Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

The revolution will be supervised.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

The next time the wall wtreet journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Why did Dr. Oz lose? well, according to the exit polls, it’s because Fetterman won.

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

Everybody saw this coming.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Duck Blogging / Friday Night Open Thread: Quack, Quack

Friday Night Open Thread: Quack, Quack

by | 90 Comments

This post is in: ,

Three Little Ducks in their pool

The ducks have integrated well. No idea why they decided to share one pool, when they have two. But it does give you an idea of how much Penelope Pearl has grown. Great Dane of ducks for sure.

pink and cream rose

There is always one rose from my garden that stands out. I’m waiting for my tri-colored mustard one to bloom next, it’s always showy. This one will do for now.

bowl of yummy potato salad

And finally for you Instant Pot folks, my 4-Minute Potato Salad (recipe here). You can adapt it to your favorite recipe. You cannot beat the speed and ease of cooking up the potatoes and eggs.

It’s is pouring rain, thundering, lightning…but so far no hail.  Fingers-crossed.

Open thread

Reader Interactions

90Comments

  3. 3.

    NotMax

    You didn’t seem to provide any guidance as to how much liquid to put in the pot. I’d guess a cup and a quarter or so?

    And are those little flecks of fresh dill in the picture? Possibly also some celery seed in the photo version?

  4. 4.

    TaMara (HFG)

    @NotMax: Water is just to the bottom of the steamer basket – you don’t want the potatoes in water. Both mine and Jeffrey’s are dill flecks.

    ETA: and I’ve fixed the original post. thanks!!

  5. 5.

    chris

    Happy ducks. They remind me of the wild ducks that come early in the spring after the snow melts. Every little puddle and some of the ditches have ducks happily paddling around.

    Reposting my favourite pic of the day: Happy sleepy fox on the subway.

  8. 8.

    Chetan Murthy

    @HumboldtBlue: Oh man. Ms. Gauff is -something-, isn’t she? I mean not only is she #1 with a bullet on the court, but she really has that “to the manner born” down! The way she paid homage to Venus Williams after beating her …. *class*, and I mean that in the best, best, BEST way.

  9. 9.

    James E Powell

    Had an earthquake just now – Lake Elsinore CA – Dogs not amused. Jumped up, ran outside, yelled their heads off.

  10. 10.

    Steeplejack

    Earthquake shaking the cameras at the Padres-Dodgers game in Los Angeles. Apparently minor: game not interrupted. But the crowd was making noise.

  11. 11.

    Elizabelle

    Another real good little shake in California. At least 20 seconds. In Fullerton, above Anaheim. Earthquake.

  12. 12.

    Mary G

    Pretty good earthquake happening here in So. Orange County CA. Not enough to damage anything, but larger than I’ve felt for a long time, and lasted quite a while too. Hope it’s not a bigger one in Ridgecrest.

    ETA: was another in Ridgecrest. initial estimate 7.1 magnitude.

  13. 13.

    JWR

    Pretty big aftershock/earthquake in SoCal just now. Far more shaking that the 6.4 yesterday.

  19. 19.

    Juice Box

    It seems to be earthquaking here on the west coast. The most recent one felt stronger than yesterday’s Ridgecrest quake, but the USGS site won’t load. Y’all type much faster than me.

  20. 20.

    opiejeanne

    Fingers crossed for your garden’s survival.

    We have two cats, one of which is allowed out in the garden but only with a chaperone. We live in coyote territory and they are brazen, walking down the middle of the road at noon. We both had naps this afternoon, trying to recover from our vacation, and when we headed downstairs at about 5pm to make something for supper, I noticed the privileged cat holding a mouse in her mouth, and staring expectantly at us. It took a second for what I was seeing to kick in, that there was a French door between us, and she was OUTSIDE!!!
    We are trying to figure out when she went out, can’t figure out when she escaped, and she may have been out for as many as 5 hours. UGH! That’s how we lost a previous cat after we moved here, by him slipping out unnoticed when we were coming in. She was quite proud of herself, let us have the mouse without a fuss after we let her in. Now she’s asleep on mr opiejeanne’s lap, and he has fallen asleep now too.

