Shown above: the Kaleberg sinks the Titanic

Kaleberg Symbionts

Archived Notes

February 2004 to May 2004

This page has some of our older diary entries.

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May 2004

05/28 - We were out on the Spruce Railroad Trail today, and we couldn't help noticing that the mud is back. That and the salamanders. You have to keep your eyes open, or you'll step on one of the unique species of the Olympic Peninsula. These little lizards are a sort of red gold, and as you can see in the photograph, they rather blend in to the background. The rain brings them out and it brings out the slugs, so this is a great time to explore the trails of Olympic National Park.

On our way west to the trailhead, we heard a cautionary tale about feeding wild animals. We picked up some gravel at the quarry a bit off of 101, west of the Elwha. We're retail customers and drive a Honda Civic. Most of the folks here drive umpty ton gravel trucks, or diggers, or grinders. It's sort of a grown up Tonka paradisse.

Anyway, we stopped in at the office to be sociable, and pay for our gravel, and we heard the story of cougar.

It had been a hard winter, and the cougar was about as thin as a housecat. The owner of the quarry had never seen a big cat so skinny, and having several hundred pounds of hamburger going stale in the freezer decided to feed the poor thing. Needless to say, he carried his pistol, and he kept his distance, but the cat went for the beef and not for him.

As the season progressed, the cougar put on some weight and and started to flesh out a bit. A few hundred pounds of hamburger will do that to beast, or man. There's a documentary on this that just came out, which says something about restating the obvious. Needless to say, having been fed, the cougar was much more energetic, and the owner of the quarry was figuring it was time for the creature to return to the wild.

Then, one day, the cougar dropped by a neighbor's place and went for the ducks and geese right on the front porch. The neighbor shot it. So, if you do come to the Olympic Peninsula, think twice before feeding the wild animals.

05/23 - We climbed Storm King today. We spent the last month dreading it. It is a brutal climb with a lot of slippery scree. Naturally, we can never make a head on assault. We have to work indirectly, so we drove off to Sol Duc to check out the trail to Deer Lake. As we neared Barnes Creek, we slammed on the brakes and swerved into the Storm King parking lot. Before we knew what had hit us we were at 450', passing the ramada where a youth group was lunching. Around 1200', as we were passing the little side spur to the alpine overlook, we regained consciousness and realized that we were going to make it. You'll find a couple of new snapshots on our Barnes Creek et al page.

05/19 - The Copper River salmon is in. We picked up a filet in Seattle and are going to grill it. Also, we've been thinking about the old computer game of Dazzle Darts. It was one of those rather simple games, like Pong, that came out of the 1970s, except that Dazzle Darts seems to have vanished.

05/11 - Have we mentioned Johnston Farms? They are regulars at the Port Angeles Farmer's Market and have some really good vegetables. The pea shoots and salad greens are already coming in. We can hardly wait for their poblano peppers and have included a recipe for them in anticipation.

05/10 - We have updated our Lake Crescent Cottage website. The remodeling is moving along, and so is our website.

05/09 - Here is another recipe we really like. This one is for a spicy, hearty salmon rollup made with bread crumbs and coriander seed. The sauce is sweet and sour, with honey and lime juice.

05/08 - We made our old favorite, pasta cauliflower, parmesan and pancetta today. Check out the pictures and the recipe. Did we mention capers? At Domaine Cliche this is famine food.

05/02 - We've just introduced a new lighting option, The Kenner Girder and Panel Lamp. For those who don't remember, Kenner produced a building set starting back in the 1950s which let one build in the latest style. Gone were bricks and boards, or heaven forfend, logs. Modern buildings had steel frames and translucent panels. This building set, with its brilliant orange and blue panels captured this architectural style quite well, and the translucent panels in the set modulate the light to a pleasing glow.

April 2004

04/30 - Our Original K'Nex Lamp now has a friend. We've added a Remote Control K'Nex Lamp using the guts from one of K'Nex's remote control dragsters. It not only illuminates, it is interactive. K'Nex building sets are a lot like Tinkertoys in that they let you build spatially with rods and connectors. The rods are in lengths which are multiples of the powers of two; the connectors provide up to eight connections in an octagonal configuration. It is probably a simple exercise in Galois Field Theory to determine whether any arbitrary form is K'Nex constructable. (If you haven't taken Modern Algebra, ignore that sentence).

04/27 - We'd like to introduce you to one of our local area artists, Barbara Teufert, who works in clay and with natural forms - The Art of Barbara Teufert. This is her internet debut, at least according to the more popular search engines, so you may be the first to see her fantastic castle, her take on the great stone circles, and a work best described as a collaboration with the natural forms of the North Olympic Peninsula.

Our Lake Crescent Cottage web site is under construction, just like the cottage itself. Our first teaser photo is online so you can see some of the view from the deck.

We've updated our New York City stuff a little.

March 2004

We have had this lamp in our dining room for some time. It is a kinetic K'Nex sculpture. Check it out.

Work is underway on Lake Crescent Cottage. This is our cottage right on Lake Crescent in the National Park. It's a real dazzler. We plan to rent the place by the week this summer. Check this site for progress reports, or send us feedback if you are interested.

We have updated our Rock Art pages to include photographs of two more sets of petroglyphs in Santa Fe and Hawaii

February 2004

It has been some time since the destruction of the World Trade Center. We have not forgotten, but it is time to update our web page. Our late 2001 web page is still online if anyone is interested.

As for our more recent adventures, we have been tending our gardens. Check out the Port Angeles Farmer's Market and poke around the site for new restaurant reviews. We hope to update a fair number of things in 2004. Also, we've added some rock art and some reviews from Vancouver, BC.