Scary

I found a site that plays back the earth movement of the Japanese earthquake that happened a year ago as sound clips. The seismic data is speeded up since the “sound” of an earthquake is of too low a frequency for our ears to detect. On the Web site, the part labeled “Hearing the Japanese Earthquake - Clip 2” is the most frightening. Turn up your speakers and grab your chair arms and remember that the clip is sped up 100 times faster than real time. While you listen to it, imagine an enormous miles-long chunk of the Pacific Ocean floor shoving itself under the crust on which Japan resides.The aftershocks will continue for years, perhaps decades.

Is it a flood? Snow?

This news photo from Australia is a bit mystifying. First it’s from part of the country that doesn’t get snow, and if it’s flood waters, they look awfully clean and clear. So what is it? Go here to find out. Sixteen photos of the most bizarre thing you can imagine, but hey—it’s Australia.

Hint: Arachnophobes be cautioned to stay away.

Late night duty

Dang! It’s that time again when I have to get up at 2:00 o’clock in the morning and re-set all the clocks to Daylight Saving Time. A couple of electronic clocks that are tuned to the master in Colorado don’t need any fussing with, but my wristwatch and the clock in the kitchen require manual re-setting. So does the clock on my portable radio. It seems to me that it’s an awful requirement to get people out of bed for this really dumb ritual. And oh yeah—there's the clock in the car and the one in the pickup. Can’t forget them. I hope it isn’t raining at 2:00 AM.

I wish there was a better way.

UPDATE: I just thought of something. I can’t remember if I’m supposed to get up at the old (non-Daylight Saving Time) or the new (Daylight Saving Time) to re-set the clocks. I’ll have to look that up.

Freshness for breakfast

We are lucky to be living in Central California where good things grow. Carolyn, our neighbor across the valley, has an orchard of citrus trees that has been producing scrumptious fruit for well over a hundred years. Recently we traded some of our Seville oranges (tart, nasty things that are good only for marmalade) for some of her navel oranges, the sweetest kind. We have one a day with breakfast and cut the orange into either six or eight pieces depending on how hungry we are.

It reminds me of the joke about the guy who orders a pizza and the order taker asks him if he wants it cut into six pieces or eight pieces. “Better cut it into six pieces. I don’t think I can eat eight pieces.”

It’s an old joke, but I still love it.

Gooey ducks

My friend Ed in Hawaii sent me a menu from a Manhattan restaurant famous for its ultra-chic fish dinners. He said it “would also be a good source for stimulating your creativity.” Thanks, Ed. Here goes:

First off, there’s a prix fixe of $125. At the top of the menu under the heading “almost raw,” is oysters. How many? Six. That works out to a little less than twenty-one bucks apiece. I hope you can at least get to choke on a pearl or two for that price.

The third item on the menu brought back a memory from when I was a kid. Mom and Dad often talked about going to the coast to dig up geoducks, giant long-necked mollusks that bury themselves in the mud at the ever-shifting shoreline. The odd thing to me, beside the creatures themselves, was the pronunciation of the name—using the rules you learned in grammar school you’d think it was jee-oh-duck, but it’s gooey-duck instead. (Click here to hear.) Whoever first established the spelling of that name sure broke the rules by reversing the vowel sounds of the first two syllables. The word is from Lushootseed, the Salishan language of Puget Sound in Washington, and it means dig deep. Like four feet deep! But you get a beast that weighs up to eight pounds for your effort.

To get my money’s worth if I’m going to shell out a hundred and twenty-five clams, give me a ’duck!

Can I have the salsa at its best NOW?

I was slathering some hot sauce on last night’s serving of home-made tamale pie that Karla and I had collaborated on. On the back of the bottle was the machine-imprinted “Best By” date. “Wait a minute!” I exclaimed. “We bought this bottle only last week, and it says here it’s Best By January 2014! Do I have to wait almost two years before it’s at its best? What a rip!”

Good whiskey is aged for 21 years before it’s bottled and sold. By then it’s truly at its best. A few years ago one of our ranch cooks gave me a hearty glass of bootleg whiskey that had been aged in its barrel for 31 years! 190 proof! It was so potent I could have used it to remove age spots or even to grow much-needed new hair, but I drank it instead because it was so tasty!

I think it’s only right that when buying a commercially-produced food product we should expect it to be ready to consume at its best right now, not years down the line. Exotic wines may get better with aging, but taco sauce? Gimme a break.

Number nine

Unbelievably, we are starting to build only the ninth house this year in the entire county. Here it is March 5 and only eight other houses are being built so far. Our house-plan-maker/contractor pointed to our provisional permit number and rolled his eyes. No wonder there are so many subcontractors willing to work for less.

When we went into the office to get a building permit, the guy at the desk asked, with a smile, “You want to build a what? A house?” When he saw the area in which we planned to build, he said “Why would you want to build there? Nobody’s building there!” referring to the palace being constructed down our road a ways from us.

We started the shelling-out of money for various people to look at our plans (or not) and put their signatures on them. That included three sets of plans of our fire sprinkler system inside the house. The fire people charge $275 to look at them (or not) and sign them off. There is a whole long list of people who have to give us their permissions and signatures for various parts of the process of building.

It sure is different from when my dad and I started our mountain house in 1954. The only permission we needed then was from ourselves as to where to put it and how big it would be. The times, they are a-changin’.

The view from on high

Another winner from the Web site, Astronomy Picture of the Day! This is a two-minute thirty-second video made from the International Space Station as it whizzes around the "dark side" of the planet. It's fun trying to figure out what you're looking at. Above is Italy and Sicily to the right of center.

Video Credit: Gateway to Astronaut Photography, NASA ; Compilation: Bitmeizer (YouTube);
Music: Freedom Fighters (Two Steps from Hell)

What makes Ben smile?

Ben had a day of smiles at Echo Canyon on Thursday. Why? Read on…

 First he got to see something that very few people in the whole world get to see—Bighorn Sheep! (although at a great distance) And the next thing he got to see? His uncle Michael and dad Luke standing in…

…the Eye of the Needle. On examining this picture more closely, I wonder how long the Eye will be standing. What a loose assemblage of really big rocks! For anyone standing in the Eye when a big temblor comes along and it collapses on them, I suggest that its name be changed to The Doorway to Heaven for Those Who Deserved It.

Thanks to Luke and Hilary for the wonderful pictures!