Hi,

Thought of the day.

God can’t be happy about the aufblasbarer park way humans are treating each other.

Details to follow?

—–Jim

Sunday, April 19, 2009. I think it might be Billy Randal’s Birthday, & maybe another friend in Stratford’s- (right now I can only remember his last name & that he married my friend Pamm from the postt office… Marriage didn’t last forever… but… he was a good friend. Still might be, if I remember his name and ever get in touch with him.)

+9˚C/+48˚F @ 2:12 pm in Arnprior.

I forget what kind of willow tree we have in our front garden here, but it’s not a pussy willow, even if it looks like one.

I got locked out while snapping a couple photos around the house a while ago. Cathi and the young woman went to the aufblasbare wasserrutschen movies to see “17 Again” (?) locked me out while I was stalking blog photos. I did have the van keys in my pocket- (I was outside in fleece pants, not the ones with the house keys clipped to the belt… didn’t have my glasses or wallet or — eep, I couldda got in trouble, hey? But I got to the theatre just before they crossed the road and yelled, “What???” {{ “Ya locked me out!” / “Are you serious??” / “Yup!” / “Don’t you have your keys with you?” / “Nope” }} at least they had a good natured laugh- I did get weird looks from people walking by.

This is what the Weather Network’s local weather forecast screen looks like.

With a yogurt ad in the upper left corner.

And of course the temperature is in ˚Celcius.

& the 20 is for twenty years of Weather Network, not channel 20. (It’s on channel 21 here.)

Which brings me to today’s work nonsense-

In order to show the “Cold Water Boot Camp” programme. I have to be in and out like all afternoon. Have to switch programmes into alternate dvd players because the church service has been playing in player #1, which has the hard drive, in which the ‘Boot  Camp’ programme resides. And ya can’t tell the players to switch from dvd player to hard drive by remote. So anyway I have to put church service in player #2, start it early, switch to it in progress, have already told player #1 to concentrate on hard drive, not dvd player, and be ready to start playing at 7 pm (with a 3 second delay) and make sure the church service stops and ‘rewinds’ ((we know it doesn’t actually rewind, it’s a dvd player fer cryin out loud, but it needs 3 ‘rewind’ commands to shake all the cobwebs out of it’s electronic brain and be ready to play again at 8 pm.)) & If that’snot complicated enough- There might be a new church service with a new running time to figure into the mix here… Time to insert finger between lips and run it up and down several times in rapid succession….

Are all my parenthetical messages closed? )))))))))) That should cover it….

🙂

—–Jim

Satyrday, April 18, 2009. I think it’s Hayley Mills’ birthday.

Warm enough, but a few scattered raindrops this morning had the dog yelping and crying to come back inside. (whimp) 🙂

ahhhhh- I spent most of the day messing with and tweaking web pages for the Indigo Starcrystal Radio site. (Not quite ready to go ‘live’ yet.)

Including getting a word press site hosted by word press dot com to post the podcasts and links and stuff.

I have itchy eyebulbs (allergies) and the dog is scarily quiet at hüpfburg kinder the moment. I should go check on him.

But anyway-

It was a decent, if grey, day with patches of hopeful sunshine and bits of promising rain.

—–Jim

Friday, April 17, 2009

+17˚C/+63˚F in the afternoon.

Let me think- We had an unusual day.

The boy had a doctor’s appointment early and then went to school.

I got paid by my second (in fact of time, first) job and had to cash cheque (in Canada we have cheques, in the U.S. they’re checks) in order to get boy and Mom out of drug store with prescription.

Cathi and I had brunch in an unusual (for us) spot after she got the boy to the school.

When we got home we found two notices that ups had tried to deliver something we’ve been looking for. the first notice said they might try today between 10 and 2 andbetween 2 and 5 pm.

So Cathi got the boy from School. Then took boy to Dad’s and traded him for young woman while I sat here and vegged out in the hopes that UPS might actually make another attempt to deliver. Nope.

But when Cathi and young woman got here we needed a Dairy Queen run and sat almost where the above photo was shot from and watched the gonfiabile percorso ad ostacoli river and the weir and the world do their magic while we chomped on ice cream and stuff like that there.

Yummmmm-

I still think the ‘financial crisis’ is a propaganda campaign, and I still believe the (conservative) Canadian *Government is trying to take advantage of public confusion to try to push through some very schnarr reforms that are on their very schnarr agendae and are not at all in the public interest. {{ (In Canada, “*Government” often refers to the current batch of (fairly recently elected) Members of Parliament, the Prime Minister and the appointed ‘Ministers’ (Senators are still ((as far as we know)) appointed for life up here.) as opposed to the form of government (fer example ‘representative democracy’/’republic’/whathaveyou-) ) }} But then again-

-grumble grumble grumble,

—–Jim

Thursday, April 16, 2009.

