Doctroid's Page of Scientific Mysteries

Heather's mom (Sue) and Sue's boyfriend (Al) have been in New York this past week or so, and today we and they and Heather's sister (Rachel) and nephews (Mitchell and Sam) drove to Utica, boarded an excursion train to Forestport, ate lunch there (with birthday cake), took the train back to Utica, and drove home. I've never been much for leaf peeping but it was a pleasant day trip. Weather was ridiculous: 76 F, sunny. I'm just waiting for a rerun of last year when warm weather kept the Great Lakes warm until mid January, and then abruptly colder air switched the lake effect machine on. Fortunately, as of Tuesday, we no longer own a house in the worst of the lake effect area, and we no longer have a 35 mile commute each way.

I'm getting some CDs from Amazon, courtesy of Sue and Al. Kenny gave me a castles calendar, and Heather says now that I've taken up knitting she no longer has to puzzle over what to get me. She gave me 25 skeins of yarn.

Friday, to celebrate the house sale, I splurged on a new paper towel holder. Saturday I bought a refrigerator.

Saturday we also bought six pecks of apples, a gallon of maple syrup, and about 15 or 20 pumpkins.

Calendar reform proposals are like pineal glands: Everybody has one.

Let's examine recent and upcoming weekends. Ready?

August 18-19:	Start of the American Travelling Morrice (Sat. 18th - Sun. 26th)
August 25-26:	End of the American Travelling Morrice
September 1-2:	Labor Day Weekend (Sat. - Mon.); Heather at DragonCon (Thu. - Mon.); Kenny and I at State Fair (Fri., technically not the weekend)
September 8-9:
September 15-16:	Thornden Morris trip to Cooperstown (Sat.)
September 22-23:	Pizza party at Kenny's dojo (Sat.); Thornden Morris at Westcott Street Fair (Sun.)
September 29-30:	Binghamton Morris Men at Saugerties Garlic Festival (Sat.); Breast Walk (Sun.); New School Open House (Sun.)
October 6-7:
October 13-14:	Binghamton Morris Men Harvest Home tour (Sat.); Cider making party in Trumansburg (Sun.); Heather's mom in area (Fri. 12th - Tue. 23nd)
October 20-21:	Heather's mom still in area; Leaf peeping train excursion (Sat.); My birthday (Sun.); New School wine and cheese party (Sun.)
October 27-28:	Binghamton Morris Men trip to Washington DC (Sat. - Sun.)
November 3-4:	Heather's birthday (Sun.)

( So here's the calendar proposal: )

Heather left Thursday for DragonCon, and came back Monday.

Friday I took the day off and went with Kenny to the New York State Fair. It was mostly a day of letting Kenny have his way, within limits: he rode the bumper cars (twice), an inflatable slide (twice), the carousel, a thing where you strap on a harness with elastic attached and bounce to about 15 feet above an air bag, and the big ferris wheel (with me); he played two "games" (cheapo prize every time); we watched a guy use a treadle lathe (Kenny got a handmade top), looked at cattle and poultry, played a player piano, looked at model trains, looked at real train cars (twice), watched part of a magic act, watched bicycle and skateboard tricks, watched a juggling/unicycle act, went through a house carved out of a redwood trunk, fed giraffes, putted golf balls, and ate: pizza, more pizza, lemonade, soda, Gatorade, ice cream, maple sno-cone, maple cotton candy.

Over the long weekend Kenny went to the beach (Sandy Pond) twice with his grandfather. I mowed the lawn. I harvested two, count 'em, two ears of corn -- very small ears; I probably should have planted the corn sooner and maybe fertilized better, but they did taste good. I took down the hops vines, finally figured out (I'm pretty sure) which was which variety, discarded the Nuggets -- which should've been harvested a week or more ago -- and harvested, dried, and froze the Kent Goldings. I picked tomatoes. I replaced the missing light in the window in Kenny's room, and re-puttied all six lights in that sash. (Lots more sashes to go.) I bought groceries, and materials for some shelves. I watched the latest episode of Sanctuary and the last ten episodes of "Stargate SG-1" season 5.

Kenny and I went to the playground before going to pick up Heather at the airport.

I think he got worn out -- I outslept him this morning.

The process of turning our house from a dumping ground for stuff from our old house to a comfortable home continues its slow pace.

