The Australian national broadcaster, the ABC, has a wonderful series promoting the many benefits of employing the use of a local dog breed on farms. That is the humble Kelpie, and it’s titled: ‘Muster Dogs’. Given the predicaments of peak oil and resource decline, why not employ dogs to assist with sheep and cattle, after all, they replicate themselves and want to do the work. Anywhoo, if you haven’t watched it yet, then why not? It’s up to season four.
Way back in 2020, two twelve week old Kelpie puppies came into our life through sheer chance, but also because we’re alert to opportunities. And haven’t they both been a joy?
Kelpie’s are free independent thinking animals I can attest, who aren’t afraid to share their opinions regarding us lesser humans. Despite their natural inclinations to wildness combined with bouts of spontaneous silliness, both of dogs are trained every single day. Most interactions are treated like a training exercise (for us, as well as them). And for the record, Dame Plum has achieved class three status, and may soon crack the requirements for class four. It’s been suggested that she is the smartest dog on the farm.
As dogs, they sometimes do weird and unusual things though. At this dry time of the year, the two of them will be happily running around, sometimes chasing rabbits down, occasionally being teased by the magpies. All is well with the canine world, and yet, at random times, one of the dogs will come to a screeching halt – from a high speed run. An impressive achievement. Then they’ll sit, and a limb will be stuck out.
Initially my first thought upon observing this behaviour, was that the dog had become injured. An alarming moment. Picture this, the Kelpie is sitting on it’s rear end with a foot sticking out at a strange angle (the breed does have unusual flexibility in their joints). Rush over, stay calm, what could possibly have gone wrong this time? Inspect said extended canine foot. So Ruby, you’re telling me that all this drama is because you’ve picked up a bindi in the fur on your foot? Yes, boss!
For those who don’t know, a bindi is Australian slang for a spiky plant which has sharp spikes which will attach to fur, hair and clothing. A nasty customer to be sure, but part of the grasses growing here. You’d think that after six years the dogs would be used to such seeds, but no. A drama, every single time, and maybe the two are not actually the high quality working animals that others in their breed are. Hmm.
So the other day, Dame Plum came to a screeching halt, fortunately under the cooler conditions of the tree canopy in the shady orchard. Rear leg extended outwards at a funny angle. So, I head over to the dog all the while producing soothing words. You’ll be right mate, let’s have a look at your foot. Human fingers are quite dexterous, and can search between each of the pads on a dogs foot, feeling for any errant spiky seeds. Strangely, there wasn’t anything to be found there.
Taking a wider look around. Hmm. Hang on a second. Is that a chunk of poop stuck to your rear end girl? Stoically, a couple of leaves on the ground were collected, and then used to gingerly to remove the err, dog manure. All was good again with the world. I decided that it would probably be a good idea to go and wash my hands, whilst the parrots most likely ate the now set free manure. Dame Plum and I headed back towards the house.
Standing on the veranda, the dog still had it’s tail outstretched so that it looked like an extension of the backbone. Most unusual, and this was not a good development. Having already been proven by the Monty Python theory of Regency, that I’m not the King, because I’ve already got dog shit on my hands, meant being inured to grabbing the tail of said canine and having a closer look. Clearly a tasty choice meal of wire grass had been consumed at some stage in the past. I’d suggest that whilst it may have provided some protein, it possibly wasn’t so easy to pass, for there it was, sticking out.
Sandra! I then yelled to grab some toilet paper, for delicate field surgery was required. Double wrap. Triple wrapped. My lady long ago enjoyed a higher education which touched upon the subject of industrial food microbiology, and has oft recounted the story that seventeen sheets is actually what is required before nothing can be grown from plating out a swab of the fingers. Just saying. Anywhoo, with the toilet paper, I grabbed the slimy grass, and pulled. Two inches of the stuff came out, no wonder the dog was uncomfortable and acting weird. I’d sure have felt the same. That’s when my finger suddenly broke through the now damp layers of toilet paper. I felt so much closer to the canine.
What had my life come to? Handling animal poop situations with aplomb was not what I’d had in mind when working as a CFO two decades ago for a nine figure revenue business. Oh well, I’m not the King, it’s yet again been proven. At least the dog felt better and gave me this weird: You’re my hero, and you sure smell nice now, look. Far out!
Why is toilet paper so bad these days? This was not the cheap stuff either. When it was triple layered, my finger should have been spared the indignity of direct contact with the Dame’s rear end and by-products. Manufacturing these days is perhaps not all that it was once cracked up to be. At least my fingers could be washed, and the toilet paper and grass chunk will readily decompose in the worm farm sewerage system.
Some thrill seekers would perhaps suggest that I should have used one those mysterious wipes which smell strongly, and look like (in my opinion) possibly the same stuff as geofabric.Tough stuff, and with that lot, my fingers would have been spared indignity, that’s for sure. Whatever. I don’t use those things, and certainly would crack the sads if a visitor tried to flush one down into the worm farm. Because we throw kitchen scraps into worms every day, we’d find it too. The super tough thing would be hard to ignore.
Alas, my rules are not everyone’s rules, and clearly I’m in the minority with choosing not to use such things. The city of Sydney, which is home to five and a half million people, is the capital of the state to the north of here. That big smoke is possibly having some pollution troubles. Poop balls, are actually turning up onto their once nice beaches. Not pretty.
Supersized fatberg clogging Sydney sewer blamed for mysterious debris balls on beach
I’m not suggesting that those things are to blame, but clearly the epic failure possibly suggests either inadequate infrastructure for the population size and environment, or sheer misuse of the system.
How hard would it be to simply ban the sale and importation of those products? Well, turns out that it is. And if you’ve ever wondered why I have a dim view of the future, it’s because in my opinion, a sane society would just say no. But nope, what we have instead is: Decline of Western Civilisation, the toilet paper years! You read it here first.
A little bit of rain fell at the beginning of the week. With only around 28mm (1.1 inch) of the wet stuff having arrived in the past seven weeks, yeah, it’s dry. Lovely to see some rain again, and fog. And just because being down under, the weather rarely falls for half measures, last Monday the 9th of February, was so foggy for the entire day, that the solar power system recorded less than an hours peak sunlight for the entire day. And people promote this technology as the saviour of industrial civilisation, it may well be, but I don’t think they’re going to like the outcome.
We’re made of tougher stuff than geofabric inspired items, and ignored the weather, continuing with work on the latest path project. Sadly, we’d yet again run out of large easy to obtain rocks, and so had to break apart some boulders. We’ve got the technology for that work.
The rocks were then hauled back uphill using the yellow power wheelbarrow. They were installed on the new path project.
It’s a bit of mucking around to get the rocks to sit, just so. The trick is to ensure that they all line up, show a good face, and have no movement if stood upon. At the end of the first day, a lot of boulders were smooshed, and four rocks were installed.
For readers interest, the new path has a bit of a ways to go yet. It ends at yet another concrete staircase and the full length can be seen in the next photo.
During the second day of work on the path and rock wall, we discovered that the 100mm PVC sewer line was not quite as deep as it perhaps should have been. Fortunately there was no damage to the pipe, we took note of where it was, and covered it over with a whole lot more soil.
Less boulders were smooshed on the second day of work, and so we were able to haul and place more rocks for the wall.
On another day, about four hours was spent familiarising myself with the chainsaw mill. Being of the adventurous sort, I decided to mill up a twelve foot long log of Eucalyptus Obliqua (which has a super hard density of 750kg/m3 which is about twice that of poplar) and was left feeling rather defeated by the work. The log had seasoned for about three years, and it was a completely nuts job. That timber was so hard. Sure, the log was eventually milled, but it took two chain replacements and three tanks of two-stroke fuel. Just say no.
Regular readers will recall recent troubles with Red deer. The other morning, I observed that some of the Agapanthus flowers had been eaten, and nearby a pile of deer scats was discovered. However, the damage was minor and I suspect that a whiff of consequence was sensed by the suddenly nervous herbivore, which promptly cleared off and has not been sighted again.
We’ve converted a lot of our apple harvest into cider, and the native birds are enjoying the remaining crop as a solid feed in an otherwise harsh summer. But must the parrots drop half eaten apples onto my new path? The wombats, wallabies and kangaroos (plus others) come through at night cleaning the mess up. But during the day, it looks a bit unsightly.
For so little rain this year, and no additional watering, the fruit trees in the shady orchard are looking pretty good.
Pears are having a particularly good season, but are still a few weeks (and maybe some additional rain) away from being ready to harvest.
The zucchini are producing lots of fruit now, some of which we’ll eat fresh, and others will be saved for the winter, once they’re monster sized.
Onto the flowers:
The temperature outside now at about 11am is 22’C (72’F). So far for this year there has been 28.6mm (1.1 inches) which is up from last weeks total of 20.2mm (0.8 inches)
Comments
37 responses to “Shitballs”
Yo, Chris – I thought maybe Dame Plum was pointing at something. Snake? Legless zombie crawling through the underbrush? Sometimes, communicating with Dawg feels like playing charades. 🙂
I told you about my discovering toilet paper shrinkflation. Well, as you discovered, the quality of the paper is … well, shitty. Wiping down a DVD with alcohol, it just disintegrates. Not a problem in the past. I’ve noted the brand, and won’t be buy that stuff, again.
That was quit an article about the Sydney fat berg. Nice of them to provide a cross section, identifying all the constituent parts. Junkies can now figure out which layer to peel off, and smoke.
At least the fat berg isn’t alive, and sentient. As far as we know …. Things then get complicated.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/manatee-found-trapped-in-storm-drain-after-seeking-warmth-from-the-rare-cold-weather-in-florida/ar-AA1Wf1Dm
Who knew manatees can’t swim backwards? I think H must be related to manatees. She doesn’t seem to have a “reverse,” either. She can wrap her leash around a chair leg, but just can’t quit figure out how to unwrap herself. Although a lot of that might be learned helplessness.
Fog might not be conducive to solar power, but in small amounts, it sure is nice. Mysterious and all embracing. Prof. Mass finally addressed the possibility of low land snow. Not much. If at all. But I wouldn’t place bets on that outcome. We’ve been surprised, more than once.
A long way to go on the new path. But, from what you’ve done so far, you know the results will be really nice looking. You like statistics, right? You’ll have to keep track of how many running feet of path, you’ve built this year. It will come in handy for your year end recap.
Photo: “Chainsaw milling…” You do know those trees are laughing at you? 🙂
The parrots clean up after the dogs. Then the nigh crew cleans up after the parrots. Sigh. Vast panorama of nature.
The pears and zucchini look very promising. If nothing develops a taste for them. The zucchini is probably safe, but the pears?
The flowers look very lovely. The Oregano? Pizza on the hoof? :-). Lew
Hi Lewis,
Every time there is something different with those dogs, and it could have easily been a snake. Two days ago Ruby actually bounced backwards when encountering a mass of ants, which were eating something… I’d hate to think what it was that the insects were swarming over. And it could have been a dead snake. This has been a pretty harsh summer, and food is thin on the ground, unless apples are your choice food, as seems to be the case for many a marsupial.
I so hear you about the toilet paper quality loss. Yes, very much decline of Western Civilisation etc. Until recently we paid top dollar for a brand which had old school err, resilience, but now, it’s disappeared from the shelves. Hmm. Things have not been the same since. Oh well. And I’d not use them for cleaning anything, for the very reasons you mentioned. Nowadays we cut up old clothes into rags, and have a box of those clean and ready to use. You’d be amazed at how many rags the machinery maintenance tasks require. Yup, not a problem in the past, but ’tis now.
Those poop balls are disgusting and there is no way I’d swim at such a beach. The technical analysis of the cross section of a poop ball was fascinating though, and that pollution curve of the Limits to Growth study standard run model plays out in ways I’d never personally imagined. Perhaps we all need to get out more? 🙂
You’re right too, world class chemists need to break those washed up poop balls down, and extract the essential err, higher margin, err, components. Think of the profits to be had!
Dude, fatbergs have a unique consciousness which is unknown to us lesser humans. If only we could communicate with the mass of fat, which the brain also has a lot of, just sayin’, then what wonders our species would learn. Faster than light travel, sure, it may be there for the taking, but all we do is hit them with high pressure water cannons, much like the hydraulic sluicing efforts of old (which we’ve discussed in the past in relation to gold mining). Whatever would the fatberg brain make of our efforts? Probably not a fan, that’s for sure.
Man, the Spitz family of canines are awfully clever, and probably just like the Kelpies, us lesser cavemen are being manipulated into fulfilling their desires. And, I’m not sharing the non-reversing trick with the dogs here, and hope that they aren’t reading over my shoulder.
I’ve read that with dog training, in that learned helplessness is a goal, although I tend to steer away from that extreme point, if only because there can be many random challenges here and the dogs have to be able to think in terms of consequences. It’s like when both Ollie and Dame Plum encountered the snake a few years ago. Both dogs knew bad news when they saw it, and must they check in with me at every unknown, unknown? I think not, but then, this lot aren’t working towards Crufts, are they? And neither is H.
I like fog too, and it gives the trees a drink when the rain fails to appear. Hope you get some lowland snow, and it sure has been a mild winter for you.
The latest talk on Pacific Ocean climate suggests that change is possibly in the air: Dry year ahead possible for Australia as El Niño brews. Those years can be hit or miss for rain at this particular location, and often are warmer and wetter than average. Hardly surprising really.
An excellent suggestion, and I’ve not mentioned this, but as an older fella nowadays, there are unspoken-of-on-the-blog limits as to the number of rocks hauled and placed on paths in a day. A dude has to know his limits.
I know! The trees will triumph in the end, and they know it better than I. Far out, that day of chainsaw milling through the dense, super dry timber, was hard and pointless work. However, being of a crafty and resourceful type, moves are already afoot to circumvent the plant win. For the moment, we have the upper hand, but only just.
What we’ve tried to achieve with the orchards and gardens here is a system where no one particular animal gains an advantage, and yeah, it is a vast panoply of nature. The trick is to know when to enforce limits, but then our society hates considering, let alone enforcing, that aspect.
Fresh oregano is really something else. Yum!
Shared resources, are a wonderful idea if the timing is discreet. Agreed, what the future holds in store on that front, is anyone’s guess. Some wet years the burn off restrictions here are lifted in March, and others, mid-May. Warmer conditions tends to spread the risk over a longer period of time. I believe that some of the fire fighting aircraft operate on leases shared between the two countries.
