Another week, another earthquake. This time around, the 4.1 quake woke me in the early morning hours, just in time to hear the tortured rumbling and banging of the deep Earth. The house didn’t rattle around this time, instead it sounded as if someone was smashing on the windows trying to break into the house. Immediately afterwards, the night was eerily quiet. An abrupt halt to the sleep processes. Not realising it was an earthquake, left me with the question: What were those noises? The dogs didn’t seem bothered, and so after a respectable period of quiet alertness for potential danger, sleep pulled me back under the covers. The news the following day provided the explanation.
There was more weirdness. The other night, after dinner, Ollie needed to head outside into the darkness to either assess the evenings wildlife activities, go to the toilet, or possibly both. The dog and I were both standing out in the cold admiring the clear winter night sky. So many stars and the Milky Way showed as a dull band of light snaking across the heavens. That canine sure can be quiet when he needs to be. So there we were both standing in darkness near to the chicken enclosure, marvelling at the stars when suddenly, a bright flash lit up the sky. That was weird The ‘whoosh and fizzing’ sound were slightly delayed. Being less than perfectly synchronised did not diminish the impressive show.
Either the mothership was descending that night, or space junk was returning to the Earth? Hard to know, really. Although you’d hope aliens from a distant solar system held off their long sought after planetary conquest. We’re a bit busy at the moment and have other projects to complete. Defending the planet from an alien invasion will have to be done by someone else.
They say strange things come in threes, and it’s true! Earlier in the week the news was full of articles of financial disaster because the ‘yen carry trade’ was no longer profitable. What the heck even is this thing? Turns out, it’s when money is borrowed from a country with low interest rates (e.g. Japan), which is then invested in interest bearing products in countries with higher interest rates. It sounds simple enough and works fine, until either the currency exchange or interest rates become unfavourable. And both of those risks happened all at once. People who are paid to comprehend financial risks, probably had to face real financial risks, then sought-as-one to get out of the risky arrangements. The Japanese, well, the word inscrutable possibly applies. My gut feeling suggests that they were OK with stagnant wages for locals for the past decade. But the recent hordes of tourists visiting their shores? They probably weren’t OK with those Western folks, on that scale.
The outcome of all the financial messery for Westerners may be that those who rely on paying their regular bills using income derived from investments, may suddenly find that there is less to go around. Yeah. It’s been something of a funny coincidence this week. Every year or two I’ll re-read Michael Lewis’s most excellent book: The Big Short. The film was good, but the book is an even better story. And there I was reading it this week as an actual unwinding took place. The narrative follows a few clever money managers who decided to take short positions (i.e. bet against ever rising prices) upon the bonds (or more correctly, derivatives of bonds) for sub-prime US home mortgages leading up to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. History tells us how that worked out. Those few clever folks made the unpopular bet, turned out that it was wildly profitable. There was an ethical dimension to the story though: Can you celebrate a win, in the face of such overwhelming disaster and hardship?
In last week’s blog I wrote about heading to a town about an hours west of here to pick up pre-ordered spare mower parts. Sandra and I had lunch at a café on the main street. It’s kind of a tourist town. OK, it was Daylesford, which is a really pretty country town. Years ago we considered moving there. As young adults, late Sunday afternoons we’d escape the city and take a walk around the lake and grab a bite of food as the sun went down. It was a quiet town in those days. We lead busy lives back then, and thinking back on that time, I really don’t know how we did what we did. Full time work, part time University study, friends, restoring old houses, yeah, not the usual stuff of a quiet life. Escaping the city on a late Sunday afternoon, was probably akin to escaping our intense lives. That part of the world was where some peace could be found.
For decades, the town was always a bit touristy, but over the more recent years things changed and it became too busy for our tastes. We stopped going there. So it was interesting having lunch at a café the other day. Being winter, the air was cool, and the sun shone with early season warmth. Quite a nice day really. The town was reasonably quiet. The business didn’t appear to cater for the locals, but had good reviews, so we thought, why not? One of the surprises was that the ordering process was done not via a human, but through use of a smart phone. For Sandra that is a deal-killer, but I was hungry and valiantly pushed the buttons on her behalf. The light meal, with no drinks, came in at around $45 for the two of us. Hmm.
There were no complaints with the food, I just don’t want to spend $45 on a light lunch. It’s a hard town to get a cheap basic lunch. In a lot of ways, over tourism is a part of that story. There’s work to be had there, but you wonder given the cost of things, can a person earn enough to live in that area? It’s a good question. You also hear stories of how the short stay tourist accommodation drives up housing prices whilst simultaneously uses up the available housing supply for the locals, thus pushing them out. The thing is, all of those economic arrangements depend on a continued supply of tourists, and to me that seems like a risky assumption. Things can change, after all, look at the quake that Japan’s minor changes made to the financial markets this week.
The days this week have been mostly warm and sunny. The nights have been cold, but that’s to be expected. It is still officially winter. We used what time we could spend outdoors, finishing the clean up work on the forest edge for this season. During the week two bonfires slowly crept away and headed uphill through the vegetation. That never happens in August, but it did this year. The work done this week was cutting an old loggers tree into discs so that we could split them into chunks of firewood at a later date. Plus the tree stump was removed.
The Stihl MS381 chainsaw is no lightweight, but the diameter of the log was so large that I had to cut a disc from one side of the log, then finish the cut on the other side. The chainsaw bar just didn’t reach through to the other side. I had the same problem with the tree stump.
You’d think that a log or stump sitting on the forest floor for decades would be mostly decayed, but no. This stuff is serious hardwood, and once long ago the tree would have been quite large. In order to grind out the tree stump, again I cut discs so as to reduce the height. The magpies follow me around whenever I’m working because I’ll chuck them any juicy wood grubs found. Even with that, the birds will still thoroughly go over all of the forest materials.
The core of the tree had rotted, presumably why the loggers cut the tree then left it laying on its side. In those days, saw logs were what they were after, and the rotten core would only have been discovered once the stump was exposed. At least the rot reduced the amount of hardwood material we had to remove with the stump grinder. Using that machine is very hard work, and I rotate the three commercial grade cutting teeth every ten minutes or so.
As a side note, that job is far from finished and will take many more years of work, but we’re making good headway. However, there are other jobs to be done around here. Like cleaning up the trees which fell in the wild weather only a month or so ago. There is no shortage of firewood laying on the ground here. Anyway, we began that storm clean up job. It’s a mess. I believe it will be a five day job.
With spring fast approaching, we began the job of pruning and feeding the five terrace gardens. This week the blackberries were pruned back hard. We went all science like and referred to a book on the subject of pruning for guidance (thanks to the lovely people who recommended it!)
Somehow we also found time to make a batch of apple cider vinegar and another of hard cider, both of which we’ve never successfully made before.
We harvested the last batch of kiwi fruit and also collected many of the Pomellos (a yellow grapefruit) that the currawongs (a very large bird) have been knocking off the tree.
Ollie was helping me in the kitchen the other day by cleaning the honey container.
We took the only cold and wet day of the week off work, and headed an hours drive north of here. On a narrow windy road, we pulled over to let a very anxious driver in a remarkably large vehicle get around us. It was a moment of serendipity. Right next to the road was a plaque alerting people that a particular tree was over 700 years old and of significance to the ill fated Burke and Wills explorers. Would have missed that entirely had we not stopped.
Lunch was purchased from a nearby bakery, and we enjoyed it whilst sitting on a log in forest next to the Coliban water channel. It was constructed in the 1860’s so as to take water from the Malmsbury reservoir, all the way north to the newly established goldfields town of Bendigo.
The channel is still used today, but was under repair. You could see where concrete patches had only recently been placed. The stone work is first rate. At one point the tunnel headed underground so as to get to the other side of a hill. Most impressive.
Oops! I forgot to add this weeks videos… Good help is hard to find.
See, there’s something for everyone!
Onto the flowers:
The temperature outside now at about 10am is 8’C (46’F). So far for last year there has been 596.6mm (23.5 inches) which is up from last weeks total of 595.2mm (23.4 inches)
Yo, Chris – There’s fair food, sometimes horrifying (our yearly county fair starts this week), and stadium food, something I hadn’t considered before.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/09/business/cotton-candy-burrito
Equally, if not more horrifying. Hmmm. Maybe we should write a cookbook. “Horrifying Fair and Stadium Food: Make It At Home.” I think I’ll go prune the tomatoes and harvest some Sweet Basil. And consider simpler fare. Lew
Hi Lewis,
Oh man, that burrito is awesome looking, but truthfully, I ain’t manly enough to consume such a monster treat. Let’s just say that it is a personal failing. It reminds me of a New Zealand dessert we made for a party celebrating the Waitangi Day about maybe five years ago, which was a Lolly cake. We stuck to the most traditional of recipes and the results were well regarded. But honestly, a small slice of the treat left me with sugar headaches. A decent sized slice would provide me with half the energy I apparently need to get through a day. Hmm. Like I said, I ain’t manly enough for such heady feed.
The cookbook is not a bad idea, but surely someone has already covered such potent snacks? I have some reservations that our fortunes will be made from that direction, although it is an awesome idea. Foiled again… 😉
Dude, there may be finer fare, but the combination of fresh sun ripened tomato, some chives, sweet basil, and just a dash of salt on freshly baked bread, is super awesome. Oh no, I forgot the slice of quality tasty cheese (cheddar in US parlance). So good. Yum! You’ve got me thinking of the delights of the future summer harvest.
Speaking of the summer harvest, we did a bit of paid work, then headed out into the unseasonable sunshine and warmth to prune all of the plants in the remaining four terraced gardens. I took on the grape vines and pruning and thinning of the raspberries, whilst the Editor tackled the roses and trimming the raspberries. In a few days, we’ll give the soil on all five terraces a decent feed, and they’ll be set for the summer months. We’re both very curious to see how the hard pruning job works out in relation to summer fruit set and production. We followed the instructions provided in the book this time around.
The succession crisis hypothesis hardly surprises me. Don’t you think that such events arise in the first place because there are competing power blocks wanting to implement their policies? It’s not necessarily reflective of an ability to resolve the issues facing a civilisation. There’s even an element of one group benefiting by the loss of another group. That’s kind of what happens when resources are limited. I remember distinctly that the Annie Hawes book described the social and economic arrangements of a small town where those sorts of issues surfaced. A difference in scale is not necessarily a difference in kind.
And yes, it is perhaps a good reason to avoid the situation of multiple wives, although candidly I’d lack the competency to deal with the social complexities of such an arrangement. 🙂
You called it correctly. Speculation is what it looks like to me too. A fine word, which plenty of people have mistaken to mean something else.
Are you talking about Smith Wigglesworth? So I read some of his words, and couldn’t follow the meaning. Found them confusing. He’s a fast talker that one, with a mean right arm.
Signage as a general rule is a legal response and given the many fine examples of death by selfie, does it work for the deceased – or seriously injured?
A fair point about the overnight lows. You’ve still got to the end of next month (at a rough guess), but the growing season still has some ways to go for you and the plants. After this run of warm winter weather down here, the cold and wet will return. I may miss the warmth, and you’ll have to forgive me, but there may be some whingeing. Just a little bit anyway.
Your blueberry coffers are filling up. Did you manage to process the berries and get them in the freezer? 6 or 7 inches sounds like a good meal sized sized (for a few days) pumpkin. Do you roast pumpkins or boil them?
Good to hear about the salad flavours becoming stronger over the next few days. Bean salad does that trick too, and not to forget that some casseroles have the knack as well.
I agree, it is an understatement. Perhaps the reproduction of the Sartyricon was an err, passion project, of the dark and middle ages clerics? Don’t know where that idea came from.
Can’t say I’ve ever seen the film AI, but the plot sure is dark – and popcorn worthy.
The old fella knew how to call things, and agreed. It was an unnecessary act at the site at Pompeii. You’ve said before about people and nice things.
Cheers
Chris
water for gold- The water infrastructure does look impressive, BUT, what better use might there have been than to support a mine for shiny bits? Wonder what happened to that mining town after the lode played out?
the big short- Good book, lesson not learned.
The big takeaway for me from that event was that the big guys got bailed out, and the extraction from poor to rich continues. It’s called moral hazard, and it seems to be one result of the regulatory capture the world is experiencing.
Just started reading Griftopia by Taibbi. Written in 2010 after the dust had settled a bit. We’ll see how it has aged.
discretionary spending- Our little county in Wisconsin is rural, low population, and always looking for ways to keep the wheels turning, slow down the economic decline, so now tourism is touted. I’ve a bad feeling about that, since tourism is discretionary spending, and would stop in a hot minute when some hiccup like yen carry trade dries up the investment cash flow for those with the cash to “tour”.
Yo, Chris – Well, you live on a slope … 🙂
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/california-ultra-rich-building-hidden-100000814.html
Might give you ideas. Master Gardeners are coming this morning. Later. Lew
Yo, Chris – Back! First, to you blog post. Earthquakes and comets. Omen? Signs! Miracles! Wonders! I don’t know if I’d include the stock market. ‘Tis not natural. But stumbling on a 700 year old tree, quit by accident? I’d include that. 🙂
Buzzfeed is a pretty interesting site, sometimes. Kind of click bait, but can be … informative. Last night I spotted an entry, on things people just don’t spend money on, anymore. I’m feeling #1 on the list. 🙂
https://www.buzzfeed.com/briangalindo/things-that-have-gotten-too-expensive?utm_source=dynamic&utm_campaign=bfsharecopy
You’ve developed a really nice relationship, with the Magpies. “Mutually beneficial.”
That one photo of “….felled trees…” Are you starting on another path going … somewhere?
Cider, kiwi, Pomello’s. You’re pretty much not far off your darkest part of winter, and still harvesting large quantities of this and that. Doesn’t happen here.
Ollie’s going to need a good face wash. Head wash? Clean out his ears?
The water channel is quit handsome. The Victorians had a real sense of aesthetics … something in short supply, these days. Are you sure that tunnel wasn’t dug by a giant wombat? 🙂
The videos were very good. Nice to follow up on the Saki. A great introduction to basic machine repair. I might have missed it, but did you mention not to use gas with ethanol in it? In small engines? I double checked and there is sure a lot of videos and posts about that, on the Net.
