We just might survive 2016 —

Sunday, December 11th, 2016 — -19˚C / -3˚F & “Brrrr” in Atlantic Canada @ 8:51 am Atlantic Time — Cuzzin Sarah’s Birthday { heart heart heart } —

Sunrise December 9, 2016 — Sunrise Sky Friday, December 9th, 2016 – I couldn’t hold the camera steady enough to get a decent telephoto shot of this. This was me leaning the camera on the top of the chain link fence and holding my breath – What we see and what we can capture with a camera are not always quite the same-

— 2016 has been ‘a Nine year’ numerologically – [ 2+0+1+6 = 9 ] – which, to people who believe that the numerical values of days and months and years have a psychological and/or spiritual effect on human beings, means it’s a time of ending cycles. Depending on who you talk to or listen to, this is further warped by the number of the month and date – You’re supposed to add the month and date together and use that to modify the year’s number. { So, if you were born on January 1st, you’d add one plus one and hopefully get two and add that to the year’s number, get eleven and either think you were experiencing a ‘master number’ eleven year or add one and one again and get two and believe you were having yourself a ‘two’ year. – In my case, I was born on September 9th, so 9+9 = 18 and 1+8 = 9 So I might have just lived through most of a double 9 year. Would all my ‘9’ years be doubled? – You’d have to consult with an ‘expert’ numerologist on that one. And of course, you might have to believe that numbers have vibrational power to augment or mess with they human psyche to ‘buy into’ this. Or you could be ‘scientific’ about it and say, “hey, I’m open minded – let’s see if this works-”

— Part of the explanation for what a ‘9’ year is supposed to be all about is that a lot of people will feel like they’ve finished a cycle. And, according to a couple I’ve heard on the radio this last year, a lot of people will figure the cycle they’re finished with is this life on planet earth. You may have noticed that an awful lot of people have checked out/ moved on to hopefully higher planes of existence this last year. My favorite spouse, Cathi, comes home from work too often saying things like, “Hey guess who left us today-?” — Too many wonderful people have moved on to better things this year and left us here, basking in the increasingly toxic atmosphere of whatever is going on in the power struggles of those who believe they should be in charge of the rest of us.

— & I’ve been ‘re-thinking’ a lot of philosophical stuff.

— But I also participated in “NaNoWriMo 2016” – National Novel Writing Month – last month, November – The idea with this is, you commit yourself to writing 50,000 words during the month of November, basically to prove to yourself that you can do that. For the second year in a row I wrote more like 100,000 words on my ‘NaNo Novel’ – & what ya gotta do here is — “Don’t stop and edit it, just get it all down-” and don’t go judging what you’ve got because you can cripple your effort by re-reading and feel the bottom drop out as you tell yourself, “Well, this sux-” and re-play the mind numbing words of everybody who tried to tell you that you’re a worthless piece of doo-doo if you’re not knocking yourself out to live your live by their standards and their rules. And, since they control their game, you can never measure up – hey, they cheat – in their minds they win if they convince you that- “you’ll never amount to anything, so why bother?”

NaNo 2016 Winner Banner — — This year’s ‘Winner’ Banner – tailored to ‘effbook’ standards & size { originally 1500 x 555 pixels }.

— ( I hate sans-serif fonts ) —

NaNo page — — This is the page from the NaNoWriMo web site that tells you you’ve passed their ‘upload your nano novel’ test and should really dig into your pockets and donate whatever $’s you can – They do not engage in the kind of nasty politix that many ‘beedy grastards’ stoop to – they do not try to convince you that you are a worthless piece of doo-doo if you don’t fork over the money you thought you could save to buy one of your favorite people a nice ‘it’s the thought that counts’ holiday presents.

— So I just ‘binge-watched’ all five seasons of ‘Person Of Interest’ on Bell Aliant’s take on a Netflix type service { ‘Crave TeeVee’ } (( And loved the character “Root” who was supposed to be a one episode character but, according to one of the ‘show runners’ had such a cool theme song that they wrote her in as a world class ‘dynamic character’ – Amy Acker’s Voice and expression make me want to ‘create’ and wear a tee shirt that says, “I wasn’t talking to you-” and credit that quote to ‘050313’. ))

— The perfect television programme never made it into any ‘on air’ status or ever looked like anything the ‘-powers who delude themselves into believing they ‘be’-‘ would consider airing for their own gratification and profit… But this one came close.