And hey, the very first day of volunteering at the fire brigade, the old timers sat me down and said in no uncertain language, that in a bad fire, we were on our own. A real wake up call, so yeah, help ain’t coming here, but also in plenty of other places. At least we acknowledge that reality.
Thanks for the correction and the volcano sure looks the same. Is it extinct, or merely dormant? Ook! Oh well, the mountain has been quiet for a while… Yikes!
Oh poop, that’s some cold weather you’re facing, but at least it is not freezing, oh, it is below zero Celsius. Brr! Hope you have those extra blankets handy? You may prefer your weather to that of tomorrow’s here? Heat, storms lead to extreme fire forecast across dry Victoria tomorrow.
The fire in the photo was just to the south and east of the mountain range a few days ago, and I have on good authority that it was allegedly started by lighting which set off an underground fire on tree roots.
Professor Mass does enjoy his skiing. 🙂
Nice one, and the stalwarts at the Club are returning to duty following on from the change in leadership. I applaud your effort at gently nudging Nick in the right direction. I do that with people as well. Sometimes it as simple as sowing the seed of an idea, and let it then find fertile soil to grow in.
You know, I’ve never seen that film, but should. It’s like the ultimate survival story. And no, I’d not expected a dining table was the item, but it makes a certain sort of sense. Make connections. Tell ya what, I noticed that the new neighbours across the road have bee boxes. Hmm. Says a lot that. Had a lovely chance chat this morning with an old timer who lives nearby. Fun stuff, but had to cut the long conversation short because work was in need of doing.
Cheers
Chris
Yo, Chris – The old school toilet paper firm, was probably bought by a private equity firm. So, so much for them! 🙂
Not all that long ago, I set up two rag boxes. Clean rags in one, and dirty rags, that can still be washed, in the other.
I’m sure someone, somewhere, is writing a horror movie where fat bergs become sentient. 🙂 Although that’s already been done. Sort of. “The Blob,” (1958). Although that sentient pile of goo came from outer space. There were great scenes using miniatures, in that movie.
Our high yesterday was 48F (8.88C). Our overnight low was 28F (-2.22C). Our forecast high for today is 41F. Possible rain or snow was in the forecast, for this morning. A no-show. When I took H out, there was some sun, and scattered patches of blue. But, it looks like something is brewing on the western horizon. That was an interesting article about a developing El Niño.
Age and limits. 🙁 Best taken into account by aging and old duffers. I’m always nagging at my friend Scott, to lay off the death defying aerial acts. There’s plenty of young bucks, around the Club, always looking for a little side jingle.
Oh, the trees will triumph. In all those sci-fi movies, it doesn’t take long for nature to return. Or, even, look at Chernobyl. It wouldn’t take long, here at the Institution. If I don’t hack back the volunteer walnut, oak, Ivey, holly and blackberries, every year, they’d take over in short order. I suppose you’ll recoup some of your chainsaw mill costs, by selling it on.
Mt. Hood is an active volcano. It vents steam, every once in awhile. There are small earthquake swarms. But Mt. Hood, like Mt. St. Helens, is mostly a pile of rocks, held together by ice and snow.
What was interesting about growing up in Portland, is that we also had several extinct volcanic cinder cones, within the city limits. Rocky Butte, Mt. Tabor.
https://w.wiki/HsTG
There were rumors around, back in the 1950s and 60s, that there was a secret underground missile silo, on one of those buttes. I don’t think it was true, but it made a good story. When I said you could only see Mt. Rainier, if you were at a good high elevation, I was thinking of the buttes. Get up high enough, and we could also see Mt. Adams.
So, for awhile, you’re back to fire weather, again. That was an interesting article. I also found the sidebar article, on a court case involving grocery store price fixing, interesting. And the sidebars, to that sidebar. 🙂
“The Martian” is well worth a look. If it’s not on your list, already, you should add it. I think you’d like it.
I’ll probably talk a bit more about the book, “Resilient Citizen,” tomorrow. This is running a bit long. 🙂 The author divides “the people of preparedness”into five groups. Though as the author states, there’s a lot of overlap. You’d fall into the “Homesteaders,” group.
It’s too bad you couldn’t talk to the old timer, a bit longer. He was probably about to tell you where the bodies are buried. 🙂
Today is a holiday. President’s Day. But, other than no postie, government offices and schools, life pretty much goes on.
Yesterday was one of those days where “make rice” “make oatmeal” fell on the same day. When I took H out for her early evening walk, I noticed there was no one camped out in the laundry room. So, I took the opportunity to do a couple of loads of laundry. I got online and ordered H a new coat. I’ve done everything I can to revitalize the velcro, but it only last, so long. I’m also gearing up to do a seed order, from Nichols.
I’ve got some plans, for the next few days. But, need to stay mellow and chill (not a problem), as weather may play into what I can and can’t do. No sense getting in a tizzy. I’ll take the weather as it comes. Lew
Hi, Chris!
Oh, this one’s about wombats . . .
No, not wombats. “Muster” – that’s a perfect word for what kelpies do. And a bindi binds. We have burrs and foxtails, but never have I seen a dog here point one out. Obviously, your dogs are smarter (are we including Ollie here?) – or are they just daintier (we will not include Ollie here)? Er, yes – after reading episode 2, dainty is the word. Yuk for the rest of the episode.
We can get nice, thick toilet paper here, but I never buy it, not just because of the price, but because it goes into a septic tank and must readily and swiftly decompose. So I have one layer toilet paper and it’s an interesting endeavor to use it.
What does one call those things – sanitary wipes? I’ll bet they can’t match soap and water and a good scrubbing. So they had to have a big photo of one of the, er, headlined items. Yuk.
That’s pretty shocking – “less than an hours peak sunlight for the entire day” – though thanks to you, I knew that these things sometimes happen. It is not a pretty picture.
Yep, you’ve got the technology, and the expertise, O Virtuoso of the Rock Breakers. And the artistic flair to know how to use them. The path does look beautiful.
No. It was not worth 2 chain replacements, 3 tanks of fuel, and just about doing yourself in.
Goodness – I can’t believe the apple mess. What a waste.
I took this excerpt from something I read yesterday: “And a study at the University of Western Australia found that the Pink Lady variety ranked among the highest level of antioxidant flavonoids of any apple, making them tops in fighting inflammation and protecting heart health.” Sadly, I could find no Pink Lady apples in the stores today.
Beautiful flowers. Thank you, as always.
Pam
Hi Pam,
Alas, wombats are sensible creatures and would never suffer such indignities, or at least they sort them out on their own. Kelpies, well, they both seem to be troubled by bindis, and come to a screaming halt for no discernible reason that is comprehensible to me. Ollie is much more sensibler, and like a wombat can sort out such matters using his own initiative, although he does have much thinner fur, which makes the process somewhat easier. Daintier seems to be the way of things with those two. 🙂
Yes, that’s very much my opinion as well, yuk. You’d think that for a city of over five million people, that someone, somewhere, would suggest that the outcome of poop balls littered upon a beach, is totally unacceptable (who knows what is in the water yet to be discovered) and perhaps certain products be banned, and sewage treatment be taken more seriously. But no, I’m not hearing that story, and it’s shameful. If I had to write a school report card for that lot, it may include the words: Could do better.
Interesting, and yes, when on a septic system, there are consequences, so I totally get where you are at with the choice. The worms can chew through cardboard, so they can cope with the thicker stuff, but we can’t seem to find it on the shelves these days! So same, same, but different! 🙂 Yeah, it’s the thinner stuff for us here too.
In my opinion, it’s probably the best outcome for the sake of the infrastructure, to ban those products. Not my call though, and I choose not to be involved with such things. Probably bad juju if you ask me. The dogs second hand sleeping couch which is a white leather – proper hide too – where the previous owner used those products to clean the skin. It took about four weeks for the chemical aroma to eventually dissipate. Sorbolene is a great leather cleaner and moisturiser, and it’s very neutral smelling, or at least the stuff we buy is.
Nothing wrong with soap and water, and hey, we make our proper soap too, and it’s lovely stuff. Recently we trialled using cheaper Canola oil (previously used olive oil) in the mixture and the end result is the same soap. Why spend more, the oil is a third of the price?
Sad, but true regarding days with very little sunlight. Pam, trust me in this, fog and low thick clouds are bad, but snowy days are even worse. It baffles me that people living in areas with colder winters than here, promote this photovoltaic energy technology as some sort of saviour. When it works, it’s wonderful, but when the plants aren’t growing strongly, solar electricity is likewise thin on the ground.
Ah, thanks so much, and the new path is coming along nicely. Given the need for clean fill on that job, AKA excavated soil, we may do the path project in conjunction with the new larger firewood shed project. More to come on this soon…
Chainsaw milling in extremely dense hardwood species, can’t live with the idea, or outcome…
The apple mess represents the acts of the whom being naughty in my sight, cockatoos, who also dare not encounter my presence. The birds take me seriously nowadays, but I can’t be there every moment of the day to monitor activities, and so apples are knocked from the trees for the wallabies and wombats, and possibly also rabbits and rats to consume. I’m sure that they’re all in cahoots. Your groundhog for example, may have formed unholy alliances to thwart your best gardening efforts?
They’re a favourite apple variety here, and readily available. Super sweet too, don’t you reckon? Do you grow any apple trees? Just saying.
My pleasure, and may the warmth of the local conditions melt your glacial wintry experience.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Lewis,
I’m not at all sure why the old school brand of toilet paper can’t now be found. Woe is me, and like your experience with the larger diameter cardboard, the rolls here aren’t wound as tightly lately in my opinion. Lot’s of tricks, and no doubts we’ll get to experience them all. I noticed the most recent purchase had the claim, ‘packed in …’, rather than ‘made in …’ There being something of a difference.
Yup, old clothes make wonderful rags which are useful for all sorts of cleaning purposes.
The best ideas are of course, other people’s, so why not pen a story about a sentient fatberg? Probably smarter than those computer programs everyone seems to be so excited about. And I’d not realised that Steve McQueen’s first lead role was in: ‘The Blob’ – original film, of course. They don’t make them like him any more.
Oh poop! Awful weather you’re having, and hope you both stay warm – and dry. The late rain here this evening was likewise a no-show, and I even went outdoors in the light shower to threaten the weather with some strong words. Bizarrely, El Niño may be wetter here at this location, but then again, maybe not. Nothing is guaranteed. It’s usually drier in your area during such years, isn’t it? And did the looming shadow on the radar eventuate for you?
Well, yeah, none of us is gettin’ any younger (including H), and so we all have to roll with the punches as the old timers used to suggest. On that note, the idea of chainsaw milling has been shelved as too hard given the tree species here, but a cunning plan has been formulated. With the future firewood shed project, let’s just say that all options are now on the table. Yay! This was not the case until just recently, so a breakthrough in negotiations occurred. And being the crafty and resourceful types we are, there’ll be some outcomes, shortly.
Ladders are something to take seriously, and Scott has to find his own path, advice being somewhat studiously ignored. It happens, and when on ladders my brain is fully immersed in the goings on, and the Editor may not interject, cajole, add useful advice etc… The consequences are too great to bear… And that’s exactly it, a dude has to know when to ask for, and/or hire assistance. Yup. The tree dudes worked long and hard here for about a decade, just sayin.
You watched ‘I Legend’ recently, and that was very much one of the background themes. Nature always wins, in the end, and it takes an awful lot of energy to keep her will at bay. The dogs of Chernobyl was astounding, and it was nice to see the happy pooches enjoying the salubrious conditions. Years and years ago, the owners of the next door block sold up, and without any attention from the new owners, the land is returning to thick forest. Not my business though to get involved with and/or admonish. Dunno about selling the chainsaw mill on. It may have some use in the future, just not on the scale to which we’d planned. There are some projects which really need doing, and soon – like the larger firewood shed, and second greenhouse too. And it’s probably best we do those now whilst the time, resources and energy are available. Truly, at the moment, so many variables hang in the balance in the larger realms of our civilisation, that the future is occluded. Events can go anywhere right now.
Oh my gawds. The thought of an active volcano made of rocks, ice and snow nearby, is an unsettling thought. 🙂 Oh well, whatever shall be, shall be.
Sorry for the distraction, but the stonework in and around Rocky Butte is just beautiful. The entrance to the road tunnel was particularly pleasing to the eye. All lovely works from the WPA mob. And a promise of what may be done again in the future.
The butte was at one time quite a popular destination for presumably day trippers, but has now calmed somewhat – based on descriptions. Dude, don’t get me wrong, the visuals of those strato volcanoes is really something else, should they err, do what they do, well, who knows what the outcomes will be? And hey, the eruption of Mt St Helens remains a vivid memory of my youth. How can such a thing happen in a country as advanced as the US was my thinking at the time, but then I was really young. The National Geographic magazine had some awe inspiring photography of the event. And you got to experience it first hand. Cool.
One of the recurring memories I gleaned from the book read a couple of years ago, recounting locals memories of the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires here, was how bizarrely pretty the mountain looked at night. Sometimes, nature can put on a massive show for us humans.
Yeah, like I mentioned, lot’s of interesting things going on right now. Events are flying fast and furious down here, and a bloke has to know when to hang onto his hat. As a culture which began life as an offshore prison colony, society here tends to favour stability and safety, over all other considerations. I’m intrigued to see where the environment fits into that story, but pretty much can already guess the answer.
Thanks for the film prod, and yes I do need to make acquaintance with this film. Sadly, more hours in the day would be nice. Had a strange encounter with the coffee ground supplier today, all things change.
🙂 Running over long is a life style choice here! Well done you, and I look forward to learning your thoughts on the book. Yeah, probably that’s the group, and in this area, there ain’t many.
Ha! Funny you mention bodies, but that subject actually came up in the conversation. Chins will wag, and we all love a good juicy chunk of gossip around these parts. Part of the bush telegraph, and hey, I did my bit too.
Happy big chief boss day to you!
I hear you about that and sometimes face many multiple tasks to juggle and manage, although don’t tell the ladies I can multi-task, it being a bloke secret to pretend otherwise. Velcro sewn to fabric can be challenged, yup. The Editor sews on new chunks of the stuff, but the underlying fabric can be stressed by the stuff too.
Plans – sounds intriguing. As does chilling out, winter being the time for such activities.
