Astronomy Presentation To Brownies

Off and on for some years now, I have been the Sidewalk Astronomer in residence at the Brookfield Public Library here in our suburb.  About once per month during the warmer seasons here in America's Dairyland, I use my 8" Celestron telescope to show library patrons Jupiter, the Moon, the Sun, and other objects.

Occasionally I am asked to give talks, and tomorrow afternoon I will be giving a PowerPoint presentation I call "Wonders of the Sky" to a troop of Brownies at a local elementary school.

These outings are a lot of fun.  I try to show people things that those who follow astronomy see fairly regularly but others rarely or never do.  Some of the videos and slides I have in my talk came to my attention at the amazing Astronomy Picture of the Day site.  Two NASA scientists administer it and always come up with something interesting.  Have a look at: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Weight Loss Plan

After I quit smoking in 2003, I gained some weight in a hopeless attempt to reduce the cravings I had for nicotine.  Those cravings persisted strongly for two full years but then went away.  Now I never think about smoking.

About four months ago I decided to lose the weight I gained and went on a simple plan--not a diet.  A young woman I once worked with told me "diets don't work."

She meant that diets are a finite effort--they begin and end. 

What works is simply changing how much one eats and how much one exercises.

I coined an acronym for my approach:  ELEM.  It stands for "eat less, excercise more" and it's working great. 

Back in college a phy-ed teacher told a class I was in something I've never forgotten:  "There is nothing mysterious about losing weight; all you need do is burn more calories than you consume."  Simple and effective.

Owl Spotted In Brookfield

We've lived in Brookfield, a suburb about five miles west of Milwaukee, since 1990. When we first moved here, a dead oak stood outside the master bedroom window and sometimes at night we'd hear an owl hooting, we thought, from a perch on its branches.

Ultimately, we cut most of the oak down but left about 10 feet of trunk that we built a sandbox-playground around. We continued to hear owls hooting but they didn't sound as close.

Early last Sunday morning, my wife came to my office and said she could hear an owl hooting and it sounded close. I went back to the bedroom with her which is at the opposite end of the house and the hooting was loud.

I quietly walked outside and stood in our driveway which is also at the opposite end of the house. After about five minutes, I spotted the owl standing at the very top of one of the towering pines that is just outside our master bedroom. It was a huge bird with a thick body; I don't know what type, but given its size it might have been a great horned owl which are said to be common in this area.

The owl continued hooting and sometimes, in the distance, another owl would hoot back.

My wife soon came out and joined me, and we watched this magnificent (though surely malevolent, too) animal for a while longer before it leaped into the air and glided off to the north.

Cat-Scratch Training

Training a cat to claw where you want her or him to and nowhere else is quite a satisfying accomplishment. With many cats, it happens quickly because, for whatever reason, they are able to understand that Natural Scratch is just for them and is the one place they can scratch with abandon and with the hearty approval of their human companions.

I don't think coming to this realization is a matter of intelligence. Two of our three current cats--Twinkles and Gemini--were immediate Natural Scratch clawers and haven't scratched anything else in years. The third, Leo, is probably smarter than the other two but he was harder to train.

It wasn't because he didn't understand what Natural Scratch was for or that he didn't like clawing it. What bugged him was being restricted to just one approved target. Leo wanted to scratch anywhere, anytime. To him, Natural Scratch was fine but so was the corner of the futon.

Nevertheless, through a combination of rewards for clawing Natural Scratch and negative conditioning--cat jail--for targeting anything else, we were able to train his bad scratching habits out of him. If you have a cat like Leo, Natural Scratch and its easy-to-use training method is just what the doctor ordered.  Please visit naturalscratch.com.

MIld Winter

Along with rolling steadily toward summer, winter here in Wisconsin so far has not produced a sub-zero day or a sizable snowstorm.  It's a nice change.  Usually by now we've had several heavy snowfalls and six to 12 inches or more snow on the ground.  Not this year.

Today, in fact, it is 47 degrees and it feels like late March.

Predictions are that the weather will remain mild for the next week or so.  Good!