Moe -- Study in Orange — — Moe — our own little ‘Orange Revolution’ —

— And, once again, Moe gets the last word. I really should record some of our conversations, the plaintive cat, “Maereh Raireh!” and, “Maaw-ou-” &. “Aereh mung muh!” with so many subtle shades of emotional expression. — If I ever completely understand what he’s trying to say, I probably will be ready for a straight jacket – or a halo? —

— pas de schnarr –,

~~~~~ Jim

A Little More Than Half Past October — 2016

Wednesday, October 26th, 2016 — +4˚C / +39˚F — dark and damp in Atlantic Canada @ 7:43 pm — 21 years ago tonight my father died. —

Yup, our cat really is that big- This is Moe. He took possession of the extra large sized dog bed we bought for Jassper – The bed measures 48 inches long by 33 inches wide. Moe’s a long haired ‘Cat and a half’ but most of what you see here is one pudgy cat.

— I’ve been calling “Pudge” off and on for a couple years now.

— Sigh – There HAS been a lot going on lately –

— I nearly believed I could finish one novel and enter it into a contest, even went and created a cover for it – as per contest rules —>

Book Cover. — Book Cover – Final Design – So far, anyway – This won’t display here at full size –

— I was ‘going gangbusters’ here writing this as a third complete revision – after starting this novel in 1987 – but so many new details have jumped into the story – many of which I’m pretty sure will need to find themselves edited out, but it will then have one heck of a back story – Hint – There really should be a flying saucer way the bleep in the background on the left somewhere.

Stone Lake in the game world. — Here’s where the above cover ‘photo’ came from – one area in the game world I’ve been building online since 2011 – lately production is on hold waiting for another one of their promised innovations that would make my work a lot easier. This is the “Stone Lake” area inside “Aerendel” on the Hero Cloud. And you’re looking at what you’d see if you had a character there. She’s carrying a Gear Axe that all the builder characters are born with.

— Builder Characters are all that are running around in the game world We’ve been building since 2011. They’re the ones who run around and get out of the way when you’re raising mountains and carving rivers and doing all sorts of esoteric ‘other’ things to each area – Sometimes they fall through the ground and I’ve had a couple disappear completely and had to re-roll or re-create somebody to run around inside the world so we can see how it will look when finished, etc.

Jeep being loaded onto a flatbed. — Somebody finally bought the Jeep.

— I’d quote very early Buffalo Springfield here, “Don’t it leave you with the thought, that perhaps you’ve just been bought?” – We finally had to accept less than half what Cathi wanted for the Jeep – but it’s gone. There’s a strangely vacant spot where the Jeep sat for over a year, waiting for us to either get what we’re owed so we could afford to fix the danged thing ourselves or receive an offer that we could live with. As it is we’re left with a bad taste in our mouths.

Bride and Mothers at September wedding — On the positive side. Cathi’s daughter – Erin – got married on September 4th, to a really nice guy. This is Erin the bride between her mother (Cathi on our right) and her new mother in law (Hala on our left).

— I’ve still got a lot to do with a lot of photos we took at the wedding. And this was complicated by a hard drive with all those photos and videos ‘dying’ after a bit of a power outage here last month. – grrrrrr –

— Um, I might add to this later, we have a dog who needs his evening constitutional –

~~~~~ Jim

Copied & Pasted from Radio Free Earth News:

Tuesday, August 9th, 2016 — 23°C / 73°F & pleasant in Atlantic Canada @4:30 pm — It’s our friend Nina’s birthday today (and, coincidently, her twin brother Bobby’s birfday too – funny how that seems to happen. ) —

Our good friend, Doug is sharing his odd a-political insights with us here – And even included a tribute to our dearly departed bengal cat, Domino, sniff sniff – :

