Global Warming On The Decline - Indian Ocean

Pirates seized a record 1,181 hostages in 2010 (link here to BBC story), thereby disproving that global warming is on the rise.  As His Noodly Greatness has taught us, the decline in pirates over the years has directly correlated to the rise in ocean temperatures.  Therefore, since pirate activity is on the rise, ocean temperatures will inevitably decline as well!   It doesn't matter how many nations send their navies into the Indian Ocean and Arabian sea, the pirates are a wily bunch.  Ramen!

So much for that dream vacation to the Seychelles I've always dreamed of.  If rising ocean levels don't wipe out the islands, the pirates will make it less than enjoyable.

Les Arôme de Bacon et Citron

I fried up a package of applewood smoked bacon this morning, and the delicious aroma of the bacon greeted me as I walked back into the house after an hour of poolside bacon in the 74 degree Fahrenheit ambient day.  It's to bad that the interwebs haven't figured out how to convey scents yet... but mmmmm, such a delicious fragrance.  After finishing up yoga, and drinking in the aroma of bacon, I decided to pick some more lemons.  Our tree is in FULL ripeness, with boxes of lemons sent to my boss and boss's boss at the corporate HQ, bags given to neighbors... more lemons than we know what to do with.  And the tree is simultaneously in bloom and in laden with ripe fruit, so it has the enticing fragrance of jasmine-like aroma as well.

Most of my life, I underestimated the pleasant power of scent, having grown up in a chronically flatulent and lactose intolerant family, living in the NW Indiana industrial region, and eating rather bland food.  After I met my inlaws and wife, they introduced me to bay leaf, cumin, oregano, tarragon, chilies, and a host of other wonderful tastes and scents besides just paprika and nutmeg.  (yes, the spice shelf in the home I grew up in, had nutmeg, paprika, salt, and pepper, c'est toutes)  Now, I take every opportunity possible to enjoy the wonderful scents here in the desert and in / around my home.  Life's too short to let this stuff go by.

And now I have a container of solidified fat to freeze for future cooking, and 2 large bags of ripe organic lemons to juice and freeze tonight, so that we can enjoy lemonade year round here. Mmmmmmmm

Daniel Hernandez, A Role Model Intern

Listening to NPR this evening, I heard a story of how Billy Sipple, a gay veteran who prevented Gerald Ford's attempted assassin from taking a shot at the president, and they mentioned how Daniel Hernandez is also openly gay.  The NPR story contrasted how Sipple was shunned, being unexpectedly outed 30 years before don't ask, don't tell was repealed, and how he died at the age of 49, alone and estranged from his family.  In comparison, Daniel Hernandez has been lauded as a hero, even though he is reluctant to take on that mantle, and has selflessly and humbly redirected the "hero" label to the first responders and law enforcement and paid staffers who Daniel said are the "real heroes".  As I watched last Wednesday's speech on public television, I thought to myself "what a well spoken young man!" and was struck by how unassuming he came across. 

I highly doubt that many strongly conservative, fundamentalist Republicans would not be taken aback by Daniel Hernandez's sexual preference and would "hate the sin, but love the sinner", wanting to "cure" him, or help him to "choose" not to be the person that his creator has made him, but to someone like me who is not a fundamentalist, and who understands the differences between nature and nurture and basic programming that 10% of the population throughout all of history has experienced, and that it is not a "sin" or a "disease", someone's sexual preference "just is".  And Daniel Hernandez's preference had little to do with his heroic act of rushing towards the violence and chaos, and in deeply caring for his boss to stem the flow of blood from her head wounds and treat her for basic shock... but it DID have much to do about being in service to others, in affiliating himself with a political party as a volunteer intern that doesn't condemn him or try to change him.  It DID have a great deal to help him work for social change in this red state of Arizona, where he spent a Saturday morning, when most other 20 year old college students would be sleeping in, or hung over, to be ready to pitch a hand in at his boss's "Congress on Your Corner".

I hope Mr Hernandez has a long, happy, productive career in public service, and he does not go down the same route as Billy Sipple after his very public, very heroic act.  The world needs more - not less - people like Daniel Hernandez.

Birthday Bird Bath

We had our friend Dr Todd come over today to watch NFC Football (Bears surprisingly beat the Seahawks) and prior to his arrival, I turned on the little water fountain in the front courtyard.  It's one of those made-in-China plastic framed fountains with a cheesy $5 electric pump that cost around $20 to manufacture, but the big box hardware stores mark up to $100, not a fancy smanshy local artisan crafted fountain - which we've looked at that cost from $500 to thousands of dollars.  But I digress...  In low humidity Arizona, the water in the fountain tends to evaporate every 3 or 4 days, so we don't leave it on all the time.  In addition, some of the more devious neighborhood feral cats have developed a proclivity for leaping from the courtyard wall about 5 feet away, to get ON TOP of the fountain for a drink - and in the process toppling it, and leaving 3 or 4 large parallel claw marks across the spherical surface as they attempt to pounce; another reason to trap and relocate the critters.   So the fountain is more decorative than it is functional, and rarely filled and used.

With this in mind, I was VERY surprised when I looked out the window this morning, and saw a female black chinned hummingbird bathing in the running fountain.  She flew back and forth, from various foliage in the front yard to preen, and then back to the fountain, immersing herself, repeatedly.  At first I thought she was just drinking - as I have witnessed hummingbirds in the Desert Botanical garden do - but the more I watched, the more obvious it became she was bathing on top of a slippery wet sphere.

Keep your eyes open, and you see something new every day.  =)

Thank you Mr & Mrs Green

This story (link here) about how Christina Taylor Green's parents donated their daughter's organs to save the lives of others really warmed my heart this morning.  Since I got my first driver's license, I've always been a consenting organ donor.  The conspiracy theorists who say that an organ donor card is just carte blanche for paramedics and ER physicians to begin the process of disseminating your organs to others are about as accurate as the malarkey of 'the Jews caused 9-11'.  Christina Taylor green's death was tragic, violent, and senseless, but I am heartened to see that some good could come out of it. 

