As I mentioned before, I got a drone for my birthday. It is a Mavic-Mini. A very small drone with with some big features. Mainly a built in GPS that enables it to hold its position and a nice camera. Click the link above, it has some fun videos and to be honest the drone is as easy to fly as it shows in the link.
I have been experimenting with it in various places. I went to a local freeway interchange that featured a very high overpass. The drone flew right up there and stayed in a pretty good wind. If you run the video you can see it bouncing around.
I took it to a local park and flew it around and it did fine. Got into some conversations about it with people. They thought that I was “very good at flying it.” Not really, its just that it is very easy to fly. This is my third drone, the other two were okay but they had a mind of their mind especially the slightest wind.
I got confident enough to fly it in our back yard where we have lots of trees in a small space.
This is toward the northeast of our house overlooking the greenbelt
More maneuvering around the back yard.
To the west toward the setting sun.
Looking down on our back yard. Abby is one of our three dogs. She loved the drone, barking at it and wagging her tail.
This has nothing to do with Skywatching or Drones or anything. This video of some Irish Dancing at a wedding caught my eye. I hope you don’t mind it. I thought it was cool.
That’s about it for this week. We are still trying to flatten the curve. I hope everybody stays healthy and takes precautions. I am linking with Skywatch Friday
This might be the most selfish and self centered blog post in the world. Then again isn’t selfish and self centered at the heart of blogging in a way. I mean the internet has given us a voice so we go for it. Am I wrong? Is it a bad thing? I don’t think so. Also, the interwebs are full of grumpy people talking about what makes them grumpy. That is political blogging in a nutshell. The community of photobloggers though are pretty much about telling us what makes them happy and I’m good with that.
So now that I’ve justified my selfishness lets give it a go.
https://flic.kr/p/2iPbrUf
My family makes me happy, my bride of many years Heather our special son Logan. Rascal the Pomeranian makes me happy as well but near as much as the other two.
https://flic.kr/p/2iPNiqe
Then here is them two again and me. Make note of my expression. That is my big wide rarely seen smile.
Here is Lizzie, our diffident, fat little toad kitten. She probably isn’t a kitten more technically and she isn’t that loving generally but she makes me happy. She rules our household of three humans, one other cat and three dogs.
And beautiful landscapes make me happy. This is Woodward Park here in Tulsa. We have azaleas, dogwoods, and who knows what else going on here.
And Tulips make me very happy. The more the merrier, and the more colors, the better. I don’t care if they are a bit past prime like these, I love them all the same.
And I’ll take single tulips or tulips in a bunch.
And Azaleas, and how they are so lush and overwhelming.
And some more Azaleas.
Iris’s may be my favorite flower. The tissue like delicate petals are sublime.
And Wisteria, wisteria makes me very happy.
The Gilcrease Museum gardens are open at no charge seven days a week even though the museum is closed. They have this huge wisteria.
And baseball, baseball is shut down and it is killing me. Being there live is the thing. Nothing more boring than baseball on television. Well there is one thing. At my MIL’s house we were watching “The Greatest Story Every Told” the old movie. Of course the story is great but the movie puts seven R’s in Borrrrrrring. Low energy. They needed to cut in half and put in a chariot race. Oh yeah, they already did, its called Ben-Hur. Now that’s a good movie.
I hate the virus that has its grip on the world but I love the medical people who are risking their health taking care of the virus’s victims.
And art, love it. This is a sculpture at the Gilcrease Museum Gardens called “Twins” by Jay O’Melia. I think this is perfect.
Another scene from the Gilcrease Museum Gardens. It’s easy to maintain social distancing because nobody else is every there!! By the way, can we call it “Physical Distancing?” I don’t want to be socially distant. Sorry.
And here’s Heather again. I love sitting out on our patio with her.
And I love challenges. Heather got me a fancy drone for my birthday. It’s kind of cool. It has a GPS built in so when you tell it to stop somewhere, it maintains its position. I’ve two other learner drones and they just kind of did whatever they wanted to do. I want my technology to do what I want it to do. So anyway I put it up in the air, told it to stay and fished my camera out of my pocket and took a photo.
And I had it take a photo of me.
And then moved it a little closer and took another pic. And then it started to rain. I was trying to figure out how to do video and I think I have it but it is very rainy and windy. So it might be a few days before I can try it again.
I’m happy that my fellow citizens are helping to flatten the curve by following the guidelines. It feels un-natural and weird but we have to do what we can do.
Know something else that makes me happy is how people responded to this crisis. For example as I write this post, Mary Chapin Carpenter is singing a song from her house on facebook, lots of artists are doing similar things. Exercise instructors are doing Zoom workouts. Restaurants moved quickly for takeout options. It has been amazing how creative and resilient people are. It’s been amazing to see. Kudos to them.