The Jonquils and Daffodils are lovely. We won’t see the likes of those, for months.
And, to your missive … I think I’d steer clear of the Lolly Cake. Strange colors are a warning in nature, and the Lolly Cake sure had some colors, not found in nature.
Don’t be nervous. Hard pruning is usually a good thing. I pruned my tomatoes, yesterday. Two good sized plants and a smaller volunteer. I got a five gallon bucket, of clippings. And, I’m not done. The Master Gardeners said I’d “got it.” I forgot to ask them, about something I thought about. I wondered if the extra foliage, was to catch the wind and shake the plant. So it would pollinate. Probably not a problem, if you give the plant a little shake, each time you walk past. As I do.
Succession. Court intrigues, factions and maneuvering. Everyone pushing their sons forward. Sometimes, murder was resorted to. Not only would a son become an emperor, but Mum would end up being an Empress Dowager. A very powerful position. Yes, probably not best to have a lot of wives. As then, you’d have a lot of mother-in-laws 🙂 … never mind a lot of extended family.
Little Willie Wigglesword, AKA William Shakespeare.
The high yesterday was 72F (22.22C). Overnight low was 52F. Forecast for today is 71F. It’s overcast, and cool. I’m beginning to fret about an early frost. The earliest, since I started keeping records was 2019. We had a light frost, on September 28th. Enough to kill any tender plants. Such as, tomatoes. That was a La Niña, year. Prof. Mass has a post on why the smoke was kept aloft.
I added the blueberries, to plump up the bags that were light. I also dug down to the bottom of the freezer, and took a census. Oh, my. I found four bags of blueberries, from year before last. But they were very light. I’d count them as two full bags. I’ve got 3 really full gallons … 5 if I count the older blueberries. 14 bags, in various states of “fullness.” I think what I’m shooting for, is 18 really full bags.
Besides pruning the tomatoes, I pruned off all the flowers from the Sweet Basil. And harvested a good quart of the leaves. Now on plates, drying out. I got two more, not quit ripe Oregon Spring tomatoes. I cut up one of those, and put it on top of my cucumber salad. Tasty. I think the trick with the Oregon Spring, is to harvest them not quit ripe, and give them a couple of days on the counter. At least, until all the green disappears.
The Master Gardeners (the Ladies, at least) were running around like crazy people, cutting things for a display at the fair, which starts this week. They man a booth and “pitch” the Master Gardeners program. The guys, and I, were working on a couple of yellow plum trees. Last year, they produced NOTHING. Weather, bees and blossoms, didn’t play nice. This year, they are so loaded branches have been broken. So, we were thinning fruit, and doing a little pruning. They’re still green, but will ripen on the counter. I got a large container.
My dried cranberries showed up, today. So, I’ll have to start dealing with them. Cool weather crops should be planted. More blueberries to pick. It’s just a tsunami of produce 🙂
A pumpkin, that size, will make a pretty good sized pumpkin pie. I’ve done it before. The pumpkin is split in haves or fourths, the seeds and “strings” cleaned out. Blossom and stem cut out. And, then baked in an oven, until soft. And the skin peels off, like parchment. Mashed and used for pie or other bake goods. It can be frozen. The baking dish should be fairly deep, as they lose a lot of moisture. Lew
Chris,
We spent the weekend celebrating. The Princess had a birthday. Good food was eaten. Fun was had.
Temperatures are cooler now, as in less hot. Right on schedule for the 2nd third of August. Intense heat can return, but at least the days are noticeably shorter and it will cool at night unless there is cloud cover. Naturally, this means that more smoke has rolled in. It smells like wildfire outside today.
This does have positive ramifications for the plants. Some parts of the lawn are showing beginning signs of awaking from the zombie state. Other areas are still sucking water and remaining dry as a bone. The transition from extreme summer to whatever the next season is has begun.
Sometimes we don’t get transitions from one season to the next. This year we went from spring weather to intense heat very quickly. Thinking about it, abrupt seasonal changes are about as common as calmer transitions. Makes it interesting.
Alaska. Well, summer, you could look outside, see that it was still light out, pop another movie into the video player. When that movie ended you realized it had barely gotten dark and it was well after midnight. I never had problems sleeping.
Winter…well, we didn’t have a car, so we walked everywhere. I also made sure I got outdoors on campus if the sun was out. That all helped. We went 10 consecutive days that October with continuous snowfall – very dry snow, so maybe 18 inches fell total. At the end of that round of snow, the daylight was less than 6 hours. That is when people started losing it, in late October. Most people became depressed or psychotic. Lots of coffee, lot of time outdoors mostly worked for me. I’ve since heard that that is also the common scenario for living in Norway: get outdoors and get active.
I got the line trimmer fixed during a break from the weekend’s festivities. A video on Youtub was helpful. The “fix” in the video involved drilling a hole and inserting a screw to make sure a spring in the switch mechanism worked properly. I found that simply by removing some parts and reseating the spring, everything works better than when the machine was new. Now that I know what to do, it is a simple 10 minute event if needed again.
The nightmare scenario was thus avoided. You know the one. Take machine apart. Take plenty of pictures. Mess about with the innards. Put machine together while referring to the pictures. Yet some parts are left over that were in the machine initially. Nevertheless, the machine runs better than when new. What were those extra parts for?
Beware. Be very careful. I remember the Winnie the Pooh books and the Disney movies. Pooh Bear got his head stuck in a pot of honey once when doing precisely what Ollie was doing.
Light lunch for $45? Welcome to the tourist trap area. At least the food was good. It could be worse: Lew’s dreaded stadium food is of dubious quality and exceedingly high price.
Night noises. Alien mother ship? Nope. Space junk? Quite possibly. Ask Elon Musk if it belongs to some of his satellites. Apparently he has a ginormous armada of satellites all awaiting plummets to earth. Space junk, space force and space pants. Oh my.
I’ve heard of that mysterious “yen carry trade” before. All I know is this: bonds are boring but you get paid interest and get you principal back. Stocks, if you do things right, can make more money for you than bonds, but can also be disastrous. Trying to “arbitrage” among interest rates can often involve derivatives and other dubious and mysterious objects. Disasters are more prevalent and can be huge. Then there’s the cryptocurrency stuff that makes stocks look sedate and derivates safe. I’m sure someday soon somebody will devise a way to “insure” the “yen carry trade” via cryptocurrency-based derivatives tied to the value of the Altairian dollar. What could possibly go wrong?
The photo of the morning valley floor is wonderful. I miss views like that from my days romping through the woods in hunting season.
Looks like the kiwi harvest is progressing. And your other fruits. Our zucchini now has a lot of little zucchinis as well as a few that are nearing readiness to eat. The weather will be perfect for these for another 4 to 6 weeks. We might get a good haul.
On the water saving front. I keep coming up with more and more ideas. A pint here, a cup there adds up. Stale coffee, old tea gets added in. Occasional coffee grounds find their way into the water when cleaning the French Press filters. As this water gets poured onto dried plants, mostly thyme and some of the new dryland grasses, the small amounts of coffee grounds may be of longer term benefit.
Naturally, somebody asked me if giving coffee and grounds to plants would dehydrate the plants. My reply: “First, they can’t be any more dehydrated than they are now. Second, recent studies have shown that coffee and tea do NOT cause dehydration. Hmmmm, I’ll go brew me another coffee, rehydrate myself.”
The Princess loves watching the Olympics. The Olympics are over. The news cycle has already returned to “all election politics, all the time”. I’m keeping busy and ignoring the worst of the “noise”. I’m healthier when I ignore that stuff.
DJSpo
Hi Steve,
Oh, it was part of the water supply for the town of Bendigo, which you quite rightly suggest was established around the gold mines (some of which are still active today). Nowadays it’s got apparently 110,000 people living there. For an inland town down under, it’s quite large. Most towns and cities hug the coastline. Unsurprisingly, the reservoir is just on the other side of this mountain range (you may have noticed that it rains here from time to time!) The town still has some mining, but it’s also the commercial hub for that vast area.
Total respect for having read the book. It’s a fave of mine. But as you note, lessons not learned. Yeah, this is the world you get when mad cash is inflated into existence, sorry to say. The excess supply has to go somewhere to die otherwise none of us could afford food.
I absolutely agree with you, the bail out introduced moral hazard, but I’m real sorry to say, the Emperor wears no clothes. The bail out in many ways (at least to my perspective) was a reset of the game, and next bust will be even biggerer, and so it will go. You should see how the goobermint here is expanding each year.
I’ll be very interested to hear your thoughts on the book once you’ve completed it. The Big Short book has not aged one bit.
Man, you nailed that, and it was the central point, what can giveth, can be taken away-eth. The impositions on the Japanese were too great, and something broke, then waves of consequences spread outwards. Take it from me, you won’t enjoy the hordes.
Cheers
Chris
Hi DJ,
Please extend my birthday wishes to your lady. 🙂
Dude, I’m working on a theory that the six seasons revolve around the energy available from that big fusion reactor in the sky. An easy measuring stick for that energy is the ultraviolet radiation reading. It’s as good a measure as any on that spectrum. We’re now in ‘Moderate rated UV’, and the days are warmer and plants are not merely surviving, but growing. As you may have noticed, too much of that energy is a bad thing though. But now you’re on the other side and enjoying a mini-spring.
Is UV radiation even measured daily in your part of the world?
Alaska, the land of the near to midnight sun! Try Antarctica for even more extremes. 🙂 The other week I was speaking with a neighbour who scored a job down on that frozen continent. That’s why I was curious as to how your experience was like. The neighbour has worked there before, and mentioned that the doctors take special note of who is awake around the midnight hour, and send them packing off to bed under doctors orders. You may have noticed in Star Trek that the doctor fills a role one step below the captain?
Hehe! Sandra loves Scandinavian noir shows, and far out, you wouldn’t catch me hanging around the dark winters with such murderous behaviour. The first summer, I’d ship out with perhaps not the first, but a later Viking long ship. And I wouldn’t go back. 🙂 Your blood may have informed you differently, but I will say that you live in a sunnier winter climate these days! Hehe! Thanks for the laughs, I’ve had a long work day today.
I like your style with the trimmer repairs, and have also noted that machines are not always assembled well and with care. Hmm. I reckon your path is the preferred option until the mechanism proves otherwise. Hey, one of the mowers has a Honda GXV-160 engine and the coil was poorly installed originally. It’s a genuine motor too. A year ago we reset the ignition coil to the correct tolerances, but it’s time of abuse (overheating due to being poorly installed) was what caused it to fail. Replaced that failed coil last week, and the machine now works perfectly. Anywhoo, you’ve set the part back to where it should be, and see how it goes from here. At least you have a plan B in mind should the switch fail again.
Once Ollie removed his stuck head from the plastic honey bucket, he enjoyed a good washing with a wet sponge. Note that there is a significant difference between the term ‘wet’ and ‘damp’. Ollie offered the opinion that the cleaning sacrifice was worth the honey. Who are we to argue with such canine wisdom?
The food depicted left me feeling pre-emptive sugar headaches. Sorry to say, but I ain’t man enough for such heady delights. 😉
I’ve never met Elon, but he’s probably a good fit for my personality type, and we’d get along just fine. There does seem to be a lot of launches these days. In such moments, dunno about you, but I hear the echo of doubt which expresses itself as: “Hope you dudes know what you’re doing?” Now, that was once apparently spoken to people developing a local vehicle known as the Holden Sandman. Officially they were called ‘Panel Vans’ and had quite the surf cult following, although unofficially they were known as: “Shaggin’ Wagons”, although I have no idea what they were talking about. 😉
Ah yes, one does get their principal back, if the bond does not fail. Hmm. Whatever you do there is both acknowledged, and unacknowledged risk. A bit like the purported activities going on in the panel vans, whatever that may mean. But yeah, I agree, derivatives allow for both greater gains and greater losses. Oh my goodness, you’re delving into the world of abstractions there.
Thank you so much for saying that. It’s great to get out into the wilds and observe and be surrounded by the many moods of nature. Ah, the wonders of nature, huh?
They’ll grow fast those Triffid-esque plants. I’ll be very interested to hear how your season goes, but I agree with you: it’s a mini-spring, with underlying warmth. Perfect growing conditions. I’m coming around to the idea that the trick with the extreme heat is simply to stop the plants from dying, until you get where you are at now in the seasonal cycle. Dunno, it’s a theory.
You’re making that up, aren’t you? 🙂 Go on, did someone seriously ask that question about the plants drying up under that application? Whatever will they come up with next time. Oh my, so did all those folks with their coffee and tea wisdom have it wrong in regards to dehydration? Well, this is news. I always thought the claim sounded odd to me. Caffeine effects people differently, and I’ll tell ya what: I could go to sleep after a coffee – it sharpens the brain, but does not stay sleep in my case.
Very wise, and I tend to avoid such news too, although keep an eye on the trajectory of such matters. The divisions are less different than they may be claimed, and divisiveness is the goal in order to divide. It’s an old strategy, and hey, try and say that last sentence four times, at speed! 😉
Cheers
Chris
Hi Lewis,
Those were some uber cool Bond-esque bunkers. Hope the builders paid good attention to waterproofing. A complex and detailed job which is very easy to muck up. On the other hand, I would like a root cellar / cool room / fire refuge dug into the side of the hill. Not a bad idea.
A bit of contagion has struck the website, possibly a shared disease from Mr Greer’s website. For some reason artefecal untelligent comments are beginning to arrive in the in-box in numbers. For your interest, the computers are quite politely thanking me for my fitness videos. Last I checked, I hadn’t made any of those, that I know about! 🙂 I had this weird idle thought a few months ago that such computer mischief directed at vast scale could bring the interweb to a standstill.
