Fish Oil

My most popular horoscope for the day--

Expect to be torn between two seemingly paradoxical urges today, Aquarius. Part of you wants to spend the day wrapped in a cocoon, playing with your toys. But another side of you is just as committed to spearheading a major creative or social endeavor with friends who share your revolutionary ideas. You feel exhausted from trying to build the perfect world.

Me and my revolutionary ideas. Nods head. Yup.

The end of November is here. I'm still resisting the sickness of my wife and daughter. Must remain strong. Have started Vit D and Fish Oil Supplements!!

This was a pic I found from the woods in Maryland. Silly me only took a 50mm lens that day, so it doesn't really show how I was surrounded by these Blair Witch trees. Creeeepeeee!

Hunger and Isolation

I can remember being deep in the woods in Maryland in late November. You are surrounded by trees and bushes with rolling hills everywhere. You can't take a step without crushing a lump of dead leaves. When the wind blows through all of this, there are times that you can almost sense the wind as a solid entity moving through the woods. It can give off a creepy illusion that something is out there, something you can not see. It can be somewhat claustrophobic.

180 degrees to that setting is the desert in winter. Today the wind gusts were up to 40 mph or so. Walking with Finley just a few hundred yards away from the nearest house and you can still feel this awesome sense of isolation. You can see for miles and it's just the same scrubby little bushes, the same rocks, and the same cracked dirt. You can walk past a larger bush, and it comes alive with sound as the wind plays it like an instrument. In fact, all you can hear is wind. You feel it push you, trying to get inside you, and rushing past. It's not good weather for running, but if you feel like a quick escape into isolation, it's an oddly beautiful thing.

Walking back towards my house I noticed a strange black object in the sky. It was a large black bird hovering in the wind. I thought it was hawk perhaps, but I'm pretty sure it was just a raven. The first time I ever saw a raven was my visit to AZ a few years back. I heard it before I ever saw it ,as it buzzed over me in a walmart parking lot. Later I saw one lifting things out of a trashcan finally getting a Jack In The Box bag out to eat some fries. They are big and fairly smart I think.

As I continued my walk I saw this raven sitting at the end of a light pole and noticed another smaller bird at the other end of the pole. As I got closer the smaller bird turned out to be a mocking bird. Wow, I thought it was a sparrow. Then the raven began tossing feathers off the light pole. He then held up what looked like a large chunk of bird and waved it around and jumped up and down. The mocking bird then flew down to a tree next to the light pole where I noticed another mocking bird. These two birds sat there in the tree looking up as the raven continued ripping his meal apart. I don't think mocking birds would wait for scraps. Which begs the question, why were they watching? Was the raven's meal their offspring? Or was it a territorial posture on their part?

The raven didn't like me stopped and looking I guess because he took his meal and flew off. The mocking birds flew away too, but I lost track of them. As I rounded the corner a few minutes later, I could see the raven perfectly silhouetted in the afternoon sun on top of another light pole. If only I were to carry around a 400mm lens eh. This time I would walk right under the light pole the raven was on. I could hear his claws scraping the metal and hear his beak pecking the metal. He stopped and looked at me as I stopped underneath him. I said, "Does it taste good?" He continued eating, and I went on my way.

MV 22B Osprey

Sickness is all around me. I am currently resisting!

Las Vegas has a lot of sky traffic. There's the Air Force Base and their continual sorties out to the bombing range. There's a small airport near me, then the big airport south. I didn't know there is this line of helicopters flying around downtown which I heard is for celebrity transport. There's even a radio controlled plane runway a couple blocks away from my house. These rc planes are like 7 feet long.

I see cessnas and helicopters just come and fly circles round my neighborhood like they're looking for someone. And the military aircraft is way more varied here than it ever was at Eglin or Offut.

When I first moved here, I was told that one of my neighbors is a predator drone pilot. There are sighting of those here too. I would like to see one hopefully someday while out in the mountains while running. Anyway, driving home one afternoon before the airshow a few weeks back, I looked up and saw an unusual plane flying away from me. It took my brain a few minutes to figure out what it was. I had forgotten about it until surfing the web tonight. I'm sure it was probably headed to Nellis for the air show.

Vamp Farts

Who knew a street so close to my house would have such strange items. Remember the corgis and decapitated pigeon? Same road today, I see a couple walking towards me and Finley. They look so amazingly ordinary. Both are middle aged, slightly over weight and stocky. The man has some pretty wild porkchops going on and they're slightly reddish in hue. Both wearing sunglasses, hats, very similar exercise outfits , and very similar backpacks that look like school packs. As I walk by, both smile and say Hi! So what could possibly make this completely ordinary encounter stick out?

I swear both of them had vampire teeth!! I forget how trendy vampin is these days.

So the walk continues and I notice that the usually quiet horse corral is full of riders today and several of them are ringing their lassos in the air. Then I notice them yawin in some steers. Yeah I said Yawin! So they were practicing for rodeo I guess. It was funny to me, because I don't think Finley has seen a cow up close and he was kinda wigged out by them.

