death valley

Craig and I just got back from our Mojave Desert Vacation. We visited the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, and Death Valley, all of which are in the Mojave Desert.

This is me at the Devil's Golf Course at Death Valley National Park. It's all salt deposits like the chunk I am holding up, and apparently only the Devil could play golf here (don't ask me). The elevation was somewhere between -182 and -282 feet below sea level and the temperature was 91 degrees F.

This is Craig at Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America. He's surrounded by salt deposits and extremely salty water. You wouldn't want to drink it, hence the name Badwater.

Death Valley is a funny place. It's between two mountain ranges made by two faults, and it's still sinking today because the area is still seismically active. What's weird though is that although we were so far below sea level, it didn't feel that way. The ocean was nowhere in sight, and all we could see in any direction was mountains.

The Lake is gone - not a good way to wake up

Every morning, for years now, I've been listening to the Greg Bair morning show on 93.1 The Lake in Madison. It's a Classic Rock format, and it was a good mix of music and news. Too many morning shows are more talk than music, and that's just not what I want. This morning, my radio came on but the music was different. Hip Hop was playing, not Classic Rock. It turns out that The Lake is gone. What a horrible way to wake up!

I'll have to find another radio station. But for the record, I do not approve.

I hate stumps!

I cut down these ridiculously ugly bushes in front of my house. Mostly I did it because they greatly reduced the visibility along the steps leading up to my h0use, making it very easy to trip! Cutting them down was difficult but not impossible. I used a chainsaw and loppers. It took a few days, but I was happy to see them gone, and I cannot wait to replace them with something pretty! My only stumbling block is the stumps they left behind.

I don't want to use one of those stump-dissolving chemicals because that would take a long time. I thought I could cut down at least to the ground with my sawzall, but no luck there. I saw a site online that suggested using a spade to dig a trench around the stump and then using a landscaping bar to break up the roots and lever up the stump. So, I went to the local hardware store to buy a landscaping bar. The trouble... Yes there was trouble. I couldn't lift any of the landscaping bars there! Ugh! So I couldn't even purchase a landscaping bar, let alone whack at roots with it.

So I'm at an impasse. I will probably hire somebody to come in and remove the stumps for me. Grr though because I'd really like to be self-sufficient in this matter and remove the stumps myself.

My inability to remove stumps also presents me with an expensive problem. I have a yard full of unwanted, ugly, and overgrown bushes. I could cut them all down, but I'd still be left with the stumps which would just regrow ugly bushes!

The Pineapple Project

In every episode of Psych, there is a pineapple somewhere. Sometimes these pineapples are obvious, and other times, they are rather subtle. I looked around online and even on the Psych official web site, and I could not find a source listing the pineapples on Psych. I was left with one choice: watch a lot of Psych episodes and compile my own list.

Why is there a pineapple in episode? I don't know, and the Psych cast and crew have many of their own theories. By the way, there is a pineapple in the fish tank on the top of the official Psych web page.

Here are my pineapple sightings so far (at some point, I will organize this list by season):

• Psy vs Psy: Shawn makes a pineapple upside down cake using an EZ Bake oven he bought on eBay.
• If You Are So Smart, then Why Are You Dead: There are pineapple drink glasses on Shawn's Dad's tiki bar.
• Gus Walks into a Bank: There are 3 pineapple sightings in this episode!
  • Shawn complains about the pizza toppings that they don't even have ham and pineapple
  • There is a pineapple in the fruit bowl. Shawn walks past it on the way to the bathroom
  • There is a pineapple cutout on the zipline snack delivery system
• American Duos: Shawn brings Emilina a Pineapple
• And Down the Stretch Comes Murder: Shawn's dad gets him to wear a green Hawaiian-style shirt emblazoned with pineapples.
  

Pineapple picture courtesy of Flickr user Giniger.

Multitasking

I read an interesting article over at Lifehacker called Debunking the Myth of Multi-tasking. The idea is that when we multitask, we are not really doing two things at one time but rapidly switching between several tasks. The time to switch tasks add up and you become less productive.

I'm not so sure that I accept that multitasking is a bad thing. I think it has its time and place. I work in an office, and when I am running a large copy job, I could just sit there and twiddle my thumbs or watch the copy machine work, but I choose to do something else instead. As I boot my computer, I read the notes on my desk. But is what I describe really multitasking or technological delegation that frees me up to do something else? At home I multitask too. For instance, I empty the dishwasher while I wait for water to boil. Productivity is about making the small moments count.

I believe that if you can effectively manage your time, switchtasking can be a part of your routine too. I am an office clerk, so if somebody comes in with a question, there I am. If the phone rings, I need to answer it. Throughout the day, I rapidly switch between tasks. However, I think you can manage constant interruptions and still get things done by the use of detailed checklists. This falls more in line with David Allen's Getting Things Done theory, and it works for me. I have a daily checklist of things I need to do each day, and I have a list of tasks as well. I have also found a tickler file quite handy, but I took it a step further and indexed it. I have a spreadsheet printed out of the year and what each month's tickler file folder contains and upcoming events.

By the way, I wrote a book review of Getting Things Done over at my other site, UniversalBookReviews.

Tape and Paperclips

Don't you just hate it when you lose the end to your packing tape? You've got to spin it around and search for the end and waste a bunch of tape because when you finally find the end, the tape tears as you are unwinding it. Grr, right?!

Here's a simple solution, place a large paperclip under the tape end when you are finished using it. That way, it keeps your end, and you are set to start taping right away.

Baby pumpkins

We visited the pumpkin patch this morning to find baby pumpkins! This wasn't the only one but it was the easiest to get a photo of because it's right on the edge of the patch. It's a little hard to tell scale here, but it's about the size of half a football. It looks more like a watermelon than a pumpkin!

The vines all have flowers on them too, and we saw bees flitting about pollinating the flowers, which was really cool. Yay bees! I was a little concerned that they wouldn't find the pumpkin patch, but they seem to have found it just fine.

We couldn't stay out there too long though, not even long enough to get a count of pumpkins because there was a swarm of mosquitoes determined to exsanguinate us. I'll have to get some Deep Woods Off before I go back to count pumpkins and pull some weeds.