Do you ever have one of those holidays where you have ten minutes of quiet time at home after doing a bunch of boring chores at home, and then you open up social media and see the inundation of photos of people doing all sorts of cool, interesting things, and start to wonder what you're doing with your life?
I still don't entirely understand some of these human tendencies. I mean, I share them, too:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
scrottie and I had a fun mini-adventure on Sunday morning, and I took a whole bunch of photos (okay, 35 total), and I want to blog about the adventure and share my photos with you. I suppose it's just some level of classic FOMO ("Fear of Missing Out"), and the general remedy is to close social media and go outside into the garden.
And I was utterly delighted not too long ago when my father shared a couple of photos on Facebook, which is something he rarely does. [But that was because he created his own version of the Project Worm Bin photos to demonstrate that his freshly constructed worm bin was adequate for the job, and his photo was equally hilarious].
So maybe it also has to do with the balance between one's own personal narrative and listening to the narratives of others.
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So. Sunday morning,scrottie and I got up early so we could try and make it over to Cal Sailing and off the dock in time for a special event, Breakfast on the Shoal. By way of background story: before the Bayside Freeway was constructed (I-580), the whole south sailing basin was much larger, and Berkeley Aquatic Park didn't exist. The substrate in that portion of the Bay is all silty, mucky mud, as one would expect at the end of a river outflow. Mud isn't a very stable foundation for building freeways, so according to the story one of the sailors told us, the freeway construction crew built a large pipeline to cart sand over from Treasure Island and fill in the land for the freeway. Apparently, at some point they discovered that they were putting a lot more sand into the pipe than they were getting out at the other end because there was a big leak in the pipe. And thus the Shoal was born.
It's only exposed during very low low tide, so the Breakfast on the Shoal was carefully timed to coincide with a morning low tide. During those same low low tides, the area near the launching docks for Cal Sailing is very shallow and muddy, so there's an added challenge of getting the timing right in order to get the sailboats out without having them get stuck in the mud.
Prior to the Breakfast,scrottie fretted a bit about the boating logistics: we would need to arrive early if we wanted to get out in a sailboat. Otherwise, in theory there are a couple of kayaks at Cal Sailing, but reservations and priorities hadn't been declared.
Fortunately, we managed to get up early enough to get our own dinghy launched in time, and managed to scoot out of the shallow mud with the centerboard up and the rudder barely in the water. From there, it was a bit of a slog out to the shoal because we were up against a headwind, but we managed to be the first to land.
The rest of the story is best told through the photo album.
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In other weekend news, on Saturdayslydevil and sytharin acquired two new chickens, Matilda and Bianca. They formerly belonged to a bike shop mechanic who accidentally wound up with too many backyard chickens (~30). From the looks of things, it's going to take a little while for all of the chickens to get adjusted to the new arrangement, but that's to be expected with chickens. Matilda and Carlotta are working on establishing a new pecking order, and meanwhile Bianca is trying to show up Patricia with respect to chicken Houdini skills. Yesterday morning, Bianca managed to get up onto the workshop roof, and then flew over into the neighbor's yard. Fortunately, the neighbor's dogs weren't out. After Bianca pulled a second escape maneuver, I helped L clip her primary flight feathers on one wing. It will be nice to be back to four birds.
I also finished a second bike spat, so now all I need is a rainstorm to test out my handiwork. If I wind up revisiting the design, I think I am going to model the shape more closely after the shape of the 'quarter' on laced shoes. In the meantime, the next sewing projects in the hopper are a new lunchbox, and pants.
In the garden: it's going to be a good year for rhubarb, which makes it even sadder that the rats are eating ALL the strawberries. Jerks. I did finally find strawberries at Monterey Market that are good, thankfully. They aren't cheap but they're worth the price. I appreciate that Monterey Market seeks out some smaller-scale farm operations to bring in really good and fresh produce for the masses.
I think I am now finished, for the time being, with acquiring new plants. The other day,coinneachf blogged about that familiar experience where one gets a Thing (in his case, motorcycle), gets it all fitted out and nice, and then is suddenly back in the realm of looking at more, shiny, newer Thing. It's a familiar sensation: bicyclists call it the "n plus one" problem, and for a little while there I was smugly thinking I'd managed to manage that impulse. Silly me. But yesterday, I found myself back at the twee, expensive plant shop (Flowerland), staring at ferns and plant pots, and realized I'd just transferred over to a different category of Thing. Ha!
But now for ornamentals I have four types of ferns and a spider plant, and a string of pearls succulent to go with the other succulents I've been accumulating in the lab. It's all more than enough to make up for all of the houseplants that froze to death when I moved from Texas to Nebraska. So it is time to say Enough and focus on cultivating what I have.
