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Gallery: Blooming Flower
Posted 11:34 PM, Sep 26, 2007 |
Update: I added more pictures - I think just 4, maybe 5, I don’t recall - to the end of the gallery, as 7 of the flowers bloomed this evening, leaving just two, well, late bloomers. So you can check out those pictures, which aren’t any more illuminating (ha ha, again) than the others, necessarily, but maybe I did a better job. Also:
The plant smells fantastic. It doesn’t smell like anything, I guess, other than a flower. I also wanted to comment on all the intricacies within the plant (which I added at least one “good” close-up of). I don’t know what they do or what they are. There’s a bunch of little things that appear to be holding pollen, and then there’s a long tentacle-like thing that sticks out from the pollen-holders. At the end of the tentacle, there’s an octopus-like thing that spreads in all directions. Maybe that’s something to invite an insect in, to help them find the pollen. I don’t know. I’d like to, though, so all you bio majors can jump in.
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Constance, the Dutchman’s Pipe plant I mentioned earlier, finally bloomed. Turns out it wasn’t ready to bloom last weekend; I’d forgotten that the buds (is that the right word? That denotes smallness, which these are not…) get to be about 3 to 4 inches long before blooming, not the 2 inches or so I mentioned before. So anyway, tonight three of them went into full flower, one showing only, tonight. Tomorrow they will be shriveled lumps of themselves, but tonight, they’ve bloomed into flowers about the size of my outstretched hand. Pretty gigantic flowers.
Updated: Blooming Flower
There are still 6 or 7 to go; if they all bloom at the same time, I may take more photos. The problem is that the plant overhangs the balcony and the flowers all face the sun, which is to say away from the balcony. Pretty tough to get a good look at them, and even tougher to get a 15-second exposure. This may be all the photos there are this time. The plant is unwieldy.
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Closer to Home
Posted 4:44 PM, Sep 26, 2007 |
Topic: baseball.
Now that some of the readers are gone… Anyway, this rumor says the Dodgers might make a trade for Santana. If Santana is going to go somewhere as opposed to staying in Minnesota, the Dodgers would be a fine choice. It would give me a better reason to root for the Dodgers - I’ve been struggling all year to take any sort of real emotional stake in them. I don’t think it will happen, but who knows? I also heard a rumor that Santana was closing on a multi-million dollar Twin Cities home, so I guess anything’s possible. (Of course, if the rumor linked to above is true, then Hunter’s assuredly gone, as Matt Kemp will take his place in the outfield. Hunter’s 90% gone anyway, but that would pretty much end all speculation.)
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Airdate
Posted 11:39 AM, Sep 25, 2007 |
As mentioned before (here and here), I recently taped an episode of Merv Griffin’s Crosswords. My show is set to air this Monday, October 1st. Check your local listings, or check here to see if and when it airs in your area. If your area happens to air two episodes daily (like in L.A.), it will be the first episode of the day.
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Top Morning
Posted 11:22 AM, Sep 21, 2007 |
It’s been quite a morning around YoG HQ. In the approximately 90 minutes I’ve been awake, I:
1) Finished Metroid Prime for the Gamecube. Sure, it’s 5 years old and the other time I finished it was 5 years ago, so nobody really cares, but it was still about a 15-hour task, and I beat the final boss with 19/1400 health left, so it was close. That early in the morning, it’ll get the old heart racing.
2) (may have) fixed the sink. I doesn’t appear to leak, so I’m letting the bucket dry and then I’ll put it under there for regular use for a day or two and see if it collects any water. But, on first glance, it looks good. It required replacing the trap as well as the tailpiece - the old tailpiece had corroded and snapped off inside the pipe from the drain, and the seal inside the trap was bad as well. At least that’s my take on it.
