Sunday, March 8, 2009.

+2˚C/+36˚F @ 7:09 am.

I took the photo to the left about 20 minutes ago.

The train tracks are a couple hundred yards from our house here, you get so you hardly notice the noise most of the time.

But anyway, the snow is melting and the trees are at least thinking about budding and there might even be small patches of green here and there.

Cathi just brought the boy home from the weekend at his father’s and he’s arguing that she should have done his chores while he was not here.

And while I was typing the last line Cathi changed the channel from Flash Gordon (the new series) to something else, black and white gonfiabili world war ii  bombers dropping bombs on Europe which was not what she wanted to see, but- when I complained, she hit the back button on the teevee.

It’s a Sunday- I changed the clocks, including the internal clocks in all the computers at the studio and here we are… getting ready to try again to wish happy birthday to my friend in Vermont.

—–Jim

-I’ll have to go into the studio today and make sure all the clocks on all the computers are set correctly.

-But here is the Eastern Corner of our living room. The house is situated so the corners point to the compass points.

This was a couple hours ago. Cathi was half watching a movie from India about a royal love triangle and had just announced, “I’m watching a silly movie from India, it must be way past time to go to bed.” (She was also working on computer stuff on her laptop. We have at least half a dozen projects going on at once, including getting a dvd ready for a friend, editing a radio interview with Geneve Blue (who wrote “I Ching Jukebox”, a novel) several web pages, a couple custom graphics for web pages… and income tax returns (which seem to be much more complicated up here in Canada than anything I had to deal with in the states.) )

Paintings on the walls. the one to the left is a numbered Robert Bateman print. There’s too much glare to tell, but the subject is a spotted leopard reclining. We have a spotted and striped Bengal cat (newish breed, crossbred from asian leopard cats and domestic tabbies, their import was illegal in Connecticut last time I heard, because they thought they were a wild breed, cat sized cats, nothing like a tiger or cheetah or other exotic cat, but-) anyway, Cathi saw the print in a commercial gallery in a big shopping centre in Ottawa and had to get it. (Domino, whose birthday is March 4th, is a worrier, he worries about everything, he wanders around at night calling out to other cats that we can’t see in a trilling voice, sounding like “Moe- Moe- Merrrrrrrrroe! Merrrrrroe!” he is quite ambivalent about letting us pet him, he gets so happy he falls off the edges of whatever furniture he’s sitting on and then he has giochi gonfiabili trouble coping with the fact that he’s been clumbsy in front of humans (which every cat knows, are members of an inferior race of quasi sentient beings.) He spends a lot of time running away and hiding.

The painting to the right is one Cathi painted, “Bo” was a white long haired cat, an instigator, ring leader, and trouble maker, who weighed in at 32 pounds (which is huge for a cat). That makes him twice as big as Moe, our own orange instigator (who loves waiting until I’m almost asleep on the couch or in the recliner, then running across the room and jumping about five feet through the air to land on my poor unsuspecting belly. I’m thinking he secretly keeps track, giving himself a score that he calculates, based on how high I jump and how loudly I gasp.)

Another interesting thing in the top photo in this article/post- The Native American/First Nation drum, hanging from the light switch of the old old light fixture in the corner there, often thumps on it’s own. Cathi and I are pretty sure the thumping is caused by our ancestors and friends and guardian angels who have crossed over, announcing their presence, asking if it’s okay if they pay us a visit.

hmmmmmmm-

—–Jim

Sunday, March 8, 20009.

+1˚C/+34˚F @ 4:49 am.

This is probably the first of several current photos that I will post here in this blog.

Our “Four Car Garage”, photo taken yesterday, a grey day, with snow and wet asphalt apparent.

We probably got this house at a ‘reduced price’ because the real estate people listed it as a “Handy Man’s Dream”, mostly because of the garage workshop area where the previous owner supplimented his income by working on people’s cars. Potential buyers probably read that and thought the house was a Handy Man’s Special / Basket Case.

I took these gonfiabili photos before we went to the local builders’ supply place in town to show the guy what we’re thinking of doing and get as good an idea as we could about what we would need and how much it would cost.

We want to insulate and finish the second story here, which is currently wide open, unfinished, you can see the underside of the steel roof.

We’re thinking this would be a wonderful place for Cathi to have an artist’s studio and we could also have office space where I could be writing, doing radio stuff, recording video… doing lots of stuff….

I mean it looks like pure potential.

Yum.

Let’s see how this looks, and see if I have to write another couple paragraphs to make it look right, or not.

—–Jim

+6˚C/+43˚F @4:37 pm, Saturday, March 7, 2009.

-Jassper, the puppy horse seen walking Cathi at a beach on warmer days last summer, took me for a walk down by the Madawaska River, just north of the area where this morning’s photo was taken.