Far out man, I needed an extra coffee this morning to focus my mind. Probably something to do with not having had an extended work break of longer than a week or so for more than six years now. Anywhoo, so I drove into the big smoke to work at a clients, and forgot to take the laptop. A bit of a Doh! moment really. Anyway, teh Editor sprang to the rescue and drove into the big smoke and dropped off the laptop. Everyone had a good laugh at my expense, me included. Note to self: Take a few weeks off paid work at the end of the year, and until then, slow down and focus + keep the coffee inputs up. 🙂
Hehe! Very funny, and a good argument could also be made that falling space junk is likewise not natural! 😉 And you’re right, I hadn’t thought of the ancient tree encounter as the third sign. Oooo. That’s top notch thinking.
I’d never been to the land of the buzz feeds before. Interesting, actually very interesting that sort of word is getting around. People will need the advice. And I’m so with you about the pizza, and would prefer to pay for a quality made pizza. Nuff said.
It’s taken a lot of years to develop trust with the magpies, and as this place gets more fertile, their family increases. It used to be only two birds back in the early days. Now the family is seven birds, and the sheer variety of birds is a bit unsettling when a person starts considering fruit harvests.
Hehe! Nah, that wind fallen trees is definitely what could be politely described as ‘the end of the line’. We’ll clean them up though.
I’ve read accounts of the historical six weeks of want, and frankly they scare the daylights out of me. Mind you, it’s taken a lot of years and much trial and error to work out what plants work here given the vagaries of the climate. Still, winters are less harsh here, but some summer days can be like 11 on the dial, just enough to remind a person that nature will do what she will. But, you’ve got that risk in other formats, like volcanoes and earthquakes. Same, same, but different.
Thanks! And we’re fast students, although I must say, producing videos is a complicated business. I re-watched some earlier clips from other folks I follow on utoob, and it was good to see their journeys as well.
What an awesome idea for a natural super hero. A huge wombat that can crush rocks and bore tunnels through solid granite. Cool. Makes you wonder what the nemesis of the character would be? And the kryptonite for that matter.
Yes, I am steering clear of lolly cakes, and appreciate your words of wisdom. Mind you, I’ve seen moulds those colours when a batch of apple cider vinegar was colonised by the local yeasts. They’re no good those yeasts.
Lewis, we’ve been a bit soft when it comes to hard pruning of the plants – and not to mention correct spacings. There’s been a bit of soul searching in relation to those matters, so I appreciate your words. Hey, good stuff, and isn’t it good getting a pat on the back from such folks? Interesting about the shaking of the tomatoes. I’ll give that a try, the pollinators are known to do similar activities but it’d never occurred to me to see how that works. Hmm.
Like you, I’m an orphan and likewise celebrate a noted degree of freedom on that familial front. 🙂 On the other hand, if they were warm and welcoming, I would have spent more time amongst them, but they weren’t! Oh well, play the hand you’ve been dealt.
Ah, of course, The Bard. I’d not previously heard of that colloquial appellation.
Lovely weather, and we’re catching up with you, although Friday looks set to knock off the early fruit tree blossoms. That’ll learn them! (whatever that means 😉 )
Do you reckon they’ll still be OK? Yikes! You’ve got a bit of freezer filling to go for this season. Does the four discovered bags suggest that your goals are perhaps too lofty?
Yum! Dried basil leaves are delightful smelling. Do they keep for long? Like you, I believe the tomatoes will ripen to a more red colour off the bush.
Is that fair the local city fair, or does it encompass a wider area. If you go, I’m sure it doesn’t need saying, but beware the snack food. Is it really such a good idea to suck back so much sugar? 🙂
Wouldn’t the dried cranberries be OK as is?
Ah, that’s how we roast pumpkin as well. It keeps in the fridge and is incorporated into meals in the days following the roasting. I discovered this year after the large harvest, that other people may be OK, but I cannot eat pumpkin in one variety or another daily for six continuous weeks. My guts began to ache. Ook! That stuff is very high in fibre. Backed off for a couple of days, and all is now well with the world again.
Last night I watched episode two of Clarkson’s farm and it is a truly wonderful show. Despite the comedy intentional and otherwise, it really highlights the complexities of farming. Oh yeah. A must watch if I may say so.
Cheers
Chris
Yo, Chris – I’m noticing more problems, with the Internet. Denial of service, hacking, etc.. A couple of weeks ago, I started getting a landslide of spam, in my main e-mail account. I check it, morning and evening, and there’s usually a dozen + that I have to delete. Pain in the … ear. I expect an escalation, as we move closer to the election. The whole thing could go kaboom. A highly scientific and technical term. 🙂
I resemble that. Disorganized and forgetful. Just assembling all the bits and pieces, to get out of the apartment, can be a challenge. I’ll know I’m in trouble, when I have to put a sticky note, on the inside of my door that says, “Pants?”
The Land of Buzz Feed can be stupid or a lot of nonsense. But occasionally, informative and useful. Things such as, 20 kitchen tips I wish I would have known. Hmmm. So it’s kind of like crowd sourced information. But, I’ve decided even a quality pizza, is too expensive. I’ll stick with making my own.
The high yesterday was 68F (20C). Overnight low was 54F. Forecast for today is 71F. More scattered clouds with frequent sun breaks. Coming up, this weekend is “Slight Chance of Rain.”
Once upon a time, you did have giant wombats. The Diprotodons. Their kryptonite? Probably, sunlight. Maybe. Or, hunters.
I picked another quart and a half of blueberries, last night. Off that same bush! They’re on trays in the freezer, and I’ll start consolidating bags. I think I’d like to get 18, really plump gallon bags. I had another serving of the cucumber salad, last night. Only one left to go. I cut up a couple of Oregon Spring tomatoes, to go on top. Tasty.
Once the basil leaves are dried, I keep them in an airtight, glass container. I’m using the last from last year. They’re still quit aromatic.
The county fair draws a lot of people. From surrounding counties, too. Back in 2022, 71,000 people, attended. If I went, I’d steer clear of the sweet stuff, but probably would be a sucker for the deep fried stuff. 🙂
I usually freeze up the pumpkin pulp, in one cup packets. Keeps pretty good for 6 months, or so.
I do hope Clarkson’s Farm becomes more available, here, on DVD. I noticed on my library record, that the new Mad Max movie, is in transit to me. I may be able to pick it up, tomorrow.
And, from the Wonderful World of Archaeology. A new find, in Pompeii. You may have seen it, as it seems to be hitting all the major news sites. Skeletons of a man and woman, in the house with the blue room.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/2-victims-ancient-pompeii-eruption-181750314.html?
Took shelter in a bedroom, clutching their bling. Fat lot of good it did them. Lew
Chris,
Amazingly, I looked up the local UV for today. Moderate, just like you. They do measure it here, which I suspected. Although we had mixed clouds and sun that may have reduced it from a slightly higher level. It was very pleasant today, not hot. Good air quality. The house is opened up with fans sucking fresh and cool air through. Highs circa 29C and lows below 15C provide what we always called “Good sleeping weather”.
I noticed that about the old Star Trek. Bones was almost as powerful as Kirk, and in some areas could overrule the erstwhile captain. The Princess had a relative that spent many years living in Point Barrow, Alaska. Far northern tip on the North Slope oil field. Two months or longer with NO sun. Two months or longer with NO dark. That would be brutal to me.
Hey, Spokane isn’t too bad in the winter, at least for length of daylight. Maybe 7.5 hours at the winter solstice. Well, if it isn’t cloudy! It’s the short days combined with several consecutive weeks of clouds, precipitation and fog that can be hard. Compared to the 4 hours or so of daylight in Fairbanks? Pure heaven here.
Killian’s human bought some contraption 2 months ago that also had some coils improperly installed. I wonder if that is a modern “feature” by many manufacturers?
Good on the WET rags to clean Ollie. But, ummm. I dunno about Australia, but hereabouts there are several companies that rent portable toilets. Big plastic thingies with a urinal that drains into a large reservoir that is under the toilet. One of the local companies is “Honey Bucket”. That’s all I could think of when you said that about Ollie’s head being stuck in the honey bucket. 😉
Food at the fair. Stadium food. Nasty stuff. Way back when I was about 8, a neighbor took a bunch of us little guys to the local stadium for the evening to watch 3 high school American football games. Hot dogs. Cotton candy. Other candy. Popcorn. More hot dogs. Midway through the second game, I was taken home with a bad belly ache.
I can see why the Sandman was renamed the “Shaggin’ Wagon”. No rear windows and behind the front seat easily blocked from view? All that’s missing is a surfboard or two on the top. Then it would fit in with some Beach Boys songs. Maybe their song “California Girls” could be rewritten “Shaggin’ Wagon” girls, as in “I wish they all could be Shaggin’ Wagon girls”…
Of course, the Beach Boys DID mention the Woody in at least one song. https://www.oldcustomcars.com/blog/the-woody-wagon-a-fascinating-ride-through-history
I came up with several short pieces of doggerel regarding “There’s always risks in a panel van, and always risks in a woody”, but, alas, beyond those beginning words, nothing is fit for a family friendly audience.
Ah yes, the wonders of Nature. Nature is good. The Reformed Druids of North America, founded as a joke/protest at Carleton College in the 1960s, had only 2 statements in their doctrine. The simplified version is “1. Nature is good. 2. Likewise, Nature is good.” When asked why they are “Reformed”, one early member is said to have deadpanned “We gave up ritual human sacrifice. And we pray to bushes also, not only trees.” Interestingly, in the first season of the MASH television show, an officer was “invented”, one Captain Tuttle. When concocting his fictitious personnel file, Hawkeye suggested that Tuttle’s religion be listed as “Druid, Reformed”. When Radar asked “Reformed?”, Hawkeye replied, “They pray at bushes too.” Somebody in the writing room or one of the actors was likely familiar with the Carleton College antics of less than a decade prior.
Yes, you caught me. Nobody asked me about coffee dehydrating grass. Although, and the Princess agrees, it IS the type of question my boss, the dumb one, would have asked in complete seriousness.
Yes, the dumb one. There’s an old phrase “You’re so dumb you can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.” One day when he and a friend were about to leave for a walk, I told the boss to get rid of his gum before walking, “because we all know that you can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.” When they returned to the office much later, the boss was very upset and his friend was laughing to the point of helplessness. The friend finally was able to say, “Yeah, we started walking and his gum just flew out of his mouth and his shoe walked right onto it. He spent the last 30 minutes trying to get it off his shoe.” I never observed that boss chewing gum ever again. And that IS a true story.
However, I have read recent studies that suggest that coffee and tea are NOT dehydrating liquids. Unless the coffee is hideously strong, most coffee is slightly rehydrating. Tea is even better, although not as rehydrating as water.
Yes, keep an eye on the events. Watch them closely? No. Obsess over them? Not a chance.
DJSpo
Hi DJ,
Curious minds want to know, are we using the same scale when it comes to measurement of UV radiation? Interesting that you’re now in Moderate ratings. If the seasonal tables were turned, we’d probably be in a High rating during the month of February, even with cloudy weather. But yes, your weather is now what I’d describe as almost perfect. Warm enough to grow plants, but not so warm that us humans cook and overheat – Huskies may of course hold differences of opinions in this matter. Has Dame Avalanche expressed any opinions in the matter?
Interestingly the old Star Trek followed a real world navy protocol there, but a bit of digging suggested that it would be an absolute last ditch option for the doctor to act so. i.e. when the court martial case is heard, the doctor would want to have a very, very good reason for having acted so. Mere politics might not cut it. Your doddery politicians would have been long since removed from the public sight based on the revolving leadership door down under model. 🙂 A number of leaders have stepped down for medical / mental health reasons over the years. No shame in that. Sometimes the politicians immediate family has err, lost the plot, and yeah, stepped down out of the spotlight. Ah well, the spectacle provides a source of continuing amusement for all of us.
Oh my! Only the staunchest souls from my perspective could endure two months of no sun, then alternatively two months of only sun. The majority of humans are perhaps not wired for such experiences, although natural selection would hone our species to adapt to the conditions.
Man, the times they’re a changin’. As that song suggested, although he may have been talking about something else altogether, maybe, actually I dunno what he was on about. Who did know? You wanna get freaked out? It’s the 14th August, like late winter, and at 9:30pm it’s 13’C outside right now and earlier today was 18’C. A really nice day. Yet, only a few years ago, that night temperature would have been a warm winters day. Hmm. Looking at the forecast for the immediate future, there’s absolutely no chance of snow. You may wonder why I’m super motivated to do all that recent forest clean up work? Probably not.
So, you’re 47’N latitude, and yeah 7.5 hours sunlight in winter is pretty good. At 37’S (but at 700m above sea level) on a south west facing slope (remember back to front in the south) we get a climate which is the equivalent of 44’S and so around the winter solstice you’ll get light from around 7:45am to about 5:00pm, which is good too. Winters are fine here as well, who knows what all the fuss is about?
Hehe! The improperly mounted ignition coil – and the motor was a genuine Honda GX160 – suggests to me that the quality control was possibly reduced to: does this assembled engine start up? The improperly aligned coil overheated and so died. The engine works beautifully now with a replacement coil. Honda still make great engines.
The ‘honey bucket’ is a hoot. Yes, Ollie was nose deep into the honey bucket, and the results needed cleaning. Dogs, huh? As an amusing side story, there is a business servicing this area for people with septic tanks which need emptying from time to time (not an issue with the more expensive worm farms, just sayin’). Anyway, the business name is: The Turd Burglar. Always brings a smile seeing that waste truck.
Oh yeah, your guts got cooked that day! 😉 That would have been problematic for you, but these sorts of things happen. You reminded me that when I was a kid I had a similar memorable experience when we went to a Chinese restaurant and I err, pigged out. So good, but the consequences. Going from the usual meal of lamb chop and three vegetables, to helpings of exotic food was probably a step too far for the youthful digestive tract. One must build up to these tasty events, and not dive in head first. Just thought I’d chuck in a sports nod. It seemed relevant! Dude, I couldn’t eat such a feed today as you enjoyed.
Oh, DJ, ignoring the obvious double entendre, proving that just like Fight Club, sometimes it all comes back to National Lampoon’s 1983 movie Vacation. A quote must here suffice: “You think you hate it now, but wait until you drive it.” – Ruben, the car salesman. Oh yeah, we be talkin’ about the 1983 Ford Wagon Queen Family Truckster. Who named that car? There was so much wrong with that film, but then that was the fun of it all don’t you reckon? For some reason the John Hughes movies resonated with my wacky sense of, I dunno. They just did.