3) watered the plants, which is really just an excuse to talk about them. Constance, my Dutchman’s Pipe (Epiphyllum oxypetalum) is about to bloom. A couple weeks ago, it had 29 buds. Many didn’t make it - the plant was overly ambitious - but 12 have survived and most should bloom during one of the nights over the weekend. Here’s a small photo:
The bud is about 2 inches long. Hopefully I can get some other photos, although most of the plant is actually over the railing here, so it’s a little tough to snap photos of.
Lastly, this plant wants to give props to its fore-plant, the plant from which a cutting was made way back in 2002, which belongs to the old Wren.
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Taking Care of My Horse
Posted 2:41 PM, Sep 20, 2007 |
Today, I came home from the hardware store, where I was buying supplies to repair our eternally-leaking sink, and this woman in the garage asked if I could let her in. She was a guest staying with someone on the 2nd floor and had accidentally dropped her keys in the elevator foyer (which I had just seen her come out of) and thus had no way to get back in.
I let her in, and she was delighted, saying that she was so thrilled she could kiss me, or buy me a flight to San Francisco (?). She did neither or those things.
So we took the elevator up together, her with her keys, me with my bag from Orchard Supply Hardware (tagline: “We’re the worst, but most convenient, hardware store in town.”) containing a tailpipe for the sink, a hacksaw, and some Teflon tape. We got to her stop on the second floor and she said, “Thanks again, and take care of your horse.”
Yes, that’s right. “Thanks again, and take care of your horse.”
I was dressed in jeans and a plain white t-shirt, so maybe she thought I was a rodeo cowboy, although I was not wearing a cowboy hat and had left my lariat in the trunk of my car.
I thought, later, that maybe she said, “Thanks again, and take care of your house,” and that maybe she saw the hardware store bag, but I don’t think she’d refer to our place as a “house,” and even so, what a weird thing to say. And it really, absolutely sounded like “horse.”
Sadly, needless to say, the sink still leaks, but the horse is doing fabulously.
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Non-Memory Lane
Posted 11:30 PM, Sep 19, 2007 |
So the last book I read was Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth, a book my fourth-grade teacher was always telling me to read, but I never did, instead spending a large amount of the year listening to the soundtrack to Stand By Me, not understanding that it was all old songs, and also years away from seeing the movie. I can see that I would have liked Tollbooth when I was a kid - reading it now, as a near-old man, made it seem silly and goofy and kind of lame. The only moments during which I enjoyed it were the moments when I was able to imagine how I would have felt about it in fourth grade.
And now I’m reading A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, who recently passed away. This is another young adult book that I never read and so am encountering for the first time now, in my near-old age. It’s better than Tollbooth, and there are a few weird things about it.
1) The main character’s name is Meg.
2) In the story, Meg has twin siblings.
3) The story involves a father who has disappeared.
4) The story also involves time travel.
None of these things are weird by themselves, but for a long while I was writing a story (which you can find in the sidebar, the watch) that I never finished, but it shares the above 4 traits with L’Engle’s book. (Well, I never got around to actually writing far enough to include #4, but it was in the plans.) So that’s weird.
Another, unrelated but also strange, coincidence, occurs at the beginning of Chapter 3, when Calvin says to Meg, “We’re going to be friends,” which is also the name of a song by The White Stripes, half of which is Meg White. So that’s weird, and I wonder if they didn’t take it from the book.
Another surprising thing about the book is that they listen to this alien singing, and it’s some sort of spiritual about the Lord, and then they also mention Jesus later on as one of Earth’s “fighters” in the fight against evil. So I didn’t expect that. Also, there’s a character named Calvin, so maybe he’s named after theologian John Calvin. I don’t know enough about Calvinism to figure it out - the thing I really know is that I keep typing Calbin instead of Calvin.
I bet these are both books that are best read and enjoyed as tender youth instead of grizzled near-old men.
