a summer walk

Friday, March 28th, 2025 05:12 pm
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Last summer, I took an opportunity to go for a walk at my old work campus.
I took many photos and videos. I texted myself thoughts/notes about the experience of walking there; what makes it so nice compared to other places.

16:59. The sound, the scents, the insects, the breeze, the sun, sweat trickling down my chest, trucks rumbling by with that zoomy sound like the ocean waves rolling in and out
17:00. Birds chirping, ambulance going by on the interstate with siren on, quiet space of wind thru the trees
[ I meant, there's a relative quietness & calmness in the wooded areas (compared to the interstate for sure); a light sound of wind ]
17:02. Different pitches, tones for different trucks and vehicles; rising and falling; cicadas, katydids
17:04. The breeze of walking cooling the moisture on my torso
17:04. The rhythm of my steps
17:04. The unexpected sights
17:05. Decaying tree trunks
17:06. Bright green leaves
17:06. Spiderwebs
17:06. Pine needles
17:07. Mild danger
17:07. Shadows
17:07. Places deeper in the back woods where people could be hiding.
17:08. Security guards that might appear out of nowhere to say you shouldn't be here.
17:15. Away from the highway, airplane motor in the sky; insect (sounds) more distinct
17:15. More peaceful
17:16. Over here I can hear my steps on the ground.

Back in my car at 5:23pm, I took some sound recordings of the insect noises.
I wished I had brought a water bottle with me, as I was thirsty from the walk.

quick walks

Friday, June 23rd, 2023 04:58 am
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Thought: It's no good taking a break from work and going for a "quick 10 minute walk" if I then spend an hour writing about it (in my daily notes file) and looking up things* that I got curious about because of it.
(*such as today, the different types of dog ears)

coincidence on awakening

Wednesday, May 19th, 2021 12:26 pm
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From my daily notes/journal about this morning:

I woke up in between with a song/ditty playing in my head. That seems to happen fairly often, like my brain makes music when I sleep.
The song was nothing special, but still.

When the alarm/radio went off, a song was playing, something ethereal/melancholy with lyrics that sounded like a woman singing... "I walk alone" or something like that.



In other words, I woke up a few times in between dreams this morning. When that happens, I often hear unfamiliar songs with lyrics playing in my head. Then later I was awakened by a different song playing on my clock-radio when its "alarm" finally went off.

The clock-alarm-radio has an analog dial such that the station isn't tuned in perfectly, so there's static white noise along with the songs. I also sleep with a separate noise-maker that makes ocean sounds. Both add to the ethereal sound of some songs upon awakening.

I checked the radio station's website (WUSC, college radio) to see what song that had been. It's "Night Walks" by Black Mountain.

The coincidence (or maybe not) is that the lyrics of the song as shown on the first above link include "And I woke up / In between", like I wrote in my journal notes.



Video title: Night Walks
Posted by: Black Mountain
Date posted: Nov 30, 2014
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Taken while on a walk last month.



darkoshi: (Default)
I'm trying to go for walks more often. So I've been taking a break from work before sundown, and walking around the neighborhood.

I smell weed while walking past several places. I wonder if it's that obvious to anyone else who walks by too.

There is much litter all over. Much is recyclables; beer cans and soda bottles and glass bottles. Lately, I've noticed more than the usual amount of beer cans in the area around my house too while picking up trash. I'm not sure whether to be mollified that it's not only my intersection where people litter so wantonly, or dismayed by the larger scope of the problem.

I feel like taking trash bags with me and picking up some each day, at least to clean up the places that aren't right in front of people's houses. I've thought about doing that before, but I felt self-conscious about doing it in areas that aren't even near my house, and then I stopped walking.

There's also a difference between walking for walking, and walking to pick up litter, and I'm not sure I want to make that switch. Maybe I ought to do it once or twice a week. Maybe one day to pick up recyclables and one day for other trash, to avoid the number of different bags I'd need to carry.

I might not get more than a couple blocks away from my house before the bags being full.

..

Wearing a face-mask while walking makes me feel more anonymous and less self-conscious, even though I know some of my jackets are quite distinctive. I think it's also less clear to onlookers what sex I am, which also makes me feel more comfortable.

When getting back from my walks, my eyelashes have tiny beads of water on them, from my moist exhaled breath coming out the top of the mask. (I had read that someone else, walking in colder weather with a facemask, had ice or frost form on their eyelashes.)

