Hiking Sky Harbor

 

Millerton Lake

 

San Joaquin River

Today we hiked Sky Harbor in Fresno County.  A singletrack or fireroad for bikes, hikers and horses, this hike is noted for its views of both Millerton Lake and the San Joaquin River.  It's first mile is all uphill.  Mountain bikers enjoy this 17-mile singletrack which connects to Squaw Leap. 





Bobcat and deer tracks



A fire burned through portions of this trail on 6/22/2010 and was contained by CalFire on 6/23/2010.  There are many new additions to the ranch/fire roads.  We enjoyed exploring the fire roads today, a portion of which I usually hike anyway to enjoy the sweeping views of the San Joaquin River on one side and Millerton Lake on the other.  





This trail can be horrificly hot at the height of summer because there is not much shade.  But today was a gorgeous 80 degrees F.  Despite the fire, there was evidence of returning flora and fauna including tarantulas, turkeys, bobcats, deer and quail. 



Tarantula



Wild Turkeys

Punny Baseball Injury

I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger.  Then it hit me.  No, really it did.  About 2 years ago at a minor league game in Fresno, CA  a foul ball came straight at me.  I sat frozen, staring at the ball as it loomed larger and the only thing that prevented my nose from being the last thing to enter my mind was my husband's hand deflecting the ball from my face.  His reaction was solid as a rock, I couldn't have asked for him to be any bolder.  The ball still managed to create a terrific bruise on my left thigh.  It was at that moment I realized that it beats me why anyone would want to be a masochist. 

Mel Tormé Tribute Act vs. Dividing Creek, (MD)

I went to Wikipedia.  I clicked "Random Article" 7 times, because 7 is my favorite number and...I came up with *drum roll please* "Dividing Creek (Maryland)" .  Wow...I am not certain that I deserve such an exciting topic for tonight's Blog!!!  But, perhaps you do!

Dividing Creek is a tributary of the Pocomoke River.  So, not only is this topic relatively minor, but it is only a tributary!  Is that like a tribute group for a rock band?  A group that plays the music of a band or musician who is no longer performing, possibly disbanded and is perhaps deceased?  Wow!  Well, even Mel Tormé has his tribute acts, so I guess a tributary of the Pocomoke River in Maryland (not in Delaware or other known locations of the Pocomoke River) is entitled to a whole article on one of it's tributaries.



Velvet Fog



Well, Dividing Creek had a battle in 1635 between Englishman.  That's pretty exciting!  The Maryland colonists won.  And there was a microorganism outbreak in the 1990s...Oh, woops!!!  Sorry, These things happened along the Pocomoke River itself, not Dividing Creek.

So, back to our topic of the night, Dividing Creek.  Ladies and Gentlemen, *drum roll please*, the article on Dividing Creek is a stub!!!  That's right!  Not even a full article.  And that, is about as exciting as a Tribute Act for Mel Tormé.

I take that back.  The Tribute Act wins.

Rapper/Bubblegum Pop Duets make cents

Apparently Chelsea Handler and Rapper 50 Cent may be dating .  Chelsea is quite the comedienne, television host, etc.  Although I do not see "singer" in her vita, I can't help wondering if this will be the next Bubble Gum Pop/Rapper duet to hit the airwaves.

What other she sings/he raps duets are we familiar with?  Katy Perry and Snoop Dogg sing "California Gurls", Rihanna and Eminem sing "Love the Way You Lie", Hayley Williams and B.O.B. sing "Airplanes", I would like to keep going, but being a hard core metalhead, I've run clear out of my knowledge base on this. 

Of course these femme singer/homme rapper duets are not new, Paula Abdul and MC Skat Kat introduced this phenomenon to us with "Opposites Attract" in 1989.  (By femme, of course I cleverly mean "female" in the French sense, not in the current slang sense of someone who is demonstrating exagerrated feminine traits, or in the LGBT sense as in the opposite of "butch".) 

