Clifford Beshers

  • The last tomato. Food geometry.

  • A drunken octopus challenged me to a fight this morning. I gave him space.

  • Spelling Bee Pangram Drugs

    Today’s NY Times Spelling Bee pangram was very difficult for me to find. Often, I see an answer within a few seconds. Over Christmas, I’ve been taunting my niece when I can see it and she can’t. Today, she saw it right away; all I saw was made-up pharmeceutical names. Since she is in med school, I sent her my fake drug names and we had fun with the product descriptions.

    Central letter: o. Surrounding letters: abilmx.

    • Immobilax: a paralytic combined with a laxative, not a big seller.
    • Labiamoxi: boosts your feminism.
    • Billomax: costs you everything.
    • Bimoxial: makes you twice as feisty.
    • Ambilox: suppresses allergic response to left-handed salmon.
    • Lolamobilix: causes hallucinations of being in a time loop where you have to steal 100000DM in 20 minutes.
    • Molamolabix: turns you into a funny-looking pelagic fish.

  • When flash goes wrong, it can produce ghastly photos. But sometimes with cats, it just adds humor. Note the second cat.

  • Is there a posting glitch? Today’s post not showing up in the timeline, despite several attempts to tickle the cache. @help

  • Bricks, ivy, graffiti, ONE WAY.

  • Finnegan, Master of his Domain.

  • We went with something different this year for Christmas dinner, a 10lbs salmon roasted with lemon and dill, and nobody regretted it one bit.

  • Christmas kitten, all tuckered out.

  • Christmas cats.

  • Night flight, partially cloudy.

  • Morning light on the freshly covered crest.

  • White Whites.

  • Peak snow from last week. The triangular fracturing of granite under stress underlies the scene.

  • First Robin of…winter? Migratory visitors are up since the snow started. Presumably they were enjoying the extended fall somewhere to the north and higher up, but the mountains got nearly 6’ of snow, forcing a move.

  • As I huddle inside, orbiting the woodstove, I always marvel at the folks who get through life in these harsh conditions without any engineering of their environment.

  • The nearby ski area got over 5’ of snow this week, but even such a big storm dissipates over the Great Basin at some point. At dawn, light can come in horizontally under the canopy for perhaps 10-15 minutes. In these conditions, it pays to be an early riser.

  • Big snow storms this week. This photo is from Tuesday. The crest is covered in fresh powder, but the dark border below tells me the snow line was just barely down to us. Yesterday was sunny, but this morning it is snowing again, with 2-3” already on the ground.

  • A new episode of #WhatsItWednesday.

  • The arc of negotiation, new weather pushes in over Mt. Tom and displaces the old.

  • Light and shadow livened up the valley, but neither rain nor snow made it down that far.

  • Winter storms are rolling to us over the Sierra Nevada. They haven’t had enough energy and moisture to bring snow down to the valley, but they have been providing quite the light show above Mt Tom.

  • Recently, I have been singing “Easy to be Hard” from the musical Hair. No idea why, hadn’t thought of it in years.I just looked up the original cast album to find out who sang it; I remember her voice so vividly. The answer is Lynn Kellogg, and she died two weeks ago. Freaky.

  • Ragged, swept, portent.

  • Any shape of standing wave you see in a river seems to appear above the mountains here eventually. I don’t know what to call these. “Riffles” springs to mind, but Wikipedia says that’s more about the collection of sediment to form a shallow section.

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