Creepy Crawlies

It must be almost June, because these little beetles we saw everywhere today near Putah Creek are called June Bugs or June Beetles.

 and then this striking black & red caterpillar, this guy was really on the move, maybe it wasn't too comfortable sporting those bright colors hanging out in the open with all the little swallows, robins and bluebirds flying around. I googled it and think this guy is a Pipevine Swallowtail caterpillar.

Here is a nice link to learn more about the Pipevine Swallowtail (it's a beautiful butterfly). The site explains how a caterpillar of this size is likely poisonous to predators. But still it would be a really bad day to get pinched in half, by a bird, then dropped from the sky when you taste bad.

Nightlife at the California Academy of Sciences

I do occasionally get out of the house, away from my latest obsession with glass (and I've got the pictures to prove it).  A friend from work, a graduate of Penn State, invited me to accompany her to a Penn State alumni night at the California Academy of Sciences this last Thursday.  The Academy offers an Adults only event called Nightlife weekly.

view from the living roof, the tall twisty building to the right is the DeYoung museum

We were pleasantly surprised it took only a little over an hour to get there from Vacaville, parking was easy to find and because this is a weeknight event there were no huge lines or crowds (that was actually the best part)!  They had some DJ and live music pumping through the open spaces, lots of options for food and beverages and all the exhibits were open AND free tickets to the Planetarium show, such a good deal!

We saw the 6:30 Planetarium show (spectacular) and afterward I was initially a little disappointed that we missed the opportunity to see the living roof, but actually it was totally cool to see the view at night.

looking out over the music concourse

We wandered around checking out the displays and spent a considerable amount of time in the Aquarium.
Our nominee for "Ugliest Fish in the Aquarium" (he didn't seem to mind, a guy's gotta eat right?  And this is good camouflage for an unsuspecting fish dinner).

and our nominee for "Coolest Creature in the Aquarium" (we were not allowed to photograph this light sensitive guy, but I pulled a photo off the internet to show you how totally cool this one is;

ah, the Weedy Sea Dragon, oh how I love thee, so elegant and graceful, so colorful and otherworldly gorgeous!

Other creatures of note:
the eels, sleek, sinuous and with a menacing sense of danger about them.

the upside down jelly fish, this one is reaching out a tentacle to check out the nearby starfish, hmm... friend or foe?

These frogs which look like aliens pondering how they got stuck in this strange glass world with giant faces peering at them all day and night

the albino American alligator, named Claude

I have fond memories of this enclosure from yearly school field trips, I'm sure this is a different alligator, but it sure does bring back those memories.  My best friend at the time got shelled by the seagulls during lunch and we had to perform some major hair clean up in the little bathroom sinks, all the while I was desperately trying to be sympathetic, while inside dying to laugh uproariously, good times, good times.

Blue Ocean beckons

This was a very productive weekend.  I attended another training session at the local library for adult literacy tutoring, learned how to hook up the trailer by myself, practiced backing into a parking space with the trailer (no easy task I might say) AND finally, at long last, finished the Hawaiian Quilt, hereafter to be know as "Blue Ocean".

Now that Craig is working nights, going to school during the day and sleeping any other time he can, I often find myself the only one awake in the house (the dogs sleep all night with me and then all day with Craig, lazy mutts).This has been strangely liberating, don't get me wrong I love spending time doing just about anything with Craig, but now I must ask only my own self how I want to occupy my time, rather than "what would we both enjoy doing together?"

I have started volunteering at the library doing one on one tutoring with a nice lady who wants to improve her basic English skills.  I was very nervous about taking on this responsibility, worried that I wouldn't know what or how to teach English or really any subject at all, let's just say I'm not known for patience.  But the Solano County Library has an awesome Literacy program and they really take a lot of time and effort to help tutors put together appropriate materials and provide lots of information and techniques for working with adult learners.  We meet twice a week for 1.5 hours at the library in a quiet study room.  It's been about 6 weeks now, I'm not sure if my learner and I have made much progress yet, but we are getting to know one another better and communicating in English.

