The Manic Mechanic

This one one of the most beautiful things I have seen.

Louis Schwartzberg, a filmmaker whose focus is on nature, gave a TED talk in 2011 about an often unseen activity happening all around us: pollination. Nature's method for continuing, diversifying and expanding is not only an essential mechanism, but has such unbelievable beauty as well. After his talk, he shows excerpts from his film that positively must not be missed. Find the biggest screen you can, sit back, and prepare to be awestruck.

This is one film that begs to be seen in 4K.

In our continuing quest to exist among Mother Nature's temper tantrums, Jeff and I left Hillside around 3pm or so Saturday before the weather got nasty. We kept our eyes on various weather reports, keeping a minimal setup so we could hightail it out of there at a moment's notice. Instead, we had a leisurely drive back to Jeff's 'rents place to drop off the trailer and await Irene's soaking. We spent our last night camping in the driveway as the rain and wind pelted the trailer. We spent the morning hanging out there, having an early dinner the drove back home to MD. The weather kept clearing up as we drove south, once we hit the Maryland line we were greeted with beautiful weather, as I had hoped. Once we got near home it became apparent there was no power (traffic lights and stores dark, etc) despite no damage to speak of. I fired up the generator to halt the thawing happening in three freezers. Once we settled in, we surveyed practically no damage here aside from a pretty much shredded vegetable garden. We picked about a bushel of tomatoes which will become sauce, chili sauce and other goodies this week.

We are currently watching the news detailing how widespread the damage and power outages are, though here at Casa Mayhem life is normal. The monster generator chugging away out at the garage providing all the power we need, even enough to make a nice pizza for dinner in the electric oven. We are lucky damage wise, and our preparations have come in handy. Internet here thanks to my 3G hotspot, since the cable is out for the duration.

We have one more camping trip scheduled for next month. I wonder what kind of natural disaster awaits us till then.

Holy Shit! Earthquake!!!

Ongoing edit: I'm watching the news, and it was a 5.9 magnitude temblor centered in Mineral, VA, near Richmond, at a depth of 3.5 miles, which is quite shallow. It was felt from New York to South Carolina!

I'm picking up a few things that fell during the 30+ seconds of shaking. No damage that I have found as of yet. Well, other than some shaken nerves. While there have been earthquakes here before (one being centered about 4 miles from here at one time), I've never experienced experienced something like this. I know, you California people are calling me an amateur, but this is completely new to me!

Kodi is still a bit, well, shaken. He's not relaxing just yet. Trying to call Jeff on the cell or the landline is futile, I imagine the lines are flooded.

Most people have seen the video of the two guys that raised a circus lion at their home then went to visit him after some years left in the wild. They were told and convinced that the lion would not remember them after the passage of time, but the animal and the amazing love-fest of a reunion spoke otherwise.

Let's try it again, shall we, but instead of a savanna, the venue here is a jungle, and replace the lion with a gorilla. Let's see what happens...