Just a brief update on some of the critters that wander across our lawn on occasion.
Hummingbirds.. The hummingbirds seem to have taken to the idea of the free lunch we've been providing. When we first put out the hummingbird feeder we only saw one or two would come around. For the last few days, at times when I look out the window at the feeder it looks like WWII over France. As many as six hummingbirds were swarming around the feeder. It seems a bit late in summer for them to be "flirting" so I'm thinking defense of food source would be the most likely explanation.
I was out attempting to hoe out the grass/weeds growing between the rocks of our walk (very near the feeder) and heard the buzzing of a huge bee. Having had a grandfather that kept bees I knew better than to run...but it sounded like a really big bee. I stood still and soon a small creature hovered around to the front of me...a inch long hummingbird. Hovered there, looking like if it would have had hands or hips to put those hands on..it would have been hovering there, a bit askance, hands on hips and giving me that look.
At first I was impressed since I outweigh it by about 3500 times. On thinking about it a bit more, I'm thinking it probably could have kicked my butt if it so choose. It's got a pointy beak and moves really, really fast. I would have zero chance of actually hitting it and it could easily move around and poke at me with that pointy beak. Yep, that's not a battle I'm likely to win.
We had a slight mystery with the feeder. We would fill it up and during the course of the day the level would drop about 1/5 of the amount. The next morning we would get up and it would be empty. I was starting to think that hummingbirds are nocturnal. While filling it up yesterday morning we discovered the probably cause...which brings us to...
Raccoons.. We have at least one family of raccoons that come through. We've seen them more than once, a parent and 3 younglings. While filling the hummingbird feeder, upon looking closely at it we discovered tiny paw prints and some scratches. What is probably happening is that the raccoons had discovered that the hummingbird feeder can serve very well as a nightly dessert banquet for enterprising raccoons.
I'm thinking one of them gets on the steps rail and pull the feeder over sideways. This causes the vacuum seal to break and the water to run out the other side. I don't know if that raccoon gets the goodies or if the others gather on the ground below it and catch the sugar water on their tongues like school children and slightly deranged adults do with snowflakes. If you look below the feed it's clear that something has been in the vegetation below the feeder. I just wish I could get video of it before we relocate the feeder.
Deer.. We appear to have an orphaned fawn. Several times we've seen a lone fawn wandering through the yard with no mom in sight. A few weeks ago we saw a fawn/mom pair where the mom was severely limping. It's possible this is the fawn from that pair. It seems to be doing okay now but I'm not sure how well it will do after the first freeze. Anyone out there understand deer biology enough to know if fawns require the milk supplement to survive through the winter?
I'm not opposed to setting up a corn feeder and probably will anyway just to keep the deerkin fat throughout the winter.
Coyote.. haven't actually seen him but do keep running across signs he is still coming around. A paw print here and there. A bit of scat around the corners of the yard.
..take care.. tim b
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Thoughts Politik
Just a few thoughts and questions about public doings in the not so distant past....
I think I need some clarifying. When BHO was organizing community members against the actions of private companies and governmental entities it was a good thing. Now that BHO is a governmental entity and community members are organizing against his actions...it's a bad thing. My general response to the 'accusations' that folks against the current rush to 'reform' health insurance have been organized by some organization is.... so what?
I'm thinking someone needs to explain to me why it's a bad thing for citizens with a common grievance to organize together to express that grievance. The Secretary of State says that dissent is patriotic. The only relevant part of our current President's resume was as a community organizer. Folks just seem to be trying to follow their examples.
Why aren't we seeing a mad, elbow-throwing, shoving folks around rush of Congress Critters trying to get in line to sign up for this wonderful public option health insurance deal they're crafting together for us? Seems like if was such a good thing, we wouldn't be able to keep them from signing themselves and their families up for it.
I keep hearing that Medicare works...it'll be like that. Okay, maybe...but, why are there supplemental Medicare insurance policies needed if it works so well? As I understand it these supplemental insurance policies are through private insurance companies... will this same type of additional coverage be needed for the public option? Will they be available? Will the combined taxes for the public option and premiums for the supplemental policies be greater or less than what folks are currently paying?
These are questions... unfortunately both my senators seem disinclined to hold meetings where I could ask them. My representative seems to be on the questioning side of things, having publicly asked questions similar to the ones I have.
I have other questions related to the details of this thing but if I spend too much time thinking about it my blood pressure starts to get agitated, so I'll close for now...
..take care .. tim b
I think I need some clarifying. When BHO was organizing community members against the actions of private companies and governmental entities it was a good thing. Now that BHO is a governmental entity and community members are organizing against his actions...it's a bad thing. My general response to the 'accusations' that folks against the current rush to 'reform' health insurance have been organized by some organization is.... so what?