"That’s what I believe, in part because that’s what a child like Christina Taylor Green believed.  Imagine, imagine here for a moment, a young girl who was just becoming aware of our democracy; just beginning to understand the obligations of citizenship; just beginning to glimpse that someday she too might play a part in shaping her nation’s future.  She had been elected to her student council; she saw public service as something exciting, something hopeful. She was off to meet her congresswoman, someone she was sure was good and important and might be a role model. She saw all this through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism, vitriol that we adults all too often just take for granted.
I want to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it. I want America to be as good as she imagined it. All of us – we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations." (transcript link here)

And now those eyes are helping another person see. Her young, healthy heart beating in someone elses chest.  Her lungs breathing in air to help sustain another young person.  Thank you, Mr & Mrs Green.

Taggers Are Pathetic Little Boys

There is an electrical box next to a gas station on the North West corner of McDowell Rd and 99th Avenue, that was a Mecca for these pathetic little taggers.   The taggers have figured out if they use a sharp glass cutter or carbide cutter, they can deface the pump screens at the Chevron gas stations that Dr Desert Flower and I most commonly use to replenish our vehicles' fossil fuel reservoirs.  These same taggers, also seem to find it necessary to tag electrical boxes, in futile attempts to broadcast "Look At Me! I Am Important!".  No little boys, really,  you're not.  Unfortunately, the tagged electrical box is in a "no man's land".  Phoenix says it is outside their borders  (page 89 of http://phoenix.gov/BNDMAPS/keymap.pdf ), and that I should contact Avondale.  Avondale flatly said their border did not extend east of 99th avenue (http://www.avondale.org/documents/City%20Departments/Water%20Resources/annexation%20areas%202006.pdf ) . That left the electrical box in the sad little town of Tolleson  (page 16 http://www.tollesonaz.org/DocumentView.aspx?DID=138 ).  Phoenix, Avondale, and Tolleson, all come together, like Munster, Hammond, and Highland do in North West Indiana.  I wrote to the assistant manager of the city of  Tolleson at their little web site (link here) and got no response, so after 2 days, I took the matter into my own hands this morning.  

Having no shortage of left-over house paint from the previous owners, I took the cheapest Chinese brush I have, a 5/6ths empty can of paint, a paint can opener, a few rags to wipe up any mess I made, and my digital camera out to McDowell and 99th.  20 minutes later, problem solved.  Yes, the sad little boys will probably take another 3 or 4 months to cover the box again with their spray painted urine to "reclaim it", but I've got alot of paint, and a paying day job, and a strong disdain for pathetic little boys who feel it's their obligation or right, to deface public property.  Yes, "OKIE", "FREMS", "KOZ", "Vaper", "JDG", get a real job, move out of your parents' houses, put your "art" up in a gallery somewhere, and stop defacing public property, and then maybe you'll get noticed and make something out of your life.

And as a post script, on my way home, I noticed a few utility poles on 91st Avenue, adjacent to the Maryvale DMZ covered with white tagger paint.  I pulled over, and covered those as well, and a lady in an SUV drove past, rolled her window down, and yelled "Thank You!" to me as I was painting over the tags.  That was a nice feeling.

We can sit back and be "victims" waiting for a nearly financially bankrupt city to come by and clean them up, or we can take action and reclaim the city, peacefully, fastidiously, determinedly, one block at a time.  I choose the latter.

Anna Adores Aloe

I did poolside yoga about an hour later today than most days, and as I was in a twisted lotus pose, with my shoulders about 110 degrees rotated from my hips, I first heard, and then saw Anna buzz over my head, and drink from the aloe just 3 feet away.  I think this is the most beautiful video I've made all year, and wanted to share it here.  It was taken at 30 frames per second, on a VGA setting, with the "macro" setting "on".  The unsteadiness of the camera is due to the fact I've not achieved the refined control over my breathing when in difficult poses that yoga strives to teach - but I'm working on it.  Maybe in another 6 years, I'll get it down better.

You might notice that towards the end of the video, Anna simply perches and drinks.  Yes, she's an excellent flier, with amazing maneuverability, dexterity, speed, and stamina.  But when she can drink casually, and expend less energy to drink from a blossom while sitting, she will take that break.

City of Lindas

Some 20 years ago, I heard a band at Dawg Gone on the East Side of Spartanburg SC called "City of Lindas".  Their drumming was tight.  Their vocalist was enthusiastic and crowd inspiring (as lead singers are supposed to be). Guitars were talented.  I enjoyed the music and the show they put on, and I 'bought the t-shirt'.  They were selling tapes (yes, cassette tapes) and CDs (this was 20 years ago) but since all they had was an EP, and I wanted to get a whole album, I waited, and said to myself "I'll get the album when it comes out".  If it ever did, I never saw it.  I was going to banish the t-shirt to the rag bin, but the color hasn't faded yet... so I am kinda glad I've still kept it around.

Using the interwebs and the google, I tried for 20 minutes today to dig up anything I could on "City of Lindas".  There's slim pickens out there from the early 90s when most people didn't even have dial up, and if they did, a 9600 baud modem was considered FAST!  When I got a Micron PC 100Mz Pentium in 1996 with Win95 on it, and a 14.4K modem, I thought it was lightening fast - LOL! 

But if you would like to listen to some City of Lindas also, check out the "myspace" link here.  There's very few clicks on the individual songs, for as long as these unknowns have been around.  Too bad more people did not get a chance to hear them.

Me thinks, that with this posting, I've just cornered the google market on "City of Lindas" references - LOL! 

NPR, Stop Covering That Alaskan Quitter!