So, there are tons more things that make me happy, but I’ll stop. What makes you happy?
In the meantime, stay home, and flatten the curve.
The family is together all the time during this pandemic. I am one of the lucky ones who is working from home. Logan, our son, is home from school and continuing his classes online. (Poor kid, one of his history teachers loves to talk, and not constrained by class time he has talked on his subject for over two hours!!!, Nobody is there to tell him that it is time to go.) Heather is an exercise instructor, and the gyms she works at are closed. So we do lots of walking and our dog is loving it.
One of our favorite places to go is Lafortune Park. It has a nice, paved three mile track that wraps around two golf courses, baseball diamonds, playgrounds, and a library. Their is a sculpture garden behind the library that I think has to be one of the best kept secrets in town. Their is Peter Rabbit above.
And Mother Goose, with a gosling on her back. There is Logan checking out Peter Rabbit.
I turn 90 degrees and this is the view. Lafortune Park is nicely landscaped.
And continuing around the park, here is a tree on the golf course. The golf course is shut down but they are still mowing it and maintaining it. Personally I think that they could open it with modified rules. Maybe, only one person per cart unless you have pull cart or something like that. Sorry, I’m diverging, I tend to do that. I don’t play golf any longer but I am worried about keeping the course workers employed, if it can be done safely.
Another golf course scene. As I was taking this a guy said “Dang you take lots of photos.” Huh? It was a friend of mine, who retired in 2018. It was nice to see him. We kept our distance and didn’t shake hands or anything. It was nice to see him. I see all sorts of people now while out walking.
Close to the end of the walk. A combined Redbud and Whitebud tree. They seem to be fused at the trunk.
And to end up, we had a Pink SuperMoon this week. It’s a little hazy because the ranchers north of Tulsa are doing prescribed burns on their pastures so it looks a little hazy. I didn’t care, I just love moons.
So that is it for this week. Everybody stay safe!! Come join the party at Skywatch Friday
I’ve been working from home for several weeks now, along with an army of other people. We in that army are the lucky ones who are employed. Others were sent home wondering what is next, others are working in the hospitals, clinics, grocery stores, as police officers and fire fighters and other people working at high risk providing services to us.
Here in Oklahoma we can still do outdoor stuff like running, walking, hiking and other things.
No tennis
No golf (I don’t quite understand that to tell you the truth)
Playgrounds are all taped up, stay away.
The swings have had had their swings removed.
The baseball fields are quiet.
Nature keeps doing here own thing. I am hoping that things ease around here sometime this summer.
Here we are still sheltering in place, along with most of the rest of the world. Here we can go out on errands like grocery shopping and such including outdoor exercise as long as we practice social distancing. I went out on a bike ride along a bike path close to the house.
I’ve ran, walked, biked and geocached along this path dozens of times over the years.
Generally I have this 20 plus mile trail to myself but not any longer. Lots of people are looking for a little exercise to make our stay at home more bearable.
I had never seen so many people on this trail.
But there is still wide open spaces.
And when we were passing each other we all got way over on the edge of the trail.
I’m actually kind of hoping that people make this being outside a permanent part of their lives after the crisis is over.
I saw an interview with our latest national hero Dr. Anthony Fauci explained about the seasonality of viruses. He says it is not the heat, its the ultraviolet light from the sun that kills the viruses. I killed a bunch of them yesterday. But because I am skin cancer survivor I slather on the sun block very heavily. Can the viruses hide under my sunscreen? Just thought I give fearful something to be afraid of (not really.)
And that is a wrap as I turn off my Go Pro clone.
Are you spending time outside, fully in compliance with whatever orders you are under? Tell me about it.
Here in Tulsa we are under a an order to Shelter in Place except for essential trips and outside activities away from people are one of the essential trips allowed in addition to the real ones like going to the doctor, grocery store, pharmacy, liquor store, and marijuana dispensary (not kidding!) So one day I ventured off to Tulsa’s Woodward Park. The playgrounds are closed but the flower beds are open.
There were not very many people there. The ones that were kept their distance.
There are always flower pickers (they say the flowers are there for everybody!) but not this trip, thank goodness. One lady was making me nervous as she waded into the beds but as far as I could tell she didn’t trample any.
I don’t know anything about flowers in general or tulips in particular except that I love them. I have no desire to grow them, nope I will enjoy the fruit of other peoples’ labors.
It took a while but I had my fill.
They have great trees as well.
I love this stone bridge. You come to t he park on a nice sunny day and often there is a bride and a whole posse of bridesmaids all arranged on it. You can tell if the photographer is a pro by how nervous they look. The pro’s have to pay a fee to shoot here, they just charge it to the bride’s family as part of the cost. Hacks like me, well I can shoot to heart’s content (but not weddding parties.)
