Oh, man. What a week to be out of the office. Apparently real celebrities are in the building! (Well, at least one. I’ve never heard of that other guy, what’s his name?)
60 degrees
Thanks for all the kind notes. It’s odd how this blog thing has created an extended community of folks I’ve never met face to face.
The knee is still swollen, but it’s moving a lot better now, and I’ve got a lot more energy. The question is now to use it, what with only one functioning leg and all. Books, I guess. FInished Daniel Coyle’s new Lance Armstrong book, which is a ripping good read. My buddy Paul yesterday brought over Jane Leavy’s Koufax book, which shows great promise, a trip back to my youth in LA.
The knee bender contraption is up to 60 degrees flexion. Doc says I need 70 as quickly as possibly. PT says 110 to ride the bike.
Injury Report
So I survived yesterday’s knee surgery with no nausea from the anasthetic, and almost no pain. That’s the good news. The bad news is when the knee repairman finally popped the hood to look inside, things were substantially more messed up that we had hoped. He had to do some bone work, not just cartilege. I’m going to be laid up much longer than I thought.
Back on the plus side, I’ve got one of those cool CPM devices, idly popping my knee up and down while I’m parked on the couch watching Dr. Strangelove.
Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere
On the U.S. nuclear weapons program:
The United States’ current approach to maintaining its nuclear arsenal “looks increasingly unsustainable,” according to an internal report by senior officials at the nation’s three nuclear weapons labs.
The nuclear weapons program’s future costs exceed the available budget, and the effort to maintain aging warheads is forcing the nation to retain a larger nuclear arsenal than would otherwise be needed, the report concludes.
Completed last month, the report’s findings mirror in some respects those of a key House of Representatives subcommittee.
The House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee issued a report last month calling for a sweeping reorganization of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex as part of its proposed 2006 Department of Energy budget.
Hollyhocks
We’re not entirely clear on how we first got hollyhocks in the garden. Our best recollection is that we got an old stalk from our neighbor Alison across the street and shook it over the garden to scatter seeds. Or maybe we bought some. Whatever. They just volunteer now, wandering the yard looking for a cozy spot to do their stuff. This year, thanks to the prolifically wet spring, they’re putting on a show:
I assume the varieties of color we see are the result of hybrization, because I sure don’t remember ever having salmon pink (not shown) before.
The show’s going on all over the ‘hood, with an especially striking one up the street that’s a sort of lemonade yellow with just a hint of green. Double blossoms. Magnificent. Must see if I can score some of the seeds when it’s done blooming.
(See Sim Yard for last year’s disquisition.)
Baby Cottonwoods
The “islands” in the middle Rio Grande through Albuquerque are really nothing more than sandbars that have stabilized because the river hasn’t flooded in years. But with this spring’s high flows they’re turning into an interesting little ecosystem experiment.
Back in the day, before dams and levies channelized the rio, it meandered a wide sandy flood plain, scouring things every few springs when things were wet. That hasn’t really happened for probably five decades. The winter of 1940-41 was a hugely wet year, causing major flooding, and the folks who lived here over the next several decades built a system to protect their homes and farmland. It was an understandable response, but the result is a human-mediated ecosystem that bears little resemblance to the old river.
The cottonwoods are a case in point. Along both sides of the river, the last cohort of cottonwoods is all roughly the same size and age – fifty years or more. Babies, which used to sprout following the spring scouring, are rare. But this year, on those phony islands in the river’s midst, scoured by a slightly larger-than-normal floodiing, baby cottonwoods can be seen.
I spotted some yesterday morning on the islands in the middle of the old Alameda bridge at the north end of town. I took mom and dad back yesterday evening for a look. They’re lovely, and it’ll be interesting to see how they do over time.
Update 6/23/05 Johnny_Mango got a closer look and thinks you can see previous years’ growth on the cottonwoods I thought were babies. I really need to track down a cottonwood subject matter expert and get more info.
Goebbels
Godwin’s law: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”
Over on Quark Soup, a thread in which we hit the mark on the very first post.
Link Watch
I’m curious about this Who Links Here thing.
Cactus Watch
Funny in the Midst of All That
M.J. Wilde at the Albuquerque Tribune is a treasure. How she manages to be funny in the midst of all that is a wonder:
Even sleeping with a tube down her throat, she held her chin high, dignity intact. We were all waiting to talk to the doctor. And, like chili cheese fries, they’re never around when you really, really want them.
It takes strength to be snarky at a time like that.