I'm thinking someone needs to explain to me why it's a bad thing for citizens with a common grievance to organize together to express that grievance. The Secretary of State says that dissent is patriotic. The only relevant part of our current President's resume was as a community organizer. Folks just seem to be trying to follow their examples.
Why aren't we seeing a mad, elbow-throwing, shoving folks around rush of Congress Critters trying to get in line to sign up for this wonderful public option health insurance deal they're crafting together for us? Seems like if was such a good thing, we wouldn't be able to keep them from signing themselves and their families up for it.
I keep hearing that Medicare works...it'll be like that. Okay, maybe...but, why are there supplemental Medicare insurance policies needed if it works so well? As I understand it these supplemental insurance policies are through private insurance companies... will this same type of additional coverage be needed for the public option? Will they be available? Will the combined taxes for the public option and premiums for the supplemental policies be greater or less than what folks are currently paying?
These are questions... unfortunately both my senators seem disinclined to hold meetings where I could ask them. My representative seems to be on the questioning side of things, having publicly asked questions similar to the ones I have.
I have other questions related to the details of this thing but if I spend too much time thinking about it my blood pressure starts to get agitated, so I'll close for now...
..take care .. tim b
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
The Great Leviathan Hunt
It's one of the classical confrontations...fisherman versus fish. The mano-a-fino battle of primal creatures using all their wits and intelligence in an effort to defeat their opponent. Or maybe it's just a guy standing on a boat trying to trick an animal with a brain the size of a BB into thinking the plastic wormy thing being dragged across the bottom of the lake would make a tasty snack...and failing to do so on a regular basis.
It didn't take me long to figure out that for these new attempts at piscinarial harvesting my old method of leaping cat-like from a high perch to explosively impact the water might not work too well. Mostly because this 49 year old body won't take the repeated punishment as well as that 9 year old body did. I suppose if I had 4 or 5 pints of Guinness filtering through my brain I might be tempted to give it a try, but with any less lubrication than that, it was unlikely.
Being very left brained, I first attempted to plan my fishing out logically. It would seem that if I could devolve to the point of being able to think like a fish, I should be able to figure out how to make a bit of fake worm appear to the fish equivalent of a Julia Child masterpiece.
Since I wasn't entirely sure how to think like a fish, I decided to start with other creatures that might also have brains the size of a BB. I began by trying to think like any of the 219 representatives that voted for "cap and tax"...then decided even a fish wouldn't be so stupid as to vote for something they hadn't read. So I set my devolving a bit higher.
After running through several possibilities I came to the perfect solution... just listen to Larry, a fisherman of long history and sterling repute, as to what to put on the line and how to make it act. As it turned out, that proved to be a pretty good strategy...on our first outing, I caught the first fish.
We had motored over to an appropriately fishy looking bit of lake shore a couple of hours before sunset. The protocol for this expedition would be to drift along this set of bluffs lining the shore, casting our bits of worminess out, and retrieving them in a fish enticing manner. My hook was baited with a item called a 'watermelon red Fat Albert' which in fact looked green to me and caused the phrase "Hey, hey, hey, it's faaaaaaat Albert." to get stuck in my head for the next 2 hours. I hope that you are now similarly inflicted....
So we drifted along..cast, let rotund Al sink to the bottom, slowly reel in, dragging the bait across the bottom trying to attract the attention of a fish.... repeat as necessary. As necessary turned out to be about a half a gazillion times. Cast, sink, retrieve...
I've cast, it sank, I'm retrieving, then a sudden jerk on the line and I'm all "Quint" from Jaws, calling to Larry to throw a bucket of water on the reel so that it doesn't melt from the heat of the monster stripping the line out. We're doing a Nantucket sleigh ride in a bass boat. I'm sure that Queequeg and his harpoon will be needed to land what has to be the record setting fish of all record setting fish.
Now this is fishing...a life and death struggle, a battle of wits and strength. A playing of nuanced strife reflective of the taming of the wilderness by humans. For twenty whole seconds I struggled to land what had to be the Leviathan of Beaver Lake.
As it turns out I had managed to land, as identified by Larry, a Kentucky bass of such minuscule proportions that if you managed to scrape all the meat off of it, you might have about 1/2 a fishstick worth of a meal...but it sure was fun catching it. Off the hook and back into the lake...the fun is in the catching, not the keeping.
Yep, this new round of fishing is much more fun and entertaining than the ones 40 years ago...even the ones where I used my uniquely hazardous methods.
