Cop Car's Beat

Moving along

Wonderful Weather (2/17/2021):

By Tuesday (2/16/2021) morning we had accumulated about five inches of snow since Friday. During the previous night, our outside air temperature (OAT) equaled the -17F OAT that I recall having experienced in Kansas in about 1960. The Current Results: Weather and Science Facts website tells me that, as recently as February 10, 2011, we reached -17F, again. How soon I forgot. The website tells me,

"These records were observed at Eisenhower National Airport and go back to 1954. The lowest temperature measured during that time was -21 degrees Fahrenheit (-29 Celsius) on February 6, 1982."

Lowest Wichita temperatures in recent years

Min °F	Date	Min °C
2	March 05, 2019	-17
-2	January 01, 2018	-19
4	December 31, 2017 +	-16
-10	December 18, 2016	-23
0	January 07, 2015	-18
-5	January 06, 2014	-21
3	February 23, 2013	-16
7	December 29, 2012	-14
-17	February 10, 2011	-27
0	January 09, 2010	-18

Not living in this area during 1981-1989, I missed out on the -21F  OAT in 1982. I was living on the Gulf Coast of Florida's panhandle at that time.

Finally this afternoon, I got around to tackling the snow on our driveway. I do, after all, need to drive to the grocery store tomorrow. (Kudos to WalMart for automatically having rescheduled my pickup from Tuesday to Thursday when their online scheduling system was overwhelmed such that we customers could not reschedule for ourselves. One assumes that everyone with a scheduled Tuesday pickup was pushed back to days expected to be exhibiting better weather/street conditions.)

I never spent more than 11 minutes at a time and only went out thrice. My muscles are not accustomed to that sort of exercise, now, and I hate it when I cripple myself because I'm too stupid to pace myself. I'll do even more shoveling tomorrow morning - after it warms up a bit, but before my appointment at WalMart's little store.

The first photo (below) shows the results of my first two ventures out. That bare concrete is where my car will be required to back and turn to the street (to the right).

Next, I cleared some of the concrete in front of the garage doors that hide Hunky Husband's and my cars.

Emergency Supplies (2/17/2021):

Yesterday afternoon, a tiny package was delivered by FEDEX; but, today, FEDEX brought me a really important, heavy box: 14 pounds of safflower seed and 10 pounds of shelled peanuts for our birds. Yay!

Old Photographs (2/18/2021):

One of the photos that I scanned, today, was of my mother's basketball team. She attended country schools during her grades 1 through 10, then had to transfer to a larger school in a town down the road a piece. Whether she also played basketball in 11th or 12th grade, I'm not sure; but, I also scanned photos of the elder of Mom's two younger sisters with her basketball team from the larger school.

In the photo, below, my mother is holding the ball because they lined up by height and she was the shortest. I remember a few of these players, and the coach, from years later when I lived in that area. In fact, my first year or two were spent in a house whose yard abutted the schoolyard. I suspect that the "uniform" bottoms were bloomers - with elastic at the leg opening which is pushed up on the thigh. At least, our gym uniforms in the 1950s had elasticized legs that pushed up - a bit shorter than the ones shown.

ADDITION of 2/24/2021:

Joared gave me a thought. In seeking a photo that showed the gym clothes that my own generation of girls wore in high school, I had searched my yearbooks from 1954 and 1955. Aha! I have a yearbook from 1956 (with which class I should have been graduated had I not skipped 11th grade). The following image is a scan of a page from the 1956 yearbook which illustrates, nicely, the outfits that we wore in the mid 1950s. Since I attended school with these girls for several years, I know knew nearly all of the girls in the two photos. The girls who were seniors when the photos were taken, and who have survived, will be celebrating their 65th year reunion, this year.

Turkeys Making Tracks (2/19/2021):

Each day, early of a morning, our neighborhood's turkey flock left more tracks through the snow. We could follow the flock's movements after-the-fact, up and down and across our street; but, the most interesting patterns were left in our back yard.