Cheers
Chris
Yo, Chris – And, in news of the world, the “Lover’s Arch” in Italy, has collapsed. Ironic? An omen? An ironic omen? 🙂 . And, on Valentine’s Day?
https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/16/travel/italy-lovers-arch-collapses-valentines-day
Your fortune is made! Anything Victoria bans, even wet wipes, will become highly prized commodities. You could have a highly lucrative career, in smuggling. 🙂
Steve McQueen … the Early Years. 🙂 I thought he was the blond actor, who appeared in so many Japanese monster movies. Nope. It was Nick Adams.
Our high yesterday was 41F (5C). Our overnight low was 34F (1.11C). Our forecast high for today is 43F. It’s been scattered showers, that H and I have managed to dodge. There were reports of snow flurries, in parts of Centralia, but nothing I saw here. Nothing stuck. In theory, a La Niña year was forecast for us, to be colder and wetter, for the Pacific Northwest. Maybe in some places, but not here. Keeping track of frosts and La or Le years, I don’t see any correlation. But then, my sampling is small. In years and area.
Packed in … made in … and I also see “distributed by.” Sometimes, I can get on-line and figure out where stuff actually comes from. But not often.
Yes, events can go anywhere, these days. Haven’t heard much about Black Swans, lately. The “Resilient Citizen” author lists quite a few things people worry about. He also states: “We live in an era of polycrisis: “a cluster of related global risks with compounding effects, such that the overall impact exceeds the sum of each part.” He calls it peril soup. 🙂
I vaguely remember a school field trip, to Mt. Tabor. I think we were studying geology. It was a nice days picnic in the woods, and we all got to take home a piece of pumice.
In “The Martian,” our hero goes through a pirate phase. He wants the folks at Mission Control to refer to him as Capt. Blondbeard.” 🙂 Something was nagging at the back of my mind. Yup. Back in 1964 there was a movie called “Robinson Crusoe on Mars.” I don’t think I ever saw it. I see even the Criterion Collection has a BluRay copy of it. Our library doesn’t carry it. Maybe after things settle down, I’ll see if I can interlibrary loan it. What was Adam West doing before “BatMan?” Now, you know.
https://w.wiki/HtHG
Well, that’s interesting. When I was checking to see if our library carried that movie, I noticed that Defoe wrote a sequel to Robinson Crusoe. “The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.” Our library only has it as an e-book.
https://w.wiki/77Lx
I’m planning a trip to Winco, tonight. IIDS (If it doesn’t snow.). I re-upped my parking lot sticker, this morning, with Little Mary Sunshine. Had to produce proof of insurance and the truck title. I started plugging in numbers, to the bank part of recertification, last night. IIDS, I’ll swing by my credit union, tomorrow, for the parts I can’t figure out, and then go see Jane. She hasn’t been there, for a couple of weeks. Sick one, broke car the next.
I also bit the bullet, this morning, and sent an e-mail off to the sender of the missing seed packet. Opening salvo. I made it very clear, that it’s not them, it’s the post office. We’ll see how that goes. Lew
PS: The new “Dexter” is in transit, to me. I’ll maybe pick it up, tomorrow. The holiday might have delayed things.
Chris:
Five million people is a lot to keep under control; it’s going to be expensive. Time to raise taxes sky high. I mean, higher than the sky.
This is what I used to use for cleaning saddles and bridles and such stuff, also hiking boots: “Saddle soap is a specialized, all-in-one cleaner, conditioner, and preservative designed to remove grime, soften, and protect smooth leather items like boots, saddles, furniture, and jackets. Composed of mild soap, glycerin, lanolin, and beeswax, it cleans while preventing leather from becoming brittle. It is applied using a damp cloth or sponge to create a lather, then wiped clean.
I am amazed that you can get the same soap result using Canola oil instead of olive. That is good to know.
Wasn’t that why the cocka spaniel was bred?
A groundhog lives entirely for his own fat self and makes no alliances. Sort of like cats . . .
Our lemon harvest is in; I picked them yesterday (except for 2). We have 34 and a lot of them are 3 times bigger than what is in the stores. This is from 4 trees and is actually pretty good as they have had no sun and no light except from a north window since mid-fall. I did keep them well-watered, though, because of the woodstove in the basement with them.
Have you ever made chicken pot pie? I love it, but have never made it. What I actually want is to duplicate the sauce/gravy in the pie to eat with baked chicken, but I don’t think you can do that without actually making the filling.
Pam
Chris,
Nice title to this week’s entry. Quite the story about pulling that slime/poo/mess from Dame Plum. UGG. Bleeping nasty mess, that. Not fun. And the disintegrating toilet paper didn’t help.
I had to read part of that story aloud to the Princess. When I got to this part, however, she couldn’t listen any longer. She literally fell off the sofa from laughing too hard.
“That’s when my finger suddenly broke through the now damp layers of toilet paper. I felt so much closer to the canine.” That, and the next paragraph, yeah that was some good writing.
Now, you get that slimy poo on your shoes or clothes, or those maybe contaminated with poopballs near Sydney, or the balls of deer dung, well, I concur with Pam. Hard to beat saddle soap for some of these things that are soiling certain surfaces. And good to hear that your canola soap is as good as the other stuff and cheaper. I was hoping that could work out.
I see more results from more hard work that you did this past week. Rock breaking is better than back breaking! Things are looking good.
The Princess and I ran errands Monday afternoon. Thought about you. Went past a fast food restaurant that was advertising “moby tacos”. Apparently some type of oversized fish taco or something. Moby tacos for those who break up moby rocks? Although I’m one of those who can’t stand fish tacos. Nope, not for me. So maybe a “moby enchilada”, being a largish enchilada after a hard day of breaking rocks.
We also ran into a chap I used to work with. He had a smile that was so big it went completely around his head. Twice. He has been retired from the County for just over a week now. He’s very happy. He was there for 41 years. Turns out we also played baseball against each other in high school. He went to a tiny school northwest of here that was in the same league that my tiny school was in. We played two games on his field one afternoon. His team won both. He was two years behind me and didn’t play much that year.
We got another 4 or 5 mm of rain over the weekend. It rained pretty hard for an hour Monday, also. Got some snow late this afternoon. Nothing on the streets or sidewalks, but maybe 2cm on the lawns. Might get a bit more overnight. Maybe even 7 or 8 cm in the mountains. Every little bit helps up there.
Thanks for the flower photos. The agapanthus is interesting. I’m thinking about adding some chamisa, aka rabbit brush, to one of our planters and some seldom watered parts of the yard. A variety grows near here, so it should do okay. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ericameria_nauseosa
Been listening to songs by a young lady from western North Carolina. Different style of banjo and singing than what I am used to, so I’m finding her interesting to listen to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtyhEprUfps&list=RDrtyhEprUfps&start_radio=1
Nice mess the birds make of the fruit. At least the wombats and others clean up after the birds at night. Everybody gets a feed that way. And you don’t have to clean up as much mess.
DJSpo
Hi Pam,
You’re not wrong, and hey, how hard is it sometimes to extract Mr Baby on a cold wintry day, when the snow is thick on the ground, the air is well below freezing, and he’s decided to take himself off for a little adventure – out of your reach. Now, imagine that effort and frustration, but multiplied by five or so million times, and it’s probably that hard to get under control! 🙂 Ooo, the sky perhaps is the limit.
Thanks for mentioning the product, and who knew it was available down under? Yeah, most of the ingredients tick the right boxes. Interesting stuff. Have you used the stuff on leather boots?
Yeah, truly it’s difficult to tell the difference between olive oil and canola oil soap – which we’d made – but the cost is about a third. Canola, as you’d be aware comes from a Brassica species of plant, rapeseed I believe it’s called, but it’s just another type of wild mustard. Grows like weeds here that plant. I forget, have you ever made soap? The list of things to do is admittedly long.
Looking at the long term climate forecast for here (always chancy and indicative as distinct from reality), looks like we’re in for a dry year. Plans might have to change to accommodate that possibility. Probably best if we got the new firewood shed done sooner, rather than later.
Ha! Thanks for the laughs regarding the spaniel joke, and it took me a while to figure it out. But yeah, nice one. Very funny. Them cockatoos better watch out, the Sheriff is in town, although those big white long lived birds get up earlier than I. Hardly fair is it? Perhaps the old saying was wrong, and it should have said instead: The early bird, gets the apple!
Oh my! Clearly there is only one solution for Mr Groundhog then – the Holy handgrenade of Antioch – which being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it. Amen.
Well done with the lemon crop, and what a delight the fruit would be in your glacial winter. Lovely stuff, and if there’s a finer winter fruit than citrus, I’m yet to encounter it. Any plans for the crop? The small trees have shallow root systems, so the watering would work well.
Being vegetarian at home, I’ve never considered a chicken pot pie, although it looks delicious. How do you manage the dairy part of the filling? Incidentally, the gourmet chicken pie is not far off that recipe – chicken, leek and bacon, which are a wicked combination. Yum! Have you tried roasting the chicken with the other ingredients, such as peas, leeks, bacon etc? Dunno about you, but that’s kind of what I’d try.
It was a lovely cool and sunny day here today, which was mostly spent indoors doing paid work.
Cheers
Chris
Hi DJ,
Thank you so much for expressing your enjoyment of the words, and hey this essay could have been somewhat polarising! And please extend my appreciation to your lady, for I too was chuckling along when penning the words. Dare I write this, yeah why not? (was my thoughts at the time) And Sandra likewise burst out laughing when doing the edit. Man, I said to the Editor, this blog just wrote itself and took on a life of its own. A poop story in the making, simply waiting to be told. 😉
Both yourself and Pam intrigued the ol’ brain and sent me on a rabbit hole regarding Saddle Soap which is an astounding product, clearly created by someone who knew the requirements of the task set before them. Very impressive.
Absolutely, I’d recommend swapping the pricier Olive Oil for the far cheaper Canola Oil with home made soap. There may be a difference, but I’m yet to encounter it. Ain’t just you either, with Olive Oil pushing around $20/L, cheaper alternatives are temptations which you’d hope would work. Obviously I can’t vouch for other oils having not run the tests.
If I had to worry about a product becoming unavailable in a future resource crunch, it’d be coconut oil. That’s really nice stuff, and even the dogs enjoy a small chunk in their breakfasts – thus probably their glossy coats.
Ah, you’ve a keen eye and mind to discern that subtlety, for it is true. Why work harder, is often a question which is rarely asked, especially in these enlightened days when economists ask ye of others, more for less, all in the name of productivity gains! 😉 If the tree species here were less crazy dense, the job would make perfect sense (the rhyme of the day!) In your country poplar is considered a hardwood species, but that is just peanuts compared to super dense seasoned Eucalyptus Obliqua. I won’t show you any photos of burrs, as a professional courtesy. Hehe!
Go the Moby Taco, but dude, are we up for the challenge? Clearly neither of us are competent to face this monster. 🙂 Never had a fish taco, and our enchiladas are vegetarian (mushroom + capsicum + carrot + radish + proper tasty cheese + pepper + Italian herb seasoning + a dash of tomato passata)
Dare I suggest that people with big wide smiles are super happy, but may also have untapped singing skills? Sorry for the digression, but astounding voices, need a big mouth. What a fun catch up you two would have had, and it is a very small world upon occasion.
I envy you your rain and snow, I know, it’s kind of sordid, isn’t it? Oh well. Good to hear that some of the white powdery stuff even made it up into the nearby mountains. We had 2.6mm overnight and that was so good. It’s crazy dry out there right now.
Agapanthus are a super hardy and reliable plant, which some folks consider a tad weedy, although that doesn’t seem to be the case here. The insects and nectar feeding birds love those plants.
Your Ericameria nauseosa sounds to me like the sort of plant which re-establishes disturbed arid-land soils. Probably should be grown far and wide as a primary plant at a wild guess. Also it’d probably grow really well down under – yikes! Far out. Looks like an important winter fodder crop when there isn’t much else for wildlife to consume.
Wishing the young artist success, and the tune was a real toe tapper. What’s with the fifth string and the tuning knob a third of the way down the fret board? Never seen that before.
Absolutely, nothing goes to waste here, including fallen apples. I’ve read dire prescriptions regarding orchard hygiene (not leaving fallen fruit on the ground) and that just doesn’t happen here.
Did paid work for the day, and finished late this evening, as is often the case on a Wednesday. The weather here today was superb, 24’C and blue sunny still skies. The dogs ran around like crazy at times, and then retreated indoors where the March-flies can’t bite.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Lewis,
Did you notice that some couples were recommending kissing under the arch – prior to the collapse of course. Best not to be under it, or upon it, in my opinion. Anywhoo, arches collapse. There’s a similar arch formation along the coast line way to the south west of here: London Bridge (Victoria). That collapsed too. Sometimes a rescue has to be effected by helicopter for there isn’t another way… Other than perhaps ‘Deep Water Soloing’, although it’d be hard to test the waters depth from such a height. Probably fatal.
I like how your mind works, seething with ideas as to how our fortunes could be made. First we have to get the things banned, but biggerer powers than you and I attempted that in the courts, and failed. Drats, foiled again, back to the drawing board. When is our lucky break to occur?
It was Steve McQueen’s first lead role that film, yeah exactly. Just read the short bio on Nick Adams, and would have to suggest that self promotion was more than a passing gift for the actor. Presumably getting noticed and hanging out in those circles would be a difficult affair. Probably wasn’t all that great with recalling his lines towards the end of his career at a wild guess. He sure got them talking though.
Whoa! Those temperatures are plummeting in your part of the world, and the days sure would feel cold. How is the IIDS situation playing out? 75’F here today, sunny and blue skies. All very pleasant, and most of which was spent indoors. Finished up work late tonight, which is cool. Gotta go and make some dinner soon. Chris’s quick vegie pasta meal is on the menu this evening.
In theory, a La Niña year was forecast for us here as well, which usually means wetter and colder, but alas, other climate forces are afoot and the opposite occurred. Up north of the continent, they are getting some serious rain this year. A whole lot. Here, not so much. Hard to tell what the coming year promises climate wise. I’d have to suggest that all bets are off. But I’m thinking about possibilities, and may make some changes soon.