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Gone Testosterone-Crazy
Posted 11:26 PM, Sep 17, 2007 |
The EC has been out of town most of Sunday and all of Monday, and it took about 30 hours for me to go testosterone crazy. On my way home today, I stopped at the store and picked up a $10 steak and came home and cooked it with onions and had an icy beer to go along with it. I would’ve killed the cow (and the hops, I guess) if people would’ve let me.
Yes, this is what it means to me to go “testosterone-crazy” - eating steak and drinking beer, half of which I do on a regular basis, anyway. So it’s not like the EC keeps me chained to salad greens.
Also, I’m reading a kids book. (Five bonus points and a gold star if you can tell me who wrote The Phantom Tollbooth without looking.)
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Cheap Storage
Posted 7:05 PM, Sep 12, 2007 |
And more, because I’m bored, and because that last entry was probably of little interest to anyone besides me (like this one is going to be any better):
From May 16, 1977, an ad for computer storage - 80 megabytes for under $12,000! (Less than $150/Mb!) Or, better yet, 300 Mb for under $20,000 - less than $66.67/Mb!
Typing in “hard drive” over at Amazon and clicking on the first result brings up a sleek-looking USB 2.0 500 GB hard drive for only $116.99 (free shipping!). It’s faster, more reliable, and even better-looking than the clunky tape-drive or whatever that other thing is.
500 GB = 512,000 Mb, for a cost of $0.0002 per Mb. In other words, computer storage space was about 300,000 times more expensive back then.
The stunning conclusion of all this data: gee willikers, things sure have changed. Um, thanks for reading, I guess.
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Rubik’s
Posted 6:53 PM, Sep 12, 2007 |
I don’t know if I mentioned it here or not, but recently the game of checkers was weakly solved, i.e., from the starting position, both players can guarantee a draw if they play perfectly. Now, mathematicians have tackled the pesky Rubik’s cube and shown that a Rubik’s cube can be solved in a maximum of 26 moves (with each “move” being a quarter- or half-turn), although there is no known starting position that actually requires 26 moves, so the upper bound for required moves may actually be less. (The upper bound has been lowered over the years: In 1982, the upper bound was known to be 52, which then improved to 27, and now to 26.) The actual paper, which rekindled some abstract, bizarre love for higher mathematics for me, can be found here. I was able to follow more of it than I thought - all the way to section 5.1. If you want the lowly layman’s explanation, check here. If you want an easier definition than that, keep reading:
Put. The. Cube. Down.
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The Final Demise of The Lion Plate
Posted 5:11 PM, Sep 11, 2007 |
Despite what I deemed an “irreparable crack” that, in my opinion, doomed The Lion Plate, the EC kept it around. Old favorites die hard, or don’t die at all, apparently.
But even though The Lion Plate couldn’t be beaten by brute force, it quite possibly can be beaten by bacteria. This morning I opened the microwave for the first time since, apparently, it was used to defrost some sort of frozen meat. The defrosted meat had left grease and fat on The Lion Plate, which was still in the microwave. Both The Lion Plate and the microwave smelled like death warmed over, ha ha. Upon hearing the news, the EC declared that The Lion Plate will have to be destroyed.
Finally.
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Premiere
Posted 2:49 PM, Sep 10, 2007 |
Today is the premiere date for Merv Griffin’s Crosswords. Here in Los Angeles, NBC is airing two new episodes daily, at 3:00 and 3:30. I don’t know when my episode will air - they’re supposed to let me know, and then I’ll let you know, but you might as well find it in your TV listings today - or, you can look here to find it in your local market. (In Minneapolis, it’s airing on KSTP daily at 3:00 PM and KSTC daily at 7:00 PM - I have no idea if these are each different episodes or the same episode rebroadcast. That’s the only airing stations listed for Minnesota, so the Duluthians might be out of luck, but check your newspaper to make sure. In Seattle, it’s airing on the King of television networks, KONG, daily at 6:30 PM. (I don’t know if KONG uses that as their tagline, but they should - either that or “The giant, sweaty ape of television networks,” which is appealing in an entirely different way.))