Six months after moving in, we still don't have television reception capability -- or maybe we do. I haven't checked yet, but I know we have no antenna connected (and no cable TV subscription). But that's closer than we were Sunday morning.

Part of what held me back from that project was the living room outlets. None were grounded, and I wanted to get at least one grounded outlet in there before proceeding. I'd opened up one outlet a couple months ago to see if I could take care of it; all that was needed was to replace the existing 2-foot cable between it and the junction box in the basement with a grounded cable. Unfortunately the existing cable was fastened in place inside the wall and there was no evident way of running another cable.

So then I thought I'd just install a new outlet box and run a cable up from the basement and through the wall to it. That plan was thwarted yesterday when I went to try to find the studs in the wall and determined that there were none. The house dates from the 1830s, remember, and this was one of the original plank walls, covered with wallboard. No simple way to put an old work outlet box into that, or to run a cable to it if I did. (No, the existing outlet box doesn't date from the 1830s. But it was put in before the present wallboard went up.)

By prying up a piece of baseboard molding and poking a hole in the wallboard I found that the old outlet box was located near a gap or cutout in the planks, and the old cable ran through that gap. So, sighing mightily, I chiseled out the wallboard over the gap from the floor to the outlet, removed the staple that had prevented me from pulling out the old cable, took out the cable, and put in a new one. So now we have a grounded outlet, and we also have a hole in the wall. Reminds me of an old song.

Anyway, having done that, I got the stereo and "TV" set up, replacing the boom box that'd been there. The stereo includes a CD player and tuner I bought at a garage sale in June for $10. They work. The "TV" is still what it's been for over a decade: a VCR connected to a 13" Commodore monitor (vintage circa 1983). I hear there are bigger TVs available these days. I might look into that.

Meanwhile Heather went shopping for curtain fabric and came home pleased with what she'd found in the half price bin.

I suppose this was obvious, and twillis has probably been laughing at me all this time, but the alleged zombie Moorpark apricot in the field out back is no such thing: the grafted wood died, and what's growing now is the root stock. Which is who knows what (besides Miller Nurseries, and they're not telling), but it bears almost no resemblance to the Moorpark out front, which also was thought dead once but resumed growth from above the graft line.

Well, I intend to find out. I mowed around it, pulled weeds, and wrapped roofing felt around the bottom of the trunk to keep the gnawing things away. Did the same for the other fruit trees too. I took the cages off the two trees that had them. I'll put one of them back; the other is too small for its tree now. But not right away -- I think I want to give them some compost or something.

I mowed the yard too, including the far back which we hadn't gotten to yet this spring and was pushing a foot high. We also put away some stuff that was sitting in the yard since last weekend's move, put up a clothesline, weeded, put up a fence panel for some berry canes to climb, bought and planted some tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, cukes, and nastutiums, mowed around the hops and added a string for the latest shoot, pruned, cleared brush, and, for something completely different, baked chicken and made hot fudge sauce. Busy weekend so far.

And now I must go change my pants, which have split across the right butt.

We wanted a 16 foot truck; we got a 26 foot truck. Same price, or cheaper even, given that we probably would've had to put twice as many miles on a 16 foot truck, but neither of us is that good at driving a truck that big. Heather did most of the driving, because she's better at trucks than I am, but she hated it.

So you'd think our house would be empty, right? A container full of furniture and a truck full of mostly stuff from the sheds and garage and a bazillion pickup truck and car loads over the past three months?

JESUS GOD WHY DO WE HAVE SO MUCH STUFF AND WHEN WILL WE BE DONE MOVING IT?

It doesn't help, of course, that given our decision in February to leave the house on a few hours' notice and stay in Onondaga from then on, we couldn't really devote much time to organizing things in Parish and, in particular, sorting through stuff and getting rid of useless crap. So we've moved a fair amount of useless crap, to be thrown out or sold off or stashed away until the next time we move (25 years from now).