I am seriously considering writing to NPR and asking for my annual pledge money back.  They've been really tremendously piss poor in covering the Tucson shooting.  I had to turn them off, AGAIN this evening, as I was responding to blog posts, and they ran a disgusting 4 minute piece on Sarah Palin's reaction, and her predictable re-accusal of others (as she is the Master of Personalized Victimization). Who Cares? Her 15 minutes of fame were up in November of 2008.  Stop Covering her, if you want to maintain any shred of dignity as a news organization... or did all of that leave with Ellen Wiess?  They got Mayhem Fest wrong, and didn't bother to look it up.  They're stumbling all over themselves.  They keep calling the disturbed Jared kid an "accused suspect" - there's witnesses, he's proud he did it, he was pinned at the scene, there's no "accused" about it.  Yes, yes, in America we have too many lawyers who sue everyone for "libel", whatever. 

I'm enjoying listening to my Playlist here instead.  =)

Downtown Chicago Flooded!

If the 3rd largest city in the US were flooded, it would be a horrible humanitarian and economic disaster.  At 2.8 million people, Chicago is the bustling center of commerce, politics, and transportation in the Midwest.  As I hear on the radio repeated (NPR and BBC) today about downtown Brisbane Australia being flooded, with water levels up the street lights, I grapple to put this in perspective in my head.  This is not the rural outback, this is a large metropolitan area.

Brisbane has 2 million people, and is Australia's 3rd largest city, as well as capital of Queensland.  I've got relatives on my father's side there, though exactly where geographically, I do not know, just "Brisbane".  The scope of how huge this flooding disaster is, I do not think it being comprehended.  This is akin to Pakistan's Indus river flooding last year, except the country is much more developed.  Hopefully that developed infrastructure (helicopters, military, medical, transportation, organized government response, fellow citizens uniting in support, lack of terrorists [in comparison to Pakistan]) will be able to ramp up and handle the disaster, minimizing the loss of life and reducing the misery of the people.

Everybody Supernova

Hearing this story on NPR today (link here) about a "Green Blob" identified in outer space, followed by Queen's "We Will Rock You"... I said to myself.. "no no no, play PUSA!"  Feather Pluckin has a better chorus, much more relevant to the radio story. Dr Desert Flower and I saw Presidents of the United States of America in Indianapolis at the "Egyptian Room", and it was a great show, back in the 90s.

What the Flax?

I'm sorry, but tiny bags of flax seed crackers are NOT worth $8 a bag.  At the Central Farmer's Market last Saturday, I picked up a bag of Rosemary Garlic and a bag of Banana Raisin Currant "Raging Raw" Organic flax seed crackers.  I thought these were going to be $4 a bag, but when I handed over a Andrew Jackson, I was handed back four George Washingtons. Hmmmm.  Checking "Raging Raw's" website here, one can easily see that these are indeed $8 a bag.

To give you an example of how "BIG" these 5 ounce "Large Bags" were, I've compared them to a normal apple, and to a $1.99 bag of delicious Trader Joe's Pita Chips (6 ounce size).  Yes, the banana chips are tasty, slightly sweet, and as a breakfast snack, are fine.  The rosemary garlic flavor Dr Desert Flower does not like.  They have an "interesting" flavor, and I laid out 4 large "chips" on a plate, covered them with Swiss Gruyere cheese, heated, and made delicious nachos.  Yes, the flax chips ARE gluten free, vegan, raw, wheat free, high protein, and high in fiber, But at $8 a bag?  I'm sorry, we won't be buying any more.  We could have gotten 8 bags of Trader Joe's pita chips for the same amount of cash - what we would have done with 8 bags, I cannot imagine. 

I do enjoy flax - ground flax, flax flour (thanks Ame!), makes an excellent "thickener" for thin soups, and the Omega 3s included in flax is wonderful.  I could buy organic, pasture raised beef for alot less than these flax chips, and get more protein from a gluten free, wheat free, organic, raw source.

Best Crying Boehner Inspiration Ever

The SNL episode last Saturday (8 January 2011) had a Weekend Update that was hilarious & accurate. 32 year old  Bill Hader does excellent impressions and is huge talent asset for Lauren Michael's troupe of comedians..  His John Boehner visually was not that awesome - with only a mild orange tone and a MASSIVE OVERSIZED forehead that was not Boehner-esque, but verbally, the dialogue & writing was perfect!

Jump to the 34:30 minute mark (link here), to see & hear each of Nancy Pelosi's statements that made Boehner cry like the little baby girl he truly is:
Nancy Pelosi:
"Little American Flags.
An Old Man, Saluting a Parade.
A son coming home and making Folgers[TM].
Reruns of Touched By An Angel.
Reruns of Magnum PI."
But then Pelosi pauses, and says: "Millions Without Health Care" - Boehner instantly stops crying (they need to get their own damn bootstraps!) ... and wipes his tears.
Determined to drive her point home, Pelosi continues:
"A puppy, in a red white and blue bandana sits near a door. A soldier walks in carrying his bags. the puppy greets him with barks...  and kisses" - Cry Baby Boehner's hysterical crying resumes.  If anyone needs to "Man Up", it is the orangeman.

Um, it's not Oswald

Democratic Diva has a nice posting here (link).  Extremist Republicans trying to label Jared the Assassin as the newest "Lee Harvey Oswald".  What sad contortionist acts they are performing.  Link to the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence's long tabulation of politically motivated cumulative gun violence since just 2008 (link here), causes one to pause - many of them I had forgotten or never heard originally.

Post Frost Thirsty Hummingbird

As I was doing yoga, poolside this weekend (65F, sunny, light wind, nice Arizona January afternoons), I noticed my girl friend Anna enjoying the lavender that survived the recent frost.  I've started to take my digital camera out with me in my yoga bag carrier, as Anna's gotten quite tame / bold  in drinking from plants within a few feet of me.  After she finishes feeding from the irresistible lavender, she'll strafe within a foot or so from my head, rapidly passing by, as she heads off to one of her perches where she can survey and guard the whole backyard.

