It’s that time of year when we start to put up our Christmas decorations. Over the past few years, we have been putting a red white and blue emphasis on the color coordination. I got some red poinsettias and some white mums for the planters out on the front porch. To add the blue color, I placed a couple of small American flags in the planters. Click on the image to enlarge.
We have had pretty good success with pork tenderloin when we grill it with a honey-mustard glaze. Today, Damsel made some apple compoté and baked broccoli/cauliflower au gratin to serve with this delectable entree. Click on the image below to enlarge.
I was looking through the gunnies’ sites this morning and noticed a link to the Second Amendment March to be held in Washington, D.C. next April. What caught my eye was the poll they posted on their site.
Our Mission
The mission of the Second Amendment March is to galvanize the courage and resolve of Americans; to petition our elected officials against establishing anti-gun legislation; and to remind America that the Second Amendment is necessary to maintain our right to self defense.It is the one right that protects all others.
We will accomplish our mission by a peaceful march in Washington DC, the United States Capitol, supported by satellite marches to State Capitols and smaller cities all across America.
The march in D.C. will take place on Monday, April 19, 2010 on the grounds of the Washington Monument.
Interestingly, fat Rosie gets about four percent of the vote.
Back in the summer of 2008, Damsel and I went on vacation to Southern Utah and Northern Arizona. We visited several of the National Parks, including Bryce Canyon NP. At Bryce, the weather was nice, but a bit cloudy and overcast at times. Regardless of the weather, we enjoyed our stay at Bryce very much.
We were gawking and taking pictures of the canyon and all the colorful hoodoos that make this place so spectacular, when we encountered a nice gentleman who told us he had come here from Scotland. I asked him if they had anything like this in his home country.
Now, for his answer you have to imagine his voice, which I thought sounded a lot like Sean Connery in his role in the 1999 movie “Entrapment” as Scottish master thief Robert MacDougal :
“Aye,” he replied, “that we do. Almost every day, we have clouds.”
I wish I had taken a picture of his wide grin as he spoke.
Click on Damsel’s image of Bryce Canyon to enlarge.
Family, friends, fellowship, food and football. Thanks be for those, Amen.
Click for big.
There are signs that the current solar cycle, presently in a relatively low activity state, is on the move to become more active as we enter the second year of the eleven-year cycle. This is a movie of an event captured last February that scientists are calling a “solar tsunami.” It is a towering wave of plasma that lifts itself more than the width of the Earth above the solar surface and hurls massive amounts of solar matter into space.
From NASA:
The twin STEREO spacecraft confirmed their reality in February 2009 when sunspot 11012 unexpectedly erupted. The blast hurled a billion-ton cloud of gas (a “CME”) into space and sent a tsunami racing along the sun’s surface. STEREO recorded the wave from two positions separated by 90o, giving researchers an unprecedented view of the event:
Above: A solar tsunami seen by the STEREO spacecraft from orthogonal points of view. The gray part of the animation has been contrast-enhanced by subtracting successive pairs of images, resulting in a “difference movie.”
Please note that this is actual science and not the filtered version that you get from, say, the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit. You can click on the movie above to see a larger version.
Many folks who don’t live here, see the California Coast as a place where you don’t have four seasons. While the seasons here don’t take on many of the extreme characteristics of the weather experienced elsewhere, we do have distinct seasons.
The colors in these trees with deciduous leaves give the suburban areas a definite sense of fall. By January, the leaves will all have fallen and the branches will be bare until late march or early April. Click on the image to enlarge.
