Våren -- Spring is already here

 Rainy windshield, First Hill in Seattle, the last week of January, 2016.

Our Winter here in the Seattle area didn't last long. The past few nights and mornings have been between 38-42F (around 4-5C). We haven't had a freeze since just after New Year's. The trees and bushes aren't budding yet, but there are more Spring birds chirping and singing, and I even heard a Northern Flicker (our local woodpecker) tapping on the metal chimney of someone's house a couple mornings ago.

Fog over a pond on a cloudy, misty morning in late January.

Lately we've had a lot of rain. And a lot of cloudy weather. But it's fairly warm for us, for this time of year. It's even been 60F during the day here. Not bad. Back East, people are having another Winter storm.

A picture of the Duwamish River, and the spires of the Seattle Skyline are in the far background, at the very center of the photo.

Personally, work has been picking up, and that's good.

I still have been working out, and have reached one of my goals, benching over 200 pounds (91 Kg) this week, and that feels good also. I intend to keep going until I max out. My bench will only support so much weight safely, so I may need to buy a new bench this year.

The Seattle harbor and skyline during a rainy afternoon in late January, 2016.

I am still working on my action novel. It's about 250 pages and gaining. Hopefully, it will be ready to publish on Amazon Kindle some time this summer.

I have two other books in the works -- one of them already half done. They will have action also. The one I have about half done is an action sort of novel featuring some homeless guys. I got the inspiration from seeing what goes on with many homeless in my area, and from knowing some people who would be homeless if it weren't for the good graces of their families. The rest of the inspiration was from talking to friends about some of the industrial jobs that a lot of people have to take in the Green River Valley -- some of which have poor safety conditions, bad hours, and low wages. Of course, a lot of that second novel is little more than pure fiction. But most novels are. :-)

A pair of ducks has adopted a local pond. Hopefully, they will stay.

Meanwhile, nationwide, the country is getting into election mode, which means that my Facebook newsfeed is heating up with lots of political crap.

SOME MW DXers READ MY BLOG / PR-D5 and HEADPHONES

I notice that my MW DXing articles get read by a lot of people. I have a few more of those articles in the works. On that front, I've been turning on the radio at least once a night, and tuning around. The only new station has been KWKW 1330, an ESPN Deportes station from Los Angeles, which I logged on my Sangean PR-D5.

Göteborg, Sweden have their Elverommet (a building with a large mural of their river on the side of it)... Seattle has its equivalent: The South Park Transfer Station!

I re-learned that I need to use my old Radio Shack headphones with that radio (I've since updated my PR-D5 article, adding a section about headphones). The PR-D5, being a mini-boombox, has a loudness circuit, which boosts bass at low volumes. It is part of what gives the PR-D5 a big sound through the speakers. But if you have bassy headphones (like my Sonys, which I got with a Sony SRF-59 headset radio), the bass will cover some of the highs, and you can miss ID's on stations on crowded frequencies.

Tåke på vannet... Ghostly fog over the local Beaver's Pond.

My old set of Radio Shack headphones -- which broke last year and I rewired for mono, using speaker cable -- are excellent for DXing and distance listening. They have clarity, but not a ton of bass. And they don't emphasise the midrange like some cheap headsets can do, which just gives you listener's fatigue -- I get zilch listener's fatigue with these headphones. For a while I misplaced them. Now that I found them again, I'm using them with the PR-D5 more.

Finally, I got a decent picture of a duck that wasn't blurry. Taken the first week of February.

My PR-D5 is so good on MW I usually don't need an external loop to DX with it. It's light enough to hold in my hand and turn from side to side, angle it slightly, etc. -- strengthening some radio stations and weakening others. One morning a week ago I heard an unidentifiable Spanish station on 1650 khz. My external loop only boosted the signal by about a db or so -- I still couldn't read the language 100%, but I heard "kilo" and "ahora" -- definitely Spanish. There is a distant Deportes station on that frequency, but this station didn't sound like Deportes at all.

I don't understand a lot of Spanish, even though I took it in high school. But sometimes I'll listen to the Spanish speaking stations to see if I can understand anything.

The last week of January we had some rains... One of the small local creeks, which comes down off of a hillside, got muddy, turning the frog pond yellow.

The only other languages I can read are Norwegian and Swedish -- Norwegian a bit better than Swedish (I took Norsk in college and learned Swedish on my own, as they are related languages). The only way I can hear those languages is through online listening, by logging in to NRK or Sveriges Radio, which -- thankfully -- do not 'geofence' their broadcasts. Jeg kan ikke forstå dem når jeg høre dem, men jeg kan lese dem OK.

ESPN Deportes stations like KWKW 1330, KTRB 860 (in the Bay Area of California), KBRO 1490 (across the Puget Sound from me) etc. are fun to listen to because the announcers are very peppy, and the bumper music is lively -- sometimes rock, sometimes hip-hop oriented pop. I understand the language just enough to know that they usually talk about Mexican soccer and European soccer. NFL football isn't that big amongst US Hispanics, unless they are 2nd or 3rd generation. The farthest Deportes station I've logged is the one in El Paso on 1650, KSVE.

SUPER BOWL SUNDAY

On a sports related note, I enjoyed the NFL Super Bowl earlier this month. As most of you probably know, the Super Bowl is a very big deal here in the U.S., even with people who aren't into NFL football. This year it was a game between the Denver Broncos and the Carolina Panthers.

As it turned out, it was a tough game. The Denver defense kept Carolina from doing much. Carolina's quarterback got 'sacked' about seven times, losing the ball a couple of times. Before the game, a lot of sports experts were all saying Carolina was going to win. But during the game, they were barely able to move the ball.

It wasn't a high scoring game, but was a fun game to watch.

I'm not much for 'selfies'. As close as I'll get to one. I'm all dressed up to watch the Super Bowl.

Hope all have a great February -- and Happy Valentine's Day, if you're into that....
CC  2-13-2016