Make no mistake, Anna's a very possessive alpha female, and she doesn't like to share. She's not intimidated by the large, slow, clumsy, shirtless, nearly hairless ape in red framed sunglasses on a blue yoga mat who keeps pointing the shiny silver Sony Cyber-shot 7.2 Megapixel camera at her.  She seems to delight in seeing how close she can fly past my head at close range "Why is he so close to my flowers? I'll buzz that ape and see if I can make him flinch."  When I was trying to cover the lantana last week in futility (now completely dead), Anna hovered over the neighbor's back yard, angrily chirping at me "How Dare You cover one of my food sources!" and then from about 50 feet away, she made a bee-line at my head, covering the distance in less than 1 second, stopping 2 feet away (yeah, about 35 MPH, with instant accel and sudden decel, she's an impressive flyer) as she tried to scare me away.  I didn't flinch, and instead, smile (scary - apes baring their teeth!), noting the physics of what she just performed, and it's hard to be afraid of such an apparently harmless and incredibly lovely little bird, when I am as large to her as a whale is to a human diver in relative size.

She doesn't want any Anna's or Costa's or Black Throated humming birds - male or female - sneaking into her delicious lavender, salvias, honey suckle (what little remains of the HS not killed by frost), aloe, nectar feeders, or lemon tree, and she pugnaciously and vociferously chases all avian intruders away.  I even saw her try to intimidate a male mocking bird, twenty times her size, who tried to perch in her ocotillo.

  Ocotillo, edge of lemon tree leaf, or bare mulberry branch in my neighbor's yard, Anna maintains fastidious, possessive vigilance over my back yard.

 In the Winter of 2009-2010, I do not recall having my back yard under surveillance by any one hummingbird - I also didn't spend as much time in the back yard then as I am this year.  But Anna is a welcomed new feature.  I was doing a Ardha Matsyendrasana pose when I saw a Costa's male hummingbird interloper drinking from these lavenders, and I said to myself "Anna's gonna be so p*ssed!" and a moment later, she swooped in, almost skewered the male with her beak, and ran him off, chasing him over the boundary wall, with the "get out! this is mine!" chirp series I hear many times each hour in the back yard.  Anna is no "fading flower", meek little soul - not by a long shot.

AZ Has No Shortage of Guano

As far as crazy people go, my current state of residence has no shortage.  A young dejected loser, who would not even be accepted by the US Army when he applied in Phoenix, poses rambling questions to his elected Congresswoman back in 2007 - so rambling that even "friends" of 'Jared' thought the question was incomprehensible.  So disillusioned and isolated, this unstable Tucson-ite gets kicked out of community college, arrested on Pot charges, buys a Glock 9mm at an Arizona gun shop right after the November 2010 election, and plots his next move. If his personal agenda could not be solved "by the ballot" then he'd solve it "with bullets".

Jared then sees that his district's Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords is going to hold a 'town hall' meet & greet at a local Tucson Safeway on a Saturday morning.  He goes there, with 33 round extended magazines.  To get a good idea of what a 33 round extended clip Glock 9mm looks like, see the picture to the right.  A Glock has a standard 15 round clip.  To get the "extended" clip that holds 33 rounds, the magazine sticks out twice as long as the pistol's handle. Shown here is one magazine loaded into a Glock 9mm, and 2 additional standard 15 round magazines beside the weapon.

So this delusional Jared boy walks up to Congresswoman Gifford, and shoots her in the head (forehead, from the preliminary look of the ambulance bound photos).  Luckily for Gifford, Jared, not knowing much about firearms apparently, did not have the foresight to buy hollow tipped bullets, so the bullet passed through her skull and out the back.  Also luckily for Gifford, she had a staffer who was trained as a first responder, who applied pressure to the wounds, slowed the bleeding, shielded Gifford from intrusive cameramen, and "probably saved her life" (per the "this Week" ABC report this morning).  Another 6 people, including a 9 year old girl born on 9-11, and Federal Judge John Roll, were not as lucky, and died.  Another 13 people are wounded, some of them critically.  One of the wounded was a woman who after being shot, attempted to wrest the weapon and new magazine from Jared as he tried to reload, while kept yelling "why!?!?" at him (per ABC's "This Week").

Originally, law enforcement was looking for a 2nd "person of interest" who was seen by witnesses running from the seen just prior to the assassination attempt.  This afternoon, Yahoo News was announcing that this misguided idiot Jared "acted alone" from what initial investigations of his home, his internet postings, and the suspect himself were revealing.

Where could a disillusioned, mentally unstable person like Jared get the idea to shoot at, and try to kill an elected official?  Well, sarahpac.com has a convenient list of targets.  I wonder how many other of the Democrats on this list have increased their security details.  Thanks sarah, and glen, Hush Dimbulb, and all the others.  Heck, even Olbermann apologized on air, for ANY acts of violence his rhetoric might have inspired in the past and strictly told all his viewers that nothing a pundit says should ever lead to violence (transcript here).  Calls from Fox News on a similar message have yet to be broadcast or heard.

There is no shortage of guano in Arizona.  Lots of publicly carried hand guns, no shortage of misguided "blame it all on Mexicans" xenophobes, and now one less rational politician.  Giffords may recover, but ask Reagan's press secretary Jim Brady how easy it is to return to your day job after being shot in the head.   First South Carolina, and now Arizona... no shortage of nut cases.

Wanting to get the US back on the gold standard, claiming the US Constitution has no authority to establish police forces, claiming no one in AZ district 8 is literate, posing rambling questions to Congresswomen and getting mad when they don't answer it to your satisfaction, and posting nonsensical youtube videos just prior to going on a shooting spree, I hope Jared finds his new role as "prison b*tch girl friend" enjoyable, until the day he's executed by the vengeful US judiciary system.

The Hardest I've Ever Seen Her Laugh

Back in December, Dr Desert Flower and I watched "30 Rock" on DVR, and enjoyed the "Christmas Attack Zone" episode tremendously (online summaries by others of that episode here and here).  If you follow this Hulu link, and advance to the 5:45 mark, you can see the dialogue that sent my loving wife of almost 2 dozen years into tearful & contorted laughter at first, then jumping up and down laughing hysterically, before falling onto the floor and literally "rolling on the floor" in uncontrollable laughter, hilarity, and over-whelming joy.  I've never seen her so consumed with laughter before, in all the years I've known her.  "30 Rock" is very well written, acted, and delivered.  This last year, it helped to remind us and reinforce our decision to not spend thousands of dollars flying to visit our families in the frozen midwest, when DDF didn't have the vacation available to do it anyways.