We met a German Shepard-Husky mix named Kenobe (Like Obi Wan of star wars fame) and we stepped off to the side while a snow mobile pulling a snow trailer full of what looked like logs and other camp site stuff noisily zoomed past us.

Jassper was okay with the snow mobile. I’m hoping the guy didn’t go out onto the ‘lake’/Ottawa River (that’s the Ottawa River/Chats Lake behind Cathi and the dog in the summer photo). It’s getting to be the time of year when at least one snow mobile and rider goes through the ice somewhere within 25 kilometres of here.

Maybe now it’s time for me to rant about the economy.

General Motors.

Last year I was sitting in the Jeep-Dodge-Chrysler dealer’s Service Area waiting room while the mechanics and technicians gave our 2005 Jeep Liberty its periodic check up. An older guy sitting beside me related some of his adventures in auto mechanics. (He’d put a car together from spare parts of several different makes and giochi gonfiabili models and years and the Motor Vehicle people didn’t know what to put on the registration when he went to have it inspected and registered.)

He also told me he’d been a GM Mechanic for several years and had been sent to a big pep talk meeting with corporate big shots showing off a few of their latest innovations.

When they showed him (and his group) a plastic engine part he looked worried and said, “That makes no sense- the damned thing’s going to wear out too fast, they were always made of regular metal before-”

His observation angered the big shot who snarled back, “Do you like your job? Do you want to keep working? We’re paying people two million dollars a year to come up with ideas like this so the parts do wear out so the customers have to come in and get their vehicles serviced-”

The mechanic was stunned, shocked, and apparently never got over that. He shook his head as he told me.

-Seems like basic dishonesty to me, misleading marketing practices, manipulation, betrayal of the public trust.

-So now General Motors is hurting and crying for help.

-I think General Motors should be temporarily nationalized. Fire everybody in management and turn it over to the unions. Give them a deadline, tell them to try to come up with the most reliable, least expensive, most versatile vehicles they know how to build, and see what they come up with. If this fails, try something else.

-But give the people who know what they’re doing, and don’t know how to cheat and manipulate their customers, a chance.

See what they come up with.

—rantingly yours,

—–Jim

Saturday- March 7, 2009.

+3˚C/+37˚F @ 9:33 a.m. in Arnprior.

The scene to the left was taken after one of the first snows of the season in late autumn/early winter of 2008.

The ‘Weir’ is a rounded dam on the Madawaska River near where it flows into the Ottawa River at a wide section also referred to as “Chats Lake”.

‘Les chats’ means ‘the cats’ in French. Chats Lake may have been named for wild cats seen in the area by early ‘voyageurs’ or explorers. Or it may have referred to sharp rocks just beneath the surface of the ‘lake’ that some compared to cats’ claws.

Or it may have been named ‘Chats Lake’ for some castillo hinchable entirely different reason that no one remembers correctly.

At any rate, This is an early winter photo shot from a park like area beside the Madawaska River, looking South over the weir. There is an island to the left, out of the shot, from where the fire department launches its Canada Day (July 1st) fireworks.

Maybe soon, I should post a bit of a map here.

—–Jim

Friday, March 6th, 2009.

-3˚C / +27˚F @ 5:08 a.m. & we’ve had freezing rain over night, not a lot, just enough to make everything slippery & mess up windshields big time.

Jassper, the graduate, (wearing his vehicle harness, not a tuxedo) with most of Cathi visible in this photograph, grinning along with him.

This was last year (2008) I forget exactly when-

Now let’s see- I was thinking about saying something political a few minutes ago, but I went completely brain dead when I sat down to type here. (Maybe “brain dud” would be more like it.) But anyway, I’m going to add a ‘politix’ category to stuff I’m posting here. And that is probably the most parque acuatico hinchable political statement I’m about to make in this installment.

yayyyyy?

—–Jim

Ack-

Thursday, March 5, 2009. (Lyn’s birthday) (& Chelsea R’s birthday, too.)

-10˚C/+14˚F @ 4:59 am ((the weather network thinks it’s -18˚C/0˚F, that’s probably up at the Army base in Petawawa.))

Sigh, Wizard- the Keeshund (sp?) in the photo
to the right, died yesterday (March/4/2009) of an apparent stroke.

Pets should never die.

Cathi’s worried about how the boy will be today, she said he didn’t take it very well last night when his Dad called and told him.

I’m praying / sending out the intention to the universe… that they get an affectionate, low maintenance, not very high energy (definitely not a puppy horse) replacement, real soon.

Gack. Things like this take the wind right out of your sails. I mean how can I write a story about mean people doing evil things to each other when kids are hurting because their dog died?

