Presents

I've received two presents this week.

Isn't that a pretty present? Such lovely wrapping paper. Lee gave me this when I saw her at my parent's house this past weekend.

I'm a strong believer in that statement it's the thought that counts.

People who know me realize I frequently say I don't like to receive presents. And by this I mean: I don't like to receive presents. This isn't code, y'know?

Y'see, the usual interpretation of that maxim above is that if a person buys you something it means that they're thinking of you, and regardless of what the gift is--it's a symbol of their thinking of you and that's what makes it special.

I don't think that way. My thoughts on this more follow the course of: if the gift-giver knows me well then they should pick a gift I like, if they can't do that then they don't really know me and I should no longer have anything to do with them.

I'm not claiming this is a well thought out thesis. It's a purely emotional reaction but as such, it's impossible for my rational mind to argue with. How can you argue with subconscious feelings? And that's the reason that I don't like to get presents, it just provokes that odd reaction in me--especially since I rarely get presents I like.

Along that line of thought, it's odd but the best present giver was Chris who I was only seeing for a few months and the worst was Renee who I was seeing for over 4 years. I guess length of time isn't a big help in this. As for Lee, so far the birds like her a lot. She's been giving them nice food. I don't know the birds collective opinion on the wrapping paper but I like it.

So here's the question for all of you. Do you prefer no gifts, token gifts, big expensive stuff?

Jung typing

Me. INTJ? Who would have believed it? (pretty much everyone I know)



You want to know yours? Here's the place to go for a simple free version of the test.

Dawn

Is this good enough reason to get up a little before dawn and go paddling a little ways?


There must be some kind of fishing tournament going on. There were fishing boats all over the place. I took this picture early Saturday morning just as the sun was about to move above the tree line. Right now it's 4am on Sunday and it's pouring rain plus thunder. Not looking good for being out on the lake. :-(

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there.

Beware of Shoals

You have to be wary of signs.

Sometimes they warn you of very real dangers, other times they're just there to cover someones butt--legally speaking.

And then there's the times when a sign is just out of date. That's the case here.

That cylinder under the crow--it's hard to tell but there's a nest under the crow as well--warns boaters of there being a shoal here.

No Friggin' Kidding???

It's like 18 feet above the water--the shoal itself is around 500 feet long. How could you miss it???



Here's a picture of it from further back. The spit of land really is quite long and wide.

The sign usually has a more important role. It just looks funny now.

The water here in the Carolinas is quite low due to several years of drought. The lake level is down something like 16 feet as a result. Normally there's just a little bit of land above the water, right at the very base of that buoy.

At this point though, it's not a shoal, nor even an island. This spit of land is dry from one side of the shore to half way across the lake.

In this picture you can see the lake on the other side of the "shoal". This is near the wet side of the shoal. It's only about 18 feet across here and maybe 4 feet above water.

The picture I had up the other day was from another 40 feet down where the shoal was finally ending.

It's a very popular place for fishing. There were 3 boats there while I was taking pictures.

Clay awash

I took this picture early this morning while kayaking.

I like the layered effect that appears due to the close nature of the clay in the foreground and the islands and bridge in the background.

The day started all stormy looking but by 9am was bright and sunny. I had to return to base 'cause I had no sun block on -- it didn't seem necessary. In fact I had a wind shirt clipped on the back of my boat so I could don it once the rain started coming down.

Turned out that I never needed the shirt. My timing in returning was good tho--my dad wanted to move the dock somewhat and I got back just in time to help with that chore. After that? I relaxed on the porch with Road Kill, a 1999 Tim Dorsey novel and watched the birds flirt with one another in the trees.

Bad Hair Day

I took my kayak out for a 2 hour spin when I got to SC this morning. It was good to get the kinks out of my back from the 4 hour drive.

While paddling, I saw this fellow. For some reason there were a lot of herons out today. Typically I'll see no more than 4 in a day. Today I saw over 15. It was weird. They were everywhere.

This one stood out due to his interesting plumage. He's got long feathers, almost quill-like, emerging out from the back of his head, the base of his neck, and on either side of his back near the wings. Kinda freaky looking.

Of the herons I took pictures of (5 of them) this is the only one that had plumage like this. Herons are kinda shy and fly away when approached closely. So I don't know if the other birds looked like this. I took this picture at 12X so details appear in my pictures that weren't visible to my eye. Maybe tomorrow I'll see him again.

Smells nice but...

4-hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyde is typically created by refining petroleum though originally it was distilled from coniferin (the crystals you occasionally see on pine trees) in Germany around 1875. That awful sounding chemical compound is vanillin, the major ingredient in vanilla.

While some vanilla is still harvested from Vanilla beans, mostly in Madagascar which supplies 60% of the worlds crop of Vanilla, it's such a labor intensive and lengthy process most vanilla is chemically synthesized. The complication is that there's 216 different chemicals in vanilla.

Why am I telling you all this? It so happens that this is the focus in a chapter of a book that I'm currently reading. Twinkie, Deconstructed by Steve Ettlinger. The book details just exactly what goes into making a Hostess Twinkie and where those ingredients come from and how they're made. It's a very interesting book--particularly if you're curious about how much chemistry is being used in the food business these days. I assure you, it's scary at times.

In case you were curious, vanillin is an oxidized alcohol. The artificial version never quite tastes as good as the natural version but it only costs about a half percent as much as the real stuff. It's no wonder most commercial bakeries use artificial vanilla.

Primary Day

There's a reason to celebrate today here in North Carolina. It's Primary Day!

I didn't get up early enough to vote this morning but I'm happy anyway. Why, you ask. Well, it's actually simple. This marks, if not the end, at least a dramatic lessening of political commercials on TV. They get very annoying after a while!

In other political thoughts, this past Sunday, on CBS's 60 Minutes, there was a segment on people who were falsely convicted in Texas. The focus was on Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade who was a top prosecutor for more than 30 years.

It was the late Henry Wade, a Texas legend, who ran the district attorney's office from 1951 to 1987. He was famous for prosecuting Jack Ruby in the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald as well as being the defendant in "Roe v. Wade."

In the program it was made quite clear that as a DA, Wade often went the extra mile in getting his convictions. That extra mile apparently included fabricating evidence, not complying with discovery laws and often concealing exculpatory evidence. All very naughty.

Michelle Moore and Jeff Blackburn are lawyers for The Innocence Project of Texas, a nonprofit group investigating wrongful prosecutions. According to Moore, "Prosecute at all costs, it doesn't matter what they have as far as evidence. But if they've got anything that could tie this person into the case, then they were going to pursue the case against that person, even if it meant that they overlooked other suspects in a crime."

"Dallas got a reputation as the hardest, roughest county in the state. This was the one county that you did not wanna get accused of a crime in, because in this county, if you got charged with a crime you were likely gonna go to prison," Blackburn adds.

Anyway, the reason I mention all this is because the problem keeps cropping up. Here in the RTP area we had a nasty case 2 years ago in which the Durham DA, Mike Nifong, tried to railroad a number of Duke University Lacrosse players despite having clear evidence of their innocence. He's been disbarred as a result of his gross misconduct. Too bad tar & feathering is out of vogue. He deserves it. But as long as prosecutors are evaluated purely on conviction rate this sort of misconduct will keep occurring. I'm a little short on alternatives tho.

An interesting thing popped up when I was looking up references for this post. According to this PBS site, Bush jr wasn't responsible for all those Texas executions. While he did gather up some political hay for his death penalty stance, the executions were completely out of his hands. In Texas, governors aren't given clemency powers. Who knew?