Lot’s of fun words to sort of, you know, hide the fact that a product is made in the wonderful land of elsewhere. A beautiful place to be sure, it just ain’t here. 🙂
Peril soup is a really nice way to describe a mixture of complementary troubles. 🙂 Thanks for mentioning it. You convinced me long ago that there was no one silver bullet for Rome’s demise, but there was an extensive list of reasons. On their own, probably insignificant, but as a group, a formidable weight unlikely to be bested.
Mount Tabor (Oregon) is kind of like a low rise, but far out, Mt Hood dominates the skyline of Portland. All rather exciting to have such a slumbering beast hovering in the background. Hope it stays quiet.
Ha! That’s funny about the film, and yes, my film education is sadly lacking due to restricted time for the enjoyable activity. Have to see what I can do about getting the film on the to-watch list.
The Batman series was notable for it’s funkiness and hip and with-it visuals. I enjoyed it. Truly, the world was never in peril from that lot of baddies – they were too busy partying. Ooo, was the Mars film a remake / nod? And the Editor read Robinson Crusoe a year or two back and highly recommended the book, but alas it was an old edition and many pages simply fell out. By the time the book had been read through, the thing was a mess. Should get another copy. Hmm.
Hope the credit coop sorts out the missing info, and that the answer is acceptable, although I get the impression that merely completing the form, puts you ahead of the pack. Sometimes just turning up, is enough. Hope Jane feels better soon and avoids further car troubles. The new tires here did a tidy raid on the funds. Oh poop, you just reminded me to leave them some interweb feedback. I keep forgetting to do that.
Very diplomatic, and lost mail is a nightmare. The seeds could be anywhere… Not even in the same state! Fingers crossed for a good and speedy resolution. I once had something arrive at the post office, and it was not scanned in, and just sat there, waiting until enquiries were made. Coffee spare replacement parts too for the machine, so I was getting desperate.
Hope you enjoy the series. The Editor had many good things to say about it, and of course you must avoid poking holes at how the protagonist was brought back to life. 😉 It was also suggested by the author, that Sherlock himself could have been brought back, if public demand was great enough.
Cheers
Chris
Yo, Chris – It’s lucky the cousins weren’t on the arch, when it collapsed. If people had so many lives, like cats, they both would have lost one. 🙂
Then there’s the natural arch, that probably wasn’t. Down in the Columbia River Gorge, there’s an area called “Bridge of the Gods.” There’s a Native America story, attached to it. In illustrations of the myth, it’s often portrayed as a natural bridge. More like a landslide. But, it makes an interesting story.
https://w.wiki/Htqs
I guess the kindest thing to say about Nick Adams, was that he was an opportunist. But, one must say he sure worked pretty steady. Even if some of it was pure schlock. Even top tier, beloved actors often admit to doing this or that part, just for the money.
Our high yesterday was 45F (7.22C). Our overnight low was a steady 32F (-0-C). Our forecast high for today is 42F. I still haven’t seen any snow, at least in town. Prof. Mass posted another entry about low land snow. We might get some, tomorrow.
I see there are wild fires, out on our Great Plaines. It’s dry, it’s windy. Looking at a map, it’s about the same area that suffered the worst of the Dust Bowl.
I saw an article about La Niña and El Niño, and how there’s going to be a recalibration, due to climate change. I didn’t understand half of it, but you might.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/17/weather/el-nino-global-warming-pacific-ocean
I also saw an article about how some cities cope with incclimatev weather, mostly cold. I’ve also seen articles about similar set ups to deal with heat.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/17/travel/toronto-path-canada-underground-networks
Your quick veggie pasta sounds a lot like my quick rice veggie mix. Only the carrying system, is different. 🙂
I got a response from the E-Bay seller. They still think the package is going to show up. Hope springs eternal … They also sent a snapshot of the shipping label, so, I can do a claim. I’m tempted to just write it off and order the Yerba Mate seed from another source. They weren’t that expensive.
Yeah, how will Dexter resurrect? Doesn’t seem to be a big problem, in fiction. They’re kicking around a sequel to Will Smith’s “I Am Legend.” That was discussed in some of the articles I read about a sequel. Nothing had been settled on.
I made a trip to the Winco, last night. I am now stocked up, and if snowed in, won’t have to eat the dog. 🙂
I ran into one of the minions, from my library. Someone I talk to, frequently. It’s the minions that are going to catch it in the shorts. The powers that be are leaning on them, heavily, picking at this and that to force them out, or outright fire some. They’re even monitoring some of their social media, to look for “negative” thoughts. What’s happening on the surface, is bad enough.
https://chronline.com/stories/timberland-regional-library-staff-union-calls-for-investigation-amid-ongoing-budget-crisis,396383?
I asked her about the state of the “Friends” group. I think I’d best steer clear. Right now, it’s run by two old ladies, who want to hold onto everything. I don’t want to get in a situation where I have to battle to jettison each and every volume of junk. Lew
Chris:
I was thinking about fat bergs today as I poured grease from a pan – into the trash can. Don’t those people ever think of their own drains and how they are going to clog them up? Why would anyone pour fat down a drain?
Yes, indeed – I have used saddle soap on leather boots. I can’t remember the brand; it was so long ago that I had a horse.
No, I have never made soap, though you inspire me every time you mention it. As you said: “The list of things to do is admittedly long.”
I never look that far into the future . . . If it is going to be a dry year there, couldn’t the new firewood shed wait, since the wood would stay drier?
No hand grenades for Mr. GH. If it comes down to it, I expect we could catch him in a Have-a-heart trap if we tried extra hard. I was supposed to have reinforced all the garden this winter to keep him out, but we’ve had this ice (it’s about gone) for weeks and I hurt my shoulder, which I have to be very careful with. And I am about to start seeds indoors, more time used up, so we shall see.
After I asked you about the chicken pot pie, I remembered that you guys eat vegetarian at home. I guess I’ll have to exepriment.
It was a lovely cool and cloudy day here.
Pam
Hello Chris,
“some dude begins trolling me after reading that and suggesting that the off grid system is so wasteful, unlike grid tied systems.”
Did he know a way of achieving 100% EROEI or perpetual motion? I hope he told you how.
“Thus why I suggest if you wish to maximise the potential energy generated, first charge the batteries, then turn devices on, like the air conditioner.”
That’s the time of choice to use the stove and washing machine. Also the water heater is programmed only to run from PV, not the battery or mains.
“the crushed rock I used is described locally as Tuscan toppings with fines. The fines are the sandy lime component. look for a local product which is also described as ‘rock crusher dust’ – the material is amazing fertiliser too, and the darker the colour, the wider variety of minerals contained therein.”
Is this the new Nu-Soil? (the crushed paramagnetic rock product from Boral which looked so promising and now is not to be found)
I’m confused… are you saying the rock crusher dust on its own can be mixed with or put on soil, but needs added lime in order to set like mortar?
“By the way, we use a Fowlers Vacola bottling system, which must be over 50 years old. Super tough glass.”
Yes, amazing stuff. Except I have got a crack in the base of one of mine. I use them for making yoghurt. I thought they were indestructible. Did it heat too fast? Did it not like the dishwasher?
Afraid where I am the UV is still extreme and the rain keeps staying away. Except for last night when a carpenter had left uncovered wood about everywhere. It was enough to wet the timber but not the soil.
Does daylight savings affect your farm operations? I have not changed the clocks the past two years. It is so onerous, better to do the calculations in my head.
Now you mention a relation between geofabric and cleaning wipes there may be some use for used ones in the garden. Assuming they are not biodegradable.
Re your chainsaw mill: even the humble ubiquitous log splitters get bad reviews and accusations of underperformance. I wonder if they are all made for less sturdy timber than our native varieties.
Chris,
Well, but that was one of the funniest things I’ve read in some time. Even Douglas Adams injecting Arthur Dent into the mix, with some appropriately depressive comments from Marvin, couldn’t have improved on the tale. Or the tail, as may be. 😉 The Tale of Chris and the Spiny Poop Tail.
No further snow overnight, just the 2cm I previously mentioned. It was breezy, though, but not too bad.
Remember when I mentioned that computerized CNC carving stuff? You had made a grand comment, which I even kept for my research. Yes, my club decreed research with other clubs is completed. I’ll give the results at the meeting this Saturday.
However, as you were helpful with clarifying my thinking…I contacted 9 other clubs spread over the United States. Three did not reply. Several have shows, but they are not formally judged shows. One show states in its show rules that absolutely no CNC, laser or other computer-controlled carvings are allowed. One, just an hour or so north of Lew, allows CNC entries for junior and Novice, but above that is for display only. Three others haven’t run into the issue, two of these deciding that they don’t even want these as display. The third of these will make future decisions if and only if there is a large demand for CNC. The club in Boise, Idaho, meanwhile, allows CNC entries. However, the Boise woodcraft show is divided into four large groupings. The CNC subcategory falls under one of those four groupings “Woodworking”. It is NOT part of woodcarving/pyrography at all.
I agree about the probable future of coconut oil. I would like to get into soap making, but I’m busy with carving and making chokers. And I have gobs of wax to make candles with. A bloke has only so much time, unfortunately.
I remember before everyone had a PC at work. The job I had at the County, done before the PC, well, it was a lot of hard work with calculator and hand drafting. Maybe a total of four projects a year. With PCs and decent software, there was one year we did 28 projects. More productivity, yes, but also more stress due predominantly to having to multitask a lot. I’ve been reading different articles recently about what AI is already doing in the workplace. Yes, less people, significantly more productivity for those who remain. Sort of another giant jump up the productivity slope, similar to the one from calculator to PC. And longer hours and more stress.
The “work smarter, not harder”, specially with changing climate and water accessibility, well, that’s why the Rabbitbrush. And succulents. Stuff that really doesn’t need much water or care but is better than bare, sunbaked dirt. Hedges around three sides of the back are already of the low water variety.
Glad you liked the saddle soap. Not just for saddles. Good stuff.
Ah, that fifth string. Banjo. It’s what is called a “drone string”. My sister wanted to play bluegrass banjo with 5 strings. However, the local banjo instructor disliked bluegrass, calling it “a worthless fad”. So sis took strumming lessons. Four strings. Called the “tenor banjo”. I’ve seen this style of banjo played in jazz orchestras. Bluegrass and the style she learned aren’t even tuned the same. She eventually quit, so I took over the banjo.
I retuned the four strings and bought the fifth string. Taught myself how to do bluegrass picking with thumb and two fingers. You should be able to see how this works on this video. Music starts at about 2 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=af9wHDrkjfk
You might notice that that fifth string is not touched by the left hand. It is a static high G. Notice also the back of these bluegrass banjos is different than the back of what the young lady plays.
Yes, Murphy Campbell’s banjo is tuned the same as the bluegrass banjo. However, she plays the older clawhammer style. The back of the banjo is wildly different – I got a similar sound effect by taking the back completely off the bluegrass banjo. The bluegrass is fun, but if I were learning today, I would probably learn the clawhammer style. Strum down with two fingers, pluck the drone string with the thumb.
Rhiannon Giddens has a wonderful interview here on history of the banjo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiP8Tfa8bB8
Dogs running around crazy. Walked Dame Avalanche over to see Killian the Red, as his human was “in the field” for the job all day. The two wild things had a grand time chasing one another in the snow. Twas a good venture away from home.
DJSpo
Hi Pam,
🙂 Back in the day, houses – down here at least – used to have these plumbing bits known as the grease trap. And that collected the fats from the kitchen so that they could be disposed of in the bin – only to end up in landfill. I believe that commercial kitchens still have such systems, but for households, it was so 1970’s, that it hurt. And the vast majority of people got lazy, easier to dump the stuff down the sink, and nowadays simply don’t know any better. You know not to do it, I know not to do it, but we are the minority in this instance. And I’m so with you, why pour the stuff down the drain in the first place? Back in those days, fats were generally collected and stored in the refrigerator, and made for some yummy chips. Fats in general I reckon get a bad rap nowadays, when there are other bigger – dare I say it? – metaphorical fish to fry problems with food. 🙂
We get around the whole fats problem by simply eating a vegetarian diet at home, but when we do cook meat for the benefit of visitors, I’m always astounded by how much harder it is to clean plates, cutlery, cooking utensils etc. With no dishwasher, it’s a very upfront and personal experience – did I ever mention that we use the olive oil / canola oil soap to wash dishes in? The soap shaker is a wonderful old school tech, stainless steel nowadays too, so it’ll last for decades.
I’m also guessing that in ye olde times, fat from the kitchen never went to waste, and at some point in the future, everything old, will be new again. It’s useful stuff.
I’d not realised (or forgotten) that long ago you had horses. They’d be hard to own on your current land due to slope issues, and that’s one reason we don’t keep livestock here. Did you have a dressage area to train the horses upon way back in the day?
🙂 True, and finding spare hours in the day is admittedly a difficult prospect. Had a sourcing day today. Drove to the nearby big outer urban area and picked up the posts for the new firewood shed project. Then grabbed some sand + aggregate mix plus bags of general purpose cement. The plan is to get the many posts in the ground over the next two days before it… rains…. Apparently, it may rain on Sunday, but we’ll see. The centre of this arid continent may perhaps turn into a quagmire. The size of the storm is off the charts, but remember that there just aren’t the large mountain ranges which so impact upon the weather in your country: Outback deluge to cause flooding in SA, NT. Pretty pictures, those forecast models – and hopefully a relief to the dry.
Ha! Dry firewood is one consideration. Forest mess is the other, and if we clean up in order to reduce the fire risk, there needs to be a place to store the newly created firewood. 😉 And around, and around it goes.
Hope your shoulder mends, and from past experience, it can, although admittedly the early stretching was err, painful. In best Yoda voice, stretch you must, and stretch you shall, but in small increments. Feeling for you with that injury, as the irritation is with you every moment of the day.
Pam, a little secret, the gourmet pie place makes a wickedly good chicken, leek and bacon pie. You’d have to work out the dairy part of that sauce, but could it be done? You betcha! Go the Italian route with a tomato based sauce instead.
🙂 Yay for some nice cool weather for you, and hope the glacier melts sooner, or later. And that the melt water ends up in your soil. A lovely cool sunny warm day here today.
Cheers
Chris
HI Kallianeira,
That secret was sadly withheld from the trolls diatribe. 🙂 Electricity is a funny energy, because it leaks out everywhere. The cheaper the system components, the more heat gets created, and the less useful power is delivered.
