What people won't believe!

I just saw a curious quasi-chain-letter post on a Facebook page belonging to someone who ought to know better. (I define a "quasi-chain-letter" as something that asks you to repost, instead of the more traditional "send money," although the requisite "bad things will happen otherwise" is still there.) The post starts with the following blockbuster:

This year October has 5 Saturdays, 5 Sundays, and 5 Mondays. This happens once every 823 years.

I can't imagine too many people who haven't noticed that the calendar shifts by one day every year (except in leap years, when dates on or after March 1 shift by two days, because of the addition of February 29). Mathematically, this one-day shift corresponds to the remainder of 1 that is left when you divide 365 by 7.

Without getting into calendar math or knowing anything other than the fact that the calendar shifts by that one day every year (and two in leap years), it's pretty clear that if October starts on a Saturday in 2011, it will start on:

• Monday in 2012 (leap year, so Sunday is skipped)
• Tuesday in 2013
• Wednesday in 2014
• Thursday in 2015
• Saturday in 2016 (leap year, skipping Friday)

If we perform the same exercise going back in time, it's straightforward to determine that October started on:

• Friday in 2010
• Thursday in 2009
• Wednesday in 2008
• Monday in 2007
• Sunday in 2006
• Saturday in 2005

So, 5 years going forward, 6 years going back, and October starts on Saturday. So much for "every 823 years." The rest of the post is pure bunkum as well.

Cheers...

Mushroom bounty

Mushroom season around these parts typically occurs in the second half of August, although one of the results of last year's copious daily rains was an early season that kicked off about a month early. I hadn't been around earlier in the summer, but I was reliably informed that rainfall this year was not anything to make a big deal about, and mushrooming treks made earlier this season were initially successful, but subsequently disappointing.

Yesterday, after noticing an eruption of mushrooms along the side of the road across from the City Market shopping center, I got to thinking about recent rains and lack of really cold temperatures and I decided—armed only with my trusty canine companion Shiloh, a couple of plastic bags, and a pair of scissors I found in the glove box (which made a serviceable cutting implement)—to travel down a road I call "Shaggy Way" that takes me via a rather circuitous route from "downtown Pagosa Springs" toward home.

It's the kind of road where, from time to time, you can spy the Rockies through the trees.


The photo above was taken scant yards from a stump that has developed a local ecosystem of sorts, comprising moss, lichen, some gray basidiomycete fungus (I think), and a lone example of what might possibly be a Velvet Foot (but I'm guessing).



On the one hand, I like the shot, which I've cropped somewhat, but on the other, the cropping turned out sort of freaky, because the result almost looks like a landscape from the air, where the moss and gray strands look like a forest of some kind, the cracks in the wood look like cliffs, and only the giant orange mushroom is the lone anomaly.

Fantasy aside, I've learned enough, over the years, to reliably recognize some basic mushrooms—chanterelles, king boletes, hawk's wings, aspen boletes, shaggy manes, and even the occasional clutch of oyster mushrooms. My knowledge of other fruiting fungi, especially of gilled mushrooms, is rather sparse.

My spore printing skills are not too shabby, but even with that information, it's pretty clear that I need to make better notes about the environment surrounding the specimens that I find. That, and ask others for pointers so as to have a good point of departure for learning more about specific mushrooms.

Among the specimens I found yesterday were the following:

1. A coral mushroom (Ramaria?). There are a lot of these in the woods.



2. Some sort of Clitocybe?

 

3. Possibly a Gymnopilus of some kind? These are quite common.

 

4. Is this a honey mushroom?



Cheers...

P.S. Cross-posted to mycology.

In other news...

A nice, 7,500-word job came in today, which brightened the day, although I felt a bit puny around noon, but a nap seems to have fixed that right up. The client wants the file back by Monday, which ought to be eminently do-able.

In el-cheapo fountain pen news, the Pilot V-Pens that I picked up in Paris (I noted a heck of a lot more use of fountain pens being used for everyday purposes, BTW, in Paris) are nothing special, but they work, producing a satisfying black line wherever needed. They are intended for one-time use (once the ink is gone, you're expected to toss the pen), but I seem to recall the package of two pens ran about €5, which gets me thinking.

At the other end of the spectrum, perhaps, is a $2 pen I picked up at the Fit store in Houston (which appears to specialize in stocking inexpensive items from Japan), produced for Daiso, about the size of my antique Conklin, and fed by a cartridge. (If memory serves, replacement cartridges were hanging next to the pen, but they seem to be of "standard" size.) It's a nice, compact pen that I am reluctant to "start" because of all the other fountain pens that are lying around, ready to write.

Cheers...