• A Moving Sunday

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    46  70%  39%  4mph windroseNNW  dewpoint 37   bar steady Waxing Crescent of the Snow Moon (I hope.)

    Kate and I plan to move items around in the living room and kitchen today, putting some of the finishing touches on our remodeling.  Her cold has abated, so her energy is fearsome.  She’ll work me hard, at least until 11:30 when the Vikes and Packers come on the tv.

    Jon asked Kate to help him redesign their kitchen for an addition he and Jen plan.  With two little ones they’ll need more crawl space.  Jen has also considered becoming a day care provider, which, with her early elementary experience, would be a great fit.

    All for now, because a work load is calling me.


    📂This entry was posted in General

  • The Byte Master

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Bill Schmidt came over this afternoon and coached me in Word Press.  He did the heavy lifting when it came to shifting my website created in FrontPage to this new vehicle, Word Press.  I’m glad he made the change because I don’t understand what he did.

    Bill and I have spent 20 years plus in the same men’s group.  I’ve gone from from 40 to 60 over that time and Bill from 50 to 70.  That length of time together builds a lot of trust, much like a marriage.  He has the password to my site and continues to fiddle with some of the nuances.  Where did the navigation bars on the old site go, for example.

    He coached me in the original change when I put up AncientTrails for the first time.  I had a couple of months of enforced leisure then, thanks to surgical repair of my ruptured right Achilles tendon.  Thanks to his help then, I’ve picked up Word Press quicker.  Still a lot to learn, but that’s part of the fun of doing this. 

    Hope to see your comments here some time soon.


    📂This entry was posted in Woolly Mammoths 📎and tagged

  • Korean soap operas and the Silk Road

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    Back from a night at the U of M’s Institute for Advanced Studies.  The occasion was a lecture on Chang’an, the capital of the Tang empire and site of the present day city of Xi’an.  The lecture, as well as a pipa concert on Sunday at 3 PM at Kaufman, celebrates the 25th anniversary of a relationship between Minnesota and Shaanxi province as sister states.

    A supper preceded the event, paid for by somebody, and had a variety of Chinese dishes, whether indigenous to Shaanxi or not, I do not know.  Over supper I met a Korean woman, a Catholic, who is a professor of history at the Catholic University of Seoul.  She’s here on a one year research fellowship to study Asian history.  Why Minnesota?  We have a good Asian history contigent here at the U.  Her name was Seon-Hye.  Next to me was a graduate student in history, a Chinese woman, who has as her dissertation project women’s writing in China from the 18thC on.  Seems women wrote poems to celebrate their locality.  Beside her was Yoshimi, a Japanese graduate student.  We got to talking about Korean soap operas.  Yoshimi said they were very popular in Japan, so much so that Japanese young women take tours to Korea to see sites where their favorite soap operas happen.   The Chinese woman, whose name I didn’t learn, agreed, saying the Korean dramas were very popular in China, too.  

    Huang, a young Mandarin man, is a student of the Qin dynasty.

    The lecture that followed supper was on Chang’an and its cosmopolitan nature, demonstrated through art and a mini-history of the silk road.  The lecturer was Kathy Ryor, a professor from Carleton College. 

    Also picked up a pair of new sunglasses today.  Snazzy and gray/blue in tint.  Gives the world a slight wintry cast.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture 📎and tagged

  • Changing the Scenery

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    33  82%  38%  0mph windroseE  dewpoint28  bar steady  Ordinary Time New Moon

    First snow.  After a scatter of flakes, a beady snow dropped onto our deck, bouncing before it came to a rest.  Didn’t last long, but it was enough.  This first snow has a magical quality, a true signal that the theatre of the seasons has changed scenes and scenery.  Clouds give the day an intimate quality, the sky closer to the earth.  The brown of dead lives and withered perennials has small shadows of white. 

    This is the time the evergreens begin to stand out.  The pachysandra on the third tier under the Colorado Spruce is a nest of shiny green leaves; the cedar trees in our woods stand tall, their flat needles green against the leafless oaks, big-tooth aspens, ash and black locust.

    In my northern heart this time, called by the Celts Samain, through to Imbolc, the time when lambs came into the belly in old Ireland, around February 1st, defines me and those who live here.  This is our time as summer is the time of Southern California and Arizona, Texas and New Mexico.   Part of it is because of what we endure, for them the heat and aridity, for us, the cold and the snow, but it is more, much more, than that.  It is the difference between cranking up the snowblower and pushing the button on a power boat, between walking through knee deep snow, exhilirated, and walking through 107 heat refreshed by the mists from those outdoor cooling devices.  To my northern heart exhiliration trumps wilting in the heat; but I know that’s my bias, a bias not shared by the hundreds, thousands of Minnesotans who become snowbirds each winter, migrating to warmer climes.


