Goals 2017 -- November Recap

I did make some progress in my effort to move from a paper file box to a digital one, but I certainly did not complete the task.  Mush more to do. 

Pro tip: there are some things that are just going to be too difficult to scan, also (for example, the 150-page owner's manual for my camera).  For such items, in an effort to continue my move towards the digital, I have had some success finding PDF versions on manufacturer's websites. If that fails, I'm stuck with paper.

What I Watched -- Doc Shorts: The Unexpected

Our third SLIFF film was actually seven films -- Doc Shorts: The Unexpected.

Mickey's Pets.  Mickey has been taxidermying animals for some time, but this is her first entry into the National Taxidermy Championships.  When her deceased peacock arrives in the mail, she gets to work making it look alive again, and we follow her through that process all the way to the competition.  This was both S's and my favorite.

The Day of the Wall.  This is a wordless depiction of an Italian festival which I don't really understand.  A few words may have helped out.  The best part was the little girl rocking out to the music in her head during the end credits.

6 Toes.  Did you know that polydactyl cats (with more than the normal number of toes) are colloquially referred to as Hemingways?  I didn't.  6 Toes is odd: part autobiography, part biography, part history.  Reasonably enjoyable (and delightfully short).

Balloonfest.  Back in 1986, the city of Cleveland attempted to shed its nickname ("the mistake by the lake") by making it into the Guinness Book of World Records by releasing 1,500,000 helium-filled balloons into the air.  They did it, but it didn't turn out quite the way they hoped.  Quaint and mildly amusing.

The Tables.  A world-champion table tennis player installed two permanent tables in Bryant Park, in the heart of Manhattan.  A diverse community has developed around them.  I liked this one a lot.

Molasses & Lemon.  An odd little attempt at comparing love and heartbreak, highlighting the similarities between the two.  More confusing than enjoyable.

Lost Paradise.  A facility originally built to house a nuclear warhead has been converted into a disaster survival bunker for the ultra-rich.  It was an interesting thing to learn about, but should have been about one-third as long as it was.

What I Watched -- What If It Works?

The second SLIFF show of the year was What If it Works?  The festival doesn't host many comedies; they don't lend themselves to the contemplative navel gazing that such festivals thrive on.

This one, though, with its additional subject of mental illness, made the cut.  And, boy, am I glad it did!

Where I think the film succeeded so well is in treating each person's mental illness respectfully, but keeping it light-hearted and funny.  Adrian's OCD is hilarious, but at the same time, you can easily see how his condition wreaked such havoc on his life.  Grace's multiple personalities are comically divergent, but come from a place of serious damage, which surfaces from time to time.

Bottom line: a totally adorable love story about two broken people.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sea Shepherds

There was a short film that preceded The Islands and the Whales, which focused on the animal conservation work that the Sea Shepherds do -- primarily, attempting to stop illegal fishing.  I had heard nothing about them before this movie (or at least don't remember it if I did).  As we were walking back to the car, S told me about a Animal Planet show, Whale Wars, which had been more or less cancelled back in 2013 after Sea Shepherd's founder, Paul Watson, was charged with several serious crimes.  There were a few more episodes aired in 2015, but it's not clear that any more will be produced.

As with so many organizations of their ilk, that the Sea Shepherds are polarizing.  Paul Watson and several others have been charged with serious crimes in some countries.  But they have also been given amnesty by governments of other countries.

There is no question that they take bold action to stop illegal fishing.  (Check out this fascinating article in The New York Times about their 111-day chase of one of the world's most notorious illegal fishing vessels, which was on Interpol's most wanted list.)  The question, I suppose is this: should the Sea Shepherds be taking such actions?  In all likelihood, what they're doing is illegal (hence all the criminal charges).  Is it worse than the illegal fishing?  Should ramming and sinking the fishing vessels be such a point of pride? (See the Appendix to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal's reversal of a denial of a request for injunction against the Sea Shepherds.)  Whose job is it to step in and prevent over-fishing, if the Sea Shepherds don't?  (There doesn't seem to be much argument that the over-fishing is, in fact, happening.)  And even if it's possible to identify the government or organization who should step in, will they?  Can we count on a government to do anything?