..take care... tim b
It didn't take me long to figure out that for these new attempts at piscinarial harvesting my old method of leaping cat-like from a high perch to explosively impact the water might not work too well. Mostly because this 49 year old body won't take the repeated punishment as well as that 9 year old body did. I suppose if I had 4 or 5 pints of Guinness filtering through my brain I might be tempted to give it a try, but with any less lubrication than that, it was unlikely.
Being very left brained, I first attempted to plan my fishing out logically. It would seem that if I could devolve to the point of being able to think like a fish, I should be able to figure out how to make a bit of fake worm appear to the fish equivalent of a Julia Child masterpiece.
Since I wasn't entirely sure how to think like a fish, I decided to start with other creatures that might also have brains the size of a BB. I began by trying to think like any of the 219 representatives that voted for "cap and tax"...then decided even a fish wouldn't be so stupid as to vote for something they hadn't read. So I set my devolving a bit higher.
After running through several possibilities I came to the perfect solution... just listen to Larry, a fisherman of long history and sterling repute, as to what to put on the line and how to make it act. As it turned out, that proved to be a pretty good strategy...on our first outing, I caught the first fish.
We had motored over to an appropriately fishy looking bit of lake shore a couple of hours before sunset. The protocol for this expedition would be to drift along this set of bluffs lining the shore, casting our bits of worminess out, and retrieving them in a fish enticing manner. My hook was baited with a item called a 'watermelon red Fat Albert' which in fact looked green to me and caused the phrase "Hey, hey, hey, it's faaaaaaat Albert." to get stuck in my head for the next 2 hours. I hope that you are now similarly inflicted....
So we drifted along..cast, let rotund Al sink to the bottom, slowly reel in, dragging the bait across the bottom trying to attract the attention of a fish.... repeat as necessary. As necessary turned out to be about a half a gazillion times. Cast, sink, retrieve...
I've cast, it sank, I'm retrieving, then a sudden jerk on the line and I'm all "Quint" from Jaws, calling to Larry to throw a bucket of water on the reel so that it doesn't melt from the heat of the monster stripping the line out. We're doing a Nantucket sleigh ride in a bass boat. I'm sure that Queequeg and his harpoon will be needed to land what has to be the record setting fish of all record setting fish.
Now this is fishing...a life and death struggle, a battle of wits and strength. A playing of nuanced strife reflective of the taming of the wilderness by humans. For twenty whole seconds I struggled to land what had to be the Leviathan of Beaver Lake.
As it turns out I had managed to land, as identified by Larry, a Kentucky bass of such minuscule proportions that if you managed to scrape all the meat off of it, you might have about 1/2 a fishstick worth of a meal...but it sure was fun catching it. Off the hook and back into the lake...the fun is in the catching, not the keeping.
Yep, this new round of fishing is much more fun and entertaining than the ones 40 years ago...even the ones where I used my uniquely hazardous methods.
..take care... tim b
Monday, July 20, 2009
Fishin'
It sure is dusty in here, I wonder who is responsible for this space.....
We camped out at Horseshoe Bend during July 4th and the week after. Thank you Martha and Larry for letting us stay in your RV.
One of the activities during the week or so at the lake was fishing. When it was first proposed I was a bit hesitant. The last time I had gone fishing was when I was 8 and 9 years old and it really hadn't been that positive of an experience.
I had been taken fishing during that time by a step-father and it would be vastly understating things to call him a jerk. My fishing with him consisted of being placed on the bank of a creek or stream, close to an eddy. I used worms as the bait and a pole with a bobber on it. Instruction consisted of being told to not move, not talk, and watch for the bobber to move. I'm not sure why any adult would ever think that a 8 year old, small town, Arkansas boy could ever sit on a creek bank without moving or talking, watching a red and white piece of plastic sit in the water. I never remember catching a single fish.
After the first episode of this, the only reason I ever asked to go back was because I discovered that if I endured this unnatural torture for 30 to 45 minutes, I could quietly slip off and explore further up or down stream, out of eye sight. Sitting through the nonsense of watching the bobber gave me access to new stream banks to explore... one of my more favorite activities.
Thankfully, I was often left to my own devices on the stream that ran behind our house in Cave Springs. I was allowed to go as far as the upstream edge of the pond and for two cow pastures downstream...a bit less than 1/2 mile of stream bank to explore.
