(cross-posting to urban_nature)
We didn't get any trick-or-treaters at all this Halloween... but we did get a javelina. It came to eat our jack o'lantern.

( More pictures )



Eventually we threw the pumpkin into the vacant area at the end of the street, so we could all get on with our respective evenings without bothering each other.

Got this link from one of my relatives.

New York Times: The Saturday Profile
Party Elder Still Jousts With China’s Censors
By Sharon LaFraniere and Jonathan Ansfield
Published: October 17, 2009
"Du Daozheng, 86, the former head of the Chinese government’s censorship efforts, now spends his days pushing shunned topics into the public domain."

Mungo is doing fine. In fact, I wasn't going to make an update for him this month, as there's not much to tell. His seasonal shed seems to have tapered off, thank goodness. He has started marking almost like a normal dog — I say almost because at least once I've seen him lift his leg against a tree and nothing came out, and then he put his leg down and leaned forward to empty his bladder in the way he has done previously. Not trying to be crude, but he still has his quirks.

There's a dog park about ten minutes' drive from our house that he enjoys visiting. He doesn't necessarily play with other dogs there. He does sometimes, but he seems to like just sniffing around the large enclosure even more. We've also taken him to "doggy day care" at a popular kennel, but we aren't sure how much he likes that, since he always acts scared when we drop him off with the staff, and we don't stick around to watch how he behaves when released into the enclosure. The kennel was recommended to us by staff at the vet clinic, and I'm sure they take proper care of the animals, but I suspect he's simply happier in our company any time.

What really prompted me to make this post was an article in this month's electronic newsletter from the microchip company. It talked about how black dogs often get passed over at shelters. The day we adopted Mungo, one of the shelter staff there remarked on this same tendency. I did a Google search just now and turned up more links than I expected: here's a whole website devoted to getting dark-colored dogs adopted, and here's a recent New York Times opinion piece defining "black dog syndrome." Apparently, despite not being documented in any statistical study, it has been noticed by a lot of people, and it applies to black cats, too.

Any acquisition of a pet should of course be thought through very carefully, but if you are planning to adopt an animal, please consider getting a dark-colored one, or at least don't rule them out!

Been meaning to post something cooking-related for quite some time now, hence this very long post.

I came across this suggestion several weeks ago: pureed frozen banana as an ice cream substitute. I figured mashed banana would be lower in carbohydrates than the equivalent amount of ice cream, plus it's definitely fat free. So I tried it. I wouldn't call the texture creamy exactly, but it's pleasantly smooth. It tastes like banana, of course. I think it might be good with a little cinnamon mixed in, or maybe chocolate chips, although then you start to take away from the "healthy" aspect. The downside for me is that a whole banana counts as 2 carbohydrate choices, and half a banana looks even smaller pureed than left intact. It really doesn't go very far. I expect I'll enjoy this more when my dietary restrictions are lifted; meanwhile, I've found that Edy's Slow-Churned and Bryer's Double-Churned are options for me if I have just half a cup.

We received a mini food processor last year as a wedding gift, but I only tried it out recently. I used it to mash the aforementioned banana; otherwise I've used it mainly for mincing garlic and ginger. I was impressed by the speed with which it renders a thumb-length piece of fresh ginger root into tiny bits. What would take me several minutes with a sharp chef's knife and chopping board takes it about ten seconds of "whiz-whiz-whiz." However, when I'm cooking with ginger, I'm nearly always also cooking with garlic, and fresh garlic is sticky, and it's a little more involved to wash off the food processor assembly than to wash off a knife and chopping board. So, whether I choose to use the machine or the knife depends partly on the amounts I'm working with and partly on my mood.

( actual cooking )

Fall is here. Equinox was yesterday. The nights are cool now.

aristeros and I were heading out shopping last week when we saw two deer, a mother and fawn, run away from somebody's front lawn. This morning while walking the dog, I saw a [presumably wild] pig in the grassy area beyond the houses. The dog didn't seem to notice. Maybe I should bring a camera on these walks.

Our hummingbird feeder is visited by finches and woodpeckers. I don't think the finches can get anything out of it, but the woodpeckers certainly can. I bought a pound of sugar at the grocery last week; we'll see how fast that gets used up between woodpeckers, bats and hummingbirds!

Also, last Sunday aristeros and I watched people catch, take measurements of, and band hummingbirds. We each got to hold one when it was time to release it. I could feel its pulse against the palm of my hand.