= = = = =

Oh Dangit – Too Much Good Information That Needs Sharing To Let Me Sleep –

ON AUGUST 9, 2016 BY DOUG OTTERSONIN “ALWAYS QUESTION AUTHORITY”, “CAFR1.COM”, “DUST BIN”, “INTER WORLD NEWS”,“JUST GIVE US THE TRUTH!”, “OOPS”, “REALITY”, “WE DON’T NEED NO FRACKING POLITICIANS”,‘SMART’ METERS = BAD NEWS, ‘THE ENERGY NON-CRISIS’, BIG PHARMA KILLS-, CONSPIRACIES,COPIED & PASTED, DID RONNY RAEGAN SUCCEED IN MAKING U.S.A. A 3RD WORLD NATION?,DOES DONALD J TRUMP REALLY WANT TO REDUCE THE WORLD TO CINDERS AND MAKE ECONOMIC SLAVERY MUCH MORE PROFITABLE?, ECONOMIC WARFARE, ELECTRO-MAGNETIC-FIELD SENSITIVITY, EVIL MANIPULATING ECONOMIC ICE HOLES, FAIRNESS IN REPORTING?,FIRST NATIONS /NATIVE AMERICAN ISSUES, GMO FOOD IS POISON, HALF PAST HUMAN DOT COM, HISTORY, INTERESTING, KARMA, LIFE DOES NOT NEED TO SUCK, LIFE SHOULD BE MORE FUN, MONSANTO SUCKS, MUSIC IN GOOD FOR YOU!, PARALLEL WORLDS, PERSONAL NONSENSE,PHILOSOPHY, PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE?, POLITIKS, PRIVACY NOW!, QUANTUM PHYSICS,SECRET AGENDAE UNRAVELLING, SPIRITUALITY, SUGAR FEEDS CANCER CELLS, TRUTH IN REPORTING, UNCATEGORIZED, WE NEED MORE POSITIVE NEWSEDIT

Tuesday, August 9th, 2016 — 85°F / 29°F — Too hot with too much bright sunlight in Ithaca, NY @ 1:45 pm —

Ireland Jailed 3 Banksters. Why Haven't We. — Ireland Jailed 3 Banksters. Why haven’t we?

— If I took the time to get large screen shots of everything I thought was important in news feeds and twitter feeds today I’d never get to sleep.

US Intelligents reports that WikiLeaks is not an arm of Russian Intelligence. — U.S. Intelligence says WikiLeaks is not a political arm of Russian Intelligence.

— Those who believe – “It’s not illegal if you don’t get caught” want to vilify all good reporters. WikiLeaks is not your enemy. Dishonest, megalamaniacal, micro-managing – manipulative, power-crazy politicians ARE.

Krishnamurti quote. Labels are violence. — – Wish I’d said that – [ Wow ]

— Defining yourself is an act of violence? Holy Cow! Why didn’t I think of that? Calling yourself a Republican is vilifying all Democrats? Calling yourself a Democrat is demonizing all Republicans? “Ego is the human soul desperately trying to believe that it is limited to a human body and one short lifetime” < Jim Wellington > – That’s how I got mixed up with all this blogging and stuff – I’d always been a writer, I thought it was an obsession – This guy muttered one phrase at a writers’ workshop and blew a thousand of my most worrisome misconceptions all to hell. – No, I’m a truth seeker, embracing any truth I can verify and wanting to share that with all the rest of us lost and exhausted pilgrims desperately hungry and thirsting for Truth, Mercy, Spirituality, Personal Evolution – This is not an obsession, it’s a calling. I want to share everything that makes me feel good about being alive with everybody else who’s starving for peace of mind.

"Republican Refugees seek asylum in Democratic Party. — – This might be politically motivated nonsense, but it’s too funny to pass up.

— If reformed Republicans really want believe in themselves again and sleep nights (or days if their biological clocks are half as mixed up as mine is) – They’d be better off seeking asylum in the Green Party. Remember a Y2K bumper sticker with an animal that was half Donkey and half Elephant – a two headed ‘push me pull you’? Calling them “Republicrats”? Why keep voting for the same old [stinky stuff]? Haven’t we had enough of this nonsense? My wonderful, adorable daughter says, “Jeeze – it looks like everybody’s trying to drive back all human progress to the madness that started the first world war-” And she’s too young to remember the first Desert Storm idiocy.

— Caterpillars can’t understand butterflies. Morons with their heads stuck up their Ice-Holes can’t understand anyone who isn’t as stupid and destructive and greedy as they are. Donald J Trump does not have a prayer of being able to understand anybody who believes in Bernie Sanders [ at least, not in this life ]. People who believe they have a right to destroy everybody else’s quality of living in pursuit of a little profit will never understand conservationists. Frackers will never understand anyone who wants to be able to drink pure, unpoisoned water. Oil Company executives will never want to understand why anybody would ever want to share renewable energy that costs almost nothing and provides better energy, more and better jobs, healthier people and a lot less stress than gasoline, gas and oil – { at least, not until it’s too late and they realize they’ve shot themselves in their own crotches }.

— I thought it might be a good time to post a photo of a beautiful world that is not yet spoiled and poisoned by the [ snar ] coming to California from the Fukushima disaster. People who are not muzzled by lying unethical political motivation are warning that Fukushima’s radiation has already poisoned too much of the Pacific Ocean, we might already be beyond any hope of undoing the effects of some of the deadliest poison known to humans – { unless those rumoured aliens/angels come to our aid with their radiation eating technologies. Pray for help, guys – }

Leopards in Botswana. — This is a tribute to Jim and Cathi’s cat, Domino.

