Today is the first annual UN World Oceans Day. I didn't plan well enough to go whale watching day (dang it) so I blogged instead :-)

World Oceans Day

I have a lot to post about being in Provincetown, but for now I am heading out for whale watch #2 of the weekend. I have posted on the blog a summary of yesterday's whale watch, and in a different post, impressions on watching some of a necropsy of a fin whale. That post includes a link to some photos. There are no photos in the blog post so if you want only to read about it (the photos are somewhat gruesome) it is safe to do so.

Whalegeek.com

Happy Sunday!

So, I hadn't posted about this here yet because there was always more to do. Well, I finally am ready to give the "big announcement". Last year I started a blog for my whale watching and news etc. As this season gets under way, I have been working feverishly to get the blog caught up with stuff from last year. And so here it is

whalegeek.com

My goal is to be a lot more regular this year with posts of blogs and photos and whatever catches my eye in the world of whales. I still need to do some updates on the reading list but otherwise, I am hoping people will find it, visit it, maybe I will get a comment that isn't spam from time to time.

Welcome!

Generally speaking, I am not a morning person. I seem to do my "best thinking" at night which is when I am most productive a lot of the time, too. I like to stay up late and sleep late. Which is not to say I am not capable of getting up early. I just need the right reason.

Today, I had one of those. A FRFF friend, Jake, and I had been talking about whale watching and a trip to the NE Aquarium for a while. Finally a date was set. The whale watch left the New England Aquarium dock at 10 AM so I got my butt out of bed at 5:20 this morning. Now mind you, just because I have occasions to get up early does not mean I go to bed any earlier. While I did manage to do a little better last night, I still awoke a little short of sleep, but long on energy and enthusiasm due to the day's plan. I was out of the house by 6:15 and still hit traffic so parked at the Aquarium (rather then outside of the city and taking the T in). It's more expensive but also convenient.

It's finally spring in New England, with a little tango of summer thrown in lately, so the weather was gorgeous - clear blue skies, not a lot of wind. A great day to go out on the water. Being spring and not yet summer also means that it's early in the whale watching season. Sightings are happening, but it's not the "embarrassment of riches" that a later whale watch can be. And it's always colder on the water at this time of year. Being early in the season, the boat was not at all crowded, which is refreshing. I don't go out on NEAq whale watches a lot because the 3 level catamaran can hold over 300 people which makes getting to the rail to see and take photos a challenge. The wind made it rather brisk out there, but we were prepared.

The sightings? Well, they were early season sightings. We came across a few minkes, including two travelling together which is somewhat unusual. I am fairly certain I saw a finback just as we got to Stellwagen Bank. For humpbacks, the "big money" whale because they are so charismatic and tend to be more dramatically active at the surface, we got good looks at just a few. Thanks to Jake's digital camera, one was definitively identified as Giraffe. I've seen her before but it has been a long long time. The others we saw were farther away so getting good looks at their flukes was much harder, though the naturalist (also a Jake) thinks one was Crown. We could see a fair number of spouts around on the horizon but they were too far for us to reach in the time allotted. Except for one breach that most of us missed except for the resulting splash, the whales were not being overly active. We went to the north/northeast corner of Stellwagen Bank because the southern end of the bank is in Cape Cod Bay which is still pretty well populated with critically endangered North American right whales so good efforts were being made to minimize boat traffic around them.

Reports on the NEAq web site of whale watches so far included dolphins, but we didn't get that lucky today. And I'm still trying to add the elusive (to me) Salt, the grand dame humpback of Stellwagen Bank, to my personal sightings list. She has already been seen this year so she is out there somewhere... I shot less than one roll of film (of 24 exposures) on whales today so I am already working on figuring out when I can get back out again.

I rather doubt I will be up late tonight, since I am already fading, but the day was well worth it. After getting back to the dock, we wandered through the Aquarium where I got to play a little more with the new digital point and shoot. It seemed to do pretty well. I need to sort through them, especially the large bunch I took of a diver in the Giant Ocean Tank hand feeding fish and rays.

It was also sort of fun to take advantage of my Blackberry and post updates through the day. I am following NEAq (which is also following me), so it cracked me up a little when they re-tweeted one of my posts. Which in turn was re-tweeted by someone else. Whatever works!