Note: Yes, Hulu does SUCK in it's completely unavoidable and un-skip-able commercials (that's why DVRs were invented, and why I resist canceling my cable/digital satellite subscription), but when you turn the sound off, and do something else while the inane commercials run, it's not so bad =)

5 Dollar LaGranja Syrah Delivers

As I've stated previously, I don't normally go for catchy labels on my wine.  A chicken laying a golden egg seemed a little cheesy, but Trader Joes had this on sale for $4.99 a bottle, and at that price, I really could not pass up trying it.  I'd had Spanish Carinenas before, and this bottle DID have a serialized Carinena denominacion de origen back label, so I put my bias aside against catchy labels, and bought the "La Granja 360" - which translates to "The Farm 360".

I finished the bottle earlier this week, over the course of my Tuesday and Wednesday dinners - one a meat dish (grilled organic pasture fed ribeye, mmmm, with onions and mushrooms) and the other some left over cheese and celery from New Years and the last of the almond butter.  It was really delicious, but went better with the ribeye.  I'd call it a "full bodied syrah".  It did have some black cherry tones, but it was not overwhelming. Dr Desert Flower enjoyed it as well.

La Granja is bottled for Axial by a negotient, SL by R.E. 4099Z Almonacid de la Sierra 50108 Spain, and imported by Evaki, San Luis Obispo CA for Trader Joes.  This won't be the last bottle from "The Farm 360" that we enjoy, chez nous, especially at $5 a bottle!

simplehuman Stainless Steel Put To The Test

I am a strong advocate of the adage "you get what you pay for".  Yes, occasionally one can find a sale, or an item on sale where it is miss-marked and tremendously under-priced, but in general, cheaper usually means lower quality, less durable, lower strength, weaker performance, less reliable, inferior materials or manufacturing techniques or "all of the above".  As an experienced rotating machinery engineer, quality engineer, mechanical engineer, machine designer, facilities engineering manager, plant engineer, and licensed PE who has worked with suppliers and engineering firms on all 6 inhabited continents on large rotating machinery, custom assembling machinery, medical devices, audio speakers, and radial tires, I've found that "cheaper" is rarely "better", and while "more expensive" is not "always better", it's rarely worse.

There are exceptions to this adage of course, some "premium" products are all fluff, show, and little substance, selling some inflated image.  But simplehuman is not one of those false inflated brands from what I have found.  One of my earlier postings "How to Repair A Flip Top Garbage Can" was mocked by some people I know as irrelevant or "silly", but it's had 129 hits in the last month alone... and it is a posting from Dec of 2009!  It's the third most popular posting on all of JustJoeP, and has some of the most comments of any posting to date. 

While the simplehuman garbage can failure was initially distressing to me - for the premium price I paid - the Torrence Californian company's customer service follow up, and proactive sending me an improved replacement lever arm, inspired me to purchase another product to solve a chronic problem in my home, and improve my shower's over-all appearance.  The simplehuman BT1060 Shower Caddy was on sale at Bed, Bath & Beyond (though I prefer the Beyond Section) and I originally bought it as part of a Christmas present to Dr Desert Flower, but after our not-inexpensive stay in Palm Springs, a $30 Shower Caddy seemed like a weak post-script, so I just installed it the day after we got home and DDF went to work.

A "5 year warranty" and "rust proof" materials, I wanted to see how this caddy holds up to the potassium chloride softened Arizona water that has severely pitted the WELDS on the shower caddy we moved here with in 2007, and it's "$12" replacement that was supposed to be an "improvement".  All the shower caddies we've had in the 2 dozen years we've been married have been made in China, including simplehuman's (sadly - really, was it necessary to outsource the manufacturing of such a nice product from such an environmentally depleted, polluted, economically corrupt, totalitarian-centralized-command-and-control-non-open-market, inefficient country?) The stainless steel rods tend to do fine if the chrome and moly content is high enough (316 SS, as opposed to say a 304 SS), but the welds where the tray is secured to the rods is invariably contaminated and rusts almost immediately, sending brown streaks down the shower wall behind it, and just looking gross.

simplehuman appears to have solved this failure mode by NOT using welds.  They've formed the stainless tubing (which I am assuming is 316) and inserted plastic trays into the bent-rod-trays.  To avoid the inevitable galvanic reaction that would occur if the aluminum contacted the stainless, simplehuman's California designers used the plastic trays to separate the dissimilar metals AND they anodized the aluminum extrusion to keep its finish "like new".  Smart. 

We'll see how well this caddy works.  I anticipate it will probably do well for the first 5 years, and then slowly but surely, chemistry will take it's corrosive course and the stainless will inexorably pit.  Since the $5 and $12 no-name BB&B brands performed so poorly, I thought the extra $18 was worth a try.  I can't imagine I'll still be blogging 5 years from now...  Il faut voir. 

Anna's Warm Place In The Sun

My girl friend Anna understands the concept of radiant heat transfer, conduction, passive solar heating, and that our cats are indoor felines who won't be attempting to "hunt" her outside.  This window's upper framing ledge, visible from our living room, is directly over the South facing Master Bedroom window.  6 feet below, and about 2 feet behind Anna, one of our cats is slumbering in the sun as well, getting a healthy dose of vitamin D. 

In the summer time, the radiant heat that pours off this stucco/concrete wall (common throughout the Phoenix valley in residential construction) can be felt about 3 feet away, akin to an oven.  In a 40F ambient (as was the case when this photo was taken) the radiant heating was detectable to about a foot away.  I am glad to be able to provide warm sanctuary to my tiny, avian, lovely little girl friend.