— Rest In Peace, Domino – you taught me that cats can be fun to play with.

Huge Hungarian Guard Dog — Now that’s one serious looking guard dog. { he said, flawlessly elucidating the painfully obvious – }

— Like I said, there’s much too much important looking information flying around the Tweet-Us-Sphere to ignore today. Most of it is probably based in truth. But, like always, don’t take my word for it. Get out there and investigate! Use your brain before it doesn’t even help your cranium in its function as hat rack.

— Please, God, Can I get some rest now?

——— djo ———

Saturday – Thunder Storms – Power Outage – Quacking Up & Schnarr Like That –

Saturday, August 6th, 2016 — 18˚C / 64˚F & “Dark” @11:59 pm in Atlantic Canada —

Puddles — At 4:26 pm Outside the Regent Street Mall – The rain had all but stopped, but dark clouds persisted.

— We stood around at the Koodo Kiosk inside the mall for more than half an hour while the Kiosk manager was on hold with Koodo support, trying to find out how to resolve a minor problem – After we changed to a minimum amount of data per month option the app that allows for data beyond wifi connections wouldn’t work, and as a matter of fact – was not in evidence at all on my Galaxy s5 Neo. [ schnarr ] As soon as the customer service rep picked up and verified my existence and plan options – the power went out in Fredericton during a heavy duty thunder storm. – we could not get through until we got all the way home and had electric come back on there – and at 8 something pm – the power went off at something like 3:45 pm – I called Koodo customer service from home and waddled through their automated greeting, punched “0” for ‘talk to a human’ and heard “Thank you for calling Koodo customer service, as a point of information, we’re closed right now, but you can call back during normal business hours-” and — paraphrased — by the way, you can get answers to all kinds of things at our web-site —- so I woke up a computer and managed to find their site and by the way, You CANNOT get a satisfactory answer to anything but really fundamental questions like, ‘where is my on/off button?’ — Grrrrrrrr! — But the manager at the Kiosk was really good and helpful and kept apologizing for taking so long, he said he checked out an employees message thing and everybody was complaining about long waiting times for customer service reps.

Nesting Ospreys on a platform built for them. — This is an Osprey nest along a walking path on our way home. In a 4x close up – Everything has a slight, clear ‘aura’ Especially when the photos are displayed full size.

— We had to get a couple things on the way home, and discovered a couple stores that had power, and heard about an Osprey Nest just down the walking trail a couple hundred yards ( okay the Canadians called it ‘meters’ not yards ) So we had to walk down the path and find them. They sang to us and we sang back. I have no idea whether we were admitting to being idiots in Osprey language or anything, but they didn’t attack us, or laugh at us like some crows do around here, so I guess we didn’t tell them their mother wears combat boots or anything like that.

Osprey plaque. — Here’s the plaque near the Ospreys to give you something to read and tell you about what kind of birds you can almost see from where the plaque sits.

— There’s a piece of plastic in front of the plaque, so the colours look faded.

Ducks Unlimted sign. — We also passed the Ducks Unlimited Canada Centre on our way home. I conned Cathi into stopping to get a couple photos. Some of my quacky friends will probably appreciate that.

— This quack’s for you – “Tommy Y” 😉 —

Ducks Unlimited Logo – in Iron.

— Quack quack quack quack quack!