I am also becoming quite obsessed with the idea of working with hot glass to make marbles, beads, wine stoppers and other small glass objects.  The last post showed way too many pictures of my first ever marble (and the only one) made at a 2 day course in Lampworking, which I attended last month at Public Glass.  This is the perfect combination of working with fire and glass. It's done with a torch that is mounted on a bench, so it's possible to set up your own "studio" in the garage. This technique is great for making small solid or nearly solid stuff like beads, marbles, etc and can be also be used for making larger hollow items like goblets. I have been researching like mad on everything to do with this and how to safely set up my very own studio.  The big deal items to take care of first are creating a safe and well ventilated work area.  Then the fun can begin in getting the torch, tools and melting glass.  Here's a picture of someone doing lampwork:

but first, I have soberly committed to renting some more time on the equipment at Public Glass before investing in this seriously. My first rental time is next weekend, which brings me to "the practicing with trailer" part of this past weekend.  As the glass place is in San Francisco and any newly created glass objects will need to be annealed before coming home, the torch rental also implies an overnight stay nearby. 

In my quest to keep the challenge level high, I rashly decided to make this my first solo jaunt with our travel trailer (affectionately named Shelly, for obvious reasons). I'm not sure what the heck I was thinking when deciding that my first solo should be through one of the busiest cities in the WHOLE WORLD!  Craig, bless him, stayed up late (for me early morning) to patiently explain the whys and wherefores of hooking the truck to the trailer, while stopping frequently for me to take photos, ask dumb questions, etc.  Then we drove off to the local Camping World Store, which oddly enough had none of the items we wanted.  No rear brake bulbs, no hitch helper flags (I hope the ones I ordered online from Garage Toys get here in time), but of course they had plenty of brand new, shiny RV's which they were not shy about telling us about ad nauseam. 

We escaped from the showroom and then I tried my hand at backing up the trailer.  I thought I had scouted a nice empty area in back of the Camping World parking lot to practice in, but it turns out I needed A LOT MORE space than I thought so the whole thing was kind of stressful; Craig trying his best to explain the physics of backing a trailer on a pivot point while I nervously under and then over corrected while keeping a wary eye on the very, very expensive RV's parked all around us in the lot.  We finally bailed out of the lot, both of us silently, but fervently hoping the RV park in Pacifica has pull through spaces.

must stop now, hand cramping, next post I'll show you the completed Blue Ocean Hawaiian quilt.

Redneck Safari

Yesterday, we went to a friend's new place out in Grimes (farming hinterland near the Sutter Buttes) for BBQ.

 We heard there was some interesting wildlife so we all piled into the truck for a little "redneck safari" (must credit my clever friend Jack with coining that great phrase).   After bumping along the country roads for a little bit we came upon a raucous cacophony of bird cries in the nearby slough.  It is a rookery for Night Herons, Egrets, Bitterns and who knows what else.  It stunk to high heaven, but oh what a sight, there were literally hundreds of birds and nests all crammed into this one little area in the middle of miles of farmland.

we saw lots and lots of nests with juvenile birds, many looked just about ready to fledge, like these egrets.

the Night Herons make a very interesting cry, sounds like a cross between a little dog woofing and bird whooping.

Jack found some volunteer walnut saplings to take back to Esparto.

back to the homestead, we enjoyed some great food and company.

after dinner we took a walkabout to a little pond up the road known to be home to some beaver and otter.  We didn't see any critters at first, but there was definitely wildlife trails and evidence of beaver cuttings and dam building activity.  Io, Blair's super friendly black Labrador dog, decided to cool off in the pond.

We were just fooling around, throwing rocks for the dog to chase, when out of nowhere a beaver appeared

 and was swimming towards the dog, who was unaware of anything amiss at this point

the beaver was making a bee line for Io, and everyone started screaming at the dog (who is kind of deaf) to get out!!

when all of a sudden SLAP!! went the beaver tail

luckily this story has a happy ending, Io was just a little startled, no one had to get into the yucky water to rescue her and the beaver was evidently OK, it simply wanted to scare the dog away from the pond. 

Relieved, we all walked slowly back home through a gorgeous sunset

Hot Glass and Cold Beer

A friend and I went to a fun event at the Public Glass studio last night, Hot Glass and Cold Beer.  It was quite a scene, for the $25 door charge we got to pick our very own keepsake hand blown glass, as much beer and wine as we could stomach (which in my case was just 1/2 a glass, lightweight!) the fun of watching real glass artists design and create glass sculpture right in the midst of everyone and enjoyed it all to the rockin live band, Jabberwocky.  What a thrill.  I didn't take many pictures of the glassblowing stuff because it was quite crowded and I was a little afraid of getting bumped and, heaven forbid, somehow getting burned or messing up the artists at work.

below is the unique hand blown glass I chose, it is rather large and heavy, so I think it will make a great flower vase.

 we also were treated to a demonstration of superb lamp working, this is a slightly different technique of glass working using a torch to melt and work glass rods into smaller scale pieces, like glass beads. The artist we saw last night was creating the most amazing glass flowers in clear glass to be made into pendants, earrings, door pulls, etc.

