Rainbow cows

This photo is from a storm that blew through one evening about two weeks ago. It rained pretty hard, but it also cleared really fast. With the sun fairly low in the west and it still raining off to the east I was pretty sure we'd have some nice rainbows and I wasn't disappointed. I only wish I had the SLR with the really wide angle lens at home so I could have captured the whole arc! A secondary rainbow was also visible for a lot of the time, although it didn't make a whole arc.

One cool thing is that the rain hadn't moved too far when the rainbow started to show up, so it appeared to be coming down in our neighbor's field. Guess I should have gone looking for that pot of gold, but I think the cows beat me to it. In the picture above (which is linked to my rainbow Flickr photoset -- the last six are from this storm) you can see the rainbow coming down in front of the cows and the trees on hill in the background.

What I did with my Sunday afternoon

And why I am sooooo sore today...



The amazing thing about this garden is that some of the plants have made it through drought, 100F+ degree temps, ice storms and hail and are still around. Namely, the parsely in the middle front (which has about 1-inch think woody stems underneath now) and the oregano behind and to the left of it. The rosemary (far left), hyssop, lavender and sage (all to the right) have only been in the garden for about a year, but still had their share of bad weather and neglect. I'm especially surprised that the sage is still around because I've always had trouble keeping sage alive. BTW, the herbs are in such weird places because there used to be other ones planted in the empty areas, but those plants didn't make it.

I had planned to do a new herb garden this year with raised beds, and maybe with a layout that has more of a medieval feel, but I just didn't get around to it in the late winter, so I don't think I'll do it this year. Now to get some new plants to plug the holes in the existing garden...

Freaky

Okay, so it is the 7th of April, and in central Texas it is now SLEETING. Tooooo weird. This is right up there with the ice storm that was followed by a high of 99F about two weeks later - in February.

Belated St. Patrick's Day post

Okay, so I should have posted this two weeks ago, but ... well... I didn't.

We had a good day listening to music around town, drinking some good beer (although not excessively this year) and eating way too much food. The picture above links to my Flickr set of a few photos I took. We started out at the Dog and Duck Pub, which puts up a big tent in their parking lot now and has live music going on most of the day. I've watched their St. Patty's day party grow over the years and I really like that big tent they have now, since some times the weather isn't very cooperative. I remember one year that was pretty cool and drizzly (authenic Irish weather, I guess) *before* they got the tent! While we were there we caught the Tea Merchants and Poor Man's Fortune, and both groups were excellent.

After Dog and Duck, we wandered down to 6th street to see the craziness that reigns on the 17th of March. For those of you not familiar with 6th street, it is the main bar and music street in downtown Austin. So, it's generally crazy anyway, then add South By Southwest, and then add St. Patrick's Day and well, you get the picture. We went to B.D. Riley's which is one of the newer pubs in town. We first went there last year or the year before (can't remember for sure) and really liked it. One nice thing is that they limit the number of people who can go in so sometimes you have to wait for a while for people to leave. But it works out well and it isn't quite as crazy-packed as other places. And you can actually get into the bathroom without waiting forever with your legs crossed or doing a funny dance. And a special added bonus is getting to drink your beer from a real pint, not a plastic cup!

Anyway, one of the reasons we went there was to listen to Gilmer & Moore, who were also excellent. That's one of the great things about Austin on St. Patrick's Day, you basically can't swing a lepruchan without hitting some good music.

After 6th street it was off for dinner and some Amy's Ice Cream, which I have to admit didn't sit so well on top of a fried lunch, a couple of beers, a glass of wine and an Italian dinner, but seemed like a good idea at the time.

Mmmmmmm pi(e)

In one of the countries who typically write the month and then the day when writing out the date, someone cleverly noticed that today is 3.14 and decided it should be celebrated as Pi Day. And of course, the best way to celebrate is by eating pie, which besides being a homophone for pi is also round and therefore pi is useful for figuring out just how much pie you have. Starting a few years back some of our grad students starting bringing in pie for pi day and I'm happy to announce that tradition continues... I'm munching on a piece of apple pie right now.

And for an extra special geek bonus to the day, it is also Albert Einstein's birthday!

Customer Service Announcement - Fraudulent Charges on a Credit Card

Well, I can now say (not too proudly) that I have been a victim of a fraudulent credit card charge...

