Summer Projects

It's been a busy summer, full of projects of varying sorts.

I did some professional stuffs, and still have more to do.  But on the housing front, I got my floors done, powerwashed the deck and part of the house, and am in the midst of painting the exposed structural wood on the underside of my deck.

The floors look great (and involved moving stuff out of half of the house, and back again, with lots of trips to various places to donate clothes and such.

The deck looks WAY better than it did!  And I've fallen in love with the power washer.  (Good tools are amazing!)  (You can get a sense of how dirty it was in the top picture.)

I'm about one third done with the final coat (well, I hope I don't need a second coat of paint), and all primed (two coats) on the exposed (and very weathered wood) structural framing for the deck.  I think the color is a little different than what's on the rest of the lower part of the house, but it should be okay.

I have two more projects (both professional) that will probably take about a week each, maybe less, and then more reading prep for teaching at the Abbey.  But so far, things are beginning to feel more ready.  I'll feel a lot better about leaving with the house in good shape for the winter.

Movie Still

One of my young kin posted in effbee recently about the new Godzilla movie and how excited he was about it, sharing a picture from it.  In the picture, Godzilla was HUGE.  I mean, way bigger than ships and stuff.  (Here's a link to the Wikipedia page, where you can see a poster picture, and see it compared to the Golden Gate Bridge.)

Now I know I'm totally the wrong demographic for this, but I have to admit that when I saw the poster I immediately thought:  how the heck did it get to be that big and no one noticed?

Here's the thing:  big animals need to eat a lot.  A LOT. 

There are basically three choices for eating a lot:  plants.  You do the elephant thing, and you eat plants, a lot of plants.   Fortunately, there are lots of plants to eat, at least in some places.  (And in the sea, there's algae, which grows fast.  But, my understanding is that most algae grows only in relatively shallow areas (or is the free floating kind, which I'll count as plankton for now), so you'd think people would notice a giant lizard thing eating algae off the coast of Humboldt County, wouldn't you?

plankton.  This works GREAT for the big baleen whales.  There's lots of it, which is good because whales need to eat a lot.

The problem for godzilla eating these things is that really, no one would be scared of a giant manatee godzilla thing, because it would be busy eating plants all the time.  Yes, hippos are really dangerous, and you shouldn't swim with them, but they're not going to take out big ships very easily.  And whales can be, I suppose, really dangerous around small boats, but not against the navy.

And finally, most plant and plankton eaters don't look fierce and scary, right? 

That leaves us with an animal that eats largish animals.  But there's simply no largish animal for something the size of Godzilla (in that poster) to eat and get enough.  Compared to a Godzilla that size, a whale is like me eating a minnow, not an entirely satisfying meal.  And it's a whole lot easier to catch and eat a messful of minnows (or other smallish fish) than whales.

It's worth noting that many of the largest predators around these days are actually smaller than most of their prey, no?  I mean, Brown Bears are bigger than salmon, but lions are smaller than wildebeasts.  You either have to eat a whole lot of smaller stuffs (salmon, say, or plankton), or have a plentiful supply of bigger stuffs that you can somehow eat (wildebeasts for lions).  Even so, hunting big stuff seems to work best cooperatively.  Otherwise, it's handy to be bigger than what you want to eat.  (That's why I should hunt minnows.)

Thus, a Godzilla that would find the TransAmerican Pyramid barely up to its chest is a Godzilla that would have deep unmet dietary needs.  No wonder it's pissed off!

Let's just admit that I wasn't nearly as impressed by the movie poster as my young kin.

Pizza on Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it.

Last year, I started a new tradition and had some friends over for Pizza on Thanksgiving (TM). 

Everyone loves pizza, right?  And it's way less stressful and overwhelming to make than a turkey, especially if you're a single person.

Pizza on Thanksgiving (TM) doesn't pretend to be a traditional thanksgiving dinner, so I don't feel like I'm missing out on what made thanksgiving great when I was a kid, and that was being a kid with a lot of cousins around, good food, and fun.  (Even that wasn't without its conflicts, however, since as a girl, I was expected to be all dressed up, and dressed up meant I didn't get to go outside and play football with the boy cousins.)  Instead, Pizza on Thanksgiving (TM) is about sharing a relaxed, informal meal with friends

We make adult pizza, so not the overloaded saucy pizza of kidness.  Instead, we've got a variety of choices, sun-dried tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, a crumbly goat cheese, basil, oregano (both fresh), quartered artichoke hearts, olives, and mushrooms.  We'll see what folks want to do with the different pies.

Now if I can get some grading done, my weekend will be much better!

Switch

I switched to the new blogger today. Here's hoping it works!

So far, most things look about the same, but there's a labels section. That looks fun!