  26. 26.

    James E Powell

    The shaking did last longer than usual. Where I am, it had two strong pulses each followed by shaking.

    People on local news really obsess on the magnitude.

  29. 29.

    Doc Sardonic

    @James E Powell: Answered your question about octave pedals after thread died. I currently use an octave that is modeled in my G5 modeling board. Back in the day doing gigs I used an Electro-Harmonix HOG(harmonic octave generator), and then fiddled around with the next generation POG(polyphonic octave generator). Forgot in the earlier answer I had used the HOG. Good pedals, combine with a chorus, delay and a volume/wah and you can make a lot of interesting noise.

  30. 30.

    TaMara (HFG)

    @opiejeanne: Oh, I’d be freaking, too. Bixby has been opening the patio door and letting himself in and out -but of course, he can’t close it behind him and I’ve been freaking out, because Gabe is not ready to be unchaperoned. I finally put a lock on the screen.

  31. 31.

    Martin

    Yeah, bigger quake than the other day. Closer to 30-40 seconds. No damage we can tell so far here in OC. Again, a roller here.

    Same place – Ridgecrest. A tiny bit further north than last time.

  32. 32.

    opiejeanne

    @NotMax: It was a really small thing, probably an elephant shrew (a tiny and hilariously misnamed creature).

  33. 33.

    Mary G

    Doesn’t sound too bad:

    Kern County fire responding to a bunch of calls. Elevators stuck, people having difficulty breathing, broken water lines.— Scott Stedman (@ScottMStedman) July 6, 2019

    Local NBC affiliate’s seismograph has the duration at up to 40 seconds

    Of course it’s only been 20 minutes. I remember when it seemed like forever for the news to get to Cal Tech and talk to Dr. Lucy Jones. She is a favorite of mine.

  36. 36.

    eemom

    Lifelong east coaster here. Experienced only one earthquake, in Palm Springs in October 1999, while there on a boondoggle business trip. The quake happened at about 3 am on the night after I’d spent the day at Joshua Tree and fallen in love with it.

    So the next day I went back to Joshua Tree, and at the entrance I asked the park rangers if there had been any bad effects from the earthquake. No ma’am, they said, none of the rocks moved. Satisfied, I went on my way.

    At some point, after climbing up a rather high pile of rocks and gazing exultingly at the view for a while, I suddenly remembered there were these things called….aftershocks….and *I* started quaking, in terror. Fortunately, I ran into a fellow hiker, a nice young man from Canada, who literally and figuratively talked (and walked) me down.

    We also talked about the upcoming 2000 election, and how he liked John McCain….but that’s another story.

  37. 37.

    opiejeanne

    @TaMara (HFG): Nearly 4 hours later and when I realize I haven’t seen her for about 10 minutes I start to get worried.

    Coyotes are the usual danger, but we also have bald eagles, and they like kitties and smallish doggies.

  38. 38.

    Martin

    @Mary G: 6.9, and a shallower quake. So, 3-4x more energy and being shallower it’ll be jolt things harder. I’d expect considerably more damage. The only good news is that it was even farther from towns.

  42. 42.

    opiejeanne

    @eemom: I have cousins in the midwest who prefer dealing with tornadoes to earthquakes. I don’t get that but I do understand the panic if you didn’t grow up on the west coast. Some places here are worse than others, though. A couple of bad spots are Mammoth and Hollister but most of the quakes on the west coast are so small that no one notices them unless they’re sitting very still. One of our friends who taught engineering at a state college had a seismometer at his house, in a quiet area that was unaffected by movement in other rooms. I think it had a cement slab floor. I stood and watched it during a party and was surprised at how many times the needle jumped for tremors we couldn’t even feel.

  43. 43.

    tobie

    Courage Californians. 40 seconds for a 7.1 magnitude earthquake sounds terrifying. I was living in the Bay Area in 1989 when that earthquake hit, and while it felt like it went on for an eternity, it was less than 40 seconds. Hang tough tonight and hold someone or something you love.