Quick- think up an alternative castillo hinchable world where pets don’t die, they regenerate or something, and retain all the memories from their previous existance. There needs to be an escape clause, I mean if a kid beats his dog, the dog can regenerate, look the kid in the eye and say, “You were mean to me, I’ll go give my unconditional love to somebody else- loser-” or something like that.

shrug-

—–Jim

Wednesday, March 4, 2009 ((Marcia Logan’s Birthday)) -13˚C/+9˚F @ 5:38 am.

(((Temperatures in the warmer range are from the same Weather Network”s applet, I think at the Ottawa Airport)))

That’s still cold.

The elf house here is something that I picked up on the internet way way back when I attempted my first web site. Angelfire had pages of free images and told you how to use them. This house was on a ‘Fairies’ site maintained by a woman in California who frequented Renaissance Faires and kept Fairies etc on her site to support kids who needed emotional support. I asked her about the house gif and she said she’d forgotten where she got it from, but nobody’s come after me with a chainsaw or a lawyer screaming anything like copyright infringement, so I guess it’s safe to use it.

Which brings me to the buried issue of the day.

The CRTC has been holding hearings about taxing the internet. (The CRTC is the Canadian version of the FCC) In the U.S., I’ve heard what sounds like serious rumours that the government wants to tax downloads.

I remember tons of rumours flying around before the turn of the millenium that governments were going to try to tax email, like charge something as if it was regular mail. I remember armies of little old ladies rattling their canes and shooting worried messages to all their friends and stuff.

Now this rumour showed up in a legitimate newspaper. The CRTC has been looking into taxing the internet. They want to charge the ISPs (internet service providers). They’ve become so bogged down in confusion that they decided to hang up their gavels and take some time off for a while.

Should we be worried?

Who actually is trying to tax the internet? Are all the governments in the world trying to quietly sneak up on us while we surf, getting ready castillo hinchable to throw a net over our heads (and all the other parts of our bodies in the process?)? Are the wild wild west days of the internet numbered?

Where are the internet freedom fighters (aka the ‘hackers’) and what kind of guerilla operations are they planning to discourage anybody foolish enough to try to rein in on the internet?

Or are we asleep at our wheels (and keyboards?) unaware that men in black are creeping up on us, ready to spring and try to pound us into submission (I knew I never liked those buttons at the bottom of most internet forms that say “submit”)

Will we all be here same time, same place tomorrow?

hmmmmmmmmm-

Stay tuned, folks, lets see what tomorrow may bring.

—–Jim

Yeah, today was freakin cold. Or friggin cold. one of them words lights up red in Eudora’s naughty word warning routines.

I hear the wind roaring now.

We didn’t get any part of the 25 plus inches that people in New England got (or were supposed to get)

And that picture on the right is not the legendary ice storm of ’98. That’s a pretty morning in ’08.

Sigh.

I felt sick for a while.

Thought I had another revision parque acuatico hinchable of another flu bug or something. (shrug)

Then I wondered how I’d know whether I had chills or was only freezing my bum (butt to youse southe of ye border types) off.

Berrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-

—–Jim

(Edited at 8:12 PM) Here’s the book I mentioned in the previous post.

Not only did an Exxon Executive tell a room full of Exxon Supervisors and an honorary officer (in the form of a Chaplain, who was working for free, as a missionary, looking after the souls of men away from home, working on the
Alaskan pipeline, keeping the men out of trouble, sober and on the job, cutting down on absentee-ism, hangovers and all that) “There is no oil shortage, there never was an oil shortage, And with what we know now, there never will be an oil shortage.” {{-There’s enough oil under Gull Island (Alaska) to keep them all in hefty bonuses for as far ahead as I can see…}} He told them they were pumping enough natural gas back into the ground to light and power the whole east coast (of the USA) for free- for 3 years.

Now, this winter, I learned that the price of gasoline rises and falls, not due to supply and demand, or the cost of getting the slime up out of the ground and to the refineries and refined and carted to where-ever. The prices are set by the geeks you elected to represent you in Congress or Parliament- or in backrooms and shadowy nether worlds by those castillo hinchable who pull the strings that control those geeks you thought were representing you… Prices rise to bolster the Russian economy or fall to undermine the Soviets’ ability to put down velvet revolutions or even challenge East Berlinners who want to push down their gawd awful walls…. Prices are agreed upon by world players… The Chinese agree to help the US undermine the Russians- The Russians agree to help the US undermine the Chinese… whatever….

So today our coffee maker died. Is there anybody out there who thinks it’s worse than hideous that the whole culture goes nod nod wink wink or maybe even endorses planned obsolescence?

schnarr—

—thanks anyway,

—–Jim