I still don't entirely understand some of these human tendencies. I mean, I share them, too:
scrottie and I had a fun mini-adventure on Sunday morning, and I took a whole bunch of photos (okay, 35 total), and I want to blog about the adventure and share my photos with you. I suppose it's just some level of classic FOMO ("Fear of Missing Out"), and the general remedy is to close social media and go outside into the garden.And I was utterly delighted not too long ago when my father shared a couple of photos on Facebook, which is something he rarely does. [But that was because he created his own version of the Project Worm Bin photos to demonstrate that his freshly constructed worm bin was adequate for the job, and his photo was equally hilarious].
So maybe it also has to do with the balance between one's own personal narrative and listening to the narratives of others.
-
So. Sunday morning,
scrottie and I got up early so we could try and make it over to Cal Sailing and off the dock in time for a special event, Breakfast on the Shoal. By way of background story: before the Bayside Freeway was constructed (I-580), the whole south sailing basin was much larger, and Berkeley Aquatic Park didn't exist. The substrate in that portion of the Bay is all silty, mucky mud, as one would expect at the end of a river outflow. Mud isn't a very stable foundation for building freeways, so according to the story one of the sailors told us, the freeway construction crew built a large pipeline to cart sand over from Treasure Island and fill in the land for the freeway. Apparently, at some point they discovered that they were putting a lot more sand into the pipe than they were getting out at the other end because there was a big leak in the pipe. And thus the Shoal was born.It's only exposed during very low low tide, so the Breakfast on the Shoal was carefully timed to coincide with a morning low tide. During those same low low tides, the area near the launching docks for Cal Sailing is very shallow and muddy, so there's an added challenge of getting the timing right in order to get the sailboats out without having them get stuck in the mud.
Prior to the Breakfast,
scrottie fretted a bit about the boating logistics: we would need to arrive early if we wanted to get out in a sailboat. Otherwise, in theory there are a couple of kayaks at Cal Sailing, but reservations and priorities hadn't been declared.Fortunately, we managed to get up early enough to get our own dinghy launched in time, and managed to scoot out of the shallow mud with the centerboard up and the rudder barely in the water. From there, it was a bit of a slog out to the shoal because we were up against a headwind, but we managed to be the first to land.
The rest of the story is best told through the photo album.
-
In other weekend news, on Saturday
slydevil and sytharin acquired two new chickens, Matilda and Bianca. They formerly belonged to a bike shop mechanic who accidentally wound up with too many backyard chickens (~30). From the looks of things, it's going to take a little while for all of the chickens to get adjusted to the new arrangement, but that's to be expected with chickens. Matilda and Carlotta are working on establishing a new pecking order, and meanwhile Bianca is trying to show up Patricia with respect to chicken Houdini skills. Yesterday morning, Bianca managed to get up onto the workshop roof, and then flew over into the neighbor's yard. Fortunately, the neighbor's dogs weren't out. After Bianca pulled a second escape maneuver, I helped L clip her primary flight feathers on one wing. It will be nice to be back to four birds.I also finished a second bike spat, so now all I need is a rainstorm to test out my handiwork. If I wind up revisiting the design, I think I am going to model the shape more closely after the shape of the 'quarter' on laced shoes. In the meantime, the next sewing projects in the hopper are a new lunchbox, and pants.
In the garden: it's going to be a good year for rhubarb, which makes it even sadder that the rats are eating ALL the strawberries. Jerks. I did finally find strawberries at Monterey Market that are good, thankfully. They aren't cheap but they're worth the price. I appreciate that Monterey Market seeks out some smaller-scale farm operations to bring in really good and fresh produce for the masses.
I think I am now finished, for the time being, with acquiring new plants. The other day,
coinneachf blogged about that familiar experience where one gets a Thing (in his case, motorcycle), gets it all fitted out and nice, and then is suddenly back in the realm of looking at more, shiny, newer Thing. It's a familiar sensation: bicyclists call it the "n plus one" problem, and for a little while there I was smugly thinking I'd managed to manage that impulse. Silly me. But yesterday, I found myself back at the twee, expensive plant shop (Flowerland), staring at ferns and plant pots, and realized I'd just transferred over to a different category of Thing. Ha!But now for ornamentals I have four types of ferns and a spider plant, and a string of pearls succulent to go with the other succulents I've been accumulating in the lab. It's all more than enough to make up for all of the houseplants that froze to death when I moved from Texas to Nebraska. So it is time to say Enough and focus on cultivating what I have.