That injunction that was granted (link above) was sought by the Institute for Cetacean Research, a Japanese research organization.  The ICR claims that its whaling activities are permitted under the research exception to the International Whaling Commission's whaling ban.  But, if this 2007 New Yorker article is to be believed, "the institute has produced virtually no research of any regard, and all the whales that are purported to be under study are also butchered for the purpose of selling whale meat to the Japanese public."  Are they just exploiting the research loophole, knowing that no foreign government will call them out on their behavior?  The US government had an opportunity to make a statement, by upholding the denial of the injunction, but didn't (no surprise there).

It's a fascinating issue to read about.  Everyone has a perspective.  Photographs like these support one perspective.  The rule of law and desire for orderly and cooperative world operations supports the other.  Time will tell, I think, which one wins out.

What I Watched -- The Islands and the Whales

My first SLIFF film of the year was The Islands and the Whales.  The preview set the movie up as a clash between Faroe Islanders and the Sea Shepherds, an activist group whose stated goal is to protect the oceans and the animals who live in it (sort of like The Cove, except that it was about dolphins in Japan).

That really wasn't the case.  The heart of the story was the conflict between the Faroese people.  There is a local doctor who is alerting the islanders to the dangers of whale meat (and meat from sea birds, which the islanders also catch and eat), specifically the high concentration of mercury.  He is trying to educate the people on the dangers this causes, and encouraging them to eat less whale meat.

On the other side of the fight are stubbornness and traditions.  The islanders are a traditional people, and their all-hands-on-deck style of whale hunting dates back generations.  They live on desolate, rocky outcroppings off the north coast of Scotland, about halfway between Iceland and Norway.  Not much produce will grow there, and it's a long way from anywhere.  They depend on the whales and sea birds, whose meat makes up a substantial portion of their diet.

Though the film has an obvious perspective, it doesn't settle on anything.  It did, however, leave me with a lot of reading to do.  More on that in my next post.

Bottom line: beautiful shots of the desolate landscape make the conflict all the more understandable.

SLSO - Show #3

Technically speaking, Jurassic Park was not part of my SLSO subscription this year.  But when I was that the symphony orchestra was going to be screening the movie with a live score, how could I not go see it?

And boy am I glad I did.  I forgot how much fun Jurassic Park is, and it's even better when the music really rises and falls and resonates with all the volume and much more quality than it does in a movie theater.

There were times during the screening that I completely forgot we were even at the symphony, and there were other times that I was so engrossed watching the musicians that I missed sections of the movie.  But what a great opportunity, to see (yet another) classic early-90s film, support the local arts scene, and get to drink a special T-Rex cocktail!

Anyone up for North By Northwest or Harry Potter coming later this season?

SLSO - Show #2

The title piece of the second show of the season, a couple weeks back, was Beethoven's Symphony No. 5.  Who doesn't want to see that?

Well, in order to get there you had to sit through the first half of the show.  I didn't know any of the pieces, but it was interesting viewing.  We started out with a Strauss horn concerto. SLSO's own Roger Kaza was the soloist.  It was nice to see an instrument like the horn, which usually is relegated to the background except for the Christmas concert, get to do something that was written for it.  We were then joined by relatively-local soprano Christine Brewer for Berg's Seven Early Songs.  Again, it was not a collection I knew anything about, but I'm always entertained by having a vocalist on stage to watch.

Then, after intermission, everyone held their breath for those famous four notes.  In truth, I probably cannot write a very good review of the performance.  It was so great to hear such a famous piece live (for the first time!) that I was not paying sufficient attention to the details of the performance to say anything meaningful.  I would expect, however, that the performers feel the pressure of such a well-known symphony, and either have performed it before (so are comfortable with it) or spend the extra time to make sure it's as good as everyone hopes it will be.  For me, it was.