Must be done today:

• wash dishes


• cook the chicken that's been thawed for several days


• refill hummingbird feeder


• water houseplants

( Later this week )

What I feel like doing now:

• take a nap

I've been a bit groggy since last weekend, when we stayed up til midnight Saturday night.

On Monday night we saw a bat coming to the hummingbird feeder. Or rather, I saw a flying thing, about finch-sized, that repeatedly approached from below. It was too fast for me to get a good look, but aristeros identified it as a bat. At first he thought it was hunting bugs attracted by the back door light, but it turns out nectar-feeding bats sometimes visit hummingbird feeders in this region during this season. Check out these photos, which I would never be able to match without better equipment and practice.

This week we may find out what will happen to us next year — where we move next and so on — so we are a little anxious.

We finally received our missing armchair and CDs yesterday.

On the house-tidying arena, I've found two thrift shops and at least one of them had Gladware for sale, so I expect to be able to donate most anything I care to.

I'm making another attempt at crocheting an afghan. With the boucle yarn, it was just too hard to count stitches, so I gave up on any pattern that requires me to make rows all the way across. I'm making granny squares instead, for the first time, with much better success. So far I have two and a half squares. I think I have 186 to go. I may not finish by the new year, but I will try.   :)

Twice in the past three days I've been unreasonably grumpy. Once was less than an hour ago, but after some idle websurfing, I'm getting my equilibrium back. The other time was at 3 AM a couple nights ago: I couldn't sleep, and my mind kept going over and over things that were bothering me. Part of the insomnia was hunger, so I got up and ate a yogurt, but I still couldn't sleep afterward. And I don't think I can blame low blood sugar, because I checked and it was in the low 90s on both occasions, which I think is smack in the middle of normal.

One thing that's bothering me is the damage to our dining table. The moving company won't reimburse us for the damage, and I can't decide whether paying for professional repair is worth the cost, which is half what we paid for the whole table in the first place. On the one hand, I want it to look beautiful and be sturdy. On the other hand, the damage is mostly out of view, it's just a table, aristeros could make it hold together, and we have lots of other uses to which we could put that amount of money. I thought I had already gotten over this issue and contented myself with home repair, but receiving the letter from the moving company in which they make their excuses upsets me again. Maybe it's hormones.

At least the weather is starting to cool off. We haven't needed to put the swamp cooler on for the past couple nights, and high temperatures for this week don't exceed 90°F. That makes going out during the day much more bearable.

We passed a pleasant Labor Day weekend, the last weekend I'm permitted to travel far from home for a few months. We drove up to the second closest major city (I'm still allowed to visit the closest), went to a couple of museums, visited friends and ate good food. We boarded the dog for the first time, for four days, and he seems fine.

The next thing I'm trying to do is organize our belongings properly and get rid of some of them. As I'm sure I've noted before, I have a tendency to keep stuff I don't really need. This house is small, and we don't have a spare room we can devote to storage the way we did in the last house. My parents will be coming for a multi-week visit later this fall, and I need to make sure we have space for them. The hard parts are, first, determining that it's all right to let go of an item, and second, figuring out what to do with it, since I hate throwing away anything that can still be used by someone for some purpose. For examples: purses that I don't like enough to use; an old pair of jeans with holes and torn cuffs; an old bathroom scale that's not very accurate; melamine serving dishes that we've used perhaps twice in five years; reusable plastic food containers saved from Chinese takeout.

When I exited the house this morning to begin walking the dog, I was excited to find a sphinx moth or hawk moth taking breakfast from the lobelias or whatever those red flowers are in our back yard border.

I can see how these insects would be mistaken for hummingbirds. The size and general body shape are about the same, they hover to feed rather than perching, and their wings move so fast they're a blur. The eyes looked small, not like huge bug eyes, although that may just have been some kind of weird pale and dark color pattern. I had to watch for several seconds to assure myself that it was not in fact a hummingbird, but the antennae and the fact that it curled its proboscis when it paused feeding were giveaways. I could kind of see the pattern on the wings, striped forewings and pinkish hindwings, and I think it may have been the same kind of moth that I noticed on the outside wall of our hotel at the last place, right before we moved:
(picture taken with crappy phone camera)

After staring for a minute, I moved toward the door to get a camera from inside, but the moth flew away. Still, that was a cool way to start the day!

About the hummingbirds: they've been at the feeder all morning. At one point, one was perched and feeding while a second one chased away a third. There has been much squabbling. An angry hummingbird is one of the funnier, and cuter, animals I've witnessed.

