Silence of the Bees

Okay, so I'm a little (I think understandably) obsessed with bees this week.

Mom sent me this link today: Silence of the Bees.

Bee Inspection

The Bee Man came out to the house today. I showed him where we suspected a hive, and when I mentioned that you could see them from the roof, he jumped right on up the fence and onto the roof.

He said we definitely have a hive, and went over our options. We could have him spray and kill them right then, or we could do a live removal later in the week. If we chose to have them sprayed, they still recommend having the hive removed, because once the bees stop caring for all that honey, it would just start oozing into the drywall, and attract rodents and other bees.

I asked if we get to keep any of the honey, but he said that since it's in our wall, there's a good chance it has insulation or other building materials inside it, and we wouldn't want to eat it anyway.

We had already decided we wanted to keep the bees alive, so we made the appointment for Friday. I'm excited to watch and take pictures.

The Dark Knight

Sometimes, really great movies are spoiled by their own hype. When the first Austin Powers movie came out, I had heard so many quotes, and saw so many re-enactments of key scenes, that by the time I saw it, I'd already heard all the funny parts. I was dissapointed. After the second movie, and then watching it again much later I was finally able to enjoy it.

The level of hype surrounding The Dark Knight made me worry that a great movie would again be spoiled. I don't watch a lot of television, and other than a couple of reviews, tried to avoid most articles. But word of mouth is hard to avoid.

I know, Bobby and I waited awhile to see the film - it may sound crazy, but we had more important things going on. That left plenty of time for everyone I knew that had seen it to tell me that it was the most amazing film they'd ever seen. Everyone literally gushed. Even the rating on RottenTomatoes.com was a solid 94%.

Bobby and I finally got around to seeing it tonight, and I have to admit it really was a very good movie. I love comic-inspired movies as it is, and this was definitely one of the good ones. Heath Ledger's performance was very good - and his makeup and voice were so well done that if I hadn't been aware that he was the actor, I never would have guessed it. In fact, he really did steal the show - Ledger's Joker seemed much more developed than Christian Bale's Batman.

The best movie ever made though? No, I don't think so. Entertaining, definitely, but in my opinion, an amazing movie will illicit more emotional response than this film did. Great films draw you in, and you sympathize with the characters. Biting your nails through suspenseful scenes, crying in sad ones, etc. For me the scenes that illicited the most emotional response for me had nothing to do with the Bruce Wayne - Rachel Dawes relationship, or Bruce's internal struggle, but with falling from extreme heights - more because I'm afraind of heights than because of any brilliant filmmaking.

Batman Begins was very good, and if you enjoyed that one, you'll like this one too. I would say The Dark Knight was better than Batman Begins, but not leaps and bounds better. When Bobby and I were back in the car alone, I asked him what he thought of the movie. "I really wish I hadn't heard so much about it." We agreed, it was a very good movie, and we both enjoyed it, but the hype had definitely killed the excitement for us.

Go see it, and expect to be entertained - not blown away.

Invasion

A couple of weeks ago, Bobby sent me an instant message saying there was a bee buzzing around the light in the back room, and when he went to check it out, he noticed a few dead bees nearby. We don't have a lot of bees in the yard, so it seemed strange. But sure enough, each day there seemed to be a bee near the light, and dead bees around it.

Sometime last week, on a quiet morning, he made me get out of be and stand silently in our bedroom doorway. "Do you hear that?"
Very sleepily, "No."
"Be really quiet and listen."

And then I heard it. Very faintly, I could hear a low buzzing, and the sound of bees running into the backside of the wall.
"I hear it!"
"We have bees in the wall."

I have never known anyone with bees inside the wall. None of us are allergic, so I wasn't too concerned, but wow! So I did what any renter would do in this situation - I called my landlord.

