fidlmath

Diana the Spider Wrangler

Kitties

Last night we played a game of get the squirrel-tailed, feathered thing on a stick.  If you can come up with a better name, please do.  Anyhow here are some of their reactions - I wore me out and the boys were still rarin' to go.  Nosedive in a moment of inaction.  Emmy saying something like "Ye Gods, not again!"







Then there's King Voodoo with his new hat?  Finally, Milo waiting patiently for it to come a bit closer.
















                                                                               

posted by: mafidl at July 19, 2008 11:33 | link | comments (11) |
kitties

and again

posted by: mafidl at July 17, 2008 00:45 | link | comments |

In case you also missed this

Thanx to friend, R for emailing this to me. So what do you think?

posted by: mafidl at July 17, 2008 00:26 | link | comments (1) |

Beauty to counteract the sadness.

A friend, R, sent me this beautiful song/video from YouTube - hope you enjoy it:

posted by: mafidl at July 11, 2008 23:07 | link | comments (1) |

RIP Don S. Davis

posted by: mafidl at July 11, 2008 23:06 | link | comments (4) |

Home again jiggety-jig

Here are some more pictures from my trip.  On the left is a typical southern Utah landscape, with a red butte in the background, junipers and in the foreground, a pinyon pine.  To the right is a pair of old cottonwood trees in Capitol Reef National Park.






















Then there are birds' nests in the red rock, and, finally, daughter L's cat Wally peeking out of his new cube

posted by: mafidl at July 10, 2008 21:18 | link | comments (8) |

1 day to go

Thursday afternoon we drove down to Torrey, Utah, which is almost bordering Capitol Reef National Park, my favorite of Utah's group of national parks and other beautiful areas.  I doubt there is an area of Utah that isn't beautiful in it's own way.  We got to watch a small, but very nice, 4th of July parade this morning - why a day late, I'm not sure - but fun.  The last thing in the parade was a camel! A Bactrian, to be precise.  We had several lovely, mostly peaceful walks with daughter J's dog, Chewie Snapdog Demon Dog, whose lineage definitely includes Beagle, pointer of some sort, jackrabbit, goat and, possibly, lemur.  He's 1 year old - we celebrated his birthday with a party earlier this week - fun.  Daughter L went for a jog yesterday and saw a jackrabbit [large, muscular and definitely not your cuddly fluffy domestic bunny] and some interesting birds.  Today she took a walk along a creek and flushed a fawn - no doe apparent, and we're hoping it was OK.  Then we wound up in a combination bookstore and coffee shop in Torrey called Robber's Roost - very cool.  We sat outside, surrounded by large pines, fir trees, cottonwoods - lovely setting - and got to watch several humming birds at a feeder.  I'm going to try putting one out come late Fall in Miami, when they come down for the winter.  Then as we meandered back up to Salt Lake City, it rained! in the desert, yet.  Most often Mother Nature teases the desert with something called Virga [Sp?] which is rain that never reaches the ground.  As in the picture below - later I'll probably find some pics that I like better - but I took a total of some 200+ on this trip, so have to week through them and edit/discard a lot.

Here is Hidden Falls, after which our motel in Torrey was named.  To get to where we could view it,  we had to circumvent a locked gate in a fence with a sign saying no trespassing, then go over a beaten down barbed wire fence and down a somewhat dicey path - which had, thank goodness, a very solid hand rail.

posted by: mafidl at July 06, 2008 01:09 | link | comments (3) |

9 days, 6 to go

Greetings from Salt Lake City.  I'm having a mostly restful time with my 2 daughters J and L.  My cousin K and her husband B have also been here for about a week attending a conference of the Undersea Hyperbaric Medical Society - his field and she also works in the organization.  K took several tours in the area, including one of SLC area that I would love to take.  She has an excellent memory and learned a lot of info about SLC that daughter L, who's lived here on and off for 13 years, didn't know.

