Family – Page 20 – Into the West

Spring Sprung, Grass Grew, Trees Bloomed

I left my husband a voice-mail as I left work, asking him to sharpen the mower blade so I could spend the evening trimming the verge. The front and side yards, I hoped, would be dry enough to mow. The backyard presented thick, lush, tall grass that would take longer to conquer. As I pulled into the driveway, I saw the mower waiting for me, but as I surveyed the side yard, I realized he had already mowed most of it. Since the garage door gaped open, I entered through the garage and sought my elusive mate. Apollo met me on the landing and I found Terry in the kitchen, slicing up the fresh green beans we picked up at the grocery store a few days ago. I scolded him for mowing, but he insisted he needed the exercise.

We spent the next hour or so crafting a wonderful dinner of home-made chicken friend steak, white gravy and fresh green beans sauteed with some bacon, white onion, garlic and chicken stock. Tasted divine, but left the kitchen a complete disaster.

We relaxed for a few minutes. Then I changed into some work clothes and went outside to see if I could get the mower started. Terry worried it had vapor locked or worse that the plug had fouled, since he couldn’t get it restarted after stopping it to talk to a neighbor. He instructed me not to prime it before attempting to pull start it. I tried four or five times without success when he joined me and told me to try priming it. I primed it and he pulled the rope. Of course the mower started up for him.

I finished the side yard in about fifteen minutes. I unlocked the side gate to the back yard and eased the mower through, making sure Apollo didn’t sneak by me and escape to traumatize our neighbors. Terry kept working on the hot tub, vacuuming it clean, in anticipation of our need to soak later in the evening. I slowly pushed the mower through the incredibly thick grass up the slight hill to the top of the backyard (the north end) and crept along the privacy fence. Thirty minutes later I had finished a bit more than half of the back yard, just as the sun set in the west.

As I returned through the gate with the now idle mower, I saw the last glimmers of sunlight illuminating the blossoms on our apple tree. I pulled my cell phone out of my jeans pocket and snapped a few photos, but without the benefit of my reading glasses, I had no idea that the close-ups of the apple blossoms I took would come out blurry. Oh well, at least the first shot I took (above at the top of this post) came out very well. I continued on to the garage and put the mower back in it’s neat little area (then I cleared for last weekend). Terry soon followed and we closed the garage for the night.

I watched an episode of Jeopardy (a couple of days old) in which the $1,000 clue for the Jeopardy round category of ‘Animals in Children’s Books’ referenced Rottweilers. Here’s the clue:

The title pooch of “Good Dog, Carl” is this breed named for a German place

I knew the answer immediately of course. None of the contestants guessed correctly, though.

By the time I finished watching one episode of Jeopardy, the clock displayed half past eight o’clock, and ticked inexorably on toward nine, the hour at which my mental faculties reduce themselves to the level of a pumpkin. I winced my way down the stairs to the laundry room to change into my bathing suit. I grimaced my way back up the stairs and slipped into the extremely hot water of our outdoor hot tub for a soothing soak. Terry joined me and I tried to show him some of the constellations currently visible directly overhead. I could only positively identify three or four, due to some lingering stratus clouds and light pollution. The moon appeared nearly half-full and Venus and Jupiter still dominated the western sky. I had remembered to take a few photos with my camera on a tripod earlier, but at that time the clouds had been thicker. Had I waited just a bit longer, I would have had clearer skies for a better shot. I’ll post this weeks’ Venus and Jupiter photographs tomorrow morning in my weekly wrap-up of my astronomy observations.

Remembering Roxy: First Trip to the Dog Park

Another Friday arrives, and another installment in my ‘Remembering Roxy’ blog post series. Last week I reminisced about one of Roxy‘s nicknames – Bear-Pig, which followed the inaugural post on Roxy’s talent for Circling the Wagons. This week I decided to focus on Roxy’s first trip to a dog park. If I remember correctly, this trip occurred before we rescued Apollo.

