I was in Las Vegas all week last week for a conference related to work. It’s funny – I work in technology and the conference was related to technology. The only thing was, there was no technology available at the conference so I was stuck with email and internet via phone. So, anyhow, I am back and am somewhat comforted by the sweet hum of my computers.
I won’t bore you folks with conference details. Instead I will share my favorite part of the conference…Carlos Santana was in concert at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas. We got to see him opening night which was pretty cool. Even cooler was the fact that we were something like 15 rows back and at center stage. We could actually see the band and stuff.
I like Santana’s music and I especially like some of his most recent stuff. Of course, he has been releasing great music for 40 years and it’s hard to say anything bad about most of his music. We got to enjoy a tour through his years as a performer and it was a blast.
(click the image above for a video. If that link doesn’t work on your machine, try the one here)
He’s a free spirit and kind of fun to listen to when he talks. I can’t really explain it but he feels very “spiritual” in his own way. He also has marijuana leaves as one of his backgrounds on stage. Surprisingly, I didn’t smell a single bit of smoke.
for B.H.
The view from my room
So, I am glad to be back from Las Vegas and if you ever get a chance, definitely go and see Santana in concert!
When I was growing up, our town didn’t have cable as an option…it just hadn’t come yet. We survived (somehow) on only three channels that came in during the winter when the leaves were down. Sometime in high school (maybe 10th grade?) the cable finally made it to my town and we got it at our house. I was able to watch tv for those 2 years until college. During college I don’t think we had cable in our rooms. If we did, it was pitiful and we never watched it.
Re-runs...we gotta get the cable
Emily and I got married right out of college and headed to graduate school. We were beyond broke for the first 5 years we were married so we couldn’t afford to have cable (except for that one year we lived in a funeral home…but that’s another story). Once we got out of all of our schooling, we just didn’t bother to get cable. We were able to get the major broadcast stations on rabbit ears both in TN and here in WV.
Fast forward to a year or so ago…without cable we tend to read a lot. We read the Sookie Stackhouse novels (upon recommendation of Lacy) and really enjoyed them. A co-worker mentioned that there was an HBO series called TrueBlood which was loosely based on the novels and he had a copy of the first season.
My inspiration for the cable!
TrueBlood is very loosely based on the books but good in its own right. Make no mistake though, this is an HBO production so it is definitely not for the faint of heart…there is all sorts of NC-17 stuff in it (which is totally unlike the books…they are “clean”). Anyhow, it took a year for season 2 to be released on DVD and I was having no part of waiting another year to see what happened this season so I ordered “the cable” and it was installed this weekend. We call it “the cable” because the kids were asked a year or two ago what they wanted for Christmas…they replied, “the cable” like their aunt and uncle have.
Now honestly, the only reason we got cable was so we could watch TrueBlood. It premiered last night so I know we were cutting it close having it installed on Saturday. The cable guy was right on time and did a great job re-wiring the house. Apparently the previous time cable was installed in the house, the wiring rules were different…but whatever. So he gets everything hooked up and turns on the digital box which holds my beloved HBO…and it started rebooting over and over. I asked him to go get another one and he said he didn’t have a spare…but he could have one for us on Monday.
A little dark maybe?
Remember I mentioned I only got cable so I could watch the TrueBlood premier? Yeah, I was not exactly happy…we hauled butt down to the Cable store (they have on in our mall) to get a new box. Huh…Saturday…yeah, no one there at 5:06 pm. I was about to call the cable guy to come get all of his evil cable out of my house (see, I knew we were right all those years) when I decided to try the cable box one more time. For some reason, it worked fine after I re-connected it. It might have overheated or had a loose connection where it was previously installed. I don’t know…but I was able to watch TrueBlood so crisis was averted!
In side news, we also cancelled our (allegedly) 3 mb dsl service (which never clocked higher than 600kb) to get 10 mb service which actually tests at 10+ mb! And it keeps getting better! We also have our phone through the cable so we have caller id and all that stuff as well as unlimited long distance! Oh, I think I love the cable after all…
There are all sorts of jobs related to keeping bees. I need to check for a robust queen, I need to check to make sure they have enough open comb, I need to treat them for mites and the honey flow needs managed. Some of these jobs are pretty fun but many of them are extremely hot and tiring…and sticky.
Every spring, though, I seem to get a chance to do my absolute favorite beekeeping job of all…I get to catch swarms of bees. Most years I do splits and other manipulations so my bees don’t swarm. Usually the 911 center calls me to report a swarm of bees in someone’s tree or by their house. I love going to get swarms of bees, especially when the swarm is from someone else’s hive.