My fishing style during these solo expeditions was much more exciting. My favorite technique was to belly crawl along the bank until I found a spot on the outer edge of a bend where the water was deep enough I couldn't see the bottom. My reasoning was that if I couldn't see the bottom to verify there was no fish there then there was a distinct possibility there was a fish there. I would then ease myself up to crouching on all fours and launch out over the stream like some large, hairless jungle cat to plunge feet and hands first into the stream. All such launches from the creek bank were accompanied by a top of the lungs scream of "Geronimo." I'm not entirely sure why, but it was a practice I revived many years later during the 12 parachuting jumps I made...much to the chagrin of the jumpmasters.
My operational theory for this method of fishing was that I would seize any fish that my hands happened to contact or at the very least the shock wave of my body hitting the water would stun any fish in the eddy and they would float to the top. Although I never caught any fish using this method either, at least my version of fishing had the benefit of plunging into a cool stream after belly crawling through itchy grass on an oppressively muggy August afternoon.
In thinking back at these times, it occurs to me that I must have had a very flat learning curve as a child. Often the thing I took away from these attempts was pain and another wound I was reluctant to explain to my mother when I returned to the house at dusk. While it is doubtful that those eddies ever actually concealed any fish for me to stun into submission, they often did conceal tree branches or rocks which I would come into full speed contact with. The resulting gouges, scrapes, and punctures never lessened my enthusiasm for airborne angling, it was much less painful than sitting and watching a bobber bob.
My foray into the world of fishing 40 years later was much more enjoyable..but that's a tale for another day.
We camped out at Horseshoe Bend during July 4th and the week after. Thank you Martha and Larry for letting us stay in your RV.
One of the activities during the week or so at the lake was fishing. When it was first proposed I was a bit hesitant. The last time I had gone fishing was when I was 8 and 9 years old and it really hadn't been that positive of an experience.
I had been taken fishing during that time by a step-father and it would be vastly understating things to call him a jerk. My fishing with him consisted of being placed on the bank of a creek or stream, close to an eddy. I used worms as the bait and a pole with a bobber on it. Instruction consisted of being told to not move, not talk, and watch for the bobber to move. I'm not sure why any adult would ever think that a 8 year old, small town, Arkansas boy could ever sit on a creek bank without moving or talking, watching a red and white piece of plastic sit in the water. I never remember catching a single fish.
After the first episode of this, the only reason I ever asked to go back was because I discovered that if I endured this unnatural torture for 30 to 45 minutes, I could quietly slip off and explore further up or down stream, out of eye sight. Sitting through the nonsense of watching the bobber gave me access to new stream banks to explore... one of my more favorite activities.
Thankfully, I was often left to my own devices on the stream that ran behind our house in Cave Springs. I was allowed to go as far as the upstream edge of the pond and for two cow pastures downstream...a bit less than 1/2 mile of stream bank to explore.
My fishing style during these solo expeditions was much more exciting. My favorite technique was to belly crawl along the bank until I found a spot on the outer edge of a bend where the water was deep enough I couldn't see the bottom. My reasoning was that if I couldn't see the bottom to verify there was no fish there then there was a distinct possibility there was a fish there. I would then ease myself up to crouching on all fours and launch out over the stream like some large, hairless jungle cat to plunge feet and hands first into the stream. All such launches from the creek bank were accompanied by a top of the lungs scream of "Geronimo." I'm not entirely sure why, but it was a practice I revived many years later during the 12 parachuting jumps I made...much to the chagrin of the jumpmasters.
My operational theory for this method of fishing was that I would seize any fish that my hands happened to contact or at the very least the shock wave of my body hitting the water would stun any fish in the eddy and they would float to the top. Although I never caught any fish using this method either, at least my version of fishing had the benefit of plunging into a cool stream after belly crawling through itchy grass on an oppressively muggy August afternoon.
In thinking back at these times, it occurs to me that I must have had a very flat learning curve as a child. Often the thing I took away from these attempts was pain and another wound I was reluctant to explain to my mother when I returned to the house at dusk. While it is doubtful that those eddies ever actually concealed any fish for me to stun into submission, they often did conceal tree branches or rocks which I would come into full speed contact with. The resulting gouges, scrapes, and punctures never lessened my enthusiasm for airborne angling, it was much less painful than sitting and watching a bobber bob.
My foray into the world of fishing 40 years later was much more enjoyable..but that's a tale for another day.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
A devolving evolution....
At times, while perusing the chaos that is the interwebonet I come upon a piece of writing about the current state of verbal and/or written communications in our fair society. Once in a while the article is simply an observation but most often it is a full throated lamenting of the deplorable state and direction of our rapidly devolving skill in usage of the English language.
My first thought upon reading one of these latter pieces is to marvel at the delightfully subtle irony of a screed decrying the tragedy of the evolution of language written in contemporary English rather than Late West Saxon (the long demised linguistic ancestor of English) or any of the innumerable permutations that have since found their way to the communicative boneyard.
