Sunday 03

Sunday 03- I did my stretches, ran a mile, lifted weights, and rode my bike.
Today’s Weather was: Temps of around 37 and 64 degrees, slight breeze, humidity around 29 percent, clear skies; just another gorgeous day!
According to the National Weather Service: “Monday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 62. Light and variable wind. Monday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 38. West southwest wind around 6 mph becoming calm.”
I still have a lot of cleaning and putting everything away after I finished the tiles last month, and that’s what I mostly did. I’m trying to sort out the stuff I want to keep, throw away, give away, or put into storage. The computer room is a mess with wires, CDs, DVD, old computers and parts lying here and there. I bought fifteen plastic boxes that I’ll put most of them into. I’ll need to build some shelving to hold the boxes and get everything off the floor. I cleaned up the pile of clothes and other items on the floor in the bedroom and it looks a lot neater now!
I practiced my guitar and then called up two of my oldest friends to wish them a happy new year.
I went on my evening walk listening to three new Astronomy Cast lectures: Ep. 163: Auroras, Ep. 162: Edwin Hubble, and Ep. 161: Launch Facilities that was mighty interesting!
I read aloud from the textbooks: “Astronomy Today” and “The Cell: a Molecular Approach”. The astronomy was about Spectroscopy: Emission Lines, Absorption Lines, and of electrons going to different orbitals from its ground state to a higher orbital when excited. The Cell was about Cells as Experimental Models using E.coli, Saccharomyces Cerevisiae (yeast), Dictyostelium discoideum (amoeba), Caenorhabditis elegans (mematode), Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly), Arabidopsis thaliana (a small flowered plant), Xenopus laevis (frog eggs), Zebrafish (the only one I could pronounce!), and Transgenic Mice (which sounds scary to me). I’m only putting these words here for anyone reading this journal to know what difficulty I am having. Reading aloud is very slow especially with biology whose words are just tongue twisters for me. Why I’m reading these aloud I’m not sure but I believe that I’ll benefit in some way from doing it; besides I live alone and don’t get the chance to talk that much.
I went outside around 8pm to watch the Quadrantid meteor shower. While I was outside I saw my neighbor Ginger and stopped by for a bit to say howdy. I spent over an hour gazing into the night sky looking for meteors and saw only one! But it was a nice one that streamed across the skies.
I finished the evening reading “The Letters of Richard Feynman”
I did my stretches; practiced my guitar; wrote to my journal, posted it to the web, and called it a night.
I still haven't turned on the TV!

Monday 04

Monday 04- I did my stretches and ran two miles.
Today’s Weather was: Temps of around 38 and 62 degrees, slight breeze, humidity around 36 percent, cloudy skies.
According to the National Weather Service: “Tuesday: Sunny, with a high near 62. North northwest wind between 6 and 8 mph. Tuesday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 39. Northwest wind between 5 and 8 mph.”
I was going to do some more cleaning of the house when Roger T. called and asked me if I had a computer I didn’t need. I had one that was missing a hard drive and a CD drive and he could have it for a few bucks. He said he’d be down to pick it up in a little while. So I had to clean it up and blow it out with canned air. I found the box that the motherboard came in with instructions and CDs with drivers and such, and had it all together for him when he arrived. I told him that if he couldn’t get it working that I’d give him his money back. He lent me a DVD movie called “District 9” that I’ll watch tonight.
I dropped by Stoney’s to see how he was and got a call from Marcie Hines saying if we wanted to pick up Stoney’s paint sprayer we could come on over; we did.
I went on my evening walk listening to a new Astronomy Cast lecture: Ep. 156: Famous Stars. I found most fascinating the most powerful star Eta Carinae that almost went supernova in 1843 and was the second brightest star for a spell. Eta Carinae lies in the southern sky and is almost one hundred times the mass of our Sun. Eta Carinae is a good candidate to go supernova sometime in the near (soon or in a million years or so) future. I was doing a search and found this recent article and picture.
I practiced my guitar and then read aloud from the textbooks: “Astronomy Today” and “The Cell: a Molecular Approach”; I’ll spare you the details! I read an hour from each book.
I watched “District 9” Sci-Fi (2009) and found it very refreshing the way it was filmed, the actors that were used, and the country it had taken place. I liked it!
I did my stretches and lifted weights; practiced my guitar; wrote to my journal, posted it to the web, and called it a night.
I still haven’t watched TV yet! Nova is on tomorrow night and I may watch that, but that’s okay because it’s on my list of educational shows I can watch.