May

My Yard

The sand verbena that volunteered into one of my pots is happily blooming lavender.  The texas rangers are in full bloom.

A lizard (Sonoran Spotted Whiptail?) sidled up  to my foot this afternoon to lap up the water dripping from the pot I was watering.  A small spiny lizard had fallen into the bucket that I use to collect patio sweepings before I add them to the compost pile.  Luckily he was fine.  A small spotted lizard – do we have Canyon Spotted Whiptails here? don’t think it’s a gecko – in my compost pile, which has attracted many insects; hope it’s not eating the red worms I bought.  I only see it as I open the lid and it scrambles beneath the top debris. A dove finally ceded half of the birdbath to a much smaller towhee.

My backyard agave (a transplant from friend Barb) is starting its flower stalk.  Unfortunately agaves are monocarpic, meaning they die after flowering, so I’ll lose it.  But a similar species, probably yuccas as they have trunks, in the front yard, with eight flower stalks pointing out, shouldn’t expire so easily.

The agave typically has sharp spines on the leaf edges whereas the yucca has none. Yucca plants also have thinner, straighter, and less succulent leaves than agaves and with time produce trunks.

The spinach bolted, as well as the arugula, so  I’m finishing them.  The tomatoes are just reddening, and the hollyhocks (which I grew for nostalgia’s sake) are blooming.

Most of the palo verdes in the neighborhood are encircled by shadows of fallen yellow blossoms.  After my last sweeping, my back patio is no longer gold.  And my allergies are almost gone!  I’d been doing pills and nose spray in order to breathe, and sucked on cough drops when I’d play tennis.

Sports

Speaking of which, my tennis doubles partner and I won on Friday, after a hard-fought match from 6:30 to 8 pm!

Had spent afternoons last week watching my granddaughter’s volleyball team compete in a middle school tournament; at one point, after four games, the grandmother sitting next to me in the bleachers said They must be tired.  Thirteen-year-olds tired after only two hours?  Others watching their daughters playing in the tournament: a guy with a shaved head and a ZZ Top beard, another guy in a three-piece suit, a lavender shirt and a slicked- down Mohawk.

Also went to my grandson’s taekwondo graduation (which I think occurs four times a year) which went on for hours, with performances from tiny kids who looked about four to grey-haired adults.  Here my grandson demonstrating how to deter an assailant.

Mothers’ Day

Not the best photo, taken by a passerby with my daughter’s phone, after brunch at a local resort.  Quite windy.  But you get the idea, a tall family (‘cept for me).

Music

It’s the end of the school year, so there are lots of Events.  Photo from the boys’ piano recital, with their teacher.

Miscellaneous

Have so many things I’d like to talk about, such as this article on “Fundamental Unfairness”: Leana Wen

Then there’s “Taxing the Rich”: IRS eviscerated

And “Women Take the Fall”: male greed

But I’d just get worked up and mad, and write too much, so you can read the articles for yourselves.

Except there’s one fun article on social spiders: a-social-web.  I have a photo of those I saw in Peru in this blog: the-birds-and-the-bees.  There was also a marvelous article on how important spiders are and how some people (in Africa?) bring spiders into their homes to eat mosquitoes, but I can’t find that one.  I’ve started leaving the webs around…

Heating Up

Weather still hasn’t gotten back into triple digits.  But yesterday’s 98° still felt too hot.

Photo of a large lizard that lives by my compost pile.  Sometimes he climbs up the wall to look into my kitchen window.  Here he is on my bedroom patio.

The Race

… Romney took a break from the hubbub of the convention to do a little campaigning elsewhere. NPR’s Ari Shapiro reports on his getaway. ARI SHAPIRO, BYLINE: The morning after his wife’s speech to the Republican convention, Mitt Romney hopped a plane for a day trip to Indianapolis. That’s where thousands of veterans are meeting for the American Legion convention.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: …the massive influx into the country of illegal immigrants.

SHAPIRO: When Romney’s entourage arrived, an American Legion official was reading a resolution condemning illegal immigration. Democrats are trying to make inroads with veterans, particularly young vets. But this largely gray-haired audience is not an Obama-friendly crowd. Bobbie Lucier is a retiree from Manassas, Virginia. She’s there with her husband, who’s a vet. And she has strong feelings about President Obama.

BOBBIE LUCIER: I just – I don’t like him. Can’t stand to look at him. I don’t like his wife. She’s far from the first lady. It’s about time we get a first lady in there that acts like a first lady and looks like a first lady.

Why do I listen to commentary on the Republican Convention?  It’s news, even if it’s as grim as Flooding from Isaac forces evacuation of 60,000.

Torrential rain dropped by Hurricane Isaac threatened to burst a dam on Thursday, forcing evacuation of up to 60,000 people in Louisiana and Mississippi and leaving large areas of the region flooded and without power.

I actually did like Jeb Bush’s address (despite him saying that his brother had kept us safe – when 2,819 died on 9/11 under his watch, another 6,348 Americans dead in Iraq and Afghanistan and 49,310 wounded in his wars, men and women without limbs, with traumatic brain injuries) because he spoke about the need for education (except for him dissing teachers’ unions, and except for him pushing for taxpayer-financed vouchers that allowed some students to switch from low-performing public schools to private or religious schools, [which] was struck down as unconstitutional by the Florida Supreme Court in 2006, and except for him emphasizing a statewide standardized test, the FCAT, as a basic testing tool in the classroom, [which is] hobbled by grading glitches and growing unpopularity.)  Well, ok, I did like that fact that education was mentioned as important, but I didn’t like Jeb’s talk.