"Mom, we have a beehive in the wall."
"Really?" She doesn't believe me. I told her about all our evidence - the dead bees around the light, the sound in the wall. She says she and dad will come by sometime soon and check it out. I mentioned that if there is a beehive, I would feel bad exterminating them because of the disappearing bee problem. She agreed, then we started talking about finding someone to transport them to a beekeeper, rather than exterminate them.

I first read about the disappearing bee problem in Fortune last September. Colony Colapse Disorder is affecting bee keepers nationwide, and they only have theories as to why the bees are leaving. Essentially, all the worker bees will leave the hive permanently, leaving behind everything. For the agricultural industry that relies on bees being brought in to pollinate crops, it is a huge problem.

So today, while my laundry was drying and my banana bread was baking (this time instead of 2 cups of All Purpose Flour and 1/4 cup Hazelnut Flour, I used 3/4 cup each of All Purpose Flour, Amaranth Flour, and Hazelnut Flour, and added 1/4 cup of Wheat Germ - it was tasty!) mom came by to investigate our invasion. After a minute or so, she heard them in the wall too, and we started looking up hive removal services. When dad got there he set up the ladder and put his ear right on the wall.

"Oh yeah! There are definetly bees in there." Then he climed on the roof, and found where they were getting in and out. We definitely have a hive!

Finally - Rest

The last few weekends have seemed so busy, spending all day one day doing chores while Bobby worked on his parents' pool, and then going out to help with the kids on the second day while he stayed outside working on the pool some more. Both the weeks and weekends seem to end before they begin, and I've been longing for some quality rest time.

Sure, I still did some chores - cleaned the kitchen, dining room, and living room - but I spread them out over the today and tomorrow, so didn't seem like near as much work. Bobby had an interview for a new pipe fitter early this afternoon, so he stayed home for the day.

For breakfast, I made pancakes from scratch again, with sausage and eggs (I love breakfast!), and after I finished cleaning up the house, I made a light lunch - grilled some polska keilbasa, corn on the cob, and zucchini. There is something wonderfully satisfying about lunching on my back patio, and today was such a beautiful day. I felt peaceful and rested even though I hadn't yet rested.

That was next though. Now that I had finished what I wanted to get done, I spent a good few hours sitting in one of the sky chairs on the patio, reading a fantasy novel I picked up recently - Karavans. It was so nice to just relax and do something completely unnecessary.

I made some shredded pork fajita tacos for dinner, along with some salsa fresca made with tomatoes from my garden, and guacamole made with some of my salsa fresca. After dinner, Bobby and I climbed in the car with the intention of seeing The Dark Knight with Brian and Jessica. On the way there I remembered that I had wanted to see it in IMAX, but there wasn't an IMAX showing at a reasonable time. The boys were getting up early and going to work on a jobsite in Brea.

But we drove out to Norco anyway, and after tucking the kids in bed, we left them with their nana and instead spent a little while at a local dive bar, playing pool and having a couple drinks. Sometimes I'm just in the mood for a dive bar - they are so much more relaxed than other places.

Heat Ultra Lounge

Bobby's been working on a number of projects at the new GardenWalk nearby. A couple of weeks ago we checked out Pop the Cork, and we spent this evening at the now open Heat Ultra Lounge.

An old high school friend of mine was finishing up her very last final, and wanted to go out on the town. I had mentioned the club last week, and she called the other day to see if we wanted to join her. So when Bobby came home from his time with Emma, we got dressed up and headed out.

Since a a few of her other friends came out, we had a sizable group, and had bottle service at one of the larger tables. The club looks really nice, and the sound was great. They played a healthy mix of music - some rap, hip hop, house, Michael Jackson, and even a little Pink Floyd. I only danced a little bit, so Bobby and I spent most of the evening watching the crowd and the go-go dancers.

It was a slower night, but it was still a really good time. We decided we should come back sometime. It's nice having a little more nightlife closer to home.