Bang On The Drum

Third day back to work after a 3 and a 1/2 week vacation... motivation is hard to find.

Thank you Mr Rundgren.
At least my boss is not a jerk...  Outside of compensation, 90% of job satisfaction is WHO you work FOR and WHO you work WITH, and just 10% is WHAT you do.

Playlist Gadget Addition

I was sick and tired of hearing the Orange Man on NPR today, so I turned off the radio, and booted up my playlist.  After tinkering for a little while, I figured out how to add it to my blog as a gadget.  I've DISABLED the AUTOPLAY, for those of you who do not want to hear X'a "New World" everytime you log in.

Let me know if you like having it there, in the left hand side bar.

Futile Attempts to Thwart Mother Nature, AZ

I THOUGHT I was well prepared for the cold snap last week here in Arizona.  I had

December 30th Afternoon

- boxes to cover plants
- rocks to hold the boxes down (against the wind)
- old bed sheets
- 32 oz stryofoam cups
- rolls of blue "painters tape" to secure the cups on less stout plants
- light permeable "frost cloths" from Elgin Nursery
- a garage with room enough to store potted plants and utility lights to warm the area around the plants
...and I was on vacation, so I had ample time to apply all of these devices and techniques.  I foolishly thought I could overcome Mother Nature with my human ingenuity, energy, cognition, and persistence.  Silly me.

Dec 30th Afternoon

Now, after the cold spell, the following observations can be made:
- boxes to cover plants work, use big enough rocks to secure the boxes

The incorrect way to apply a "frost cloth", as it does not extend all the way to the ground around the palm.

- "frost cloths" need to cover not just the leaves of the plant, but go from the top of the plant down to the ground, to "lock in" the ground's latent heat, or the cold air will just swirl under the cloth and attack the plant.
- styrofoam cups on mexican fence post cacti arms are fine, but
- styrofoam cups over aloe, honeysuckle, or hibiscus blossoms are a FAILURE
- bed sheets, when weighted down sufficiently by rocks, can be a temporarily effective means of resisting frost
- the garage stayed in the 50s, adjacent to the house, and the plants in the garage did just fine.
The concept, is to
a) retain latent plant heat
b) retain latent ground heat around the plant
c) prevent cold & moist air from settling on the leaves and stems of the sensitive plants
The nice thing about the "frost cloth" is that you can leave it in place over multiple nights, as the sunlight can "filter through" it to help the plant.  The bad thing about it, is it is $15 a sheet (15 foot x 10 foot).

The concept is not as easy to apply as one would think.  Wrestling a 250 square foot cloth over a 6 foot tall palm single-handedly is very frustrating.  Trying to secure 32 oz cups to delicate flowering plants only damages.  Securing 32 oz cups to a structure - like a pool fence - is possible using painter's tape, but it is not entirely practical or effective.

So now I must practice Ksanti (kṣānti'  or  patience) and not prune my damaged garden until the weather is appreciably warmer.  Let Nature take her course, slowly but surely.  

32 oz styrofoam cups can effectively insulate the tips of the arms of cactus. For larger arms, I used cardboard boxes.  Unfortunately, the smallest box of cups I could buy at Costco was Qty 500.

Put Down those Clippers!

Pruned Basil that is now wiped out from recent low temps.

Ok, so the 3 nights of "below 32F" temperatures have passed here in Arizona (Dec 30th, 31st, and January 1st nights), and maybe your plants are as damaged as mine despite your best efforts to preserve them, but DO NOT prune back the damaged plants yet! 

Wait until
- all the danger of another frost is past (Spring)
- the damage to each plant is clearly 'sealed off' by the remaining living plant, and new growth is visible beneath or adjacent to the existing damage
Yes, the damage may be ugly, and it might bother you (as it does me), but every reliable bit of horticultural advice I've read (here, here, here, and here) clearly says to wait to prune.  Pruning re-opens wounds and makes plants more vulnerable to further damage.  Pruning also stimulates growth hormone in plants, and drives them to put out new shoots which can be severely damaged if the weather gets cold again.

Previously glorious Honeysuckle

Also, I noticed, the plant damage in my backyard was relatively minor on the mornings of the 31st and 1st, when the dew points were down in the teens. But on the morning of the 2nd, when the night time temperatures were HIGHER than they were on the previous 2 nights, the damage was MORE severe.  My theory on this, is that it is NOT the temperature variable alone that matters, but rather the temperature combined with the relative humidity (the dew point).
--------- min Temp --- Dew Point
Dec 30th     38                27  
Dec 31st     32                17
Jan 1st        30                16
Jan 2nd       32                22 (minor frost seen on walls and leaves)
Jan 5th        37                34 (actual frost seen on street parked car wind shields)

As the Dew Point increased, and the ambient temperature decreased (see the graphs at each link above, on the green and red lines) the propensity for FROST increased.  Dec 30th and 31st were colder, but there was no actual deadly-to-plants ice crystals visible on the foliage.  January 1st, you could see small amounts of white frost on the cinder block border walls, and tiny flecks of white on some leaves, prior to the sun melting them.  January 2nd morning, the plant damage was not just decimation (one out of ten) but much more widespread.  So it ain't the dry bulb temperature, it's the wet bulb temperature, the dew point, that really matters here in the desert in the winter, combined with a cold ambient.  Take the moisture out of the air, and the plant won't be attacked from the outside.  Lower the temperature enough to crystallize the water internal to the plant's structure, and you can rupture the rigid cell walls from the inside-out, but this takes longer to do than external ice formation..

Some aloe froze, others adjacent did not.

Hibiscus is 90% lost.

New Lemon shoots, burnt by frost

Protecting the aloe flowers didn't matter.

Lantana is 95% lost

Kill The Reasonable Moderates?