The Reformed Druids of North America sound like my kind of people. A lot of loose units, and a whole bunch of creativity. If I may use the word, I’d say ‘Inspired’ would be an appropriate description. You know, my grandfather sent me to that more English than the English grammar school, and so we’d attend Anglican church services twice a week. For some reason not entirely known to me, the final year students (who I was a part of) began singing the many hymns in harmony, but at volume. To be honest, I found the experience to be quite stirring, like those English military choirs, but far out, did the headmaster crack the sads or what? After school detentions, well, there were a few. So how was he to be the arbiter of what the Anglican god would appreciate? Lead me to begin questioning.
You’re cheeky, and let’s just say that it takes one, to know one. Hmm. Thanks for the laughs.
Good to hear that your boss got rid of the habit of chewing gum. And refer to previous paragraph. One boss who I hated, I used to leave his car radio at full volume. Yes it is puerile, but it made me laugh. And he never said a word about it.
I try not to obsess about the events either, but I also try to slot incidents into a world view. Look it is very possible that none of the stuff going on makes much sense. That may be a feature. Oh yeah.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Lewis,
Do the bots have a right to a voice? It is beginning to become a problem for the interweb for all those reasons you mentioned, and just like your experience, every day I delete comments which clearly have electronic origins. When the bots are good enough to speak properly in public, then, and only then, should they have a voice. The comments I receive are stupid and even worse, they exhibit poor grammar, not to mention an incoherent structure. How hard is it to have a beginning, a middle, and an end to the expression of a narrative? If that’s the best they’ve got, progress is done for. 🙂
But I agree with you there, the escalation will increase, and hopefully we avoid the kaboom. It’s only a couple of months away, so what could possibly go wrong in that time? Ook! Hopefully the return on investment just isn’t there for the interweb annoyance factor, and the entire problem disappears due to unhealthy economics. The old timers use to quip: Hope springs infernal, or something like that. It may even be true.
It was such a nice day here today. 64’F, and even now past 10pm it’s still 54’F which is unseasonably warm. Anyway, we did paid work. Then made a decision to head down to the local soil supplier business and picked up a trailer load of compost. Good looking stuff, quite fine material, probably very carbon heavy. Mixed in the coffee grounds + wood ash + garden lime + blood and bone meal. Fertilised all of the five garden terraces. The sun was so nice too. Obviously, we’d had to start very early, and so we crashed out later in the day as the sun was going down. Then I did more paid work. No rest for the wicked, or the competent, or something like that. It’s good to have all of the garden beds now ready for the growing season.
Hehe! It happens, far out I so hear you. For some reason, I have to really concentrate on what is required to take with me, when heading out the door. Well exactly, one day Lewis, it may come to that sticky note pants? moment. Hopefully that is way off into the future. 🙂 Mornings are rarely clear and in focus, and yet societal expectations are that they should be. They could be wrong?
We had home made pizza tonight, and for your interest we had discussions along similar lines today. The Suzuki Swift dirt mouse is now five years old – where did the time go? At the current usage levels, it’ll probably get another five years, but at the end of the machines life, we’ll revert to one vehicle. You save costs where you do, and that was what was really interesting about that article. People are making choices about what is important to them, and what they can live without. A couple of years ago, few if anyone was even talking about such stuff, maybe?
And, we also had home made pizza for dinner this evening. It’s good stuff. Should do a video on that.
It’s uncanny, but your weather is about identical to the weather here today. Hmm. I will closely check that seasonal batten when you finally hand it over. There may be a claim made for damages and spoilage. 🙂
Of course, the Diprotodons. Yes, eaten as were many of the other megafauna species around the planet. As a species I observe that we accept limits when we have no other choice.
Holy carp! That’s an amazing haul of berries from that one bush. Are those the ones you mentioned which have been a bit sheltered from the summer sun? Best to have a few gallons extra up your sleeve so to speak. The other day I opened up an apricot bottle only to discover that the rubber ring had a minor leak and the contents just didn’t smell quite right. Good feed for the worms, and no point taking the chance.
I’ve never dried herbs before, and will give it a go this year. The basil is a great idea, and would not have occurred to me to do.
Hehe! I’d likewise avoid the sweet stuff, but rather than deep fried, thoughts of the flame grilled cheese and onion chilli kransky hot dogs are making me salivate. So good. That’s a big fair. As a comparison, the farm expo we usually attend runs over three days and gets apparently around 20,000 visitors. It seems busy enough to me.
The expo has what I impolitely sort of call ‘poop shops’ where there are tables of miscellaneous tools and all sorts of hardware knick-knacks for sale. Those stalls are great and it’s amazing what you find in them that you think to yourself: I definitely need one (or some) of these! They’re good fun, and you always learn stuff.
Ooo. I’d never considered freezing roast pumpkin chunks. They’d defrost well too I reckon. Hmm. Freezer space here is very tight. The stored pumpkins are beginning to return to a mooshy state. The fruit sort of implodes and presumably the water released gets the soaked seeds off good start for the season.
I believe that you will enjoy the series. And please do let me know what your thoughts are on the latest Mad Max instalment?
Not a good ending being trapped in that room, before then being eventually buried. I wonder if the folks had gone back to the house for the bling? Yes, sometimes known as escaping the lions den, only to head back to collect the forgotten hat!
Cheers
Chris
Yo, Chris – It’s pretty clear that a lot of the junk that comes over the internet, is from foreign climes. Some “creators” obviously speak English as a second language. And not very well. There can be some real howlers. Amusing, but not amusing enough to offset the irritation. Somewhere I read that sending out all that dreck costs fractions of pennies. The theory is, throw enough spaghetti against the wall, and some of it will stick.
Ah! All has been made clear, as far as very scientific and technical terms. I was attempting to reference “blooey”, instead of “kaboom.” Couldn’t find the right spelling, until this morning, when I got onto “kablooey.” Now that that’s all sorted … 🙂
Yesterday’s high was 68F (20C). Overnight low was 52F. Forecast for today is for 78F. Prof. Mass has a ominous post, that we could get a lot of rain, next week. First autumn rains? I think a lot of the garden may not make it, this year. The long range forecasts are sort of useless. Predicting a “colder and wetter winter.” How cold? Feet of snow? How wet? Massive floods? Someone told me the other day, I was future tripping. Hard not to.
That sounds like a really good feed, for your terraces. We still have a small pile of the “garden soil”, that had way too many wood chips in it. Maybe if I add some of your mixture to it, and let it set all winter, it might be useable.
Yes, the article seemed to indicate that some people, are sorting out their wants and needs. And finding they didn’t need the wants in the first place. And, that in some cases, quality of life is better. Much to the chagrin of some companies and industries. Saw this, yesterday.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/13/investing/home-depot-earnings-housing
These folks are the one’s I’m usually referring to, when I mention a big box hardware store. They have an outpost, here.
I’d never trigged to it, before, but our fair is called the “Southwest Washington Fair.” Although, all the surrounding counties, have their own county fairs. And then there’s the state fair. There’s concerts and shows, a two day rodeo, monster trucks (?), and lots of etc., and more etc.. 🙂 Back in the day, the concerts were usually real headline acts. Johnny Cash, ZZ Top, what was left of The Beach Boys. Now, I’m sure due to costs, bands and singers I’ve never heard of. All boils down to expenses, I suppose.
Every year has a theme. This year’s theme is “Red, White and Moo.”
I don’t freeze chunks, of pumpkin. I freeze the mash. Put it in quart bags and squeeze out as much air, as possible.
I watched the Amy Winehouse, film bio, last night. “Back to Black.” So talented. So sad. Joined the 27 Club. Paparazzi should be taken out and shot. Put down like mad dogs.
I finished reading “Fall of Civilizations: Stories of Greatness and Decline,” (Cooper, 2024). In the epilogue, he thinks we’re going down, and it’s mostly climate change that’s going to do it. He mentioned a climate event, I had never heard of … the 4.2 kiloyear event.
https://w.wiki/Auw3
Maybe it’s not too well known, as that’s not really a catchy title. 🙂 Lew
Hi Chris,
Only time to skim the comments here. Last week Cecily had surgery on her thumb which she injured in a fall – had to reattach a ligament. She also moved out of her house on Monday. Hard to pack with one hand so much help was recruited. I was there on two different occasions last week. Needless to say things continue to get behind here but at least it has continued to rain regularly so not much watering has been needed.
If Salve had been there she could have cleaned Ollie’s head. She used to clean Leo’s on a regular basis after dinner when he had cleaned up a pan. She did a very thorough job.
The medical facility where Cecily had her surgery was like an assembly line. The patient came in was met by a nurse and escorted back to one of the rooms. I had to give my cellphone number so they could text updates. The patient has no one with them while they wait or in recovery which is usually the case. Cecily’s surgery was delayed by an hour. Afterwards a nurse came out to give me the instructions and then I received a text when she was on her way to the discharge door. At least the doctor spent time with her and was very accessible in the days following for questions. Another example of our fine medical system. Oh yeah, there was no water or coffee for those waiting. My granddaughter and I were there for 3 1/2 hours.
Been freezing lots of beans and raspberries.
Today was my last visit to the bluebird trail. The mosquitoes were better but I still needed to wear my net insect clothes. Here at home our 3rd clutch of bluebirds have fledged.
Margaret
@Lew
Between trips to Cecily’s house this week which takes about 2.5 hours each way, Doug and I took advantage of senior free day to go to our county fair. I pretty much avoid the food except ice cream. However this time there was a Korean BBQ food truck so I tried that. It was OK but too salty but a better choice than the usual fare.
Walking through the animal barns brings back memories of our daughter, Carla’s 4H days and the overnights we both spent chaperoning the kids who slept over with their animals.
We did enjoy the draft horse show. When Doug was in college he worked for a farmer who raised 300 pigs and draft horses. They used to show them at the Wisconsin and Minnesota state fairs – even had six horse hitches.
Margaret
Chris,
Dame Avalanche has been enjoying the cooler weather. She has much more energy and tells me to make sure it’s never that hot again.
For some reason, there is a stigma about mental health in this country. Mental health issues are often viewed as weaknesses. It is unheard of for the politicos to step down due to mental issues, much less to acknowledge that they have any. As far as stepping down because of age? Americans think that age 50 is no different than 30. And 70 is the same as 50. So the doddering “leader” has barely achieved middle age in that way of thinking and is far too young to step down. Plus, all of the many decades of experience, well, ego steps in also.
Oh the reasons for your forest clean up were very evident. Warmer winters are conducive to greater chance of wildfire. Which you know better than most. UGG. I’d be cleaning up the forest too.
Many years ago my sister and I made a surprise visit to our uncle near Los Angeles. All of uncle’s children and grandchildren were going to be there, too. It was in late May. Although the weather was cloudy with a light breeze the evening of our visit, I found the 20C temperature to be perfect, so I sat outdoors in my shirtsleeves. (And pants and shoes.) Most of our cousins remained indoors or else wore heavy sweaters or jackets outside. One of the cousins of my generation asked how I could stand being outdoors in the cold. I replied, “You folks in Southern California are spoiled. The rest of the country experiences something you don’t have: winter. This is very nice May weather for Spokane.” There was no reply.
The Turd Burglar? Brilliant name. The Princess exclaimed, “So cute!” I grew up near the regional sewage treatment plant, aka the Turd Mill.
One question about your pigging out at the Chinese restaurant. Did you eat things like sweet and sour pork, pork fried rice, pork chow mein? That would be “pigging out”. If, however, you had eaten almond chicken, chicken fried rice and chicken chow mein, I would posit that you had “chickened out”.
The first weekend of September, Spokane hosts a big bash for 5 days in big Riverfront Park downtown along the river. Bands are involved, live music. Many local restaurants set up booths and have a limited menu. It once was very reasonably priced with decent portion sizes. We quit attending many years ago as the portion sizes shrank at the same rate the prices increased. The name of this annual event? Pig Out in the Park. I always wanted to let a wild boar loose in the park during the festivities, then there would be a true pig out in the park. 😉
Those National Lampoon movies were different. The funny parts were beyond funny. The name of the car? It almost sounds like the writers couldn’t decide what to name it. So they put random words on the wall and each writer threw a dart, the name of the car consisting of words thus struck by darts. That’s my guess.
“So how was he to be the arbiter of what the Anglican god would appreciate? Lead me to begin questioning.” Sounds like a good place to start thinking and questioning and investigating. One of my catalysts was when I would see mention of Pelagius and Pelagianism in historical novels about the late Roman and Arthurian times in Britain. Running into the basement to check out the family Encyclopedia Britannica on the subject, I found that Pelagianism sounded a lot better to my mind than did standard dogma. When I heard that the opponent of Pelagius had political connections in Rome and was allegedly handsome, whereas Pelagius was a Briton, ugly, whose Latin was spoken poorly, well, further thought and inquiry were required.
Cheeky? Me? Killian’s owner refers to me, often, as “You smartass!” to which I always reply, “At least part of me is smart!”
We had 2 pool cars in the car park near the office. One high level dude always used the same one. And always left the radio volume up a bit too loud, the radio tuned to an obnoxious politics radio station. Whenever I used that car, I made sure that I left the radio tuned to a hard rock station with the volume turned up to “11”.
DJSpo
Hi Margaret,
Thanks for taking the time to drop by and say hello. Oh my, you hadn’t mentioned Cecily’s thumb injury before, but a torn ligament is an horrendous injury. Hope your daughter is rapidly recovering from the surgery. Oh yes, not possible to do much moving, packing and lifting with such an injury. Is it my imagination or you’ve been involved with two moves in recent times (the other being the bookshop)? No rest for the competent.
Go Salve, and her services would have been appreciated by Ollie. Sometimes Ruby cleans Ollie’s ears and I just wish that she’d be more gentle. An old boss dog used to vigorously clean all of the other dogs, and there were times I was mildly worried that their eyeballs were not injured. Still, my worries were unfounded and I’m sure Salve knew her business.