Breakfast: Waffles, in bed.
Presents: A book and a Venus Fly Trap kit.
Morning: Heather: In bed, reading. Me: Laundry and a few other chores. Kenny: good question.
Midday: Heather: Weeding. Me: More laundry. Kenny: good question.
Lunch: Me: Peanut butter on bagel. Kenny: Cream cheese on bagel. Heather: Granola bar.
After lunch: Lowe's. Stuff to support climbing strings for hops; stuff to repair Kenny's toy chest; stuff to fix a bookshelf; oil for the mower; goggles and earplugs for use with chainsaw; string for the trimmer; wooden stool; new wheelbarrow.
Late afternoon: Kenny and me: Cooking, assembling wheelbarrow. Heather: Nap.
Dinner: Steaks (charcoal grilled), romaine salad, mashed potatoes, firecracker cupcakes.
Evening: Washing dishes, Go Fish, Crazy Eights, reading, knitting, writing, calling Mom, email, LiveJournal.

So since when does Mother's Day involve going to Lowe's, and not even buying any plants?

Today we and five friends/relations filled up a 16 foot PODS container with, mostly, furniture. We managed to get nearly all our furniture into it. There's still tons of stuff to be moved, we haven't decided when or how -- but the furniture will arrive here Monday. We'll have a bed again. And the washer and dryer -- so we won't have to decide whether to put up with going to a laundromat or driving 40 miles to the Parish house once a week to do laundry.

Going the PODS route cost considerably more than renting a truck (per cubic meter: a truck similar in size would've cost a little less if we made a couple of trips). On the other hand, we're spared having to drive the truck (backing into the driveway here especially), we don't need to rush to get everything done by Monday morning, and one thing I didn't really appreciate until I tried it: No ramp. The container floor is just a couple inches off the ground. That's a major plus.

Our house is still standing, as of yesterday. Roof shoveling guy is supposed to do the job Monday.

The front end loader came by on Monday evening to shift the piled-up snow out of the way. (See icon. That was 2004 but 2007 looks similar, only deeper.)

We're still at Onondaga Hill, along with a little more of our stuff.

Oswego County didn't get hit as hard by the northeaster as Onondaga did, but it started the lake effect machine back up.

Oh, and Syracuse University cancelled classes Wed. afternoon. WTF? I thought SU only did that in case of nuclear attack. Successful nuclear attack.

We finally returned to work and school today.

Parish supposedly got 115 inches of snow over the past week. They say the lake effect machine is now shutting down, but a general snowstorm is heading our way.

We spent a second night at Onondaga Hill and are considering making it permanent as of now -- almost no furniture or stuff, no Internet, no TV, no mailbox, no landline phone, bad cell phone coverage (though better than at Parish), and incidentally no hot water, but even so it's more attractive at the moment.

I've been on flights before where I felt as though I wouldn't arrive until sometime next year, but tonight that should be literally the case. We take off from Seattle-Tacoma at 11:42 pm and land in 2007 at Dulles, then fly on to Syracuse. We'll still be in the Pacific time zone when its midnight arrives... which is good because if not, we might not have a midnight at all, which would mean no new year for us. So we'd have to do 2006 over? Well, there are worse years to repeat.

Correction: [redacted]

Correction correction: No, I had it right the first time.

Update: Actually we were on the ground, taxiing to the runway, when midnight came.

We've been here at Heather's mother's house for a week. It was her first Christmas with Kenny. He saw two displays of lights (Heather and I stayed home for the second one, missing also a carousel ride and an ice cream parlor), the Seattle Aquarium, two ferries and two floating bridges, Pike Place Market, and Redhook Brewery. On one day when we went shopping he came home with a paperback copy of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang that's older than his mother. Good times, but vacation's ending soon.

I don't do New Year's resolutions. If I did, getting more exercise would probably make the list.

Saturday morning Heather (and one of our cars) was in Oneida with our friends Fred and Kate (and their cars); Kenny and I (and our other car) were in Parish; our friend Tom (and his cars) was in Syracuse. Saturday afternoon Heather, Fred, Kate, Kenny, and I (but not Tom) wanted to be in Marathon; Saturday evening Tom and I (but none of the rest) wanted to be in Binghamton; and Saturday night we all wanted to be at our respective homes. Quick, write down an algorithm to do this with minimal duplication of driving.

Heather had gone to Oneida the night before to have dinner with Fred and Kate and their neighbors, and to learn about Ukrainian egg dying from Kate. Kenny and I stayed home due to Fred and Kate's cat and Kenny's allergy. Saturday we went looking for rain boots for Kenny -- no one had any -- and mailed a package. Fred, Kate, and Heather (in one of Fred and Kate's cars) drove to Syracuse and we rendezvoused at Tom and Karin's house. I parked our car and Kenny and I squeezed into Fred and Kate's car, and off we went.

