Category: Nature (Page 13 of 20)

Signs of Spring

March 31, 2012 / Katie L. Carroll

Here in New England you never can use temperatures to decide what time of year it is. With a warmer than average winter (bad for allergies and getting rid of bugs, but a nice break after last year’s crazy winter), it seems like spring has been around for months.

I know better than to let an 80-degree day in March fake me out with a premature promise of summer. An April snowstorm is always a possibility. Just today it was rainy and damp and cold outside. There’s other ways to tell spring is here, though.

For one the birds are back. I spied a crow taunting a squirrel. The crow clutched what appeared to be a long reed of dried grass in its mouth. The squirrel got real close to the reed, only to have the crow fly out of reach. Then the crow landed back on the grass and let the squirrel approach. With a squawk, the crow hopped away again. This went on for some time, much to my amusement (those pesky squirrels are always stealing my unripe tomatoes, taking one bite, and leaving the rest for me to find) and much to the squirrel’s dismay. I’ve also has a particular blue jay that seems to have made a nest in the forsythia bushes on the edge of the yard. And the distinct who-who-who lament of the mourning dove is back.

On Thursday, the hubby, the bro, The Boy, and I had our first ice-cream-for-dinner event at the Sundae House. The giant sign on their building reads, “It Must Be Spring, We’re Open!” Signs never lie, so you know that it really must be spring!

On Friday as I was leaving work I drove toward what from afar looked like a couple of misplaced lawn chairs blocking the driveway. Turns out, it was a tom turkey strutting its stuff and peacocking (let me just point out what a fun word “peacocking” is) as it tried to court an indifferent lady turkey.

Lastly and most definitively I know it’s spring because the little pea seeds are sprouting in their trays. My mom and dad both stopped by the house and saw the too-tall-for-trays pea plants on my kitchen counter and (independently of each other) said, “You’ve got to get those in the ground!”

What signs of spring have you seen lately?

The world stays the same…or does it?

February 26, 2012 / Katie L. Carroll

After teasing us last September with the news that Einstein might have been wrong, scientists reported on Wednesday the face of physics as we know it is not changing. It appears a faulty cable connection created an erroneous reading of tiny neutrino particles traveling 60 nanoseconds faster than light.

I’m a bit disappointed to learn the way we thought the world worked isn’t changing (as in E really does equal MC² and Einstein had it right all along). Maybe the physicists over at CERN should have done a better job of keeping the lab rats from gnawing on sensitive technical equipment (just kidding)!

Yet just when I thought my imaginings of a new paradigm for the universe was going to be destroyed by such a mundane thing as a bum cable, a report on Friday restored a little of my previous excitement. It seems the faulty wiring could actually have made the original readings wrong in the opposite direction and the particles may have been traveling faster than the faster-than-the-speed-of-light readings.

Say what? So maybe Einstein was wrong and I might still have the pleasure of seeing a major scientific shift in my lifetime. Oh cruel physics…stop toying with my fragile emotions and get some definitive results already!

Autumn Snow

October 29, 2011 / Katie L. Carroll

Ummm…so it’s snowing, and it’s October 29th. And this is Connecticut, not freakin’ Alaska. C’mon, Mother Nature, give us a break! At least let us get through Halloween. I guess this is just another weird weather phenomenon in the year of The Boy.

Was Einstein Wrong?

September 23, 2011 / Katie L. Carroll

BIG NEWS today regarding the very fundamentals of physics and how the universe works. This latest mind-blowing development comes not from the Large Hadron Collider, but from OPERA (Osciallation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus…yeah, I know…huh?). It turns out Einstein might have been wrong…that’s right, Einstein might have been wrong.

Scientists at the CERN physics lab just announced that subatomic particles called neutrinos were observed to be traveling faster than the speed of sound. So that whole E=mc²thing may need to be rethought because it is based on the the theory that it is impossible for any particle with mass to accelerate at or above the speed of sound. BAZINGA (as Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory would say)!

But you may want to wait a little longer before you tell that iconic Einstein poster hanging above your bed, “You just got served!” Before scientists call the measurements true (even though the 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of sound the neutrinos traveled is above the 10 nanosecond margin of error), they want to verify with independent tests.

Tune into the CERN live webcast, which I thought was supposed to take place at 16:00:00 (Europe/Zurich) today, but I think that time has already passed and the webcast doesn’t seem to be up. I’ll keep checking back to the page for the latest.

A Beautiful Life Is Born

September 19, 2011 / Katie L. Carroll

I believe I tempted fate with my last post because The Boy decided to make his appearance right in the middle of the hurricane! He was 17 days early (still full term, but his nursery wasn’t quite ready for him!) and mommy and baby are happy and healthy. (And, no, if The Boy had turned out to be The Girl, we would not have named her Irene!)

What I learned during the whole labor and delivery process (don’t worry, no gory details) is that it’s great to have a plan, but expect that plan to be thrown out the window (and whisked away by hurricane-force winds). My doctor was on vacation (of course) and so the on-call doctor (who I had never met) was there for the delivery. She was perfectly competent and an experienced doctor, but let me just say that I wasn’t used to her brand of bedside manner. It wasn’t that she was necessarily rude or mean or uncaring, she was just a bit odd.

Case in point, the doc and her husband has purchased property a few blocks from us. We noticed this piece of land because what had been a tiny old, dilapidated house surrounded by overgrown plants was very quickly transformed into a huge, gorgeous house with a manicured lawn and nice cars in the driveway. It came as no surprise that a doctor had bought it. When we first learned she was the on-call doctor, my husband recognized the name from the property transaction in the local newspaper.

During the early part of my labor (when I was still coherent and interested in engaging in small talk), the doc mentioned that she was in the hurricane evacuation zone, but that her husband was going to stay in the house with the dog. I was like, “Oh, yeah. You live not that far from us.” Then I went on to compliment her on her nice new home.

Big mistake! I realized it was kind of weird that I knew where she lived and quickly explained that we had noticed how quickly the house had been built and saw the property transfer in the paper. The doc was like, “It bothers me that anyone can see how much I was taken for a property by the water.” The she went on a bit of rant about how a suspicious car was driving up and down her street recently and she didn’t understand why she couldn’t find out who it belonged to by looking up the license plate but it’s posted in the paper how much properties go for.

It seemed like a weird time to vent about such a trivial thing (given that I was in labor 2 1/2 weeks early in the middle of a hurricane) and I wasn’t really in the mood to debate what goes into public records and why. Yet she kind of has a point. I don’t necessarily care that property transactions are listed in the local paper, but I do think that certain things should be kept private. Hence why I’m not posting The Boy’s name or a picture of him on my blog. There’s no way for me to control who sees it and I’m not interested in blindly pasting my precious baby’s information for any old pervert to see it.

But it I know you and you’d like to see a picture of him (and haven’t already), I’d be more than pleased to brag about my perfect little guy. Just let me know!