— duh — that should be enough damage for tonight — I gotta lotta more photos to pop in here later.

~~~~~ Jim

Monday, Monday –

Monday, July 25th, 2016 — 29˚C / 84˚F — sunny, muggy, hot & sticky @ 12:56 pm in Atlantic Canada —

Clouds over intersection — Of course I couldn’t get the best details from Saturday’s very interesting sky – I tried messing with exposure, contrast and saturation – and this is as good as I could get it –

— There were some amazing cloud details on Saturday – but they wouldn’t translate to decent photos of amazing cloud details – grumble grumble.

Cathi looking at her cell phone. — Cathi playing Ingress while everybody else in Fredericton was running all around town looking for Pokemon to capture, playing Pokemon Go –

— We almost didn’t cross the bridge into Fredericton South, but shopping for end of sales bargains at garden shops was hot work so we crossed the bridge and tested the ice cream at the ‘Happy Baker’ across the street from Digital World and a stone’s throw from the big Atlantic Superstore. We saw dozens of people walking around with their eyes on their cell phones: couples, families, concentrating nerds and smiling hockey players – Cathi checked her cell phone and grinned, said she could feel less self conscious about playing “Ingress” than before, with everybody wandering around looking for Pokemon to capture – So she activated the ingress app and was puzzled to find a couple portals within a hundred meteres of where we were sitting. We drove around and recharded a couple portals for friendly players and discovered a portal that had never been captured before. Cathi captured it. Then she linked a bunch of portals and gained a level. The ‘good guys’ [ the alignment Cathi supports and plays as ] are a little stronger and a little more protected from the ‘others’ now.

Walking Trail Map of an area of Fredericton. — – This map was one of the portals we went loking for – hard to find when it was only a couple meters from us.

— I could not see the obscentiy that was scrawled / painted on this map and then cleaned up when I took the photo. & This was not the portal that Cathi discovered and captured before anybody else knew it was there. We wandered around a bit longer than we expected to and Cathi was fairly excited about gaining her level and sharing this adventure with me while we grinned at all the Pokemon Go teams looking like accidents about to collide with each other all around us. 🙂

Jassper determined to tak time to sniff traces of his neighbours. — – ‘Walking The Dog .101’ –

— Jassper is getting better at taking us for his daily walks. He no longer flops down every couple steps and refuses to budge until we can psyche him into thinking there just might be something interesting to sniff just a little farther up the road, or up the side of the road – which is where we try to keep him. He does, however need to assert himself and plop down and get a better chance to sniff some trace of somebody or other who might have walked by in the past day or so.

Jassper hamming it up for the camera — – ‘Walking The Dog .102’ – “Aren’t Ithe cutest thing you could ever fall in love with?”

— & here we are several yards farther on up the road. Cathi keeps hoping we can get a photo of Jassper rolling around on his back with his feet in the air, looking like a horse instead of just his ‘puppy horse’ self here. He seems to know what we’re about to do and rolls to his stomach and smiles for the camera before we can get it fired up and ready to catch him at his horse-like antics.

Cathi nearly having her arm yanked off as Jassper decided there was something back there that he absoutely needed to check out much more thoroughly. — – ‘Advanced Dog Walking .301’ – There really is a dog back there in the dark –

— here’s what happens when Jassper decides he really really needs to check something out more closely back there – He’ll stop, plant his legs and nearly pull your arm off- Cathi has actually taken a step back to keep her arm in its socket here. And she’s laughing about ‘who’s walking who here’. Her son is just out of the photo on our left. We have proof, his arm actually shows up in one photo where you can’t see the dog at all and Cathi did not look very happy about nearly being dragged backward down the street by a dog who wanted to assert himself just before I pushed the shutter button.

— Sigh? –,

~~~~~ Jim

St Mary’s Powwow

Sunday, June 19, 2016 — +31˚C / +87˚F & Oppresively hot out there at 4:38 pm in Atlantic Canada —

I'm not sure whether the videographer was with any of the local media outlets or there on his own, but he looked like he knew what he was doing and This photo gives me an opportunity so show a wide shot of the field and the dancers. — I’m not sure whether the videographer was with any of the local media outlets or there on his own, but he looked like he knew what he was doing and This photo gives me an opportunity so show a wide shot of the field and the dancers.

Another photo of the dancers in the field. The drums were amplified through a sound system and filled the area with their infnectious beat. Nobody was complaining about that. — Another photo of the dancers in the field. The drums were amplified through a sound system and filled the area with their infectious beat. Nobody was complaining about that.

Connecting the new Cell phone to this computer was aggravating and extremely counter intuitive. I had to give up on following directions and after I thought about pitching the computer out the nearest window something ‘fell into place’ – and actually worked. I could then up or download the photos into iPhoto ( not the latest and most aggravating Mac ) – only after I quit out of iPhoto and started it up again. That reminded me of the jerk in a commercial for dishwashing snar who swears up and down the woman will never get her pot clean if she doesn’t scrub it first, then claims that he’d told her that her pot would come out perfectly clean and shiny without scrubbing – Give up – think about shooting a computer and of course it snaps to attention and completes the recently impossible task, and tries to smile at you and claim, “See – all you had to do was follow my directions and you would have no problem at all – ” [ grrrrrrr……. ]

And the first photo I took with my new Cell phone was of Cathi trying to get out of the parking lot with a bunch of drivers lost in their own day dreams and visions of getting home in time for dinner. Full sized the picture is so detailed you can see each raindrop that fell on the driver’s door within the last six months.