My second thought is usually that any difficulties caused by new or creative alterations in spelling, grammar, or usage is more due to a failure in compliance with context rather than any absolute shortcomings of contemporary language. Since it is possible that the phrase "failure in compliance with context" just now saw it's very first utterance, maybe I should explain.
In my brain (admittedly sometimes not being in congruence with reality), it refers to the idea that the use of any thing, such as a tool, eating utensil, clothing, or language, works best when the selection of a particular type of the thing from all the various sub-types of the thing is made with due consideration of the context within which the thing will be used. An alternative label might be "Eating Soup with Chopsticks"
While a fad diet and book titled "Eating Soup with Chopsticks" would probably make it's way to the top of various bestseller lists, the truth is that selecting that particular eating utensil to assist in the consumption of that particular foodstuff would be a definite failure in compliance with context, not to mention a really looooong meal.
The same theory would seem to apply to the changes we some times see in how members of our society, especially those with birth years in the not so distant past, make use of language. I don't believe there is anything inherently bad or wrong with slang, the abbreviations used in texting, or even "smilies", it's just that using those particular linguistic protocols when a more formal formulation of expression is appropriate is likely to yield results as unsatisfying as digging into a bowl of creamy tomato with a non-spoon utensil.
Possibly a better path lies in upping our efforts in teaching better compliance with context rather than using our energies to down the creative adaptations necessitated by changes in our society and the technologies that support it.
I'll even be kind and not insist that any dissenting opinions (always welcome, by the way) be presented in Late West Saxon... Chaucer's Middle English will suffice.
To answer the question many of you might now have in mind... Yes, an article I read this morning really got up my nose and has been irritating my brain cells all day long. Now it's been purged and I can move on to thinking about how to avoid the disasters that always seem a hair breadth away from every turn in my renovational journey.
..take care... tim b
My first thought upon reading one of these latter pieces is to marvel at the delightfully subtle irony of a screed decrying the tragedy of the evolution of language written in contemporary English rather than Late West Saxon (the long demised linguistic ancestor of English) or any of the innumerable permutations that have since found their way to the communicative boneyard.
My second thought is usually that any difficulties caused by new or creative alterations in spelling, grammar, or usage is more due to a failure in compliance with context rather than any absolute shortcomings of contemporary language. Since it is possible that the phrase "failure in compliance with context" just now saw it's very first utterance, maybe I should explain.
In my brain (admittedly sometimes not being in congruence with reality), it refers to the idea that the use of any thing, such as a tool, eating utensil, clothing, or language, works best when the selection of a particular type of the thing from all the various sub-types of the thing is made with due consideration of the context within which the thing will be used. An alternative label might be "Eating Soup with Chopsticks"
While a fad diet and book titled "Eating Soup with Chopsticks" would probably make it's way to the top of various bestseller lists, the truth is that selecting that particular eating utensil to assist in the consumption of that particular foodstuff would be a definite failure in compliance with context, not to mention a really looooong meal.
The same theory would seem to apply to the changes we some times see in how members of our society, especially those with birth years in the not so distant past, make use of language. I don't believe there is anything inherently bad or wrong with slang, the abbreviations used in texting, or even "smilies", it's just that using those particular linguistic protocols when a more formal formulation of expression is appropriate is likely to yield results as unsatisfying as digging into a bowl of creamy tomato with a non-spoon utensil.
Possibly a better path lies in upping our efforts in teaching better compliance with context rather than using our energies to down the creative adaptations necessitated by changes in our society and the technologies that support it.
I'll even be kind and not insist that any dissenting opinions (always welcome, by the way) be presented in Late West Saxon... Chaucer's Middle English will suffice.
To answer the question many of you might now have in mind... Yes, an article I read this morning really got up my nose and has been irritating my brain cells all day long. Now it's been purged and I can move on to thinking about how to avoid the disasters that always seem a hair breadth away from every turn in my renovational journey.
..take care... tim b
Friday, June 5, 2009
A flaw in the system...
I will readily admit to being addicted to caffeine..my brain doesn't function very well without it. While there are some studies that suggest ingesting great quantities of caffeine will damage your body...my daily study suggests that not ingesting great quantities of caffeine will cause me to do damage to my environment and possibly ever greater damage to my body than whatever is being done by the caffeine.
Prior to our moving to Italy in 1987 I never drank coffee. Nine years in the Navy, having stood innumerable mid-watches (translation for those not navally oriented -- a job assignment from around midnight until about the time the sun comes up), and a stint on Subase Pearl Harbor where I worked 48 to 60 hours straight on a regular basis...all without coffee. I seem to remember drinking a lot of tea and sodas during those years though.
