Spine and Open

I have been struck by two songs recently both regardng the subject of grey eyes.  One “grey eyes”  is by the stellar shoegaze band the  sleepover disaster and you can listen to it here.

Sleepover Disaster

Anisa from Sky Cries Mary

The second “grey eyes”  is by a band influential and near and dear to my heart, Sky Cries Mary, and you can hear it here.

I really enjoy both of these tunes, but I don’t think I’ve actually seen any eyes I would classify as grey.

Here is what wikipedia has to say about grey (they say gray) eyes:

“Gray eyes have less melanin than blue eyes,^{[citation needed]} even though they are considered a darker shade of blue (like blue-green). They^{[clarification needed]} are most common in European Russia, Finland and the Baltic States.^{[citation needed]} Under magnification, gray eyes exhibit small amounts of yellow and brown color in the iris.

A gray iris may indicate the presence of a uveitis. However, other visual signs make a uveitis obvious.

Visually, gray eyes often tend to appear to change between the shades of blue, green and gray; this is because gray eyes are extremely light, as mentioned before. The color change for gray eyes is usually influenced by the lighting and the colors in the surroundings (such as clothes, makeup, etc.).

The Greek goddess Athena was renowned for having “owl-gray” or “sea-gray” eyes (in Greek, γλαυκῶπις – glaukōpis).^[33].”

HMMM… I also found this cool site, ask a geneticist.

Apparently these grey eyes are so enchanting they command songs, I must keep a lookout for some.  My eyes are officially called Hazel.

I just got back from 4 days of skiing at glorious Mt. Bachelor.  I had never skied more than 2 days in a row, I was skeptical about my ability to do 3 in a row, much less4.  We got there on Friday.  There were no clouds, you could see for miles, it was really warm, pretty much a day you only get blessed with once in a while.  That day the Summit chair was open, which takes you almost all the way up Bachelor’s 9,065 feet.  We pretty much rode this chair all day.  The fact that I hadn’t skied since January 2nd, combined with the fact that I am not at all used to being at 9,000 feet made me pretty loopy.  I had to lay down in the snow for a while.

Here’s a pic from Jen, of the bowl at the top of the mountain;

I skied in there!

I didn’t ski from the top, since I’m not a double diamond type of skier, but I skied from the middle and it was fun!  A really bizarre feeling with no trees around and just gliding through the remnants of a once super violent place. 

The next couple days the weather got worse (or better if you like the pow pow), which did mean some fresh snow on sunday and monday.  Sunday was the first time I attempted skiing 3 days in a row.  There had been some fresh snow, and towards the base (6,000 feet) it was really wet and hard to move through.  My first run is when I encountered this wet snow.  Of course I was kinda sore from beating my muscles for 2 days, I hadn’t even seen a green run.  Once deep in the wet snow, and just trying to get through it, I felt pain like I had never felt in my life.  I’ve played 6 lacrosse games in one day, I’ve ran in ridiculous relay races, surfed, done all kinds of activities that cause pain, but nothing like this.  It was as if all of the muscles in my legs and back cramped at once, and were just screaming.  I felt like I could hear them screaming.  I finally got to the end of the run, and explained to my ski buddies that I had never felt anything like that before.  We decided to hit some higher elevations to get away from the wet snow.  It worked.  I skied a ton that day.  The weird thing is that on monday, I felt pretty good, not great but pretty good - that was my fourth day of skiing in a row. 

We got back home at about 10 PM on monday night.  I woke up tuesday morning and rode my bike to work - not really sore at all.  How is that possible?  I think that run where I felt the screaming was like breaking some kind of deal with my body; it was asking If I really wanted to.  I think the deal is that my body has agreed to give me more strength as long as I take advantage.  So I’m moving forward with getting in shape for the ski to sea and for the northwest passage relay.  Thanks body and thanks Mt. bachelor for being so great.  Speaking of how great Bachelor is, they had these electronic ticket passes that track your runs, you can check in online, here are my final stats:

that's a lot of vertical!