— Yum —

~~~~~ Jim

It’s The Saturday Morning After A Not-Quite-Killer-Storm — & We’re Still Alive –

Saturday, March 26th, 2016 — // -2˚C / +27˚F with very bright sunlight reflecting on very white crust of ice & with very clear air in Atlantic Canada @ 9:14 am. — Had to restart my MacBook, it crashed and didn’t tell me why —

Icy Driveway — This is the kind of thick icy crust we loved as kids because we could walk on top of the snow. But this morning poor Jassper could barely walk around and keep his legs from flying out from under him.

The Morning After A Day In Which The World Did Not End?

— Yesterday, just minutes after I posted a photo and a short blurb about us expecting an all day freezing rain event, like the one that dumped 30 cm of ice on Fergus, Ontario – where my travel trailer lived for the first three years that I was in Canada – Um, Jassper went outside to pee and I started getting him and the orange cat’s breakfast ready – and heard what sounded like a summer downpour that you’d hear through open windows ( taking for granted you had screens in your windows to keep the bugs out and let the breezes in? ) And when I looked out through the porch door, we had a hell of an ice pellet event happening. I went to let Jassper back in, he was standing outside in his ‘dog run’ area, just standing there, looking stunned and perplexed about what was happening. After I clapped my hands and yelled something like, “Don’t you have enough sense to come in out of the sleet?” he turned to me, smiled, said, “Oh yeah, you southerners call this ice pellet stuff ‘sleet’ don’t ya?” – tried to gallop, didn’t quite fall with legs all flailing in different directions, did manage to get to the stairs, did manage to climb up and get back into the house, managed to get to the kitchen, began chomping on his morning ‘crunch crunch’ dry food and absolutely loved having me towel off all the little ice crystals he brought back in with him. The next time I looked the weather had almost become tame, and had become more like tiny ice crystals mixed with small droplets of ‘freeze on contact’ rain. — Not long after that, maybe after Cathi managed to claw one eye open and stumble around in her bathrobe – the weather network had revised its prediction from 20-30 cm of ice pellets and freezing rain down to less than 10 centimeters of mixed precipitation. More than a hundred thousand customers in Ontario lost electricity. Our lights never blinked here. And that’s amazing.

— But my laptop had an anxiety attack while I was busy with something else and right now it’s worrying about a hard drive it says I have to eject or initialize. I clicked, “ignore it you stupid computer routine!” and it said, “okay, we’ll just continue to try to open it for you…. backup usb hard drive? We were just testing you, Are you sure you don’t want us to erase everything you’re storing on that thing? I mean, if we can’t upload it to the NSA – you shouldn’t be able to hang on to it, should you-?” And I grumbled, “Oh Eff Off!” and it said, oops, sorry, wrong routine- we’ll work on this…”

Icy World One — Ice on the branches, Ice on the ground. Looking toward Canada Street at a little bit after 9 am this morning.

Ice World Two - More of the dog run. — And, looking slightly down and to the right of the picture above this one. This is the ice-scape inside the ‘dog run’ where Jassper had to try to navigate around this morning. He kind of hugged the fence and leaned heavily on it as he stepped gingerly along, looking for a safe place to pee without falling and sliding indignantly around on his haunches or his side- He managed to remain upright, but was real happy to see the door open, and then climbed the stairs very carefully and happily came inside, ran to the fridge and wanted a treat. He wasn’t impressed with what I gave him, dropped it on the floor and sighed and stumbled back to lie on the floor in the bedroom. It might be a dog’s life, but that isn’t always the most exciting life in this world…. —jrw—

— Catch ya later? –,

~~~~~ Jim

I Still Don’t Know Why They Ever Called This “Good” Friday.

Deserted deer hill on a grey morning. — 9:23 am. First hints of Freezing Rain and Ice Pellets began falling here. It’s quiet, grey and damp outside on this ‘Good Friday” morning.

Nasty Freezing Rain Event Beginning In Atlantic Canada?

— Good Friday, March 25th, 2016 — // -5˚C / +23˚F —grey and damp and just beginning to unleash our forecast Freezing Rain event here in Atlantic Canada @ 9:23 am.

— The dog threatened to jump up on top of me on the bed if I didn’t get up and let him outside. I did, get up and let him out. The fire was still going in the woodstove. The outside world was grey and still. I opened the door and let the dog out, he ran to his fence and started barking at a dog visiting a neighbour we barely know, down on the corner, across from our good friend next door with all his wood piles-

— I watched the weather network news and saw horror story freezing rain clips from Fergus, Ontario — Very near where we parked my travel trailer when I first came to Canada. They got an inch of freezing rain there yesterday. (30 cm?) and with a lot of branches down and power lines broken – it will be some time before they get their power back up and running. There’s something like 100,000 people without electricity in Ontario right now..

