The parade was equal parts delightfully small-town cheesy and rather uncomfortable (oh my rural Saskatchewan is white white white). The hours(!) of biking slowly on dirt roads and appreciating the land I live on was definitely the highlight of Canada Day.

Here's an organization (that I share my land through) that is taking a better direction toward fulfilling the treaties in Canada: https://treatylandsharingnetwork.ca/

It took FOREVER AND A HALF. My kids bike slower than I knew was possible, plus I got my first flat tire on my new-ish bike halfway there, and had to call in a rescue mission from my partner (brought new tube and we kept on).

So even though it was slow and took WAY longer than I expected (and I seem to have applied sunscreen to myself badly and have random sunburned patches), it was a completely pleasant ride and I think my kids enjoyed it as much as I did, so yay for more bike rides with kids!

Happy Canada Day! I'm going to try to get my kids to bike with me 10km on gravel roads+grassy highway shoulder 4x4 trail to the nearest town. There is a pancake breakfast and a ridiculous cheesy Canada Day parade waiting at the end if we manage it in less than 2 hours... this will be challenging! Wish us luck!

Today's hike was my periodic reminder that Saskatchewan is jaw-droppingly gorgeous in ways I never expected before living here.

Thanks for lots of replies! I love this community.

This option worked simply and beautifully for me! https://github.com/marcosdiez/shareviahttp (And now I can delete some photos off my phone and have it work better. Hopefully.)

So now here I am, trying to upload months worth of photos to flickr. It has taken more than an hour to upload 30 photos (thanks, sluggish rural ISP - shit like this makes me understand why everyone is jumping on Starlink ). This is... not ideal.

Any suggestions for either better ways to share photos or get photos from my phone to my computer? (I may just have to wait and do it next time I'm on campus with fast internet... also not ideal, but fine I guess)

I've always thought of my computer as being the main repository for my photos. And I used to be very very good about uploading and sharing photos with family (part of academia is usually living far away from everyone, so this is how I try to share my life with family).

But then Google got eviler, and more importantly, my phone-to-USB jack doesn't seem to work anymore (it's the jack not the cable). So...I have like 6 months of photos to upload.

Tonight's ridiculous food project: lasagna with homemade noodles, 3 kinds of goat cheese I made, kale and shallots we grew, and store-bought mushrooms and tomato sauce (will be a while still before we have our own-grown tomatoes). It was SOOO GOOD.

Cheese curds! Haven't decided if I'm actually going to make something more with these (was originally aiming for caciocavallo again), or if I'm just going to leave them as cheese curds (or accidentally eat all of them one by one while making dinner)

I pulled a bunch of weeds, shoveled a whole bunch of poo, sat down at the computer and now I need to go back outside to the hay field and rage-scream about satellites and billionaires, I guess.

Wishing you peaceful llamas and gentle thunderstorms.

In the grand scheme of things, this is not terribly important, and I'm privileged to be in a position where I can take this kind of financial hit and be ok, but fuuuuuuck tractor tires are expensive!!

Hopefully the new ones will last as long as the old ones! Pretty sure those are the originals on this 1970s tractor.

Good chance of auroras tonight! (I will have to just hope I wake up after midnight when it's actually dark, no way I'm going to manage to stay up late enough...)

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/aurora-dashboard-experimental

I had a pretty good writing session out with the goats before that last zoom meeting. Now there's thunder starting, so no more sitting in the goat field with electronics! (Yes, the goats have a nice safe metal-sided barn to hide in during thunderstorms. Doesn't help the poor thunder-scared doggo though)

Gosh I love the feeling right before a thunderstorm rolls in. The uncomfortably warm humidity drops to a cool breeze, really neat wiggly clouds start moving over, it gets darker and quieter, then as the really tall cloud structures get close, faint thunder rumbles start. (That's the stage we're at right now. Hoping for no tornadoes today!)

Hahaha well, I just got elected to be on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Astronomical Society. I'm also the co-chair of the light/satellite pollution committee for the American Astronomical Society. I think I have volunteered for tooooo mannnnyyyy thiinnngssss! (Good thing they're all full of truly awesome people that I'm excited to work with.)

Now I can *officially* yell a bunch about satellite pollution in TWO countries!

Mama and baby birds are all snuggled in for the night. Sleep well.

Just got an email with a serious suggestion for AI use that is completely stupid and deeply offends me, right after a stressful (but useful) webinar on online safety and I think it's really time to chuck my laptop into a pond and rage-scream in the hay field.

Livestock guardian dog's answer to the question: 0 goats, one dog (better view to watch for predators, and take naps)

How many baby goats can you fit on top of one hay bale?

Answer: always one more. (Until the head-butting starts)