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 ———

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

Walkin the dog & fixin the porch

Monday, July 4th, 2016 — 26˚C / 79˚F @ 1:31 pm – The sun is shining and it was pleasantly cool earlier — Today is our friends, Matt Kantrowitz’s and Nora Z’s Birthday —

Not Level porch/deck — “Before” – At around twenty minutes after 4 pm yesterday.

— At around 4:20 pm yesterday, Cathi thought she would have liked to have leveled the wooden deck while she’d been on vacation this last week, when it rained nearly every day – and was much too hot to contemplate major exertion when it wasn’t raining. The deck is outside what she calls the front door and what I tink of as the enclosed porch on the west side of the house. The door is on the north side of the porch and you can probably see how slanted it had become. I think it was fairly level when we moved in almost three years ago.

— We gritted our teeth and went out with a couple prybars and fulcrums and discovered that it wasn’t as hard to move the deck as we had feared. It was no snap, but it wasn’t that bad.

— We did manage to move the deck out beyond where it had been sinking into the sandy soil against the house. Then we tossed a bunch of gravel and moved two of those cement paving squares you can see at the edge of the porch – moved them up and against the house to support the deck’s eastern edge. (which would be on the left side of what you can see above- )

Porch much more level. Cathi clowning. — “After” — 5:15 pm.

— And, by 5:15 – { it felt like it took us a lot longer than that – } The deck was a lot more level { “Good enough for government work-” my friends in the USA used to say. } Our muscles were a little sore – but we had this sense of accomplishment, like we’d accomplished at least one impossible task before supper time. 🙂 –

Jassper lying down, Cathi scratching her head. — “Walking the dog” –

Jassper, with his aggravated arthritis and pulled ligament in one hind leg, lives for his walks up the street, where he gets to sniff everything and possibly catch up on who’s (“who” being the 4 legged citizens of this neighbourhood- ) been where, and what they’ve been eating or drinking lately? He only gets so far before the pain gets to him and he pulls back on his leash or just plops on the ground and nearly yanks us off our feet.

Jassper on the ground again, Cathi slightly frustrated. — This photo was taken, probably about ten yards or meters from the photo above it. Jassper only got that far up here at the ‘top’ of the street, where there is a circle for cars to turn around.

Trees in shadow, bending over a trail. — Trees Bowing over the path through the woods.

— Trees on both sides of the trail are bending over/reaching over the trail – that we’ve heard goes from the end of our street here up and around and ends at the ‘Smart Centre’ with its Walmart (Booo – Hiss – ) Canadian Tire ( if they allow their mechanics to cheat their customers I have no use for Canadian Tire Stores. [ a kind of big box hardware store with a bigger automotive department than any Walmart I’ve ever heard of ] ) And a Kent building supply place ( sort of a Canadian grown Home Despot 😉 store ). A couple other smaller retail outlets, like a dollar store and maybe a GNC nutrition place have ‘grown’ there since 2013 when we moved to this city.

— At 8 pm-ish, the shadows were too deep and on the wrong side of what I was trying to photograph here, I’ll have to try again under different natural lighting conditions to get this right.

— So, um, we accomplished two impossible tasks this late afternoon and evening. We leveled the porch/deck, and we walked Jassper all the way up and around the end of the street and all the way back home – which has only happened twice since we were told he has a prescription for exercising at least twenty minutes to half an hour every day. He loves his walks, it just hurts too much – but he is showing improvement – whether it’s the medication or the exercise or the fish oil ‘sandwiches’ he gets once a day.