I filled and hung up the hummingbird feeder two days ago, as I had contemplated, and lo, they come! We've observed several hummingbird visitors today. Actually, the first hummingbird that I saw approach the feeder this morning was chased away by a second bird, with angry squeaking, but the second hummingbird did not partake at that time. I think it's been back since, though. I can't really tell individuals apart, so I don't know if we have several birds in the area or just two repeat customers. They have green backs and pale bellies, and at least one of them has a patch under the chin that sometimes looks red and sometimes black, depending on how he's facing the light. I hope I can take a picture of one, but the birds are fast and my camera is a tad slow, plus there's a glass window between us, so I don't know how well it will work.
(Our feeder is this model, btw.)

One of the two yellow lantana plants in the front border has grown quite sprawling and is a big draw for black swallowtail butterflies. I saw at least a dozen black butterflies on it while I was pulling out of the driveway on Monday, and that's part of what prompted me to put up the hummingbird feeder. I frequently see hawks circling over the area south of our neighborhood where there are no buildings. aristeros is not impressed by seeing hawks, as they were common where he grew up, but I always like watching them.

While walking the dog in the mornings, I often see rabbits — the dog usually notices them after I do, if at all. A couple of weeks ago, I took him out for an evening walk, a rare treat for him, and we startled what was probably a deer. All I saw in the darkness was a patch of fluffy white at about shoulder level that quickly ran away. aristeros and I saw a young deer out in daytime several days ago. The playground at the loop end of our U-shaped road has a length of chain-link fence backing it, perhaps fifty yards long to judge from my memories of long-ago PE class. As we drove past, heading out to lunch, we saw a deer running back and forth along the fence on the playground side. It didn't seem to realize that it needed to run only a little farther to get away.

My mindset has been very home-centric lately. I don't have much to draw my attention past the reach of my own arms.

I am trying to follow a low-carb diet. I am already tired of salads — and I've had only two in the past week — and I want bread, especially in the mornings. Skipping my usual rice at suppertime isn't so bad.

We've noticed hummingbirds in the yard. Perhaps today I will hang up the hummingbird feeder that we bought a month ago.

It's hard to believe we've had Mungo for only half a year. It feels like longer, now. I considered moving to bi-monthly doggy status updates rather than monthly, but it turns out I do have something to say: he is no longer a silent dog by any means. He is still a fairly quiet dog, most of the time, but he whines when he wants our attention, and sometimes when he's excited he makes other conversational-type sounds somewhere between a whine and a growl. And just now he barked at me, apparently because he thinks 9 o'clock at night is a great time to play and he wants me to run around with him. I did walk him around the block earlier this evening, and that seemed to help with the restlessness a little.

Also, he seems to be blowing his coat again. We vacuumed less than a week ago, and we could stand to do it again, even after I used the Furminator on our dog a few days ago. When I scritch his chest, hairs come off with each motion of my hand. I hope this lasts no longer than the last time (which was around six to eight weeks, IIRC), preferably shorter.

We just watched the G.I. Joe movie.
It was flashier but stupider than last year's "Eagle Eye."
aristeros apologized for taking me to see it, but really it was about what I expected.

We've noticed a lot more insect life here than at the last place we lived. Beetles, ants, moths, flies — an annoying number of the latter two enter the house, but I don't want to spray poison around in case I end up breathing it or swallowing it.

Here's a more unusual visitor we observed last Friday evening: a stick insect on the outside of our patio wall.
( photo )

And, our rose bush with more flowers than in the last picture I posted.
( photo )

Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature

"Men have had to conquer foreign lands, win battles and wars, compose symphonies, author books, write sonnets, paint cathedral ceilings, make scientific discoveries, play in rock bands, and write new computer software in order to impress women so that they will agree to have sex with them."

A very "selfish genes" explanation of many behavioral phenomena. I think this article oversimplifies human behavior a great deal, but it makes some interesting points.

I think this was the first thing I cooked here in the new house on our good cookware. It was such a relief to have my giant 14" stir-fry pan again.

( What I did )

At any rate, I was pleased with how the dish tasted, and aristeros loved it, so I'll be making this again.

A bonus that came with our house is the border garden in front and back. Actually, there's not much left in back, just a few sparse bedding plants, but the front looks a bit better. Most houses on our street do not have this. That means someone who lived here before took the time, effort and money to plant the garden. Also, there's a great big rose bush in the patio in front.

We were told that this neighborhood will be demolished next year to make way for new construction, just like at the last place we lived. That means all the improvements people have made to their yards will be torn up, including the large trees that some houses in this neighborhood have. One house up the street from us has a sizeable oak in its front yard. Such a shame, but I guess I understand the reasoning. People prefer bigger houses and central air conditioning. I hope to root some cuttings from our rose bush before we leave this house so it will live on in some form.