..

I read something funny earlier, like: "When friends don't call me, I take comfort in knowing that their computers are working well."
darkoshi: (Default)
like the big dipper
like the giant bear being spun around by its tail by the gods
Go look and see!*

I took a quick ten minute walk.
Need to get out of this house,
need to start walking again
even if it is in the dark

The sky is vast at night
all the familiar and unfamiliar constellations
still reassuring, encouraging, twinkling.

Walking down a very badly lit street
I realized I hadn't even brought along a mask.


*I looked it up now. The moon's tethered by Saturn and Jupiter. Hah! It is indeed being swung by the gods!

jupiter bright

Friday, August 9th, 2019 09:36 pm
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Jupiter is bright, right next to the moon tonight.

Yesterday I saw a hawk, on a low tree limb not 20 feet away from me. It must have been a young one; it flew up to that limb as I was walking by, else I might not have even noticed it.

When I work from home, alone, I'm such a chatterbox sometimes, talking to myself. Sometimes my voice even gets hoarse from it, though that might also be due to outbursts of annoyance. It's strange, as I hardly ever feel the urge to talk to myself out loud like that when I'm at work, or around other people.
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I've been feeling fairly chipper today, considering I got less than 4 hours sleep last night. I should have gotten 6, but had trouble falling asleep.

.

Remember that big tree at work by the pond, which a beaver started chewing on over a year ago? The trunk finally was chewed all the way through. At first, the tree fell over onto a nearby tree and leaned that way for a while. Then it finally fell down into the pond. Within a few days of that, the grounds-people had taken it away. So much for all that work you did, beaver. I have photos; may post them one of these days.

The beaver (or beavers) have been gnawing on a bunch of other smaller trees too, and the small trunks get chewed through a lot quicker. One of the felled trees had nice bright green leaves, some kind of evergreen; I felt sad for the pretty tree. The grounds-people had removed it by the next day too.

.

I bought two Wyze cams to try out. They are inexpensive, and let you record 12 second motion-activated clips and store them online for 2 weeks, for free. You can view the clips from your phone, and you can configure it to notify you when motion is detected. The cameras can also store video to a micro SD card, and you can view the camera live streams on your phone when you are away from home. So far, the cams seem really neat. One drawback is that after each 12 second clip that is stored online, it doesn't save more until after 5 minutes have passed. But if you have the SD card installed and keep your home's wi-fi running all the time, after getting a notification, you can make a note of the time, and then go and view the continuous video recording from the SD card, all remotely from your phone.

I have had a few problems so far. A 32 GB microSD card works fine, but an old 4GB card doesn't seem to work. And when I turned off my wi-fi overnight, for some reason the camera stopped recording an hour later until I turned wi-fi on again in the morning. Supposedly from what I read, it is supposed to keep recording to the card even when the wi-fi goes out. I'll have to try that again.

[ Update: It happened again; this time it stopped recording half an hour after turning off the router and wi-fi. So maybe that's not supported after all, but I will check. ]

I'm not sure how good these would be for security purposes (if a burglar can get to them, they can steal the camera along with the SD card, and then the recording on the SD card won't do you much good.) But for remotely monitoring things, they seem quite neat. This is the kind of security camera I've been looking for, where you don't have to pay an ongoing fee yet still can access the video streams remotely, and get notifications and all.

Admittedly, I have been viewing the video streams and clips only when connected to wi-fi (both at my house and remotely), as I don't want to use up my phone plan's data. Between yesterday and today, just from my playing around with it, the app on the phone has used half a Gig of wi-fi data. If I were using the phone's data, I'm not sure how long it would take for the video and clips to load.

fox

Tuesday, May 1st, 2018 12:46 am
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I saw a fox today while doing my lunchtime walk. It was crossing the street, looking in the other direction. It was the size of a cat and rather skinny looking, but the head and tail were definitely fox and not cat. The fur on its back had a reddish tinge. Once it noticed me, it scampered away into the brush between the trees.

I think that's the first time I've ever seen a fox in the wild (although not sure one can call that "in the wild").

Unless I've seen a fox there at work before, and have forgotten... that's part of the reason I post here about those kind of sightings, so I'll have a record of it.

flight skills

Tuesday, July 18th, 2017 11:39 pm
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Walking back from my lunch break, I passed a group of 7 crows cawing and flitting between trees.