Head over to space weather to get all the details of the satellite collision that ocurred 800 KM over Siberia.  There is a lot of room in space, you’d think something like this would not happen, but it did.

Some of the info from Space Weather’s sight:

The US Air Force Space Surveillance Radar in Texas reportedly detected echoes from the debris cloud when it passed over the facility on Feb. 11th. Spaceweather.com is streaming live audio from the radar, and it might be possible to hear echoes the next time debris passes overhead. Try listening on Thursday, Feb. 12th, between 4:14 pm and 4:24 pm CST (2214 - 2224 UT). That’s when Kosmos 2251 would have passed over the radar intact had the satellite not been shattered.

Yes that’s right 3:14 to 3:24 (Cascadia time) you could hear space debris on the space radio.  AWESOME!

Here’s what a pentagon official had to say,  “It’s an unfortunate incident that highlights the importance of cooperation and collaboration in space.”  Yeah, the pentagon wasn’t aware of the impending collision.

It came in the mail, the 2009 Territorial Seeds Catalog, now with 225 new varieties.  Hello - I do not NEED 225 more varieties to chose from, it is hard enough!!!

Now those of you that are gardeners or know gardeners, will find nothing new about my post.  For the rest of you, I will try to explain the drama, joy, bargaining, and ultimately, hard truths that a gardener goes through when planning their crops.

The seed catalog arriving is a time of joy.  There has been time to reflect upon successes and failures from last year.  I sit down with my catalog and my gardening journal and start writing down what I need.  Golden Beets, I don’t like them, but I’d love to grow them for those who do.  I stayed up late looking at the catalog.  I made myself put it down and try to go to sleep.

I’ve been reading books on self sufficiency and I have plans.  New garden plans.  There will be so much room for crops and new flowers, to attract the bees, for proper pollination, and delicious herbs for cooking with……

Just writing about it, you see I don’t have very much room, I live in a city - I already tore up the lawn and converted it to garden, but I’m not ready to move on to bargaining yet.  I think I’ll let myself have more joy and let the list of plants NEEDED get really out of hand.  Maybe instead of real scientific bargaining, I’ll cut each plant out, throw in a hat and pick 15.  We’ll see what happens.

Of Spines and Wide Open Spaces was going to be the title of Half Light’s (then functioning under the name Opunita) first CD.  The thing was Opuntia did not have that many songs at the time, or a real band.   So Before Half Light’s first CD came out, another local band called their album Spine to Sea.  I had to be different of course.  Here is a picture that reminded me of the abandoned album title, and it’s condensed version which has taken on new life as the theme of this here bloggity blog.

West texas, New Mexico???

I took this picture in October of 2006 while on tour with the Purrs.  We were headed from Austin to Tuscon, and coming upon these mountains was really nice, because West Texas is pretty flat.  I’m not sure if we were in Texas or New Mexico, but this is one of my favorite pictures from the 100 or so that were taken on tour.  I really enjoy the sky.

I have an update regarding my disillusionment with what I call Deathcake 2.0.  I sent Cupcake Royale an e-mail begging them to bring back the original deathcake.  Les than 24 hours later, I received a great response from them.  While I may still be in disagreement, I was impressed that they got back to me with a personal and caring response.  When is the last time you got customer service like that?  For me it’s been a long time.  Here is the response from Jessie at Cupcake Royale (I assume female - but just like my name, Jessie can go either way.  Jessie I apologize if I assumed your gender incorrectly) -

“Hi Dayna,

I’m so sorry to hear you don’t love the new Deathcake!  We are all super excited to have a new, cupcake-ier manifestation of death-by-chocolate meets Cupcake Royale.  We use the same bold Stumptown espresso ganache as last year, only this time, instead of a thin outer layer, it’s a dark, luscious truffle deep inside the cake-y interior.  And on top, we have decadent waves, piled extra high, of the same super dark Theo Chocolate ganache.  Altogether with our fudgey new chocolate cupcake,  we are in love this chocolate treat.  Our biggest complaint about last year’s Deathcake is that it just wasn’t a cupcake, and that’s what we always wanted it to be - the absolute ultimate chocolate cupcake.  As a cupcake bakery, we really don’t want to be in the business of making painstakingly elaborate, super pricey desserts.  After 2 years of experimenting, the discovery of a method to cram that much chocolate and coffee goodness into one magical cupcake was like a life changing moment for us.  A baker’s miracle, even.