 

The best part of the whole night, for me personally, was finally getting to see my very own, first ever, glass creation.  When last I saw this, it was a dark, shiny lump that was too hot to handle.  Now that I can see it, especially in the sunshine, I am most proud!! 

 

I think I might be hooked and will just have to take more glass working classes.

The All-Time Coolest ( or maybe Hottest) Class Ever!

I had an opportunity to take the most awesome class ever called "Playing with Fire" at Public Glass, San Francisco's Center for Glass Arts.  I was feeling a little intimidated by the idea of being a complete neophyte in the middle of a "real artist's studio" and then I rolled up to this rather unassuming building in one of the rougher parts of town,

The whole experience was different and much better than I expected.  The guys teaching the class were really relaxed and having a good time, which put myself and the other 5 students immediately at ease. I expected some crazy, super safety lecture and rigid rules of behavior for using the equipment.  We merely signed a single sheet release form, grabbed some scratchy safety glasses and pretty much immediately started playing with molten glass. 

 We newbies were allowed to walk about freely and look at anything, and it became clear very quickly that everyone was VERY AWARE of where the red hot glass was AT ALL TIMES.  The very real and apparent danger kept everyone on their toes without need for a lot of discussion of safety rules.  One of the teachers likened it to the sort of dance that food servers naturally fall into when it's busy, calling out "behind you" and sidestepping around moving obstacles. 

We set out to make simple, solid paperweights, actually blowing into the glass is another class entirely.

Step 1: The process begins with selection of a pipe, a 6 foot hollow metal rod to gather and work the glass with.  The pipes are kept hot in a gas burner.

 Step 2: Gather molten glass from the 2100F furnace, using the pipe to dip into the liquid glass, which is about the consistency of warm honey, gently rotating the pipe until a goodly size blob of glass has coated the end of the pipe.  This was somewhat challenging as the furnace is so blasted hot you can barely stand to be in front of it and without dark glasses it was pretty much impossible to see where the glass was so this was somewhat of a "do it by feel" process.

Then cool the pipe in the former beer keg turned circulating water bath so it's possible to hold the pipe with bare hands

Step 3: shape the molten blob on the steel "marver" table to make the glass blob more cylindrical. 

Step 4: As the glass is cooling it becomes harder going from the consistency of cold honey to taffy, so you have to keep the pipe turning at all times to keep the blob symmetrical and reheat frequently to keep it workable.  The reheating is done in the smaller "glory hole" furnaces at each of the 3 workstations.

Step 5: Add color by patting the molten glass into various bowls of colored glass granules, sort of like adding a peanut coating to candy apples.

Step 6: Shape the colored glass so it creates swirls of color in the finished object, reheating as needed to melt the colored bits and keep the glass soft enough to work.

 notice how the glass is getting darker as it cools off.

Step 7: add more clear molten glass from the big furnace to create a nice globe of clear glass around the swirly colored center.

Step 8: shape into final form using a wooden cup shaped tool that has been saturated in water to keep it from bursting into flame from the red hot glass.

Step 9:  Create the "jack line" to separate the glass from the pipe.  This is done by creating an indentation using giant metal tweezers in the blob close to where it is attached to the pipe.  Then carefully dripping water onto the indentation to cool it down quickly and start micro fractures in the area.  After that you suspend the pipe over something soft to catch the piece (someone with fireman's mitts for large delicate pieces or a padded cradle for the smaller pieces like the paperweights), then use the metal tongs to rap on the pipe which feels like a giant tuning fork and the resulting vibration causes the glass to crack apart at the jack line, thus separating the glass from the pipe.

Step 10: Gently place the first glass creation in the annealing oven and sadly wave goodbye as it takes 24 hours to cool down and I won't be back in SF for at least a couple of weeks.

Mine is the smaller, darker one on the right, it should be kind of blue and purple when it's all cooled down.

A statement? about what? and to whom?

As I was driving down the highway to the annual Walk On The Wild Side at Stone Lakes, I spotted this trash by the side of the road, directly under the $1000 fine for littering sign.  Is this some kind of redneck protest, a political statement or what?   And you're probably thinking, maybe some dummy just happened to dump here and didn't even notice the sign.  To that I say, possibly, but there was really nothing, and I mean nothing around for miles, so I think it was deliberate.  I just don't understand people who will go to this length to mess up a perfectly nice nature area just to tweak the nose of some government official (who's probably the poor Caltrans person who has the clean this s*&t up).  I mean, what's the logical alternative; to remove the sign so anyone can just throw their trash out of the window anywhere??  That's surely not the city I want to live in.