Here's the story so far:

Yesterday I logged on to my bank account to check my balance... something I'm pretty anal about since I only get paid at the beginning of the month so sometimes the funds get a little low at the end of the month. The charges that I expected to be there were, along with an extra one for $12.95 that I didn't recognize from "LITTLEFORK TECHNOLOGY". Since I don't use my debit card for much beyond food and gas, I was suspicious and started to Google around. And here is a thread that I found that pretty much confirmed my fears. The question still remains how our card numbers were stolen, but hopefully someone will eventually hear back from an investigating bank.

I called Bank of America yesterday, but we couldn't do anything until the charge actually posted. So this morning I called them again and they handled it quickly and graciously. I didn't even have to ask for them to cancel the number and send me out a new card, they automatically did it. If an

yone else comes across this post because they were curious about a mysterious charge from Littlefork Technology (or any of the other "businesses" listed in the thread above), call your bank and report it ASAP. I'll update with any additional information I come up with about these charges!

Happy Valentine's Day

The above is one of my all-time favorite images from Mars. It's actually only one of several objects on Mars that are heart-shaped, but for some reason this one reminds me the most of the cartoon hearts we used to draw on the little boxes we made in school for everyone to drop in those little boxed cards in. (I always like to adorn mine with sequins -- which aren't as sparkly after you get glue all over them -- and beads.)

So, Happy Valentine's Day, where ever in the solar system you may be.

Dang... the Universe is most certainly NOT fair

I was going to write up a short blog entry about the death of Barbaro, and then Molly Ivins went and lost her battle (and it was probably a fight to the very last breath) with her third round of breast cancer. I hope that Molly Ivins wouldn't mind that I'm memorializing her with a horse ... I have a feeling she would have been pleased.

Both were some of the best ever at what they did and both got a bad roll of the dice and left us too soon. And we are all left to wonder about the amazing things that they still had left to accomplish (although, granted, with Barbaro, a lot of that would have been making little Barbaros).

Molly Ivins was a thoroughbred of wit, and she will be sorely missed.

Texas Observer's obituary for Molly Ivins

Interesting weather the last few days

So, it started with rain, which then became floods, and now it is freezing rain, sleet and snow.

Overnight Friday into Saturday morning we got quite a round of thunderstorms and very heavy rains (on pretty well saturated ground). After going to breakfast we drove around to all the low spots on the roads around the house and pretty much all of them were under water. The creek that is just down the road from us was higher than we've ever seen... the monitor on it says that the normal level lately was about 5 ft, but Saturday night it peaked at 34 ft. Thankfully we're up on a hill. If we have water in the house, Houston is in the drink...

By Monday, the cold air that was wreaking havoc in the middle of the country had worked its way down to Texas and combined with the moisture from the Pacific to give us freezing rain. We already had the day off from work for Martin Luther King Day, which was good, since ice and Texans in cars don't mix well. The forecasts last night looked bad, so the University (and all the school districts) canceled work and classes for today (Tuesday). Good thing too, since sleet, snow pellets and honest-to-goodness SNOW has been falling all day. We're in a little bit of a lull right now, but it looks like more is on the way. I'm personally hoping for more of the snow, since 1) it's a lot safer than the ice and 2) it's so pretty!

We've been taking photos and I'll have some up on Flickr once I get a chance to upload them. The satellite internet is a little slow from home today since the receiver is covered in ice!

Awesome ads and a good idea to boot

The above are two of the ads from the Girl Scouts Girls Go Tech campaign, and my particular favorites (I especially like the radio version of "Twinkle"). Click on the small versions to go to the full sized images at the AdCouncil website.

I was a Girl Scout (actually, a Brownie) for about all of two seconds in the late 1970s in Houston... which of course was long enough to sell cookies ... yuuummmmm.... thin mints.....

But, I digress. The goal of this campaign it to encourage interest in math and science in young girls, and even more importantly, to keep that interest alive in them as they grow older. The website isn't too in depth, but it does have a few good resources for encouraging girls in technology, math and science.

I've seen a huge variety of girls in the past 11 years that I've been doing astronomy education and outreach. Some are smart, confident and don't mind showing off what they know and others are shy and need enouragement to answer questions. I've seen three-year-olds able to recognize the moon through a telescope and I've seen teens that don't know the difference between a solar system, a galaxy and the Universe. And I've seen everything in between. But, I'm somewhat encouraged because I'm seeing more and more of the smart, confident type and I see more and more female undergrads and grad students coming into astronomy. I think the past few graduate classes we've admitted at UT are close to 50/50 male/female. I don't know as much about other fields, but at least astronomy seems to be making a little progress.

There isn't really any grand point to this post, I just wanted to link to those neat ads and ramble a little about something that I care about (for obvious reasons) - girls and women in science.