on school morning. Gloria and I took her to Kennedy Space Center decades later to repay the favor. She got to see one of the ISS modules being prepared for a shuttle ride.
I was in VietNam when the first moon landing took place. I didn’t see it live but did see a replay on AFVN, just after coming in through the wire to Dau Tieng base camp...
Allan B. Shepard, jr. was one of my personal heroes. I was always pleased for him that he was able to overcome his inner ear dysfunction and make the moon trip. He was the first to ride the highly unstable, Mercury-Redstone combination and deserved to make the full trip he signed on for.
http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/alan_shepard_gallery/index_noaccess.html
Back to local items.
There is a tree-trimming crew working on Cassi Road, trimming branches and a few trees away from power lines. They are supposed to trim to the county line, which crosses our property. Loki is very unhappy about walking by the chipper and by the large trucks. Normally she is content to walk properly on my left, not at heel, but controlled and obedient. As we approach the trucks and chipper, she begins crowding into my walking space, less and less willing to stay on my left. By the time we parallel the trucks she’s in front of me, nearly tripping me, heading to my right; to get as far from the trucks as possible. It must be some sound or combination of sounds that bothers her. I hear the diesel roar and the chipper whine. I don’t hear the full human auditory spectrum and my high frequency deficit leaves me unable even to approach Loki’s range of hearing. When we reach the half way point and walk back up on the other side of the road she simply puts as much distance to my left on the lead as she can when we reach the trimming crew again. They’ve got several more days of trimming to do yet, so walks may be affected. If they trim around our property it may really bother Loki. When she’s worried by thunder or other noises and not on a lead, she paces incessantly. When lightening gets close she looks for small spaces to crawl into. Once she crawled up onto the bottom shelf of a mobile kitchen island. She was sharing the shelf with a slow-cooker, a deep fryer, and a rice cooker. We have no idea how she was able to find any room at all on that shelf.
When Gloria arrived home after class, we ate lunch and drove to Greeneville. We recycled 8 printer cartridges, bought one cartridge. We both had our hair cut. Our barber shop is immediately downhill from a very good Barbeque restaurant, “Chuck wagon BBQ & Grill.” When we parked, the smell of pork butt, pork ribs, and brisket being smoked was so heavy in the air it was almost visible. We brought home a rack of their ribs, some sweet potato fries, and coleslaw. I’ll do pork with bean sprouts tomorrow night. Using the wok will give me a chance to try the new range hood that will be installed tomorrow morning.
After grocery shopping and another pharmacy stop, we made it back home. Gloria’s Halloween costume came in today’s mail. I don’t normally get as excited about Halloween as she does. But generally, when she has fun, so do I.
It is a bright sunny afternoon blending into what will be a cool, pleasant evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment