When I was growing up, living in my parents’ house, life unfolded in a pattern and with some predictable regularity. In the evening, when dinner was over, Dad would settle down to read the paper, while my brothers, my Mom and I conducted whatever complicated negotiations were required to arrange the evening’s television viewing schedule. Very often, all five of us would be gathered together – paper being read, some sitcom like Barney Miller on the tube – in the little family room that sat next to the kitchen.
The Scene Tonight
The kitchen was at the back of the house and there were no streetlights nearby; as a result, there was little or no ambient light streaming through the kitchen window or the patio door that led out into the yard. For some reason, though, I remember a light on the Jenn Air stove very frequently being left on and bathing the room in a soft, warm glow.
Growing up with my brothers and my parents, we were fortunate enough to enjoy happy times. When I think of that house and the time I spent living there, I have fond memories. For some reason, one of the many mental images that springs to mind when I think of those days is the kitchen, illuminated in muted tones by the stove light.
Thirty-one years later, I found myself washing up some of the after-dinner dishes and putting some things away in my own kitchen. As I dried my hands on a towel and clicked off the light switch on the wall, I turned to look over my shoulder as I was walking out of the kitchen and heading to my own family room. We don’t have a Jenn Air, but there is a microwave suspended over our stove with a built-in light on the bottom. it was on and casting a dull but pleasant yellowish glow on the surface of the cupboards and the stovetop below.
I smiled and headed in to the family room to watch some television with Spouse.
No time for reasoned analysis again this year, I have too much to accomplish before settling down in front of the big game.
I was initially leaning toward the Cardinals, on the theory that nobody expected them to beat the Steelers, which makes them a mortal lock to do so. On further reflection, however, it seems to me that a large portion of the public does in fact expect the Cardinals to beat the Steelers, probably based upon some version or another of the exact same train of thought; such a state of affairs turns the underdog into the favourite, and the upset into an expected event.
I feel confident, therefore, that this will not happen: Steelers 23, Cardinals 10.
(Also, it seems to me that everyone knows that the Cards can’t run the ball at the best of times, while the Steelers are the best in the league at stopping the ground game. That moves the battle on to well-defined, easily predictable territory – through the air. The Steelers should be able to plan routes to pressure the quarterback and disrupt the Cards’ passing attack, and should have plenty of opportunity to use those schemes, with Arizona frequently facing third-and-long. Lots of short Arizona drives should leave the Steelers with a relatively short field and – injuries to Hines Ward notwithstanding – a chance to build a lead, further enhancing the pressure on the Cardinals to abandon any semblance of a running game. If the Steelers lose, I think special teams play on the part of the Cardinals will have played a huge role in the game – turnovers forced on kick coverage, kicks run back for a score, etc.)
Update: Right result, wrong score, closer than I thought. Ben Roethlisberger did not have a very good game and the Steelers benefited, I thought, from some generous calls by the officials. Exciting game, though.
Spouse and I headed out today with Popeye in tow for a walk in the winter woods. There are a lot of pretty well-known birding areas not far from the borders of Juniorvania, perfect destinations for wintry perambulations. The F.W.R. Dickson Wilderness Area is a beautiful little plot of land that is the site of some ongoing ornithological research:
Just nearby is Wrigley Corners Outdoor Education Centre. As part of their education and research programs, they have been banding the chickadees that come to the feeders here in the park. They use a combination of bands, both silver aluminum and coloured plastic ones, to create a unique colour combination that can be easily visually identified at a distance. This allows you to follow individual birds to learn more about their behaviour patterns and movements. No two birds in a study are ever given the same band combination, unless it’s known the previous owner of a combination is deceased. Band colours are read from top to bottom, with the bird’s left leg first, then the right.
Spouse read about the area in a little book Santa brought her for Christmas. We were intrigued by the write-up, which indicated that the chickadees in this area were known to feed from visitors’ outstretched hands. That little incentive was enough for us to gather together a bag of seed, the snowshoes (just in case) and a pile of photographic equipment and set out for an enjoyable afternoon.
It was a terrific afternoon; the snow was falling softly (giant round flakes), the place was virtually deserted (though we did see one other group, a man with his two young children) and the birds were very co-operative indeed.
= Two in the Bush, Apparently
Thanks for the Seed!
We saw plenty of friendly little chickadees, both rose and white breasted nuthatches, a couple of downey woodpeckers, a pair of cardinals, a cedar waxwing and even a couple of robins that looked like basketballs with wings.
Snowshoes weren’t necessary, so they stayed in the trunk. I could have used some kind of a field bag, preferably of the waterproof/resistant variety in which to stow the camera and lenses. Without this key piece of gear, I was forced to carry the camera in my hands. I was worried about snow accumulating on the body of the camera and then melting, as it is my view that water and consumer electronics do not mix. I was convinced I was going to lose a lens cap. There was also a concern – not insubstantial, and based upon solid historical data – that I might lose my footing while striding along the path and go tumbling to the ground, with the attendant consequences for the camera. I ended up cradling the thing like a football and tucking it under an armpit, even shifting it from side to side depending upon the type of terrain I was traversing and the consequent likelihood of a port or starboard side tumble, all of which felt like some kind of weird naturalist tribute to Super Bowl Sunday.
The birds are so tame, they really are prepared to come right up to you if you display any kind of intention to feed them, and sometimes even when you don’t. I got the first chickadee of the day in my hand while crossing a boardwalk-type bridge; Spouse and Popper had gone up ahead a bit (Poppy doesn’t like seeing through the things he’s walking on, things like grates or decks, so he had to be urged along by Spouse). Spouse had the bag of seed, so I had nothing to offer anyone, but I noticed a little flock of chickadees gathering in the bushes at the side of the boardwalk. I held out an outstretched palm and – in less than thirty seconds – one brave little fellow figured I looked trustworthy enough to serve as a temporary perch.
Later, when we reached another boardwalk-type area, there didn’t seem to be many birds around. Nonetheless, we stood there for a moment, palms outstretched and filled with little piles of seed. Within a minute or two, there was a cluster of birds that had gathered, flitting from tree to tree, that began to swoop in and feed. After a few minutes of feeling the unmistakable thrill of feeling the tiny creatures alight on our hands, select a yummy seed and then dart back to a nearby branch, we moved on a few dozen yards. We noticed that the flock of birds was essentially following us, the little birds hopscotching from branch to branch along the path, staying roughly a constant distance behind us. Of course we rewarded them with some more seed.
Close enough to touch
Rose-breasted nuthatch in flight
Again, after a few minutes we moved along – and the birds again followed us, so we fed them more. That cycle repeated itself maybe three or four more times as we headed out of the woods and back towards our car.
I really couldn’t believe how fearless the little birds became. I noticed that while Spouse was standing with palm outstretched feeding a group of birds that were perching in a small bush in front of her, there were at least a half-dozen birds in another bush right behind her – no more than eight or ten inches from her back – that were curiously looking on and waiting for an opportunity to join in the fun. On another occasion, I had stopped on the path and attached my long lens in an effort to photograph the basketball-sized robins. I had the camera raised to look through the viewfinder and was adjusting the focus on the barrel of the lens with my other hand when one little chickadee swooped in and landed first on my lens-adjusting hand, then on the lens, then hopped back to my hand. All the while, I continued adjusting focus and I was even calling out to Spouse to get her attention; the little bird stayed put even while I clicked off a couple of shots of his woodland friends.
Spouse and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and resolved to return with family members in tow. For sure, we thought, our nieces would get a kick out of hand-feeding the birds. Even more likely to enjoy this, we think, are our parents. But the happiest of all about today’s walk in the woods? This guy:
Credit me this much: tonight, I did the food preparation thing without a recipe. Yup, workin’ without a net.