Steve Inskeep interviews (link here) Rashid Rahman, editor of Pakistan's Daily Times after the funeral and burial of Punjab province Governor Salman Taseer who was killed by a cowardly fundamentalist assassin - shot repeatedly in the back with an AK-47.  The proud, deranged, grossly misguided - and perhaps insane -  assassin failed miserably in his sworn duty as a body guard to protect the governor, and decided instead to narrowly interpret the Koran as he saw fit, murdering a respected, elected official, who he judged as being a defender of "blasphemers against Islam."

This is akin to a "Christian [TM]" sniper shooting a gynecologist who gives abortions, an IRA bomber murdering a policeman, a Nazi SS member killing a Jew, or a Sunni killing a Shia (whom the most radically fundamentalist Wahhabi Sunnis consider heretics).  It's madness.  Pure, evil, visceral human hatred, fueled by misguided fundamentalist religion.  Except this time, instead of just an individual, this inept, disloyal, cowardly, pathetic, sad little boy who thought he was a man killed a vocal, moderate leader.  Maybe the moderate majority of main stream Pakistanis who can no longer stomach their vocal fundamentalist minority country-men will start to stand up against such violent extremism.  Or maybe, the assassin will be let go with a slap on the wrist, with friends in the ISI.

Papaya? Papay-no.

Before Christmas, I was shopping for Mexican Mangoes at Costco, and found none - Northern Hemisphere growing season was over, only South American growers offered Mangoes and others fresh produce.  Not wanting to encourage high carbon foot print transcontinental fruit consumption, I did not purchase the Peruvian Mangoes Costco had.

Costco DID have Papaya from Belize.  They were HUGE.  That's an 8 inch (203 mm) blade shown in the photo to the left, on my largest Schnitzelbank (cutting board).  I'd never brought or prepared a papaya before, so I contacted my friend Dr.Claudia, who used to summer in Columbia as a child for suggestions.  To my surprise, Dr.C didn't like papaya either - though she does share my love of mango - but she contacted her mother who is a strong papaya advocate.


Her advice:
- Don't eat the bitter skin, though it Does have significant health benefits.
- Don't eat the bitter seeds
- Cut up the pink-orange meaty pulp into bite sized pieces
- Serve with other fruit (which initially confused me... since mango is great all by itself).  Honey or other sweet toppings are optional.
- Enjoy the health benefits of eating papaya

The proteolytic enzymes which are rich in papaya assist in digestion.  My reasonable acupuncturist, who is a vegetarian but understands not everyone wants to be one or can be one also recommends eating papaya or taking papaya enzyme tablets after eating meat.  Many Thai restaurants shred the skins of papaya to make "salad" which has a nearly instantaneous and powerful effect of sometimes sending non-Thai diners like myself directly to the rest room, it works so well in "aiding digestion", so I was careful to skin off all the fibrous skin.

So I got the massive fruit all chopped up while Dr Desert Flower was at work and our son was visiting / recuperating with us in our home, and prepared several bowls of fruit salad using some canned Trader Joe's mandarin oranges (from Spain, not from China) I had in the back of the pantry, and a bag of frozen cubed mango which I'd nearly forgotten we had in the bottom of the freezer, bought over a year ago.  Having no whipped cream, I opted for a dollop of Cool Whip on each bowl.

How well did it work?  Eh.  Dr Desert Flower wouldn't finish hers, and picked out the pink papaya pieces.  Our son said succinctly "It tastes like medicine".  Honestly, I had to agree with him.

The sweetest part of the fruit, immediately adjacent to the seed pocket cavity, were "slightly sweet" and palatable.  Once you moved a 1/2 inch away from the center, the meat was bitter, and unpleasant.  yes, it's very possible this was not the world's most ripe papaya, but I'd let it sit for 3 weeks, immediately beside the bananas to share the ethylene oxide out-gassing in a futile attempt to hasten the ripening.  Somewhere between harvest and kitchen, my papaya was dropped, as evidenced by a dark bruised area that began to locally "rot" in a one inch oval, so waiting to cut it up was not an option.

I scooped out the remaining papaya pieces, and put them on a plate under the hummingbird feeders, hoping to entice the Gila Woodpecker who frequents our feeders to enjoy the tropical fruit.  He showed no interest in the plate of pink pulp, and after 3 weeks of 'drying in the Arizona air', defeated, I tossed the mummified papaya-turned-desiccant into the trash heap.

Mangoes? Yes.  Papaya? Papay-No.  I won't be attempting another papaya culinary creation again.

Monarchs at the DBG

On this chilly Tuesday morning here in the desert, thought it would be nice to share some warmth and beauty.

No, I Must Not Read This

I am sorry, but when I hear "You Must Read This" on NPR, I cringe, steel myself, and rail against most of which the author who is speaking says.  Sure, some of the books they mention are good books if you like fiction (primarily, what they talk about it fiction), but "must read" ?  Who is NPR, or any author, to tell me what I Must and Must Not read?  I'll read whatever I would like to read, or care to read, but rarely will I ever read what I am told I "must read". 

The concept of promoting good books and interesting authors is fine, but do not tell me I "must read" something.  MAYBE someone originally meant this to be "tongue in cheek", but I've heard dozens of authors inthe afternoon promote their favorite "must reads" and they seem so myopically focused as to actually believe the imperative, "you must!" - a myopic author?  Yeah, who'd have thought there were any of those.

Blue Sky Mining

While I was doing Yoga in the back yard poolside just after Christmas, I snapped this photo as I reflected back at how during the three years I visited China ('99-01) I never once saw a clear blue sky in that country.  Here in Phoenix, where we have abundant sunshine - as well as abundant desert wind blown dust and 4 or so million cars driving around - we still have beautiful blue skies over-head.  Some days, sure, there's temperature inversions and the snog near the horizon is pretty thick, but over head, one can still see BLUE, not gray, or haze, or overwhelming pollution.

When I am in a transcontinental flight, up around 35K or 39K feet, I always try and spot "the horizon" to see if it is distinguishable.  So far, in the US and in Europe, I've been able to "find it" most of the time.  In China, if you were below the clouds of smog, you could never tell where the ground was, much less the horizon, and if you were above the clouds (like on a Hong Kong to Chengdu flight), the amount of sunlight being reflected back up was blinding, causing air travelers to reflexively wince and immediately close their window shades. 

