I was up before the birds started singing. I sat in the camper reading since the sun was just clearing the Picacho Mountains and hadn’t had a chance to warm things up yet. Wasn’t long before the birds started chirping, tweeting, and clicking. Went for a walk at about 8 o’clock. Good to be back at it.
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Still
getting too many notifications from the cell camera. It’s set to the least
sensitive setting, the interfering branches were trimmed back and yet, it still
sends seemingly random videos of nothing. Well, not always nothing; sometimes
there are videos of small white butterflies dancing with each other. But there has been no wildlife action for a
few days.
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This morning, Kim saw a comment on a Facebook
post that offered up ‘Whensday’ as a good day to meet. It’s obviously a phonetic spelling of the word
and that got me thinking about why we spell it W-e-d-n-e-s-d-a-y. Like, who
thought that was a good way to spell it?
All a person has to do is ask a child who’s just learning to read to sound
out that word and it’s obvious that it’s clumsy spelling. I looked up the
origin of Wednesday and came up with this: The name
is a calque of the Latin dies Mercurii 'day of Mercury', reflecting the
fact that the Germanic god Woden (Wodanaz or Odin) during the Roman era was
interpreted as "Germanic Mercury". This meant nothing to me. (Calque
is a word-for-word translation from one language to another.) However, I found
a video on Youtube with an audible explanation and the narrator used notecards,
which made the subject make more sense to me. If I understood correctly,
Wednesday evolved from the Germanic word ‘Wodanaz’. The video also explained
why it wasn’t pronounced Wed-nes-day. It
comes down to syllables…Wed-nes-day would be three syllables and every other
weekday has two, except Saturday which apparently doesn’t count because it was
named for a Roman god instead of a Germanic one. Symmetry of syllables seems to be a strange
reason for the way it’s pronounced.
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We have to drive
around the perimeter of the campground to get to our campsite; there’s a much shorter
way if we ignored the ‘Do Not Enter’ sign but then we’d probably fall out of
favor with Felicia and Ryan so around the camp we go. Anyway, there are two spots along the outer
drive through the campground that have orange trees and right now they’re so wonderfully
fragrant. Same with an orange tree in a front
yard in the neighborhood across the road.
The smell is fleeting when walking by but it’s so intoxicating.
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The Traveling Sheep
are still in a field back away from the highway. Today we drove over to where
they are on a designated road, but it seemed more like a farm road. There are 5 or 6 fields, separated by fences and
a driveway or maybe it was a road. Two of the fields back away from the highway
had sheep in them. So, because there’s
not direct access from one field to the next, the sheep would have had to have
been herded from the field by the highway to their current location. Perhaps the big Pyrenees dog hanging with
them was helpful in the regard.
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The voltage gauge on
Kim’s bike was running high on our last ride, too close to the red zone for
comfort. Did some research online and
narrowed it down to the regulator/rectifier, which made no sense to me, so I
googled it: A rectifier is an electronic
device that converts ac power into dc power. Motorcycles typically have an
alternator that generates ac voltage, but the electrical system of a bike
requires dc voltage to function properly.
The rectifier also keeps this dc power output within a specific range.
If the voltage exceeds safe levels, this excess power runs the risk of damaging
the battery or other electrical components.
Kim replaced the regulator rectifier,
and nothing changed. So, then he tested the battery when the bike was running
to see how much voltage it was putting out. It was in the normal range. Next up
was taking a look at the voltage gauge, which meant taking off the faring. He
wasn’t looking forward to it, but it had to be done to troubleshoot the problem
thoroughly. Don’t know what all he did had to do, because I went for a solo
ride, but he determined that the gauge was the problem. Put the bike back together and said that he
has full confidence in riding it.
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I took a ride today while Kim was tinkering with Flame. Rode about 70 miles, looping from Coolidge to
Casa Grande to Arizona City to Eloy. It
was good to be out.
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VANDENBURG SPACE FORCE BASE, Calif. – SpaceX announced a launch window Monday night
The organization
is targeting a liftoff time of 7:28 p.m. with backups available until 11:10 pm.
for their 10th flight of the first stage booster supporting the mission.
Kim also went next door to get the kids to come see it…Mom came out, too. Others in the campground were gathering
outside talking about it. Not sure how I feel about all the Starlink satellites
littering the sky but that was an amazing sight!!
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The name for the swan in my Tribe is Blanca,
which is Spanish for White, the name suggested by Shelby. She has taken her place on the shelf.
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