Cop Car's Beat

Tidbits for another week - 3/12/2021

Electrical Problems (3/10/2021):

We have overkill in my kitchen: There are four ovens in it. Since I'm not much of a cook (I only cook to keep us from starving), you may not think that logical. However, the number of ovens in my kitchen is not the point of my sad tale. The point is that I had an electrical problem with the small toaster oven (to left of microwave on the counter in the photo, above) which proved to the world that I, who completed a minor in Electrical Engineering back in the late 1950s, am an idiot.

I wanted to toast a sandwich bun for our dinner, last night. I put the bun in the toaster oven, set the controls and started the oven, and left the room. Upon my return, I discovered that the oven was not hot, did not even have glowing digital control numbers showing. I unplugged the unit, re-plugged it. (That's the plug to the toaster oven at the right end of the toaster oven and above it. The other plug to the left of the toaster oven is actually the plug to the microwave.) Nothing. Exasperated, I used a skillet and the range top to toast the bun. As I went downstairs to bed, last night, I took the toaster oven down to our workshop where I intended to check it, later, to see if there is a fuse inside the casing.

This morning, as I came upstairs, I brought our standby toaster oven up from the basement. Later, I stuck a bagel into the standby toaster oven and set its simple mechanical controls. I listened to the hum of the spring-loaded timer as I walked away. When I returned, did I find a toasted bagel? Nope. The toaster oven was (electrically) dead as a doornail. Bah! Humbug! The poor thing had served me well in Albuquerque in the 1980s and had served me well for the first 10 years after my return to Derby KS; but, it hadn't been used since about 2000 - at which time it had been replaced by the newer unit.

A bit later, after working in the yard and kicking back thinking to take a short nap, my idle mind realized what was going on with the little ovens: I had been checking the wrong ground fault interrupter (GFI) unit. I had checked the GFI into which the microwave is plugged. That's logical since it is, physically, the nearest GFI unit to the outlet into which the toaster oven is plugged. However, the electrical outlet into which the toaster oven plugs is actually wired into the GFI unit of the outlet that is to the right of the microwave. Duh!

While everyone is looking at the photo of the ovens, please note that the little woodwork one can see is nice and clean. I started on spring cleaning, in the kitchen, the other day. It took me four days to finish scrubbing all of the cabinets in the kitchen, but they are clean!

Terminology Illuminated (3/12/2021):

The other day I asked that anyone who understood "Lie group" and/or "surfaces of ignorance" let me know so that I could share the Zoom login information to yesterday's Wichita State University Physics Seminar. I needed someone to watch and translate for me. The seminar featured Dr. Shannon Ray, National Research Council Fellow, Air Force Research Laboratory, speaking on“The Purification of 3-Level Quantum States and Surfaces of Ignorance”.

No one took me up on the challenge of translating for me, so I watched the presentation, alone. It turned out to be an interesting talk. Although I understood the math (heavy on tensor algebras), there was a lot of what turned out to be jargon - much of it invented by the presenter and his colleagues. One term that he used in a peripheral comment turned out to be less esoteric than I had perceived or considered: it was "The Bottom Turtle".

In exchanging emails with Ole Phat Stu, a few minutes ago, I was inspired to research "The Bottom Turtle". *Face Palm*  The term is from Yertle the Turtle by Dr Seuss.

Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) has been in the news, much, of late - at least, here in the States. Fortunately, Yertle the Turtle was not implicated in the loud complaints against some of the Seuss books. Who knew it would contain an allegory during a physics talk? Whoo boy.

Personal Tidbits from Hunky Husband and me:

As of Wednesday (3/10/2021), Hunky Husband and I are considered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to be "fully vaccinated". We may now meet with a few other people who are also "fully vaccinated", indoors, without masking and distancing. Unfortunately, in our family, being "fully vaccinated" has skipped the generation of our daughters. We are looking forward to their attaining the designation no later than the end of May.

On Friday (3/12/2021), HH & I met with our tax guy. Yikes! HH had, without my having noticed it, until we gathered our tax papers, chosen to skip the Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) from his Volunteer Investment Plan (VIP) with Boeing, for 2020. The problem that it presented for our 2020 taxes was that by not taking his RMD (not required in 2020 because of COVID-19), he did not contribute the taxes that he would have had withheld from the distribution.