A friend of ours had suggested taking Roxy to the off-leash dog park at Shawnee Mission Park. This never occurred to us, being residents of Leavenworth County, more than twenty miles north of the park. We made a family outing out of it. Even though the park allowed dogs to roam leash-free, we kept Roxy leashed until we were certain she would behave around other dogs. She roamed free and played with many other mostly smaller dogs for a few minutes. Then we put her back on the leash and headed to the beach.

Roxy, and all of our previous Rottweilers, did not care for water or being wet. Yet Terry thought it would be a good idea to take her down to the beach, where we saw retrievers and labs and Newfoundlands cavorting in the water just off shore. The shoreline included several large, flat sandstone boulders. Terry led Roxy up onto one of them, hoping to entice her into a quick dip with the other dogs. Another dog snuck up behind Roxy, eagerly sniffing her nub of a tail, and accidentally (or intentionally depending on your perspective) goosed her. Roxy leaped forward landing four-square in the shallow water, almost taking Terry with her for a tumble. Terry managed to salvage his balance while Roxy just stood there, standing completely still, looking aggrieved and resigned to the fact that she was, indeed, now soaking wet.

We took Roxy back to the field above the lake and let her roam free for a few minutes, mostly in an effort to dry her coat. As the sun began to set, we returned to our car and made the drive home to Lansing, convinced we would return in the near future for more fun in the sun with an unfettered Roxy.

Just Dew It

I decided Apollo and I needed some physical therapy to deal with an entire week of rain which prevented either of us from enjoying the newly arrived spring conditions. The last time we walked happened to be exactly one week ago. To make up for six sedentary days, I decided to traverse the entire sidewalk system of West Mary Street in Lansing.

We set out at a quarter to nine and headed west from home to First Terrace, where we crossed to the other side of the street and headed north towards Olive. We passed a flowering red bud tree (see photo at right). We continued north towards Nina, where we dog-legged back west to First Street, which parallels very closely with Main Street (aka as US-73/K-7). While on Nina, a small Benji-like dog attempted to intimidate Apollo from behind a chain link fence. We’ll revisit this canine curmudgeon on the return trip.

Apollo always does well waiting to cross the busy intersection at Mary and Main Street. We proceeded west along Mary street, staying on the north sidewalk. I only spied one other person walking their much smaller dog ahead of us, but they turned onto the Town Centre boulevard that connects the terminally undeveloped land between Mary Street and 4-H Road.

West Mary Street makes several sweeping curves through the wooded hills and creeks as it meanders between Main Street on the east and DeSoto Road on the west. We passed by a muddy construction site for some additional multi-family housing, within easy walking distance of the nearly new Lansing Elementary School (in the background in the photo above).

We passed one walker and were passed by four joggers on our jaunt westward along Mary Street. I saw my first cardinal of the year, but didn’t attempt to photograph it with my cell phone. I prefer to have my good digital camera with my telephoto lens attached to photograph birds. We finally arrived at the top of the long hill, where Mary Street dead ends against DeSoto Road at a quarter after nine. I finally achieved my goal of a minimum hour long walk, since the return trip would take at least thirty minutes. I took the following three photos while letting Apollo catch his breath and cool off (being a black dog means he absorbs all the sunshine and it’s accompanying heat) from the top of the hill.

I crossed to the south sidewalk and Apollo decided he should become a hunting dog on the return trip down the hill. He foraged through the tall, wet grass, determined to pull me with him into the mud and the woods in search of deer. By the time we leveled off, his snout, paws, legs, underbelly and first third of the leather leash were soaked with dew. Several times he nearly pulled me off the sidewalk while sniffing and snuffling through the dew-drenched grass and soggy ground. I saw ample evidence of the presence of deer by the tracks they left in the mud. The wooded areas along West Mary Street team with them and I often see them emerge at dusk when Apollo and I venture out on sunset strolls.

I sighed with relief as we approached the construction site because the fence prevent Apollo from straying to far off course. The construction materials seemed to have other ideas about the fence though. The rest of our walk along Mary Street proceeded apace and without further forays into non-sidewalk environs.