I am trying to find and keep my focus - on a lot of things, not just environmental. Along those lines, if you have not watched "the Story of Stuff", please set aside 20 minutes and have a look. It's eye opening and very worthwhile.

The Story of Stuff

I know, its been eons since I have posted here. Just a little thing tonight, which gave me a chuckle and a bit of a start.

I signed up for Twitter tonight. Originally, my plan was to have two twitters, one for me as most know me, and one for my whalegeek self, to follow different things. When I tried to sign up, the nick of photomonk was already taken. Whalegeek was not, so I set that up. Decided to see who the person was who already had photomonk.

He's an honest to goodness monk and photographer.

http://web.mac.com/fatheranthony/Father_Anthonys_Monastery_Journal/About_Me.html

Wonder if I should follow him on Twitter. Could be interesting...

Heh.

For the need to strengthen our school budgets...



I mean, come on - didn't anyone proof this before putting signs up around town?

.... saschaloves! Since it is after midnight here on the east coast, I can get an early jump on greetings! May your juggling always go well, your tumbling as planned, and may you always fly the trapeze of life with the greatest of ease!

Gonna be a little bit sad so please bear with me.

One of my third grade teachers passed away over night. She and her husband have been friends with my parents since before I was born, so I think of her as more than just a teacher since she has always been around in some way. Being that third grade was ages ago, I don't remember a lot of specifics from her class, but one memory has stuck with me for all of this time and probably always will. I have a clear image in my head of her pointing to a world map and asking me to tell her what the country was. I sounded it out. I said "eggypit". She very gently corrected me and that's how I learned how to pronounce Egypt. I think it had to have taken place after school because I do NOT remember being laughed at or ridiculed by the class (which did happen from time to time when my imperfect hearing caused me to hear questions incorrectly and thus answer seemingly randomly). And I do have those memories of being mocked from school. I related this story to her when she was over for dinner a couple of years ago. She didn't remember it but was charmed by it.

My elementary experience overall was a little bit unusual since my dad was the elementary guidance counselor for the school system. There was no doing anything wrong because it all got back to him, and all of the teachers knew us socially. To this day, no matter what they say, I still call all of them Mr. or Mrs. Whomever. It's just too weird to try to go to first names. Some of their kids were our babysitters growing up, too, so there was no distinction of personal and professional for me in education until I went to college and none of my profs knew my parents (which didn't stop the folks from trying to meddle a couple of times, but the college didn't take that seriously).

Still, I am sad for this teacher's passing. Am sad for her husband of 51 years and their daughters and families. Her decline was swift, which is merciful in some ways. She was fine in early December but was then diagnosed with a swift and aggressive cancer. Things can change in an absolute instant.

I was lucky that I had some very good teachers when I was growing up, and Mrs. Goodrich was one of the best.

... to theunveiling and rockradar

I hope you two have a fantastic year, and to see you in July!

I am working in the stained glass store today which thankfully has a TV. Aside from 30 seconds during Obama's speech, the day has been uninterrupted (bad for business, good for me). I know I am posting like a mad fiend today, and not in a very cohesive manner, but I keep finding myself with thoughts.

I watched CBS coverage. Before the ceremony, they had Bush's former chief of staff, Andy Card, as a commentator. I almost fell off my chair laughing when Katie Couric asked about Bush's failures, including the moment on the aircraft carrier with the "MIssion Accomplished" banner. Card actually tried to spin it buy saying that the banner referred specifically to the carrier's own mission, not the war/action in general. OMG are you serious? After all of this, you want us to take that spin sitting down? Good grief.

Even though I am sitting by myself in a room, the energy emanating from D.C. has been palpable. I would not have been able to tolerate it very well because big crowds mean massive sensory overload. So it was fine to watch from inside (not to mention much warmer!)

I don't tend to go for all of the patriotic stuff. I've become too cynical, especially after the past 8 years. But there were several times today where I felt gladly compelled to stand - when they got to the White House, when Obama emerged from the Capital building, when he was sworn in. I even stood with my hand over my heart for the national anthem. My only fear is that the expectation of Obama is so high... how much satisfaction can we have? It is going to be interesting to see just how much, but any at all will be a major improvement.

