Tag Archives: Arizona

Zoom, zoom, zoom

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My weekly zoom call was interrupted yesterday by four majestic Harris Hawks. Here are two of them. There were two more in a tree.

Thursday was busy. It was the day after our house guest left. I woke up early to get the house ready for my cleaning lady. She usually comes after 2 p.m. but she asked to come in the morning. But I had neighborhood coffee group followed by my weekly zoom call in the morning. I had to have the house picked up and garbage out before I left for coffee.

Neighborhood coffee is a casual group of neighbors who meet the first Thursday of the month. We meet at local cafes and take turns choosing the location. What was funny about this meeting was the women’s coffee group was seated at a table next to the men’s group. That has never happened before. Also, we had six women, but the men had a dozen. I wonder what they talk about?

My weekly zoom call consists of a group of people from Alaska, California to New Jersey and in between. We talk about all the stuff people usually avoid. Politics, religion and current events. The group has Republicans and Democrats and discussions are polite and civil. I’m learning a lot about history and world politics from very intelligent people. There are two neurosurgeons in the group, other doctors, lawyers, a woman mayor of a Southern California city, and a man who ran a bond desk on Wall Street. Yesterday there were 14 people on the call, which was a big group and interesting to hear their points of view.

It’s refreshing although at times exhausting. The group leader keeps us all in line. He sends us material during the week to discuss during the call. He has a plan for the day and asks each of us questions, with the point at the end, “What is the truth?”

I was sitting in the casita by the window while on the zoom call. Then bam! A hawk hit the window scaring me to death. Then I saw hawks swooping through the yard, chasing quail. I guess I’m responsible for that, because I put bird seed out for quail, which attracts the predators.

Then I took a break from zoom taking photos through the casita window.

Now my guests are gone, my house is clean, and my social activities are over. No more zooming around! Remember “Orange is the New Black?” Well, this week, Friday is the New Saturday!

Have a great weekend. Do you have any special plans?

Sunset and Sunrise Season

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This is a sunset view from my driveway earlier this week. I took this photo with my iphone.

This photo I took with my Nikon as rain was beginning to sprinkle.

I’m posting photos to celebrate the end of the election. I will be so thankful to never hear another ad for years. Living in a battleground state, it’s been unbearable. It doesn’t matter if my candidates won or lost, or when we’ll find out. I’m just glad it’s over!

Sunday we had clouds, rain, thunder and lightening. The sunsets have been spectacular! The sunrises are gorgeous too. Now the sky is bright blue. Everything looks washed clean and sparkling.

Look at that blue sky!

Sunrise in our back yard.

One more sunset photo. This one is from my husband’s iphone a year ago.

Are you happy the election is over?

Which is your favorite sunset or sunrise photo?

Confusing Times

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Morning views of clouds.

I’m so confused. It’s because of the time change or NOT.

Where I live, we don’t change time in the Springs or Fall. But when everybody else does across the country, it’s strange. We went from Pacific Standard Time to Mountain Standard Time overnight. This makes it confusing making phone calls to my kids who are now in a diffferent time zone than me. It also raises havoc with the TV schedule.

We don’t Spring Forward or Fall Back. I wish the rest of the country would be on our schedule.

I wrote about the confusing times HERE.

From NBC News, here is a bit of history about the time change:

Why is this happening?

The practice, established by the Standard Time Act in 1918, according to the U.S. Astronomical Applications Department, is an effort to extend the daylight hours we have in the summertime by pushing off sunset an extra hour.

Daylight saving time, a contested idea after it was first passed, was quickly repealed in 1919, becoming a local matter. It was re-enacted during the early days of World War II and was observed from 1942-1945, according to the department.

After the war, the implementation of daylight saving time varied from state to state until the Uniform Time Act passed in 1966, which standardized the dates of daylight saving time but allowed for local exemptions if states or localities did not want to participate.

According to the department, the standardized start and end dates have been changed throughout the years, but since 2007, daylight saving time has started on the second Sunday in March and ended on the first Sunday in November.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/know-daylight-saving-time-ends-sunday-rcna178497

What are your thoughts about Standard Times versus Daylight Savings Time?