— And the forecast models project Frederticton to Miramichi “being in the bull’s eye” for the worst of today’s ‘Freezing Rain Event’ in the Maritimes. I think we brought plenty of fire wood from the shed to the porch last evening, so we probably won’t freeze to death, but we may be off the grid for a while.

— Healing intentions going out to my good friend Pamm from my old Post Office days.

— & For some reason, I just felt really close to my Brother, Bob. Long Distance Spiritual Hugs going out to everybody. Catch yas on the other end of whatever weather we get today –

🙂

~~~~~ Jim

Saturday – Sunrise – Committee Breakfast —

— Saturday, March 19th, 2016 — // -10˚C / +14˚F & Clear & quite bright out there at 9:00 am Atlantic Daylight Savings Time — I think today is my grammar school friend, Donald Hanichek’s Birthday. I could have the spelling wrong – and the last time I bumped into him we were in our twenties and both shopping at an art supply store where my friend, Kim, worked. I think Don was picking up art supplies for the place where he worked, and he pointed at me, smiled and said, “This is what I like about living here-” (bumping into childhood friends) —

— This week’s Media News included a bit on how consumers brought a complaint to the CRTC (Canadian Radio & Television Commission? — expanded to include cable and satellite etc. ? ) About the way Cable ‘Provider’s are handling things. The CRTC ordered cable companies to provide a cheap, stripped down ‘basic’ package that had to include the major Canadian Networks and possibly a couple US networks — I’m not 1,000 % ‘up’ on the details – But – They were also supposed to ‘provide’ single channel options, and not just offer channels inside ‘Bundles’ that a lot of people were complaining contain a bunch of channels they never watch and have no desire to pay for. & Now it seems that the cable ‘providers’ – “jacked” the price of all the single channels they offer – up as high as they could get away with – and people are complaining now that it would cost them more to get just the few channels they want than all the channels they didn’t want before.

— & Now, Yesterday, Our local CBC Morning News Program reported that a new complaint has come to the CRTC regarding one of the major Media Providers and the way they charge for Cell Phone ‘service’ – They made it very easy for anyone on a family’s plan, including the minor children, to go past the ‘Data Transfer’ limits on their family plan – As in Testing and connecting to radio and YouTube NetFlix and stuff like that. The woman who brought this one complaint in question to the CBC reporters discovered that her minor son was able to go to a ‘screen’ where the warning “You are about to exceed the monthly Data Transfer Limit associated with your family plan – If you wish to continue receiving the program you are attempting to connect to you must verify that you will pay for the additional Data transferred. Do you wish to continue? If So Type “Yes” – ” The woman got her bill for that month, opened it and nearly fell down. The additional data transfer the company said she owed amounted to over $1,700.00 Canadian. After she complained to the CRTC the Cell Phone ‘Service’ was ordered to pay most of that back to her. The reporter told us that some complaints reported much higher amounts the ‘provider’ claimed the consumer owed, whether a minor child or the actual bill payer ‘okayed’ the extra data transfer or whatever –

— The CBC reporter identified the company in this case as ‘Rogers’ who may now own the iconic tower in ‘Downtown Toronto’ and might even own the Toronto Blue Jays. I could be wrong on this point. But anyway. The love of my life had a family plan with Rogers and needed to watch her bills extremely closely because the company tried to bill her in accordance to one plan after numerous long phone calls complaining and explaining that she had the plan that allowed her teenaged daughter either unlimited or close to unlimited data transfer every month while holding the rest of us, who didn’t text much, or in my case, not at all – And every month they tried to tell her that that was not the plan she had and every month she fought and argued and said, “Yes it was the plan she agreed to-” And they would get those details correct and the company representative would say that ‘these are your contract’s terms’ – and read her what she wanted to hear, and then the very next month the bill would come in as if those conversations/complaints had never happened. She was close to tears every month over this nonsense. It seemed ver much like the company had a policy of: “Charge them whatever we freakin feel like charging them – and threaten them with legal action for breach of contract if they don’t pay our version of this- and to hell with what they think they want or what they think they agreed to-” And then they made their customers service complaints so contentious and maddening that they hoped their ‘treasured customers’ would just shut up and pay whatever was on their bills.

— Schnarr! —

And Now back to pretty pictures:

Deer blending in on the hill. — — “Wide Shot” of the deer that surprised me this morning – Here they began to run away as I was walking up close to where I had just stood and tossed cups full of oats up to ‘their spot’ on the hill.

— Okay, this blog doesn’t like full sized photos, let me publish what I have here and see how it comes out and maybe edit some more later.

— Schnarr –.

