Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

So, it's the One-st of October -- and we've had a full week of autumn now.

Took a while for the weather to sort itself out. The week before the equinox, summer ended on a cool note. But for most of the first week of fall, we had maybe three days with highs in the 83° to 89°F range, then days in the 70s which were just putrid. High humidity, with air you could shovel. Everett's air conditioning has been irregular since before the semester started and it was brutally humid in the buildings. Not only was there no point in trying to do a Van de Graf generator demo in E&M, my hands were sticking to the wrist rest on OUEST, the university's Dell laptop... Ugh.

Wednesday morning the temp was about 41°F. Today it was clear and 39°F. Ah-hhh, this is better.

There are leaves down in some places, but not a lot of color yet. It was funny that on the 23rd or 24th, as I drove up to my handicapped parking space, there are these two relatively recent maples in the lawn by Everett Tower. The one on the right -- half the big leaves were green and half were sort of beige. The breeze was blowing a snowstorm of beige leaves onto the ground. It looked like something you'd see on a cartoon, or maybe the pine needles falling off all at once on Charlie Brown's Christmas tree. (grin) We're talking about knocking off all the beige leaves in minutes, not hours or days or weeks. Very odd looking.

Maybe October will bring some pleasant cool jacket weather -- and some great leaf color. We shall see.

No pictures yet.

Dr. Phil

Posted on Dreamwidth
Crossposted on LiveJournal

Whiplash Weather Changes

Wednesday and Thursday was our Indian Summer, I guess -- the highs hit 78°F -- and we had lows in the upper 60s. Immediately followed by lows around 33°F and highs in the 40s and 50s. Heck, Thursday, even as the temps were dropping, the house had gotten so hot I had to switch on the AC for a few hours to make the house comfortable for sleeping -- we had to close the windows due to the heavy rains.

Meanwhile, the East Coast is bracing for the Frankenstorm -- Hurricane Sandy + another storm front coming in from the west = Big Bad Snow Storm. We may even get snow from Sandy for Halloween. But I've written before about Halloween snows in Medina NY (DW) as a kid, so it's not a crazy thing.

Declining Gas Prices

Gas prices had been up close to four bucks recently, but they've been steadily dropping every day. Regular was $3.33.9/gal when I bought gas on Thursday -- down to $3.31.9/gal yesterday. I saw a similar run down in price leading up to the 2008 election. My theory is that the oil companies are trying to keep gas prices out of the election rhetoric. Yeah, prices were a lot less in 2008 -- gas had fallen from over four bucks in the summer of 2008 to $2.14.9/gal on Election Day.

It even continued dropping after the election, hitting $1.98.9/gal on the following Saturday.

Sure gas is higher in 2012, but remember the economy was imploding in 2008 -- things are a lot stronger now. I predict gas will be under two three bucks by November 6th.

Dr. Phil

Updated.

North and East...

The Fall 2011 color shoots continue, with a run I made on Thursday to get some watch batteries installed. They'd forecast rain late in the afternoon, but I was dodging dark clouds and bits of rain on and off for the outbound leg of the trip. Some really dramatic clouds east of Allendale, where you could see the rain falling, but with some genius in a Toyota insisting on tailgating me -- when I can't see your headlights in the rear window of a Blazer, you're too close at 55mph -- and boxed in on the right side, I wasn't able to pull over and get a shot. But I did want to go up to Lamont and then take Arthur/6 Mile Road over to Alpine. As before, all shots were made with a 70-300mm f4.5-5.6D ED AF-Nikkor on the Kodak Pro SLR/n -- a few have been cropped.


Lamont on the Grand has a lovely tree lined "boulevard", but as I pulled over in front of the Post Office, I had to miss this long puddle. While waiting for the sun to come back out and light up the trees, I liked this contrast been the dark rain puddle and the blue skies and white puffy clouds. (Click on photo for larger)


The light was perfect when I stopped, but had to wait and wait for it to return. Finally I took this shot, which gives you some of Lamont's fall flavor. (Click on photo for larger)


No sooner had I packed up the camera and got into the Blazer when the Sun blazed forth and really lit up the yellow tree. So I got back out and tried again. (Click on photo for larger)


The yellows and oranges of the falling leaves have been especially brilliant this autumn and as I got to Alpine Avenue I was struck with these yellows... oh, they're not leaves? It's technology and not natural? No problem. These traffic lights are still striking. These are the old ones just removed, as the cherry picker was just leaving. I particularly liked how the low angle sunlight in the lens/reflector makes the one light appear green. The new lights should be the LED types -- they're much brighter and more efficient, but they aren't warm enough to melt the snow and ice which accumulate on the housings and block the lenses. Ah the Law of Unintended Consequences.