We crossed back to the north sidewalk just before crossing the highway and continued back to Nina Street. Once again the Benji-like small dog charged the fence, snarling and barking and this time Apollo caught me completely off-guard. He lunged to meet and greet the dog at the fence. I temporarily suffered a wrenched left shoulder, elbow and thumb and had to scold Apollo for his un-gentleman-like behavior. I guess it’s time for some remedial obedience training with the large pinch collar instead of the small choke chain Apollo usually wears. My elbow didn’t stop aching until we crossed Olive and walked under another beautiful flowering red bud tree (see photo above).

We turned the corner east onto Fawn Valley and walked the half a block to our yard. Just one of the advantages of owning the southwest corner lot on Bambi Court. Apollo waited patiently on the porch for me to disentangle him from his leash (he set a record this walk, although I lost track of how many times) and open the door. He rushed to his water bowl and then collapsed for a nap under the table at my feet while I composed this blog post. I noted the time (ten o’clock) and took off my pedometer, which had recorded 7,695 steps (is that’s 15,390 for Apollo?) taken on our one hour and fifteen minute Sunday morning walk.

Remebering Roxy: Bear-Pig

I can thank my son, Derek, for coming up with the nickname ‘Bear-Pig’ for Roxy. Back in 2005, Rachelle was a sophomore in high school and Derek attended a local community college but still lived at home. By then he had moved into the basement (don’t all young adult males thrive in those environs?) and only came up for air when he needed food or to leave for work or school. I often referred to him as ‘Derek the Destroyer who lurks in the Mossy Catacombs (or Dungeon).’ At that time, Roxy didn’t have a playmate or companion dog to annoy (we would rescue Apollo the following year).

Derek and Roxy in a Stand Off (Aug 2005)

Derek loved to tease and harass Roxy. She would wait for him at the top of the stairs when she heard him rising up from the basement. He would lean forward on the stairs from the lower landing so he was eye level with her and start making strange noises at her or woofing at her. Roxy replied with her own strange sounds, which reminded Derek of the sounds a bear makes. He would get her so worked up she would start to lunge at him. Then he would egg her on more by chasing her into the great room and wrestling with her. Roxy didn’t stand a chance by then, since Derek is an expert in nearly all forms of grappling – wrestling, judo and jujitsu.

That explains the first part of the nickname ‘Bear-Pig.’ The second half has more to do with Roxy’s typical Rottweiler appetite and the fact that when she sniffed around the house for anything remotely resembling a snack, she sort of looked like a wild pig. At least she didn’t ‘oink oink’ while she was rooting around for treats.

Click here for a page of memories and photos dedicated to Roxy.

Green Men, Red Planet, Grey Lord, Black Dog

After spending a very lazy Saturday avoiding the invasion of little green men from the Emerald Isle by baking bread, reading about life under Mao in China and watching action flix, Apollo and I took a long walk Sunday morning under an increasingly gloomy overcast sky. Oddly, we saw only one other dog, which looked like a miniature version of Apollo. Only three other people were walking during the nine o’clock hour yesterday. We passed by two clocks on our walk, both of which are broken (either not telling time at all or completely incorrect in their display). Here’s a couple of shots of the clock at the north end of Lansing’s long undeveloped Town Centre street:

As Terry and I were about to leave the house in the early afternoon, my father stopped by on a surprise visit, mostly in response to a status update I Tweeted late on Saturday. He wanted the nitty gritty details concerning my success in updating my Autostar hand-held computer control device for my Meade ETX-90 telescope.

