Quarantine Notes, AKA, Fleeting Memories of Ephemera

We're all getting along in some way during this pandemic. I used to think it would be novel to experience something like this. Ridiculous in smirking way. The boredom and lack of drive; the need be out, fighting with the need to be safe. Masks! On the streets! Grocery stores become beacons of civilization. Never before have shouts of "Stop touching everything! AND now stop tasting your hands!" ever meant so much.

Before real masks were procured, I looked like a nice boy out on a beautiful day for a train robbery:

Some streets were literally breaking in half with water pouring out of the crack. Quarantine or no, this was a cool observation:

Not doing justice to reality

But under these circumstances, when I leave to either get food, alcohol, or trips to and fro my son's home daycare, this was a major, photo-worthy moment.

Fleeting ephemeral memories are created. My boy putting on my jacket, "I mistar Sherwood. I haffa go to work. I mistar Sherwood..."

One day I got to go back into my zone, properly masked this time:

Won't be getting back anytime soon, but I still need a cord. Oh well. We adapt. Like my son, who got a proper mask as well:

I'll always have the memories of my daughter enjoying the cute baby in the mirror, smiling back at her:

Sometimes you just have to get a little crazy, like, SNES mini, projector, and stairwell CRAZY:

Sons, am I right?

We had a party a while back. Before the disease. Someone gave us a bottle of Vodka. Months pass. Pandemic consigns us to our house. That dusty vodka bottle becomes a new adventure. Why not get some bloody-Mary mix, or lets use mint with the tonic that we already have for our, much preferred, gin. The vodka ran out before the tomato-horseradish mixer did, so Corrie had me get some cheap beer to make micheladas.

And of course I got Steel Reserve. I'm not messing around. This should show how serious I am.

In the end, the best part of a global catastrophe: I get to spend so much more time than expected with my baby girl:

Quarantine Regression

It's silly to think any "regression" is due to the stay-at-home order, but the pen and notebook showed up on my birthday, and this seemed like as good a time as any...

Above you will find some things. One is how I tell time on my wrist; some are a collection of items concerned with how I shear the hair from my face; two are how I like to keep personal notes.

The oldest set up there is my shaving stuff. I use a safety razor with double-sided Japanese blades, a badger-hair brush, and a face soap disc. No aerosolized shaving cream for me, and no cartridge razors either. This way, once you master it (it took me a while to stop butchering my face), saves so much money and you may actually learn to like shaving.

The next oldest is my watch. It needs no batteries and doesn't use electricity. Self-winding and spring operated, as long as the delicate pieces don't get jostled too badly, it'll work forever. Er, given the inherent tenacity of the mainspring...

Lastly, the fountain pen and notebook, arriving the same day, made me think of my travels into the past. Maybe when we're all ready to leave our homes again besides grocery runs, I may be rocking the Chester A. Arthur beard and bowler hat, taking notes with my refillable fountain pen, reading the time without electricity, and, eh, shaving my neck with the one-at-a-time Japanese safety blades...

I also felt obliged to mention where these came from: all gifts.

The handy ceramic shaving dish and badger hair brush were gifts from my brother Dan, for a birthday maybe five years ago. I had bought a razor, but it kinda sucked, and Ryan let me have that black-handled Schick---it had been his grandfather's. (I supply my own blades and soap pucks. And ink, for that matter.)

The watch was from my wife two Christmases ago.

The pen and notebook combo, again, is from my brother Dan, but this birthday.

Regressing with the help of my friends, it appears.

Spring, the Tropics, and Math

I missed posting on the first day of Spring this year, but what's the big deal?

Having had our wedding day on the Summer Solstice, and being a math nerd, I try to pay attention to special sun/math days.

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As a child growing up in Sacramento, things like rain forests and tropical islands held a dear place in my imagination. But what specifically is it about things "tropical" that inspires?

Beaches...blue ocean water...palm trees...like a marketing campaign for laundry detergent.

But what are the tropics?

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And what is spring?

Associated with the color green and rebirth, the season of spring comes after the (sometimes long and harsh) winter and before the (sometimes hot and stifling) summer. April showers and may flowers and all that. The days continue their push towards getting longer and longer.

The first day of spring is on the vernal equinox, and similarly, the first day of fall is on the autumnal equinox.

While doing research for some work to give my charges I learned exactly what the equinoxes are: they are the days when the amount of day and night are the same for opposing latitudes on the earth.

For example: Los Angeles and Sydney or similarly placed on the globe with respect to the equator, LA's at 35⁰ N and Sydney's at 35⁰ S, so on the equinox, the amount of day and night in LA and and Sydney will be the same.

Our spring is their fall, and vice-versa.

How do the tropics fit into this?

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There are a few demarcated horizontal lines on our global sphere. The equator is the most famous, as it cuts the sphere in half, and we've named the halves the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere.

At 23.5⁰ north and south of the equator are the lines that we call "tropics," the Tropic of Cancer is at 23.5⁰ N and the Tropic of Capricorn is at 23.5⁰ S. The area that makes up this equator sandwich is collectively known as "the tropics."

The zone represents a precarious historical position in western society: one one side, they are lauded as paradise; but alternately they've been seen as sub-human and uncivilized.

But why is it 23.5⁰ that marks where those tropic lines live?

Here's where the math comes in: the axial tilt of the earth is 23.5⁰. As in, have you ever noticed that a globe is tilted on the vertical axis? The result of the impact that created our natural satellite, the moon, the earth is tilted (and wobbles a smidgen) vertically. (The "wobbles" are sometimes blamed for different ice age events.)

The amount of separation from the vertical axis, 23.5⁰, means that on the summer solstice in either hemisphere, the sunlight comes down directly perpendicular to that hemisphere's tropic. 

On June 21st, the summer solstice for the northern hemisphere, the sunlight is coming straight down on the Tropic of Cancer. On December 21st, the summer solstice for the southern hemisphere, the sunlight is coming straight down on the Tropic of Capricorn.

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For complete mathematical disclosure: 

Another pair of horizontal circles on our globe are much closer to the poles, the Arctic and Antarctic Circles.

These are named and designated thusly: in the hemisphere's respective summer, there is no night, and in the respective winter, there is no day. Check out the graphic below:

NorHem bias!

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Spring is the way we humans chose to describe the transition from cold to hot and the tropics are about perpendicularity.

Also, the quarantine is going well...