Upon our arrival in Italy, in the spirit of trying out new cultural experiences, I tried a latte. Immediately I started asking around to find out why this magic fount of taste and clarity had been hidden from me all these years. So began my willing embrace of this Ethiopian elixir.
Fast forward twenty something years and we arrive at a point where my few remaining brain cells refuse to function very quickly or very intelligently prior to as least a minimal coating of coffee based caffeine. Therein lies the flaw in the system.
My usual routine is to hit the five minute "In a minute Ma" button on my phone alarm a couple of times when it goes off at 4 a.m. but in a relatively short time, get up and ambulate a somewhat unsteady course to the kitchen. There I perform the high religious ritual of creating the pot of potential profoundity while in a very non-profound state of mind.
This morning, things went a bit awry. Our coffee maker has one of those semi-permanent metal mesh filters. The process goes something like.. Take pot, pot lid, and mesh filter from cabinet. Fill pot with water, pour water from pot into coffee maker. Put lid on pot, put filter in coffee maker, put appropriate amount of grinds in filter. Put pot into coffee maker, close lid, push button, stare blankly at the red happy light on button until enough time has passed for the first cup of coffee to have ended up in the pot. Take advantage of the "can't wait for the whole pot to brew before I get my first cup of coffee" feature of our coffee pot (Pause here for a small standing ovation for whoever first invented that grand device) and pour a generous quantity into my cup. It turns out that this is a VERY ordered process. If you hose up the order of the steps you are well....hosed.
This morning I reversed the order of two steps... putting filter in coffee maker and putting coffee in coffee maker. This is not good. The filter sits in a plastic filter shaped recess in the coffee maker. If you pour the coffee in the recess before you put the filter in there...no good things occur. You get to spend about 15 minutes in a coffee deprived state trying to get the grounds out of the recess. Some of them you can just kind of scoop out..but to get the remaining bits out requires some water, paper towels, then more paper towels to clean up the mess on the counter and floor that was created by severely non-coordinated fingers attempting to manage the clean out the grounds process.
Finally, got the grounds cleaned out, put the filter in place, put grinds in filter, pushed the button, stared blankly at the red happy light, and wondered why my toes were getting so warm..like in scalding coffee type of warm. Wrenched my stare off the happy light and discovered the coffee pot...sitting on the counter and not nestled within its proper nook of the coffee maker...dadgumit.
I promise you I said dadgumit at that point and not something more unsuitable for a mixed audience. A digression... If you go to Carlsbad Cavern and take the tour (highly recommended), when you get into the biggest room of the cavern the guide will tell you a story about the first person to climb up to one of the small passages leading off from near the ceiling. It took him several days to make the climb up the side of the cave wall. He pulls himself over the last ledge and falls face first into a huge pile of bat guano. His companion on the cave floor below inquires as to what happened... he replies, "I fell face first into a pile of bat guano." Yep, I'm as sure he used the word guano at that point as I am that I used the word dadgumit when my toes got coffeed this morning.
Another 10 minutes or so of cleanup in a coffee deprived state... I'm thinking that making use of the "program the coffee to start on its own in the morning after having set it up at night" feature of the coffee maker might be the way to proceed in the future to save my toes.
..take care... tim b
Prior to our moving to Italy in 1987 I never drank coffee. Nine years in the Navy, having stood innumerable mid-watches (translation for those not navally oriented -- a job assignment from around midnight until about the time the sun comes up), and a stint on Subase Pearl Harbor where I worked 48 to 60 hours straight on a regular basis...all without coffee. I seem to remember drinking a lot of tea and sodas during those years though.
Upon our arrival in Italy, in the spirit of trying out new cultural experiences, I tried a latte. Immediately I started asking around to find out why this magic fount of taste and clarity had been hidden from me all these years. So began my willing embrace of this Ethiopian elixir.
Fast forward twenty something years and we arrive at a point where my few remaining brain cells refuse to function very quickly or very intelligently prior to as least a minimal coating of coffee based caffeine. Therein lies the flaw in the system.
My usual routine is to hit the five minute "In a minute Ma" button on my phone alarm a couple of times when it goes off at 4 a.m. but in a relatively short time, get up and ambulate a somewhat unsteady course to the kitchen. There I perform the high religious ritual of creating the pot of potential profoundity while in a very non-profound state of mind.