  44. 44.

    Peej01

    Another east coaster here…I’ve experienced at least 4 quakes, only one of which was in California (one of the Northridge aftershocks). The last one was here in Maryland (the quake was in Virginia). That one damaged a number of the monuments in DC.

  46. 46.

    SectionH

    @James E Powell: Mr S even felt it, and that was because the shaking changed – original was the same rolling style as the other day, and then the shaking was coming from 90º different. That scared me, on the 7th floor of an almost 50 yr old high-ish rise. I was “sure” we were ok, but Martin (I think it was Martin) described the stages of earthquake paying attention to a day or so ago, which mostly are oh, whatever. And then when shakes are stronger, longer, just different, you go into at least Serious Attention mode.

    To be honest, this one went on long and differently enough my first thought wasn’t about Ridgecrest, it was about um, more populated places.

  48. 48.

    CaseyL

    Stay safe California!

    I was in my office in downtown Seattle when the big Nisqually quake hit in early 2001. I thought a big ol’ semi truck was coming down the street because things did shake a bit when they did so. But there was no truck and the building kept rocking and rolling. So did the street! It was so fascinating to watch that I stayed there looking out the window until my boss yelled at me to join him in the doorway.

  50. 50.

    HumboldtBlue

    My family’s text thread that began with earnest concern over safety, preparations in place, double-checking those preparations and triple-checking everyone had checked in following an earthquake, then devolved into the efficacy or necessity of drinking one’s urine as a matter of survival.

    They’re still about it.

  51. 51.

    SectionH

    @Mary G: She’s very cute, but I’m pretty sure she has normal cat-sized legs. What she also has is Very long hair, which hangs down to her knees. ;->

  54. 54.

    opiejeanne

    @Peej01: Yeah, but you have MULTIPLES EVERY DAMNED YEAR! We don’t have big quakes every year and, in fact, they’re pretty rare.

    And my idiot uncle from Missouri used to laugh at us until he was caught by one when he was on the road, ended up lying in a ditch praying that the car didn’t get dropped on him. The warnings did nothing for him, but after that he didn’t laugh at us west coasters because we thought tornadoes were terrifying.

  55. 55.

    JWR

    @opiejeanne:

    I have cousins in the midwest who prefer dealing with tornadoes to earthquakes.

    I’ve lived in SoCal all my life, and I don’t get that at all. (’71 Sylmar was my first rodeo.) And while the 1920’s era house I live in has never been shaken off it’s foundations, (pilings, or whatever they’re called), I cannot imagine the terror of a tornado barreling down on me.

  57. 57.

    opiejeanne

    @HumboldtBlue: My sister, a southern California native, is seriously freaking out right now. My niece and her husband are with her and she’s crying and shaking. I’m shocked that she’s so upset, and now she’s afraid to leave her house. They have a trip to Disneyland planned for Sunday and they’re afraid she won’t want to come.

  58. 58.

    Martin

    That was cool seeing the early warning work on that 5.x. Could see it coming, hitting northern LA, and then a few seconds later hitting us in OC.

  60. 60.

    JWR

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    @JWR: It’s still shaking here in Glendale.

    I’m about 10 miles due East from you, and my brother, who lives nearby timed it at 70 seconds, but I think that was the waves fading out throughout the area. But boy, wasn’t that fun? ;-)

    Also, “monitor shake” was how I first detected yesterday’s event, as well.

  61. 61.

    HumboldtBlue

    And being able to nearly instantly connect with family members via digital media via satellites in an emergency only reinforces just how fucked we will be when the infrastructure is truly damaged and we are left with flashlights and dreams of landlines.

  62. 62.

    Martin

    @opiejeanne: My wife really struggles with earthquakes. The Whittier quake put her mom in the hospital, so she’s super sensitive to them. She won’t leave my side for a good hour or so after a quake. She’s pretty calm now because Lucy is on the TV.

  65. 65.

    TaMara (HFG)

    I’ve been in two quakes in SoCal, not big ones by any means, I found it fascinating. Not so much when I visited not long after Northridge quake.