Rick Warren - the smug part of me wants to say he buckled under he pressure and controversy. I thought his invocation was stilted and rough and not at all impressive. I am not sure he *could* have impressed me, but still. I remain very skeptical about his being picked for this task, because he publicly compared gay marriage to incest and pedophilia and has not publicly repudiated his remarks (I don't care what he told Melissa Etheridge in private - he needs to say it to ALL of us). Rev. Lowery - now that's how to get people into a prayer. I am not a religious person, though I love me that Gospel Wake Up Call at Falcon Ridge (I don't care what your spiritual leanings, just about everyone present is on fire for that time on that Sunday). I loved how Lowery had the whole crowd chiming in to his Amen! which felt like a great pulling together of everything at the end. I say "amen" not in the religious sense, but in the "let's all do this TOGETHER" sense.

Obama's speech was terrific. It was to the point and direct. It did its job with me, making me feel like I need to get busy, dammit! There was one bit of contradiction that hit me. He commented at one point that we as a nation were not going to apologize for who we are or how we live. But then later he commented on how nations of some relative plenty need to be conscious of the resources we use and how that affects the whole planet. Part of the problem with American is consumer excess. Four percent of the world uses 25% of the resources. We do need to apologize for that, and change it. It's our demand for cheap crap that affects so much of the rest of the world which uses up resources so excessively. That's just me being nitpicky.

It struck me while watching all of this pomp and circumstance, the crowds, the enormous preparation and structures put in place, that this is all for ONE MAN. ONE human being. No matter who is President, it is rather messianic. Talk about use of resources. That said, it has to have been awesome to be present for this event. And when Obama was moving through the Capital building, he was led by Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein. Two powerful woman politicians leading the first African- American president to take his office. How far we have come, and how much promise there is for how much farther we can go.

Bye bye Bush. I have so much enmity for you that all I will say here is Good bye and Good Riddance. Oh and Dick Cheney? That goes double for you.

There may be more later. But that's good for now :-)

Happy New President Day!

I wish I had recorded Obama's Inaugural address because dang it all, I am READY. I am FIRED UP and want to do my part. Every time I feel like slowing down or not doing, I want to watch that speech again.

"My fellow Americans" finally means all of us. And I know it will take all of us to improve our nation and our planet.

Time to get busy.

The happy dawning of a new era. Finally, a man with integrity and unabashed, unapologetic intelligence will take the Oval Office. He has a weighty task ahead of him, and I don't envy that,but he gets the gravity of it, he really does seem to care, and hey it isn't Bush!

I have my fingers crossed...

I am watching the evening re-broadcast of the We Are One concert and it sets me to thinking. It's about six months later than my 4th of July diatribe, and I am finding it interesting how I am having such a very different reaction to the patriotism I am seeing on TV right now vs what I saw on the 4th here in my hometown.

During the Mellencamp song, Pink Houses, as well as during other bits, they showed photos of Americans, the parade of "ordinary Americans who make America". I found myself thinking while watching the photos, "these people are not getting up each day thinking, I am America and will walk through fields of grain, stand before a painted flag on a barn wall, build a car, serve food, etc etc to BE America". These are, like many of us, Americans now trying to focus on simply surviving. Making enough money to pay the bills, put food on the table and keep a roof overhead, and maybe have a little left over. Amazing how a few well staged, well lit photos can tell a noble story of what is really sheer scrabble. They don't include the Donald Trumps and Bill Gates in those montages. No Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts. Just folks. So if all of us "just folks" are so special, let's hope that this will finally be a government dedicated to lifting us folks to true peace and prosperity. We certainly have a better chance of that now than in the past 8 years.

I was a Hillary supporter during primary season. I am excited for her to be Secretary of State now because I think she will bring instant credibility along with newly re-found tempered American humility to the role. It took me a while to warm up Obama when it was clear he would be the nominee. It had nothing to do with his credentials. Having seen him the day before the NH primary, I felt good about his capabilities. Recently I was thinking about this, and realized I cannot pinpoint the time at which I was firmly on board. I just found myself there one day. Perhaps it was the Unity Rally. Perhaps it was just time and momentum. All along, I was firmly of the mind that unless he picked someone like Ann Coulter for VP, he very firmly had my vote in the general election.

It was awesome, too, to see the DC Gay Men's Chorus on stage, even if they weren't identified (I don't think any of the choirs were). I have a lot of skepticism about Rev. Warren's involvement with the inauguration, so seeing the Gay Men's Chorus felt good. I think there are less divisive ways to reach out to conservative evangelicals than the inaugural invocation, but at least the whole event, including Bishop Robinson today, does add credibility to Obama's claim to want inclusiveness. After 8 years of Bush going *ptooey*, the table really does seem to be getting bigger, with chairs for just about all of us.