ALT Caption: Traffic lights trying to cross a busy highway. (grin) (Click on photo for larger)

A few more to come another time.

Dr. Phil

Alas, No More

I'd hoped to get one more round of tomatoes from our Potter's farmstand. Yesterday as I drove off to Holland on an errand, I passed by Potter's and the signboards still said TOMATOES. But today, despite the lovely autumn sunshine, following a below freezing night, the TOMATOES sign was down and all they had was apples and squash and a few peppers and such.

It's not that the other things aren't good, but one of my favorite things to have in the summer is a tomato sandwich -- and with me on sabbatical, it was practical to have tomato sandwiches several times a week. Yum!

The Dr. Phil Tomato Sandwich

I know I've rhapsodized about tomato sandwiches before, but I guess I've never gotten around to posting about, though I've meant to. The other day I was looking for another photo from the Sony from two years ago and came across this picture:

Dr. Phil's Tomato Sandwich

Bread
Cheese (Velveeta, Sharp Cheddar, American or other yellow cheese, 
                or Swiss)
Peanut Butter (smooth or chunky)
Thick slice of tomato (or two if the bread is large enough)
Salt to taste
Ketchup 
Mayonnaise (optional)

What is amusing about this 2009 picture was that we'd just discovered the Kraft mayo with olive oil -- really nice stuff. Alas, we don't use mayo all that often and around here, we can't even get a bottle this small anymore, which would be a waste because it doesn't have an enormously long shelf life. So we don't.

I'm sure the food critics out there will have plenty to say. Velveeta? Sure you can use "real cheese", but I eat a processed cheese food stuff slice sandwich every day -- and have since I was a little kid. I like it. Ketchup? It adds a little sweetness and some moisture against the peanut butter. Don't want ketchup? Don't add it. If you're making a tomato sandwich, it's YOUR tomato sandwich, not mine. (grin)

Look, the real taste here is the tomato versus the peanut butter. For many years we bought Reese's peanut butter, but then the local stores stopped carrying it. So we did Skippy again for a while. My mom uses Jif. Lately we've found a really nice Planter's peanut butter -- and a Skippy All-Natural. Grind your own if you like. For my taste, despite the salt in the peanut butter (and the ketchup for that matter), I still need the salt on the tomato slice, too. Again, your mileage will vary.

Anyway, the real tale here is that I had my last tomato sandwich of 2011 on Wednesday or Thursday this week. Alas.

The BLT Factor

But ten days ago we ended up with a bunch of lovely tomatoes, and also had the rest of a package of Smithfield bacon. So what could be more fun for a dinner than B-L-Ts?

Now for many of you, the mere mention of bacon makes you go crazy. Frankly, neither one of us believes the current foodie mantra that "bacon makes everything taste better". Mainly I prefer bacon as, well, bacon. Preferably sitting next to a lovely stack of pancakes, smothered in maple syrup. (Ah, WindyCon and breakfast via the Harry Caray's Steakhouse... coming up on November 11-13 -- you going to be there?) A good club sandwich or BLT will do, though, because the bacon can stay crispy and whole, rather than get lost in the mush.


The Parts


Dr. Phil's B-L-T. Note the new Hellman's container which can make ribbons of mayo, rather than blobs. It works, sort of, but can get messy and leaves the cap messy. The jury is still out as to whether this is an improvement to either the regular squeeze bottle or a jar-and-a-knife.

After I shot those, Mrs. Dr. Phil piped up and asked, "What about mine?" So here's Mrs. Dr. Phil's B-L-T:


Note the fresh dill on the right side -- and I think there was some spicy mustard under the lettuce on the left side. Also the soup was a Campbell's Select squash soup, I believe. Needed salt -- two words I never thought I'd need to say with a Campbell's Soup product. (double-word-score-grin)

Needless to say, the sliced tomato season of 2011 was a complete success. We won't be trying to duplicate this with the sad and hard and tasteless tomatoes of winter. Some things are best not to speak of.

Dr. Phil

Posted on Dreamwidth
Crossposted on LiveJournal

The Cool Off Continues

The West Michigan weather has trended towards highs in the 60s and 70s of late. Lows in 30s, 40s and 50s. In the space of a week, we've gone from light use of the AC to light use of the furnace. Funny, I used to recall stretches of spring and fall with neither running, just open windows.