— Yay? –,

~~~~~ Jim

Summer is here —

Monday, June 20, 2016 — 25˚C / 77˚F — sunny & muggy @4:30 pm in Atlantic Canada — I think I remember hearing somebody say that Summer arrives shortly after 7 pm Atlantic Time —

- "Walking" Jassper at 9:15 pm. Jassper has arthritis. We're supposed to be taking him for a walk for at least 20 minutes every day. Here, he made it about halfway up the slight hill on our street before he had to plunk down and rest from his pain. Happy walks and sniffing every squar millimeter in his neighbourhood aren't quite as much fun as they used to be, but if we can keep this up he probably will get better at it again. — – “Walking” Jassper at 9:15 pm. Jassper has arthritis. We’re supposed to be taking him for a walk for at least 20 minutes every day. Here, he made it about halfway up the slight hill on our street before he had to plunk down and rest from his pain. His happy walks and sniffing every square millimeter of his neighbourhood aren’t quite as much fun as they used to be, but if we can keep this up he probably will get better at it again.

I watched the Canadian dollar [ the ‘Looney’ ] rise a little, fall a little then rise again today – It ended last Friday at 0.7753 U$ dollars, then began this morning @ .07808 and rose to .7819 and fell back down to .7807 — Global News [ the Canadian television network ] reported that it finished the day @ .7807 – & CBC business news online said it was at .7815 at around 9 pm. — So I guess you can reasonably assume that today wasn’t overwhelmingly interesting if I’m writing something like that here.

I did manage to finish screwing the plywood roof over the frame & beneath the heavy duty tarp [ the tarp that our neighbour gave us after I mentioned that we’d probably have to go out and buy one to protect the bare wood from the elements over the winter – one day this wonderful heavy duty tarp showed up beside the tool shed. 🙂 ] And I came through that with a thick layer of sweat weighing me down about ten pounds heavier than I started out. So I took a shower and sat near the air conditioner and watched last night’s brutal battle between Ramsay Bolton’s forces and Jon Snow & the Wildlings over again – then conked out and slept until something like 4:30 pm.

But at least I accomplished one impossible thing today. Finished the plywood roof all by myself without killing myself in the process.

And we had a nice talk with our neighbour, Connie Pond, when we were starting out to give our enthusiastic Jassper his adventure up and down the street. Apparently – the chipmunks that inhabit our stone wall have been planting oat seeds above their little caves – maybe they brought the oats home and thought they’d save them for a rainy day – then forgot where they left them? Connie is impressed.

— enough blogging for today?

~~~~~ Jim

Monday – Bring the Cat to the Hairdresser’s Day –

Monday, May 9th, 2016 — Colder than usual — 7˚C/ 44˚F @ 6:21 pm on a day that’s been on and off sunny and dark and splashed half a dozen rain drops on the windshield every now and then in Atlantic Canada — on uncle by marriage – Ed Conroy’s Birthday.

This is Moe – the 25 pound ‘Cat and a half’ – after his trip to the hair dresser’s. He’s checking out his cat treats, or maybe looking for fragments of cat treats he might have missed – and looks like a beast from a science fiction novel I read once.

Moe Hair. — No, this is not what’s left after you put a cat through a shredder – this is a small portion of Moe’s hair on the groomer’s floor.

Moe checkind his bowl of cat food. — – A little dark, I should have told the flash to do its thing, but this is one more angle of our newly trimmed ‘trouble is his middle name’ orange cat, Moe, as he’s looking at his dry cat food and trying to decide whether to shred us in our sleep for putting him through the indignity of having his matted hair shaved or let us live another day, possibly because we come through with some decent cat treats now and then.

— The round flower pot to the right and almost even with Moe’s nose is catnip that Cathi planted. We have more than once found Moe passed out cold with his arms around that flower pot and his nose deep in the leaves. We have had to hold our breath a couple times and pray that he was still breathing. Yup – he’s still alive.

— & Game Of Thrones Stuff —

— Should our Game Of Thrones Banner feature an orange cat wearing a purple cape?

— And – Regarding The Game Of Thrones last night, might be the quote of the week: When asked if he was still himself after having appeared very dead after being murdered by possibly well meaning ‘brothers’ of the Night’s Watch – Jon Snow replied, “I think so, don’t burn my body just yet.”

— & in the Game of Thrones speculation department – Bran and the Three Eyed Raven guy were watching an unven battle in which two Targaryen swordsmen { especially one knight – after his companion was pierced rather soundly – } nearly killed off something like eight Northmen, including Eddart Stark. Howland Reed, who we all thought was struck down, stabbed the Targaryen Knight (Ser Arthur Dayne?) in the back when it looked like Eddart Stark was about to lose his life – Then we heard a woman scream in a tower behind where this lopsided fight took place – and the Three Eyed Raven guy would not let Bran follow Eddart up into the tower ( not yet ? ) telling him that if he lingered too long in his visions he might never get back to his body — I’m wondering if that scream was Lyanna ( Eddart’s [ ‘Ned’s ] sister ) giving birth to Jon Snow – or both Jon and Meera? You wouldn’t believe the speculation going on around that one.