U2 is on now and I am getting a little choked up. Bono's enthusiasm is so apparent that it kind of brings home the global hope that Obama is bringing to the world's stage. My only fear is that the expectations are so high that Obama will have a hard time living up to it all, but he also seems to really *get* what's at stake.

Usually, I don't have a lot of patience for in-your-face patriotism. But this event, this moment in history, feels very different. When Bill Clinton first took office, Don't Panic had a t-shirt that said "Due to the change in administration, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned back on." That's a lot of how this feels. I look forward to Tuesday. And I look forward to a presidency in which I feel like a *part* of the process, not an annoying outside distraction (though I expect I will still be sending my share of emails to my Congressional delegation).

To the future!

I have simple tastes. Anyone who knows me, knows this. Having been away from Boston now for 6.5 years (where DOES the time go???), one of the things I miss the most is Sessa's Italian deli in Davis Square. I still remember the first time I walked in there... while I have no Italian blood personally, my grandfather (dad's stepfather) was an Italian immigrant, so I grew up eating authentic Italian with homemade spaghetti sauce. Walking into Sessa's, well, it smelled just like Grandpa's kitchen.

Despite being away from Boston, my mother keeps me in Italian heaven since she learned how to make sauce and meatballs from Grandpa so it's darn good stuff. But when I was in Boston and had no containers of sauce and meatballs in the freezer, I had to make do. Sessa's made that a lot easier. When I didn't have plans on Saturday night (which was more often the case than not), I'd go there late afternoon and pick up some small bread loaves, a nice chunk of mozzarella cheese, and frozen meat tortellini. Early on, one of the staff there told me to drop a vegetable buillion cube into the pasta water while it was boiling up for a little more flavor. I'd take it all home, start making dinner at 5:30 and be done in time for a marathon session of Xena, Hercules and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine on channel 56. If I felt a little rich that day, I would also go to the local liquor store - which had an awesome beer selection - and pick up some Abbey Brown Ale (used to be called Monk's Brown Ale). This is pricey, but awfully good.

When I get back to Boston from time to time and can make it to Sessa's, I go in to get bread and cheese. Getting the frozen tortellini - a brand which I cannot find anywhere around me in NH - usually is passed over given the long drive. Yesterday, though, I found myself in Boston which was in the midst of an impressive cold snap. So I bought some bread, cheese, AND tortellini. And I had a bottle of the ale in the fridge.

Guess what I had for dinner tonight?

It was awfully good. And I am terribly full. No Xena or Herc on TV, but it didn't matter.

UFO claims follow mystery wind farm damage. Even the BBC reported on it...

Am sitting on an overstuffed leather couch in the library at Eastover right now. It's the winter Camp Camp getaway weekend. There's a fire in the fireplace. Charles is next to me on the couch, knitting. Claire is across the room in an overstuffed leather armchair, with headphones on and quite possibly snoozing. There's a ping pong tournament happening downstairs. A bunch of folks have done off to the outlet mall about 10-15 min away to shop (I went yesterday in a quixotic quest and unfulfilled quest for slippers).

There's about 45 of us here which is a nice group. A few are people I hadn't met before but everyone is still uniformly warm and welcoming. It's been great to catch up with people, have conversations with folks I had never really spent a lot of time with previously, and just relax with all of these new friends. My throat, caught in a cold for about a week now, is still scratchy and hoarse, and really not aided by talking. But it's quiet now in the Mansion and there's wireless so I am good. Hopefully when I get back and can keep from talking for longer stretches, the throat will recover. Don't have congestion and not a lot of coughing so it's just stuck in my throat.

Tomorrow the weekend ends. Since I am in the general neighborhood I may drive down to Dodds Farm where Falcon Ridge takes place. Would be interesting, even if a little disconcerting, to see it quietly wintering. Then it's back home to the cat. The camera arrived yesterday so I am looking forward to checking it out to see if it works after its time in the cold. Someone from B&H photo saw my blog post and commented, offering to investigate the shipping mess. I am very pleased to see proactive service. I had heard of such things happening with a lot of companies, but this is the first time I have experienced it personally. Then Tuesday Mom and I will go to the first gift show of the year. She isn't planning on spending as much money as usual, but she does like to try to find new things.