Clint’s “interview” of an empty chair was not funny, but Jon Stewart was hilarious talking about that “interview”!   http://now.msn.com/jon-stewart-makes-fun-of-clint-eastwoods-empty-chair-conversation-at-rnc

I did not like Romney’s talk, where he said that he would create 12 million jobs (!), but didn’t say how (except to approve the Keystone XL pipeline which would travel directly over the Ogallala Aquifer, and if you think that the BP spill was bad…)  The only specifics I heard him mentioning were eliminating health care, disallowing abortions, and giving back religious freedom (so that Catholic institutions can exclude birth control from their health care).  Anyway, the Huffinton Post really reamed him.  (Tidbits here, click to read the whole thing.)

Romney’s Speech: Pleasantly Delivered, A Bit of a Crock, Preceded by a Doddering Film Star

Romney talked about the price of gas doubling since Obama took office, forgetting that it was even higher under George W. Bush in the summer of 2008.

Romney talked about his success in business and dared anyone to suggest that his methodology might have been insensitive or impractical, leading to his continued support for the lowering of taxes for richer Americans. He continued the lie his running mate Paul Ryan stated last night that Obama would cut Medicare when, in fact, the cuts go to the providers while the benefits remained the same, presumably paid for by higher taxation of the wealthy.

Ryan also lied about a GM factory closing because of Obama, whom he said promised that it would stay open during his campaign in 2008. The fact that the factory closed in the summer under George W. Bush, however, wasn’t mentioned…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-russnow/mitt-romney-speech_b_1845414.html

 Air Conditioning

Friends and I have been comparing our electric bills through this hot summer.  (My daughter’s up in Phoenix where they’ve had a rash of over 110° temperatures, and her bill is astronomical.)  If you think that yours is high, The amount the U.S. military spends annually on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan: $20.2 billion, according to a former Pentagon official.  That was reported in 2011, so I’ll use 2011 numbers.  Now tell me if my math is wrong, but from what I could find online, we had 99,000 troops in Afghanistan and about 13,000 in Iraq.  I multiplied that total by 12 months and divided into 20,200,000,000 and came up with $15,029 a month per soldier!

Of course, Cost of deploying one U.S. soldier for one year in Iraq – $390,000.  So A/C is minimal.  This site was so interesting! http://usliberals.about.com/od/homelandsecurit1/a/IraqNumbers.htm  Here are just a few tidbits:

Lost & Unaccounted for in Iraq – $9 billion of US taxpayers’ money and $549.7 milion in spare parts shipped in 2004 to US contractors. Also, per ABC News, 190,000 guns, including 110,000 AK-47 rifles.

Lost and Reported Stolen – $6.6 billion of U.S. taxpayers’ money earmarked for Iraq reconstruction, reported on June 14, 2011 by Special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction Stuart Bowen who called it “the largest theft of funds in national history.” (Source – CBS News) Last known holder of the $6.6 billion lost: the U.S. government.

Missing – $1 billion in tractor trailers, tank recovery vehicles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and other equipment and services provided to the Iraqi security forces. (Per CBS News on Dec 6, 2007.)

I figured while I was checking out the cost of the wars, I’d compare them with the deficit that the politicians have been making such a fuss about (when the rest of us would just like a job). Federal deficit $1.1 trillion.  Cost of Bush’s wars since 2001: $1.4 trillion.  (This is a great site: http://costofwar.com/; it shows the amount spent, increasing by the second.)  Conclusion: if he hadn’t gotten us into those thankless wars, there would not only be no deficit, we’d be in the black!

Brrrrr

I know you’re going to think this is weird but I had to sit outside to warm up.  Even though I’ve shut most of the AC grates in my office, and have been wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt and have turned the AC upstairs to 80° and have been drinking hot tea, my ears are cold!

It’s 5pm and the doves are coo-coo-cooing all around.  A yellow butterfly is flitting among the yellow flowers on the acacia trees and the cat is watching a rabbit nibbling away at my grasses.

Was a bit more exciting this morning (as it always is with predators).  While I was having my morning coffee, listening to the (depressing) news on the radio, my cat sidled by the door, tail furred out, not chased, but spooked.  I let her in, went out and saw nothing.

Half an hour later when I was sitting at my computer I espied a bobcat lounging in my driveway.  I went out to snap a few photos, which caused him to keep just a few yards in front of me.  (He ignored the roadrunner a few feet away.)  Noticed that he had a bit of a limp – not good when you have to catch lunch, but he probably won’t be bothered by coyotes as he can scramble up a tree.

Speak of the devil, half an hour later a coyote ambled down the drive, not stopping for a photo op.  This one was not a cute puppy type, but a large scary creature.  A few moments later I saw it in my neighbors’ enclosed yard.  They haven’t maintained the ocotillo fence and the javelinas have created entry holes.  (Have seen the javelinas in there before.)

But have yet to see a bobcat or coyote catch a rabbit, as the vegetation down here in the wash is pretty thick.  Much easier to see a couple of lions take down a wildebeest on the Serengeti Plain (during a photo safari I took two years ago.)

Lizards like the heat

A blue-throated lizard (Clark’s Spiny Lizard?) looking in my kitchen window must be camera-shy as he darted around the wall when I pulled out my camera, so this is the only photo I got.

Teaching applications

I have now applied for 11 high school math and 9 high school English positions in five school districts in this area.  I know – be careful what you wish for, as you may get it!

But my math test is in three weeks and I don’t think that I’m going to pass.  This time ‘round I’m teaching (myself) for the test, going over every one of the 80 questions on the sample test, but golly, it’s hard!

Brrrrrr+

Am leaving Friday for Vancouver BC (to see my son) and Sequim, Wa (to see my cousins).  Check out the weather there:

Weather for Vancouver, BC, Canada

Weather for Sequim, WA

Now contrast that to my fair city:
Weather for Tucson, AZ

Gee – no wonder I’m cold; it’s only 95° out!