For 2020, we had under-withheld (Fed & State) by an amount equal to my income from retirement benefits plus social security. (Of course, for 2019 we had over-withheld 1.2 times that much.) HH had left home without his checkbook, so the rest of our taxes will be automatically syphoned off of my checking account.  Fortunately, I am in the habit of carrying a blank check in my wallet and Robert was able to get the routing information off of it to give the Feds and the State Revenuers. (The minute we got home I transferred the funds from my savings. In the meantime, HH had received texts from H&R Block informing him that both sets of taxes had been accepted and would be deducted from the indicated account.)

 

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.

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?

 

16 Escapees

At times we see no wild turkeys for weeks-on-end. Sometimes we see 3 or 4 turkey nearly daily. Then there are the bonus days when we see a whole flock. For the past few days a flock of 10-16 turkey who seemed to have escaped being someone's entrée for Thanksgiving or Christmas have visited us. If they cross the creek that borders our lot they are subject, during season, to being shot by humans - with bow & arrow or shotgun.

The photos were taken on the 10th of this month and are in order from earliest to latest. There are no photos of the turkeys while they were near the house (on our patio and in the planting beds) because, to get a decent photo, I must open the sliding glass door. Obviously, that is most likely to flush them.

I just recalled that, last evening, as Hunky Husband and I sat chatting in the living room, I caught a glimpse of two turkey fluttering down from having flown over our house to settle in our back yard. I didn't get up to see them and it would have been too dark for me to have caught photos. They sometimes roost in the trees of our (or nearby) woods for the night. I have sometimes thought that some of them roost on our roof, as well.

2021 - a clean slate

For a few days the weather guessers have been telling us to expect snow and freezing rain this past Wednesday. By the time it got closer to Wednesday, the nasty weather had been pushed forward to Thursday - then to Friday. As it turned out, AFAIK, the rain/freezing rain that was to precede and proceed the snow and was to have started at around Midnight last night did not show up. When I trudged through the accumulated snow and blowing snow to retrieve our morning paper, there was no sign of slipperiness as I expected from a coating of ice. But...the world from our house, looks fresh and clean with its white coating. It is still snowing, but only half-heartedly with tiny flakes. The sun has been trying to peek out for the past hour. I've already had my first bowl of snow ice cream - for breakfast. (I'll take a small break, here.)

The first photo was taken at about 8am (the camera's date/time was off) at which time I measured a bit over 4 inches of snow on the patio table. At about 11:30am, I measured 5.5 inches. The sun came out just before noon and the snow had quit. By hovering your cursor over a photo you may reveal the caption to each photo.

When the weather turns bad, we always have a bountiful number of birds at our feeders. This morning, we've had European starlings (ugh!), a passel of slate-colored juncos (with one pink-sided amongst them), a handful of house finches, a like number of American gold finches, a few tufted titmice, one white-breasted nuthatch, one red-bellied woodpecker, a couple of downy woodpeckers, and a female cardinal - that I recall.

Please note the blue feeder in the above two photos. I have a hook on a pole that I use to retrieve/replace feeders through one or the other of the living room windows during weather such as this. A bit after these photos were taken, I tried to retrieve the blue feeder for re-filling. Unfortunately, I used one hand/arm in the process and fumbled the feeder when I took its full weight at the end of my pole, dumping it off onto the ground. I replaced it with another tube-type feeder rather than going out and trampling about in the snow. The snow looks better without my footprints.

Added at 3:33pm - No more ice cream

It warmed up, quickly, once the sun came out. About half of the snow has already melted. What is left wouldn't be fit for snow ice cream. It is 35 degrees Fahrenheit.

Yard work progress report

The photo, below, shows an area of our yard/woods abutment - before recent rework. The photo was taken a year ago.

 
The photo, below, shows the same area of our yard/woods abutment - after some rework - as it appears, now. Many of the spindly trees have been removed and one can now more plainly see our neighbor's brush pile beyond the concrete blocks that I piled up for temporary storage. (Some years ago I had used the blocks to effect a rough retaining wall at the bottom of the small hill.) Brush piles are "illegal" in our city; but, birds love 'em, so I shan't complain. As birds fly from our feeders it is frequently to the refuge of the brush pile that is shown, or to the refuge of another.

