Saturday Gym

Grumpy / tired / sore today.  'Nuff said.

Went to the gym:  35 minutes on the elliptical with about 333 calories.  Downstairs 12x(50+60+70+70) lbs on the lat pull-down.  3x15 hanging curls on the Roman chair.  3x12x10lbs 45 declined press-ups.  A number of side-and-front-raises with 5lbs.  12x(20+30+30)lbs triceps pull-down.  Oh, and some assisted dips mostly for fun than anything else.

Lunar Album with Mars and Venus

Wednesday night's (10/18/2018) conjunction of the Moon and Mars.

Moon conjunct Mars, Sept 19,2018



















Full moon near Mars, July 26, 2018

















New moon near Venus, July 19, 2018

Dec 7, 2013 (shot through a telescope) 

















Feb 20, 2015 (also shot through a telescope)




















 Feb 26, 2009.  The moon is next to Venus.  

Zumba!

Gym report:  Well... Mark was right, I do dance like I'm taking a Zumba class.   I'm not sure how well Zumba classes will work out.  The class was pretty much "just start dancing" and then the instructor did some uncalled, fairly complex cha-cha-grapevine-yoga steps -- I think if I hadn't already taken some dance classes I would have been pretty lost; as it was there were several times where I just tossed any notion of doing the hand and arm motions out the window and tried to not kick my left foot when we were supposed to be kicking our right feet.

On the plus side, it's learning something new, and there are a couple of steps that will improve my balance. 

Gym Report

Went to the gym Monday.  Only got to about 260 calories on the elliptical.  12x60 + 2x12x70lbs on the lat pulldown.  3x12 Roman chair curls. Assorted free-weight stuff... um, inclined press 3x8x10lb er, kneeling triceps pull-thing 3x8x10lbs, side-and-front lifts 8x5lbs.  Triceps pull-downs 12x20lbs+2x12x30lbs. 

And it turns out Zumba classes are included in my gym fee... so maybe I'll go Wednesday night.

Dancing Music

Last spring we go a new patio table. It's larger, which means we can have more folks eating outside with us, but it's rectangular, which means in the late afternoon when the evening sun swings west, one has to move to the far end of the table or get an extra dose of sunlight.

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The other day I was curating a playlist and Mark commented that the transition from one song to the other was jarring.  I was a little confused because I usually compile songs together because I like them (they might have clever/snarky lyrics) and I think they'll be fun to dance to, too.  Okay, I also will add a song because I think it's funny.  In this case, I went from a song with a strong Rock-n-Roll feel to one with sterile Techno feel.

As we worked through the list, with me trying to figure out what Mark was getting at and trying to craft better transitions, it came out that 1) We Don't Know What Dance John is Dancing (for the record, it's usually a modified Cha-cha) but he's Really Into It, and 2) OMG, you would totally get into a Zumba Class--you should take a Zumba Class at the gym--because you really aren't getting enough cardio with your current routine; you could go and hang out with all your Zumba Woman Friends who would totally be into you taking a Zumba Class like the Belly Dancers were all your best friends when you were belly dancing.  And you could pal up with the instructor to make a play list and maybe even become a part-time Zumba Instructor yourself.  

Mid October Reflections

I'm enjoying the weather Sunday afternoon and writing in Café John in my bare feet.  The sun is out and bright for a mid-October day, and already at 3:30 the day is growing cooler.  In about two hours' time, the long dusk will start:  our house will be in the shadow of the hill, but across the slough the westerling light will paint the hills ten blocks away a ruddy hue.

Early last week we had a few days of extreme grey -- the kind of day when dawn is merely a lessening of darkness and the sun's path is hidden behind a rumbled swath of cloud.  If it were fog, it would be mysterious; if it were rain, it would inspire to curl up with a warm drink.   But it's distinctly bland weather that leeches color from the turning leaves and flattens buildings' details, and the only response is to feel a paw-touch of dread at the meaningless existence as the cogs of the Machinery of the Universe grind everything into dust.   Even hibernating through it would be too much effort.

So when the sun came out last Thursday, I was glad -- and now I'm enjoying writing out in it.

On the Gym Front:  I managed to get to the gym Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  Usually I spend about 30 minutes on the elliptical for about 300 calories (and read The New Yorker).  Then it's downstairs to the lat-pull-downs (12x60lbs + 2x12x70lbs), the Roman Chair hanging curl (3x12), and then inclined presses with dumbbell weights (3x12x10lbs) and then some forward-and-side rises with lighter dumbbells (3x12x5lbs). I try to end with tricepcs pull-downs (12x20lbx + 2x30lbs).

Friday when I went downstairs, I had the entire weight room to myself, so I grunted and breathed heavily after the slightest rep.  And then I giggled and tried to top the previous lift's drama.  Which probably wasn't so good for keeping my rep speed up.   I did not drop weights on the floor.