For instance: State St is the longest, widest street in the U.S., running for 11 miles from the Temple area south.  It is so wide, as are most of the other main streets here, because the founding fathers decided that anyone should be able to turn around a wagon pulled by 4 oxen, since it is, I'm sure, hard to get oxen to back around.  City Creek Canyon is the first of a series of canyons going off into the Wasatch Mountains as you head South from SLC, several of them [Big Cottonwood, Little Cottonwood] are home to some of the most famous ski resorts in Utah [e.g. Alta and Snowbird are in Little Cottonwood Canyon]. Anyhow, City Creek runs under State Street!

The runoff from snow in the mountains is mostly channeled into huge reservoirs under the city, which is why, although it's very dry here most of the time, they don't ever have water restrictions, which are becoming a frequent reality in South Florida.

The state bird of Utah is the California seagull - which mostly lives at the Great Salt Lake.  It seems that after the first winter here, when they nearly starved to death, the residents planted crops.  However, there are crickets [?] who swarm every 10 years and that was their year.  They were munching away at the crops, the Mormons were afraid of losing them and starving, so they prayed and prayed and prayed and "lo and behold" seagulls appeared before them and ate every one of those pesky critters up. [Of course the alternate story that my daughter heard was that they imported the seagulls, but who knows.]

One thing that I think is neat is the fact that wild critters occasionally show up in the city.  When Laura lived further West, but still in the hills of the city, we saw 2 deer when we were returning home one evening.  Last week a moose wandered down and had to be corraled and removed.  3 days ago about 4AM, J's dog, Chewie, got agitated, jumped on and off the bed trying to see something outside, ran into the other room and went through the same routine, finally to the doggie door at back, but instead of going outside, stood about halfway out with his tail down between his legs - indicating clearly that he was scared.  I put the back light on, couldn't see anything, but heard howling.  When I described it to L later she said it wasn't high enuf for coyotes - so probably a dog.

I am going to include a picturse of J's dog Chewie and L's cat, Wally.

Also, SLC is launching an amazing project, to replace overpasses on I-80.  The reason it is amazing? They are constructing the bridges in one place and then moving them to where they're to be installed. 
We were able to drive down this one street 4 days or so ago, but the next day when I was on my own, the road was blocked while they attempted to install the overpass - but there were problems and they had to take it back - it sounds to me like it's similar to moving the spaceshuttle to the launch pad.

But seriously, folks, I've only gotten lost here twice - then acquired a functional map. The firt time, the paper map I had ripped in a cross shape, right over the street I needed so I couldn't read it.  Believe it or not, NN went online to Google maps, figured out whre I had to turn.  The frustrating part was that I knew that I was circling around and no more than 3 blocks from J's house the whole time.  Did I tell you that I am directionally challenged?  And BTW, SLC is or should be fanastically easy to get around.  The roads heading north or south are labelled E or W depending on where you are in regrd to the Temple, and those heading east or west are labelled N or S ,similarly acording to where you are with respect to the Temple. So the location of a store might be 500S and 500E and cn be found pretty easily  -unless you're me with no map.

posted by: mafidl at June 30, 2008 12:28 | link | comments (5) |
travel, family, pets, bridges, critters, frustration

Our Fearless Leader

I tried to get this directly from the Miami Herald online, but finally had to scan it and I'm hoping I'm not violating the cartoonist's rights.  Anyhow, it is so cute, I couldn't resist. As you can probably read - the cartoonist is an Aussie. Yeay!


Homestretch - giving test today, grading tonight and tomorrow morning so can hand it back Wednesday and review for the final that is Thursday then grade finals and oh yes in between that and appointments, must pack, wash, make lists, buy food for my kitties, etc - so I can leave Saturday. Yeayyyyy!  Finally - even if only for 2 weeks.
Forgot - was wondering about brown vs white eggs, since my Mom usually bought brown, so found this interesting article re brown, white, organic and cage-free eggs.
TTFN

posted by: mafidl at June 17, 2008 09:21 | link | comments (5) |
teaching, politics, cooking, excitement

In case you missed this

Here is Keith Olbermann responding to John McCain's claims about Iraq:

posted by: mafidl at June 13, 2008 17:18 | link | comments (1) |

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