Math in real life

Bamboo,
originally uploaded by mamawitch.

This is the bamboo in my garden. As you can see, it is corralled and corseted in ways it probably doesn't like. I am in the process of relocating it because where it was just wasn't working aesthetically. For those who prefer their plants in Latin, this is Phyllostachys bissetti from New England Bamboo. (http://www.newengbamboo.com/.) I got this plant several years ago and according to the folks at New England Bamboo, this variety of 'running' bamboo is only supposed to saunter in these northern climes. Absolutely controllable through regular mowing. That's the theory. There must have been a disclaimer in micro print somewhere, something like "unless planted in optimum soil conditions." Nine months after planting, I discovered just how happy my bamboo was the morning I almost broke a toe on one of the shoots - eight feet from the mother plant. On closer inspection, they were all over the place! And here's the kicker (pardon the pun), each of those shoots could be separated from the rest of the runner and planted, growing eventually into a clump of its own. Now, I have an elderly neighbor who worships the smooth, uninterrupted, uncorrupted green that is her lawn and at least two of those runners had made a beeline for her yard. Part one of crisis management: remove all runners. Part two: corrall mother plant. Part one = labor intensive and partially completed by flashlight after elderly neighbor had gone to bed (no lie). Part two involved the largest garbage bin I could find. Just for reference, it's 4 feet deep. Part two also involved sinking the bin into a 4 foot hole that I had dug, falling into it (the hole, not the bin) at least twice. After repotting (rebinning?) the bamboo has been contented. Enter the need for relocation. A crane would have been the best tool choice to accomplish this, but I don't have a crane. I had: a climbing rope (about 24'), two shovels (one short, one long), a 2x4 (3'), a heavy duty chain (4'), 8 bricks and a Jeep Wrangler (1994, 2 door). Also, a lifelong fascination with how the Greeks, Romans and Ancient Egyptians maneuvered large heavy objects. Leverage. That was the key. Precise positioning of the bricks (after a suitably large amount of soil removal) coupled with coordinated leveraging and pulling. Also crucial was the angle of leverage and pull. Did I mention that this was planted beside a fence, betwixt trees and therefore had to be pulled out and immediately turned to get through a gateway? My math teachers were way off the mark - I am not inept at math!

Hilda

Hilda,
originally uploaded by mamawitch.

This is Hilda, in whose chair Prince sat. Hilda was a beloved member of our family for 14 and a half years. She died this past spring and we've all been missing her terribly. Fortunately, she was willing to sit still periodically for photo shoots. This particular image was lurking on our digital camera's memory card - a lovely surprise! So I learned how to upload photos from the camera, transfer them to flickr, play around with contrast, color, sharpness etc. in flickr and now put it on the blog. I'm on a roll!

You Tube

Well, this certainly was an interesting exercise! It only took me 45 minute to find the box labeled "embed."

Regarding this funny clip, (Linda says we actually have children like this in the children's room) I first saw this in one of my graduate school classes. It was used as an example of how even very young children can be taught to mimic the adults around them. Thankfully, they can also forget.

My friend Prince*

Lola the Bulldog,
originally uploaded by Scandblue.

One evening a couple of weeks ago I was sitting in the Den, which is at the back of our shotgun-style farmhouse, with my laptop on my lap when CLICKETY, CLICKETY, CLICKETY! in raced Prince, with a ginormous smile on his face. Prince lives around the corner from us and he is a Very Happy dog. When he sees us he is in danger of levitating off the ground because his tail is whirling around so fast. Evidently Prince had been begging to come into our house for a long time and this time ! it was O.K.!! He was ecstatic. 75 pounds of solid muscle came rocketing into my lap (the laptop narrowly missed obliteration). He then checked out the rest of the first floor. He zipped out the front door, leapt off the porch, ran around us, his owner and the front garden (twice) before begging to go back in. So we did. And the first thing he did was to make a beeline for the den where he climbed into Hilda's chair and sat with a happy grunt...

Then he dashed outside again.

I love it when Prince visits.

*I've never been able to capture Prince on camera since he is always moving. This must be a close relative. Photo courtesy of Scandblue on Flickr.

Feeds, Blogs and Bookshelves

Last Friday afternoon I had way too much fun here at work. There were three of us on the desk and it was quiet enough that we could play around with blogs, finding blogs, going off on tangents because of blogs and feeds. The tangents segued into exploring book sites like Librarything which we all jumped on with glee (but not before subscribing to a few others and messing about with those too). It reminded me of being a kid when I had friends over and we'd all be playing around with some version of the same thing. Someone would say "Hey, what's this? How does this work?" and someone else would answer "Oh, that's ...Here's what you do." And at the same time someone else would say"Hey, check this out!" Ideas bouncing all over the place and everyone willing to share. What a blast!

Results? Love Librarything and can see subscribing to it eventually. Especially relevant since I lost my book log/journal. I will now attempt to reconstruct it online.

Am learning lots more about how to put stuff on my blog, like photos. I'm itching to play around with flickr etc.

RSS

I first explored RSS last year when an acquaintance of mine went on and on about it. I just couldn't see what the big deal was. I tried subscribing to some bundled stuff, which was boring and a waste of time. I couldn't figure out how to subscribe to what I wanted to and, since I had to log into something just to get to all this stuff, I dropped it. Now that I've revisited the topic, I think it's kinda cool. It defenitely helps to know how to subscribe to particular sites (duh!) As for finding those sites, I used the random, leap frog method, which was to find something I was interested in and look at what they subscribed to. Not the most efficient way of going about things, but much more fun. I found the blog search tools ineffective and frustrating. Will I keep using RSS? Possibly, probably, not sure. What I would like is to have an icon that sits on my desktop that I could click on, which would take me directly to my RSS feeds - rather than having to log into igoogle every time.

Later...Things 5 & 6. RSS has definitely been a very helpful tool. I've managed to keep on top of all kinds of things and find new stuff via links. It's been great! I've also played around lots with Google reader and found some other really useful stuff for my Other Life.

Bugs and Birds

So a week or so ago I went into the Pony shop during my lunch hour to buy a helmet and a decent bike lock. At 8:25 that morning we discovered a scheduling crisis with the car and I, in a fit of generosity/carbon footprint guilt, volunteered to ride my bike. Actually, my daughter's bike.* But then we couldn't find her lock or my helmet thus the visit to the Pony shop. I found a lock and a spiffy new helmet and, of course, a spiffy new bike. Maybe it was the intoxicating combination of tools, grease, mechanical bits and wheels. Or the allure of speed and the ability to change gears without mishap. Whatever. I now have this fabulous new bike and I've been cycling everywhere. I'm in danger of becoming a cycling nut. One of the great, unanticipated pleasures of all this riding around is experiencing wildlife. This past weekend I found this catching a ride with me:


Please note that the photo is a pale imitation of reality. This little jewel of a beetle looked like it had been created out of polished copper with deep emerald green inlays. I later discovered (because I had to know what it was) that it's a Japanese Beetle and the scourge of gardiners near and far. I still think it's gorgeous.





I also heard a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker that looked like this (photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

As well as a murder of crows, several bluejays (chasing a cardinal), and a variety of finches.





And as a background chorus, was the drone of cicadas and crickets.














Aren't they gorgeous? Next toy on my wish list is a digital camera.


*My bikes: #1 A Schwinn 3 speed bought with my babysitting money when I was 12. It has Issues. #2 A Motobecane 10 speed I bought at 15 when I wouldn't have been caught dead on a Schwinn 3 speed. It doesn't like potholes or changing gears.

Just FYI, I will not ever appear in spandex.