Swarming, you see, is the bees’ way of growing. When a colony gets too packed into its existing digs, it forces another queen to be created and, when the new queen is nearly ready, the old queen and half (or so) of the overcrowded bees head for the hills…or the nearest tree branch. Once they make it to the branch, the queen hides in the middle of the swarm and scout bees go out looking for a new place to live. Back before the days of varroa mites, these bees usually ended up in a tree out in the woods. That still happens today, but they don’t live for more than a year or two. So, back to why I like to catch other people’s swarms – when the bees came from my hives, I end up with two half-strength colonies instead of one really strong one. In one way, it is cool because I get two hives that will grow into good colonies and may make some honey this year. The bad thing is, if I had one strong colony, it would make honey this year. Oh well, it can’t be helped!
Anyhow, when the bees are in waiting for scouts to find a new home, they are pretty vulnerable. Each bee filled up on honey before it left, but that’s all the food they have to go on until they get to a new location. They are completely exposed to animals and humans and weather and cold. Being in a swarm is a dangerous proposition for a bee.
So, next door to one of the locations where I keep bees, the homeowners saw the swarm take off out of the hive and end up in one of their trees. They knew it was mine so they called and I rushed to see if I could catch them. There is no real trick to catching a swarm of bees (but please don’t try unless you know what you are doing). All one has to do is get the swarm into a container along with the queen. If the queen makes it into the container, the swarm will stay and claim the new location as their home.
Click for video
(try this link if the one above doesn’t work on your computer)
So, I got to the swarm location and saw the largest swarm I had ever caught hanging about shoulder-high in a tree…in the middle of a bunch of poison ivy…which I now have on my leg. I carried my empty hive box to the location and cut the branch with the bees. I shook them into the box…mostly. A bunch of bees (since it was such a huge group) fell onto the ground in front of the colony. Typically the bees will “sense” that a good hive is near and they will march into it. I have no idea whether the queen walked in herself or if I got her into the box on the initial shake. Either way, she ended up in the colony and all of the remaining bees followed her inside!
Click for video
(try this link if the one above doesn’t work on your computer)
Bees in a swarm are pretty docile (but don’t mess with them unless you know what you are doing…they still have stingers) and fun to be around. It’s like pure energy…it’s just amazing to me. The buzz that they generate is incredible and it’s just a sight to behold. I cannot begin to really explain how cool and exciting it is to see and catch a swarm of bees. It is my absolute favorite part of beekeeping though! I love this time of year!
We started indoor soccer at the YMCA this weekend and the kids’ games were spaced just perfectly to mess with the entire day. Abigail played at noon so, by 1, we were pretty hungry. We knew better than to eat before the game as the floor needed to stay puke-free. Anyhow, by 1, we were all pretty hungry so we headed downtown to one of our favorite restaurants. It’s a local downtown place and lately has been somewhat flaky about when it is open. We usually hit it on evenings and weekends though it really caters to the weekday lunchtime crowd. That’s right…you guessed it…they were closed.
Anyhow, we were pretty bummed and more urgently, pretty dang hungry. We stood in the middle of the street with vacant zombie-like looks on our faces, wondering how we would survive…what we would do to get food…whether we could bear to go on. Fortunately, my lovely wife, with cat-like reflexes and an eagle eye, spotted the Blossom Deli a few hundred feet away. If only we could make it the 100 steps to their door-step, surely they would have something they could give us to avert disaster.
Somehow we made it to Blossom Deli alive. It’s all a little fuzzy, but I sort of think ants must have picked us up and were carrying us to their nest when some heroic patrons rescued us and drug us inside…but I have no evidence of that. Anyhow, we got inside and…you’ll never believe this….they sell food at the Blossom Deli!
We were seated right away (I think they noticed our pitiful blank faces and feared a zombie attack) and quickly set us up with liquid salvation from the fountain. Yes, you heard me right…they have a real soda fountain at Blossom! I wasn’t going to push my luck, but I bet they have a real live soda-jerk somewhere too. Anyhow, the whole place seems right out of the 1950s. Inside the place is art-deco floor to ceiling. A lowered grill sits adjacent to the bar seating and simple tables (like your grandma used to have in her kitchen) were everywhere. Ours even had a nice, easy rock to it. I think the only thing missing was a poodle skirt or two.
