Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

I honestly love snow, and I never want to live anywhere without a “real” winter. However, this winter of 2008/2009 is officially on my shit list.

It started early and has been a very wet winter for Utah—which is GREAT for the mountain snow pack, should it ever actually start to melt and fill the rivers and reservoirs with water. But there has been a little Springtime torture mixed in lately that is driving me NUTS.

***

Exhibit A: Sunday, April 12, 2009

I took this photo on Easter and thought, “Oh wow! Spring has finally sprung!”

It had been chilly and rainy in the afternoon but warmed up enough to be simply cool and delightful. Ben and I sat outside and enjoyed the early evening sun until it got too cold.

The past couple weeks have had spotty sun and more day-to-day clouds than I think I’ve ever seen since moving to Utah. I’m just being whiny*, of course. This is still no comparison to Cincinnati’s total of 4 nice days a year.

***

Exhibit B: Tuesday, April 14, 2009

It got colder again and rained for a good portion of the day. As I was walking on the university campus with my bold purple umbrella protecting me, I had to try very hard not to smile and laugh and all of the people who weren’t even wearing jackets, let alone carrying umbrellas.

It made me think of a recent episode of Heroes when Angela Petrelli chides Noah for being out in the rain without an umbrella. And then that irritated me because hello, Heroes? Needs to just quit being a telenovela and kill everyone off except Hiro. And then Hiro needs to be badass like Future Hiro in Season 1. Read more…

I want to tell you my exciting stories of Sundance and being a college student again, but it’s about all I can do right now to keep my eyes open. So instead, I give you photos I took a couple days ago. There’s this weather “inversion” that’s hanging over Utah Valley and keeping all the pollution trapped inside, sometimes masquerading as fog but more often it’s a haze that’s clearly visible from higher elevations.

On the plus side, it makes early morning drives very pretty because of all the frost that collects on the trees. The frost disappears mid-morning, leaving the trees a drab winter brown—but then the frost reappears again overnight. It’s fabulously magical and makes it easier to get up on cold winter mornings.

It was unseasonably warm on Halloween* this year. On Saturday, November 1, Ben raked leaves and I spent some peaceful time lying in one of the piles before we shoved them into bags. The sun was extraordinarily bright, as you can see from my squinty eyes in this photo.

Then we had beautiful fall weather for a couple days, and a cold front came in with some rain. It snowed in the mountains, and then last night the rain turned to snow here in Utah Valley. I woke up on the Day After Obama Won to see a soft blanket of snow, only an inch or so, covering the yard. It was really beautiful. It mostly melted by the afternoon, but not before Ben took this sweet photo of a wilting, snow-covered jack-o-lantern on our front porch.

*Oh yeah, Halloween. I Twitter my thoughts but then sometimes forget to expand those thoughts into blog posts. Some friends came over and we ate chili (Ben made an amazing Beer Chili that I have demanded he make again soon) in pumpkin-looking bread bowls and drank hot mulled apple cider (that was spiked with rum for a few of us). Tons of kids came to the door, so it’s a good thing that our friends brought extra candy. Read more…

Yesterday’s Mystery Bird that was stuck in my chimney is no longer a mystery! It was a female red-shafted Northern Flicker (photo from Cornell’s ornithology website, taken by Keven T. Karlson).

I was impressed with Cornell University’s ornithology website (which is what you’ll visit if you click on that first link) both for the multiple photos and the ability to listen to a clip of the bird’s song/noises. I’ve definitely heard that bird outside our house before, and it’s really cool to know what I’m hearing now.

I’d been sitting on that blog post for a few days, all the time wondering what kind of bird that was and trying to figure it out from online searches and my two birding books (National Geographic Field Guide and Birds of Utah). I finally decided to email Sharon Stiteler over at Birdchick.com to humbly request assistance, and was surprised by her lightning-quick response with a positive ID of the bird! She said that she was checking email at the time and thought my question was a fun challenge. And then she linked to this blog and challenged her readers to ID the bird…. cool!

Incidentally, Sharon’s profile claims her blog’s purpose “To show the world that you can be a birder without being a geek.” Well, I’m a geek, so I hope it’s okay that I want to be a birder!