Next, I came across a group of vultures standing together in a group on the grass. At first glance, they looked like black crows too. I tried not to look at them very directly, as doing so generally scares them away. But I got out my cell phone and took a furtive photo.



A few of the vultures flew upwards and bumped into the side of the building behind them before landing back on the ground. Huh? A couple more did the same thing, and I wondered what were they doing. Then I realized... they were all younglings, and were frightened of me and trying to fly up onto the top of the building. But their flying skills aren't good enough yet to fly straight up 20 feet like that. I walked away, not to scare them further, poor things.

It reminded me of a day last week when I walked right past a single young vulture that was sitting on a railing, not even noticing it until the last moment, as I had just walked out of the building into the sunshine.


A few days ago I was reading about vines... ah yes, to see if my mom was correct that letting them grow up the pine tree trunks can hurt the trees. While doing that, I found out the name of one of the vines that grows in my yard: Virginia Creeper. It has little suckers on its tendrils that helps it climb, and 5 leaflets in each compound leaf.

Earlier today while walking, I saw a similar looking plant with leaflets of 3... and remembered that rhyme, "leaves of three, let them be". I wondered if it was poison ivy. It looks so innocuous; I walk by it nearly every day. In lieu of touching the leaves to find out, I did a web search on my cell phone to find some images of poison ivy, and sure enough, that is what it was. Now I know what it looks like. For the moment, anyway.


darkoshi: (Default)
I've decided which phone to buy. The Moto G4 Play has pretty good specs (it has 2GB RAM, not 1/2 GB as I originally thought), for a good price.

.

This is the most chewed-on tree trunk by the pond.



These are Catalpa tree blossoms. The photo is from 2015, but the tree has blossoms this year too. The blossoms are about the size of big popcorn, and don't have much scent. But a clump of honeysuckle is also growing by the tree, the lovely sweet scent of which has fooled me a few times.



I found this growing in the ground in Qiao's yard. At first glance they look like fallen red blossoms, but what is that black tarry gunk on them? It's one of the strangest looking things. Per the internet, they are called starfish fungus. I saw one by the pond at work too, an odd coincidence, as I don't ever remember seeing these before. But then again, maybe I did and simply thought they were fallen blossoms.





While walking along, do you ever have a sudden amusing thought that makes you break out in a big grin?

the bird is still there

Wednesday, June 15th, 2016 12:54 am
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Oh, and today I saw a hot-pink colored caterpillar. I didn't think of taking a photo of it.
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On my lunchtime walk, I noticed some traffic cones in the field behind the tennis courts. They'd never been there before. Maybe there were there to keep people from falling into some kind of hole, or what else could the reason be? I walked in that direction to check it out.

As I got nearer, I saw that the cones were positioned in a circle. To my surprise, in the very center of the circle, a small bird was standing!

It felt surreal like a dream. Why would a bird be standing in the center of a circle of traffic cones?

Times like that, I wish I always carried my cell phone on me, to be able to take a photo.

I didn't want to frighten the bird, so I didn't go any closer, but rather walked on past while still looking. There was another bird of the same type outside of the cones. It walked into the circle towards the other bird. When it reached the center, it took the first bird's place, and the other bird walked away in the opposite direction. Half-way doing one of those funny bird-walks.

So. I can only presume that there's a nest of eggs on the ground right there, and someone put up the cones as a warning to keep the nest from being trampled or driven over with a lawnmower. I wonder who did it, and where they got the cones from.

It was a hot afternoon, and the whole area was in the sun. I imagine the birds were shading the nest with their bodies to keep the eggs from over-heating.

The birds were brownish, with a ring around the neck. Most likely killdeer:
The birds nest on the ground. They do not build a nest but will lay their eggs in a depression in gravel. The nest, and speckled eggs blend easily into the background making them hard to see. ... Both parents take turns incubating 4 buff, speckled eggs for 24 to 28 days.

.

After work, I drove to the grocery store. A car in front of me had a SC Equality license plate, like mine. It's the first time I've come across another car with one of these plates! I was tickled, and wished they could have seen my license plate too.

At Kroger, I checked the ice cream section, and for the first time they had non-dairy Ben & Jerry's. They had all 4 flavors, so I got one of each. They taste good!