So, the less creative members of my family ordered hotdogs (all beef as Isaac likes to remind me) while I ordered my usual (see, I am the creative one!). Whenever I go to a restaurant and I see a Reuben on the menu, I order it. I am not sure why but I MUST order it if I see it. So I ordered my “usual” and a cherry Coke. When the waitress (I bet she wants to be called that rather than a server…it’s 1950 afterall) delivered our drinks, I initially wondered how she would tell my cherry Coke from the others’ vanilla Cokes. Silly me, it was easy…she just sipped from each straw and knew right away! Not really. No, she simply looked at the color. My cherry Coke was definitely red…and I think that red was either the fantastic cherry flavoring or the color of awesome!
Isaac and I quickly drained our glasses (he declared his vanilla Coke to be the best he’d ever had and he’s had a bunch) and asked for another. When it finally became clear that we weren’t weren’t about to be hauled off by a creepy guy in black carrying a scythe, I took a look around. The mirrored walls make the inside look much larger than it really is. It’s really quite comfortable but cozy inside. The waitresses gave great attention to everyone and I could see as the cooks prepared my meal…fresh! Blossom Deli offers a daily blue plate special which I will definitely have the next time we go there.
I am sure we will go to our other “favorite place” again when we see it open sometime…but we now have a new go-to local restaurant in Charleston, WV! Blossom Deli, not only did you possibly save my life, you nourished my soul (well…at least my stomach!)
We braved the cold and snow this weekend to go to church as we do most weeks. We were pretty proud of ourselves for being among the hearty few who risked life and limb to get to the church a few minutes early so I could hit the pile of donuts before all of the kids ran their somewhat less than germ-free fingers all over the pile. It felt like pretty much every other church service at River Ridge. I don’t mean to say that church is boring exactly…but it is usually pretty comfortable and predictable. We do contemporary music exclusively and it is well done. As KISS says, if it’s too loud, you’re too old…that definitely applies to River Ridge. But church is comfortable and easy most weeks.
Anyhow, after the singing and such, I settled in to listen to the preacher talk. I had a belly full of donuts so I felt pretty content. He gave his sermon which centered around the idea of doing something radical to make a difference. Now everyone says that in church. And in most typical churches, if anything at all comes from it, radical means something like clapping to the beat during a song or maybe someone swaying a bit or even giving an “Amen”.
But at the end, the preacher did something a little different (which is typical at our church). He told everyone about an organization called Soles4Souls which collects new and gently used shoes for people living in impoverished areas who may not have shoes. And then, he asked us, if we felt so moved, to leave our shoes in the barrels at the outer doors. No one knew in advance so folks had their normal shoes on (not old clunkers). His point was that giving your shoes, whatever shoes you had on, was radical at first blush, but in the grand scheme of things, a small gesture for most people. But the impact it could have in the lives of other people could be enormous.
I had my very nearly brand new tennis shoes on and Abigail had on her favorite cowboy boots. I have to tell you, at first, I really wished I had worn a different pair of shoes, but as I thought about it, I am pretty glad I wore my new ones. I don’t care who you are or what you believe or don’t believe, if you take a moment to think about it, giving your shoes away changed a life for the better somewhere in the world and that makes it worth doing.
So, we left our shoes and walked across the parking lot barefoot in 16 degree cold…and we got a lesson, albeit a brief one, in what it might be like for someone if we hadn’t given our shoes. What seemed so radical at first, really was such a simple thing…
OH. MY. WORD! This weekend we saw the Trans-Siberian Orchestra in concert in Charleston. I have seen some pretty cool concerts but nothing compares to the concert these folks put on. Their concert was full of light and lasers and fire and sound and fire and more fire! It was the most visually overwhelming thing I have ever seen!
Ok…back up…what is Trans-Siberian Orchestra for those of you who are uninitiated? They term their musical style as Rock Opera…with Fire! I really liked the fire! We had pretty great seats close to the main stage but the performance really takes place all across the floor of the arena. Snow fell from the sky and smoke rose from the floor (which had me concerned once I saw fire also come from the floor).
There are lasers and light EVERYWHERE and the sound was just right…loud but not so loud that the audience lost the lyrics and music. My ears were ringing for 24 hours afterwards which was also just right. There are no bad seats for a Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert!
Before the performance started, a few members of the group came on stage and presented a check to Mountain Mission for their food drive. It was a pretty great gesture and was received well by the crowd. The concert started as a narrator began telling a story of a man he met who had a story of a child far from home on Christmas. The narrator’s voice was deep and booming and gave me chills as he told his story. The orchestra (which, by the way, had WV strings players) played along with the electric guitars and an absolutely fantastic drummer. The story was told in narration and song and was absolutely fantastic.
I can’t really say enough about this concert and my pictures surely don’t do it justice…it was amazing! If you ever get a chance to see them, you MUST go!