I too, was an avid fan of the squared off version, but have been quickly converted by the deliciousness of this cupcake beast.  I sure hope you are too, but if not, I do understand, and I sincerely apologize for any Valentine disappointment it may have caused you.

Cheers,
Jessie”

At least now I understand, and judging by the picture on their website, they have made a little modification to the deathcake 2.0 that I tried, specifically - there is much more of the espresso part:

that does look good...

I  felt that, now that I know where to find the hidden treasure, you could probably cut this guy into 6 parts and get 6 bites with all of the goodies deathcake has to offer.  I wrote to Jessie to ask permission to include her response in my blog, and to let her know that I plan to try another cupcake with my new splitting strategy and she said,

“Yay!  Just let me know when and where you want to give the new deathcake another try, and there will be one waiting with your name on it, on the house.   And feel free to post my reply on your blog.”

I thought that was pretty nice.  And, I have no intention to swindle a hard working local company out of $ they deserve for chocolate, but I will buy another deathcake, probably tonight.  And thank you Cupcake Roayle, for that little thing called customer service.  

Thanks to space weather’s simple satellite tracker, I have been informed that we should be able to see the International Space Station tonite in Seattle - if the clouds hold off of course.

space sightings tonite

You can see that the transit time for the space station is only 3 minutes, so you can’t really mess up with your timing.  I’ve seen the fly by once and it was super cool.  For those of you directionally challenged, here in Seattle look roughly towards the Olympic mountains and in the general direction of Canada.  You should see a bright, small, fast moving light head across the sky over towards the eastside.  This time the ISS will be at a pretty high elevation too, almost straight above (instead of close to the horizon).  I think I will time my bike commute so that I’ll be hitting the ballard bridge at 5:27, it is pretty open there so I should get a great look.    Anyone else?  Bridge party?

I heard a rumor that Deathcake was out a day early.  I called cupcake royale, and they were in.  I started running around the house freaking out, grabbing my coat, and as much cash as I could I find.  In a moment of complete disregard for almost everything I believe in, I got a ride to the store.  I needed to get there fast, and I needed my precious cargo to get home intact - the bike ride would have destroyed their beauty.  I am sorry polar bears.

Lucky for me there was not a huge line for cupcakes like there usually is.  I got to the front of the line, “I am here for deathcake.”

“How many do you want?”

“Four.”  The deathcakes they gave me, did not look like the beauties in the post below.  For one they look like a cupcake.

I thought the layers of cake and ganache were tucked inside the wrapper.  You know, the economy is tough, cost of goods is high, they just scaled the thing down, no problem.  I got home, I peeled back the wrapper no layers.  I thought, well this frosting stuff on top better be really good.  It was ok.  I got a hint of the espresso, but none of the deep dark ganache I remembered.  This new version 2.0 deathcake is an imposter.

The old deathcake, it was made with love.  You could tell that the person(s) that created it, and delicately put it together, had a well-thought out and well-lived devotion to chocolately goodness.  This person(s) did not even consider milk chocolate chocolate, they laughed at anything under 60% cocoa.    Deathcake 2.0, 2009 release is really cute.  Someone spent a lot of time on the application of the frosting.  But its not the same thing.  One can easily eat the whole thing in one sitting, and never get the chocolate high.

Dear cupcake royale, please bring me joy!  Please do away with this imposter deathcake and bring back the real one.  You can charge me more money, you can cut the size in half.  I don’t care; the real Deathcake made February ok.  Now, well I’m just disappointed.