I hope the new Republican Congress majority doesn't roll back the hard fought environmental legislation that helps to keep the skies in America blue, and "relatively" free of smog - compared to our Chinese counterparts.

Perhaps By The 7th Washing?

Recently, I tried to "support the little guy" and go with Seventh Generation's automatic dishwasher gel instead of the usual Palmolive we typically use. Target carries it, and Colgate-Palmolive is a huge multi-national that is not hurting for profits (15 Billion in revenue and 3.73 Billion in profits)m and I've always had a "soft spot" for the under-dog (like The Cubs, and usually Da Bears), so I thought "Why Not?"

Well, in our GE dishwasher, using Arizona water treated by our water softener, washing our normal dirty dishes, Seventh Generation Does Not Work.  Avocados, left over egg residue, cheese residue, microwaved or not, anything that has not been pre-washed by hand in the sink goes through a full dishwasher cycle - perhaps even 2 cycles - and comes out nearly as dirty as it went in.   I have no love of "pre-washing" dishes, that's why I have an automatic dishwasher.  And besides, pre-washing them uses up more water and more energy (to heat the water) and time.  So I declare Seventh Generation dishwashing gel, in our home, with out dishwasher, a failure.

If you'd like the 9/10ths full container, and it works well for you, let us know.  We'll be more than happy to give it to you.  I picked up a new low phosphorous Palmolive container last week at Target, and it once again works great.

Unsupervised Children Will Be Eaten

At the "Welcome Center" on I-10 as you cross over from California into Arizona, there's this lovely little sign:

We found this to be "scary" the first time we ever drove into Arizona in the summer of 2007.  Now, we see it as amusing and perhaps practical.  Though we've never seen a scorpion or poisonous snake in our yard, we have seen 4 and 6 foot diamond back rattle snakes in the Mayo Clinic parking lot, trying to get warm on the black top on a cool Fall evening, and one of our neighbors did find a dead scorpion in one of their planters.  Though I hiked all over the Gila Mountain range in South Mountain Park, just north of the Gila River, I never once saw a Gila Monster.  I Have been bitten by a black widow here in Arizona, but heck, we had black widows back in South Carolina too!

...and if you want to walk your dog, off a leash, at a Interstate Rest Stop, make sure you've got a wide array of anti-venom, for various snakes, lizards, spiders, and scorpions for your precious little pup. 

Green Eyed Obese Geriatric Lady

Dr Desert Flower's 16 pound geriatric paranoid cat - afraid of her own shadow, door bells, children, foot steps, etc - was lounging at the foot of the bed last weekend, when the setting sun hit her eyes "just right". 

She's almost a Russian Blue, but her eyes are green - and she has no pedigree papers being a shelter rescue.  If she wasn't so paranoid, and obsessed with suckling her own nipples LOUDLY (usually while we are trying to sleep) due to being taken from her mother before she was fully weaned (our Bloomington IN Vet Sherri once guessed) won, she'd be an awesome cat.  Luckily DDF doesn't hear the feline slurping suckling... lol!

The cat's eye color inspired me to look up Sugar Loaf's "Green Eyed Lady" for future reference here.  Sweet base line, but the drums are lacking and the guitar, anemic. Gotta love the jammin' 1970s electric organ!

Palm Springs Gayborhood Sunday Brunch

The day after Christmas, Dr Desert Flower and I drove from La Quinta to Palm Springs, to seek out a delicious brunch.  We had our radar set for Cheeky's (as in Cheeky Monkey) due to the positive Yelp reviews, but they were closed on December 26th.  Luckily, Jake's was open, just 2 doors down, and we were early enough to Just Preempt the Sunday Brunch lunch.
 
Now keep in mind, this was our first time to Palm Springs ever, and while we are familiar with Phoenix's Central Gayborhood, we'd never knew that Palm Springs had such a vibrant Gayborhood as well.  the weather was a lil chilly - in the upper 50s and lower 60s, but not unpleasantly so.  Jake's was busy, but Bruce Bloch (proprietor) was doing a wonderful job of keeping his guests' beverages refilled, complimentary cookies and treats flowing, and bills arriving promptly.  The service was customer centric, the food delicious with generous portions (and relatively low carb, when choosing the '3 eggs any way you want them') and not expensive at all for a Sunday Brunch. The Mighty Lead tea was organic and sustainable. - we were sort of glad that Cheeky's was closed in retrospect.  Only complaint was the one stall unisex bathroom, which did not afford enough capacity for the coffee and tea filled customers - though the rest room was artfully decorated! =)

After a leisurely brunch, we sauntered down the street (California 111 Business) and crossed to visit Café Chocolate Palm Springs - an amazing chocolate shop where the fine chocolates were little pieces of art.  This chocolate shop sits beside a place called "Corridor", which is a breezeway leading to a hidden courtyard.  As we walked into the sunny courtyard, Dr Desert Flower and I became immediately aware of our obvious heterosexuality.  We were not bears, or in leather, or walking our little fru-fru-doggies, or lounging happily with our life partner having a pleasant picnic on the grass - add a head dressed Indian and a Construction Worker and all the Village People would have been there.  It was a nice little microcosm, and we did not feel "out of place" or "ostracized" in any way, but as we walked into just fabulous "fabulous gifts for fabulous people" and I saw a copy of the Penis Pokey Activity Book prominently displayed, I could not contain my laughter.  Yes, they had all the ripped washboard abs fire-fighter calendars, and artys posters, hip music, hilarious cards full of innuendo and such, but we did not purchase any items as we browsed, it was a very amusing shop.

So while La Quinta appears to be populated with many older, conservative, golfing type of people, Palm Springs has a healthy population of Sunday Brunch goers who are less elderly, more fashionable, much more eclectic, friendly, and apparently much more tolerant...and way so fabulous.