Quiet Walk in the Park? Not!

Posted on by chappyshi

I headed out today for a walk on the Occoquan Trail which runs 17 miles from Bull Run Regional Park to Fountainhead Regional Park along Bull Run Creek.  The trail meanders along the creek and up into the hills and creek overlooks.  I figured it would be messy since we had a six inch dump of wet snow a couple of weeks ago and temps today were in the low fifties.  I didn’t expect to see much in the way of critters.

It was muddy as hell in many spots making for slippery, sloppy conditions.  But I had the good fortune to meet a couple at the top of a hill, as I was breathing heavily from the ascend, who had just seen a hawk, Bluebirds, a Downy woodpecker and, they said, a Red Headed woodpecker.  I stopped to pull out my binos and caught all the aforementioned birds less the hawk.

I pondered the likelihood of seeing a Red Headed woodpecker at the time and a bit later after checking my bird book realized that the woodpecker was really a Red-breasted which are much more common in my area.  The Bluebirds were brilliant.  I have seen them before later on in the season when their colors are not so vibrant.  I followed a flock of them for awhile and everyone I saw had very pronounced blue on the back and wings as well as pronounced orange on the breast.  Beautiful birds!  I also saw a Tufted Titmouse.  To cap it off, I heard either one rapidly moving Bard owl or two of them calling out to each other.

There was  a downside to the whole venture unfortunately.  As soon as I got on the trail I heard and saw 4-wheelers on the other side of the creek.  One was stuck revving its annoying engine trying to get out while a mud-splattered friend was trying to push.  Never in the three or four years I have been hiking on this trail have I encountered 4-wheelers.  They were not on my side of the creek in the park but they were certainly annoying.  I saw at least four 4-wheelers and one dirt bike and heard them and smelled the exhaust for most of the six mile hike I took.

I could see the trails they had blazed including areas where they went in and out of the creek to the islands and up and down the embankments.  The noise and smell was annoying enough but when I think  about the potential erosion and degradation of the flood plain and all the crap that will flow down the creek to the reservoir and eventually to the Chesapeake Bay I just cringe.  I also have two friends who live on that side of the creek who must hate the noise of these off road vehicles.

It is a shame that the northern side, the Fairfax County side, is protected as parkland but the Prince William County side to the south is wide open to such abuse and devastation.

Can’t Get Enough Air

Posted on by chappyshi

Yesterday I woke in the wee hours just baking in bed.  I threw my comforter off  and managed to get back to sleep.  It was still warm when I got up.   Thermostat read 72.5 degrees.  Now, please understand that I set my thermostat at 63 degrees most of the time during the winter months.  I don’t mind the cold, save some money, and save the environment.  It was going to be a warm day for February so I opened up the sliding glass doors in my bedroom and dining area.  Nonetheless the temperature stayed at 72 degrees.

Since I have moved into my new smaller apartment, I have found that the doing laundry, particularly the drying aspect, raises the temperature in my apartment 3 to 4 degrees.  So I do laundry on weekend mornings to warm up my apartment rather than turn the heat up to 68 degrees, which is my weekend norm if I plan to be in house most of the day.  I had to do some laundry so the temperature crept up to about 75.  I was schvitzing.

The temperature had started to go back down a bit, not lower than 72 degrees though, by the time I headed out with my brother to get some growlers and spring rolls as our contribution toward the Super Bowl (can I say that?  Please don’t sue me) festivities.  I closed the apartment up at that time, eight hours after I had opened up the doors.

I watched the first half of the game at my sister’s house and then came home to watch the second half.  By then the temperature had gone back up a couple of degrees.  I send off a scathing rant to maintenance and left another on the apartment manager’s voice mail  After the game I was pretty tired so I hit the fartsac without paying too much attention to the temperature.  However, I woke up once again schvitzing in my flannel sheets.  When I got up, the temperature was at a steamy 76 degrees.

While I was working today, I thought that I must have sounded odd to the apartment maintenance staff and office personnel but when I got home, the temperature in my apartment was 80 degrees!  I immediately headed off to the rental office.  I figured, since I could  actually feel the warmth in spots on my tile floors in the bathroom and kitchen, that the maintenance office, which is below me and is a story for another time, had the heat maxxed out and suggested that to the manager.  They said they would check into but didn’t really seem to understand how screwed up the situation was.

Help me, I’m melting!

Trying to Get Air…and I Am Not Skiing

Posted on by chappyshi

Looking at my left front tire after coming out of the grocery store today, I thought it was looking pretty low on air.  I figured I had better get some air in it before I went home.   I stopped at this one place I go to where you dial up the tire pressure on the pump, add air to your tire, and it beeps when your desired pressure has been reached.