So the new year is having a pleasant and quiet start which is ok since I have to pick up the pace when I get home. Gotta find income, and gotta get my personal space at home cleaned up/out a bit. It's tough not having a place of my own right now, which is why my "universal" resolution for the year is to simply get my shit together and make the life changes I want into reality, somehow, even if its just getting a process into motion. Gotta be better than inertia.

May 2008 fade quickly and quietly into the background, and 2009 bring us all only good things.

There. My last post of the year is a positive one :-)

Happy New Year!

Oh boy. Oh boy oh boy oh boy. Am I pissed. Can you tell? Let me explain.

I have been coveting a new digital point and shoot for a little while now. My current one still works fine, but it is 4 years old and, well, that's like 60 in electronic years or something. I wanted something with better ISO range, especially. So after doing a ton of research, I settled on the Nikon P5100. It more than doubles the MP of my current camera, too. Sweet, and pricey. When asked what I wanted for Christmas, I suggested Best Buy gift cards because the camera was available on line there. I kept watching the site for sales, right into early December.

So fast forward to Christmas. With a couple new Best Buy gift cards in hand, I decide to see if there is any special deal running on the camera. I go to the bookmarked page. And get Page Not Found. Searching for the model got me nothing - apparently BB had already discontinued it (as has Nikon, in the constant flow of releasing the Next Best Thing).

Frustrated but undeterred, I also had some cash for Christmas. While I would have liked to have used that for other things, I *really* wanted this camera. I wanted something pocket sized (which the new, heavily pushed P80 is not) and with a lot of feature/ISO flexibility. Searches for comparable Nikons (I'm brand loyal) came up with the P6000 which has even more bells and whistles than I need/want and was more expensive. A Google search showed that the P5100 was still available at some places, and for less than advertised at Best Buy.

After earning a little more cash with a little photo gig right after Christmas, I put money in the bank and called B&H Photo to order the camera as well as an extra battery. I called Monday. I am leaving tomorrow for Eastover, a Camp Camp winter getaway. In order to get it in time, I paid for the 2 day shipping, which was really not expensive at all. All aglow with the prospect of my new purchase, I also went to Staples and got a new 4GB memory card to use in the new camera. Then it was about waiting.

Little did I know...

I had the camera shipped to Mom's store since we were both scheduled to work today and so no one would be home. I checked the tracking number and see "In transit - on time delivery". Usually the UPS guy is at the store by around 2:30 which would be good since the store was closing today at 4. So, when no one had arrived by 3, I started to worry. I call UPS. The woman I spoke with, hampered by vague company guidelines, couldn't tell me much. Most important bit was that the package apparently still had not yet even arrived at the local processing hub, which is an hour south. I started to fear that I would have to stay at the store for a lot longer since they can't change delivery address. So I tell her I want to speak to a supervisor. I had no issue with her personally, and I told her so, but wanted to go up the chain.

About 10 minutes later, the supervisor calls me back. He did a little digging on the package before calling me back.

Ready for the Epic Fail?

NO way am I getting this package today. Some dunderhead (my word) put the 2 day in the wrong end of a trailer, putting the package into ground circulation. Because of the winter storm today, drivers were already being called off the road, and no one would be digging around the trailer for misfiled boxes. So two day shipping became a joke and the camera won't be delivered until Friday, which means I will not have it to take to Eastover and play with there. AND the box will be sitting, in this arctic cold air front following the storm, in a trailer outside. I don't want to even contemplate what THAT could do to it.

You can bet that on Monday, I will be calling B&H Photo to have them start the process of refunding the shipping (I can't do it directly, has to come from them) and I am just going to be hoping all weekend that the cold did not damage the camera. Mom has been told to leave it all in the box when it arrives, so it will have 3 days to warm up. UPS is usually pretty reliable. They are so not reliable today.

I go through spurts of adding stuff to the iPod. My CD collection numbers somewhere around 1700 or so, which makes this a bit of a project. Today, I got some gumption to start adding CDs I had put away in bins. I forget I have some of this stuff.

One of those CDs is not only in shrink wrap still (not the only one), it is so old as to have the dog bone sticker.

At present, there are over 10,000 songs on the iPod, which I estimate to be a bit less than half of the overall collection. I have some musical catching up to do.