On the Writing Front:   Last week I edited three short stories that have been getting rejected.  In one case, the prose was clunky--I reworked some descriptions so the setting wasn't overly described, and that helped.  On the second, I think it probably needs one more pass to make the epiphany stand out. The third was already more-or-less perfect (hah!) and only needed minor touch-up; I've submitted it and we'll see how it does.

Ah, the novel.  Well... the process of breaking short stories out of the novel's corpus will have to be the next project.

Astro-Photography

 I pulled myself out of bed this morning and tried to take photographs of Orion.

I set the camera for a 15 second exposure time, which made the stars cold and not so twinkly.

Right off the bat, I pressed a series of incorrect buttons as I felt around the camera in the dark to try to find the manual focus setting and turned off the side LCD.

I managed to get a shaky shot of Taurus (I was aiming for the Pleiades) when I tried to take one photo before the 15 seconds was up....

Because the larger LCD screen was turned off (and I still haven't figured out how to get it back on), I really couldn't see what I had pointed the camera at, and had to make a series of guesses by zooming in on Orion's belt (or in the case of Taurus, Aldebaran)

At least the night before I'd gotten an arty shot of the crescent moon.

Halloween is Coming

In about twenty days it will be Halloween.  I'm wanting to ease my way into it, because if you start too early, you get holiday fatigue.  Also, The Child wants to fill the house with gory things, which is sort of the secular side of Halloween.   

We used to do a corn maze, but haven't gone the last few years.  I'll have to see if I can talk the family into going again (maybe we'll have to invite some friends).   Oddly, I don't have photos of us in the Corn Maze -- or at least, I can't seem to find any.

We were crafty one year, and made a large shadow box for a party (the kids were sort of into it, but I recall the shadow puppets, being on sticks, quickly turned into objects to whack each other with).

And we had fun snacks with cupcakes made up to look like gravestones.

Cats and Autumn

Cicero brought a rat into the neighbor's yard and started playing with it; this gave me a good opportunity to stop painting the side of our house and grab the camera. 

The autumn has been dry, so the yards in our neighborhood are still on the brown side. 

I'm recovering from the mandatory Autumnal Student Cold.  This has interrupted my return to the gym, which is delaying my attempts to shrink the bicycle tire around my abs. 

Oregon Caves Chateau

I managed to take a photograph of the chateau reflected in the gazing pool.  The pool is fed by the River Styx, which flows out of the Oregon Caves.  Some of the water from the pool is diverted to the inside of the chateau, and runs through the gift shop/dining room.









The interior is on the plain side, which is probably for the best.  I can imagine someone going crazy with bat motifs everywhere.  The door knobs were Artsy-Craftsy.

 I like these lamps. ... although they do have a tin-can feel to them. 

The crossbeams are spliced together with simple joins.  The simple wedges keep the beams together.  Most of the beams were long enough to not heed the splicing ... which in some ways is too bad, because they look cool.

The shaded lamps reminded me of the Yellowstone Lodge, only these didn't have Moose and Mountain stencils on them.

The main lounge had 1950's speakers in the corners.  Back then, there was an intercom system that played music (and maybe announcements) throughout the six floors of the chateau.

Equinox Raven

Over the equinox weekend, we went to the Oregon Caves National Monument Chateau. 

It's located about a three hours' drive from Eugene, near the Oregon-California border.

There was a lot of talk about bears and cougars, but we didn't see any.  I did manage to get a good photograph of this raven. 

I didn't see any other ravens, although we saw some stellar jays, and heard Woodpeckers.  This raven seemed to patrol the trees between the Chateau and the visitors' center.  It seemed to be more interested in flying around and croaking at tourists than in stealing shiny objects or accepting food from them.  I'm pretty sure it knew I was taking its picture, or at least pointing a black object at it, and I'd like to say it was curious what I was doing.

No raven equinox dreams so far... although I did dream something about vultures stealing eagles' food, and being able to fly in the form of various birds and the Space Shuttle.

Snake Scale Details

Cicero keeps bringing snakes into the yard.  I think this may be the same snake that I've rescued about three or four times now. 

What I like about this photo is that you can see (when you zoom in) how the scales change along the girth of the snake's body.  The ones along the top are long and narrow, while the hexagonal ones on the side are more circular, and the scales along the snake's bottom look like shields. 

Also, the yellow stripe along the snake's body has scales in it that are half-yellow, half-slate colored.

After I photographed this snake, I scooped it up and slid it into a crack in the ground (we have a lot of those because of the high clay content of the soil).  Cicero can't get at the snakes, but he can smell them, and I suspect he spends much of his day standing guard over the cracks, waiting for serpents to emerge.