This morning, things went a bit awry. Our coffee maker has one of those semi-permanent metal mesh filters. The process goes something like.. Take pot, pot lid, and mesh filter from cabinet. Fill pot with water, pour water from pot into coffee maker. Put lid on pot, put filter in coffee maker, put appropriate amount of grinds in filter. Put pot into coffee maker, close lid, push button, stare blankly at the red happy light on button until enough time has passed for the first cup of coffee to have ended up in the pot. Take advantage of the "can't wait for the whole pot to brew before I get my first cup of coffee" feature of our coffee pot (Pause here for a small standing ovation for whoever first invented that grand device) and pour a generous quantity into my cup. It turns out that this is a VERY ordered process. If you hose up the order of the steps you are well....hosed.
This morning I reversed the order of two steps... putting filter in coffee maker and putting coffee in coffee maker. This is not good. The filter sits in a plastic filter shaped recess in the coffee maker. If you pour the coffee in the recess before you put the filter in there...no good things occur. You get to spend about 15 minutes in a coffee deprived state trying to get the grounds out of the recess. Some of them you can just kind of scoop out..but to get the remaining bits out requires some water, paper towels, then more paper towels to clean up the mess on the counter and floor that was created by severely non-coordinated fingers attempting to manage the clean out the grounds process.
Finally, got the grounds cleaned out, put the filter in place, put grinds in filter, pushed the button, stared blankly at the red happy light, and wondered why my toes were getting so warm..like in scalding coffee type of warm. Wrenched my stare off the happy light and discovered the coffee pot...sitting on the counter and not nestled within its proper nook of the coffee maker...dadgumit.
I promise you I said dadgumit at that point and not something more unsuitable for a mixed audience. A digression... If you go to Carlsbad Cavern and take the tour (highly recommended), when you get into the biggest room of the cavern the guide will tell you a story about the first person to climb up to one of the small passages leading off from near the ceiling. It took him several days to make the climb up the side of the cave wall. He pulls himself over the last ledge and falls face first into a huge pile of bat guano. His companion on the cave floor below inquires as to what happened... he replies, "I fell face first into a pile of bat guano." Yep, I'm as sure he used the word guano at that point as I am that I used the word dadgumit when my toes got coffeed this morning.
Another 10 minutes or so of cleanup in a coffee deprived state... I'm thinking that making use of the "program the coffee to start on its own in the morning after having set it up at night" feature of the coffee maker might be the way to proceed in the future to save my toes.
..take care... tim b
Friday, May 29, 2009
Random thinking....
Just a few random thoughts my brain cells managed to spark up during my recent journeys. It might be a bit long winded so get comfortable.
For those contemplating using radio roulette as their sole source of aural amusement during a long drive there are a couple of things you should consider.
The strongest, longest lasting signal will be a Spanish language talk radio station. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. However, if your command of the Spanish language consists solely of the phrases "Dos cervesas, por favor." and "Donde es el bano.", as mine does, then it is very difficult to extract any entertainment value out of Spanish talk radio. Those phrases seemed to serve me very well during the six years I lived in places where Spanish was the predominant language but they didn't seem to come up during the episodes I listened to on the radio.
The second strongest, longest lasting signal will be a local talk radio station. The person talking on this station will have a voice so devoid of tonal variation as to make the pure tone sounds of an audiogram sound like a musical interlude stretching over several octaves. The reading will be delivered at a pace that makes the slowest southern drawl appear as a staccato, issuance of life saving orders during an emergency. Plus the subject matter will be the minutely detailed minutes of the last school board meeting.
All other stations will fade out on a time schedule of inverse proportion to the quality of the songs they are playing. Good songs...quick fade. Playlist consisting of the B side songs of one hit wonders... audible almost as long as the school board minutes reader. One last caution...if the DJ starts a contest where a question is asked and listeners call in with the correct answer...change channels before they ask the question... the station will fade before the correct answer is given.
It is only by an unbelievably lucky convergence of radio propagation theory and freakish atmospherics that I know the correct answer to: "What object do 70% of U.S. citizens like but don't own?" I didn't make the mistake of listening to the question the next time this type of contest came up.
Speaking of amusements... there is a certain night clerk at the Super 8 Motel - Amarillo East that can be induced to throw an amusing stamp-his-foot, put-his-hands-on-his-hips snit. To get him to put on this display all one has to do is: Upon checking out at 6:10 a.m., proceed to the complimentary coffee urn and proceed to fix oneself a cup of coffee. Upon the clerk stating, "The breakfast starts at 6:30." simply reply "Okay, thanks.", put a lid on the cup and walk out with it.
It wasn't until said cup of coffee marinated some of my brain cells into working that I realized given the body language response to my reply, his statement was probably an admonishment and not an invitation. Of course, by then I was thirty miles eastward on I40, irretrievably trapped in the tractor beam of the fatman chair and proceeding at greatest semi-legal warp speed toward said chair. Mr. Motel 8 Night Clerk...sorry man, didn't mean to usurp your coffee-icular authority.