Two new toys

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This is one of two alligators who hang out by the pool. In the background is our waterfall.

Yesterday, two items arrived adding to my recent interest using a DSLR camera. I bought a tripod plus a remote. That’s because I’ve noticed my photos were often blurry. I have shaky hands and I can’t hold the camera steady — especially when trying to capture hawks or bobcat pics.

The photos posted today are the result of my experimenting with my new photography toys in our backyard. I have to say the photos are crisper than when I hold onto the camera and push the button.

The remote allows me to set up the camera on the tripod, stand a few feet away and press a button on the remote to snap the picture. The hardest thing was to line up the shot while the camera is on the tripod. It’s not as easy as point and shoot. But I took lots of photos and made minor adjustments, nudging the camera this way that that.

Flamingos and cacti in the sun.

Two mourning doves in flight. Funny, I was going for a lone quail on the rock, but captured this!

Our swim up pool bar.

If you enjoy photography, do you use your iphone, a DSLR camera or a tripod?

Any tips?

Odds and Ends

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It was windy and beginning to rain when I went outside to bring in a towel out by the pool. I didn’t want the towel to end up in the pool, or get wet from rain.

I pulled the towel off the recliner and a bobcat jumped out of the fireplace! We both were surprised. She ran to the fence and crawled through to the wash behind our house. I ran into the house. A few minutes later, she returned to the fireplace. I grabbed my camera with the telephoto lens and took a few pictures from inside our bedroom.

Olive the cat noticed her first bobcat. She got low into stalking mode — but stayed far away from the window as she watched. If it’s a bird, she’s right up against the window whacking at the bird through the glass.

The fireplace makes a cozy cat cave.

House Guests

The last house guest stayed with us for several days to scout a local lake. He’s entering a freshwater spearfishing competition. He arrived at our house with his boat and spent the next three days free diving in the lake from dawn to dusk.

He also brought us some treats from a recent fishing trip to Alaska. The freezer in the casita is filled with salmon, rock cod and black cod. There’s also lobster from his free diving off the coast of Southern California. What a treat! He’s welcome back anytime.

This is Black Cod that I cooked in foil on the barbecue. It’s my favorite fish which I used to get in Seattle’s Chinatown while I was in college. Incredibly delicious!

Things are not going swimmingly!

The past two weeks, I got back into the pool at the YMCA for lap swimming. I had stopped swimming during our wet, cold winter months ago. Then summer came and the weather was hot, which means I don’t like being out in the sun.

I was proud of myself and wanted to be consistent with swimming. Then on my swim day, the weather dropped overnight by 50 degrees! It was windy and rainy. I cancelled swimming. It warms up a bit this week, so I’ll get back to the pool.

One day while driving home from the pool, I heard INTELLIGENCE FOR YOUR LIFE MINUTES by John Tesh on the radio. It was about a Harvard study on ending your daily shower with 30-seconds of cold water.

In the study, people who ended their daily shower with 30-seconds of cold water had less sick days than those who took hot showers. I’ve heard of a trend of cold plunge lately by a number of celebrities. My college roommate’s husband said he takes a cold plunge in an icy stream at their home in Sun Valley, Idaho.

I found this information from UCLA:

What is cold therapy?

Cold therapy, also called cryotherapy, uses exposure to cold temperatures to cool the body’s tissues for therapeutic reasons. There are several ways to apply cold therapy, including:

  • Cold showers, which involve lowering the water temperature below 60 degrees for two to three minutes at a time
  • Cold spray, used to numb a small area
  • Cold water immersion or ice baths, or submerging everything but your head and neck in cold water
  • Localized ice application to treat injuries or specific muscle groups
  • Whole-body cryotherapy, which exposes the body to very cold vapors

Why cold showers could be good for you

Cold showers are not the primary treatment for any conditions, and conclusive research about cold therapy is still limited. But a quick blast of cold water can be beneficial when used for symptom relief.