What I Watched -- Basic Instinct

In addition to Alive, I recently watched another early-90s production, Basic Instinct.

This was an "it's Saturday night and we're surfing Netflix" find, but neither S nor I had seen it, so we went for it.  I knew that the movie was somewhat risqué, but I didn't realize what a shock it must have been to regular movie-going audiences 25 years ago.  It was shocking to me now! S's comment was classic: "That's very porny for such an old movie."  He's not wrong.

The plot is as simple as you might expect: Sharon Stone plays the sex kitten who is suspected of killing her lover.  Michael Douglas is the cop who is investigating.  Shenanigans ensue.

Bottom line: definitely worth seeing, if only for the role it played in changing movie history in my lifetime.

What I Watched -- Young Frankenstein

On one of the many days that S and I struggled to find a movie to watch, I relayed to him some of the films on my list of movies to see.  He couldn't believe I hadn't seen Young Frankenstein, so that was the choice for the evening.

I'm not much of a Mel Brooks fan, but that's mostly because I don't know exactly what his work is, and I don't follow him in particular.  Upon investigation, it turns out that I've seen Spaceballs (stupidly funny), Robin Hood: Men in Tights (my favorite of his films that I've seen), and the remake of The Producers (if that counts).  And there's Gene Wilder as the title character, and I like him (mostly because he was Willy Wonka, once upon a time).

Bottom line: I'm not sure I'd call it a classic of American filmmaking, but it was definitely amusing.

Road Trip Adventure -- Part V

We drove south out of Salt Lake City headed for the Manti La Sal National Forest.  This turned out to be a bit confusing, because the Manti La Sal is broken up into three or four separate parts, but we managed to find ourselves a lovely spot near Grassy Lake.  We parked the camper, rolled out the sunshade, set up some chairs, and poured a drink.

And then the rain began.  And continued.  And continued.  I got a lot of reading done.

We were in the Manti La Sal for two days, and it rained for a day and a half.  The last evening was clear, and we had a nice walk around the lake and explored a bit near where we had camped.  All the rain made for a messy drive out, but messy in a good way.

The muddy truck took us next to Capitol Reef National Park.  The visitor's center was packed (it was Saturday), so we headed down the scenic drive farther than most people went.  Then, to get even more isolation, we parked and hiked away from the truck, roughly following a creek to keep our bearings.  It was a beautiful hike, and S spotted some petroglyphs, which unfortunately had been vandalized by previous visitors.

A storm was threatening, so we left the stone carvings and booked it back to the truck.  We found a beautiful campsite outside Goblin Valley State Park, and tucked in for the night under the beautiful stars.  The storm from earlier in the afternoon never did materialize.

We started out our Sunday by visiting Canyonlands National Park, but it's such a big park and we spent such a small amount of time there that I feel like it hardly counts.  Canyonlands is more correctly described as three adjoining parks: Island in the Sky, The Needles, and The Maze.  Though technically they are all part of the same National Park, no roads or bridges connect the three sections.  The only one we visited was Island in the Sky.

Again, since it was the weekend, the visitor's center was packed.  We headed off to hike Aztec Butte and see the Puebloan granaries.

We finished the day in Moab, looking for more bikes to rent.  Much to my delight, Rim Cyclery had the Scott Contessa Spark Plus that I had been looking for!  We rented that for me and one for S, found a campsite from our prior trip near the north end of Arches National Park, and decided where we should ride the next day.

As the sun was rising, a van came down the road, followed by a truck.  No big deal, it happens.  About 15 minutes later, a hissing noise was too loud to be ignored.  We looked at each other questioningly; obviously neither of us knew what the source was.  Had one of the propane tanks sprung a leak?  Was a tire losing air?