A couple of weeks ago, I had downloaded the most recent Autostar Updater software from Meade and finally remembered to attempt the hardware portion of the update. Hardware and I have a long history of adversarial confrontations. Basically, I used several different connector cables between my laptop and the Autostar device: 1) a serial to USB convert cable, 2) a proprietary Meade serial to Autostar cable (looks very similar to a phone jack, not nearly as big as RJ-45 though), 3) the Autostar cable to connect to the Meade ETX-90 and 4) a universal 12 volt transformer and power cable to supply electricity to the telescope. Once all the connections were in place and secure, I fired up the software. I did an auto-detect on all available COM ports and the software found the Autostar on COM5. Then, I instructed the software to download the most recent firmware version (43Eg … an increase of nearly 20 versions over the 26Ec firmware that came on the Autostar when I received it) from Meade and proceeded with the download to the Autostar at the astronomically miniscule data rate of 9600 baud. The update amounted to about 36 kilobytes of data. I have text files that are larger than that. It took fifteen to twenty minutes to complete the transfer. Man, has data transfer come a long ways in the last decade or two.

I gave dad the bread I had made him Saturday, as well as the Netflix envelope with The Adventures of TinTin sealed in it so he could watch that movie and then return it for me to Netflix in a second unsealed envelope I sent home with him.

Without further ado, Terry and I headed to the Plaza branch of the Kansas City Public Library to attend a lecture and presentation by John Carter Tibbets billed as “From Africa to Mars! 100 Years of Tarzan and John Carter.” We arrived just in the nick of time and parked in the tenant parking garage, since I remembered to bring my security badge with me. I happen to work in that same building. As a result of the lecture, I decided to add the DVD of Greystoke to my Netflix queue. I remember watching it in the mid 80s, probably on a VHS tape, but decided now is the time to see it in wide-screen via DVD. I also acquired a movie poster for the John Carter movie, and other memorabilia, courtesy of Tibbets’ recent private screening of the film at a special showing to a select group of Burroughs aficionados. Tibbets closed the session with this wonderful quote from C.S. Lewis, summing up the why behind the timeless popularity of characters like John Carter and Tarzan:

To tell how odd things struck odd people is to have an oddity too much: he who is to see strange sights must not himself be strange. He ought to be as nearly as possible Everyman or Anyman.

— C.S. Lewis, On Science Fiction

On the return trip home, Terry and I detoured to Mission Med Vet to pick up Roxy‘s remains. We spent the drive home in silence, cherishing memories of her and missing her deeply.

Remembering Roxy: Circling the Wagons

RottsAndHerRingToyMay2007 — Roxy with one of her indestructible ring toys (May 2007)

I have many great memories of Roxy to share. I hope most of them make you smile. Some of them may even make you laugh out loud. All of them will be bittersweet for me, but still precious. So, I plan to share them with you on a weekly basis, probably on Fridays, as I will have the hardest time getting through a weekend without Roxy to cheer me up.

I dreaded walking up the fronts steps these last five days. Apollo met me at the door, but his tail didn’t thump-thump-thump against the dividing rail between the entryway and the dining area. He wagged his tail at the sight of me, but he wasn’t crowded out of the way by Roxy. She usually stood front and center, eagerly gripping her ring toy in her mouth, dancing back and forth in front of Apollo. I usually had to order them both to back up so I could squeeze through the screen door.

I would carefully thread the needle of swirling Rottweilers and unburden myself of my purse and laptop case in the great room. Once my hands were free, I could pet each of them, although Roxy would continually circle around me in an effort to head Apollo off from getting too much attention.

If I decided to sit down, Roxy would either approach me and plop herself down on my feet, facing away from me, or continue circling the great room with her ring toy. We affectionately called this parading around ‘circling the wagons.’ Sometimes Apollo would stealthily attempt to snatch the toy from her jaws and then the fun really began.

Roxy, being the nearly full blooded Rottweiler, could easily keep Apollo, the half-breed, from her toy. Her jaw strength and stubbornness exceeded his. But Apollo never played fair and used stealth and guile to trick Roxy into dropping it. Sometimes, he would even go so far as to lay on the ring toy, which drove Roxy into a fit of apoplexy. Eventually she would start circling him faster and faster and even go so far as to bark repeatedly at him. Unless Terry or I told Apollo to get up, he would ignore Roxy’s tantrum.