— & Yes, I agree – There may be way too much to cover for HBO to finish off the entire story in seven seasons.

— & I have too much to say, but I’m aching and tired and need to rest – So – “Au plaisir -”

~~~~~ Jim

Easter Monday, 7:30 am Grey And Speckled

Snow-Speckled Windshields, ice on the ground. — Lookin’ toward the house on a speckled grey morning. Took me longer to process this morning’s photos than to take them. But that’s always been the case, hasn’t it?

— Easter Monday Morning, March 28th, 2016 — // 0˚C / +30˚F — Grey and quiet @ 7:45 am on this Holiday Morning in Atlantic Canada —

Jassper staring through his fence. — Jassper, surveying his world, looking for something to boof at.

— Last night we binged on the second half of the season’s “You, Me & The Apocalypse” – A British TeeVee production? Wonderfully done, leaves way too many loose ends. Who’s in the box? Do the characters left for dead find a way in? Is the Grandmother really as evil as we think she might be? Do I have to write my own sequel in my head? Should I have the characters jump out of their script and hold the writers and producers hostage until they all get their happiest endings? What would that look like? Hmmmmm —–

Path from the deer hill to the garbage can at the edge of the driveway. — It really is kind of very grey and gloomy this morning. And slippery. And this area’s garbage men don’t get a break. I think they even had to work Christmas and New Years Day. Last week’s ice storm didn’t kill us, but it left a slick surface behind.

Street and Sky looking East. — — Hints of possible colour in the sky above Canada Street. The road really isn’t this flat here, but everything looked warped until I ‘straightened the horizon’ with iPhoto’s editing tools.

— & the love of my life was on the phone with ‘support’ at her tax prep software’s contact help line yesterday, getting frustrated as she realized the depths and levels of insidious corporate fascism. They are constantly trying to make things more difficult in order to con you into abandoning they ‘free’ versions in favour of mortgaging your soul to how many freakin corporations at the same time? If the punishment really fit their crimes, what sort of torture could they look forward to as they attempt to waltz into the happy hunting grounds? Having molten lead or gasoline poured onto their private parts? With the gasoline comes a gauntlet of everybody they so delighted in screwing out of their disposable income during their ‘careers’ down here in this proximity to hell? Grumble grumble grumble.

— & more of yesterday’s not-so-pleasant insights into ‘human nature’ – On Saturday – The Canadian Tire store on the north side here – twice we went in there with a $10.00 deposit bottle to bring back when the $4.99 10 gallon/18.9 litre bottles of spring water were unavailable at our favourite ‘big water’ store. Twice the cute young front line cashiers tried to charge us for that deposit as if we had no bottle to return. This time the cashier turned to a ‘colleague’ for help and when the colleague called in the correction routine, the cash register again tried to charge us for the deposit even when told we had a return bottle that should have taken care of that. After we squawked again the more experienced cashier had to walk over and manually do something on the newer cashier’s register to make the ten dollar charge go away. And on our way out the senior cashier gave us such a dirty look it made me feel like she believed we were cheating her children out of any possibility of eating healthy stuff this week by not letting Canadian Tire cheat us out of ten freakin dollars. Is this a systemic rip off? — Couple that with the fact that Cathi spent what at least felt like two hours on the phone with the ‘support’ guy at the tax preparation software’s help line only to have the guy finally tell her that she screwed up by trying to do both hers and my taxes with the ‘free’ version of their software = which the support guy said will only do one person’s taxes. This is after several years of that free version doing both her and my tax snar with no problem at all. Do you remember the angels briefing you on what life on earth would be like this time around? Do you remember anybody up there telling us that we were here only to give the greedy someone more to fleece? [ Nobody who’s had a Near Death Experience came back believing they should have worked harder, or spent more time and energy accumulating wealth. They always came back feeling like love, nurturing each other, and compassion were the important things to live and learn in this life.

— Enough of my schnarr for now? –,

~~~~~ 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