I started reading Sharon’s blog at some point a while back when Neil Gaiman linked to her. They’re friends who pursued (and subsequently blogged about) a joint beekeeping adventure. And since I’m a wannabe birder, I stuck around and love looking at all the pretty birdy pictures and hearing about her adventures.

I’m a wannabe birder thanks to my good friend Susan from college. She was a fellow zoology major (until I switched gears and majored in English) and ended up in the field of ornithology after graduation, where she’s been ever since. Susan introduced me to pishing, which I’d like to try more often. I am jealous of all the exposure she’s had to owls. Because I think owls are neat, even when they’re being fed frozen mice.

While hunting for an ID for my mystery bird, I also came across the Utah County Birders, who apparently go on field trips (field trips! wheee!) and have monthly educational meetings. I don’t think that I will ever be a hardcore digiscoping birder, but I am definitely interested in learning more about birds. And since I neglected my natural interest in college by only attending one or two Naturalist Club meetings (before the field trips! boo!), I might just check them out.

The cool thing about learning is that even if you become a primo expert in a certain field, there’s somehow always more to learn. I don’t expect that I’ll become an expert in birds. I just want to know more about them!

And maybe find out which birding book should be the next addition to my library?

Awesome: Wild birds.
Not Awesome: Wild birds that fall down a derelict stovepipe chimney and become trapped.

Once upon a time, last week, I was sitting at my computer wondering why it was so hard for me to start blogging again. It was a dim, cloudy day, and rare (welcome) storms were approaching my Utah home. At 3:50pm, I heard a horrifying scriiiiiiiiitch-ing noise and thought that something was scraping maniacally against a window–or I was about to become a front page newsworthy victim of some horrible suburban home invasion.

Gushing adrenaline pushed me out of my chair and into the living room, where it became apparent that the noise was coming from the chimney of our never-used wood (or is it coal? We don’t even know) burning fireplace. A poor bird was stuck in there. (Can you help identify the bird? See below.)

Panicked, guilty horror washed over me, which in my brain goes a lot like this: ohshit ohshit ohshit ohshit!

Why guilty horror, you ask? Because a few months back the same thing happened with sad results. The scritching noise started as I was heading out the door, late for work. I called Ben, who had a similar reaction. We weren’t really sure what to do, and I had no idea how to disassemble the fireplace or the chimney, so I went to work. I called a chimney sweep, who quoted me $100 to come out. I called Ben again, and he came home as soon as he could to attempt a rescue… which was successful. But the bird wasn’t moving much when he pulled it out, so Ben set him down gently in the garage near the open door where he staggered on his feet for a minute before falling over. Sadly, it died right there in front of its big-hearted rescuer.

And here’s the part where I look like a neglectful homeowner and horrible person: we realized that there must not be a cap on our chimney, or it had broken, thus allowing a bird to fall down in the first place. But we never fixed it. So yeah, the whole story you’re about to read could have been avoided… but at least this time there was a happier ending. So I’ll get back to that now.

3:50 I first heard the sound and concluded that it was a bird.
3:51 Ohshit ohshit ohshit ohshit
3:52 I realized the rain had started, so I ran upstairs to close the skylights.
3:53 I ran back to the living room, but the noise had stopped. Loki was sitting two feet away from the fireplace, staring intently at where the noise was but also looking somewhat bored at the same time. How do cats do that?
3:55 I called Ben to tell him about the noise, and that it had stopped, and that I was pretty certain there was a dead bird in our chimney. Or maybe it was alive, and I should try to rescue it? But what if it was really dead? He asked me what I wanted him to do, and I pulled out my seldom-used Girl Card and squeaked, “Can you come home and take care of it?”
4:01 The bird scared the shit out me as I was about to hang up the phone. “I’m coming home now,” Ben said. I spent the next few minutes clearing things away from the fireplace area and pulling out small-ish cardboard boxes and a flashlight.
4:22 The bird went crazy in the chimney again and scared the bejesus out of Phoebe, the scaredy-cat who had been downstairs up until that point.
4:42 Ben arrived. We closed the doors to the bedrooms, wrangled the cats into the basement and shut that door, and opened all the windows on the first floor in hopes that the bird would be able to fly through one after its release. We have double-hung windows so we could open the top portion, assuming that the bird was more likely to fly high. Ben had the forethought to turn off the ceiling fan in the living room.
4:46 Ben pulled off the top lid-thingy on the stove to peek inside. I felt like an idiot, because I think I could have done that. But all we could see was a tail, so I happily relegated myself to flashlight-holder and picture-taker.