    📂This entry was posted in Weather +Climate

  • Chicken Soup for the Body

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    34  67%  37% bar steady 0mph windrose NNE  dewpoint24  Ordinary Time  Waning Crescent of the Blood Moon

    A quiet night.  Kate came home early.  A good thing since she was sick, a cold.  I made her chicken noodle soup.  Had to rely on my concoction since none of the cookbooks had anything similar to what I usually make.  My recipe of choice is on Golden Plump chickens and I bought Tyson chicken at Costco.  Came out ok anyhow.

    Feels strange to use this other process for putting up entries, but I’ll get use to it.  It will be awhile before I have the hang of the whole deal.  It’s complex, but, so far, reasonably straightforward.  After Bill put my stuff into Word Press in the first place.  Thanks, Bill.

    He’s coming over  on Saturday to help me finesse certain aspects of the site.  A good friend.


    📂This entry was posted in General 📎and tagged

  • Worked out

    Posted on by Charles Comment

     37  61%  36%  dewpoint25  0mph windrose NNE  Ordinary Time Waning Crescent of the Blood Moon

    Modifying my workout to lean more toward aerobics.  It’s not easy since the Core Performance program splits workouts at the advanced level by sport and does not include weight training with the Endurance package.  That means I have to figure out a way to add resistance work to an already full program.  Not quite sure how to do that.  If I get real stuck, I’ll e-mail the Core Performance folks.

    I’ve got a fair run now of at home time, so I can get back into a groove with the workouts, the writing, and the work outside. 


    📂This entry was posted in General

  • A new sight

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    November 7, 2007  12:24PM   39  61%  34%  26dewpoint  5mph  windrose ENE  Ordinary Time  Waning Crescent of the Blood Moon

    These entries have first been a word file, .doc, before moving into this new version of Ancientrails.  Bill Schmidt plans to change my underlying program to WordPress, away from the older version of FrontPage in which  all the previous have been created.  This change happens right now, as I write this, so I can’t enter text directly into the website until late Saturday or Sunday, if all things go well.

    One reason I look forward to the new version of Ancientrails is discussion.  WordPress makes that function easy, so Ancientrails can become a two-way dialogue for those who would like that opportunity.

    Found a few more stray stories sitting in other files, so I printed those out before I went to Costco. 

    I have to make a Costco run now and then because we buy dog food, treats, Propel and water softener salt in bulk.  We also buy gas through the Costco cash card.  All told it’s nickels and dimes, yes, but they add up and exceed the $50 annual fee.  Not to mention, by the way, that Costco shows up on Consumer Reports as the cheapest place in the US to buy such items as televisions. 

    Both dog food and the salt come in 40 pound bags so picking it up, putting it on a cart, loading it in the truck, unloading and putting the salt in the water softener all call on those muscles I develop when I work out.

    Kate’s sick today as the annual parade of viruses begins at our home.  She doesn’t get sick often, but she does get exposed to everything nasty out there, and she gets her exposure from kids, for whom hand washing and other hygiene practices are still new.


    📂This entry was posted in General

  • For casting weather

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

     28 75% 36% dew point21 bar falls 0mph windrose N Ordinary Time Waning Crescent Blood Moon New Moon in 1 days

    Today I finished creating files for the major magazine markets for science fiction and fantasy, the kind of material I write. Over the next few days I will finish edits for all my stories on hand and match them with the markets. A high number of the magazines only accept submissions by e-mail. This makes the whole process easier for me. This feels like work, slogging through the tall grass, but it also feels good. The way it works is this: write, revise, rewrite, submit. Repeat. I’ve primarily done part 1, write. Adding the other three will turn me into a professional. About time.
    The weather occupies my spare intellectual effort at the moment. I’m trying to learn enough to do my own forecasting. I already have a sophisticated weather station and subscriptions to a professional weather service and an amateur weathercasters website. A book written by Tim Vasquez, Weather Forecasting, contains the preliminary information. It’s somewhat complicated, but I need the challenge.  
    The forecasting occupies a part of my growing interest in understanding my locale, right here. I’ve spent some time on the soil, what’s beneath the surface and what grows from it. I’ve learned some about the geology and the hydrology, but very little about the meteorology. So, I plan to remedy that.
    Kate earned a big, honking bonus over the last quarter and she’s like a kid in a candy store. It’s fun to see her so excited. 


    📂This entry was posted in Weather +Climate