The green cart on its side, and the leaf rake, are tools that I've quit pulling out of and replacing into the garage each time I've gone out to rake/move the leaves that have piled up in the area over the years. (That task is nearly completed.) My tools are not visible from the street and by leaving them out I prevent leaves' blowing into the garage while the door is open.

I had planned to construct a sitting area among those three largest/nearest trees, providing a safe place for local family to visit us. Silly me. What was I thinking? The neighbor's dogs have barked and growled at me every minute during which I've worked in that area - whenever they have been outside. Not a good atmosphere for a sitting area; thus, I've rather lost some of my enthusiasm for my tasking. I'll complete leaf removal and have dirt hauled in to smooth out that area. I had thought to have handyman Cecil build a retaining wall at the bottom of that small hill; but, now I am considering plantings to retain the dirt. Big question is: terraced small hill or smooth small hill?

Odds, ends, remembrance

Monday & Tuesday, 12/12/2020 & 12/13/2020 - Photos that had been passed by

Birds

The photo shows some of our collection of frequent visitors to our feeders and heated watering pan.

Yard & Remembrance of Younger Brother

Back-lighting showed off some of the dusting of sparkly snow we had on the morning of the 13th. As I pondered the scene I remembered Younger Brother who would have marked his 79th birthday on the 13th.

Younger Brother, PhD, 1941-2012

Remembrance of a dinner long ago

In the 1960s when Younger Brother and his family were traveling through Kansas on their way back home in California from Rolla MO (where YB was finishing up one or another of his degrees), Hunky Husband and I took YB and his wife Barb to dinner at Lakeshore Club in Wichita. (Please recall/know that, in those days, the only way to have an alcoholic libation with dinner was to belong to a "private club" with a liquor license. There was no such thing as a "public" restaurant where one could enjoy a glass of wine or beer with one's meal. Kansas was a "dry" state.)

As always, YB ordered a plain hamburger - one without sauces or additions of any kind - while the rest of us ordered steak, or lobster, or whatever. YB and I got to kidding around about it and we both got the giggles so badly that HH and Barb threatened to leave us there. Whenever any two of us three siblings got together, there was bound to be much laughter between/among us. I miss those days with YB. I miss YB and Barb, who preceded him in death by 21 years. May they rest in peace.

Monday, 12/21/2020 - Saturnalia happenings

Plumbing

Jeremy showed up to do a little plumbing for us. Once I told him all of our woes, he recommended a new toilet for Hunky Husband's bathroom - one that had a larger gateway between the water tank and the toilet plus having a tank-internal air reservoir to add power to the water stream going into the bowl to flush down the contents. It sounded like such a good idea that I told him that we would go with that. Other than that, I asked him to rebuild the interiors of the other two toilet tanks - one in my bathroom, the other in the guest bathroom. Jeremy will call to arrange installation when the company receives the new toilet.

The first photo, below, shows the interior of one of the tanks before rebuild. The second shows the interior following rebuild. In between, Jeremy was gone for a bit over an hour in order to run into Wichita for parts (at the same supplier that I, myself, use). Exciting. Be still my beating heart!

Astronomy

As everyone knows, the closest conjuncture of Neptune Jupiter and Saturn (as seen from the Earth), expected for the next some-odd-hundreds of years, occurred, today. (Stu blogged about it, nicely.) I had HH run me out to a clear viewing area to observe the spectacle. Like my viewing of Halley's comet in the 1980s, for which I drove (alone) to an area near the Pueblo of Isleta in New Mexico, the idea was much greater than the view. Oh, well. I recall that HH thought I was nuts to rouse Bogie & Dudette from sleep early enough one morning in March, 1970, to view a comet; but, I've tried to view most of the earth-shaking celestial events during my lifetime - well, since I was age 3.5 in 1941, at least.

Cool ice formations on the back deck, this morning

Just enough snow to beautify

We had received nearly an inch of rain in the hours preceding the temperature's finally dropping below freezing; thus, the snow was too sparse and too icy to provide that needed for snow ice cream for breakfast.