Roxy’s ring toys sit idle in the great room. I’ve tried a couple of times this week, as has Terry, to get Apollo to play catch and fetch, but Apollo only made half-hearted attempts. Apollo would much prefer to play tug-of-war with Roxy. He still doesn’t understand why she’s gone. If only I spoke better dog, then I might be able to tell him what happened. Perhaps it’s a blessing for him that I can’t.

Protected: Grieving Roxy

Roxy

Terry and I are devastated. We lost Roxy yesterday, unexpectedly. I decided to stay home today and try to deal with this loss. So far, I haven’t slept much and I miss her terribly.

So if you don’t see much from me here for a few days, don’t panic. I’m just mourning the loss of my favorite ditzy Rottweiler.

May she rest in peace until we meet again.

Click here for a page of memories and photos dedicated to Roxy.

Movie Review: Hugo (2011)

Hugo (2011)

4 out of 5 stars

Winner of 5 Academy Awards including Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction and Best Visual Effects

Nebula Nominee

I squeeed with delight when I got the e-mail from Netflix on Monday afternoon that they were shipping me the BluRay of Hugo. I really thought I would be forcing myself to watch the remake of Conan the Barbarian (starring Jason Momoa of Stargate: Atlantis fame). Since Hugo wasn’t slated for release to the public until Tuesday, I was very pleasantly surprised when Netflix opted to send it to me the day before the official release date (although I didn’t actually receive it until Tuesday, so perhaps that makes it okay).

I got home from work a few minutes early to find Terry concocting a new pasta dish with butternut squash and broccoli. He already had an appetizer in the oven so I removed myself to the great room to do some exercising while dinner finished cooking. I wanted to make sure that my evening was completely free of obstructions so Terry and I could watch Hugo in peace. I even remembered to feed the dogs.

I enjoyed Hugo and especially the story of Georges Méliès, excellently portrayed by Ben Kingsley. I knew of Méliès’ famous film (often billed as one of the first science fiction films) Le Voyage dans la lune (or A Trip to the Moon for us English speaking blokes). But Hugo exhibited more steampunk and fantasy elements than true science fiction, being based in a 1930s Paris railroad station. I would really categorize this as a historical fiction piece, since most of the information on Méliès is accurately portrayed. I did love seeing Christopher Lee again, albeit in a cameo-esque role as the bookshop owner. Terry remarked after the movie that he recognized the actor portraying the Station Inspector (played by Sacha Baron Cohen of Borat fame – ugh).

Now that I have seen all of this year’s Nebula Nominations for the Bradbury Award, I can make my selection for what I think the best of the lot. But not in this post.

I don’t want to detract from the magic that is Hugo. I highly recommend you watch this film. You won’t be disappointed.

Post-Mercury Telescope Tuning

While I scanned the early evening skies for Mercury, Terry stayed at home, installing a secondary finder scope on my telescope. I bought the red LED finder scope months ago because the original finder scope attached to my ETX-90 becomes unusable at near vertical viewing orientations. Only the larger ETX-105 and ETX-125 came with a right-angle view finder.

ETX-90 with new red LED finder scope installed

Now all I needed to do was dial it in. And I had at least two (if not three) easily seen objects to do it with. I took the telescope out on the lower patio and set it up. I opted to do an easy align this time with the Autostar handheld device and thankfully it picked Sirius as the first star to align upon. Sirius was the first non-planet object I saw after sunset earlier in the evening during my hunt for Mercury. After Jupiter, I saw Sirius appear about thirty minutes after sunset. The Dog Star was clearly visible through the bare branches of my mulberry tree and the Autostar got within five degrees of it on the first try. So, I at least had oriented the telescope to it’s home position on it’s mount correctly this time.

The second star for the easy alignment was Pollux, the twin to Castor in the constellation Gemini. Since my house is over two stories tall and I had setup the telescope ten feet west of the tallest part of it, seeing the constellation Gemini was quite a challenge. The two brightest stars (Castor and Pollux) had just peaked over the roof. Then I had a moment of panic. Which one of the two is Pollux? I knew Castor was brighter (because it’s actually a binary or double-star that I hope to one day see separately) so I zeroed in on the less bright star. The Autostar reported a successful alignment. Incidentally, Castor is the ‘star of the week’ over at Earthsky.

