Just got back...

Just got back ... from another trip up to Hardware Ranch, on a wildlife quest.  We saw quite a few deer, a dipper, a kingfisher, two golden eagles, and five gorgeous bull elk right near the mouth of the canyon, just east of Hyrum.  They were up on a knoll, lying down and surveying their dominions (and in their minds, I'm sure, their subjects).  One of them had a spectacular set of antlers, 12 points with a spread of 5 to 6 feet.  We also saw several beaver dams (just below Hardware Ranch itself) that were snow covered, but there were little muddy gullies carved through that snow – where the beavers travel from one of their ponds to another.

Unfortunately for our enjoyment (we like to drive very slowly and gawk), there were bazillions of cars on the road today.  Weekends are always busier, but today was particularly so.  Oh, well...

Words I did not know...

Words I did not know ... but which greatly amuse me: Thermaggedon.  People who believe that global warming will cause the world to end are Thermaggedonists.  Oh, most excellent!

Paradise panorama...

Paradise panorama...  I took the panorama below this morning, from the field just south of our home.  The house in the distance on the left is due south from where I was standing, and our flagpole on the right side is ENE from where I was standing.  The mountains in the distance are the Wellsville Mountains, a sub-range of the Wasatch Mountains (where the two ranges join, just south of us, is the southern end of Cache Valley).  Our home is just barely visible through the pines just right of center.

This is the sort of thing...

This is the sort of thing ... that a real geek does for fun.  After reading this, I just wish I'd thought of the problem first :)

Think about this for a moment before you go read that post.  Consider the numbers 24 and 50, written in Roman numerals:

24: XXIV
50: L

Fifty is, of course, a much larger number than twenty-four in the usual way we think about numbers' “sizes”.  But notice that twenty-four is wider (on the screen) than fifty when written in Roman numerals.  That's the observation that provoked the puzzle in the linked article.

Now go read it :)

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  On Thursday afternoon, we made a mess of roasted fresh veggies (and, in my case, a couple of Trader Joe's chicken sausages).  My pig bowl is in the photo at right, but in my defense, Debbie's was about the same size :)

What's in that lovely looking thing?  Well, there are Brussels sprouts, asparagus, carrots, turnips, parsnips, and Shiitake mushrooms.  All of those, after chopping, we threw into a big plastic bag along with a little olive oil, roasted garlic salt, and fresh ground pepper.  Shake, spread on a foil-lined cookie sheet, and roast at 350°F until the veggies are done.  How long it takes is mainly a function of how big the chunks are; ours took about an hour.

Deeeeeelicious!

Oh, and the glass full of milk is, of course, our wonderful Rosehill Dairy Creamline milk.  My brother Scott is now a fellow lacaholic...

Speaking of that milk...  Debbie and I are going to try making our own mozzarella cheese (using that milk!) this afternoon.  We got us a little cheese-making kit after reading how easy it is.  We'll see if that was just cheese propaganda, or if it's true :)  We're going to have the cheese on toasted black pepper Parmesan bread (from Crumb Brothers), with some more of those roasted veggies...

Yesterday we visited a property in south Hyrum, close to our home, on behalf of our friend Kevin P.  He and his wife, after visiting us, decided that they'd like to live up here someday as well.  They've had a sort of background search for a place ever since they visited, and this property popped up in the search.  Mainly I've got it here because I used that occasion to take the first panoramic photo I've made with in iPhone 6:

That photo encompasses about 220° of the view from where I was standing.  I'm pretty impressed with the job the camera did of stitching all that together, automatically.  The only thing I did to this photo was to color-correct it (I've noticed the iPhone takes distinctly bluish photos in snow scenes).  Otherwise, it's just like it was straight out of the camera.

A couple of years ago, a married couple bought the vacant lot right next to my mom's house, near Charlottesville, Virginia.  We've never met them in person, but right after they bought it they managed to start being obnoxious, via letters demanding all sorts of compensation for all sorts of offenses, both imagined and real.  We accommodated where it was the right thing to do, and refused where it wasn't, and they remained steadfastly obnoxious.  My mom has (rightly) been dreading the day they moved into the house they were planning to build there.  Well, a few days ago a realtor posted a sign by the front of that lot – it was for sale.  I contacted that realtor, found out that the asking price was basically a fire sale price (the obnoxious couple needed the money to fund construction on another property they bought), so I put an offer in on it, at a very attractive (to me) price.  They accepted.  Now I have to figure out what to do with two acres of Virginia forest, with one edge along a pond...