Candidly, your medical system kind of scares me, but hey, at least it sounds as if the injury was properly attended to. Best wishes for a speedy recovery for Cecily. On the other hand you reminded me of a story from the big corporate world many years ago. The company kitchen used to keep a supply of biscuits. So good. One day, the cream filled biscuits disappeared from the supply and I casually joked that the hard times were coming. Except that it wasn’t so funny. In 3 1/2 hours a person needs to drink some water, at least. Is it that too much to ask for? Possibly so.
Yum! I’d never froze beans before. We tend to dry them instead. What sort of varieties were you growing? Fresh raspberries are one of natures true delights! 🙂
Respect for your work on the bluebird trail, but it’s hard for me to ignore that your more local efforts with the birds yielded better results.
It’s been unseasonably warm the past few days, but that looks set to change tomorrow – with thunderstorms. Should be interesting… And the poor almond trees have set early blossoms. Oh well, maybe next year.
Cheers
Chris
Hi DJ,
Oh no! Expectation management is a thing, but would a husky appreciate such loose talk? Hopefully she will forget her demands when the first flakes of winter snow fall from the sky. Possibly she may then expect some caribou or reindeer – you were warned.
That stigma is also part of this country’s culture, although I did note that one of the undocumented side benefits of the period of time where that-which-shall-not-be-named was causing mayhem, the taboo on the subject of mental health was weakened. Nowadays people do talk about such issues, and they’re surprisingly common within the community. Thanks for the laughs, but my age has a 5 in front of it, and I couldn’t do those jobs. Far out! There’d be so many gulags, and then everyone would get really upset, then complaints would abruptly cease. I dunno, perhaps it is not a job for I? 😉 Actually, I was a pretty good boss who mucked in with the team, and people were genuinely upset when I decided to move on. However, I had no desire to burnout over a job.
Ugg indeed! What’s really odd about the forest clean up work is that it looks good too, and there’s an extraordinary amount of wildlife here. It’s very possible to concentrate life energy, and that accelerates the cycle of the entire system. Western culture tends to want to capture all of that energy for it’s own purposes, and the problem with harvesting most of it, is that the state of the system keeps getting reset to a lower level. There are other and better ways to approach the matter. Hope that all makes sense? Incidentally, the past week has been unseasonably warm, and that is set to change tomorrow with thunderstorms and rain over the following week.
Your southern Californian experience is known down under. Folks from this more southerly part sometimes travel north into Queensland during the winter months. The locals are as you described, but the southerners are walking around in shorts and t-shirts!
The Turd Burglar truck also has a cartoon character painted on the side. The eyes of the cartoon character are obscured by a villainous mask of sorts, but with a cheeky grin. And yeah, the place you mentioned is such a place where some excrement goes. The worm farm gets the minerals back into the soil, and that I believe is where such things are best returned to.
As an amusing side story, the word Borrie became synonymous with that of the humble turd. It was a local colloquialism because of an early civil engineer. There’s even an internationally important bird wetland lake so named as part of the sewage system: Lake Borrie Wetlands. It’s mostly closed to the public.
Hehe! Probably both pork and chicken. Encountering such rich food at an early age made a lasting impression. 🙂 Dunno about your experience, but when I was a kid, lamb was the usual meat. Beef was rarely if ever seen, and pork would only ever arrive via a Christmas leg of ham – and that treat would be extended as long as possible. Even the fat was a very tasty treat.
You’d be the number one public nuisance for letting a razorback loose in such a festival, just sayin! What mayhem (and possibly goring) would ensue. You’d never hear the end of it. I don’t mind festivals, but always hope that there are enough toilet facilities. It’s not always the case you know.
DJ, I’m totally gutted. I’d not realised that the hated vehicle with a dead Aunt Edna on the roof (wrapped in black plastic) was a totally fictitious model based on a real 1979 Ford station wagon which was so 70’s, it hurt. Who wouldn’t love the fake wood panels? I believe that as someone like yourself who crafts wood into noble forms would appreciate the touch. No? Oh well.
Like you, I tend to agree with Pelagius and his teachings. I’m just not into self loathing as a lens through which the world can be viewed. However, history shows how all that worked out.
Yes, always wise to have someone point out where our brains reside. 🙂 For all I know, it may be true. And think on this: They do say that the gut is the body’s second brain.
Hehe! Man, I so hear you. 11 was the correct setting on that particular dial. If the guy wasn’t such a, well you know what my grandfather would have called him, I’d never have considered pulling that car radio trick on him in the first place. The old Klingon saying of ‘revenge is a dish best served cold’ seems kind of appropriate here. 😉
Cheers
Chris
Hi Lewis,
Oh yeah, you’re not wrong about the poor grammar and unfortunate spelling. And as you noted, there are some serious howlers. A friend suggested to me that such details were part of the overall scam, for if someone was easily fooled by such words, then who knows where that could lead. Possibly true. But they are irritating, and I’d heard of (but not directly known) people who’d been taken in by the likes of the Nigerian oil scam. It’s so weird hearing those stories, but the sheer sweep and extent of the scams must net some returns from time to time. And if the cost is only pennies, that’s a pretty decent return on investment.
Well, that’s a new term: ‘blooey’, as in something going awry. Never heard that before, but it is a bit close to the Australian term: ‘bluey’, which is a reference to a ‘Blue Heeler’ breed of dogs, as well as a popular animated television show with a dog of the same breed. Never watched it. Kablooey sounds like a massive sneeze, you know the sort. You’ve just inhaled a large quantity of dust and the sun is shining strongly. Your eyes accidentally look towards that big ball of sunlight and suddenly bam: Kablooey! Snot everywhere. All very unfortunate and socially unacceptable these days.
It looks like most of the forecast precipitation is heading north of you, although you won’t be spared! Always fun, and the warmer days are done for you for the immediate future. I’d never heard of a ‘closed low’ before. Is that a new term?
The brief warm spell here is finishing tomorrow with thunderstorms and cooler and wetter weather for the next week or so. I’d been enjoying the warmer weather, and today we took the day off any and all work and went for a walk in a nearby forest reserve. We had the place to ourselves. Had lunch there too. A nearby bakery provided some tasty chicken and salad rolls and an apple cake was enjoyed. Had a nap later in the day, and it’s good to take time out to recharge the batteries. With the forecast rain, we’ll be stuck inside and working tomorrow. It’s nice to have a bit of flexibility.
It’s hard to really know with the longer term forecasts. I tend to view them as providing a rough guidance rather than a specific reflection of the day to day conditions. With the rain forecasts down here, the accuracy only really improves as the day gets closer.
Man, I don’t even know what is meant by the term: ‘future tripping’. It could mean anything, from visions supplied by err, somewhat dubious substances, to the boring prophet. Yes, that one. Here’s an example: And so in perhaps five days, no maybe four days hence, Lewis will be looking for lost items, some of which may never be found. He will look in certain places, perhaps behind the couch. Questions shall be asked of certain persons. Then Lo! Yes, a lost item will be found, but then at that moment, the noble companion, I believe the name may be H, no, yes, whatever. Yes, it’s coming clear. H will dart between the lost object and Lewis, and there will be a brief altercation, and some rather rude language will be used! Now that could also be the definition of future trippin! 😉 Perhaps the matter need be clarified? Yeah, it is hard not to do so, there are a lot of crows circling the skies right now.
If the forecast rain held off tomorrow (an unlikely possibility), I was thinking of chucking a trailer load of rock crusher dust as fertiliser onto the garden beds on the terraces. Maybe next week now. The material is a granite known as bluestone. Oh yeah, wood chips will break down, just like sawdust will, it just needs time, or the other stuff we chucked on. Regular additions of the home made nitrogen fertiliser would help as well too. 😉 Remember not to upset the other inmates on that front. The ladies will definitely not forgive you and won’t listen to excuses if you’re caught.
Thanks for the link to the article. That was good, and such things happen. Was the median national house price in the article correct? That’s getting as bad as here.
Truthfully, I kind of like the dominant big box store hardware which is down under. Man, I feel so guilty, but that’s my dirty little secret.
I must say, I never expected one of the stores to host a rave, but the line up looks pretty good to me: Bunnings confirm rave location, date and lineup…but with a twist. Whatever will they think of next, and it’s for a good cause.
Now those would be some good bands to see you listed. 🙂 The music business is a tough gig these days. Merch sales and touring performance fees seems to be how a headline band survives economically. The support acts will probably cost them to play. I get the impression that streaming services don’t pay all that well for most bands.
That’s a fun theme, and who knows what craziness will eventuate.
Hmm, yes the 27 club is a thing. Amy was a talented voice, no doubts about it.
Wasn’t that the climactic event which sent the Sea Peoples on a rampage through the Mediterranean? A stable climate is a thing to be cherished, but alas that won’t be the case this time around. How could it be? And yeah, it is a pretty poorly named title. 🙂
Cheers
Chris
@ Margaret – Sounds like our county fair. According to reports. I’ve been her since the early 80s, and have never been. Too many people. Of course, in the early 70s, I lived in Orange County California, and never went to Disneyland. 🙂 Lew
Yo, Chris – I cleaned 22 spam messages, out of my in-box, last night. And 16, this morning. 🙁
I must have missed that. “Closed low.” Do I really need to know what it’s all about? 🙂 Yesterdays high was 77F (25C). Didn’t feel that warm. Overnight low was 54F. Forecast for today is 74F. Might get some rain on Saturday, day after tomorrow. We might have an early fall, but so far, it hasn’t started smelling like fall.
I worked a bit, in the garden, last night. I picked all the cherry tomatoes, that were ripe. Not enough for a dehydrator full, so, they’re in the fridge. I’ll pick everything ripe, the night before the rain. So they don’t split. I did some weeding. Buried kitchen scraps. Watered.
When I took H for a walk in the late afternoon, I was surprised that the sprinkler system, was on. It’s a night time thing. I saw the Night Manager later, and all was revealed. A transformer blew out on a power pole, and 1/3 the building lost power. Fried squirrel? I was in the lucky 2/3, so I didn’t notice. So, the irrigation is working, just at odd times. I dropped a couple of e-mails to the Master Gardeners, but I’d guess they’ll let it ride, until Monday. All wound up in the fair.
LOL. Re: Future tripping. You’re over thinking it. Future Tripping: “The act of spending time thinking and worrying about things in the future that haven’t happened, you can’t control, and may not even happen.”
That’s probably a fairly accurate median house price. From what I hear. Although, you know what Mark Twain said about statistics. 🙂
That’s interesting about the rave. Although the fellow who wrote “Subculture Vulture” would be appalled. He organized raves in the early days, and got out when he thought they were getting less spontaneous, and more commercial. Which this one seems to be. Although, it’s certainly for a good cause. I saw an article last night, that Burning Man has fallen on sort of hard times. Tickets used to sell out, instantly. This year, there’s still several thousand available. Several possible reasons were mentioned. You Know What, the year of heat, the year of mud. General economic insecurity.
I saw a list the other night, of cities that will not be able to host the 2050 Olympics, due to high temperatures. There’s a lot of them.
And now for something completely different! I started a new book, last night. “The Bluestockings: A History of the First Women’s Movement.” (Gibson, 2024). I’d heard the term, and had a vague idea that they were women of a more intellectual and artistic bent, back in the day. As in, the 18th century. It’s pretty interesting. At the time, education for women was discouraged, as it would make them unmarriagable and might even affect their reproductive capabilities. It’s pretty interesting.
I suppose you’ve heard, that Banksy works, have been popping up all over London. Zoo animals.
One of the articles I read about the two skeletons found in Pompeii, is that it was an older woman and younger man. Mother and son? Wealthy lady and her slave boy toy? Quit a few years ago, they excavated the gladiator barracks. They found several males, and one female. Judging from her bling, a very wealthy upper class lady. One wonders what the story was, there. Of course, it may have all been very innocent. Might have just been passing by, and took shelter from the pumice rain.
And, I was surprised to see this article, yesterday. About the Portland, Oregon airport. PDX. Architecture doesn’t have to be ugly.
https://www.cnn.com/travel/pdx-portland-oregon-airport-terminal-renovation-reopening
We’re half way between Seattle and Portland. Sometimes, people have a choice as to which airport to use. According to reports, Portland is preferred. A lot easier to access and navigate. Lew
Chris,
Dame Avalanche has high expectations. She thinks the sky is made of liverwurst that will fall from the sky, land at her feet for her to eat. I have no idea how she got that idea. 😉 Having her own personalized caribou to gnaw on through the winter would be something she would find to be a natural outcome of life. I’m trying very hard to keep her from reading your caribou suggestion. 😉
Yeah, your forest cleanup and western harvesting ideas continually resetting the level lower? Makes perfect sense to me, very clear.
Shorts and t-shirts in winter. When in Las Cruces, one of the other guys in my program was from nearby Mullan, Idaho. He and I were both observed wandering campus in January wearing t-shirts and shorts. Felt like late March weather to us. A third guy also lived on Interstate 90, the big highway across the northern USA. He was from Erie, Pennsylvania. He would join the t-shirt and shorts parade in January sometimes.
Then some wag accused us of being Canadians “because we talk funny.” He was from Oklahoma, so we quickly pointed out that he “talks funny because you’re from Texas”, a statement that could start a deadly feud in Oklahoma. He had a good laugh at that. He had to. Mullan Man was huge and often carried a double bit axe to off campus parties. He would throw the thing at a tree from 10 meters, stick it in the tree. Never missed, but it scared a lot of people.
Lake Borrie looks interesting. The birds must enjoy it. I wouldn’t want to go fishing there, however, due to the sewage nature of the place. Nameless things caught in such waters are commonly called “Brooklyn Browns”. Don’t bite into one. 😉
We were beef people. Chicken. Occasional lamb. Then dad went on a total health food kick when I was 11 or 12. Overnight vegetarians. Poor mom didn’t even get a chance to try things out, to experiment, to ease us into it. I like to have starved to death! Said experiment didn’t last more than a few months.
The Princess had much the same reaction that you did about my wild boar idea. My reply to her was a sulky “I never get to have any fun.” There’s always a barbecue restaurant or two featured at that festival. I always thought that totally fresh pork would be welcomed by them.