Good stuff, and the warm cycle on modern washing machines uses an electric heating element to warm the water. Eats a lot of electricity, so wise of you to notice. Do you remember the old days of the twin tub washing machine, which took hot water from the house system? A mate of mine, who’s mother arrived from America to down under and worked as a rural school teacher on a 70’s migration scheme, was horrified to discover the twin tub washing machine.
Boral has a lot of quarry products, none of which I have access to. In Victoria, there is a variety of local granite which is described as blue metal (fun fact Stonehenge is also a variety of granitic blue metal). And yeah, if you can get the really fine rock crusher dust of that stuff, it’s a good addition to your soil as a fertiliser. Top dress soil, or mix into compost. A huge variety of minerals, all on the cheap, not that many are aware of this. Easy. I mean, the quarry machines have gone to a lot of trouble to produce the fine dust which ordinarily takes epic natural forces like glaciers to produce over a long period of time. It’s the exact same process, just faster for us and using an awful lot of diesel. 😉
Ah, the blue metal rock crusher dust does not set hard like the lime fines do. It eventually mixes into the soil – that’s just what the stuff does, even if top dressed. By the way, there are a number of different varieties of lime you can buy at Bunnings (for an example of a supplier), but how they work is that if you have acidic soils (as I do), adding the stuff causes the pH to rise, which allows plants access to a wider variety of minerals than they could get previously – and then they suddenly grow faster and end up being hardier. You never really want too acidic, or too basic, soils. Like the three little bears, it has to be just right. Does that make sense? And for here I’d stick to what they describe as ‘Garden Lime’ in the stores which is predominantly Calcium Carbonate, and avoid the others (Dolomite or Gypsum, but at a pinch they’re OK too). But that is my area, yours might be different, maybe. What does your underlying clay layer look like?
🙂 I’m simply amazed that such sturdy thick glassware can last for half a century and still be useful. We have a lot of the number 27 bottles, but one or two do have those cracks you mentioned. I don’t have a dishwasher, but hey, a lot of chemicals, and who knows what effect they may have on the old glass? Certainly glass does not feel the same to after having been through such a machine – it has a drier feel to my hands.
Oh poop about your UV. It’s now down to Very High here, and folks from overseas just don’t get what that story means. The Alaskan tourists the other day looked to me as if they’d be in trouble if they spent more than an hour outdoors in the middle of the day. Dry here too, but hopefully this monster storm coming, delivers some moisture. Fingers crossed.
Hehe! Timber is yeah, one of the things probably best not left out in the rain, but it’ll be fine, unless it is flooring. That’d be a bad thing. Anyhoo, the drying process for that stuff these days is amazing. And historically unprecedented. It wasn’t all that long ago when green timber was all that was available.
It doesn’t affect operations, more the half yearly changeover leaves me with a feeling of jet-lag for about a week. What do you do, but I do like your style.
That plastic wipe stuff is a truly mysterious product. 😉
Agreed with the log splitters. It would be nice to encounter a softwood species one day, but yeah, the local trees have other plans… We use a 20 tonne machine, and it’ll do all but twisted and gnarled chunks of timber taken from near to a tree stump. That stuff is crazy dense.
Cheers
Chris
Hi DJ,
Thanks for your appreciation, and it was so much fun to write as well. Yes, very much so, and it is the tail of the poop wagging the dog. 🙂
Hey, this is a weird synchronicity, but your 2cm of snow = the 2mm of rain here. Must be something in the water? There’s a big storm looming, and may soak some of the central parts of this arid continent, but the forecast models suggest both kinds of uncertainty: much and difference. Until the rain has fallen, perhaps nobody knows, the scale is pretty impressive though: Outback deluge to cause flooding in SA, NT.
Should be a nice rainfall rather than anything too scary at this location, but I will do my rain incantation challenge if things turn out too meagre. One must keep the big tools ready to be used, if so required. With the impending weather, we decided to get the posts for the new biggerer firewood shed in the ground over the next few days. The curing cement will appreciate the water from the sky. And better to do the soil work of that project whilst the stuff is dry. So rocks will take a break this week. Headed to the nearby outer urban area to pick up the timber posts today, but alas timing was off, so no Bahn Mi lunch… Tragedy is part of life, they tell me.
Good thinking and actions to research how other clubs were handling the whole CNC carving / computer 3D printing business. Glad to be have been of use with that thorny problem. An idle thought occurs to me as well: If allowed in their own category, probably not a bad idea to set some limits on the physicality of what can be shown in the category. You wouldn’t want someone turning up with a truck sized item… But also, clubs are made by the people who regularly attend, and blow-ins demanding recognition is always an issue needing to be addressed.
Hmm. CNC should definitely be firewalled as its own category. In some ways, the whole story reminds me of race cars down under in the late 1980’s. Hang with me a second. In those days, mostly locally manufactured cars were raced as a sales proposition – the halo model effect. But then an English car was introduced, but the thing couldn’t be bought at a local dealer, and the monster dominated for several years: Ford Sierra RS Cosworth. Nice winning and stuff, but the point of the exercise was also promoting locally made material, and that aspect disappeared. The race events became boring due to the sheer dominance. Your CNC issues are a lot like that. The handmade examples, should never be compared to CNC stuff, for the skills to create the things are entirely different. Just my twenty cents from someone with no skin in the game. Agreed, it’s a skill for sure, but just not a part of wood carving / pyrography as you know it. Can it sit to the side though, yeah, sure.
See, I likewise respect your candle making skills – and that is something to which I have no idea about.
Oh yeah, I recall those days as well. You’d have to book time on a dumb terminal or PC. One on every desk, I don’t think so. And! Hey, I’m old enough to recall the days when all the accounting was done on paper. Truly, the outcomes aren’t all that different, the processes though – absolutely changed beyond recognition. Underneath it all, the paper lurks in wait.
That’s my take as well, productivity is nice and all, but more for the same (or less) is just stressful. It’s funny you mention this topic, but that may be at the core of the next blog, maybehaps! 😉
Adapt to conditions as they are, and not as we want them be, is the order of the day. Respect, and you may note that the gardens here likewise very much have to survive the conditions.
Oh poop! Sorry to hear that your sister encountered the rigid instructor problem, and the Editor likewise has a similar tale of woe (she came from a family who was very much into playing musical instruments), and encountered an instructor who was hung up on the Beatles – and did nothing else. And disparaging the preferred style is a real bummer to encounter. Oh well.
The music was lovely, and I’m not mucking around, the guys picking was almost too fast to follow. That’s some serious skill, and I couldn’t detect any discernible breaks between the players either. But they all introduced their own unique style to the melody.
Well, yeah, the technique you mentioned would produce a different sound, rhythm and melody. The clawhammer style from yesterdays link has almost a blues melancholy tone, but I could be off the mark there.
Go Dame Avalanche and Killian running around wild like in the snow. Always nice when friends get together. It was about 25’C here today, blue skies no wind, really nice. Tomorrow, that’s different. 32’C they tell me.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Lewis,
We’ve all used up some of our allotment of nine lives in unexpected ways, haven’t we? Hey, one of the reasons I stopped riding a motorcycle, put it that way. Sometimes you stare into the future abyss and just know.
The landslide complex is astounding, and I’d not wanted to have been there the day the mountains let loose, although it appears that the brothers in the legend continue to quarrel from time to time. You could also say that the beautiful maiden Loowit, who became Mt St Helens, had something of a fiery disposition. Sorry for the bad pun, and I could hardly be the first to have made that observation.
Sometimes in that industry, one needs to promote ones self. Anyway, it’s probably not a field of endeavour fit for introverts who weren’t chameleons, maybe. Agreed, the actor had a good work ethic. Doing a job for the mad cash is something we all have to do every now and then, and hey, during the 90’s recession, I did four years of commercial debt collection work. In some ways it was a good experience (much like your commercial kitchen days) in that you get to experience the world from the under side. Many folks go through their whole lives without experiencing how some of the various necessary tasks go on in the background of their lives. A shame that such lessons are missed. And hey, an actors range could benefit from such experiences as well don’t you reckon?
Isn’t it a bit early for wildfires out in the central south and east of your country? Far out. Oh my! Very stressful conditions. There’s an epic continent sized storm brewing over this continent, and fingers crossed, it delivers some rain here on Sunday. The forecasts are notable for mentioning how difficult the rain is to forecast with this storm.
Given the impending possible weather, we did a sourcing day today for materials relating to the new largerer firewood shed. Travelled to a nearby outer urban area and nabbed the posts, and also grabbed more locally the materials for cement making. The plan is to dig the holes and cement the posts over the next two days whilst it is dry. The future, as they say, is uncertain. But we’ll do something…
Yes, exactly, La Niña used to mean a cooler and wetter summer here, but there are other climate drivers in this corner of the world. Things are perhaps, different now, and sea surface temperatures right around this continent, are on the warmer side of the scale.
An underground city sort of sounds sinister to me, but then I like a lot of time outdoors, and don’t have to put up with crazy cold winters.
Rice vegie mix done here too, it’s an easy healthy meal. 🙂
Hey, you intrigued me and so I watched a bit over half of the film last night (and had a 1am finish!). Thoroughly enjoyable too, and when the Martian habitat was blown up, that was not a good moment. I’m curious to see how the film ends, and maybe they’ll all die before making it back to Earth? Incidentally, not to let reality get in the way of a good story, nobody seemed fussed by the hard radiation of space…
Hope does spring infernal, or something like that. 🙂 Maybe the package will turn up? At least there was a shipping label. Ebuy usually has a cancellation and refund system which is pretty decent.
My thoughts exactly, it’s fiction, so Dexter can be resurrected from the departed if public demand is good enough. Plus there is Mr Dinklage in the series as a major character, just sayin… But no spoilers from me, and they’d be secondhand anyway, and I could be wrong.
Glad to hear that H’s future is safe, for the moment at least. If the snow is deep enough, then all bets are off. 😉
I’d certainly ditch the free printing. Like who gets to print stuff for free? And performers. At such dark financial moments, an entity has to ask of itself, what is the core reasons we are here? Sorry man, that read like a horror show to me, and I’d certainly cut at the top, middle and bottom. That story is playing out, all over the place, and maybe, even in the bigger world. The land of stuff has been quietly off loading your IOU’s since about 2016, I believe. Hmm. And around, and around it goes, where it stops, nobody knows.
Ah, sadly, libraries cannot purchase without disposals – shelf space is a finite resource. Cooler heads know this to be true.
Cheers
Chris
Yo, Chris – I have to remind myself, that unlike your continent, our West Coast is, relatively, geologically young. Anything can (and usually does) happen.
I think youngsters would benefit from a year’s service job. Any service job. Get a taste of what the real world is like. Of course, those of high status don’t have to sully themselves. 🙂 And are proud of the fact.
It is a bit unusual for wildfires in those areas, at this time of the year. But, as I’ve read in several places, “There isn’t a fire “season”, anymore.”
Our high yesterday was 43F (6.11C). Our overnight low was 36F (2.22C). Our forecast high for today is 42F. Still no snow, and I’m beginning to doubt we’re gong to see any. The arctic outbreak that Prof. Mass was banging on about, apparently won’t reach this far south. At least, the Gov forecast for the next week, doesn’t have any indication of that. I hope you get your rain, but not too much.
“The Martian” is a great movie. Most notable quote: “I’m going to have to science the shit out of this.” You can even get it on posters.
I watched the first episode and a half of “Dexter,” last night. So far, surpasses expectations. I got to wondering … I wonder if the young man who plays Dexter’s son, is feeling any pressure. I mean, sooner or later, Dexter is going to have to retire from the field, one way or another. Will the son get spun off into his own series? I’m sure if the young actor hasn’t figured this out, on his own, his agent has probably pointed it out. “Do good kid, and you’ll have a cash cow, for life.”
Sort of related .. I picked up a lot of books at the library, yesterday. One is, “Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains Why We Can’t Look Away.” (Scrivner, 2025). He explores why we’re so fascinated with horror films, true crime, hauntings, traffic accidents, etc. etc.. And, is it a bad thing? He doesn’t think so.
Libraries, not so long ago, fixated on circulation numbers, customer counts, and “barriers to accessibility.” A barrier to accessibility would be, say, overdue fees. Or, putting in a drive through. All this emphasis was due to justifying their existence, to funding bodies.
Freebies and entertainment became part of the mix, to draw in the crowds. It’s something that was used to promote shopping malls, back in the day. Or, the street events that put not a penny in my till, when I was on Tower. I noticed that the general merchandise store, next to the Club, seems to have all kinds of weekend “events.”
I actually went into the library, yesterday. Besides picking up my items, I also picked up a pamphlet on the Friends of the Library group. Apparently, there are a website or two to explore. Social media, of course.
Another thing I noticed when I went into the library. Seems like every time I go in, there’s some new, glitzy self checkout machine. Lew
Speaking of drive throughs, one I hadn’t mentioned was … pharmacies (aka chemists.) Seems like they all have them, these days.
Chris:
Ah, yes – I used to save the bacon drippings (as we called the bacon grease) to cook with other things. Yum! I never lived in a house with a grease trap.
I’ve noticed that too about vegetable dishes being easier to clean than meat. Except for cheese, though that’s still an animal product. What is a soap shaker? I know I don’t have one because my dish soap squirts.
I only had one horse, and the slopes and lack of any place to ride her is the main reason I had to eventually give her to a friend’s granddaughter. I had boarded her for awhile, but that got too expensive: horses are expensive pets to keep. No dressage ring; she was a hunter. It was Margaret that had lots of horses.
It looks like you might get a deluge yourself. It seems like only yesterday that the center of your continent was a quagmire, with a lake that did not actually exist.
Oh – forest mess. We still have a good bit of that.
I did work out the dairy part of that sauce! I made some today and it’s just what I was aiming for. I had to use yogurt for the dairy, but that’s what I always use when milk or cream is called for. It’s really just a cream sauce with chicken broth.
It has been raining most of the day (that is good) and there is only the tiniest bit of glacier left. It finally felt safe enough to go down to the garden. Everything I planted in the fall is still growing! Some of it looks pretty ragged, but it’s alive. I was especially concerned about my cabbages, but they look fine. How did it all survive so many days of way sub-freezing temperatures? I didn’t do anything special to protect the beds.
I had forgotten that I had saved some of my homegrown potatoes from last year in the back of the dishwasher where I keep potatoes. They have sprouted wildly, but look pretty good. I was hoping to see how they do this coming season as I’ve never managed to save any that long before. I just have to tame them a bit.