The walk through the Stonelakes National Wildlife refuge was great, this is the 2nd time I've gone.  They have all sorts of interesting vendors, but it's not too commercial, most of the table/tents were organizations devoted to environmental causes and the proceeds of sales are donated toward the cause.    There were also wildlife education/demonstrations on bats, local and invasive water species (hyacinth and sport fish), and the local flora and fauna.  The guy from Wild Things, Inc, pictured below does a wildlife demonstration annually, bringing rehabilitated but still "too damaged to release" critters like a turkey vulture, horned owl, beaver and rattlesnake. 

This year he has the cutest juvenile red fox. Which we learned they will have to keep forever as it is illegal to release red fox back into the wild in this part of California.  While there are some native red fox in California, the ones around here are thought to be fur farm escapees who have "gone native".  According to a 1993 Fish and Game study, the non-native fur farm red foxes are a predatory threat to several endangered bird species, but the newest information published in the Sacramento Bee this year indicates that there is a particular subspecies of red fox that IS native, so who knows?  Native or not this guy was one foxy little pup!

I'm back from the Land of PMP

whew, well it's been awhile since I updated the blog. I took an extended break from pretty much everything while taking preparation courses and self study to prepare for taking the Project Management Professional (PMP) exam. This has been on my to do list since last November, so I finally got my rear end in gear:

• signed up for a couple on-line preparation courses from Solano Community College
• completed prep courses 1 & 2 simultaneously (nothing like a little procrastination to make you work extra hard at the last minute) on November 6th
• took the exam on the last possible day permissible, November 7th
• and passed, yay!

I learned some interesting project management techniques, including new ways to do financial analysis of alternative investments. The professional certification makes a nice addition to the resume and I actually asked to be assigned to a project at work, and got a big one! So, now I can put all my shiny new tools and techniques to good use.

Now, it relaxation & rejuvenation time. Craig took me out for a very nice, classic American, celebration meal of champagne, steak and lobster. On Sunday, we took a nice little walkabout at the Nimbus fish hatchery, it was pretty quiet as the salmon run hasn't started quite yet. We did see lots of big salmon in the river and quite a few were actually "knocking" at the gate to the fish ladder. We got some great photos and video of the scenery and fish. It's kind of hard to tell from the video, but the adult salmon are HUGE, about 3 feet long and 40 pounds of muscular fish. The trout in the raceways are 8-12 inches long.

Yolo County Fair

We went to the Yolo County Fair on Saturday. What a great deal, it's totally free. It had all the essential summer fair elements; FFA animal auctions, pie baking and gardening contests, meat on a stick, tons of tractors both old and new, flashing lights, midway barkers, screaming riders, cotton candy and lots of happy families.
We visited with all the animals, Aidan particularly liked the very friendly sheep that licked his fingers. We observed an auction and as we entered the building Craig cautioned me strongly about raising my hand or making any kind of gesture at all, as the last thing we need is a lamb in the backyard. It just so happened that that particular lamb went for $30 dollars per pound!! It must be some gloriously good lamb or the little FFA girl had some grandparents planted in the crowd.

We visited most of the exhibit halls, I think my favorites were the garden exhibits and of course, the giant vegetable exhibits. This enormous butternut squash could easily be mistaken for a baby seal!another big hit was the Entomology table put up by UC Davis, the students there were letting people gently get to know the hissing cockroaches and the very strange Walking Sticks.

Conservation Carousel

On a recent trip to San Diego we had much fun at the Wild Animal Park. We got a little lost on the "9 minute" trip from the Motel Mediteran, a lovely, independent hotel near the park. After the 3rd miscue from my Blackberry (which was likely directing us to the keeper's house :), Mary ratted us out and called Jack for directions, so now we had me shouting directions from the backseat, Diane calling out directions based on her good sense of direction and Jack trying to direct us from afar over the phone, can you say cacophony?

In spite of our initial difficulties, the rest of the day went beautifully. We stayed from 9am until just after 7pm.

Not to be missed was the Conservation Carousel, we liked it so much we did it twice!

Diane finally gets her Cheetah ride

The park is very family friendly, and we got the pleasure of observing this friendly family in action. Check out the video