Anyhow, photos:
( A brief pictorial review )

Monsoon season seems to encourage flowers.

The past few days have been busier than last week. The trucker with our household goods arrived Monday morning, and he and the local helper working with him spent pretty much all day unloading our goods — and I spent pretty much all day keeping watch on them and checking off box numbers from the list. At the end of the day, we were lacking a few boxes and an overstuffed armchair. The truck driver decided to use Tuesday to search his truck again, since he also carried the possessions of two other households, but he found only one box of our books.

I really can't understand how or why the chair would go missing. It's not expensive or glamorous, it's a hand-me-down from aristeros' family, and it's big. How could people loading our goods fail to see it? Or, if it was on purpose, who would steal such a thing? The main issue with the boxes is our music CDs; nothing else valuable is missing. Our nice wooden dining table that we bought last spring is a bit damaged, though: two of the corner joints have come loose. aristeros thinks it can be fixed with careful application of glue and clamps. We made note of the missing and damaged items on the official paperwork. The trucker asked us to wait to file a claim until he delivers the other households' items, hoping that our stuff will turn up, but if it doesn't, we'll be reimbursed. In any case, we're inclined not to use movers next time but to pack, load and unload everything ourselves. The lack of control over our goods was frustrating.

Since we found out about the problems, I've been going back and forth between being sad over the loss and damage and not caring much. I think I'm starting to settle toward the not-minding-much end of the spectrum. In the end, these are only things, and they don't even impact our day to day living our lives. What does impact our daily life are the boxes everywhere. I think this house is half the size of the house we were in previously, and it's suddenly become difficult to walk around. We've unpacked maybe a quarter of the boxes since Monday.

( Mention of canine bodily fluids ) As I type this, he is looking very cute napping on his side in his regular wire crate (newly unpacked), with a squeaky rubber ball at his nose.

Last Saturday we drove up to the nearest big city, ( and did boring stuff. )

After a morning of shopping and delicious lunch, we decided we were tired and didn't really feel like touring a cavern. So we headed home. The dog probably would have been distraught if we'd stayed out all day anyway.

There are a surprising number of Asian restaurants in this little town. They're all small establishments and in general not much for atmosphere and decor, but at the three we've been to so far, the food was decent. This week, we have tried out another local Asian restaurant, registered myself and the dog for our respective medical care, picked up a few household items and looked without success for flypaper. We have a lot of flies in the house, but neither the supermarket nor the discount store sells flypaper; they only have sticky traps for mice, not flies, and roach poison and insecticide sprays. Does no one want the product anymore? We bought a spray, but I may cobble something together out of duct tape and cardboard.

We finally got a call from the truck driver carrying our worldly goods, who told us he expects to reach our house next Tuesday. Meanwhile, having little else to do, we both got sucked into a couple of Facebook games, in particular Mafia Wars. Time spent playing will likely taper off once we get into a real routine.

Mungo has now moved three times in a month: from our previous house to a hotel, to another hotel, to our current house. He has coped well, I think. He was very excited to be let loose in our back yard after spending two weeks in hotel rooms. He's taking a few more days to adjust to the house itself. We set up his portable crate in a corner of the living room and his mat next to it, and he spent most of his time there in his "safe place" for the first couple of days (we've been here for six days, five nights). One problem he has is that all the flooring is smooth, slick tile, and his feet have very little traction on it. Any time he tries to run indoors, he skids. We find this funny, but we plan to shop for an area rug later, at least for the living room. Meanwhile, it's impressive how much dog hair is on the floor in less than a week.

We're at the end of the street, and other houses' back yards border our yard in three directions. All three have dogs. In fact, I think every house on our street has a dog, although it's hard to tell. The fences are chain link, unlike the stone and cement fences at our last house, and the living room window is big, so Mungo can see what he considers his potential playmates. This means he's rather more agitated than he was in the last house. He still doesn't bark at other dogs, but he does whine and cry when he's indoors and becomes aware of interesting doggy goings-on outside.

There's an old baseball field down the road from our block that's been converted to a dog park, fenced all the way around. We've taken him there twice. Unfortunately, both times he got burrs in his feet after only a couple minutes. It doesn't seem like a good place for him to run around. Too bad; one thing I wished for at the last place was a large, fenced area to let him off leash. It is still too hot out to go walking except before 8 AM or after sunset, so the dog and I are not getting much exercise.