S stuck his head out the skylight.  He came back in.  "You've got to look at that."  "What is it?"  "Just look.  You wouldn't believe me if I told you."  Sure enough, I wouldn't have.  The van and truck that had driven by were, apparently, the start of that day's hot air balloon tour of Arches, and they had decided to set up about 50 feet from where we camped to inflate their balloon.  It was worth a laugh.

The bike riding we did that day was on slickrock, which I wanted to try for two reasons: (1) I had never done it before; and (2) I wanted to try this bike out on different terrain.  The trail we had ridden in Park City was an atypically-well-maintained mountain bike trail, with rocky climbs and smooth, swooping downhill runs.  The bike performed admirably, as did S's.  (And that auto-seal stuff in tubeless tires really works wonders.)

We were pretty knackered after a long day of riding, so we opted against doing it for another day and headed back to Durango that night.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Road Trip Adventure -- Part IV

Or so we thought.  It was about two in the morning when S woke me up.  The wind had gotten worse.  A glance to the west indicated that a storm was moving in.  The little offshoot road we had driven up to hide between the gravel piles was just the sort of road that washes out in a quick downpour.  Flipping through the local radio stations revealed that the incoming storm was a bad one, and all truckers had been ordered off the highways.

Well, great.

We closed up the camper, got back in the truck, and headed towards the interstate (the route we had initially decided against in an effort to avoid backtracking).

The interstate at night is often a lonely place.  The interstate at night when the truckers have all been ordered to pull over is The Twilight Zone.  It is a foreboding place, and S was fighting the wind the whole way into Little America, which is a truck stop that calls itself a town.  On the plus side, it was level, and we were pretty sure we weren't going to be attacked by Cyberdyne drones in the middle of the night.

The following morning we headed off for a historical tour of Fort Bridger, then drove the rest of the way into Park City to have dinner with S's family friends.  They were also kind enough to loan us two of their bathrooms for some real showers!

Park City, we discovered, has great mountain biking.  Through this and our prior trip, I had been on several rented mountain bikes, but none that I liked as much as the early-90s Trek ZX 970 that I got from Dad when he upgraded.  It's a steel-framed hardtail, and tracks like a dream.

At the bike shop in Park City, though, I rented a Scott Contessa Spark Plus, and it's the only one of all the bikes I've ridden that can give the Trek a run for its money.  (My favorite feature: the handlebar push-button lock-out for both the front and back shocks.)  The guys at the shop refused to sell it to us though!  S was beside himself.  "This is a bike shop, right?  And you make your money from selling bikes?  Do you often tell people who offer to buy one of your bikes that you will not sell it to them?"  It was comical.

After doing a bit of research on the bike, I learned that I was not the only person who was in awe of the machine.  That particular model sold like hotcakes, and there are very few available on the new-bike market.  Scott had not at that time announced the features for the next version of that bike, so people were snapping up the known commodity and not letting it go.  Including the bike shop.  Just my luck.

That night, we headed into Salt Lake City for dinner with A&L.  What a treat to have A's delicious Pakistani food again!  It wasn't long before he was extolling the virtues of SLC and trying to get us to move there.  He might be on to something!  It was a lovely night with old friends.

Road Trip Adventure - Part III

After returning our bikes in Palisade, we headed out the northwest corner of Colorado en route to Dinosaur National Monument.

That was a pretty neat spot.  A hundred years or so ago, an archaeologist discovered a wealth of dinosaur bones buried in the desert.  There are all kinds.  The belief is that there was a big flood which washed a bunch of dinosaurs down into a basin, where they all drowned and their bones were buried.

There is now a building built right over the spot, and you can go into the lovely and temperate conditioned air and stand in awe of the variety of fossils arrayed before you.  When we were there, there was even someone up on the wall with something that appeared to be scientific equipment, a pad, and a pencil.  Whether she was doing anything or whether it was for show I will never know.  But I like the idea that there is still active scientific research happening on that very spot.