Visited the UFO Museum while in Roswell. Interesting place, they seem to present both sides of the incident there... a not of this earth craft crashed in the desert or an expended meteorological instrumentation package returned to earth.
I'm not sure that I've formed a firm opinion in either direction. I do however wonder why a population of beings capable of creating a intergalactic craft the size of a Volkswagen wouldn't have a similarly technologically advanced version of On-Star and Triple A. They can travel from a place beyond our ability to detect that life exists there yet they can't manipulate things such that the local headlines from that time read, "Local Rancher, Sheriff, and Military Personnel Perish in Gas Tank Explosion." Just seems like a remarkable lack of consistency in their abilities and intelligence.
Another possibility is that the aliens actually landed in Hondo, NM, interrupting the Senior Citizens Annual Bronc Busting and Rhubarb Pie Gala. Tick off those folks and let them get a hold of you and the only thing left probably would resemble the scraps of a weather balloon.
The answer is "bumper sticker"...thanks for sticking around to the end.
..take care.. tim b
For those contemplating using radio roulette as their sole source of aural amusement during a long drive there are a couple of things you should consider.
The strongest, longest lasting signal will be a Spanish language talk radio station. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. However, if your command of the Spanish language consists solely of the phrases "Dos cervesas, por favor." and "Donde es el bano.", as mine does, then it is very difficult to extract any entertainment value out of Spanish talk radio. Those phrases seemed to serve me very well during the six years I lived in places where Spanish was the predominant language but they didn't seem to come up during the episodes I listened to on the radio.
The second strongest, longest lasting signal will be a local talk radio station. The person talking on this station will have a voice so devoid of tonal variation as to make the pure tone sounds of an audiogram sound like a musical interlude stretching over several octaves. The reading will be delivered at a pace that makes the slowest southern drawl appear as a staccato, issuance of life saving orders during an emergency. Plus the subject matter will be the minutely detailed minutes of the last school board meeting.
All other stations will fade out on a time schedule of inverse proportion to the quality of the songs they are playing. Good songs...quick fade. Playlist consisting of the B side songs of one hit wonders... audible almost as long as the school board minutes reader. One last caution...if the DJ starts a contest where a question is asked and listeners call in with the correct answer...change channels before they ask the question... the station will fade before the correct answer is given.
It is only by an unbelievably lucky convergence of radio propagation theory and freakish atmospherics that I know the correct answer to: "What object do 70% of U.S. citizens like but don't own?" I didn't make the mistake of listening to the question the next time this type of contest came up.
Speaking of amusements... there is a certain night clerk at the Super 8 Motel - Amarillo East that can be induced to throw an amusing stamp-his-foot, put-his-hands-on-his-hips snit. To get him to put on this display all one has to do is: Upon checking out at 6:10 a.m., proceed to the complimentary coffee urn and proceed to fix oneself a cup of coffee. Upon the clerk stating, "The breakfast starts at 6:30." simply reply "Okay, thanks.", put a lid on the cup and walk out with it.
It wasn't until said cup of coffee marinated some of my brain cells into working that I realized given the body language response to my reply, his statement was probably an admonishment and not an invitation. Of course, by then I was thirty miles eastward on I40, irretrievably trapped in the tractor beam of the fatman chair and proceeding at greatest semi-legal warp speed toward said chair. Mr. Motel 8 Night Clerk...sorry man, didn't mean to usurp your coffee-icular authority.
Visited the UFO Museum while in Roswell. Interesting place, they seem to present both sides of the incident there... a not of this earth craft crashed in the desert or an expended meteorological instrumentation package returned to earth.
I'm not sure that I've formed a firm opinion in either direction. I do however wonder why a population of beings capable of creating a intergalactic craft the size of a Volkswagen wouldn't have a similarly technologically advanced version of On-Star and Triple A. They can travel from a place beyond our ability to detect that life exists there yet they can't manipulate things such that the local headlines from that time read, "Local Rancher, Sheriff, and Military Personnel Perish in Gas Tank Explosion." Just seems like a remarkable lack of consistency in their abilities and intelligence.
Another possibility is that the aliens actually landed in Hondo, NM, interrupting the Senior Citizens Annual Bronc Busting and Rhubarb Pie Gala. Tick off those folks and let them get a hold of you and the only thing left probably would resemble the scraps of a weather balloon.
The answer is "bumper sticker"...thanks for sticking around to the end.
..take care.. tim b
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