No don’t go getting too excited, it wasn’t anything terribly complicated. Tonight’s offering was tandoori chicken, which I made by lathering a pre-mixed tandoori paste (store bought) with some plain yoghurt (as per the directions on the tandoori paste bottle), marinading a couple of chicken breasts in the resultant mixture and then cooking the breasts in the oven. That last thing is what I did without recipe details; not exactly Sorbonne material, but a significant step forward in terms of my own self-confidence in the culinary arena. I chose 375 for the oven temperature, principally because that seems to be a common request for chicken-cooking recipes, turned the breasts after ten minutes and tested them for completion after twenty-two.
There was still a wee hint of redness internally, which could have been a signal of “not cookedness” or could have been a result of the hue of the tandoori paste. I took no chances and fired the breasts back in the oven for another six minutes. When I removed and checked them that time, they were moist – and obviously done.
I think it was quite delicious. I augmented this small culinary victory by hitting the (new) elliptical trainer for twenty minutes tonight. This was my first attempt at completing an entire exercise routine program, and I am proud to say that I managed to finish up without throwing up.
I apologize for things being a little slow around here – the last few days have been busy at work and all my leisure time is being taken up, believe it or not, writing a script for an educational video that is going to be made by a committee that I sit on. The screenplay that I have to come up with is simple and prosaic in the extreme, but I am learning about the tyranny of the blank page nevertheless. I am using an awesome freeware tool to help me organize the project and format the script – it’s called Celtx, and it’s available (for free) here. The package seems quite powerful – it has features that allow you to organize all the various elements of an audio/video production (like the characters, props, locations, sets, shots and so on) as well as automatically formatting the finished product according to an industry-standard template. It’s even got tools for converting stageplays to screenplays (and vice versa) and tools for compiling a comic book script. Well worth exploring, if you’re at all interested in creating your own audio-video content.
I meant to post about this right after Christmas, but I kept forgetting to take the necessary photograph. Once I finally took the picture, the immediacy of the holiday season had passed and I found myself hemming and hawing about whether this was still of interest. Better late than never, says the old aphorism, so here ’tis:
One of the many Christmas gifts that the Spouse/Santa connection secured for me this year was the following:
Frank's Incense
I am still awaiting the delivery of the gold and myrrh, and the arrival of any Oriental kings. Perhaps therein lies a message.
LIstening to CBC radio this morning on the way in to work, and there was mention of some concert or other taking place at Hugh’s Room in Toronto. Spouse told me that she had been to Hugh’s Room once, several years ago, to see some “singing fishermen group”
My quizzical look was a silent entreaty for more information. She told me they were “West Coast clappy” guys.
I am unfamiliar with this particular genre of music (part of my brain is wondering whether the said performance involved Captain Highliner, Tupac Shakur and chlamydia). Can anyone enlighten me?
Okay, so you’re the Chief Justice of the United States of America. You have a sweet job. You’ve got a nifty black robe, an excellent seat for the festivities, and exactly one function to discharge for the entire day. That function consists of correctly reciting thirty-five extremely well-known words: the Oath of Office for the President of the United States.
Now, some people are nervous speaking in public. If that’s you, and you’re the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, don’t worry. You can take comfort in the fact that 35 words isn’t really that much to remember. To put it in perspective, every barfly in every tavern in the world can belt out the entire first verse of Stairway to Heaven, all 48 words of it, verbatim. Even with a full-on snootful of loudmouth soup. So thirty-five words isn’t really that much. Thirty-five words is definitely manageable, right? Hell, you might not even be that hammered when you have to recite those words to the incoming President.
The big moment arrives, and you stand up on the stage in front of a live audience of a million or more people. Billions more are watching by television throughout the world. Here is what you do: incredibly, your mind starts to wander while you’re in the middle of discharging this simple little task. It’s hard to say how exactly these things happen. Perhaps you’re daydreaming about the day not so long ago that the New Guy had this to say when he voted against giving you that sweet job and the nifty robe:
The bottom line is this: I will be voting against John Roberts’ nomination. I do so with considerable reticence. I hope that I am wrong. I hope that this reticence on my part proves unjustified and that Judge Roberts will show himself to not only be an outstanding legal thinker but also someone who upholds the Court’s historic role as a check on the majoritarian impulses of the executive branch and the legislative branch.