From there we attempted to visit the Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge in southwestern Wyoming.  To get there, we drove north out of Utah, through the Flaming Gorge Reservoir and the Ashley National Forest. It was a beautiful drive.  I love that part of the country.

Unfortunately though, mosquitoes love me, and they were EVERYWHERE when we got to Seedskadee.  We hopped out to see if the visitor's center was still open (it wasn't), and we were immediately swarmed. You couldn't swat a hand at your leg without killing a half dozen of them. We ran for the refuge the truck and killed all the mosquitoes we could catch who managed to sneak in behind us. 

Then, as we were quiet listening for more buzzing, we heard what sounded like raindrops. But it wasn't raining - so what was that? 

It was the crazy kamikaze mosquitoes dive-bombing the windows and the windshield trying to make dinner out of us!  Gravel flew behind us as we high-tailed it out of there.

That left us with an important question to answer though: where would we sleep?  It had been a long day of driving, and there isn't much around in that corner of Wyoming.  Our plan the following day had been to head west towards Salt Lake City.  Our present options were to backtrack southeast towards the interstate, or to head southwest on a smaller road to a town called Granger.  Heading westerly was in line with our plan, so that's what we decided to do.

Now, on the way up the road to Seekskadee, we kept seeing signs for a mysterious company.  For the purposes of my computer's safety and hopefully not being hacked, I'll call it Cyberdyne. There were signs all the way up the road, every mile or so, that said "Cyberdyne" and often nothing else.  Obviously this was a thing, but we didn't know exactly what.  It was a weird mystery.

We Google-mapped our directions to Granger, which routed us on a gravel road for 8.8 miles, whereupon we made a left onto the road into town.  As we turned onto the gravel road, there were more Cyberdyne signs, but this time with added language: "PRIVATE ROAD BEGINS IN 9 MILES."  Okay Cyberdyne, sure, it's your road.  But we're turning in 8.8 miles, so no biggie.

There isn't much in this part of Wyoming.  There are some rolling hills, but you're not in the big mountains. 

PRIVATE ROAD BEGINS IN 6 MILES

We're cruising slowly down this gravel road in what is now pitch darkness, no light from anything but the truck headlights.  We're trying to puzzle out exactly where on the map we are.

PRIVATE ROAD BEGINS IN 2 MILES

Then, as we crest a small hill, we see Cyberdyne.  It was a monstrous industrial development looming in front of us.  Blinding spotlights looked for anyone who shouldn't be approaching, and smokestacks reached for the stars.  It was a hulking beast.  Scary music came from somewhere, possibly inside my own head.

Remember that road we were supposed to turn on to get to Granger?  Turns out that was also a private road owned by Cyberdyne.  So, fearing for our lives and brain waves, we donned our tin foil hats and headed back down the 8.8 miles of gravel looking for a place to camp.

It was late.  We were tired.  It was getting windy, which makes driving on the open road difficult in a vehicle that big.  As S drove, I puzzled my way through the history of land grants along the western railroads.  Here's what I learned: as a way to promote the building of quality infrastructure, the federal government, which still owned much of the western land, gave away every other square mile to a private railroad company or developer.  This created a checkerboard pattern that extends for several miles on either side of the subject railway, with alternating private and public ownership.  Much of the land retained by the government was later given away in an effort to draw homesteaders west.

The problem this created for us at 10:00 on a Tuesday night was that we were looking for a place to camp, and sure as hell didn't want it to be on Cyberdyne's private property.  There are no markers along the road, though.  "Entering public lands," "entering private property."  Wouldn't those signs be nice?  Yeah, but they don't exist.  Instead, I was looking for a sharp bend in the road or a dry creek crossing that might indicate our exact location along the 8.8-mile stretch, so I could then determine with certainty whether we were on public or private land.

(I would just like to give a shout-out here to the Delorme Atlas & Gazetteer series -- great map books!)