To Marathon, for the thankfully non-inundated Maple Festival. The weather was much cooler and a little wetter than the previous few days (we have crocuses blooming at our house -- a week or so after Syracuse's) but not that bad. The festival was its usual self. Heather and Kate spent a lot of time looking at earrings. Well, it seemed that way. There was the usual quilt show, and the usual group of antique gas engine lovers: it's your one annual opportunity to watch grown men standing around a little 1-cylinder engine, watching it run. Kenny was more interested in the one on the trailer with belts hooking it up to a corn sheller, a grain mill, a grindstone, a butter churn, and two washing machines, and in the other one attached to a saw that was cutting inch-thick slabs off the end of a log.

Late afternoon the other four got on the shuttle bus to head back to the car, while I walked to the agreed-upon rendezvous point to wait for Tom, except as it turns out he was already there, early. We headed for Binghamton and had time to stop at Sam the Beer Man. I picked up a six pack of Woodpecker cider.

Then on to Binghamton Morris Men practice: Still more Ducklington. We reviewed The Fox, The Nutting Girl, and Saturday Night, and tried out Twa Bonnie Lassies, a dance Peter put together for the Harridans. Odd dance, but a good one to watch. They'll practice one more time before Gilbertsville, but I'll be out of town, so that's it for me.

Then (after post-practice socializing) Tom and I headed back to Syracuse where I collected my car and drove home. Heather and Kenny were in bed by then, having driven back from Oswego.

Sunday we got some gardening work done, helped Heather's father move a piece of furniture, made our first visit of the season to Gannon's Ice Cream, did some shopping at Tractor Supply (we bought Kenny a pair of women's size 5 boots, which fit him, ferheavensake; also some feed, grit, and wood shavings for the chicks Heather has on order, and a couple of shirts off their 75% off rack), and went to see Ice Age II (which was pretty good).

Yesterday we finished taking data for this year's run of the HAPPEX-Hydrogen experiment, which means the HAPPEX-II program at Jefferson Lab (JLab) is done with data taking.
( All about HAPPEX-II, for the nerd wannabes )I spent the last ten days as Run Coordinator, meaning I was in charge of day to day conduct of the experiment, meaning I carried the official cell phone and pager, spent a lot of time in the "counting house" where we control data taking, and went to a lot of meetings. Miraculously no one ever had to call me in the middle of the night -- all our catastrophes happened on day and swing shifts. Things actually went very well, and our data look excellent. We spent the last couple of shifts doing tests for PREX, putting a lead target in the beam (and not melting it). Today we had an end of run party, which was still going strong when I decided I was about to topple over so I went back to my room and slept. A couple more meetings tomorrow, then Thursday I fly home for family reunion and turkey dinner. It's been a long haul but I feel good about it.

Birthday polenta:


More presents: Owl (ceramic) and gourd (gourd):

Here's my birthday present from Heather:


In case you can't identify the medium, it's Lindor truffles on wallboard.

I guess our blueberry bushes took last year off -- either that or we were so preoccupied with other things in mid summer we just never got around to looking at them, which seems hard to believe.

Anyway, up along one of the paths into the woods, we have some bushes. I don't know how many, I know of two for sure but Heather says there are more.

Last night we took a look and, by damn, they have blueberries on them. Some ripe, some not. Little ones, a few mm diameter, the wild sort. The good sort.

We harvested maybe half a cup's worth, which may not seem like much. It isn't. But it was getting late, and picking those little berries is pretty labor intensive (I bet a quart of them is at least five times as many berries as a quart of the supermarket big-and-tasteless variety), and the bushes were being defended by a crack squadron of insectoidal bloodsuckers. And...

On one of the bushes, I'd estimate there were ten to twenty green berries for every ripe one. It's covered in 'em. Huge, huge numbers. And when I say "bush" you may be thinking little waist-high thing; nuh-uh. I'd have to go back and look again for an accurate measure, but I think it's about two meters or so high and maybe two to three meters in diameter.

There are raspberries out there too.

On the down side, one of the apple trees we planted has died. It joins a cherry tree in the Great Beyond. The others we've planted seem to be hanging in there.