    I still keep sneakers, jacket, and a small go-bag in my car because of it, though. Just seems like a good plan regardless of where you live.

  68. 68.

    opiejeanne

    @Mary G: We were expecting torrential downpours and extreme thunderstorms on our trip as we watched the weather predictions just before we left. Fate smiled on us and the only thunderstorms struck while we were tucked into our hotel rooms in two cities. Sunny mostly, and the heat broke about four days before we came home, but Vicksburg was miserable the first day.
    Just before we left, some friends had just been in Missouri for two weeks and were dodging tornadoes (the tornadoes dodged them) the whole time, so we were asking each other just why we wanted to go on this excursion? It turned out to be a great trip, no tornadoes and no more than a couple of drops of rain.

  69. 69.

    opiejeanne

    @HumboldtBlue: She’s a little tender sometimes, but she also was not at home. I called and she’s better, and they’re going out for ice cream. She says they deserve it. My niece’s husband Danny is there and he’s a rock. a total rock, and my sister adores him. Heck, we all do.

  70. 70.

    James E Powell

    @Doc Sardonic:

    Thank you. I haven’t been in a band in years, so pedals are toys rather than tools. My students (high school English) often ask me, Hey mister, what do you do on weekends? Search for tone, I tell them, I always search for tone.

  73. 73.

    JWR

    @NotMax: Ha ha! Yeah, he’s certainly dumb enough to utter such a moronitude.

    eta, anything to deny us emergency funds.

  74. 74.

    opiejeanne

    @HumboldtBlue: Ok, stop that. Just stop that right now. We had a neighbor who wanted Ma Bell to create a perpetual open phone line for the elementary school in case of an earthquake. She lived three short blocks from that school and all of our kids walked to school every day. I have never seen anyone so terrified of an earthquake in my life. She had the changes of clothes and shoes and money stashed in both of their cars, along with emergency food and a case of water. Yes, those were recommended at the time but I only knew one other person who tried that for a while and just got tired of hauling all that extra stuff around. I was cynical enough to think that the emergency stuff in the cars was in case of a nuclear strike (it was the 80s) but they didn’t want to panic us too much by calling it that.

  77. 77.

    Martin

    @opiejeanne: Yeah, my wife always wants to do more and more. ‘What if you’re at work!’. I work 4 miles away. It would take max an hour and a half to walk even if the freeway bridges are down. ‘What if you’re injured?’ We run a hospital. I have dozens of coworkers that are physicians. There’s 2 other hospitals a mile from the house. There’s 5 other clinics less than a mile from the house.

    We have supplies stashed. We have go bags. We have plans. But people can do too much. People are surprisingly resilient. I mean, once wifi is down, you’ve got nothing else to do but forage and sharpen spears to fend off the predatory neighbors.

  82. 82.

    opiejeanne

    @Martin: @Martin: Go bags I understand, and we always have granola bars and a couple of water bottles in the car plus there are a couple of small blankets in the back, the kind they give out at baseball games. But I wear sneakers and jeans all the time so I probably wouldn’t need a change of shoes or clothes if a disaster struck, and the few times I’m not wearing sneakers they are in the car anyway. When we travel, especially if it’s winter, we increase the “survival” supplies by a whole lot. We’re old. We’ve read about all of the people who got stuck just out of sight of nearby help and it has made us cautious.

    I guess we all just have to find our own level of preparedness that makes us comfortable.

  84. 84.

    SectionH

    @Martin: The Latest Earthquakes I see still shows 7.1.

    I know it’s not a game. I have much water – I mean gallons, reviewed and renewed, my never-unpacked rollaboard stuff anyway, and an actual bag of stuff. I don’t think any of my neighbors look tasty, and I’m damn sure I don’t look tasty either. I think we’re probably into cooperation locally.

    @Peej01: If the thunder don’t getcha…

  88. 88.

    opiejeanne

    @eemom: LOL! Do you remember when he had just built that new house in Oklahoma, complete with a storm shelter under the garage? and a tornado destroyed half of his town?

    He moved to Utah.

Comments are closed.