The next several minutes were nerve-wracking because in my head, the bird could die at any moment. The shrill sound of frantic talon-scratching on metal was welcome because at least we knew that the bird was still alive. Ben shook the stovepipe to encourage/force the bird to put its feet at the base of pipe, which caused it to climb up a foot somehow. So we waited patiently, and eventually it came down far enough for us to see what its body looked like.

Ben had the genius idea of bending a wire coat hanger to use as a scooping prod. No, of course he didn’t use the hook end to poke the bird! The first time the hanger touched the bird, it freaked out and climbed out of reach again. In the meantime, we scraped away some of the ashes at the base of the hole to allow more of the bird’s body to show. Eventually it slid back down and this is what we saw:

It was a much bigger bird than we thought it would be, which made it impossible to rescue in the same manner as the other bird (which had been small enough to fit underneath that flue bar in the middle). Ben tried one last time to coerce it over the flue bar, but its beak was at least 1.5 inches long and it retreated again.

Then Ben had another genius idea… to try opening the metal flue. Once open, he could see the bird in the pipe and was confident the bird could fit through that opening! I suggested he put on some gloves before sticking his hands up there in case the bird pecked or clawed or there were sharp edges inside.

So I took over as the holder of the flue handle to make sure that the flue didn’t slam shut with Ben’s hand or the bird inside. Ben used the coat hanger and something cute like “Hey there, little bird, we’re here to help you!” and pretty quickly told me to stand back.

And then the bird flew out! It flew up toward the ceiling immediately, paused for a fraction of a second, and then flew out the closest open window. I was very thankful that the top half was open… the last thing we wanted after freeing the bird was for it to slam right into a window.

We ran outside to see where it went or if it faltered, but it flew a straight course over our neighbor’s house and disappeared into the neighborhood. It was sort of anti-climactic… I mean, would have been nice if the bird had perched on the lonely nectarine tree in our backyard and chirped a little thanks before flying off, right? Needless to say, we were relieved and happy that the bird made it out alive and apparently well. A thousand kudos to Ben, my animal-loving hero who’s not afraid to get dirty:

It took a total of 45 minutes to get the bird out from the time Ben came home. Not too bad, I guess… I would say that we’ll now be able to do it faster next time, but I’m hoping there won’t be a next time. We’re getting a cap on that chimney ASAP. Also, a sign that says “No Birds Allowed.”

Can anyone help us identify this bird? From the long, conical black beak (not pictured, but it was around 1.5 inches, I’d say) and the striped pattern on the wing, I think it could be a female woodpecker of some sort, or something similar, but I can’t find a close match in my bird books or online. Those spots on the belly and the orange feathers (underneath the tail and it thin stripes on the wings) are really throwing me for a loop–not that I’m a really seasoned birder or ornithologist.

Head to tail the bird was perhaps 10 inches long and upon a quick glimpse as it flew out the window, I remember the trunk being a little fatter, kind of like a pigeon’s. The eyes were a solid black-brown. I didn’t use flash on the photo of the head because I didn’t want to scare the bird any more than it was at that point. Also, and I don’t know if this will aid in identifying the bird: it didn’t seem to like being stuck in our chimney.

[After posting this blog entry, I sent an email to Sharon over at Birdchick.com. I caught her online and she replied swiftly (it's a birding pun!) with a positive ID on our little mystery bird. Because she linked to this entry as a challenge, I'm going to hold off on my follow-up post for now... but you can see what people are people are guessing here.]

Not far from my house, there is a pond about 1/3 acre big outside of a local corporation’s building complex. Early last week on my way home from work, I peered to my right (because just driving is so boooooring, you know?) to look at the waterfowl that like to hang out there. Most of the time I see white geese and mallard ducks.

Then I noticed the pelicans.