Our neighbors growing up in Spokane had a woody station wagon. Those fake wood panels? They looked really fake in person. I never said anything to the neighbors about that, however. Their mom could be very gruff. Most of the children in the neighborhood were scared of her. The reality is that she was a very nice lady, but the gruff exterior served her well. No visiting kids misbehaved at her house.
You got one my preferences for Pelagius right off. Life is too short to spend any time wallowing in self loathing. I spent a lot of time privately musing about the events surrounding Pelagius and his ideas. As I said, it became a catalyst to move on. Eventually.
The gut. The brain. I tells ya, whenever I have had a strong gut feeling about something only to ignore it? Disaster every time. Disaster because something didn’t get done? Sometimes. Disaster because I did something utterly stupid? Often. Sometimes that second brain figures things out before the brain in the head even starts to engage.
Today was Lunch Date Thursday. Chicken enchiladas in green sauce today. Yummy. I could eat that meal daily.
DJSpo
Hi DJ,
Man, I hear they use a liver pâté in the production of the most tasty pork rolls: The Bahn Mi. Hope Dame Avalanche was not reading over your shoulder? Dude, some dogs are kitchen dogs, and they know every single sound and can smell liverwurst from 500m away. It’s only a problem if supplies are limited! 😉 Well yes, did you know your city has another name? No? I heard that Spokane was known as the city where Caribou were nervous, although I have no idea what all that means. Ask Dame Avalanche, she knows. Juicy hind legs to chew upon.
Yeah, good to hear. It’s a system which is kind of a cycle where there are a lot of complicated interactions. If you blink for a second with such a system, you may forget that Dinky was tied to the bumper of the Griswalds car, and kept up, for a bit.
Ha! That’s funny, but yes Erie, Pennsylvania would produce some wickedly cold winters. Years ago I recall a hot summers day where Sandra and I were reclining at our leisure over an iced coffee at the local General Store in the shade. In a moment of weakness, not to mention general concern for the welfare of some tourists who were from the UK (very pale plus the accent was a dead give away) I made the friendly suggestion that they might want to maybe avoid the mid afternoon sun for a little while until they adapted to the local conditions. The funny thing about heat exhaustion is that some folks get a little bit ‘ratty’, but those folks just looked a little shell shocked by the suns intensity. A wonderful learning experience for them.
DJ, your Oklahoma friend was super naughty, but I thoroughly enjoyed your retort. Honestly, I have to fess up here, the Canadian folks I’ve known are really lovely people, but then I just get a little bit mischievous from time to time and chuck in casual mentions which suggest they’re from the US. And they’re so lovely they keep correcting me. To be honest, I have nothing but nice things to say about either country. It’s a bit like the Australian / New Zealand rivalry. With kiwi friends, if the country had produced a good rock band, just for giggles I’d make the suggestion that they were a great Australian band. Have to laugh, a kiwi friend once told me that Australia is often in the New Zealand news, yet we don’t really hear a lot about the goings on over there. The same is true of your country, we hear a lot in our news about the US and politics, and I doubt very much you’d even get the most minor mention of events down under. All part of life. However, you’re missing out on snake, crocodile and shark breaking news…
Mullan Man was probably a great warrior in a past life. 😉
Ha! I wouldn’t go fishing there either, but perhaps the birds are less fussy than you and I? I do see plenty of birds consuming the dog poop, although the dogs here enjoy a most excellent diet. Very occasionally that water authority will do very limited tours of the internationally renowned wetland habitat.
That’s not good at all. It takes a lot of skill to produce and consume a vegetarian diet. Not something your suddenly put-upon mother could have gotten on top of in a day. Dude, it’s taken years of trial and error to produce food that visitors wouldn’t immediately reject out of hand, let alone recognise as vegetarian. Far out, your dad moved fast with that sudden change. However, in a world of economic decline, it’s not a bad idea to know how to produce tasty vegetarian meals.
And things are done a bit different to the west and south of you: Forgetting Sarah Marshall – Pig Scene. One of my favourite films. True. The festival folks have no sense of adventure. And I’ve consumed freshly roasted pork, and oh my it’s good. A friend raised the pigs, so they’d eaten well.
Some people use that gruff trick. Respect. In the grammar school, the accounting teacher was a gruff old bloke. It was all an act to keep us kids in line, and it worked. Hides a decent soul that trick.
Exactly. Dogma is good and all, but does it fit? Hey, some people find comfort in dogma, but it’s not for everyone and I find no comfort in such world views.
That’s been my experience too with gut feelings. Mostly I sleep well, excluding the occasional earthquake – hard to ignore those things. But sometimes during the night my brain processes away on events, and in the wee hours of the morning the answer will pop into my consciousness. What to do with the new knowledge or insight then takes a bit of time to consider, then back to sleep. No point wearing your brain out… 🙂 But mostly if either the gut or brain is working on a problem, well it may indeed be a problem. It’s a theory…
Oh yummo! And respect. Your day was a much more enjoyable experience. They’re shutting down the 3G cell phone network over the next few weeks, and so Sandra and I spent five hours cleaning up the old phone and then reinstalling everything on the new phone. Are these older things even recyclable? You’ll like this (and I may have mentioned this before but it’s worth repeating) the old phone was the Cat S41 model, and then new one is the S42. Clearly it must be better, the numbers suggest as much. 🙂
Cheers
Chris
Hi Lewis,
Some people are just popular with the spambots. I’m envious and only had six of the things to delete today, not that it is a competition. 😉 You’d hope the things get bored sooner or later? Imagine the energy being consumed somewhere so as to transmit stupid spam emails to either of us. It seems awfully wasteful.
Yes, but did the ‘Closed Low’ miss you? Actually there is probably no need to know the finer details of the weather event. Will it rain or not, is all I really want to know. As to that, this morning a thunderstorm and torrential downpour woke me before the alarm went off. I’d had plans to sleep in, but that wasn’t going to happen given the conditions. The rain was quite heavy, and then it dried up to a cloudy day. It was all going well until just after dark another thunderstorm hit. I was thinking about your warning as I was out in the heavy rain holding an umbrella whilst cleaning the water tank inlet filters out. It hasn’t rained that heavily for months, so we must be in spring now, and tonight the rain was heavy enough to clean out any and all gunk in the pipes which direct water from the roof into the tanks. A job that needs doing because the inlet filters blocked up and water was going everywhere, except for in the tanks. The water tanks are near to being full.
You can smell the change in the air, I absolutely agree with you. The first rhodie flowers opened a few days ago, and the air this week smells differently to that of the week before.
Don’t cherry tomatoes have the best taste? I don’t reckon other tomatoes beat them on a flavour front. Ouch. The rain does tend to make tomatoes split, but as long as they don’t mould, the wounds on the fruit heal over, or at least that’s been my experience.
Lucky you to have dodged the power outage. It’s kind of good with electrical systems that everything is not on the same circuit. An unfortunate event for the squirrel I’d have to suggest. Oh well. Hope they do well at the fair.
Probably so, and thanks for the definition. Hmm. I dunno, is it such a bad thing to have in place a plan B, or C just in case of unanticipated interruptions to the more usually expected day to day rituals? I tend to believe that the future will be easier on the folks who are flexible and have considered a response to some possible future scenarios. I guess everyone is different, but I’ve had the world fall out from under me back in 1992 during the recession we had to have when I was made redundant from what I thought was a secure job and unemployment was at 10%. So having experienced that first hand, it’s not a hard mental leap to consider that such bad times can happen again. Candidly I wonder why other folks seem unconcerned? Although at the time Gen Xers got hit harder than their peers being the last into the work force, they were often the first out. Still, we lot learned how to have fun, on the cheap. Hard times, but I equally recall plenty of fun stuff going on back then. It wasn’t all bad, and I’ve mentioned to you in the past the 11pm Tuesday night Next Gen Star Trek episodes where a whole bunch of people (I had friends living across the road) would lob over to my flat and we’d watch the latest episode with the stereo cranking. Good times, but I was the only one with a working colour television.
Glad to see you enjoyed my future trippin silliness of yesterday. It was fun to write that with Monty Python providing the inspiration.
Clubs probably do things pretty tough in these economic times. Drinks would be expensive (I’d imagine) and patrons would either pre-load, or imbibe chemicals which the club hopefully isn’t selling. They’ve gotta make money somehow so there’d be a door fee. Illegal raves probably were already in enough trouble that they got a cut of the err, stuff sold. An exciting life, until the place is shut down. The Burning Man festival probably is exposed to the same economic winds as the rest of us. For your interest, I hear that festivals down under are having a tough time of it economically as well. Quite a few of the long running ones haven’t returned this year. Hmm.
Oh yeah, can you imagine running a marathon in say Las Vegas during the peak of the summer heat? It’d be like a survivor event – who will make the finishing line?
A brave and audacious move for the 18th century. I’d never heard of the movement. Yes, clearly the folks of that time held some funny ideas. Had to laugh, the thought of being married to a woman who I couldn’t converse with, expressed no thoughts whatsoever, and was solely interested in child rearing – dude that combination totally frightens me. Just say no. 😉 Is the book a good read?
Yup, Banksy is always mentioned in the local news, and I’d seen the photos of the cheeky art work. Good stuff.
I finally faced up to an issue that had been bothering me for a while. Yeah, tonight I’m total 100% large and in charge. Yup. Swapped over the still working 3G phone today for the replacement 4G phone. I mentioned it a while back that the 3G cell network is being shut down at the end of this month (although they’ve very recently had to extend the deadline for two months). Anyway, it galls me to have to replace a perfectly working four and a half year old phone (and I was whingey when I bought that thing due to lack of any other workable options, which you may recall). Frankly speaking, I wonder if the old yet still working phones are even recycled – I doubt it. Anyway, so I manned up and spent five hours setting up the new phones (the Editor had to have hers replaced as well). Between the two of us, that’s ten combined hours that we weren’t earning mad cash, and yet had to do. Hmm. Not a fan of this being backed into a technological no-choice corner. It’s done now and I feel my whinge is complete.
I guess we’ll never know, but given the two skeletons were found in the bedroom, I’d say that was suggestive, but obviously not conclusive as to the arrangements. You’d imagine that after a while, the residents knew that all of their options had run out.
The trees, natural life and timber ceiling moulds were a nice touch. It is a good effort for such a utilitarian building. The photos in the article suggested to me that the folks marketing the building clearly knew their target market. Sometimes those alpacas and llamas can spit. Many years ago I went to pat a Vicuna who clearly thought it was of noble pedigree and birth, and the animal spat on me. Thanks for that. I could get triggered petting one of those support critters! 🙂
Looks like it is going to rain here again tomorrow. About 3/5ths of an inch of rain fell today. It’s rather wet outside now.
Cheers
Chris
Hi, Chris!
I’m still dragging some from That Thing Will Shall Not Be Mentioned, though of course I mentioned it . . .
Ollie – didn’t your mother ever tell you not to stick your head in things like that or it may become a permanent fixture on your noggin? Then I realized that what you were actually doing was testing it to see if it was a good fit for a space helmet, to take you back to Planet Freckles, where the recent earthquake was an alert that your family was coming for you. We once had a very large dog named Rex – also known in Pig Latin as X-Ray – who came from Planet Dairy. My that dog loved dairy, especially ice cream.
You were young once, Chris, that’s how you did it. Isn’t that what we all were?
Yeah. $45. Phooey. And, yeah – how can most people afford to be tourists?
That was a Big Daddy tree on your property, a lot to deal with without a Big Daddy Chainsaw. What a biggerer Big Daddy tree is the one by the side of the road. Wow!
What a beautifully constructed water channel. It’s a joy to behold, unlike the new roundabout they just built in the middle of town in a very heavily trafficked area (there used to be a stoplight). It’s now scary as, trying to swing throught it with all that traffic.
Our blackberries badly need pruing. Is late winter a good time to do it?
Best of luck with the vinegar and cider, though perhaps you are used to making those?
I’ll have to watch the videos later. I especially look forward to the small engine maintenance one.
Thanks for the flowers!
Pam
Yo, Chris – Yes, spam seems like the tides … rises and falls. Sometimes, the government or service provider shuts them down. And things go all quiet, for awhile. Speaking of All Things Internet …
Actually, we get quit a bit of news from Australia and New Zealand. I see New Zealand is extraditing an internet mogul, with a funny name, to the US. He’s discovering the “We’re only a platform,” defense, is flying less and less.
And then there’s something from the “Let the punishment fit the crime,” department. Video of the arsonist, who set himself on fire, is really making the rounds. I learned something new. Your country capital, Canberra, is not part of any Australian state, but in its own Capital Territory. Sort of like our nation’s capital. If you’ve ever wondered why it’s referred to as “Washington, D.C.” that D.C. stands for “District of Columbia.” So it’s part of no state. Sometimes, news articles refer to “Washington,” and I have no idea if they’re referring to this state, or the nation’s capital. Sloppy reporting.
I also see, that Melbourne is banning electric scooter rentals. Not the first major city, to do so.
The high yesterday, was 72F (22.22C). Overnight low was 57F. Forecast for today is 73F. I see lots of green blobs, off our coast, on the weather radar. Forecast is for a “30% chance of rain, after 11am” tomorrow. Later on it’s “Showers, than showers likely.” A great chunk of our mountains have flash flood warnings. I’ll check the tomatoes, tonight, for any more ripe ones. And, yes, cherry tomatoes are the best! A really, nice sharp taste.
Is the Bluestocking book a good read? Hmmm. Details are pretty dense. I also picked up another book, that I’m finding more engrossing. “Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party: How an Eccentric Group of Victorians Discovered Prehistoric Creatures and Accidentally Upended the World.” (Dolnick, 2024.)
That old TV movie (2003), “Pompeii: The Last Day” is a drama documentary, which speculates on possible stories of the people. I think the Lady in the gladiator barracks, was one of the stories. There was a similar story, to the recent find. A group of people took shelter, in a bedroom. Older mother and father, heavily pregnant daughter, son-in-law and a family of slaves. The son-in-law had a vial of poison, on him. Did he take it, when all seemed lost?