Maybe you’re a little choked about your buddy W. and his puppetmaster heading out of town for good; nobody to really relive the good times with, y’know? Maybe you just got a little too wrapped up in clicking off some snapshots of the whole shindig with your point-and-shoot digital camera (jeez guys, I thought we were all bringing cameras on to the podium – was it really noticeable that I was doing that?) Anyway somehow, not fifteen words into the thing, you find your gums flapping away as if by themselves. Strangely, your renegade mouth has the President “to” the United States (instead of “of”) and that good ‘ol adverb “faithfully” seems to have very capriciously wandered off by itself near the end of an increasingly puzzling and unfamiliar sentence. Something’s not right. The New Guy – slick orator, smart guy, never seems to lose the thread of what he’s saying – is looking back at you, right hand raised, left hand on the Lincoln Bible. He has that “seriously, that’s the best you can do?” look on his face, and you are suddenly aware that you have, as the New Guy is so fond of saying, “at this moment” and “in this place”, shat the bed. You back up ten and punt; repeat the last sentence one more time with feeling and think to yourself, “do you suppose that next time I should write this fucking thing down in advance?”
The New Guy then takes the podium and rips off an eighteen-minute inaugural address without even once losing the flow of his moving and inspirational words. Dude just totally made you look like an idiot. A drooling fucking idiot. You can hear your brother judges laughing their asses off in chambers, pounding their knees in spasms of hilarity: seriously, eighteen minutes? And you screwed up thirty-five pre-ordained words?
When the ceremony is done and you’re putting your nifty black robe away in the garment bag, you pause to explain – for the eighty-seventh time in about a half an hour – to one of the many mucky-mucks in attendance just exactly what happened up there. You both laugh about it, but everyone who comes up to you has that look in their eyes; all of you know that you crapped the bed earlier today and incredibly, you all try to pretend that no one really noticed.
Then you head back to your judicial office, sit down at your desk and wait for the first chance to express your opinion – your judicial opinion, that is – about the New Guy and his policies.
Spouse and I were late going to work this morning, as planned – Spouse had a date with a masked man intent on drilling holes in her teeth; meanwhile, I was waiting at home for delivery of some exercise equipment we ordered.
It was an odd start to the day, because the delivery truck driver was more than a little hesitant to bring his truck up the drive outside the house. Now, don’t take what follows as any suggestion that I would be able to do any better, but I had to immediately begin wondering about this guy’s level of skill. It seems to me that “maneuvering a very large vehicle around in unfamiliar surroundings and around obstacles” is pretty much the key member of the desired skill set for a delivery truck driver. Like I said, it’s not so much that I think I could do better than this guy – I don’t – but I have seen other truck drivers get their trucks up and down the drive without a hint of a problem, while navigating around more obstacles too. The fact that this guy apparently had like no confidence in his ability to avoid crushing the Probe – tucked away in its usual spot on the “gulch” side of the driveway – caused me no end of concern about this guy’s abilities. He gave off the aura less of a “driver” and more of a “bemused passenger.” The other thing that was weird about this guy was that he had this extremely thick Russian accent. Anyway, at 8:00 this morning, as it turned out, I was out front of the house in my pajamas helping this guy unload a giant box from the back of a truck that was parked part of the way up my driveway. All of these things – his furtive uncertainty, his thick accent, and the two of us struggling with a heavy load – left me feeling like a character from The Sopranos, struggling to conceal a body after a Monday morning whacking.