Eventually we found a small offshoot road that went up a steep hill in one of the public land square miles.  On top of the hill were two large gravel piles, and we parked between them.  We had a pretty good lookout, but were also tucked in and hidden between the gravel piles.  We felt good about that.

Finally, sleep....

What I Watched -- Alive

When I was a kid, I remember being told that I couldn't watch Alive because it wasn't kid-friendly.  That much is true, although it isn't particularly visually gruesome, especially as movies these days go.

The story, however, is among the more awful things one could probably imagine.  It is the more-or-less true story of a plane carrying the Uruguayan rugby team, among others, that crashed into the Andes mountains.  The survivors were left for dead after search and rescue efforts were abandoned.  With little in the way of food and supplies, they resorted to eating meat off their deceased fellow passengers in order to survive.

One might call the remainder of this post a spoiler, but the outcome is pretty well known:

Two of the players, Nando Parrado and (now-Dr.) Roberto Canessa trekked for ten days through the mountains, with minimal gear and nothing in the way of direction, to find civilization and alert the authorities that there were still survivors awaiting rescue.

In all, 16 passengers survived the 72-day ordeal in the mountains.

Bottom line: what a story.

And, you can see the whole thing on YouTube!

BC Stables and Training Center

S and I spent a recent weekend outside of Fair Grove, Missouri, at BC Stables and Training Center.

We were delighted to have a bit of R&R. If you ever find yourself in need of any equine, canine, feline, bovine, alpaca, or chicken therapy, Karin has you covered!  She is an animal lover through and through; when we pulled up, one of her friends was there trying to find a home for a blind lamb. If he survives his infancy, little Stevie Wonder will surely find a home at BC!

Tim runs the barn, and took us out on a ride each day. I rode Right (formerly one of a pair, but Left is no longer in residence), and S rode Kickin' Wing (named after his Joe Dirt counterpart).

Saturday was warm, but after getting our bearings and having lunch, we headed out for out first ride, accompanied also by Karin, her daughter L, and a friend of theirs. How nice to be on a horse again after so many years!

We had dinner with the family, laughed at the antics of Snowflake Ferret, the new kitten, and learned the wonders of Jello pudding and Oreo pie.

We stayed in the larger of their two cabins, which was quite comfortable. I very much enjoyed the rain- and windstorm that rolled through in the middle of the night. Because of the attic above the master bedroom at our house, I usually sleep right through such storms at home; it was nice to get to hear it for a change!

Sunday started out with a waffle breakfast (even some of the dogs got to join in), and then watching L train a captured Mustang. I learned a bit about what to look for in the horse's body language, which will tell you how he feels about whether the human is in charge. The transformation in just half an hour was impressive.

We relaxed for much of the day; S took a healthy nap, I read a book. We strolled around the yard, played with dogs, laughed at the baby alpaca, made friends with the cow, and generally enjoyed the much cooler temperatures.

That afternoon, we rode the same horses (the most docile ones - that's why we got them) along a different route, and were accompanied by Compton and Jake.  Because what barn doesn't need a dog named Jake?

It was a lovely and very relaxing weekend, and I'm looking forward to our next visit!

Goals 2017 -- November Edition

I really want my goal this month to be "prep for the holidays"!  You all know how much I love Christmas, so that's a no-brainer.  This year, for the first time, I'm going to host a big Thanksgiving too!

But, in an effort to continue the goal of improving myself and not just getting through the requirements of life, I will pick a different goal.

In the process of cleaning off my desk, I located a number of documents that I want to keep but that it is not necessary to have on paper.  My goal for the month is to create (or supplement) my digital file box.

This is one of those goals that will then have to continue into eternity, so that more papers don't accumulate to fill the space of the ones I've removed.  If I can stay on top of the incoming paperwork and work my way through the backlog as time allows, I think I'll be in good shape.

Goals 2017 -- October Recap

At the very last of last minutes, I made some excellent progress on my desk!