Taken from the lake last weekend.
Taken from the lake last weekend.
Things I'm Not Liking:
Things I Like:
I alternated between watching The Closer, my favourite show, and the Weather Channel tonight. Why? Yes, I am a weather geek, but Tropical Storm Dolly suddenly got big. It caught me by surprise, but it shouldn't have. For the past few years, thanks to increased temps, tropical Storms that have been forming in the Gulf of Mexico (see my post from last month or so about hurricanes) or either hurricanes or TS that end up there, get to suck the July - October bathtub temperature water up like a Lincoln Aviator sucks petrol at the pump. Warm water + TS or hurricane = energy.
It will be interesting to see what's happened overnight. It took one night for Katrina to grow into a monster. I fear for the Gulf Coast and Central America.
]]>I just returned from dropping Cody off at his 2nd year of Christian wrestling camp. Its on a lake about 40 miles from here.
Its a good thing the guys and Lily decided to go fishing yesterday because they brought in 13 walleye after just 1/2 day. The storm from the night before must've stirred up the fish.
Jace had another horrible night alone in his room. I forgot how short bursts of sleep give you really weird dreams. One time, I was even dreaming that Jace kept coming in our room so I don't know if that even qualifies as sleep! He was basically up from 1-4 am. I just don't know what to do! We could move Lily in but eventually he won't want her there anymore and then she'll be the one who struggles. The joys of parenting.
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There are critters that live inside your body naturally, that have been around since the dawn of life, or nearabouts (2 billion years ago). It would probably make you barf (and sometimes does, if the balance is upset, or sometimes you eat something they are hiding in, waiting for you) if you knew what lives where. (By "critters" I mean, life forms that exist in nature.) These critters evolved in water bodies, where all life originates from, and need to remain wet to exist. They have relatives who cause big problems. They are from the Kingdom Protista. Protozoans are Protists named as such because they resemble animals. Some are beautiful and amazing. Some are terrifying to look at (it’s a good thing you need a microscope with these monsters). Amongst the Protists are the algae. Sometimes they are grouped as Protozoans. It all gets confusing. Om..yeah, they’re kinda plants, as they use sunlight to make their own food, mostly. But wait, there’s more. Chrysophytes (algae & diatoms) and Dinoflagellates (weird science-fiction looking critters, mostly photosynthetic) are in that phylla (kingdom-phyllum-class-order-family-genus-species). Dinoflagellates exist normally as useful things, at the bottom of the food chain where they float as phytoplankton and get eaten by zooplankton and hungry filter feeders or crabs or shrimp. As their name says, they use flagella (what sperm use: a little tail) to swim around. Since they are so small they are very weak swimmers in the grand scheme of things. When they multiply too fast, there is trouble, as a few of them produce toxins that in those numbers kill fish as well as, people who eat them. When there is a big "bloom" of them, this happens. "Red tide" is one of those blooms. In California’s Salton Sea one year not too long ago, 150,000 grebes and 5,000 brown pelicans died from a red tide. Some humans suffered brain damage as well from eating the tainted seafood caught in the red tide. In eastern North Carolina there are 3,500 large-scale hog farms. More than 16,000,000 hogs live on those farms. Their excrement (aka poop) is kept in "lagoons" and often spills into rivers (and makes its way into the Pamlico Sound too) and estuaries during large rain events. The pig poop causes a certain unpleasant (not that pig poop in the river or sound isn’t unpleasant enough) dinoflagellate called Pfiesteria piscicida (often called an algae) to break free of its cysts (which lay in wait for enough nutrients in the water to be present to come alive) and have a big time. Pfiesteria is very resourceful and has evolved several forms (there are 24 in all) in its lifespan to take advantage of its human-caused buffet of food. In its cyst form, it waits in the sediments. It then erupts and after emitting a toxin to slow down fish so they are more vulnerable, and changes into a flagella stage where it attaches to fish and sucks out fluids. Then it changes and eats away the skin in a nasty seeping patch. The fish dies. Now it changes to an amoeboid so it can eat the dead fish. This all takes only hours to happen. Pfiesteria piscicida doesn’t just plague North Carolina waters. In a paper written in 2003, it was blamed for 50,000 fish deaths that happened since 1997 in several Chesapeake Bay tributaries in Maryland. It has erupted in many states on the Atlantic coastline (see map). Pfiesteria gives the term "hogwash" a whole new meaning.