That’s it for today. Everybody stay safe, wash your hands, and hold your loved ones close. (Those that live in your household, others, just kind of wave for now) and come over to Our World Tuesday and join the fun.
I started tracking data for Oklahoma by using the State Health Department web site. That’s okay but it is just a fixed point in time every day. It would be like trying to figure out what is happening in drag race by measuring the speed a hundred yards out of the start. The sites below track the spread of the virus in real time.
If you have your own credible sources of data let me know and I’ll consider adding it.
Johns Hopkins University might be the gold standard. Reportedly some government agencies use it.
GitHub, somehow related to the New York Times is a great source of data if you want t o create your own visualizations. It’s kind of a nerdy site but worth checking out.
I’ve been working from home during this novel coronavirus situation and my wife Heather is out of work as a fitness instructor. We are trying to get our exercise in a legal, ethical, and responsible manner so we have been walking the dog, family hiking, and such. The other day we fired up our bicycles and headed to the RiverParks for a ride.
The RiverParks are popular but I doubt that they have ever seen so many people on a Tuesday afternoon. It wasn’t crowded though. Maintaining separation was easy.
The weather was nice and cool and the skies were spectacular. There was a pretty good breeze from the north that made riding into it challenging but coming back with the wind at our back we were flying.
One thing that helped was the Gathering Place is closed so all the people who are new to the parks and do not yet understand to stay on the right but instead wibble wobble here and there and everywhere were not present. For the most part. There are always wibble wobblers. That’s okay, they just don’t know, I used to be one.
The bike traffic was pretty steady.
We came across friends Jay and Tracy who were walking on the trail. It was funny, we maintained our distance. Jay and I did jokey elbow bumps. We talked for a little bit and then we each went our way.
Tulsa went into social isolation mode last week. All the bars, restaurants, theaters, bowling alleys and other places were ordered shut to help slow the spread of the Corona virus. My employer had already ordered those that could, to start working at home. Our son’s college has gone online and the various gyms where Heather teaches classes have closed so we were home except for trips the grocery store and to check on my brother at the hospital and Heather’s mother.
The weather was kind of crappy as well so our exercise was limited to walking our one healthy dog in the neighborhood. Saturday we were ready to check out the great outdoors so we ventured to Keystone State Park about 30 minutes away and you can see post to know more about it. We went out there and there were only three cars in the parking lot so we figured that we were ethically fine to go hiking without endangering ourselves or others.
https://flic.kr/p/2iGvK2E
Here are Logan and Heather right after we started.
The trail was a little wet in places but in great shape. The state takes really good care of it with the help of volunteers. I helped out a week or so ago, lopping branches and picking up litter. What also helps is that the trails are designed as opposed to Turkey Mountain where the trails just kind of happened. It makes a difference you know making sure that water flows across a trail rather than down it.
Keystone features rocks and trees with a healthy amount of water. This tree looks to be growing right out of the rock.
The water level was up a little. We did about three fords. We didn’t get our feet too wet.
https://flic.kr/p/2iGsYC5
Here are Heather and Logan doing a little social distancing during a rest break.
Another tree growing out of a rock.
And my favorite, dancing trees. When we got back to the trail head our car was the only one there. We hopped in and drove straight home. I hope everybody is being safe as we go through this Corona Virus thing together in the entire world.
Check out the World Health Organization for the straight facts. Don’t be disseminating bad information. Too much of that going on already.
Heather and Rascal – they leave me behind when I start take photos, I don’t blame them. Nothing more boring than watching other people take photos.
Social distancing, remote working, hunkering down fell down on us in the US quickly as our national leadership finally acknowledged the reality of the Corona Virus and started treating it as a public health problem instead of a public relations issue.
Yep, I edited this heavily. Topaz Studio is my favorite right now.
Better late than never orders are out to shut down restaurants, schools, gyms, almost any public place. The RiverParks authority has even requested that we maintain six feet of space if come upon somebody while running or bicycling on their trails.
It rained heavily this morning and was threatening more is the reason I didn’t go to Turkey Mountain. Yep, this is edited also with Topaz Studio to get an impressionist type feel.
I’m kind of worried about my brother who is in a rehab hospital. I try and visit him every day but I worry about putting his and other patients health at risk. Nobody else visits him though so I show up every day during the restricted visiting hours and visit with him. Phone communication has worked out very well with him.
For some reason I am loving taking photos of lichen lately. And yes, I edited this photo as well. True Confessions.
From what I read, we may be hunkering down for quite a while so figure out a way to survive and thrive. I went on a walk with my wife and one of the dogs in the neighborhood with my camera. I am looking at familiar things in new ways, trying to determine what my new normal is going to be.
So be safe, make sure that you double check your sources of news, wash your hands and lets be kind to one another. We are all each other have.