Pam
Chris,
Hahaha! Nicely done. “Must be something in the water” when my 2cm of snow has water equivalent of your 2mm of rain. Something in the water. Dodgy puns are fun.
I noticed from the article the lack of certainty for rain in your area. Sounds like a Heisenberg Storm and the Uncertainty Principle. Or, as we used to say it, “Heisenberg may or may not have been here. We’re uncertain.” Hopefully you’ll get some useful rain out of the system.
Today was rather bleak outside. Bleak, as somewhat brighter than our winter grey, dry, with a chill breeze blowing at +3C. Very similar weather to what I experienced in Las Cruces in January. So I dressed appropriately and the White Wonder Husky thoroughly enjoyed the walk. An hour after that walk, we met Young Neighbor for lunch. I had the usual Meltdown Burger with plenty of jalapenos. Yummy.
It has been years since I pulled out my big gun that breaks droughts. Might be hard to do now, too. For a period of 5 years, among a group of 3 of us, if 2 went on a camping trip it would likely rain, even in the dry season. If all 3 of us were together, it was almost a certainty that it would rain for at least one of the days of the trip, even during August in a drought. It was such a foregone conclusion that when 2 of us planned a trip in the Washington desert in the late spring in a drought year, we knew it would rain. It did. When 3 of us were councilors at a youth camp, it rained for 5 of the 6 days the kids were there. Our friends planned their outdoor events around our schedules. They called us variously “drought breakers”, rain gods”, and “them foolish dudes that have rainclouds following them everywhere”. So if you ever get desperate enough for rain, maybe, perhaps, I might be able to track down the other 2 and, for an all expenses paid trip, we could visit you and camp outdoors on your farm, break the drought. Maybe.
That’s about when Douglas Adams had a side character in one of his Dirk Gently books, the Rain God. NOT because he could produce rain anywhere at any time out of a clear blue sky. He was Rain God because the rain clouds adored him, following him everywhere he went and dropping rain on him as an offering and a sign of their adoration. He had lived through like 17 years of endless rain by the time the book was written.
Your race car analogy hit it on the head why many of us do not want to compete with CNC stuff. I’ll let you know what the club decides.
Candles. Need to have a wick threaded through this metal gizmo that will sit in the bottom of the mold that the melted wax is poured into. The Princess really likes the “John Wick” series of movies starring Keanu Reeves. Maybe I will name every wick in future candles “John”, see if she picks up on why.
Getting into the time machine and moving back to early 1981. I was taking BASIC language at university. My friend had bought a TRS80 computer from Radio Shack. And a modem. It was possible to upload BASIC programs from the TRS80 via modem to the university VAX, then run the program on the VAX and print out the program and result for class. That’s why he bought the modem. Well, one evening, he was messing around on the university VAX and, well, got to where he wasn’t supposed to be. Payroll. Could’ve changed a lot of paygrades in there. Then he got into already recorded grades from various courses. Could’ve changed the permanent records. Then he couldn’t get out of the system. Eventually he had to unplug the modem from the phone cables. Never got in trouble, but it sure spooked him.
Oh, yeah, those good bluegrass banjo players pick and grin faster than fast. I always find it enjoyable to watch all of these guys playing the same song only with each individual’s little quirks added in. Bluegrass banjos sound so cheerful.
Very good, grasshopper! You picked up that tone from the clawhammer technique. Blues indeed. Good observation. Banjo – a mix of an African musical instrument with some European and Native (and other peoples) tinkering. Blues -another mix. And some of the clawhammer ballads have clear story lines in them that would fit well in the blues. Melancholy, some are.
Once upon a time in this country, music was played by and enjoyed by whoever was there to play it and enjoy it. If it was good, it could be heard anywhere by anybody. There were two types of music: good music and bad music. Then, enter technology and early records. Somebodies decided to carve up music into genres, making it easier to sell records in stores because things were categorized. That meant that there was country, western, classical, popular, African-American (I won’t use the older term here), followed by ragtime, blues, swing, jazz, etc. Some of us listen to many different “genres” of music. I still prefer the simpler breakdown into “good music and bad music”.
Hmmm, supposed to be -8C overnight tonight. Not the coolest of the season but still chilly. Dame Avalanche will be energetic tomorrow.
DJSpo
Hi Pam,
Lard was a very yummy thing to cook with, and it comes from the ‘everything including the squeak’ old school mode of frugality! Although not cooking meat here, we never see the stuff and haven’t since I was a teenager. To be honest, I’ve never seen a grease trap installed in a house before, but Sandra’s family house had one when she was a kid, which is how I knew about them. When I was a kid, meat meant a single lamb chop, and you’d eat the lot including fatty tail and marrow, and gnaw on the bone. There was no lost grease…
🙂 Cheese is good, although it tends to be yellow down under. I do wonder about the red colouring in cheese as I’ve heard parents making jokes about feeding red coloured candy to kids. Something about hyperactivity and stuff. Hmm.
Pam, you’re in for a treat. A soap shaker is so old school for washing up dishes that you’ll be amazed. I’ll see if I can find one… … Here goes: Soap shaker. Proper olive oil soap (or the newer canola oil soap) is much easier on your hands and cleans glassware, dishes and especially steel really well. I’m sure you can find some utoob videos to see how they work. Having had eczema long ago, I tend to be very careful with commercial soap products, which aren’t soaps usually, but detergents, which is a different thing.
Ah, your horse had a streak of wildness about her having a hunter personality – smart too. Respect, and yeah, I saw a bumper sticker once which proclaimed: Poverty is owning a horse – which suggests that the activity is expensive. In the valley down below the farm, there is a pony club, and given the huge vehicles and trailers (called floats for some reason, although I’m yet to see one levitate) seen there, the hobby looks financially ruinous in my opinion.
Oh no, that low lying lake in the centre of this ‘ere arid continent, is about to get around possibly four inches of rain over the next week. The forecast looks crazy, but we’ll see. Anywhoo, with the impending threat of rain, we began the new firewood shed project. Installed five of the fifteen timber posts, and would like to get some of the roof timbers up before the rain arrives on Sunday. We’ll see how it goes. It was 90’F here today, and digging holes for the posts was err, hot work.
Don’t we all have a bit of forest mess to clean up? Seems to be the way of things.
Ah, really clever to use yoghurt. 🙂 I’d not have considered using that stuff, which I make every four or five days and usually eat plenty of (meant to benefit eczema apparently). It’d give the chicken pie a nice tart zing flavour.
What? I’m astounded your garden is still growing after the deep snow and ice. Plants are amazing survivors. Well done, and that’s a lucky break because you’re off to a flying start with the soon to appear growing season.
Grab a chair and whip when attempting to tame the wild potatoes – they could be Triffids in disguise? We planted out some tubers which sounded a lot like that, and they grew just fine, although I rotate the potato crop to new beds each year – which is admittedly not always easy to do.
Cheers
Chris
Hi DJ,
Fun stuff hey, and the divide by ten to convert snow to a rainfall equivalent formula is very much locked into the brain. You are a notably bad influence when it comes to maths! 😉
We started work on the new and biggerer firewood shed today, and I stood back and assisted whilst the Editor did the maths and measurements to make sure the four corners are in fact at 90 degrees. Got five of the fifteen timber posts cemented into the ground in the 32’C heat, and my brain feels a touch cooked tonight. Oh well. The plan is to get the remainder of them in the ground tomorrow. Already there have been three modifications to the design as possible useful features became obvious.
Candidly I’m uncertain what to make of your Heisenberg joke – Ha! Right back atcha! 🙂 Quantum physics is a subject which is beyond my comprehension, but the uncertainty principle makes a lot of common sense. How much can we really know?
Ah 50 shades of winter Spokane strikes again. It was beautiful blue skies and still air today, but it would have been nice had the temperature And UV been dialled down somewhat. Ollie followed me around sleeping in and out of the sun as befits an older dog, whilst the Kelpies were most active, and are now sound asleep.
Go the meltdown burger and friendly lunch! Actually, you know what a dire plant emergency is: The chilli plants not producing enough fruit for the remainder of the year. We might have to – shock, horror – buy some.
Ah, thanks for the kind offer of the rain brining services, but the expense dude… Have to politely decline. 😉 Man, that story is like a scene from the Wizard of Id cartoon where the Wiz has had a spell run off the rails, and now walks around under a personal wet cloud. Them’s the big guns, for sure.
Douglas Adams had such a lovely grasp of the absurdities of life. Sucks to be the Rain God in the story.
It’s a bigger story than you may imagine, what your Club is facing. Anywhoo, just because someone demands to compete, doesn’t imply that they should be allowed to do so, and pushing them into their own category is the neatest solution. It’s just not the same set of skills, is it? So why compare the two? Hope the Club muddles through this challenge.
How have I never heard of the film series: John Wick. Actually, it sounds like the sort of thing the Editor would love to watch.
Security was pretty lax in the old days, but then a person would have to know the phone number and passwords to dial in, and each call cost, it would add up quickly to randomly try numbers. I have a hunch that hacking is a nuisance, because the costs to repeatedly bother a network, are so are cheap. I got rid of a lot of hackers merely by setting limits on how many times per second they could interact with this website. Hopefully they got bored and went and did something else more productive with their lives, but the arty-fish-al monsters are continuing to hoover up the deathless prose. Wonder what a computer program makes of the concept of ‘shitballs’?
I doubt the old computer systems even had audit trails. They were amazingly naive in many ways. I liked the old BASIC language, and it wasn’t all that different from the underlying machine language, which ran a lot faster.
It was the individual quirks which really made that medley, and wow, were they all having fun or what? Agreed, the tones were cheerful and joyous.
Thanks, and you can hear the difference between the instruments and tones. Maybe I’m not wired right with music, but I enjoy the melancholy melodies and they certainly don’t bring me down mood wise. Dunno.
🙂 Understood, and yes, we have both types of music here: Good and Bad, but like you, I prefer to listen to the Good stuff. Life it too short to waste on bad music. Also noting that beauty is as they say, in the eye of the beholder. Plenty of people over the long years have had said some rather pointed and unpleasant things about the national youth music broadcaster. Dunno why, I never chose to close my mind.
Oh my gawds! -8’C scares me silly. Good luck, and may the best Husky win! The Dame will love it.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Lewis,
Your country sure has some exciting geological goings on. Is Yellowstone a super volcano, or not? Let’s find out… Earthquakes are pretty common down under too, but most of the time they’re minor and inconsequential, and one day there’ll even be an eruption somewhere on the continent. The geologists keep saying that it’s only a matter of time. However, after the 5.9 hit a few years ago, let’s just say that I have a new appreciation of the risks that are part of residing in your part of the world. Experiencing something bigger than that is not on my bucket list.
But the continent is old and worn down, thus few really big mountain ranges and plus the flogged soils. Man, the tallest point on the continent, you can kind of just amble up – it’s not challenging. Your mountain ranges on the other hand, are impressive obstacles.
I’m so with you about the gains to be had from doing a service job, like hospitality or retail. And that’s it exactly, a person gets to see for themselves how the real world works. And hey, maybe with that experience under their belt, they’ll become more pleasant customers. I did a long stint in retail, and am unfailingly polite to people who serve me. Hey, sometimes if questioned about this, I’ll pull the old joke about having seen ‘Fight Club’. Avoid the onion soup today, Sir. Always gets a laugh.
Misplaced pride is a thing, sorry to say. Makes you wonder how families put much effort into the productive domestic economy, when both partners have to work a full time job?
It was 90’F here today, and rather toasty feeling. Actually, as the keys on the computer keyboard click and clack, the ceiling fan is cooling my overheated brain. We began the new and biggerer firewood shed project bright and early this morning. The corners had to be set out, so that the thing ends up square. Fortunately the Editor has a better brain for such tasks. Anywhoo, five of the fifteen posts were cemented into the ground, and it was a big day of work. Hope to get the other eight in the ground tomorrow, which will again be hot. Oh well, the soil which was dug from the post holes, has been used on the new path project. So there’s a bit of overlap between the two jobs.
Such talk ‘no fire season any more’ is heard down here as well in some parts of the country. Right now, I’m hoping that the forecast storm brings plenty of rain to this area.
Winter is having it’s last hurrah for you with those cold temperatures. Hope you and H are staying warm?
Hehe! It’s a great quote isn’t it? So I watched another half hour last night, and it’s a long film. At bedtime the Editor places herself between the screen and I, and starts chatting. A ‘bedtime’ strategy if ever there was one, and that was when the protagonist jetted off into space in a convertible… And things were going wrong. I went to bed wondering what the heck had happened! Hardly a relaxing experience, not knowing. Oh well, I’ll watch the conclusion later tonight. Thoroughly enjoyable, and thanks for the recommendation.
Yeah, I was wondering about that too. Dexter is getting older. Isn’t that the quintessential definition as to: opportunity?
What a fascinating book. Learn anything of interest? Long ago we discussed how the Victorian era folks had an interest in the macabre, and wonder if the author touches on the history? Good to hear that the stories mentally fortify the readers / viewers / listeners.
Hehe! Drive through’s are so rare down under, and only ever took off for the bottle shop custom, even then, still not common. The idea of a drive through library, really baffles me. But I so hear you about that strange fixation on ‘some metric or other’. Makes me wonder where that is all headed. All we can hope for is that the cuts aren’t too bad. By the way, the library was limited to 1% tax increases, and just for comparative purposes, the local council here (which runs the libraries among other services) is limited to a 5% hike.
Yep, you got a raw deal with those events, and the hardware store (which has since closed down) had similar issues on monthly market day – which closes some of the roads. Customers wanting hardware, just couldn’t get close to the business, and the owner was not shy about sharing his opinion of the market day. The costs don’t go away with the lost revenue.
Well done, and how bad could a friends of the library group be? They’re probably really lovely people. And yeah, all those constant software upgrades, can’t be cheap.
Ha! A drive through pharmacy, what a thought! Your country has some amazing stuff. If you want a prescription filled here, you go into the chemist, hand the script over to the pharmacist, and then wait maybe fifteen minutes whilst it is prepared. I’ve travelled to some countries which just sell whatever you want, no paperwork required. Fun stuff.
Cheers
Chris
Yo, Chris – Yes, it will be a bad day, on earth, when (not if) the Yellowstone super volcano tears loose. Not that it’s the only super volcano. It will create a nuclear winter type situation. Billions, worldwide, will die. Different delivery system, but the same as happened to the dinosaurs.