Finally, a "clear" sidewalk (2/19/2021):

Now that we've finally reached an OAT that is above freezing, I deigned to clear the snow from our front walk. A man walking down the street to retrieve his mail from the mailbox cluster asked, "Would you like for me to do that for you?" I thanked him and explained that it was good exercise for me. Really, it's more fun than work since I limit what I do at one time - this stint's being limited to 14 minutes. (Working my way up.)

It is a waste of time to clear the sidewalk: no one uses it. I can't blame them. It is so much shorter to cut across the yard from the street to the front steps.

Money well spent

In my youth (which I consider to extend to a greater age than did it 50 years ago), I transferred schools during my senior year of college. The transfer was from University of Missouri School of Mines & Metallurgy¹ (MSM), basically an engineering school, to University of Wichita² (UW). The strange thing about WU was that, although they had a School of Engineering, as a physics major I matriculated into the School of Liberal Arts & Sciences. Woo hoo! In so doing, I lost most of the hours I had earned in "engineering" courses (10 semester-hours were allowed to transfer), I lost the minor in electrical engineering whose requirements I had completed (no minors allowed outside one's school), a bunch of non-technical (humanities) courses were required to be fulfilled in order to earn a degree in liberal arts & sciences, and a couple of humanities courses that had been accepted as substitutes for over-crowded required basic courses (one in economics, the other in English) at MSM were disallowed and the "required" basic courses were added to my requirements at UW. As I recall, by the time the dust settled, the part of my previous college work that would count toward my degree from WU amounted to but 118 semester hours. Yikes! (Please note that, in order to earn a BS degree at MSM at that time, I had to earn at least 150 semester hours of credited work.

I needed only four physics courses (12 semester hours) to complete my technical requirements for a BS from UW, but I needed to complete four semester hours of physical education (not offered to female students at MSM), introductory courses in public speaking, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and those basic courses in economics and English literature. Actually, I rather enjoyed some of those courses; but, tonight the money I spent taking the required English course - Introduction to American Literature - paid off. I got bragging rights, tonight.

Hunky Husband was watching some old episodes of Law & Order. I walked into the room in time to watch the last couple of minutes of one episode in which a sleazy lawyer was saying (my quote probably isn't exact), "Sometimes a guy has to dare to eat a peach." Ah, yes...from 1962 I recall The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock by T.S. Eliot. [Yes, the same man who wrote, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.] Of course, even though I claimed bragging rights for knowing about the poem, that bit of knowledge has come in useful down through the years. In the copy of the poem, below, I have high lighted the appropriate phrase.

The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

By T.S. Eliot

 

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question. . .                               10 Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" Let us go and make our visit.   In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.   The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,                               20 And seeing that it was a soft October night Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.   And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate;                                30 Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions And for a hundred visions and revisions Before the taking of a toast and tea.   In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.   And indeed there will be time To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?" Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—                               40 [They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"] My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin— [They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"] Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.   For I have known them all already, known them all; Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,                       50 I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room.   So how should I presume?   And I have known the eyes already, known them all— The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?                    60   And how should I presume?   And I have known the arms already, known them all— Arms that are braceleted and white and bare [But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!] Is it perfume from a dress That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.   And should I then presume?   And how should I begin?         .     .     .     .     . Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets              70 And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . . I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.         .     .     .     .     . And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?                  80 But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet–and here's no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.   And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while,                                             90 To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it toward some overwhelming question, To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all" If one, settling a pillow by her head,   Should say, "That is not what I meant at all.   That is not it, at all."   And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while,                                           100 After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— And this, and so much more?— It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say:   "That is not it at all,   That is not what I meant, at all."                                          110         .     .     .     .     . No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool.   I grow old . . . I grow old . . .                                              120 I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.   Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.   I do not think they will sing to me.   I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black.   We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown               130 Till human voices wake us, and we drown.                                                               [1915]

From a Virginia website0

 

¹ Now Missouri University of Science & Technology

² Now Wichita State University

Batting cleanup 2021Feb5

Cleaning up some of the items I've posted/commented in the past few days -

Yellow jackets, galore: 2020Feb3 - The more I look at the photos, the more I think those are honey bees rather than yellow jackets. As docile as they acted when I poked my camera among them, I can believe that. (Yellow jacket is on the left, below; honey bee, right; my photo, below the other two.)