To test how successful the alignment might or might not be, I told the Autostar to go find Venus. Since I could clearly see Venus shining brightly next to the Moon, I knew I would be able to further tune the alignment of the telescope and the new finder scope using it as a guide star. The Autostar again got the telescope within five degrees (or less) of Venus so I proceeded to update the red LED finder scope’s focus. I had been so focused on my finder scopes that when I put my eye to the telescope’s eyepiece I realized I hadn’t even gotten one out of the case yet! I grabbed a 26mm eyepiece and quickly focused on Venus, but it was so bright I couldn’t get a crisp clean focus. I at least centered it in the telescope’s field of view and let the Autostar slew for a few minutes. Venus kept creeping slowly out of the center (nothing new but something I need to look into). Next stop, Jupiter.

What I saw last night through my telescope looked very much like this photo.

Again, the Autostar got close, but not quite. I’m beginning to think I need to recalibrate and retrain the drives in the ETX-90 mount. Jupiter in all it’s glory with four moons visible (two on either side). I grabbed Terry out of the band room to take a quick look, but he retreated back inside because of the cold. I hardly noticed it, having stood outside during sunset for over and hour and now observing from the backyard in just a t-shirt and jeans (the house provided a substantial windbreak).

At this point, I was happy with the installation, configuration and usefulness of the new red LED finder scope. What could I attempt observing before packing up everything and returning it to the band room? Ah! Something in Orion. Thankfully, Orion appeared high in the sky, almost due south (just a bit to the east). Since I suffer from an extreme light pollution epidemic in Lansing, the higher up an object, the better to minimize the amount of light and atmosphere I need to peer through. Having a clear cold night to make the air dense also helps. I searched the Autostar’s object database and found the Great Orion Nebula. Fetch! I said and off the telescope went.

The telescope stopped in the general vicinity of the belt of Orion. I didn’t think that was the exact location of the Orion Nebula, so I grabbed my Sky & Telescope Pocket Star Atlas and confirmed the location as being in the sword, not the belt. Using both finder scopes, I slowly got the telescope oriented on the objects in the sword. Using the eyepiece, I slowly scanned the much smaller field of view and saw a grey cloud like smudge pass by. I stopped. I returned to the smudge. This must be it! I put in a stronger magnification eyepiece and spent several minutes taking in the sights of a nebula. Only long exposures with very sensitive camera equipment equatorially mounted … or the Hubble Space Telescope in orbit (outside of our dirty atmosphere) … can produce stunning color images like this one:

I hope it was the Orion Nebula. I am almost convinced it was, but since my telescope is a reflector (not a refractor), the image I view in the eyepiece is not only upside down, but reversed right to left, and almost always black-and-white (or gray). When I compare what I see to a star atlas, I have to do mental spatial gymnastics on the fly. I did get Terry to come out one more time and view the smudge that was a nebula before packing up the telescope and putting astronomy to bed for the night.

I woke up before sunrise this morning (no surprise … I always do that with or without an alarm). I fed the dogs and when I let them out the back patio door, I noticed to bright objects in the western sky. They both had to be Saturn and Mars. I went to Terry’s computer and logged in to my Astronomy.com account (since I subscribe to the electronic edition of Astronomy on my Nook Color, I get ‘extras’ on their website). Using their StarDomePlus Java application, I confirmed the contents of the sky at that exact moment from my location in Lansing. Yes! Mars was the bright spot in the western sky and Saturn appeared just up and to the southwest of it. If only I had gotten up an hour or so earlier, I could have set up the telescope (again) and looked at Mars and Saturn both. I think I just found my next astronomical hunting expedition.

Tonight’s highlights include, for early evening viewing, more of the Moon, Jupiter and Venus (and Mercury if I wanted to leave my backyard, but I’ll pass on that tonight). For a headsup on what to expect in the coming week, visit Sky & Telescope‘s This Week At a Glance site.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
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3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28