Taking cold showers may:

1. Bolster your immunity to common colds

2. Combat symptoms of depression

3. Improve circulation

4. Increase metabolism

5. Reduce inflammation and prevent muscle soreness

6. Relieve localized pain

Our daughter used to take ice baths at swim meets in our hotel room between prelims and finals. The purpose was to flush out inflammation and increase blood flow to her legs.

Our pool isn’t heated and I could use it as a cold plunge pool this winter. Or, try the 30 second shower method. I’ll tell you how it goes.

What are your thoughts about cold showers or ice baths? Would you give it a try?

Have you tried Black Cod otherwise known as Sablefish?

Follow up photos

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What a difference a real camera makes compared to my iphone! Monday, I posted photos of an owl and hawks in my backyard. Those pics were from my iphone. The owl returned so I had a second chance with my Nikon camera. You can read Monday’s post HERE.

It was a bit of a learning curve to remember how to use my Nikon camera. Fortunately, there are lots of resources online. When I got the camera one Christmas from Costco, it came with a DVD with tips on how to use it. I still have the DVD, but it made me realize how much technology has changed since I got the camera 10 years ago.

Yes, the camera still works. But transferring photos from the camera to my laptop has changed. I’ve been through more than one laptop in the past 10 years! The camera comes with a little wireless device that is supposed to send a signal and connect to my laptop. Right. But first I needed to install the software onto my laptop from a CD disk! Funny thing, my laptop doesn’t have a CD drive. I looked online and the software wasn’t available to download.

The solution was purchasing a $9 card reader that is on a dongle that plugs into the laptop. I removed the memory card from the camera. Popped it into the dongle and BINGO! It worked in a nano second.

Here are husband and wife quail outside the casita.

Friends gave me these Flamingos from Costco for my birthday a few years ago. The flamingos like to hang out with the quail.

My favorite owl hanging out in our backyard.

One of several hawks who made a surprise visit yesterday.

I’ve written about how technology has changed throughout the years. You can read a post about how I began working in PR with a IBM Selectric typewriter HERE.

Do you notice an improvement in my photos with the camera versus iphone?

What technology has changed your day to day life the most?

I was singing Paul Simon’s Kodachrome while I wrote my blog post. Enjoy!

Happy Bird Day!

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This owl was hanging out in a tree all day and then before sunset moved to the fence.

It was awe inspiring to spot an owl in the tree outside our bedroom. I spent a great deal of time observing him. He’s a Great Horned Owl and he could spin his head around to look at us.

This was where the owl hung out most of the day. I’m looking out our bedroom sliding glass door.

Then something surprising happened. A battle of the raptors began with Harris Hawks appearing on a tree, then the fence.

The hawks moved from the tree to the fence. Five hawks strategically perched on the fence on both sides of the owl. The owl was surrounded. Talk about intimidation!

The owl gave up and flew away. Harris Hawks for the win.

I looked up owls and hawks and it turns out they are both fierce predators and don’t usually interact with each other. Let’s just say they don’t get along and they like the same prey.

Here are some links if you want to read more details about hawks and owls:

Hawks vs. Owls: A Face-Off Between Two Powerful Birds
https://www.wildbirdscoop.com/hawks-vs-owls.html

Hawk Vs. Owl: 15 Comparisons
https://birdchronicle.com/hawk-vs-owl/

Next time, I’d like to share better, clearer photos! I haven’t used my Nikon since we moved and it’s been tucked away in my closet. I’ll try taking photos with the camera versus my iphone and see which looks better.

So…the owl came back. I took photos with my Nikon and they are dramatically better! However, I’m not able to transfer them from my camera to my laptop or phone. The camera software is not compatible with either. Even after downloading new apps from Nikon, I couldn’t get it to work. I ordered a card reader which according to You Tubers is the easiest method. I’ll share the new photos soon!

This is a video of the last of the Harris Hawks flying off our neighbor’s chimney after they scared away the owl.

Which do you find more fascinating and why? Great Horned Owls or Harris Hawks?

Are you Team Owl or Team Hawk?