The Agrinautica

   Over here the SKY gets orange and red in the fall. The trees get black.

   It's wildfire season again and it's starting with a vengeance. The other day the normally peaceful trip out to the forest to visit the bees was overshadowed by the eerie red glow the sky gets all day when everything is on fire.


I. Excuses
   Haven't been blogging much lately because I've signed up for classes at the local JC on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings (Italian and Photoshop). Then Thursday I'm in a hurry to ge my stuff in order for the ljshootout deadline on Friday. And then of course, being the moderator there's all these deadlines that I have to hit as close to a set time as possible (polls being posted, closing, prompts, etc). That's a bit more of a hassle than I think I realized.
   Also it's been too hot to do anything around here. I've started staying late at work just to stay in the AC.


II. Iceland
   My dear parents recently got back from two weeks in Iceland/Norway. Lots of cool pictures and entries about it over at furzicle.



See look at that, that's neat.
(That's my dear father, whom I don't think has come up here much before. He runs marathons and triatholons and iron mans and ultramarathons (!!). The trip to Iceland was conveniently scheduled around the Reykjavik marathon, which he ran )


III. Upcoming Plans
This Weekend: Nothing particular. Finishing things up for my publisher ;D
Following weekend (12-13th) - Tall ship festival. I'll be volunteering on the local one. (Pictures to come soon probably)
3rd weekend from now (19-20th) - Mini-roadtrip / camping trip up to Redwood National Park (about the entire length of California from here - 11 hours)
4th weekend from now (26-27th) - My good friend Ben's bachelor party up in the Bay Area (8 hours north of here)
5th weekend from now (3rd-4th of Oct) - No plans (yet!)
6th weekend from now (10-11th of Oct) - The abovementioned Ben's wedding (Bay area)
Following week (15th of Oct) - Fly to Istanbul, Turkey
Following week (23rd of Oct) - Fly from Istanbul to Tel Aviv, Israel
Following week (27th of Oct) - Travel by bus to Egypt
Following week (6th of Nov) - Fly from Cairo, Egypt to New York
Following week (indefinite date) - Catch up with my cousin Tim who is going to drive from there to California, epic roadtrip back to California over indefinite period of time, having indefinite adventures.
Following week - Find out I've flunked the classes I signed up for. Not really care. :D


IV. Recent Adventures
   Went with a bunch of friends to the Stone Brewery 13th Anniversary Beer Festival. That was pretty awesome. I ought to make an entry dedicated to my tasting notes, but I seem to be bad at getting around to writing about real life happenings (there was a recent friend's wedding and weekend in Davis I've been vaguely meaning to write about for weeks now). Anyway in the mean time my tasting notes can be found on twitter (along with notes on root beers and cream sodas from before that).


V. Bee Drama Continues
   Whenever bees come up in a paper around here a drama storm starts. In particular this character who posts as "Beekeeper Bob" is always foaming at the mouth to badmouth my company, my boss and the local beekeeping association we're associated with.
   Earlier this past week the paper posted a very bare essentials news item about a swarm of bees that had become allegedly newsworthy. Beekeeper Bob, now posting as "Heymister" of course jumps in rabidly endorsing his friends (/wife's / own? we don't really know who he is exactly) business and talking shit on ours and our association, even though the news story doesn't say who was involved and it's probable neither of us was. Anyway my most recent annoyance is that poster "Bubbajelly," who seems to be a different individual from Bob/Heymister (but always posts to the same articles as the latter) posts here pretending to be a random person saying "Did a little checking and what is being said is true" in support of Bob as if they're not in eachother's pants already. We've been trying not to get involved at all but I'm extremely tempted to call him/her out on this malarkey.

   Oh also I want to note how cute it is he says he has "thousands" of bees. By my estimate I keep about ten and a half million bees. (A single have has on average 60,000)