+14˚C/+58˚F in Arnprior (tomorrow’s s’posed to be warmer.)

Canadian Government Minister Tony Clement is demanding that Chrysler employees accept a cut in pay down to levels that non unionized auto workers working for Honda and Toyota get.

I’m getting more angry about this by the moment. Last week Union officials were complaining that government officials like Clement were breaking the law that established collective bargaining.

I want to go a few steps farther and demand that giochi gonfiabili somebody convince me that this ‘financial crisis’ isn’t something that was dreamed up and manipulated on us to give schnarr faced moroons like Clement fuel to demand things like this.

I mean these idiots still believe that they can keep pulling the wool over our eyes and get away with it.

Running them outta town on a rail might not be a strong enough statement that “We’re not gonna take it!”

schnarrr—

—–Jim

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 (Income Tax Deadline in the US.)

I think it got up to about 14˚C/58˚F in Arnprior.

Yeesh. The boy has decided he should get up at 6:30 or even earlier in the morning, wash up and do long term homework projects before going to school. He was angry at me for not knowing that and for not waking him up at six o five this morning when his alarm clock failed (do to operator error?) I want to tell him that if he wants to get up at something other than what has been his normal time, well, that’s his parco acquatico gonfiabile responsibility and he can’t expect me or his mother to wake him up under those conditions.

Schnarr-

—–Jim

Tuesday, April 14, 2009. Lemme think- Scott Parlett’s B’day, and Karen D, (Sharon M-Zak’s Wife’s roommate)’s. Anniv or Lincoln getting gonfiabili sportivi shot in Washington D.C. and the Titanic sinking in the Atlantic.)

A high temp of 11˚C/52˚F was forecast, I think it reached 13˚C/56˚F.

Photo was taken Easter Morning from the sidewalk above the Weir looking North West.

The day was odd. My supervisor didn’t come down for his usual afternoon visit, he came at 7 p.m.

& This time I remembered most of what we talked about and was able to send him email messages full of the things he wanted to be reminded of.

Still haven’t downloaded photos of the house we looked at in Fitzroy Harbour.

Shrug…..

—–Jim

Monday- Easter Monday (A Holiday in Canada) April 13, 2009.

I think it got up around +4˚C/+40˚F today.

I woke up in a panic, thinking today was Sunday and I had played the wrong programmes on the wrong day. When I could laugh about that I checked my bank account on line and learned I had something like 76 cents (Canadian $) in my chequing account. (Canadians spell ‘cheque’ differently)

But, All weekends should be at least 4 days long.  🙂 and this one was, sort of. Both Cathi and I had or part-est of part time jobs to do this weekend. She grumbles about needing this part time work, but it saved our necks or skins or both last winter.

The photo is the Madawaska River, looking North over the Weir, toward Quebec. Parts of Arnprior jut out into the river from both sides, so Quebec is the discoloured haze beyond and/or above the trees in the center of the photo.

The Church is St John Chrystostum (there are a couple variations on the spelling) Roman Catholic Church. We recorded a, then 92 year old, local builder who described building the shell of this church around the smaller, older church and then deconstructing and passing the stones and bricks and wood of the old church out through the windows of the new church.

Today Cathi and I went to Fitzroy Harbour to look at an old Post Office for sale. Amazing house, built around 1880?, looks like the owners who obviously loved it, gave up trying to fix several things. The real estate woman said the owner moved ‘out west’, and would be understanding if anybody interested in buying the place needed to take some time to sell a house first, no rush… & Yes, the house has a lot of features we lack here, but it is not quite perfect for what we need, but we don’t expect that anything ever will be perfect. Still, something would have scivolo gonfiabile to fall into our laps or otherwise catch our attention for us to commit to that house right now, or in the soon enough future. I took some photos and will probably have one or two to ‘post’ here, but not right now. It’s 5 am and I’d have to wake up Cathi to down load the photos and all that intrusive stuff.

& I better go, the boy wants to get up at 6:30? He was wandering around at 12:30 wide awake and complaining he couldn’t sleep.

Cathi’s alarm starts singing to us around now. but she’s been falling back to sleep lately and I have to stay awake long enough to make sure she gets up and off to work.