Whether Bubblegum, or wailing, butch or femme, rap or hip-hop, one cannot deny that these current musical pairings are worth some cents...Airplanes has gone triple platinum, so has Love the Way You Lie (at least in Australia), and California Gurls double platinum (at least in Australia). 

Will Chelsea Handler and 50 Cent go all the way?  Maybe 50 Cent will help Chelsea find her voice and the two will duet their way to triple platinum in the charts of love.  Clearly, it only makes cents...

Twitter, Beware my Thongcrack!

Trying to understand Twitter is like trying to keep up with your 5-year old nephew who has ADHD...I can't create a list to organize my stuff.  I have too many posts I care too little about and none that are remotely interesting.  I can think of nothing clever to "Tweet", and yet it seems that is not a prerequisite, so I'm not sure what my hangup is...

I keep hearing that Twitter is amazing, but I don't have time to click on every link that others post, so if you can't be interesting in your post without requiring additional clicks, I'm not sure of the sense of it all.

This may be a sign I am getting old.  That, and the fact that I don't understand why girls intentionally show their bra straps.  Or why thongs are called flip-flops and underwear that resides in your a**crack is supposed to be comfortable and is called a thong. Or why jeans that show your thong and/or your a**crack are considered comfortable and sexy.  Or why young men spit in the presence of ladies.  Maybe I'm old enough that I no longer qualify as a lady.  Maybe I've already developed a menopausal testosterone jaw and I haven't even hit menopause yet.   

Well, I'll keep trying this Twitter thing, but be forewarned, if I'm successful, you may need to beware my bra straps and my thongcrack up in your grille...or is it grill?

Change the World - one App at a time

So, I had a GREAT idea the other day in the car for a blog that would, if not change the world, at least do it some good.  And, it took me about 1.5 weeks to actually make it to my much neglected blog, only to discover that I have no memory of the value (I in my narcissism) was set to bestow on mankind.

I searched frantically through my iPhone, could I perchance have noted my brilliance while on the move through Dragon Dictation?  I had created several subfolders to reduce my apps from 7 pages which must be re-arranged each time I downloaded a new app, to 2 pages of lovely subfolders.  Now, which subfolder might my magnanimous, benevolent ideas for mankind be located in? 

I find a subfolder on my iPhone entitiled, Ideas.  Perhaps my grand plan is in here?  Under Notes? Voice Memos?  Type n Walk?  I find lists of items to purchase, songs to download, places to research, comedians, things to purchase others for birthdays or Christmas, quotes from Jean Luc Picard, a Dragon Dictation memo gone wrong and a random thought "I see a cute animal photo and I can't help wondering if the animal is now deceased...".  None of these seem meant to change the world.  However, I just discovered that 7 of these lovelies are somehow associated with one of my public e-mail accounts...Uh-oh...how did that happen?

Well, let's not worry about that right now, how about my voice memos?  "A recent memory in a distant haze."  Wow, that's profound, I guess perhaps, when you are driving miles each day on the 99.  Mention of a dinosaur statue to be purchased if one were so inclined, just south of Lodi.  "Horny Goatweed...Effects of Nicotine" hmmm...perhaps after a visit to a truck stop?  A listing of sloughs and creeks between Madera and Merced to research later.  And finally, a mention of a decrepit hotel along the 99.  So, nothing here to be found that will be life altering or world changing for the average follower of my blog.    

Sorry folks!!! I know you were looking for that Life Altering app, all I can say is that Apps, far from simplifying my life have just created more places for me to hoard my random thoughts from the highways of my mind. 

Hasta la Vista Governator

Time for a new Governor...*sigh* On one hand, we won't get to say "the Governator"
any longer in our best Terminator impression, on the other hand, this may be a time of redemption for the State which has seriously been financially terminated.

Sadly, the Gubernatorial candidates are entirely out of touch and I'm not convinced that another term of "No new taxes" and multi-million dollar cuts to services for the underserved might not be preferable...Okay, I take that back, hopefully anything will be better than the apocalypse we currently face in California.