The movie “2012” had Yellowstone erupting. And years ago, there was a miniseries docudrama, exploring the same scenario. I can’t recall the name.
There are mountains, world wide, that fall into the “amble up” class. Mt. Fuji, from what I understand, is one of them.
I am also unfailingly kind to service folks. And, in the right situations, I tip well. Unless they totally stuff it up. Unless it’s due to circumstances beyond their control. Such as, not enough staffing.
I have enough experience, and am observant enough to identify those kinds of situations.
Some families put a lot of effort into their progeny. But sometimes it’s the wrong kind, and they turn out to be your grandfather’s favorite epithet. 🙂
Our high yesterday was 43F (6.88C). Our overnight low was 28F (-2.22C). Our forecast high for today is 42F. Yes, H and I are staying warm enough. Once again, possible snow is in our afternoon forecast. But, if it does happen, “no measurable amount.” Tonight’s forecast low is -0-C. Then the overnight lows get warmer.
Here’s an article, and some photos / video of the Great Plains fires.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/18/weather/ranger-road-wildfire-wind-forecast-climate
Go the new firewood shed! I presume the shed will be, well, fireproof? Posts. Does not compute. 8 + 5 =not 15. 🙂
Re: “The Martian.” What a cliff hanger!
The “Morbid Curiosity” book, does touch on the Victorians. But so far, it’s more about how from prehistoric times, we’re sort of hard wired for that kind of curiosity. As a teaching tool. And, people with higher tendencies toward caution, probably survived longer, and had more progeny.
How bad could the Friends of the Library be? You forget, I’m surrounded by old ladies. It could be pretty bad.
US big Pharma doesn’t make as much money, in foreign countries. I rather envy the over-the-counter access, that other countries have.
We got a food box, this morning. It had a lot of stuff that needed to be refrigerated, or frozen. So none of that will go to the Club. There were also several items, I’ll probably keep. Though I probably shouldn’t 🙂
What I may keep: A big bag of frozen fish sticks. That’s a first. A loaf of really good bread. A dozen eggs. A pound of shelled Pecans. There was a tin of Corned Beef. I might pick up a head of cabbage to add to that. Plenty to freeze up. There was a small packet of sliced turkey Pepperoni and a small clam shell of pepper jack cheese cubes. Add some pineapple to the two items, and I’ve almost got a pizza.
Stuff I’ll take down to our Community Room. A bottle of some kind of chocolate protein drink. Chicken ramen. (They sell that at the Club). There were three clamshells of a mix of veg, fruit and cheese. An individual apple pie like product. A clamshell of broccoli and cauliflower.
Stuff I’ll take to the Club. One pound of butter “product.” One pound of quick oats. A quart of shelf stable milk. A box of “Yellow Spanish Style Arrozo Amarillo rice (?). A jar of “Tuscan Style Soup.” A pound of spaghetti pasta, a box of Oyster crackers, a box of Mac & cheese, and a jar of peanut butter.
Tins: One each of peaches, vegetable beef soup, corn, green beans, fruit mix and garbanzo beans. Two small tins of tomato sauce.
I cleaned out the remaining tins of stuff, under the table in the Community Room. A lot of canned salmon and a few tins of veg. I’ll have to keep an eye on it, and see if anything turns up from this batch.
I watched more of the new Dexter series, last night. Sublime. :-). Lew
Chris:
I think the orangey color in cheese is usually annatto, and that’s natural, or at least naturally derived. What you don’t want in cheese are fungicides, pretty common here; natamycin is one. There were some lengthy tests once upon a time with food colors, especially the red dye, that found that they do indeed cause hyperactivity.
Wow – that soap shaker is neat! Now I know what to do with the leftover soap bits that I save. I did just look and can buy them here, but haven’t found one with a small enough mesh. Thanks.
Digging post holes is always VERY hard work.
As far as the garden getting off to a start: The bugs are already off to a good start. As extra proof I saw a bat whirling around eating them behind the house. Also behind the house is where the small S10 Chevy pickup has been parked for awhile. Mr. Baby likes to take naps in it with the door open. But wait! Pickle the Squirrel also likes to take naps in it, luckily in the bed. My son moved a cardboard box back there today and under it was a squirrel nest with a Pickle in it. I guess since his front porch nest was foiled when we moved the firewood over it to burn in the fireplace, he decided a pickup truck would be suitable. Besides, it is closer to where he gets his tostados and other favorite, apple peels, on the back porch. So sad, too bad for him, the restaurant is closing now that the ice is gone.
I am going to do my best to plant the spuds in a new bed(s).
Pam
Chris,
So, to summarize…Mathematically I’m a bad influence. 😉
Okay. Gotta got this one over with. We did NOT hit -8C overnight. Nope, we went to 11! Minus 11C, actually, but it sounds better to say that we went to 11. Yes, it felt nearly cold this morning outdoors. We got about a half cm of snow before the temperature started dropping. Fortunately, the sun was out today and all of the snow had disappeared from roads and sidewalks before noon.
How much can we know? I’m uncertain about that, too. Remember, Vroomfondel and his cohorts demanded that there be some areas of doubt and uncertainty.
Had lunch with Killian’s human today. I had her read your notes about pulling something out of Dame Plum’s backside. Much laughter occurred.
Ah, yes, unforgettable was the incantation of “Frammin at the Jim-jam, Frippin in the Krotz!” The results were rarely what the wizard expected. And also, well, I’m disappointed that my services were turned down. How else would I ever have a free vacation to Australia, I mean, I thought my rates were very reasonable, especially if a severe drought were broken for you and there was enough water for years. 🙂
I’m aware of the longer term issues the CNC stuff brings. In addition, finding judges for any judged show is getting increasingly difficult. Several of the clubs that replied to me do NOT judge their shows and have formats that differ from ours. I can foresee our show changing within the next few years. No judges, each carver gets an area to display any and all work they’ve done in the past year, then some of the issue of computerized stuff goes away.
Both the Princess and I enjoy the John Wick series. There IS a lot of violence, but the entertainment value is there.
I can hazard a guess about what AI might say about “shitballs”. Wombats have cube poop, aka shitcubes. Deer poop is round, so deer poop out shitballs. Elk and moose shitballs are very big. Primates and some other mammals poop out shitlogs. The sheer volume of poop from a single elephant gives rise to the phrase “holy shit!”
I remember one day at the County, maybe 27 years ago. I friend called me and was feeling rather bored and cantankerous. I suggested a funny saying that he send to what was then a valid “allcounty@… email address to the County. A few minutes later, his emailed joke came across over 1,500 computers. Within minutes, the IT group sent a countywide apology about that making it through what was obviously a faulty firewall. County email and internet security was rapidly and radically improved after that. Within a day or so.
Of course, I knew that that was a flaw in the system. But pointing it out through proper channels, well, who would have believed me? So this got the problem fixed, my friend got to do something cantankerous but harmless, and I had the joy of watching a problem get fixed while having a good laugh.
That was a problem solving method I learned from Richard Feynmann of Nobel Prize in Physics fame. When he was in Los Alamos doing research on the first atomic bomb, the facility was still under construction. Feynmann noticed that a hole had been cut in the fence by the construction crew at the far end of the facility from the lone security gate. So, he walked out the hole in the fence, walked around the facility and in through the gate, showing his ID to security. He repeated this until, on his fourth trip in without ever signing out with security, they detained him. Then he told them what was going on, showed them the hole in the fence as proof, and it was fixed. If he had reported it to his boss and up the food chain, that hole in the fence would STILL be there over 80 years later.
That last bit raises a question. First, I think that it is still very evident that had he gone through the chain of command, the hole in the fence would never have been fixed and would arguably still be there. But the fence disappeared many many years ago. Which leads to the question: if the hole was never fixed, would it still be there even if the fence were removed? After all, the hole was empty space, and only the fencing was removed, so was that empty space of the hole actually removed? Or is the answer some weird combination of “We’re uncertain, but the answer is 42?” 😉
Melancholy tones in music that don’t bring you down? I get that. I listen to a lot of that. I think it’s in the blood. A lot of Irish and Scottish music is that way. It is possible to enjoy it without it getting you down.
I’ve given a listen whenever you’ve provided a link to some of the national youth music songs. Some of it is very interesting. Each generation does different things with music. It’s not a bad thing at all to listen to different things.
Here are a couple examples of different.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EBPMASnLUs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4Ao-iNPPUc
DJSpo
Hi Pam,
Whoa! I never knew about the fungicides issue. Hmm. Oh my gawds, err, such chemicals probably kill off the useful fungi in our own bodies, oh well, if it’s cheap… Your mention of this got me interested in whether the stuff is in the cheese we predominantly consume. Phew, that’s a relief, it ain’t present. Here it is (and truly, it’s lovely stuff): Norco Natural Cheese Co. Elbo Style Cheese. They even list the ingredients.
Anecdotal accounts suggest that the other red colouring, vivid and delightful to the eyes as it may be, does lead to hyperactivity. Imagine feeding such candy to young and impressionable folks, when there is a full moon? All bets are off, and crazy things may ensue, so best avoiding feeding anyone that stuff.
Pam, we make a lot of our food from raw materials, and even then, it’s hard to be certain what has gone on with the purchased ingredients. On the other hand, I believe that there is probably no other way to feed eight billion souls. It’s like a pact with the old d’el.
🙂 Glad to be of service, and they sell plastic meshed shakers, but I prefer the stainless steel mesh ones. I’ve been using such things for around half a century. They work, and trust me, they’ll be a relief for the skin on your hands.
It was hot yesterday, and again today, but this time we had both kinds of horror: heat and humidity. By 3pm today the job was done and everything packed up, but heads were not cool on the ranch and words were spoken. Ouch! A late ice cream, peppermint with choc chip, from the store in the nearby township soothed heat rattled minds. Plus about a litre of gatorade and some rehydration solutions. 🙂 Oh my, but the brain hurts tonight…
Ah, you have insect eating bats as well. Cool! Sorry for the dodgy pun, but a Pickle in the bed, was in something of a pickle himself. 🙂 The squirrel shows poor judgement to which Queen Charlene would never have tolerated. Yup, so sad, too bad, weather conditions have improved and the hapless forest critter must find his own way. I tend to help out the forest critters when times are tough too. Tell ya what, the water bowl was drunk deep and longingly last night. Fingers crossed for some serious rain tomorrow.
🙂 Crop rotation is hard and I totally get where you are at. Interestingly I’m noticing the issue with the chilli plants. In the brand new bed in the greenhouse they are growing at four times the pace of the older beds. Hmm.
Cheers
Chris
Hi DJ,
Firstly, please accept apologies for the brain dead reply this evening. Today was again hot, but with humidity. The remaining post holes were dug on the new firewood shed project, and then all of the posts were cemented into the ground. At times, water was dripping from my head, and I felt like I needed one of those head bands professional tennis players used to wear, like the feisty John McEnroe used to stop the sweat from running into his eyes so that energies could be more properly spent on a righteous sads crack. I tell ya what, by the end of the long work day, at 3pm, tempers were strained. All good now, after cooling off and much dehydration corrections, we went to the nearby town and scoffed down some seriously tasty ice creams.
The Editor is likewise a bad influence with mathematics, and scored right up there in a state competition at high school, and never could find many ways to leverage the result. Although, nowadays for the record, 90 degree angles here, are proper 90 degree angles – and that has nothing at all to do with me. 😉
Oh my gawds, your weather really did turn the dial up to 11! Well done. An enviable achievement, it being about 31’C today (and humid). Candidly, I’m not sure either result is great.
Vroomfondel was the classic mountebank, and we the public do demand entertainment. And on a different note, I’m so pleased that you too enjoyed the silly Kelpie tale this week.
Ha! Dude last I checked, there’s no vacay for me (as the kids would say), so there ain’t no free vacay for you! See, you can’t argue a lack of consistency! 😉
Ouch, sorry to say, but I’m guessing that what you are seeing with the club judging is a problem multiplied across our entire society. Try finding people to do 12 hours shifts in a volunteer fire brigade. Hmm. When it takes two people working full time to simply pay for shelter, let alone bringing up kids, there’s a problem.
🙂 I’ll forward on the film recommendation.
Holy shit indeed! And thanks for the laughs, so true man, so true. I’m hoping those arty-fish-al things learn to swear, because that alone will cause their down fall.
Yeah, that sort of thing went on back in the day, but all the additional layers of interweb security simply add to the cost and complications of the entire thing. Exactly, authors sometimes refer to that problem solving strategy as: Show, don’t tell. Richard Feynmann was a smart bloke.
Hard to know really, but the facts on the ground suggest that the answer is: a) 42 (for unknown reasons); and b) the fence has now been removed, so who is to say otherwise?
That’s my thinking as well. The grunge garage band era of the 90’s was meant to be depressive and angry, but I just felt like the music told things as they were. Honest would have been a better descriptive, but that was never applied, was it?
Oh man, by brain is so cooked tonight. I’ll have a listen tomorrow. Thanks for the links.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Lewis,
The results are in. The new nuker, takes twice as long to do the same cooking functionality, as the old one did. A sad day. Oh well. And it proves the old timey saying: They don’t make ’em like that any more.
There’s a school of thought which suggests the long extinct super volcano I live on the side of (along with it’s nearby friend Mount Dandenong), caused an extinction event around 250 million years ago. Yellowstone could do similar things, yeah. The Earth would recover, humans just wouldn’t like the results. Agreed, seriously weirdly random things can, and have happened over a long enough period of time.
The photo of Mount Fuji as taken from the International Space Station, is stunning: Fuji in early summer seen from the International Space Station (May 2001). Seeing the hordes of climbers, was not a pretty sight. The mountain is high enough that altitude sickness could be an issue, especially with the rapid ascent.
All these images of ice and snow, are making me feel totally over summer. It’s official, I’m over it. Today was again around 90’F, but this time humid, and I dug the remaining post holes, and cemented in the various timber posts for the new firewood shed. By 3pm, heads were cooked, and usually cordial relations were somewhat strained. It happens with heat exhaustion. So we packed everything up, headed indoors and just stood in front of the portable air conditioner machine cooling down. Plus lots of rehydration solutions were consumed, a long nap, then grabbed an ice cream at the nearby town – and had the cars air conditioner blasting on low the entire way there, and back. A seriously tough work day. But that part of the project, is now mostly done.