They also still had a bunch of Clif Bars on the shelves, including the recalled flavors. I checked the use-by dates on them, and they seemed to be within the recall period. That surprised and unsettled me. I made a note to check the recall notice again after I got home, to make sure I was remembering the dates right. I didn't buy any of those, but got a few bars of the other flavors.

At the self-checkout counter, the automated voice advised me to check the bottom of my receipt for an important message. It was a note about the recall again.

After getting home, I checked the recall notification, and verified that the ones I had seen should have been recalled. (Unless I actually misread the dates on the items, which isn't to be ruled out, the way my brain has been acting lately.) So I called the store and advised them to double-check the items on the shelf. I'm not sure if the CSR took me seriously, but at least I tried.

man ma'am

Thursday, May 12th, 2016 12:48 am
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At work, a guy from the cleaning staff came into my cube and swiped his duster across the top of my cabinets. It startled me - in the past, the lady who did it would ask me first if I wanted my cube dusted, and I'd step out of her way while she did it.

As he swiped the first cabinet, this guy said something like "How are you doing, ma'am?" and I replied something like "I'm good". Then, hearing my voice, he corrected himself, saying that from behind, my hair had looked like a guy's. So I realized he had originally addressed me as "man", not "ma'am".

Neither bothers me. I'm neither man nor ma'am, so either is fine with me.

Then I wondered if he had pegged me as female instead of male, if he might not have just walked into my cube like that.

.

I cut my hair a few weeks ago, and have been quite pleased with it. It's short on the sides and back, slightly longer on top, with a longer section in the top-back that could be tied into a small pony-tail. I had the same style several years ago, but maintaining the pony-tail part is difficult... when trimming hair it's much easier to cut it off than to evenly cut around it so that its shape remains circular.

Another good thing is that my left leg is regaining its former flexibility. For a year or 2, I hadn't been able to stretch it without feeling an unpleasant kind of ache. But recently something seems to have clicked back into place... maybe ligaments finally loosening or something, and it's back to a normal feeling.

My bottom thigh muscles still feel slight discomfort simply from the driver's seat pressing against them. But I don't have the nerve spasms anymore, which I had last year. Maybe the extra walking I've been doing has helped on both counts.
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Friday, out by the pond for lunch. A big bird glided by and landed on a high tree branch on the other side of the pond. It wasn't a goose or a buzzard. It didn't look particularly eagle or hawk-like to me, but must have been. The head was light colored, whitish. The body was dark. It swooped down, dove into the lake and came back out again, still flying. Going after fish, I presume. It didn't look like it caught one. It landed on a different tree branch. It swooped back towards/into the lake several more times.

The carcass of the dead goose is still there. A week or so after my last post about it, a scavenger must have pulled it out of the pond. It's been there ever since, just bones and feathers left now. I pass it every day on my walk. The other geese don't seem bothered by it. I've seen them sitting in that area a few times.

.

When I'm walking, the air smells of magnolia and honeysuckle.

One side of the big parking lot I circumnavigate is along the interstate. There's a narrow wooded area between them. It's kept cleared enough to be easy to walk through. I like switching over from the asphalt into the "woods". I like to walk at full speed through the trees, dodging low-hanging branches, avoiding stepping on pine cones and fallen branches, making split-second decisions of whether to walk to the left or to the right around each tree in my path. I like hearing the hypnotic zoom-zoom of cars as I walk, mixing with the rhythm of my steps.

left-right, left-right-left, right-left, right-left-right...

I like swinging my bag in rhythm with my steps. The rhythm comes naturally. But when I tried to count how many steps I take per swing of the bag, I couldn't figure it out.

.

In addition to tracking my steps per day, I've been tracking my sleep. I've put the numbers into a spreadsheet, and based on that, I'm getting on average about 7 hours sleep per night. Which is better than I thought. But it's an optimistic estimate, based on what time I go to bed and get up. Not counting any time lying in bed awake.

Saturday morning, when I could have slept in, I woke up after 5 hours sleep and couldn't fall back asleep again.
Sunday morning, the alarm was set for 8 hours, as we were meeting someone for lunch. If the alarm hadn't gone off, I could have slept much longer.

book

Tuesday, March 1st, 2016 11:36 pm
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An uncle* of mine has written a book/memoir of his life:
The Kraut: On Being German after 1940

He was born in Germany, grew up in the U.K., and emigrated to the U.S. at the age of 17.