Show us the book you're reading right now.
Submitted by Strive2Be.
This is for our August book club meeting. I'm about 60 pages in and its sure not what I expected.
]]>The fishing has slowed down considerably but there was still enough fish for supper yesterday. Today, only the guys went out in the morning and then they picked up Lily and I. The weather was gorgeous and I caught a few fish. I was watching a storm move in and the men were not being cooperative about getting off the water. I was starting to get pretty worried. I finally demanded it and everyone else had the same idea as there was a line of about 15 boats waiting to get out of the water at the ramp. Since we hadn't gone at the same time as the guys, I had my car so I headed up to the cabin. Lily insisted on staying in grandpa's truck. Shortly after I got to the cabin, the rain started. A severe thunderstorm warning was in effect and then came the tornado warning. I called the guys on the radio to see if they were out of the water and let them know not to mess around!! They got here shortly afterwards.
A trailer is not the place to be during a tornado. The only interior closet is in the kids' room so I quickly cleaned it out and put the kids in there with pillows and blankets. I was impressed with how well they were managing even though they were very scared. Ray said if a tornado arrived, we needed to head down the coulee by the cabin.
The radio was recommending a ditch over a trailer but it sure would be hard to convince yourself to go outside in a tornado. Thankfully, we didn't have to worry about it and the storm has passed.
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(thanks to Maya and Karlos on getting my mind on this and Karlos for the article link) Plugged in and working as of July 17: the UK boasts the world’s first tidal turbine. I first learned about tidal power in grad school (my first stint, 97-99). Then it was something brand new and not even working anywhere. It was more of a theory with a test gadget here and there. The one we looked at was this big arse thingamabob that floated offshore and looked dangerous and weird. It looked like a UFO that had crash landed in the ocean. Water moved through a big intake and this worried me. The only thing I could think about was what would happen to any life forms from the ocean that got stuck in it. Phytoplankton and zooplankton included. That would not be good if it was a killer. Dams cause enough problems for riverine fish without the ocean critters being added to the oops patrol. But this thing is cool. It is like a big wind turbine that instead uses wave and tide motion to turn it. (Who thought of that? Why didn’t I? Dammit! I thought of bras with see through straps years ago and was dumb enough to run my mouth about it but not do anything, then someone invented them.) This turbine generates enough juice to power 1,000 homes. It is located off the coast of Northern Ireland, in Strangford Lough. A test model was run beforehand. It is made by Marine Current Turbines. A grant by the UK government backed the creation and implementation of the turbine. (Kudos to the UK government for being smart and having vision.) The issue I have with the turbine, is I would think it would be bad to put any where large mammals swim. In Strangford Lough, there are grey seals who use the lough as their main pupping site, and porpoises come to feed. Apparently, there used to be Pilot Whales, but sadly, as of the early 1980s none were sighted in that area again. I hope when they implemented the test model they figured this bit out. Greenpeace has given the SeaGen turbine a thumbs-up.
Since the boys are no longer interested in the rides that Lily likes, we had to split up. That's why there are more pictures of Lily than them.
Tuesday night was a much better one for Jace. I read a chapter in our book and then he just asked me to close the closet door and he was out like a light with not one tear. I'm guessing he was quite exhausted from the night before. I had told him if he woke up after 5 am, he could crawl in bed with us. I woke up at 4:45 due to a thunderstorm and was quite surprised that he didn't show up in our bed until 5:30 because the storm continued until 6:30.
Last night, Cody & I were in Fargo for soccer games and didn't get home until late. Ray said Jace had a hard time with both of us being gone so he let Lily sleep in the bottom bunk and Jace in the top. We had carpooled to Fargo and the boys were telling scary stories so Cody wasn't about to sleep in his new bedroom downstairs. We moved Lily to her bed and Cody went to sleep in his old room. At 2:30, Lily showed up in our bed. At 3:00, Jace arrived. I asked if he'd noticed that Cody was in his room. I carried Lily back to her bed and went to check on Jace. Cody was up and having a hard time sleeping! I feel like I suddenly have 3 infants again who don't sleep through the night! Thank goodness, we're heading to the lake this evening where all 3 of them share a room.
Cody's team won their soccer games 5-3 and 4-3. Cody scored 1 goal in each game and played goalie the last half of the first game. He allowed 2 goals but blocked several, too. Its not the best position for him but our regular goalie was gone.
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