Next property up I notice 3 horses playing in their pen. Usually I just see them standing around, wavin their tales and stuff. Today though, these young studs were prancin, jumping, rolling in the dirt, and making lots of horsey noises. Yah I'm so not a horse person am I! Somewhere out there is my first serious highschool girlfriend, and I wonder if she still loves horses. Karen? Do you? Anyway, they are playing when suddenly one horse jumps at the other and the other horse dodges the first horse. The first horse comes crashing down and lets out, no explodes with the loudest fart I've ever heard in my life. It was like a gunshot! Ok no it wasn't that loud, but I was definitely glad to be on the other side of the road.

Post Turkey Bits

After about 10 dvd coasters, hours of burning only to get an error, searching through forums, and contemplating whether to just do it in windows, I have finally taken my video camera footage and burnt it on dvd. As with any operating system, sometimes things are just troublesome for seeminlgy no reason.

I have to import the video with a program called Kino. Then I make an ISO disc image using DeVeDe creator. I could probably use a nice program called Openshot to do this. Openshot will be good for converting video to youtube format. Then I went through at least 6 programs to simply burn the ISO file onto a dvd. It shouldn't be that frakkin hard, but it was. The day was saved by a program called K3B.

I'm very happy that I resisted the urge to just load up my old crappy apps in windows. Even though I have to use 3 programs, it takes about 2.5 hours less to burn a dvd which is very cool. I'll also be able to edit more stuff like menus and chapters better.

____________

The day after Thanksgiving. Whoooh! I woke up this morning feeling like I came out of a coma. Definitely a food hangover of some kind. I'll have to post some pics of the food later this week. Everything turned out well. Well...maybe not the brussell sprouts.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a decent Thanksgiving. I was walking the dog the other day and saw that my street had twice as many vehicles parked as it usually does. As I walked, I could hear kids sqealing, women talking very loudly, smell turkey cooking, smell barbque, and other interesting kitchen smells. It was a clear blue day with a mild wind and just a bit of chill in the air requiring a light jacket. With hardly any cars, it would've been a nice day to run downtown perhaps. There was no running though. Not even the turkey trot that went by my house at 8am could've enticed me.

Cranberries

So normally during Thanksgiving, I look forward to that super tasty combination of cranberry sauce and everything else on my plate. The sauce gets all over and gets into different ratios into the green beans, turkey, mashed potatoes, etc. This Thanksgiving will be a little different though.

There will be no green bean cassarole.

There will be no cranberry sauce from a can.

There will not be mounds of mashed potatoes.

There will be no pumpkin pie.

There will be no pecan pie ( I think) hahaha

There will not be dozens of rolls.

Regardless, I am excited. There will still be a ton a food I'm sure. I'm sure I will still eat at least 3 platefuls and be the last person eating as normal. Turkey turkey turkey in mah belllie!!

Red Rock Canyon #4

I had my 4th run at Red Rock Canyon today. It's max 5000 feet here, but this tells me one simple thing. Uphill is uphill and steep is steep at any elevation. I'd probably alter that opinion if I had the chance to go above 12 thousand. Anyway, I was so out of breath today. Maybe it was the cold? Maybe it was the McD's sausage burritos? Whatever the reason, I never really got much of a groove on today.

I was on a new trail with lots of sticky red clay from melted snow, big rocks, and tight spaces with cactus all over. The scenery though was gorgeous. I will have to get better pics another day and hopefully mesh with the trail better. Anyone remember Merlin from the movie Excalibur? In the end Morgana stabs him through his back with a sword and he says "right through the spine of the Dragon!" Oh wait that was when Arthur drove Excalibur into the rock. The land without a king, the king without a sword. Damn I loved that movie. Anyway, Spine of the Dragon....that came to my mind seeing these rock formations.

In a battling mood though, I decided to finish my run going up, up, up another short one mile trail. After about 1.3 miles it became clear this trail was not ending anytime soon. It was all uphill and fairly steep. I passed a dog off leash earlier so I knew it was time to find a nice rock and just sit. My breath calmed after about 2 minutes and I sat there in silence. The afternoon sun was in full effect and steam was coming off my visor. The only thing my ears could hear was a very faint hum. I'm not entirely sure it wasn't from just inside my ears. No wind, no cars, no animals, nothing but silence....so I just sat there for a few minutes and tried to clear my mind. I couldn't help thinking that this is what someone hears when they die in the desert. Nothing.

So I got up and ran my butt downhill and out of there. I remember the other day in the grocery store, this woman wearing a blue puffy vest and brown pants stared me down in the meat asile. She had spikey red hair and a mouth that tilted in anger making her look like a pissed off sunflower. She looked at me like I was someone who she needed to punch. It kinda spooked me.

Earlier I had taken Finley for a walk and we were passing a horse farm. These two awesome little Corgis with bandanas came running out across the road to meet with Finley. As we were walking away, a 4 wheeler came out of the dogs property and the man yelled at the dogs saying 'You damn F'n dogs, get the *uck back in there!! God Damnit!!! arrrgh" I thought holy cow what an A-hole! Then not a few yards later I saw a huge pigeon head decapitated with no eyes. What would you think? I asked, was it a cat or bird of prey that did this? It was a strange walk also seeing snow falling on the mountain.

Kazzoooo