Here's the rundown:

Conservative Front Runners -

Steve Poizner: Current California Insurance Commissioner. I prefer to call him Steve "Poisoner", because he is a conservative right-winger running on a platform of bigotry and hatred. Unless you are a white male who thinks just like him, apparently you don't belong in his California.

Meg Whitman: Former CEO of eBay...Hello, can you say clueless Billionaire who has already spent over $70 million on reckless ad campaigning? Or how about, Meg "Whitless" because a)She failed to vote for 28 years b)Had to leave the Board of Goldman Sachs due to a scandal that she possibly had illegally acquired IPOs to the tune of $1.78 million and c)How can a multi-millionaire who intends to run the State like a business have any compassion for its poor and disenfranchised citizens?

Liberal Front Runner -

Jerry Brown: Attorney General and wait...former 2-term Governor of California? Well, he's failed 3 bids for the presidency...and he was once Linda Ronstadt's "Little Moonbeam"...and the Dead Kennedy's first single, California Über Alles was about their perspective of Jerry Brown's "hippie-fascist vision for America"...Alas! Amongst a field of other rich, white people, Brown's looking somewhat acceptable...

But, as I am all for freedom of expression, I leave you to choose your future...One thing for certain, Schwarzenegger will be back in film, but will not be back in the Governor's mansion.

Yo! Comrad [sic] U R not so bright...

I love reading ignorant people's political opinions. I love looking at the spelling errors, the generalized references to historical events, and the mixing of ideologies.

I saw a blog in late March, when the U.S. "Healthcare Reform" bill was passed. It continually referred to Comrad [sic] Obama (a reference to Communism), while claiming that "his" socialistic reform has singlehandedly brought down Democracy.

Sadly, this individual is part of the fundamentalist right-wing conservative movement largely associated with the Republican party. And as such, this individual and a large cadre of others just like him are allowed to vote and decide the futures of as many children as they are able to produce (missionary style only, of course).

This individual's blog post, and others like it, remind me of an article out of London which points to a correlation between IQ, party affiliation and religious beliefs.

According to the article, Conservatives tend toward fundamentalism in their (typically monotheistic) religion of choice (typically Christian). They also tend to have an IQ almost a full standard deviation below that of atheistic Liberals. The article goes on to describe a possible evolutionary reason why Liberal atheists have higher IQs, in that they tend to be more open-minded and are largely concerned about the welfare of all. On the other hand, Conservative fundamentalists with lower IQs tend to be more close-minded and concerned with the protection of their family unit and those just like them. (Kanazawa, S., March 2010, Social Psychology Quarterly)

Although many Christian religions speak to the world as "your mission field", many fundamentalist Christians prefer to protect themselves and their families from the influence of the secular world. This, however, minimizes their impact on others through association and modeling. It is a selfish viewpoint, that only you and others like you are "clean" enough in the eyes of God to interact with one another. I see this behavior as confirmation of Jesus' question in Luke 6:41 - Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? It is highly judgmental, but also protective of the belief systems.

My summary of the London article is jokingly this: As a liberal atheist, you may be smarter, more open-minded and more caring of society at large, but you will go to Hell. However, if you are a fundamentalist conservative, you will likely be protective of your own kind, ignorant and bigoted, but you will go to Heaven.

Introducing "the Brain"

In High School, I was noted as such a ginormous nerd, that I was assigned a new title "Brain". My younger sister was mortified to be seen in public with me and my classmates knew that if they needed help with schoolwork, I likely would have the answer. Oh, did I mention I also wore a backbrace for scoliosis?

Being known as the biggest nerd in school is not the best way to make friends, but it certainly impacts one's sense of self. Not surprisingly, some of my favorite movies are Revenge of the Nerds, Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, and Napoleon Dynamite.

Thankfully, as one ages, the Nerd lifestyle becomes more accepted. Some even aspire to join the ranks. Although IRL I am somewhat successful (I have not invented anything as exciting as Post-It notes, although these are a passion of mine), I am still noted as a Nerd. And, I am of the firm mind that the Nerds do, indeed, rule the world!