There were two idiots in front of me trying to get air.  The first car took one kid with pants falling off his ass and an aging dude in white hair six minutes to fill up one tire on a Subaru wagon.  Considering it was a Subaru and all that I am glad they didn’t use a person powered bike pump to fill up the tire.   Good for the environment and all that…

The next airhead was in a van, skinny and older, wearing odd shoes and pants rolled up at the ankles.  He seemed to have some issues bending down to remove the caps from the tire valve.   He only did the left front and right rear tires for some odd reason and used a tire pressure gauge, despite the pressure reading functionality built into the pump, for the front tire but not the rear.  It took him about five minutes to accomplish this.

When it was at last my turn to get air, I topped off all four of my tires in less than two minutes.  Thankfully, the tire that I thought was inordinately low, was only down a pound or so.    In the meantime, two cars had backed up behind me.  I have never seen lines to get air except at ski areas.  Bottom line though, how hard is it to put air in your tires?

Some fun pictures from December.

Posted on by chappyshi

Some fun pictures from December.

Happy Holidays!

Posted on by chappyshi

I would like to wish a happy and safe holiday to all my family and friends.  I am with my sister Kim, her husband Don, three dogs, and a cat in the Virginia Tidewater area for Christmas.  I will miss being with the rest of my family who are in Northern Virginia, Alaska, Asia, and Europe but hopefully we will all be together for the holidays in the next couple years.  I am with them in spirit or maybe I am in the spirits…who knows.

Credit Card Company’s Dis Us Again

Posted on by chappyshi

Here’s an interesting thing I found when trying to set up auto payments for my credit card bills.  They make it easy to set up the payments but both my cards have only two options.  You can pay the minimum monthly balance automatically or you can pay off the whole card.  I have not seen any options to, for example, pay your minimum balance plus an additional $100.

To me this seems like a great consumer option.  It apparently is considered to be a lousy option from the viewpoint of the credit card companies!

Alignment of the Planets

Posted on by chappyshi

As you may know, I started a new job a bit ago after being unemployed for quite some time.  It is a contract three month temp to perm position where I have the chance of getting hired on with the company.  There are a series of dates involved with this position that I think are rather interesting.  I am thinking that maybe the planets are lining up for me.

  • October 11 – My mother’s birthday…first day on the job.
  • November 11 – Veteran’s Day…I spent ten years in the Navy…start of second month on the job.
  • December 11 – My first girlfriend’s birthday…start of third month on the job.
  • January 11 – My 50th birthday 1/11/11…would have been my grandfather’s 100th birthday, he was born 1/11/11…end of three month staffing contract on the job and potential for getting a permanent job with the company.

Come on planets…get your ducks in a row!  Not to mix my metaphors or anything…

Neighborhood Moods

Posted on by chappyshi

Fall is such a great and beautiful time of year.  Even though I live in a major metropolitan area, I am fortunate to be located in an older neighborhood that has lots of trees.  I have been enjoying the color and the sunsets.  Here are a few samples from a gallery called “Neighborhood Moods” in my photo album.

Idoly Paddling With Myself, Uh Oh!

Posted on by chappyshi

I had another great paddle in my kayak on the Potomac River yesterday.  I launched at Algonkian Regional Park, one of my favorite local places to put in.  There was minimal wind, the water was crystal clear, and the air was crisp.  I saw about six or eight other people out paddling…making the most of the good weather before the winter settles in.

I did not see much in the way of wildlife just one Great Blue heron and a Bald eagle…both a a distance.  The park itself was still doing quite a business with a number of people out fishing and barbecuing.  I got out there on the water a little after two and after being on the water for about two hours, the light had already diminished considerably.  I think I might be able to get a couple of more paddles in before I bring the kayak in for the winter.

Here are a few pictures from the venture:

Lost Emails

Posted on by chappyshi

Last night before going to work I noticed that I hadn’t got any email since about 1500.  Not that I get that much email but it seemed a bit odd.  This morning after work and early this afternoon when I got up, I still had no new mail.  I checked my quota on my mail hosting service and had used less than half of my quota.  I saw from my Gmail account that forwards mail to my hosting service that my forwards were getting rejected due to a full mail box.

Well that was puzzling.  After contacting tech support, I found that I had not used up the physical capacity of my mail box but had reached the limit of the number of messages I could have in my mailbox, which was 3000.  The tech kindly upped my quota to 6000.

I asked him what good the record of physical usage was if the quota was based both on that and the number of messages.  He said that I had to monitor the number of messages in my account via webmail.  I asked if there was any kind of alerting to let users know when they were nearing either quota and was told that there was not.

Thankfully, I am not trying to run a business using this email because the lost emails could cost me money.  I think I would have to change hosting services were I to have a business dependent on email.  I think that my hosting service needs to reconsider its approach.

Anyhow, I did not get email for about 24 hours starting yesterday at 1500 so I you sent me an email between then and now, please resend it.