Once the delivery was safely in the house, our troubled teamster departed, and Spouse returned from the dentist, we were making some lunch when we heard a thump on one of the front windows. This particular thump, unfortunately, is all too recognizable to us after living almost a year in this house; it was the sound of a bird hurtling into one of the windows. Thankfully, most of the window strikes we get don’t seem to be fatal. I don’t think the birds generally get up enough speed to really hurt themselves. Anyway, we hear this type of thump rather frequently; we don’t, however, usually hear it coming from the front windows. A quick look through the window to the snow below revealed the wayward avian lying in the snow. He didn’t appear to be breathing, and was kind of planted face first in the snow, with one of his wings still extended awkwardly. Spouse opined that the bird, if still living, might be suffocating in the snow. I hurriedly put on my boots and headed outside, clambered through the garden (no mean feat with all the snow we’ve got) and scooped up the little creature in my hand. He perked right up but was obviously stunned; he turned his head to face me and managed to fold his wings back up, but was in no condition to fly. I had to pluck a feather that was sticking crazily out of one of his eye sockets. Spouse arrived in the nick of time with a shoebox lined with tissue paper. We put the little bird in the makeshift nest with a handful of black sunflower seeds (hey, who doesn’t want a snack after making an ass out of himself?) and left him alone on a table on the front porch. A few minutes later, Spouse saw the little bird fly somewhat erratically away and land in a tree.
When we were driving down Main Street on our way in to work, I spotted a guy leaning up against a lamp post. He had one arm extended up the side of the post high over his head and he was half bent at the waist. With his other arm, he was placing one finger to the right side of his nose. Too late, I recognized the gesture from a thousand hockey rinks across this great land, and just as we passed by his location, our eyes locked as he closed his mouth and exhaled abruptly, blowing the most massive piece of snot out of his left nostril that a person is ever likely to see. I am so glad I was there to chronicle the moment.
It was only a little after noon and I felt like I was living inside a David Lynch movie.
When we got home tonight, Spouse had plans to head out on a shopping excursion: with the cold weather upon us (and how), she had decreed that new boots and a particularly warm pair of “barn gloves” were needed for the nights she spends visiting Ralph.
That plan went sideways though, shortly after we arrived at home. She came and lay down on the couch and told me that she would not be going out tonight because she “felt a little funny.”
Ralphie and The Comedian.
So I asked her to tell me a joke. Between you and me, what she said next did NOT make me laugh.
A quick post today; I was back to work for the first time in three glorious weeks, and I have to admit that it only took about two hours of the chaos inherent in office life to get me pining nostalgically for my morning cup of tea in the living room with the cat purring contentedly on the back of the chair behind me. I will be calling it an early night tonight and trying not to get too exhausted in my first week back.
The video below is a brief animation I rendered after completing super3boy’s 19th blender tutorial, on the subject of domino physics. The animation shows a series of “dominoes” set up on a plane; the first domino falls over and knocks over the next one in sequence, causing a tower of dominoes to crash to the ground. It was remarkable how simple this was to create. All it took was some very basic modelling – creating and scaling a mesh cube, really – then copying the “domino” several times and placing it on the plane. Blender takes care of the rest; the physics of the virtual world are already coded in the software and all the (ahem) visual artist need do is designate the appropriate objects as “actors” in the scene to be animated. A brief key sequence starts the “game engine”, which is the piece of software that calculates the physical outcome of the scene you’ve created (in this case, tumbling dominoes) and – last but not least, a command to render the scene into the desired video format. It took only about five to ten minutes of my interaction with the computer to do this; the rest was taken care of by the software. I am flabbergasted. Blender is also capable of adding textures, lighting and shading effects to all of the objects (none of which are evident in the scene below, as I didn’t take the time to apply these effects), which is to say it’s capable of making the animation look a hell of a lot more realistic than the sequence below. Right now, I’m just astounded by the ease with which this sequence was created.
I am looking very much forward to using Blender more extensively in some video projects I have germinating in the recesses of my mind. I am especially anxious to explore the video compositing capabilities of the package, and to combine 3d effects created and rendered in Blender with actual video footage captured from live action cameras.