I've been reading it during my lunch times, in between walking** and eating. Some of it is rather dark, topic-wise, and some of it is hard to follow. But it's quite interesting.

It's available on Kindle or as a paperback, if anyone is curious about it.

* My mom's half-sister's cousin's husband's first wife's son.

** I've increased my walking circuit by about 10 minutes. My pedometer indicates I'm now getting up to about 8000 steps per day doing so.

macabre

Tuesday, March 1st, 2016 11:12 pm
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Creepy dream this morning, with me disposing of a dead body (of which I had nothing to do with the death) and then anxiously realizing that the authorities wouldn't approve of the way I had disposed of it, if they found out.

.

The dead goose has been floating at the edge of the pond for the last 3 weeks, slowly decomposing. I haven't noticed any bad smells, walking by. Yesterday there was a buzzard near that edge of the lake. It flew away as I approached. I didn't realize that buzzards would eat meat that's been dead *that* long.

The Flying Turkey

Wednesday, November 5th, 2014 08:46 pm
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Wouldn't that be a good name for a pub or inn?

Today at work, I saw... no, not flying turkeys. But wild turkeys! Three or four of them. First I thought they were buzzards, as they had a similar-sized dark body and light-colored head. But they were in a wooded area I'd never seen the buzzards in before. And they didn't walk in that funny-cute way that I've buzzards walk. Their legs were longer, they had long tail feathers, and part of their neck was pinkish. And I saw one pecking at the ground.

After watching them for a while, I decided to stop staring at them in so obvious a manner. This time of year is not safe for turkeys. For all I know, if the wrong person came along, they might pull a rifle out of their trunk, and shoot them for dinner. Though I suppose people would get in trouble shooting or even having a fire-arm on company grounds.

Later I started wondering if wild turkeys fly. I figured they must be able to, in order to escape predators. Yep, they do.

maybe I helped

Saturday, August 23rd, 2014 12:18 am
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At lunchtime by the pond, I saw something white near the edge. First it looked like a plastic bag, but then I saw wings spread out over the water. It was an egret, but in an unnatural position for an egret. Was it stuck in the mud maybe? Or was it doing some odd thing peculiar to egrets? I watched it for a while, uncertain. Then I slowly went closer to see if it needed help. But I wouldn't be able to pick it up with my hands - it had a sharp dangerous looking beak. There was a good sized stick nearby, so I took that. The stick was long enough that I didn't need to get my shoes wet and muddy. As I neared it, the egret flapped a bit, but still didn't fly away, so it seemed pretty certain to be stuck.

I think one of its legs must have been tangled up in roots or something. I gently pushed some thick stuff away with the stick, but the egret still didn't break free. It didn't move much at all, except to peck at the stick a few times. It might have been exhausted already to begin with. After trying to free it again a few times, it finally looked like the leg might be free, but the bird still didn't move away. I hoped that its leg wasn't broken.

Maybe having a human with a big stick that close was terrifying it more than being stuck was. I decided that I couldn't do much more, and walked away to my bench to eat, out of sight of the bird. Hopefully, if it put some effort again into freeing itself, it would be able to.

After finishing my lunch, I walked back by the pond. The egret was gone, and I was relieved. I wasn't sure there was anything else I could have done for it.

.

It reminded me of another day at work a few months ago. While working away in my cube, I heard a coworker exclaim "what a beautiful golden dragonfly!". Curious, I went to look. It had gotten into the building and was by the window. Our windows don't open. But fortunately I had a clear plastic container at my desk. I used that along with a thick piece of paper to catch the dragonfly, and then walked it downstairs to let it loose outside. The dragonfly buzzed in the container, making me feel nervous and a bit elated. Yes, maybe anyone looking at me would think it a strange sight, but this is what I do. It's not the first time I've walked an insect outside at work, but it was my first dragonfly. After letting the dragonfly loose, I remembered that I had seen a listless looking bee in the other stairwell on my way out to lunch. As I now had a bug-catcher (ie., container) in my hand anyway, I went to check on it. It was still there, so I scooped it up and took it outside too. Then on my way back inside, there was even a moth fluttering near the door trying to trap itself inside the building too! But I blew at it til it flew away in the right direction.
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They look like daffodils from afar, but they're not. They might be wildflowers, or perhaps someone intentionally planted them right there.

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