— Later….

—–Jim

Easter Sunday, April 12, 2009.

-4˚C/+25˚F @ 10:10 am (-5˚C with a nasty cold, damp wind earlier. I took the photo at about 8:15, brrrrrrr)

I had to get up earlier than Cathi again, had to go into the studio at work to set up today’s early playback stuff. I’ll have to go back in later to set up evening stuff.

& I’ve been thinking we should be giving the local subscribers more to look at on our channel than we are giving them now. I have to ask my supervisor why we cut back to one day instead of 4. That doesn’t make sense to me. It takes me just as much time to set up the playback for one day as it did for 4. (shrug)

But, anyway, it’s a beautiful morning and people are aufblasbarer wasserpark smiling at each other and wishing each other a Happy Easter. People in the Tim Horton’s in town were friendly as always, talking about their cars not wanting to start and they don’t blame them. I gotta check on a few things, it’s 11:33 am…

Catchya Later maybe….

—–Jim

Saturday, April 11, 2009.

(Fairly warm- don’t remember actual temperature)

I tried to sleep- couldn’t, figured today was the only chance I’d have for a while to zoom out to the Quebec (St Therese de la gatineau?) property and do something about the open window in the van/storage on wheels fing.

I was half kicking myself for keeping quiet and half proud of myself for letting Cathi sleep as long as I could. Then, when she opened one eye and I said I had to do this and she complained that she thought she could sleep late, I felt awful, bad me- but I don’t know- should I have aufblasbare spiele just left without feeling her out to see if she wanted to come, or could come…?

Anyway, I learned 3 or 4 things worth mentioning here…

•Never trust a computer (or GPS) to plot your course through Quebec.

•Going way off the beaten path in Quebec can be quite the adventure and show you some really beautiful sights.

•The GPS would rather send me through Ottawa then let me take the ferry.

•Moose skeletons at the edge of the road are a really impressive sight.

•GPSes will send you down what looks like somebody’s driveway if you don’t pay attention. (and farm animals herding their young across dirt roads as strange vehicles zoom by is a really touching and beautiful sight).

• I love Quebec. I don’t know yet whether Quebec loves me or not, but it is one beautiful place. (maybe several beautiful places bundled together, but it is beautiful) (and it gives me a whole lot of reasons to practice my French while I’m driving.)

Animals apparently like my property there. There were lots of signs that deer had used the gentle southeastern slope for a bathroom.

And something had apparently chowed down on something about the size of a deer and left us the bones, very close to the trailer. I’m thinking that whatever ate the deer probably appreciated the shelter of the trailer and the snow it caught.

I had just enough time to snap a bunch of digital photos and pop the tarp over the van (Hoping the tarp keeps the weather out, I hope I’m not inviting a hive of nasty insects into the van to breed and make a mess of anything in there. I hope I haven’t given any field mice a convenient tarp to climb up and find their way in through the slit of open window so they can breed and wreak havoc eating the furniture and stuff….) ((Cathi found the van’s keys in the cleverly obvious place I had left them while I was over there tarping and snapping photos.))

I’m thinking that a really wonderful spot to put some kind of more or less permanent shelter would be near the top of the hill, to the right of the road where we drive in- I’m thinking it is a south east slope, would be yummy for solar stuff, and could be very good for solar gain if it’s a little more south south than south east, but anyway, these trees’ roots are holding hands near where I think I should build something.

I should give you a listing of the photos here. (top to bottom)

1. The Ferry Landing on the Fitzroy Harbour, Ontario, side of the Ottawa River. The price has gone up a dollar from last year.

2. The Van with its new tarp bonnet, and the Jeep with its new coat of salt from splashing through a lot of puddles lately. (eep)

3. The bones near the trailer.

4. Roots holding hands where I want to build something. (I don’t think I have the heart to break up that romantic sight, so I’ll plan around it.)

& 5. Stone and fallen Birches just to the right of the trees that are holding roots. I think the stones are a natural formation, I’d hate to find out this might be somebody’s burial site from a couple million years BC or something. that would be creepy.

Anyway- the GPS thingy says the Jeep is parked at 46°N 17.640′ / 75°W 52.517′ I’ll have to plug that into a map to see what it tells me.

The GPS also thought that sending me through Ottawa on the way home should take 3 hours and 13 minutes. If you count stopping for gas, it was pretty much right. We had timed the trip at more like 2 and a half hours if we take the ferry and then shoot over the mountain through Gatineau Park over there. I think it’s Gatineau Park.

—–Jim