Some reviews of Heat Ultra Lounge: LA Times, OC Register

I Shouldn't Be Here

I had a plan, and this wasn't it. I was going to leave Monday, and be in Italy by now. First two weeks of August, that was the plan. But alas, a shortage of PTO time and cash have left me here. At work. Sitting in my cube rather than in the warm Italian sun drinking a nice chilled sparkling white wine.

On a positive note, in just over 5 weeks I will break even on my PTO time. No longer in the negative.

Geeking out at Work

You can tell we are being really productive, when someone asks how long it would take the Millennium Falcon to travel 200,000 light years... and then we proceed to research the answer. No, we don't normally talk about Star Wars - in fact I don't recall a previous Star Wars conversation - but today we did.


First we had to find out how fast the Falcon is, right? Are you aware that there is a Wookieepedia? Amazing, right? I suppose there is a wikia for just about anything out there, right?


Okay, so from the Wookiepedia, I find the line I was looking for "she does 0.5 past light speed." But .5 what? Is that a percentage or a unit? km/sec? miles/hr? What?


Trying to find that answer, we looked at the statment Han made that they "did the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs." What's a parsec? A Parsec is "a unit of length, equal to just over 30 trillion kilometres, or about 3.3 light years." Wait. So a parsec is a unit of distance, not time. Since the Kessel Run is an 18 parsec route, I was kinda confused as to how he could run it in 12 parsecs. That's sort of like saying "I did a 30 meter race in 20 meters." Huh?


Apparently, "Solo was not referring directly to his ship's speed when he made this claim. Instead, he was referring to the shorter route he was able to travel by skirting the nearby Maw black hole cluster, thus making the run in under the standard distance, he may have indirectly referred to the speed of his ship here because to be able to go closer to black hole and still be able to get out of its gravitational pull you will need to be able to go faster. However, parsec relates to time in that a shorter distance equals a shorter time at the same speed. By moving closer to the black holes, Solo managed to cut the distance down to about 11.5 parsecs."


Never helped us solve our question, but we should all do some actual work. Don't you feel a bit more enlightened now, though?

Homemade Pancakes

My mom always made pancakes with Bisquick, so that's how I always made them. They tasted about the same as pancakes I'd had in restaurants, so that's what I expect pancakes to taste like. My ex once mentioned that his grandmother made amazing pancakes, but I didn't know how you could improve them. But then I was reading a post on Smitten Kitchen the other day about Blueberry Pancakes, and I was tempted to try her from-scratch recipe.

This morning I woke Bobby and Emma up early so that we could get out to his parents' early enough for Bobby to return something they'd rented for the pool construction, and after I dropped them off I headed off to the store to buy the necessary goods.

Best Buttermilk Pancakes

I probably should have halved the recipe, but for some reason I didn't. I did include the melted butter, and eventually added a touch more buttermilk because the pancakes were really thick. But OMG they were so delicious. Instead of being slightly tough, which I think of pancakes as being, they practically melt in your mouth. I had one with and one without blueberries, and both were delicious.

Katie woke up a little late, and was rushing to get to church on time. She originally declined when I offered her a pancake, but then I made her try a little bite of a dry pancake - no syrup or anything. She stopped in her tracks. "Are you sure you don't want to take one with you?"
"No, I'm not sure at all. I think I should."

I don't think I can go back. Now I'm wondering what I'm going to do with the giant box of Bisquick in my cupboard.

Manning the Brewery

Aaron and Patricia went up to Mammoth this weekend for a beer festival, so I agreed to take a half day at work to man the brewery for the growler fills.

It was a slow day. I think Aaron had told the regulars that they would be out, and some of the regulars even went up to the festival with him to pour beer. But after work it started to pick up, and people that came in to buy one style tasted others and wound up buying another growler so they could take home two styles.

Dad was there to help me out, and make some keg deliveries to local restaurants carrying Bootlegger's. One local place recently took Widmer off tap so they could add Bootlegger's Old World Hefe. That was pretty exciting.

It is nice to hear all the praise for Aaron's beers, and I'm glad to see business slowly ramping up.