You may have noticed that Portland’s Powell’s Bookstore, has an outpost, at the airport.
Daft dog! Last week, I gave her some mixed veg, along with her dry food. She ate everything … except the green beans. Which she had eaten, on previous occasions. Very carefully picked them out, and left them on the floor. The other night, I gave it to her again. Ate everything, including the green beans. Both lots came out of the same package. A week ago, she wouldn’t touch the dabs of peanut butter, she usually wolfs down. Last night, I tried it again, and she bolted it down. Peanut butter, out of the same jar. Sometimes, she takes the dry food out of her dish, carefully places it on the floor, and then eats it. Tastier from the floor? I think she’s just messing with my head. 🙂
It’s the apocalypse! I went to the veg store, the other day. They price their apples, all the same, no matter what variety. They’ve been $1.58 a pound, for a long time. They’ve jumped to $1.98 a pound! In a stroke of luck, yesterday afternoon, one of the caregivers asked me if I wanted a bag of apples. Yes, please!
Sometimes, we get a plastic bag of apples, in our food boxes. But I found I need to get them out of those bags, as they seem to pick up some odd flavor, from the plastic. Lew
Hi Chris,
Cecily has another 3-4 weeks in the brace which makes it difficult to do a lot of things but she can drive at least.
The bookstore has yet to move. That’s at the end of September. I will probably help out but need to watch my back so not sure how much I can do.
We do have one more move, Marty to assisted living. That’ll be in 2-3 months. Problem is that when an apartment comes up he needs to be ready to go in a couple days. We plan to hire someone to do the bulk of the moving.
It seems like I’m always moving someone. Cecily will have another move but that won’t be until September 2025.
I’m just growing some green pole beans. We have an old gate that’s taller than me that they climb up which makes it easy to pick. They’re turning out very nice this year. It’s easy to freeze them too.
Margaret
Chris,
Yes, I’d heard that alternate name before: Place of Nervous Caribou. 😉 But, with no caribou near here, Dame Avalanche is satisfied with receiving fees from both the Liverwurst Tax and the Cheese Tax. I would be happy with a good Bahn Mi sandwich, now that you mention one.
We visited Disney World in Orlando, Florida one May. The weather wasn’t hot for us, but the humidity made it a bit hard to cope. The Princess wanted to look at something, but I was a bit warm, so I sat on a bench in the shade. Shortly after I sat down, an older couple, looking completely wilted, asked if they could share the bench. After they had gotten seated, I asked where they were from. Yup, England. 86C with 95% humidity did them in very quickly.
Mullan Man was half Italian, half Norwegian. He looked like he had just stepped off a dragon ship. He was a lot of fun. We kept in touch for several years. I learned to downhill ski at Lookout Pass, near Mullan. He was there. I’d get halfway down a hill and he would come zooming past me yelling, “Wild man on skis!” Except he was only on one ski, going faster than I could even hope for as a total beginner.
The Canadians I’ve known were mostly good natured and much more polite than most Americans. Did you know that Canadians often end sentences with “eh”? As in “That’s a very pretty dog you’ve got, eh”. Or “The sun is sure bright today, eh?” When angry, it can be quite humorous: “You’re a real bleeping bleep, eh!” That “Eh” takes the sting out of it. Which leads to the somewhat lame joke: How to you spell Canada? c EH n EH d Eh”
That pig scene was hilarious. Thanks.
Somehow I was reminded of the other event that coincides with Pig Out in the Park. That would be the annual powwow in Wellpinit on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Warm and dry days, cool nights, dust, it could be a lot of fun. Always saw a lot of friends there, some at the war dancing, but most playing “stick game”, an involved traditional and intensely exciting gambling game. And the food…there is something unique about a greasy powwow burger and fries, all coated with a thin layer of powwow dust.
Here’s a couple videos that show some stick game, with some explanations. One game can last for hours. The drumming and singing during the games is fun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC03dES7Btg Note the traditional cedar root hat at 10 seconds and about 1:30 into the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwDO59RLyh8
Sometimes the brain doesn’t know when to quit working on a problem turning it into brooding and obsession. I’m finding that I need to get back to “accept, adapt, move on” when I start down that track. Which sometimes takes a lot of work to get there, but then I have better mental clarity and can then work through the situation better. This is NOT something that comes naturally to me, but ‘m grateful that I’m finally learning.
Good luck with the new phones. At least the S42 should be superb for the obvious reason you cited. I heard that the sound is better than the S41, also. It goes to 11 or something.
DJSpo
Hi Pam,
No good feeling ill, and hope you feel better soon. 🙂 And thanks for not using the word, whilst mentioning it. Kinda fun for such a dark subject. Hope you’re getting some fresh air and sunshine? It rained here all day long today, although I braved the rain, got drenched and planted another chestnut tree. Goran (who comments here) pointed out some pollination issues with the chestnut trees. Oh well, we’re all learning as we’re going.
That’s a great saying, and one I’d not heard before. They used to tell me as a kid to stop pulling stupid faces, or the wind would change and I’d be stuck with the expression. Pam, I was dubious, but then what if I was wrong and was stuck with stupid looking squooshy face look number four? Not worth the risk, maybe. 😉 Thanks for the laughs too, the idea of Planet Freckles is pretty funny. Dogs do seem to love dairy, don’t they? One of the oldest dogs in the country lived on a dairy farm and apparently loved raw milk. There was a bit of a reversal earlier in the year for the title of world’s oldest dog. The title came back down under: Rochester’s Bluey reclaims title of world’s oldest dog after Guinness World Records reviews Bobi’s credentials. Rochester is about two hours drive north of here.
True, yes there was a lot more energy (or perhaps a lack of comprehension that a person could over-do things) when younger. I’m sure you know what I mean?
That’s a really profound question, and it is something that has been bothering me of late. How do the tourists do that?
🙂 Funny, and yes the thought of having to clean up any of the really big trees here gives me an attack of the vapours, but also maybe the excuse for a new and even biggerer chainsaw? No? Oh well, it was worth a try. The 700 year old tree was enormous and honestly, we would have driven right by it. It’s funny what you can see if you take the time to look around.
Hmm. Yes, double lane roundabouts are quite difficult to turn right (or left in your case) across. People inevitably want to undercut you, so you have to sort of pre-emptively cut them off. Always exciting. They’re probably cheaper on an ongoing basis than stop lights.
I dunno about pruning. Seriously, I have no idea. I read a book on the subject and have just experimented since then. Try a technique and see how it works out. Is it a good time? Maybe? What I do know, is that when we didn’t prune the blackberries back hard enough last year – we got very little fruit.
I have no idea about cider or vinegar making either. Other products like the sake, or country wines, we know back to front and inside out, as well as inside out and back to front. But every single cider batch we’ve made to date has failed. I suspect the local yeasts here are rubbish for that purpose and so this time we’ve sterilised the apple juice and used commercial yeast. It looks like a very active batch right now. And the scoby was very unpleasant feeling to handle, but the vinegar seems to be working.
🙂 Thanks!
Cheers
Chris
Hi Margaret,
Best wishes for a speedy recovery for Cecily. It’s one of those things isn’t it? You don’t realise how much you use your hands all day, every day, until you can’t use them. On Friday I encountered the bloke who runs the General Store, and his hand was likewise in a brace. Had an accident with one of those small electric hand held battery chainsaws apparently. He offered to show me the wounds, but I declined as everyone would be embarrassed if I passed out. Accidents can happen in moments.
It rained all day long today, but we went down to the local plant nursery as they had a 20% off bare rooted fruit trees. Picked up another chestnut tree, and then got rather wet planting the stick with roots. Hopefully having three chestnut trees assists with pollination and nut set. Dunno.
Oh yeah, Margaret, they’re keeping you busy what with all that moving. Still, it’s nice to be involved with such things, but yes don’t over-do it. It’s not a bad idea to get in someone (or a couple of blokes with a truck) to work on Marty’s move. You can’t do everything.
Thanks for the laughs, because you said exactly what I was thinking. 🙂 People sure do move around here all the time! Hope things settle down, and for all you know, Cecily’s move next year will be delayed. A lot can happen in a year.
Ah, climbing beans, right. Tasty things. Oh, that’s a good idea with the gate. We grow them up fences for much the same reason, as we do with peas. Yum!
Cheers
Chris
Hi DJ,
What happened to all of the Caribou? I see, the Southern Mountain Woodland Caribou were like my almond trees in that they were on marginal and shaky grounds in the first place and are (in the reindeer case) no longer. Dame Avalanche must now dream the dream of stalking a wild herd of reindeer, whilst I must reconcile myself to yesterday’s thunderstorm dropping many almond blossoms to the soil. A little bit the same, but different. The now deceased Sir Poopy used to know instinctively how to deal with a herd of Sambar deer, as would Dame Avalanche. It was uncanny to see the ancient wiring coming to the fore.
Hehe! Florida would be like visiting the state of Queensland, and all I recall from my visit there, was pretty much what you said. Hot and humid. 30’C is not usually a super hot day, but when you add in 95% humidity, it’s a cooker squoosher. 😉 Those folks wouldn’t have known what hit them. Although I’ve experienced adapting to the tropics having visited such places over the years, it just takes time, exposure and knowing when to slow things down. But to be honest, I prefer living in the cooler mountain environment down here – and sleep better in the cool to cold nights.
Yeah, and his part Italian heritage was probably from the more northerly mountainous areas given his skiing abilities? 🙂 The more north westerly heritage just cemented the deal. That story is like distance running, sometimes you just know you’re outclassed. Did you ever hear how he ended up? Wow, the grades on that mountainous area are a good mix, but far out you’d want to know what you were doing. The bike rail trail near to there looks interesting as well. Heading east and north of you is some wild country.
I dunno, most Americans I’ve met over the years are very polite as well. The loud and brash US tourist in foreign countries is a comedic troupe, whom I’m yet to meet in the flesh. And yes, the ‘eh’ is noticeable. You might not be aware, but the New Zealand vernacular also incorporates this addition to sentences, except instead of ‘eh’, it will be an ‘ay’. You’d occasionally hear: “Choice bro, ay”, which roughly translates into English as “Greetings friend, and that was a fine decision and/or action, if I may say so myself”. A loose interpretation, which covers the major points of the brief sentence.
There’s something quite soothing, pragmatic and straight to the point about the line: “You can stop crying now, he’s dead”. Sometimes you find yourself in situations you were not entirely ready for. Hmm. Glad you enjoyed the scene.
Out of curiosity, is the traditional cedar root hat an indicator of status, or more a practical response to the intense summer sun? The game looked fun and good natured (not to mention lucrative for the winning team), but more importantly trained for the traditional and family songs. Pretty clever, and when I go into teaching mode formerly with graduates, or nowadays with clients, I keep ’em laughing and ensure the experience is enjoyable. Not how things are done nowadays in public institutions…
Yeah, I hear you about that. It doesn’t come naturally to me either. And it’s hard won knowledge for sure. Part of the reason I loathed working at the top end of town was that the problems were hard to compartmentalise, and they’d creep over into out of work time. That’s not healthy, and as I found out, not sustainable. How other people manage such things is a mystery to me, but then I’ve always suspected that they do less on other fronts. Is it good to be a lopsided person? I don’t think so. Man, it’s a journey as you hinted at.
Very funny! Yes, 11 on the dial. 🙂 A friend who knows about such things (electronics engineer) suggested that it will be a very long time before the 4G cell network is shut down, we’ll see. At least the new phone has better reception because it makes calls through the household wifi mesh now, and that’s about all I can say about it.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Lewis,
Oh yeah, spam comes and goes doesn’t it? That sort of loose talk about shutting down the spam was all the rage a while ago, then we’re kind of back to where we were with the entire nuisance. I don’t really talk much about the administration of this ‘ere wubsite, but there’s been some funny goings on with the statistics for the past couple of months, and turns out I’ve now been sort of hauled into the gargle unalytics mob. They do seem rather large and all encompassing don’t they? It can’t end well that story. Oh well, no point fighting the interweb city hall. Another thing I’ve had to admit defeat on and move on, like the replacement of the perfectly working phone.
I’d not heard of this matter. My understanding of the long standing issue, and please correct me if I’m wrong, was that Kim Dotcom has faced extradition before. Internet mogul Kim Dotcom to be extradited to the US, NZ justice minister says. I wonder if the people using such websites were going to go to the cinemas anyway? I have some doubts about such lost revenue claims. They might get him this time around. It’s hard not to notice that our friends on those islands over to the east have a new goobermint. Wonder if ‘ol Kim picked the losing side to support?
I’d missed that news too. That’s the thing with petrol (gas in the US), it’s pretty flammable. Not to be used in such a manner is my thoughts, but those pair of miscreants clearly had other ideas and probably a wide streak of carelessness. I reckon the bloke would be in a bit of pain right now.
That national territory is trying to expand its boundaries too into New South Wales. There’s a bit of a wealth divide between the towns on either side of the territory border as well. The state locals might want to be absorbed into the territory, dunno. Oh yeah, that is sloppy reporting, and before speaking with yourself, I’d not understood the difference. I’ll bet there are plenty of people who live in Maryland and commute to work in DC? From the maps and images, the area looks pretty built up. But given that theoretically, that lot can print mad cash to pay for stuff, I’ll bet the local amenities are good.
Incidentally, the Northern Territory is probably bigger than most of your country’s states. With only a quarter of a million people, it doesn’t have enough population to become a state. It’s about 550,000 square miles. A bit smaller than Alaska.
The Editor used to spend summer school holidays at her uncles place in Canberra (the national territory). He was a decent bloke, and she got away from her family for months on end. Quite fond of the place really, although as a city it feels a bit odd to me, probably because it’s quite planned.
Out of curiosity, why the Columbia bit in the name? I don’t get it.
The scooters appear to be a bit hazardous for all sorts of reasons. Hmm. I’d heard about that debate, yeah. You know, the other afternoon I saw someone riding an electric scooter past the General Store downhill on the main road in the more fashionable end of the mountain range at an alarming speed. That looked err, exciting to say the least. Some folks like thrills. Mate, they’ve got more confidence than I’ve ever had. I don’t see how the brakes would be any good on those things.