Oh, and on the up again side, most of the hops we've planted are at least alive, and the ones climbing the arbor seem to be doing especially well.

Pictures from the Dog Days Ale and the American Travelling Morrice.

Also, multimedia.

Also also, if anyone wants a $5 discount on a smugmug.com account, just fill in "rsholumes@maiulbox.syr.edu" in the referral field on the
signup form, only without any u's.

So I'm back, having spent all but one night from July 5 to yesterday away from home. ( Cut for length )

Old Songs festival last weekend. There are two kinds of Old Songs festivals: the kind where you wish it'd stop raining, and the kind where you wish it'd start. This one was the latter. I may be indulging in creative memory here, but I think it was the hottest, humidest Old Songs I've ever been to. Mid-90s (F) temperatures. Those of you down south may not be too impressed, but it's a big deal in upstate New York. Especially when you're tent camping and spending the weekend outside or in non air conditioned buildings.

The lineup this year looked particularly good, although as it turned out I didn't see, or hardly saw, several of the performers I'd wanted to. John Roberts, sans Tony Barrand, was there, but apparently ended up being hospitalized due to effects of the heat. I didn't catch John Whelan or Brian McNamara. Tony Trischka I saw only briefly as one of the members of Jawbone.

I did see Lou and Peter Berryman, even heard a new song of theirs, "Lexical Dude", which was up to their usual high standards. They were sharing a stage with Michael Cooney, who did several good songs, not all of which were by the Berrymans.

And I saw two sets by the Arrogant Worms, and that by itself makes for a good weekend. Some of the songs they did were new since I last saw them two years ago; several, in fact, were so new no one but Trevor's cats had heard them, and they (the Worms, not Trevor's cats) were reading the lyrics off a piece of paper because they hadn't memorized them yet. Huge crowds showed up whenever they played, and on some of the older songs they (the huge crowds, not the Worms, nor Trevor's cats) were singing along on the choruses. Between the Worms and the Berrymans, Old Songs may be in danger of becoming known as a comedy songs festival. Which it isn't. But both should be back often.

Despite the heat there was informal morris dancing (black tie, not white) Sunday morning. Kibologist Sean Lasnaymere and I were both there, dancing and squeezing (me: melodeon, Sean: concertina -- no, we didn't play any duets and call ourselves Interrobang Cartel.)

We managed not to spend huge amounts of money on food, having brought along a cooler containing enough for breakfasts, lunches, and some snacks. Heather discovered one of the tops she'd brought didn't fit and a dress needed repair, so she ended up buying clothes to have something to wear, and I bought two CDs, so there went some of our money; and then Heather bought a used Yamaha guitar at the instrument swap. They had no bass clarinets, fortunately. (Apparently the instruments folkies most want to rid themselves of are guitars, fiddles, and piano accordions.)

Kenny barfed his dinner Saturday night and had a low grade fever the next morning; Tylenol took care of that, and he seemed to feel fine, but after the Worms' noontime set it was clear Sunday afternoon's weather would be at least as brutal as Saturday's, and it was time for the better part of valor. So we headed on home, missing the Sunday main stage concert. Still, we had a good time.

Update:
Also! New camera. So I'll post a picture or two later. Also also, I finished making a cheapo homebrew leak light for the instrument work, and I repaired my Casio Digital Horn. Wüüt!

Yesterday was our tenth wedding anniversary. Ten! Amazing.

It was also my parents' 65th anniversary. There are those who tell my mother it's not an anniversary any more after one spouse dies, but she's having none of that.

(No, it wasn't really a deliberate thing on our parts to get married on my parents' anniversary; in fact we were going to do it on Saturday the 24th, until someone reminded us it was Old Songs weekend, so we changed it to Friday.)

Anyway, we celebrated by going out to dinner at Antonio's on North Salina Street. I'd never been there before. I had the Shrimp Fra Diavolo. Heather had the Seafood Alfredo. The latter was made with (and they were up front about it) imitation crab meat, which I'm not terrifically fond of, but Heather likes it. My shrimp were made of tofu. No, not really. The food was great; Heather said it was the best Alfredo she'd ever had, and she pronounced my sauce as good as her grandmother's -- which is the highest tomato sauce praise in her vocabulary.

There was way too much to eat at one sitting so, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go have leftovers for lunch.