Tipping is not usually part of the culture down here, although occasionally I’ve done so, it all depends. Generally wages are what they are, and this is built into the prices. Not enough staffing in a hospitality business is a real drama, for everyone. Agreed, I can read the room as well, with such situations, and the negative aspects of my profession is that I can usually work out how much they’re making. Sometimes when pointing my insights out to other folks I’m with, I learn that this knowledge is not widely appreciated – which surprises me. I’ve been known to point out to my fellows that when there are more staff than customers, this is a very big problem for the sustainability of the business. Fairy dust, does not pay the bills…
😉 Dude, there’s one big example of that familial problem in the news today. All the best stuff and conditions, and the results still don’t work out. Rumour has it, that the gentleman in question, ain’t all that bright.
28’F is freezing to my summer softened perspective (although at the same time, I’m officially over summer after today’s efforts). It’s still 64’F outdoors now nearing on 11pm.
Those Great Plains fires are epic in scale, and it looks so dry in the photos. Scary stuff.
Ha! The house is meant to be able to resist fire, but what does that really mean on a very bad day? The firewood shed, well, probably not. I do my best, but strange things can happen in big fires. Best to have good working and tested systems, or not be here on such a day.
Oh yeah, nice quick maths. And of course you are entirely correct. But it ended up being fourteen posts, rather than the assumed fifteen of yesterday. We’re fluid with the design, and the additional post was unnecessary. So, to answer your most astute observation, we only had thirteen posts to hand, and instead of having to purchasing two, we only need to obtain one additional post.
The Martian was an epic conclusion, and I’d not known that Sir Ridley Scott was the director – makes sense. Thoroughly enjoyed the film.
And, people with higher tendencies toward caution, probably survived longer, and had more progeny. No wonder old school fairy tales are no longer taught, each of which is itself a minor tragedy. The Editor tells me that the younger folks are unhappy with the outcome of the latest Wuthering Heights film – because it is a tragedy. I reckon that Heathcliff in the book is at the very least a total sociopath who is deeply annoyed.
Well, your experience there is possibly a good guide to the realities of the library friends group. Why is it on your mind then?
Yeah, the over the counter access in some countries makes life easy when you just need a bit of a help and assistance when in a spot of bother. The goobermint down here buys such stuffs and then distributes it out. Those big farma folks don’t have direct access to the market. I’m sure that they’re doing fine.
Hehe! Go the treats from the food boxes. You know… 😉 Not a bad haul at all, and I really like corned beef. Ramen = salt, in my opinion. Sometimes I wonder if the stuff really needs so much salt. Gives me headaches consuming that stuff.
Have you got any feel yet for what is flying out of the Clubs pantry?
Wise to clean up, in case that option then gets chopped.
Oh yeah, Dex is cool as. Glad you’re enjoying it, as did the Editor. 🙂 No spoilers for you.
Cheers
Chris
Yo, Chris – Yes, the couple of times I’ve gotten a new nuker, I have to refigure out the tried and true cooking times for reoccurring items. 1 1/2 minutes for tea. Usually, 11 minutes for a dinner of rice with some frozen veg mixed in. 14 minutes for my oatmeal and fruit. 20 minutes for long grain brown rice. A new nuker and everything has to be recalibrated.
Mt. Fuji from outer space looks awesome. Before Mt. St. Helens blew its top, it was thought of as the mountain that looked the most like Mt. Fuji. A perfect ice cream cone, on the horizon. I see Fuji is still active. It could end up, eventually, like Mt. St. Helens.
If we’re talking about the same gentleman, he looked totally freaked. Not the same scandal, but I see one of the Scandahovian royal houses heirs, has been brought up on similar charges.
Our high yesterday was 45F (7.22C). Our overnight low was 34F (1.11C). Our forecast high for today is 45F. After a day or two of pretty dry weather, the rain is back. And H and I will be back to wet walks. I’d say that was some well deserved ice cream.
I’m glad you liked “The Martian.” I really liked that stirring speech, at the end. Where he’s talking to a class of students.
Well, if young folks can’t handle tragedy, they should stick to rom-coms. One time, when I was working out in a branch, a young mother complained that a film wasn’t fit for children. It was an unrated, European film. I showed her where the Dizzy movies were, and gently suggested she might want to stick to them. 🙂
Speaking of movies … the library added three DVDs to its DVD on order pages yesterday! Apparently, all is not lost. They were a new season of a Brit comedy / drama series that I watch, a dumb rom-com with Hugh Grant, and an older movie I’d like to see again. There were also some new adult non-fiction titles added. I guess they figured out how much they can spend, in that part of the budget.
Well, I didn’t realize that the library friends group had dwindled down to two old ladies. Last time I had a sighting of the group, it was a younger demographic. And there were more of them. Maybe they wanted them to wear branded aprons? 🙂
I went down to the Club later than usual, last night, to drop off three bags of food. I waited, in order to avoid the Friday night pack of feral children, group of homeless and large dogs.
The overnight shelter isn’t too far from the Club. They don’t open til 7 or 8. So, we’ve become a staging area, for the homeless. But, our landlord has complained, and we’ve had to become a bit unwelcoming to that segment of the population. There are no easy answers.
What flies out of the pantry is the usual suspects. Tinned meat or fish. Condiments. Soups, stews and chili. Tinned fruit. Veg, usually a dead last. Though there are surprises. Veg may languish for awhile, and then, poof!, gone. Lew
Chris:
That’s a very basic cheese, and it sure does look good.
Maybe you got a brain freeze after being too hot? Hope your head feels better. My, I used to love peppermint ice cream, also peach.
I am pretty sure that Pickle is a descendent of Queen Charlene (probably most of them are). The love of Charlene’s life was Larry and Larry had an odd habit, that of building nests in wood piles. I forgot to mention that there is also firewood in the back of the S10. So, Pickle is a Larry-Charlene descendent.
Pam
Hi Pam,
Sometimes a meal requires a good solid cheese, and that one in particular started me looking into the whole rennet issue. Far out! Who’s to ever know all the stuff worthy of knowing? Anyway, they use a vegetable based rennet, and, I hear fig leaves can be valuable for such actvities – for those whom have such trees. 😉 As the figs are ripening here, they’re getting diced and chucked into the freezer. When there’s enough a batch of jam will be made – just like the plum jam was today. That batch is done, and there is batch of raspberry + blackberry jam on the go now.
Harvest time used to send us a bit loopy because of the sheer volume of preserving work, but you know, you learn how to manage all that stuff better over the years.
Thanks, and heat exhaustion is not fun, as you’d also know from first hand experience. Actually I felt better by bedtime last night, but I drank a lot of water and rehydration solutions. Hmm. Oh well. Drove down to the nearby outer urban area to the big box hardware store, and picked up some of the roof timbers. I couldn’t bring all of them back because the load would have been too big and heavy for the car trailer to manage.
Never had peach ice cream before, but yummo! I’m very particular about peaches, mostly because orchardists tend to pick them too green, and so the flavour just isn’t there. When the wallaby seriously damaged a peach tree a few months ago, I was deeply annoyed because it pushes the tree back many years. Oh well, fencing is something you have to stay on top of.
Long live Queen Charlene’s progeny, as long as they are wise in their lifestyle choices. Nests in a woodpile are something that the rats here likewise do, and it never ends well because the home is destroyed at the worst possible time of the year. Hey, you and I may be breeding cleverer squirrels and rats by eliminating those whom make bad decisions.
It finally began raining about an hour ago. Yay! Quite gentle rain too.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Lewis,
Man, I had no idea how differently those machines would work. The thirty year old (and now deceased) machine was stonkingly powerful – and I had no idea. But yeah, learn, adapt, accept and move on seems to be the way of things. I’d imagine that folks who’d worked in a few commercial kitchens, would be able to size up pretty quickly the number and speed of covers that the equipment and general arrangements could produce.
It also raises the spectre of the most awful of observations: What if you get it right the first time, and don’t know it? A little bit of hardship focuses the mind wonderfully don’t you reckon?
Phwarrrrrrr! Just watched some of the footage of the Mount St Helens eruption, and it’s spectacular, and I did kind of wonder if the camera operator survived. Ook. And absolutely, the pre-eruption photographs looked exactly the same as Mount Fuji. Hmm. The tourists wouldn’t appreciate an outburst from the Japanese mountain. Hey, there are folks around who got badly burned in 2019 on the New Zealand island of: Whakaari / White Island
It’s finally raining. Yay! Not a lot, but good enough to dampen things down. As you’d imagine the plan b) dodgy rain incantation, was performed. And so far, the results are OK. About a quarter of an inch. The season has turned, so this will provide the smaller plants in the forest with a nice drink. One of the three kiwi fruit vines was mildly shrivelled looking this morning.
We are talking about the same gentleman, and I see what you mean. The eyes they tell me are the window to the soul, and you’d imagine that being of elevated status, that smarts would swim along for the ride, but history suggests that us plebeians often have to take the good with the bad, and hope the outcomes aren’t too dodgy. 🙂 Far out. And that other one you mentioned, take a good long look into his eyes – there is a story there for sure. He has the face of someone I’d distrust.
Thanks, and the gloomy skies prevailed here today, and you’d appreciate that Ollie and I ended up mildly wet whilst out on a boundary patrol check. The season has turned, and I’m grabbing the batten from your good self. Truly I don’t envy your 34’F over night temperatures. Brr! But the year rolls along on it’s usual course.
Yeah! I’m glad you liked that speech, because it spoke deeply to me as well. And the calm exuded suggested a person who’d faced the worst, and prevailed. That particular advice is not distributed as far and wide as it should be, nor is it trained from a young age in these enlightened days. Out of curiosity, did the recent book you read on surviving in hard times mention that aspect?
Hehe! You are like, so bad. Nice shot too with sticking to the Dizzy stuff if bad endings are unpalatable.
Now, here we must politely disagree, for I do so enjoy a rom-com fronted by Hugh Grant. I know, a sad tale of woe, but totally charming, all at the same time. Ah, the budget may lean towards crowd pleasing activities. Eventually middle management will be thinned, then upper management, and reality will revert to the core processes with less churn of product. History suggests that things could get worse from there. Hope the basics are there to be found at that point in time, but who knows?
Ooo, the air here smells of jam making. We produced a huge batch of plum jam today. A lovely local lady gave us many kilograms of the home grown fruit, and well, why waste it? Right now, another batch of raspberry + black berry jam is being made up. Yum! Earlier in the day because of the gloomy weather, I drove to a nearby outer urban area and picked up about half of the timber for the roof of the new firewood shed. It was a heavy load on the trailer, and so I took the back roads to get home and sat just a bit under the speed limit, which sent people caught behind me insane. You’d imagine that the general vibe on a Sunday would be super chill, but I can assure you that this is not the case.
Ha! Very funny with the aprons, but I tell ya man, if I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it. Kinda like when your club wanted to go all profesh and stuff. Didn’t last did it? Groups have to have a fun element about them, and I think about the years with volunteer fire brigade. The social element got stomped hard, and I just couldn’t figure out what I was doing there, because it seemed like an unpaid job to me.
Oh poop, that’s an intriguing problem, which may require some negotiations, boundaries and enforcement. Hmm. On the other hand, with the season getting on, the problem may resolve itself, maybe. Dude, my take, you can’t feed every forest critter. The wallabies annoy the daylights out of me, but the deer are dealt to. Picking and choosing is an activity which is not trained in this enlightened culture of supposedly plenty. Nobody wants to be the bad guy.
Good stuff, and I’m intrigued that the veg is likewise disappearing from the pantry. Suggests that people may be learning the gentle art of cooking, as perhaps forced by economic realities. Interesting indeed.
About a quarter inch of rain has now fallen. Yay! Quite gentle too, here at least. Haven’t heard of any reports of flooding elsewhere.
Oh, the state to the west of here (South Australia) has had some serious rain: East West rail corridor cut by flooding amid heavy rain in northern SA
Cheers and better get writing! 😉
Chris
Yo, Chris – I noticed something interesting, last night. The cooking instructions on the fish sticks and onion rings were for conventional ovens or “air fryers,” but none for microwaves. Air fryers seem all the rage, here. I’ve never used one and really don’t know how they work. I feel no overwhelming urge to get one.
I remember when the Whakaari / White Island eruption occurred. Well, you pay your money and take your chances. That was interesting about the sulphur mining. Wonder if the miners were offered hazard pay? Probably not. And only the cat survived.
Our high yesterday was 45F (7.22C). Our overnight low was 39F (3.88C). Our forecast high for today is 50F. We may see some wind, this evening, into the 20s mph. It’s nice you got some rain. May it continue, but not too much.
That was an interesting article, about the flooding and rail line being cut. Our north / south line occasionally is shut down, due to flooding or landslides.
I thought the younger of the two gentlemen, under consideration, looked like a self entitled little twit.
Our hero in “The Martian” certainly was resilient. I’d say the book emphasized continued self training, so one could rise to such difficult situations.
I guess there’s going to be another library board meeting coming up. The last one, according to reports, was three hours long.
Management. I’m reading a new book, right now, that explores, shall we say, management failures. “Fatal Ab$straction: Why the Managerial Class Lo$es Control of $oftware.” (Campbell, 2025). He talks about something I’d not heard of. “Managerialism is an organizational philosophy that emphasizes the use of professional management techniques and business-oriented approaches in various types of organizations, including public and non-profit entities. It focuses on optimizing organizations through systematic management processes like control, accountability, and strategic planning.”
Wikipedia. Basically, C suite critters are only interested in profit, at the expense of products that deliver on their promises … quality. And, they don’t worry so much about “externalities.” Which is a polite way of saying people die or are maimed. He has explored several incidents, such as when planes fall out of the sky, or self driving vehicles run down pedestrians. I can’t wait to read the section on AI. 🙂
There’s a Japanese or Chinese plum sauce that I made years ago. Pretty zippy stuff. All I remember is that it has garlic in it.
Maybe all those antsy drivers behind you, were in a rush to get to church? 🙂
I finished watching “Dexter: Resurrection,” last night. Now, you haven’t seen it, have you? I don’t want to get into spoilers. But I see there will be a season two!
H and I are off to the Club. Chew the fat with uncle Carl. See how the pantry is going. Someone gave me $20, yesterday, to do some shopping. Lew