Moon Conjunct Mars

Wednesday night the Moon and Mars were conjunct.

I ran out and took several photographs. 

The camera has a pretty good pre-setting for the moon, but when you try to use it to take photos of the moon and anything else, the moon washes everything out.

So... to get a more balanced photo, I have to manually set the camera for infinity focus, the F-stop to F8, and play with the shutter speed.  Usually 1/5 to about 1/20 of a second will come out with an interesting shot... although the moon will still wash everything out. 

At the moment, the moon's above the ecliptic... which seems odd, because I thought it was pretty close to its north ascending node -- I guess I'll have to look up where that is.  Or... maybe Mars is below the ecliptic and the Moon is on it.   In any case, they're about three finger-widths apart.

Dreams and Stories

Tuesday morning the cats were up to no good, and I ended up rising and writing.   Currently I'm working on a 2000 word short story.  I'm thinking that after I get that polished up, I'll look at the corpus of material from last spring and see what I can do with it.

I dreamed an Arcosanti dream, probably because one of my friends posted some pictures from her visit.  It was refreshing, because it wasn't one of those stuck at Arcosanti trying to get to the airport dreams.

Tuesday evening I printed out the rough draft of the story and edited it with a red pen, crossing out words and drawing arrows where paragraphs should be moved, and, in some cases, writing things out long hand.  There's something to be said for the physicality of editing actual text.  Also, my mobile is too small for the Scrivener screen to do involved editing.

Wednesday, I had a a very odd dream with involved the Shopping in an Alternate Corvallis scene.  Usually, I'm walking through downtown Corvallis, and there's some sort of funky boutique.  Back in the 80's, I used to shop at a store called "The Golden Crane," which sold vaguely Asian apparel, mostly for the 20-to-30-something female crowd (clue number seven about my orientation).   The Shopping in Alternative Corvallis dreams usually involve wandering around upscale shops or a series of shops similar to The Golden Crane, that sell things velvet cushions, brass terrariums, pillar candles, and poofy clothing.  Then I try to get home or to another store, or some other vague destination which involves walking a lot of blocks.

At one point I was trying to fly home while carrying The Child.  It didn't work so well because a wind forced us back, and I had to levitate us back to the ground.

Then the dream took on a weird twist.  My recollection is bad, but it involved a woman who was growing clones of her female friend out of her ground-apartment/beauty boutique.  They had sort of an Edwina and Patsy, Ab-Fab relationship, which got more disturbing as the dream went on.  I don't recall why, but the clonee wanted a copy of herself, and loaned the cloner a finger (or something) to make a full copy from.  I have an image of a wig-manikin -- just a head and shoulders on top of some sort of retro-50's clothe-washing machine/wringer -- of the clonee talking to the cloner while new clones grew. 

The number of clones grew, because each new clone wanted a clone of herself, and I'm a little confused trying to recall the dream... at one point the cloner had to hide a previous clone from a current clone, because the current clone thought she was the original, and the cloner and the previous clonee had a "OMG, do you think she knows? / Darling, no one wants to tell her that she's falling apart" French and Saunders dialog. 

Eventually, the original clonee was reduced to a pile of five shoulder and back bones, and the cloner was resignedly picking up a scapula and wondering how she was going to get a full clone out of it.

In a dream shift, a wheel of cloud rolled over Corvallis.  It was dark, and narrow, and the cloud was rolled up over itself as it whizzed over the city.  Someone was onto the cloner, and she was going to be punished.  Then the wheel of cloud rolled back over Corvallis, lower this time, and it slammed into the brick apartment building where the cloner lived.  The wheel of cloud broke up, and apart and the pieces fell to the ground in the form of a great, cloudy dog, which was inky and vaporous, and at the same time solid and alarmingly large.

It slunk into the cloner's apartment, and just before I woke up, I had taken her point-of-view and was staring at an open hallway door, querulously calling, "Hello?" and knowing there was a Very Big Dog, which might be around the corner, or which might be a mist creeping closer, but that at any moment shadowy jaws were going to close on my throat.

Dee Wright Observatory

Over the weekend , I played with the camera's panorama feature and got some wide angle shots.

Looking East

We went to Dee Wright Observatory and Little Belknap (one of the bumps on the left above). It's a lava field; Belknap crater (below) is a shield volcano.  Little Belknap is a cinder cone (with a lava tube at the top).   T

Looking West

The Cascades made their own weather.  When we left for the mountains, it was fairly clear.  As we arrived, clouds formed and the temperature dropped about five or ten degrees (climbing up to the top of Little Belknap probably contributed).


The North Sister was visible when we first showed up.

 But very soon the clouds rolled in and we couldn't see much beyond about three miles.