Tuesday there was the smell of smoke in the air. Turned out not to be local, but from the plume of the big fire in the Boundary Waters area of northern Minnesota.

Wednesday and Thursday nights we had frost warnings. I thought we'd missed that on Thursday morning, except when I came back from dropping Mrs. Dr. Phil at work, I realized that part of the roof was stark white. Despite running the heat, the new roof from last year is well insulated, the white patch ending in a knife edge where the shadow ended and the sun melted the frost. Huh.

That night also knocked down a lot of the late summer bug noises. Last night there was one lonely cricket in the front yard. For the first time in months I could hear the distant frogs. The milkweed leaves have all sagged now.

Confusion At The Pump

Gas prices have been changing daily, running roughly $3.78.9 ± 0.15. Yesterday regular was $3.69.9/gal, the differential between grades was 11¢ as it's been all summer.

I've been going out late in the afternoon a lot. At 4pm all the bays at the gas station have been stacked up this week. Guess I never noticed this trend before.

Dr. Phil

Sabbatical 1.1

Last year I declared my time off from teaching to be a six-month sabbatical, following on the heels of Mrs. Dr. Phil's first sabbatical. The plan lasted about two months, and I got a lot of writing done. But then the Physics department called and I ended up with a Fall 2009 class teaching PHYS-1060 Stars and Galaxies. Despite "only" teaching two days a week during the Fall, there were a lot of things going on and frankly, it really isn't a sabbatical if you're still teaching and updating class assignments, researching the latest astronomy photographs, etc.

Which really isn't surprising. The whole point of a sabbatical is to make a break with the relentless schedules and demands of teaching -- and do something different to recharge the batteries.

May to December 2010

Fast forward to this year. The department didn't have classes for me for the May-June Summer-I session, and so far hasn't got anything for me for Fall 2010 -- though we're expecting classes for Spring 2011. And yesterday I was told that I should be teaching PHYS-2070, the same second semester calculus-based Electricity & Magnetism course I just finished teach two sections of, for the July-August Summer-II session. This is good on quite a number of levels, but it again leaves with a potential full six months of free writing time, "subject to change." (grin) So let's tackle that six-month sabbatical thingie again:

Sabbatical 1.21: May-June. I will be going in about once a week to the office. There's a bunch of old papers that need to be cleaned up -- you can't just throw away anything with a name or a grade, so it involves some sorting. Also, in two weeks they're going to start coming by and changing from the RJ-11 jacked phones to a VOIP Internet phone plugged into the RJ-45 network connection. That means clearing out some stuff so one can pull out the desk and get to the jack. (grin) And we need to schedule getting the roof replaced. But... I have a couple of deadlines closing during these two months so I can AND WILL get a lot of writing done.

Alas, it is too late and probably too expensive to take advantage of being off at Memorial Day and going to WisCon, one of my favorite SF/F cons. (Damn, I just checked by the WisCon website and unlike the last couple of years they (a) are NOT sold out of their maximum 1000 memberships, (b) have closed pre-registration and (c) cannot guarantee that there'll be any memberships available at the door when one shows up. So hope of going to WisCon has both faded and is annoyingly winking and waving at me. Stupid hope.)

Summer-II Session: July-August. I love teaching the 7½ week summer classes with their double-length 100 minute classes four days a week. The students are taking fewer classes, so they're concentrated on Just This Class for the most part. And for those who have to repeat the class, doing it in half the time must certainly reduce the boredom factor, allowing them to focus on those parts of the course they need work on. I'm sure it doesn't hurt that my very first full course I ever taught was a Summer Session PHYS-1150 algebra-based E&M course at Western Michigan University. The downside? I won't be able to attend the August 5-8 NASFiC in Raleigh NC.

Sabbatical 1.22: September-December. Subject to the department discovering I really am indispensable for the Fall 2010 semester, this is the big four-month block of "sabbatical" that I didn't get in last year. I have a number of big projects that I've started in the last year and I'll have the time to close a couple of these out. Really looking forward to it. (grin) This will provide no conflicts with attending either WindyCon for November 12-14 or the newly revived MadCon for September 24-26. Who knows? Maybe Jeff Silver will come up with the movie financing before the end of the year. (huge-grin)

So... what are you doing this summer?

Dr. Phil