"What the…?" I said to myself, at a loss for words even inside my head. I pulled off the road and got out of my car to see if I actually saw what I thought I saw. Sure enough:

As I crept closer, they slowly moved into the water. One spread its wings, presumably to show me how big and powerful and scary he/she was so that I wouldn’t come closer. Like I was going to jump in and try to eat it, right? But the beautiful black banding on the underside of its impressive wingspan was amazing.

Not something that I expected from a boring drive home from work. I’ve never seen pelicans in the wild (if you count a man-made pond as the wild). I only had my phone with me at the time and the photos I took with it didn’t really come out, so I stopped by again last night to see if they were still there. I had to trespass on the company’s property and walk halfway around the pond to get these shots, stepping over curiously large mounds of duck poop both ways.

I’m still trying to sort out my reaction to being laid off, so writing about the beauty of unexpected roadside pelicans is a nice diversion and more zen than dwelling on my underlying anxiety of an uncertain future.

Yesterday afternoon, after the initial shock of the conference room group lay-off, I spent an hour or so talking with several of my coworkers who weren’t laid off. They were all very apologetic and shocked themselves, similar to how I’ve reacted during previous lay-offs when I was not affected. I was touched by the genuine nature of their consolation, their immediate efforts to help me find a new job through their own networks, and their assurance that it will be easy for me find another job with my "level of talent."  I already miss working with them.

My biggest anxiety yesterday afternoon was how to tell Ben, who kept leaving messages on my desk phone because he wanted to know when I could leave work for a special no-occasion weeknight dinner at the Chinese Buffet. (That’s what I wrote about yesterday: When life hands you lemons, buy a fish.)

Other than that, I focused my attention on obtaining contacts from my coworkers and making sure that people I liked and respected had my personal contact information. My boss is "transitioning" back to the sales department, so I offered my services as a contractor to his boss, who is now in charge of what’s left of the marketing department.

As the writer and editor, I worked with a lot of different people in different departments. My job is being split among three different people, and it makes me sad that my efforts to create and maintain cohesive and creative branded communication will most certainly disappear quickly in the hands of people who don’t care, don’t have the time, or don’t have the talent to make that happen. That may sound pompous, but I take pride in my writing and have learned that it’s a vocation above all else. That was a really hard lesson to learn. I’ve been thinking about creating a separate blog that is strictly about my journey as a writer.

Ironically, I spent my lunch hour the day before I was laid off looking at "becoming a full-time freelance writer" books at Barnes & Noble. I’ve been seriously thinking about pursuing freelance writing gigs and had been working out a plan to transition out of my job in the next year. So while the lay-off was unexpected, it won’t hurt me as much as it did my other coworkers who needed the insurance, were the family breadwinners, etc.

Ben and I will be on a more strict budget in the near future, but it won’t be that much of a change for us considering that the majority of our extra pennies were begrudgingly going toward home improvement anyway.

I’m going into the office this afternoon to collect my personal belongings from my cubicle and to share some tidbits of importance with the VP who will be over marketing. Though I do kind of want to stomp up and down and scream an obscenity or two, just to be immature because things didn’t pan out the way I wanted them to, I’m not dumb enough to burn a bridge where I think I could easily be hired back part-time as a contactor or full-time in the future if/when the company gets its act together. Not that I necessarily want to go back there full-time.

I was told that I was the most difficult lay-off decision they had to make, and whether or not that’s total bullshit, I can’t help but daydream about the day that I get a phone call begging me to come back.

Sounds like a classic break-up emotion, doesn’t it?  

I’m still trying to parse all of the things that are running through my mind right now, but overall I’m feeling good about being dumped by my company. It’s given me motivation to do something productive and enjoyable rather than plodding along because I’m too wimpy to give up a steady paycheck. I’ve really gained confidence as a writer in the past couple years and have proven myself as an editor and valuable "creative" on a talented marketing team.

I have no idea what challenges lay ahead of me, but I’m not going to sit around and wait for opportunity to knock on my door. I’m going out with a telescoping lens and a bullhorn to find it. And then I’ll write about it.    

I almost forgot it was Groundhog Day. Then I remembered, and checked out the official site wherin I learned that groundhog megastar Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow and therefore we can expect six more weeks of winter.

