In vino veritas

In wine there is truth.  I'm sure that the more you drink, the less this is true, but still.  A good wine, like a good friendship, is meant to be savored.  Slowly spilling along the palate.  The metaphors are endless - and overused - but wine, like friendship, like trust, is developed over time.

A-Dawg took me to a little vineyard a few minutes outside town - who knew?  The wine (and lunch!) was great, and the day was beautiful.

She left with a couple of bottles; I left with a new pair of earrings and some fish vases.

It was an uncharacteristically beautiful January day.

Before wine.

After wine.

The chairs are made from old oak barrels.

Tacky, but...different.

TGIF, people!

A-Dawg knows me too well.  I love this flask!  Oh, so appropriate!

Stair stepper

Orca has taken to climbing the stairs.  This has changed life for G & I because, although we have the downstairs rabbit-proofed, we've lived in relative freedom when it came to the upstairs.  But alas, no more.

She climbs the stairs multiple times each night.  We can barely sit down and relax before it's time to chase her down again.  We cannot get a moment's peace.

All of you with children are rolling your eyes.  I can feel it.

She explores the library,

And the guest room,

And our bedroom.

We would like to put her in time out,

But she's geriatric and has to take arthritis medicine, which pulls at our heart strings,

So we just close all the doors upstairs,
And let her climb.

Made it to the middle

It's Wednesday!  We've made it to the middle of the week, people.

Here's what sucks about the holiday season, and getting used to several 3-day weekends in a row:  Now that I have to work normal weeks, by the time Wednesday rolls around, it feels like it should be Friday already.  A normal work week feels like a year, people.  I will never make it to the weekend.  There is no light at the end of the tunnel...

In an effort to stave off the desperation of knowing that the week is only halfway over, here are a few things I'm totally pumped about today:

Ingrid Michaelson has released a new album:  Human Again.

Jodi Picoult has published a new book:  Lone Wolf.

My carpool buddy and I are going to wolf down Tex Mex tonight after the gym (BFJ, won't you come join us??  Just hop on a plane real quick.)

A-peep has introduced me to new music that I l-o-v-e:  Beckah Shae, Christa Wells, Nicole Witt.
("Faith is" by Beckah Shae is great.)

Only two more days between me & a wine tasting in the "country" with A-Dawg.

Here's hoping we get through the day...!

Me & Jodi Picoult at a book reading a couple of years ago.

Book Recommendation: Mars Series

Per several recommendations from my Dad and G, I just read the Mars series by Kim Stanley Robinson.  It consists of three books:  Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars.  These books tell the story of earth, in the not-so-distant future, becoming overpopulated and having no choice but to use space exploration to solve earthly issues.  A group of 100 talented scientists of all types are chosen to lead the expedition to Mars, and to subsequently lead the efforts to make the planet habitable.

The books are very detailed in many respects.  On the one hand, that's what I appreciate about them.  On the other hand, they can plod along like a crocodile at times.  I feel like I could have actually traveled to Mars in the time it has taken me to get through the trilogy.  But that said, I highly recommend them.

No spoiler alerts here, but I appreciated the following aspects of the books:

• Robinson presents a very scientifc, very researched view of what it takes to travel through space and settle on a planet that is not suited to human life.  There is no atmosphere on Mars; no water; no bacteria; no way for humans to breathe or eat or sustain any kind of life without serious technological advances and processes.
• His descriptions of terraforming, and all kinds of other efforts they undergo, are fascinating.  He gets down in the weeds, and no matter how interested you might be, your eyes will (eventually) glaze over.  However, the books don't read as a kind of nerdy sci-fi, alien-infested account.  They read as a tale of real people, with real flaws, working very hard to make a new kind of life work out.
• And it does work out.  And then all kinds of other problems start.  What about a government?  What happens to a society - to an individual - when removed from all known ways of life?  What psychological, spiritual, emotional, physical and mental problems arise?
• Another interesting tidbit:  humans eventually develop longevity treatments that allow them to regenerate their cell growth, and delay death by many years.  In some cases, by centuries.  What happens to a society then?  What happens to the human brain and memory then?

I can see the colonization of Mars occuring, playing out, like it does in this book.  I can envision people making these sorts of mistakes and societies miscommunicating in these sorts of ways.  If you're ever in the mood for something a bit different, try these out.  But a word of advice:  If you enjoy Red Mars, read the other two shortly after you finish it.  If you take a break, you are likely to forget a lot of important information that plays out for centuries!

Happy Reading!

Einstein Was Right

Remember the famous quote from Einstein?

"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity."


So true about the weekend.  G and I often marvel how we can, when on vacation, easily wake up at 4:00 a.m. in 20-degree weather, don several layers, and hike up a mountain.  But where, oh where is the energy at 5:30 a.m. on a Monday morning when it's time to get ready for work?  I mean, how can it already be Sunday afternoon?  It's going to feel like a year until the next weekend.


We got not one but two snow dustings this weekend.  Not enough to cause any trouble, but just enough to cover the brown ugliness of the ground & foliage this time of year.

I spent some quality time at the gym.  G and his friend C-peep spent some quality time flying RC planes.  I'm working - slowly - on my photography skillz (if you can call it that) and I like the colors in this one:

We bonded with peeps and their little peeps.  It was cozy.

And Starbucks (at least the one closest to me) is still making Pumpkin Spice Lattes when I order them, so life is good!  Bring it on, Monday!

TGIF, people!

Pretty Darn Cool

Have you ever learned something and been genuinely surprised?  As in, "I didn't know they ever did that!" kind of surprised?  I had one of those moments the other day about something I learned.  In the grand scheme of things, it isn't all that important, but I was certainly surprised.

Back in the late 1920's and early 1930's, the U.S. Navy had a small number of airships.  I won't go into all the details about them, but the two largest were the U.S.S Macon and the U.S.S. Akron.  I had heard of these ships before, but didn't really know much about them.  They both had a surprisingly large crew, and the ships themselves were pretty big.  Unfortunately, both were lost in accidents in the mid-30's (the Akron with significant loss of life).  Here's a picture of the Macon flying over New York City:

Now for the really interesting part (as if the Navy having large airships isn't interesting enough).  Last weekend, I was at my favorite local hobby store perusing the shelves, when I saw a model kit for the Curtiss F9C Sparrowhawk fighter, a biplane fighter that was used by the Navy during the same time frame:

The box art for the model showed an airship in the background.  So when I got home, I did a little research, and learned that the Sparrowhawk was actually launched and recovered from the airships while they were in flight!!  In the picture above, you can see the hook assembly over the upper wing; this is what was used to "land" the aircraft on the airship.  Here's a video I found on YouTube that shows how it was done:

The contraption (for lack of a better word) that the Sparrowhawks would latch on to was called a "trapeze"; I guess, once the aircraft was secure, the trapeze was pulled up into the hangar bay inside the airship, and the plane was parked.

I don't know how many planes each airship carried, but there were several.  The airships never really got past the test phase before their accidents, but I believe they were going to be used for long-range reconnaissance.  After the Macon was lost in a storm off Point Sur, California, the Navy abandoned the airship program.  The only surviving Sparrowhawk fighter is at the Udvar-Hazy branch of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, near Dulles International Airport in Virginia.

I've probably walked by this plane a hundred times at that museum, and never knew the history behind it.

So...that was my "aha" moment.  I never knew that anyone, let alone the U.S. Navy, had ever successfully built and flown airships that served as aircraft carriers!  It sounds like something out of a science fiction novel.  We're all accustomed to sea-borne aircraft carriers; those have been around for about 70 years.  But an airborne aircraft carrier?  That, my friends, is Pretty Darn Cool!