I used to see a dude in the city riding one, usually at high speed on the road with the cars. At least he wore a motor cycle helmet. But that’s when things got weird. The rest of the stuff he wore made him look like the robot out of the Daft Punk ‘Robot Rock’ video clip, and on his shoulder perched an old school boom box which usually blared techno music at volume. The bloke left an impression that’s for sure. He must have eventually crashed because I spotted him walking, which is suggestive that the crash was bad, but not too bad. A bit of a character.
I’d not heard that other cities are banning the rental scooters. I’d always wondered how the machines batteries were charged given they were often observed in the wild laying on their sides at unusual locations.
Lewis, I stand corrected. You know more about local affairs than I do. 🙂
Did those green blobs materialise over your part of the state? It rained here for most of the day, and was quite uninspiring. However, we do stoic, and in the interests of testing out the 20% off bare rooted fruit trees sale, I headed to the nearby nursery and picked up a chestnut (and a couple of bags of seed potatoes). Despite the rain, I planted out the tree today. Goran mentioned earlier in the year that the burrs produced on the chestnut tree here had not been properly pollinated and I needed another tree. Oh well. The tree looked huge in the nursery, but when planting it out today, it was tiny compared to the rest of the orchard. Pruned heaps of growth off it too. Got rained on, a lot, but the 20% off was worth it.
Had a long nap this afternoon which was quite pleasant. Winter days are for rest and recuperation.
That Sir Richard Owen was a complicated bloke. How I’ve not heard any of this history before? Education these days… It always amuses to me to hear people talking of ‘science’ in hallowed tones as if it is full of people all pulling in the same direction. You have to have a bit of the eccentric about you to whizz off in a different direction from that of your peers. Nothing wrong with that, the peers could be wrong.
I thought about the last Pompeii moment for a bit, and my gut feeling suggests the son-in-law was just about to act so when all appeared lost, then promptly asphyxiated.
I did notice the mention of that particular book store. Actually, an airport is not a bad location for a book store. Hey, I heard of people going on digital detox during flights. No screen time, just quiet time. As I’ve mentioned to you before, I hate flying, and so bury my nose in a good book to try and forget that I’m in a tin can way above the ground moving at extraordinary speeds, and hope nothing gets messed up.
Dogs! Hehe! Go H. She’s conducting subtle experiments upon you for sure. Some dogs are messy eaters and prefer to eat their food off the floor. Do you use strong smelling soap when cleaning her bowl? Dogs are super sniffers.
Holy carp Lewis! You’re paying the same for apples – that we do down here. That never happens. Yes, take the apples. Hmm. I’ve not ever smelled a scent from apple packaging. Hmm. Interesting. They do spray the skins of the apples with all manner of stuff, and I wash them before consuming regardless.
Cheers
Chris
@ Pam – Start calling it “The Round-about of Death.” It will catch on 🙂 Lew
Yo, Chris – Well, perhaps Mr. Dotcom shouldn’t have referred to New Zealand, as a colonial outpost of the U.S.. Not very diplomatic.
There was so little background information, on the arsonist story. Such as, why? Rival barber? Insurance scam? Bad haircut? If the authorities check the emergency wards, he’ll probably turn up.
Maryland and Virginia are both big commuter states. At least, parts of them are. Makes up that dense, multi-state, eastern urban corridor I recently mentioned.
Columbia was kind of a goddess personification, of America. Similar to Britannia.
https://w.wiki/6fWG
Uncle Sam’s wife? 🙂 She showed up in a lot of graphics, of one sort or another, mostly in the 19th century.
I read some more of the dinosaur book, last night. The author keeps referring to the tenor of the times. People, even educated people, thought, really believed that the world as it is, has always been as it was. Religion had a big role in that way of thinking. Up to that point, due to excruciating calculations of the Bible (all those “begot”, and people living 900 years) the world was either formed in 3988 B.C (Sir Isaac Newton) or, 4004 B.C. On the evening of the evening of October 22d. In hindsight, we think it’s pretty silly. But to realize the earth was incredibly old, and that great beasts had come and gone, well, it gobsmacked just about everybody. Existential crisis and vertigo, made the rounds.
I once asked my grandfather, who in retirement watched, and listened to a lot of news, what he thought about dinosaurs. He said: “Well, those Disney folks can do wonderful things.” 🙂 By the way, he had a ringside seat, out his kitchen window, where he had his morning coffee, for the eruption of Mt. St. Helens.
Back when I flew, I’d usually show up at the airport, an hour early, get blotto in the lounge, and, on boarding, immediately order two more stiff drinks. I was usually passed out, for the whole experience.
I weighed in, again, this morning. 195! I can almost button my pants. Usually, I zip them up, belt them in and wear long shirts.
The high yesterday was 75F (23.88C). Overnight low was 50F. Forecast for today is 84F. When I took H out for her walk, this morning, there are black clouds rolling in from the west. Looks pretty misty, over the western hills. Wind is rising. The weather radar has a lot of big green blobs on it. Looks like most of it will pass south of us, but there’s one band that looks to sweep right over us. Some of our sunflowers are beginning to bloom. I saw some wild bees working them over. Two were duking it out. You think they’d head home to shelter. I guess they know what they’re doing.
I watched the new “Mad Max: Furiosa,” last night. Turns out it’s a prequel to “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Well worth a bowl of popcorn. Get this: rather than schlepping (a highly technical and scientific term) up to Shop N Kart, to get Orville Redenbacher popcorn, I picked up some Pop-Secret from the Dollar + store. A bag of Orville’s fills a bowl. It takes two bags of the other stuff, to fill a bowl. I had peaches, prunes and yoghurt, later.
Yesterday, I had an hour to kill between this and that. So I went out to pick blueberries. I was behind a bush, that has small berries, but there was a place to sit, and perch my bowl. I had a lap full of blueberries. Then, four little sparrow like birds, flew into the bush. Looked young, maybe nest mates. They hung out with me, for quit awhile. Just an arms length away. I don’t know what they were eating, but it wasn’t blueberries. Bugs? Tender ends of the stems I’d picked? Leaves? After a good long time, they flew away. This Nature Moment Brought to You by …Lew
Chris:
I remember Goran’s marvelous blog, so I know that he gave you good advice.
I thought that the world’s oldest dog was a Kelpie. This was the first that I had heard of Bluey and Bobi. Or was it Toothy? Which one of your dogs was so old?
Chris, I would really love to see you have an attack of the vapours. Does Sandra always keep smelling salts with her?
Hmm. Well, I’ll just prune when the mood hits me.
Good luck on this cider batch!
Pam
@Lew:
An excellent name, Lew. I hope it doesn’t catch on as fast as I am afraid it will.
Pam
Hi Pam,
🙂 Someone who runs a nut tree nursery and grafts most of their own stock for sale, probably knows heaps more about such matters. He was right too, the chestnut burs were empty. I tell ya what, fruit trees are a long term investment in the future.
That’s what I thought too, apparently the record now goes to a Blue Heeler. Ah, I see all is now explained. The Kelpie was a close runner up. Here she is: World’s oldest dog? Australian kelpie Maggie dies after 30 years on a dairy farm.
That little incident (if it happened, and I’m not saying it had or would) might not be recorded on the videos, sorry! 🙂
Pam, I didn’t know that pruning at a particular time of year was a ‘thing’ either. There’s consequences for the time of year you do prune, and some trees can only be pruned in the warmer months, but just between you and I, I don’t reckon trees are anywhere near as fussy as people make them out to be. After all, browsing animals, cough, cough, deer, will happily destroy tree branches at any time of the year – and most of the time the trees recover. Most jobs like that get done when the time is available to do them. Perfection, what is this thing?
Thanks! We’ll see how it goes.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Lewis,
It’s been remarked upon before that some people can saw off the branch which they’re perched upon, and maybe that happened? Who knows, by all accounts there’s some mad cash to be had there, and maybe he donated to the wrong political party? Very occasionally when the dirty laundry gets aired in the unflattering light of day, I’m always surprised at how cheap the politicians are.
Yeah, I wondered that too. The barber dude seemed genuinely perplexed as well, although he could be a good actor. Now, if he’d been selling smokes, well those shops have been having a hard time of things on that fire front lately. The taxes are high enough now on smokes that possibly dubious elements have taken note – at $50 a pack retail, some may say deterrent, others may say opportunity. The alternative trade down here for some weird reason is known as ‘chop chop’. Personally I’ve never smoked, the concept just held no appeal, but I can see how mad cash strapped folks may try to circumvent high prices with that alternative product.
Hey, I like the bad haircut suggestion. Yeah, when bad jobs, go badder. 😉
Out of curiosity, does that busy multi-state eastern corridor have much farmland and/or manufacturing?
It’s hard to ignore that Columbia may have worked as a part time model, and was often suggesting that young folks head off on perilous adventures. But yeah, the archetype is bizarrely similar to Britannia. Identical may be sort of an accurate description. Dude, would Uncle Sam be equal to the dictates of such a character? I suspect that he’d have his work cut out for him.
That’s the world that Sir Richard Owen was working in. Strange days, but aren’t they all? I might mention that Sir Isaac Newton’s calculation to the more scientifically inclined friends of mine, just for giggles. To my mind, the folks of that time would have equally struggled with the concept that civilisations rise and fall. It’s hard not to notice that the comparative historians are rarely mentioned in polite company, even these days. That may be so, but are they correct, is the question which pops into my mind.
Hehe! Your grandfather may have had something of the rascal about him. He could have been stirring people up, such things happen. Oh wow, what an event to witness first hand. It would have been bad enough where you were on that day. I remember pouring through the National Geographic magazine amazed at the colour photos of the event. It was a moment when you realise that things and events can be bigger and shake up your life.
It’s a strategy, and like that baker on the Titanic, very occasionally being drunk as a skunk can be of benefit. Man, I’m a nervous flyer, at best. I blame my grandmother taking me to see the Airport ’77 film way back in the day. The thought that planes could crash had not occurred to me prior to that moment! 🙂
Good stuff, and how’s your guts feeling these days?
Your weather is so nice sounding. It rained a bit this morning, then was cloudy for most of the day. And the fricken’ vacuum broke. Of course, being me I pulled the thing apart over the course of a couple of hours and discovered a manufacturing abomination. And to think it was sold as a high end model. I will not ever buy that English brand again having seen what I did today. The machine was only a few months out of warranty. Not good enough.
Did the green blob land overhead? 🙂
Thanks for your review of the film, and it’s received really positive reviews. A tough fictional world to survive in. The popcorn sounded even better. Yum! And you balanced it out too. A fine move if I may say so.
What fun, and birds are amazing creatures. They’ve got a sixth sense for trouble and if you’d had H out with you, I reckon that encounter would never have happened. It’s hard to know what the birds are eating, but generally the smaller birds are after insects. More small birds = (usually) less insects. They work hard here. Thanks for moment, and it’s really good to hear that they’re hanging out in the blueberries.
Cheers and better get writing.
Chris
Chris:
Maggie – that’s who it was. Thanks.
Pam
Yo, Chris – The article about Mr. Dot Com, mentioned a mansion. So, yes, I guess there was mad cash involved 🙂 .
I can’t ever remember barber shops, here, selling tobacco products. But from the chatter I hear, I guess our packs are up around $20 per. It’s odd, though, loose tobacco and rolling tubes are quit inexpensive. So, a lot of people seem to have switched to “roll your own.” If I really want to flash the young folks, I mention that I can remember when a pack of cigarettes, and a gallon of gas, cost the same. A quarter. 🙂 Of course, minimum wage, back then, was $1.25 an hour, and a not bad apartment cost $49 a month.
I really don’t know much about industry, in the eastern corridor. Although I often hear references to “light industry” and office parks.
Another big player in the early dinosaur hunting industry was Mary Anning.
https://w.wiki/E3x
She often didn’t get credit, due to her education, sex, and … class. Class also plays a big role, in the Bluestocking book.
There’s also a bit in the dinosaur book, about how the Victorians were quit nature mad. Collecting and classifying was a real craze.
I lived in Portland, when Mt. St. Helens went up. Spectacular views … when we weren’t “ashed in.”
The old guts are better, but not quit back to what it was. Age?
Yesterday, the high was 79F (26.11C). Overnight low was 61F. Forecast for today is 74F. Yes, we got rain, yesterday, and thunder and lightening. When I stepped out the back door to walk H, there was a tremendous roll of thunder, and that set her off barking. But, after a few minutes, it was old hat and she went about her business. Loud noises (like fireworks) don’t seem to bother her, much.
And … during the storm, I got a bit of a ceiling leak. From the top of the door frame, between the bathroom and hallway. Not much, but I’ll report it, today.
Mad Max: Furiosa, got good reviews. But, looks like it was a disappointment, at the box office. I hate to say it, but the nerd boys don’t like women taking over “their” franchises. Lew
Hello Chris,
Great videos. Thanks!
Next week I will start to make some sake, since I do have some koji in the fridge, that I have used to make a delicious chestnut-miso.
A question: Do you not have to have some kind of water lock to let out CO2 out of the sugar-to-alcohol fermentation? Or is the lid just not tight on the bottles you use?
And a detail: I think you said that koji is a bacterium, but I believe it is another fungus/yeast, of the Aspergillus family. Not that it cares what we call it…
I also wonder if there are local yeasts that work just as well. Buying freeze-dried yeasts from Japan seems wasteful. What is your thoughts on that?
Thanks for the farm-machine repair video as well. It made me think about the grease-nipple on my lawn-mower attachment to the BCS-tractor and that I have not greased it for a whole year. Time to do so tomorrow. Thanks!
Regarding establishing fruit- and nut-trees, I think the main challenge is to win over the grasses. I have seen a few plantings where lots of support trees were planted, that shaded out the grasses during the first five years or so, and later removed. That seems to be the way forward. I will plant many more “other/diverse” trees among our trees to transform the grass-ecosystem into woodland.ecosystem.
I’ll try to post some pictures.
On our side, vole count is 39. We enjoy the best growing summer in decades. Rain twice per week and mild weather, around 20-25C. Perfect. Everything grows.
Peace,
Goran