There’s a review here, from the New York Post which explains the rules and also points out something I’ve found when trying to explain the game to other people - it sounds way more complicated than it is.
This review from the New York Daily News also likes the format, but doesn’t like host Ty Treadway - from all the contestants I talked to at my taping, we all liked Treadway - I’m not sure what the reviewer’s problem is. The reviewer does (kind of) note that the number of letters (he writes “words”) in an answer (he writes “clue”) aren’t given, and should be. I believe Treadway said the number of letters in each answer in our game, so maybe they fixed it early on, maybe the reviewer wants to see the number written out alongside the clue (a la Jeopardy!’s “Crossword Clues” category), or maybe I’m wrong and that information isn’t presented explicitly at all.
Slow day at work.
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The NFL Returns
Posted 1:01 PM, Sep 9, 2007 |
This happened last year, too: prior to the NFL season, I was down on the NFL. I had zero interest, was tired of hearing about it (especially for the two months prior to the season last year, when it seemed like that was all anyone could talk about) — this year, in fact, I was tired of it all spring and summer. It seemed like the sports media didn’t take any time off from football.
I was also tired - well, still am - of football players’ antics, including but not limited to Chris Henry, Michael Vick, Randy Moss, Pacman Jones, etc.
But then the season starts and, much like last year, I’m interested all over again. Of course, I haven’t actually watched any football, so there’s no telling if I’ll get sick of it right away, as I did last year. (It’s a good thing I have a blog to remind me of what I get tired of.)
Edit: I just realized the only thing I really like is seeing teams’ win/loss records and player statistics. If I could look at the season through a time lapse, spending maybe 10 minutes per week of the season, I would watch the whole season in just under 3 hours (excluding playoffs) and be much happier.
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Waking Up with Relish
Posted 2:57 PM, Sep 5, 2007 |
My own long, personal nightmare is over. I haven’t written about it much on here because I thought to talk about it might just prolong it, which is something I didn’t want to do. But now, it’s over.
I found the right kind of hot dog relish.
Read that sentence again. Yes, relish. (Make your own “relish” puns in the comments.)
For quite some time, I’ve been eating what I refer to as “pickle relish,” which is basically bland hot dog relish consisting of water and chopped up pickles. (You might know it as “sweet relish,” which it is, but when eating a hot dog, I don’t want “sweet.” Do you? Do you?)
I’ve been in search of what I refer to as “mustard relish,” which I think is basically just sweet relish with mustard added, but there must be more, because I’ve tried adding mustard to sweet relish and the results just aren’t the same. Mustard relish is yellowish, like mustard - or like gold - and has a little kick, a little sweet, a little spice, and, ultimately, a little love, too.
Since moving to Los Angeles, I found it once, and then haven’t seen it again for nigh on a year. Until yesterday. I stopped in at the Ralph’s on the corner of Olympic and Barrington to pick up some other things, and stopped by the condiment aisle, as I always do wherever I go. And, stacked up like gold bricks at Fort Knox, there it was. The strange thing is that it was Ralph’s brand, but they don’t have it at the other Ralph’s, just a few miles away. (They also don’t have it at Von’s, Target, Long’s Drugs, Walgreens, Jamba Juice, Cold Stone Creamery, and so on. I’ve looked.)
I bought 3 jars, in case another long hot dog nightmare, another processed meat nuclear winter happens. I should be good for a couple weeks.
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No Great Ideas Lately
Posted 3:19 PM, Sep 4, 2007 |
I should say something, right?
Well, I haven’t had any great ideas. I’ve got one interesting idea, but that’s not for sharing (yet).
I was going to try to go see Okkervil River this evening, but it’s sold out, so instead I’m going to try to finish memorizing “I’d Love To Change the World” on guitar, which is a comparable pursuit.
I’ve been enjoying the U.S. Open - have you?
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