At last the days will be starting to grow longer rather than shorter. This is a still screenshot from Archaeoastronamy.com who provides an interesting animated depiction of seasonal changes and cross-quarter celestial events.

Earth’s annual orbit is The Master Clock because the common yardstick of our lives is the year. Years are divided by the seasons just as calendars are segmented by months. Mechanical and digital timepieces measure intervals that split into hours, minutes and seconds each spin of our planet on its axis. Yet, it is the earth’s regular, rhythmic loop around the sun that standardizes our timeframe of reference, regardless of geographic distances separating us from our acquaintances or generational distances separating us from our ancestors.

The semi-rural nature of our new house allows us to observe wild critters in or near our lot. I like the little quail, cottontails and squirrels that frequent the premises. So, to encourage them to come around. We place some “Critter Crunch” on the ground near our back patio.

I put some down the last couple of times we were in Arizona. It will be interesting to see who and what comes around now that the weather is a little cooler in December. I’ll try to get some pictures of our shy little critters when we’re there over the Christmas holiday.

Click on the image to enlarge.

When we last saw our new house, Damsel climbed up the little hill behind the house and took this image. She took it on November 8th - six weeks ago tomorrow.

Image - construction progress as of 11/8/2010 - click to enlarge.

We fully intended to go back sooner, but we were held up because some custom outdoor lighting fixtures were held up in production. We’re told that they will be here (in California) in a couple of days and when they arrive we will be headed back to our new home to get them installed. The fixtures are just about the finishing touch on the new house. Thereafter, we’re going to start acquiring the furniture items we need to actually be able to occupy the house.

We have to stay over the Christmas Holiday to meet the following week with the utility company to install the gas meter and for any other yet unknown details of getting everything set up. We also plan to arrange for the new 22 long gun fire safe to be delivered and installed.

There are a lot of details that are still emerging which we will address when we understand what needs to be done. We are now hoping to be in the fully furnished house by March.

Two years ago at Christmastime we drove from Wickenburg to Flagstaff and then up to the south rim of the Grand Canyon. I took this photo from the rim at Grand Canyon Village looking northeast. Click on the image to enlarge.

Thank God that the Omnibus POS failed in the Senate last night . . . now lets hope that DREAM and START join the other POS in the political septic tank.

Update: The GOP also gets the Ramirez treatment. Maybe he should have drawn them as a Rhino . . .

Since we have had some life events this year, mainly building a new home and refinancing our old one, I thought I better begin the tax estimation process. I also did this last year when I had a retirement life event. I pulled up the TurboTax 2010 Tax estimator to approximate our Federal tax situation.

The process is bringing a little bah humbug to an otherwise jolly time. Some of the initial numbers popping out scare me a little. However, we’re not using actual data at this time, only top-of-the-head estimated numbers and there are still a lot of things we can do that may help the situation.

Hat tip to John Lott who used this estimator in a post he made about tax rates being unfairly distributed..

I harvested this tiny group of veggies from the garden last weekend. Yes, they’re all supposed to be small. Click on the image to enlarge.

Congress and the Administration at the wheel . . .

According to Wikipedia, “Gazanias are grown for the brilliant color of their flower which appear in the late spring and early summer”. In our case, we can add late fall to the list of when they’re open. Click on the image to enlarge.

In addition to two very active sunspots, this huge solar flare erupted this week.

From SOHO:

A very long solar filament that had been snaking around the Sun erupted (Dec. 6, 2010) with a flourish. STEREO (Behind) caught the action in dramatic detail in extreme ultraviolet light of Helium. It had been almost a million km long (about half a solar radius) and a prominent feature on the Sun visible over two weeks earlier before it rotated out of view. Filaments, elongated clouds of cooler gases suspended above the Sun by magnetic forces, are rather unstable and often break away from the Sun.