I wonder how far this prediction spreads? Phil is in Pennsylvania, and I’m in Utah. Are his predictions regional or strictly domestic? Do they apply in Canada or in Europe? There has to be a cutoff at some point, because that prediction cannot have much credence in Australia, where it is currently summer.

After learning that there is an official 2008 Punxsatawney Phil groundhog Ty Beanie Baby (wow, they still make those?), I learned some interesting facts about Groundhog Day, especially in answer to this pressing question: 

How many "Phils" have there been over the years?

There has only been one Punxsutawney Phil. He has been making predictions for over 120 years! Punxsutawney Phil gets his longevity from drinking the "elixir of life," a secret recipe. Phil takes one sip every summer at the Groundhog Picnic and it magically gives him seven more years of life.

Wow, that doesn’t sound like stuff of legend at all! I wonder if a pilgrimage to Punxsatawney, Pennsylvania on February 2 allows said pilgrim to obtain the secret recipe to the elixir of life? That would explain why so many freaking people show up between the hours of 3:00am and 7:00am for the cold, cold festivities. I don’t mind the cold, but those are definitely sleepin’ hours for me during the winter months.

The groundhog.org website is improved over last year’s version, which I originally discovered via a magical Google search. I do have a vague recollection of an exclusive 2007 Groundhog Beanie Baby. But I still have one pressing question about the spelling of "Punxsatawney," referencing both the city and the groundhog: why is that letter S in the word when clearly the letter X serves the double purpose of representing the sounds of both K and S?

According to this friendly little educational calendar snippet, the name Punxsutawney comes from the Indian name for the location "ponksad-uteney" which means "the town of the sandflies." Still doesn’t answer my question, especially because in that pronunciation, a K is used instead of an X. Maybe I’ll learn more on February 2, 2009.

Unless I can get an invite to the elusive, exclusive Groundhog Picnic? That sounds like fun. 

Ben was making liquid bread this evening and had the windows open for ventilation.

“It’s FREEZING in here,” I said after coming home from grocery shopping after work. Ben rolled his eyes and kept on working. I played a little Mario Galaxy (I’m at 23 stars now) until my hands turned into icicles.

“It’s really, really cold in the house,” I said. Ben rolled his eyes again and told me to wait until he was finished. He eventually turned the heat back on and closed the windows. I checked the current temperature for our town on weather.com: 8 degrees. That’s -13.3 degrees Celsius.

“I told you it was cold in here,” I said with an icy stare (literally; I think my eyeballs are still coated with a sheet of ice).

“Oh hey,” I then said. “I should check to see what the weather forecast is for Park City on Wednesday when I’ll be there.”

A high of 13? Fuuuuuuuuck… At least I’ll get a free coat from the Sundance people. I can wear it over my other coat.

Well, the power finally came back on. It was starting to get chilly in the house… we have the thermostat set to an energy-saving 70 degrees in the winter (it’s cooler during the programmed "unoccupied" times, which is one of the benefits of having a fancy-schmancy thermostat). The power was off for a little over an hour and I definitely feel the temperature difference when it goes below 69 in the house. The fact that it didn’t get too chilly means that our energy-efficient windows are doing some good.

I just wish that my computer hadn’t been on with lots of programs open when the power went off. Grr. 

It’s been snowing steadily all morning, and we have a nice cover of 6-8 inches outside. It’s that storm that swept over from California and threatened to be icy… but luckily it stayed cold enough to come down in fluffy white flakes today. Our road still hasn’t been plowed, though.

We have an unknown neighbor who ocasionally plows the sidewalks in our neighborood with a snowplow attached to his 4-wheeler. I think that’s really cool of him to do that.  We don’t have that much driveway or sidewalk in front of our house, but having just one old-fashioned shovel to do the work gets old really quickly. We’ve had a lot more snow this year than we did last year… and we’re seriously considering getting a snow blower. We could both use the exercise from shoveling by hand, but that’s a real pain in the ass when you just want to get it done.

Speaking of weather, I flipped to The Weather Channel on TV last night for the first time in a while. Ben told me he’d recently read that it was for sale. If only I had $5 billion dollars on hand, I’d buy it. Though I long for the time when they had less weather-thrills programming and more of the old-school 24-hour weather reports. At least there’s still smooth jazz and Local on the 8s.