Monthly Archives: February 2011

A Thousand Icicles

Posted on February 26, 2011 | 2 comments

North Shore ice


The weather has been frigid the last few days with daytime highs in the thirties and lows in the teens at night. A few days ago most of Puget Sound was on an extended snow watch with some areas getting up to six inches of snow. Even so I was surprised to see an icicle tree on my bike ride today (see photo). The winter wonder is on Hood Canal’s North Shore Road about a half mile west of Belfair State Park.

The family who lives there usually decorates the trees along the road at Christmas time with lights and hanging snowflakes (a few are visible under the ice). For this late February display they seem to be going for the spiky frozen look. I don’t know if they sprayed the tree with a hose or perhaps a sprinkler head broke and supplied the water. Either way the icicles are real (brr) but probably not natural. The green layer under the frozen branches is a mixture of rhododendrons and sword ferns, leaves heavily encased in ice.

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Posted in Other Local Places, Weather

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Christian Suspense

Posted on February 21, 2011 | 1 comment

Until I read Deceit by Brandilyn Collins last week, I didn’t know there was such a thing as Christian suspense. But a quick search on the Internet turned up numerous web sites, a blog, and a category on Amazon.com devoted to promoting and selling quality fiction in this specialized literary genre. Christian suspense books appear to be popular.
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Posted in Books & Movies

The Mud Cat Is Starting to Feel Better

Posted on February 17, 2011 | 4 comments

The Mud Cat, my seven-year-old Bengal, aka Pi, has been battling a fever and loss of appetite caused by a liver infection. This morning, for the first time in a week, he ate a few bites of canned cat food and lapped up a tiny bit of milk. Also the vet measured his temperature at just below 102 degrees F, almost normal for a cat. Previously it was 104.
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Posted in Pi

Lucky Day

Posted on February 12, 2011 | 1 comment

At Kitsap Regional Library a little green shamrock sticker denotes a “lucky day” book—one that’s reshelved right away instead of going to the next person on the hold list. Today I got lucky at KRL’s main branch. After all, what’s the expected shelf life of the latest Robert Crais novel in the new-book section during a rainy Saturday afternoon in February?
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Posted in Books & Movies

Buoy Collection Envy

Posted on February 10, 2011 | 4 comments

Which collection do you prefer?


If you live near the water, I trust your answer to the question posed in the photo caption isn’t “none of the above.” Of course that assumes you, at some point, have seen and admired someone’s collection of weathered fishing buoys and possibly considered starting one. Sadly the group of floats and buoys I have salvaged from Puget Sound beaches, drab and lacking variety, is the one at the bottom. It’s a long way from matching the color and character of the upper collection, displayed on the shed of an unidentified Cape Cod beachcomber (and featured in Araks Sharing Beauty blog).

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Posted in Home

Displaying the Bird

Posted on February 8, 2011 | 1 comment

Treasure Island gull


One of my volunteer jobs is to maintain the web site for the Treasure Island Country Club, the homeowner’s association for the island where I own a vacation place. The web site looks dated and could use a professional redesign. It was created in 2002, back when 17-inch monitors were still a luxury, well before social media and Web 2.0. I use an older version of Microsoft FrontPage to keep it updated. Today I added a new feature so at least the URL looks cutting edge when you view it in the address bar or in a favorites list. Instead of the default Internet Explorer symbol, there’s now a custom icon displaying the official Treasure Island seagull.

Microsoft calls these icons “shortcut icons” and has been supporting them since I.E. 5.0. But their popularity has taken off in the last year or so. It’s surprisingly simple to add one. All you need to do is to save an icon to your web site’s root directory with the default file name favicon.ico. (The browser does the rest.) The icon needs to be square in size, at least 16 x 16 pixels, and in icon format. Since I don’t have an icon editor, I created a square bitmap in Microsoft Paint of the Treasure Island seagull on a dark blue background. I uploaded the bitmap to one of the free icon-generator web sites, followed the steps there, and saved it as a 32 x 32-pixel icon. That’s all there is to it.

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Posted in Uncategorized

Bucking the Experts

Posted on February 4, 2011 | 1 comment

Normally the Mud Bay blog refrains from predicting the outcome of sporting events. For starters, it is too easy to be proved wrong. Plus a prediction should be backed by a wager to carry any weight. Online gambling is illegal in Washington. So my prediction is caveated with the subjunctive. This post is about the way I would bet on the Super Bowl if I didn’t live in a nanny state.
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Posted in Sports

But Do They Belong to the Same Party?

Posted on February 2, 2011 | 1 comment

Last week while reading The Truth About Cars web site I learned that Carl Levin, the long-time senator from Michigan, has a brother serving in Congress. That wasn’t the point of the post—it was about additional subsidies for electric vehicles proposed by U.S. Representative Sander Levin—yet it got me to wondering if there are any other siblings currently making the nation’s laws. There are, although not as many as in two previous Congresses.
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Posted in Government

Closed on Sundays

Posted on February 1, 2011 | 1 comment

January 30th was the last time the Port Orchard Library—or any Kitsap Regional Library branch—was open on Sunday. It was a downer day for me. Stopping by the funky old gray-and-blue building on the Port Orchard waterfront was part of my Sunday afternoon routine.
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Posted in Books & Movies, Government