It was confusing because it had been so long since I had seen a honey bee around here and because I've never seen them cart off bits of a corn kernel.

     
 

16 Escapees:  2020Feb4 - This morning, we were visited by all 16 turkey. When Hunky Husband and I counted, we arrived at 15; but, I can count 16 in the last photo (below). I had to lighten the photos a great deal because it was before sunup when the photos were taken. (So as not to flush the flock, the photos were taken through the kitchen window.)

It takes teamwork & Hunky Husband's 15 milliseconds of fame: 2021Feb4 - Hunky Husband just showed me his left arm where his first shot of COVID-19 vaccine had been administered. It has a faintly red area (below). Personally, I would attribute it to his having kept the little bandage on it until now. He may be a bit sensitive to the adhesive. Who knows? My own little bandage came off when I changed clothes upon arriving home from receiving the shot, so I have never been able to tell exactly where the needle went in - near my smallpox vaccination scar from 1941. My shoulder did give me a tiny twinge a few minutes ago when I was examining my own arm; but, I believe that to be from the axe wielding that I did Tuesday, hacking out a couple of small tree stumps. I can't replicate the twinge, now.

Yellow jackets, galore - Correction - Honey bees, galore

A couple of days ago, while it was rainy out and the birds weren't coming to our feeders, anyway, I put the bird seed feeders through the dishwasher. Yesterday, with a good day in the offing, I filled the seed feeders and installed them on their poles. Today, another sunny and even warmer day (it was 58 degrees F the last I looked), I noticed bunches of yellow jackets going into the ports on one feeder - the feeder that holds "junk" food that I happened to find in the cabinet but which I don't normally stock. That food is a mixture of "undesirable" seeds and even contains cracked corn. What's up? I took my little point-and-shoot camera out, held it above my head to take some photos, and snapped a few frames.

Putting the SD into its slot on my computer, the only frame that was even close to being in focus was the one displayed below. Most of the little bees (you're allowed to correct me if they are not yellow jackets) were out of range of the photo. I think the bees are carrying off bits of corn (doesn't the one on the right appear to be clutching a bit in its hind legs?) - to whence and why, I don't know. Perhaps someone can enlighten me?

 

Hunky Husband's 15 milliseconds of fame

Yesterday, at the Intrust Bank Arena, I spent nearly 40 minutes sitting in Hunky Husband's car, watching him inch his way toward the door on the way to getting his COVID-19 vaccination (1st shot). As I watched, there were two or three people lugging large cameras and tripods, photographing the waiting crowd. I meant to search online this morning to see if HH was in any of the posted photos. I forgot.

A few minutes ago, HH said, "I see that we didn't make the newspaper." He was holding this morning's Wichita Eagle. Contrary to HH's statement, he was in the photo on the front page - he just did not recognize himself from the rear. I would give you a link to the photo; but, although the online version is supposed to be included in our subscription to the printed newspaper, we've not been able to access the online version for the past couple of years - and don't care enough to work the problem. Below is a scan of the photo. What is not shown is the length of the line that snakes to the left, around a small parking lot. I got into line a few minutes later.

HH is the guy with the jacket collar that is partially turned up. I hope he doesn't let the fame go to his head. It's the least HH has ever done to earn a photo in a newspaper!

Wonderful GrandDaughter wrote in an email: "He is famous again! And this time not for a tornado."

BTW: Although each of us had developed a bit of soreness in the muscle into which the vaccine was injected, last evening, we are both ache-free, now, and have no other complaints.