~~~~~ Jim

Thursday, How Many of You Ever Heard of “Mario Day”? -{MAR10}-?

Moe Chillin' half under blankets on the bed. — “Moe Chillin'” It wasn’t that cold a day in here – But I found Moe ‘Chillin’ half under a couple blankets on the bed. The camera blinded him when I tried to get him smiling at me, so I settled for a shot of him pretending to ignore me while he licked his paw and enjoyed life.

— Thursday, March 10th, 2016 — // — +3˚C / +37˚F — Grey, Damp and soggy out there @ about 3:33 pm – The Temperature’s been falling from a high of +6˚C @ 6:00 am here in Atlantic Canada —

— Mario Day —

I never heard of that before I worked with a guy named Mario who was quite literate and had a friendly, dry sense of humour – working in the post office, you needed to be able to laugh or you’d go nuts – Anyway – He told us a story about how he learned about Mario Day – Somebody say Mar 10 on a computer where the letters and numbers were run together and asked, “Why is this thing spelling out Mario on its screen like that?” and a wize guy named Mario answered, “- Because it’s Mario Day! -” MAR10, Mario day –

Photo looking down at the wet and the snow and ice and wood chips in our driveway. — This was our driveway at about 10 after 2 pm today, I tried to get some ‘Artsy shots’ of the ice and water and sharp flat gravel, but nothing came out really great, so – here we have a little bit of wood chips, a bit of the soggy lower extremities of boards on a nice looking pallet that either Cathi or I will want to do something artistic or otherwise clever with – And a hint of the porch in the background, and this actually captured the look and feel of the snow-ice-puddle mix that is our driveway today.

— The Cell phone camera takes such nice and detailed shots that I thought I might be able to get a photo of the leaves and water and ice and snow that looks like something from the cover of a photography magazine. But the sky was a bit too bright or something, none of the shots came out looking like what I saw in my ‘mind’s eye’ when I aimed and fired.

Driveway, melting snow, grey sky, house, jeep - — And this shot, cropped and ‘shrunk down’ from ten mega pixels – took three times to load – I kept getting ‘http error’ messages. This is the grey day with the wet driveway and the melting snow that looks kind of gloomy unless you’ve had enough winter, like most people around here, especially those who lived through the last two winters, and sent a lotta prayers toward the sky along the lines of, “Gimme a break!” 🙂

— And, since yesterday’s weird dreams or psychic stuff, funny things have been happening with the pets and the computers here. The Samsung Galaxy II is ‘Quirky’ at best about connecting with the computer, it keeps trying to tell me that I shouldn’t disconnect when I’m trying to download photos. Today it was really nuts, it disconnected half a dozen times and then refused to show up when it was reconnected – I finally shut down the whole computer and pulled the USB cable, started up and reconnected and maybe I got lucky. On top of that, the USB keyboard has ‘gone missing’ several times in the past twenty four hours. It’s still there, it’s still connected, the roller ball mouse that is connected through the keyboard still works, no problem – but when I type, nothing happens, no letters appear, the return and enter keys don’t work – I’ve had to pull the USB cable and plug it back in something like three times in the past twenty four hours.

— & Yes – the pets are stranger than usual, and we have pets that we have to ask, “Hey, if they start acting unusually, how will we know?” – They’re already strange – The hundred and twenty-five pound Labrador Retriever wants to dance with me when the music’s right – He wants to do a strange imitation of a Kangaroo hop with instructions from the sound track of the Rocky Horror Picture show – with a whole lot more jumping from side to side and very happy over-energetic grinning involved. And the Cat? The cat has his own language that is so varied and so complicated – I wonder if he really is a normal Earth-Cat, or was he dropped off at the Ottawa animal shelter by somebody piloting a U.F.O. – disguised as a car – the shelter people saw somebody park, run up to the porch, put the cat down and run away. And after several years with this guy, Yup, he could very well be a spy from some extraordinarily intelligent race of cats, or shape-shifters who like rambling around dressed up like a feline quadruped muttering “Maereh Raireh!” and, “Arra mong-muh!” and, “m’gaaa – M’guhrr!”

— He’s off in the hallway right now, moaning “Aou – mah! Muhh- muh Ma-ou Murr mun mung muh! Maoo Arr ruh! [sneeze] Maaoooou maou-” which probably means, “I really need some cat treats right about now, you haven’t done anything nice to me in over two hours!”

— And all I can say about that is, “Mahgga rung ruh -”