After Anthony woke up from his afternoon nap, he wanted to do some cooking play with me. He had something specific in mind, suggesting:

(Jouzu is 上手, Japanese for “skillful”)

It was so precious (and, for that matter, on target) that I immediately took a moment to write it down just as he said it.

(In the end, I think my pretend food was pretty pretend tasty... after all, what good is an imagination if you can't use it to better yourself 🙂

When a cherry tree starts to give up its petals, it does so in great bursts and flurries. A puff of wind will come along, and every darn petal will spring into the air in a veritable supernova of off-white pink that becomes a localized blizzard as it swirls and dissipates in all directions. Gravity eventually wins, and the ground becomes a thick bed of blossoms sometimes several inches thick.

It's beautiful and mesmerizing, but the most amazing thing about it is that after every petal has been lost to that breeze, the tree remains as heavily laden as ever. It's as if the blossoms for the blizzard of petals had materialized out of nowhere, separate and unrelated to those affixed to the tree for your longer-term viewing pleasure.

It certainly defies all logic, but that's how it is.

Like watching hair grow, you never see a change in a tree's petals over the short term, but in the longer term the tree inexplicably, inexorably, inevitability turns from white to green. This year, as I've mentioned before, each tree seems to be going at its own pace, but all have at least started the transformation now.

Anyway, after our recent trip to the park, Anthony and I were passing by the area were I took that night shot I'd posted recently when we were greeted with one of the whirlwinds of blossoms. I had my camera with me, but I wasn't fast/good enough to get a picture that did it justice.

Here's one that I did get, which shows just a few petals in flight, and a decidedly getting-greener tree:

(click to expand)

It's interesting to note that the white path in the background is black asphalt, made white by a thin layer of petals (we've had a lot of rain recently, putting a damper, literally, on the petal accumulation). It's taken from just about exactly the same spot as the aforementioned night shot, but looking the opposite direction. You can see much less an accumulation in the night shot, which was taken not long after rain had cleared everything away, a good 40 hours prior to this one.

Today at the playground....

So, which hand is the ball in?

Is it in this hand?

Or, is it in this one?

Nope, not here....

Ta-daaaa! It's here!!!!

This was followed by what might only be described as a “silly dance”, and then play on the slide.

As I commented a few weeks ago, I worried that the barometric altimeter on my GPS unit (a Garmin GPSmap 60CS) was worthless because there are many factors that change air pressure besides a change in altitude (such as holding the unit in a breeze, moving with the unit, changing weather, etc.)

So, I sent a note off to Garmin asking about it, hoping that I was just missing something. Really, why would they include such a feature if it was worthless, much less tout it as they do?

Here's what I sent:

Is there a way to turn off the barometric altimeter, leaving only the GPS altitude? It seems to me (and I'd love to be wrong) that the barometric altimeter is fairly worthless because the air pressure changes with such things like the weather or the unit's position in the wind. I love my Garmin GPS unit, but the altitude part is an unfortunate stain. The altitude data in the track log, which I use to geoencode photos, is essentially random.

I wrote about this on my site and now find that people come to my site via search-engine queries such as “Garmin barometer disable” , so it's not just me that is either ignorant of how to actually use the thing properly, or dissatisfied with it as a solution.

I'd be happy just to disable it, as I can disable the compass (which works wonderfully, by the way 🙂. Is there a way?

Thanks,
Jeffrey

Here's their reply:

Thank You for contacting Garmin International!

I am happy to help you with this. There is no way of turning off the barometric altimeter on this unit. You are correct sir that given the changes you have to calibrate the altimeter just as you would in an aircraft hourly. However, in our units the altimeter is calibrated automatically every 15 minutes to coincide with the GPS altitude.

Sigh.

Silly me for not realizing that I have to calibrate it as I do an aircraft (of course, I make it a point to calibrate my aircraft often, such as before each trip to the corner store).

Apparently, the need to calibrate it hourly (like an aircraft, silly me) is such obvious and common knowledge that Garmin apparently doesn't see fit to mention any of this on their web site or even in the manual! (To be fair, their manual is horrible on all fronts, not just this one, as I've mentioned before... twice.)

I like this GPS unit, but this altimeter and Garmin's documentation of it is ridiculous.