JEEP’S ENGINE LIGHT ON BUT IT DIDN’T KEEP PHEEBS & I FROM OUR MORNING COUNTRY DRIVE

IT WAS A NICE MORNING IN THE HULLETT MARSH

Our morning walks have been a little chillier as of late so we have had to add an extra layer of clothing.  Flying insects do not have that option so we win they lose.  Nice to walk without flailing away at biting & stinging airborne annoyances. 

A TINY SINGLE LEAF FLOATS LEISURELY ON THE WATER’S SURFACE AS LONG REEDS OF YELLOW GRASS ON THE CREEK’S BOTTOM GENTLY BEND IN THE UNDERWATER CURRENT BELOW…OVERHEAD TREES ARE REFLECTED IN THE CREEK’S CLEAR WATER
With rain in the forecast for Saturday & Sunday I figured Pheebs & I had better slip out this morning while we still had sunny skies overhead.  Headed over to the Hullett Marsh & drove by the area of last Saturday's fatal shooting.  Nobody around & all was quiet.  Police held a press conference this morning saying they are looking for a suspect & a blue Toyota.  No motive for the shooting yet.

THESE ARE BUSY DAYS FOR BUZZY BEES

Pheebs & I didn't stay out as long as usual because the Jeep's engine light had come on earlier.  Checked the manual & it said not serious unless the engine light symbol is flashing.  Wasn’t flashing.  Slipped around to the Bayfield Garage anyway & they said it wasn't serious & to return at 2 this afternoon for a diagnostic test.  Did that & it turns out we need a new gas cap.  They will have that gas cap in next week.  Glad we had this little problem now rather than later while on the road traveling.

From time to time I receive questions about my photos & the free PICASA photo editing program I use.  I have done a few posts in the past with suggestions for people but sometimes I feel I may have confused some folks more than helped them.  Of course some things are just not easily explained but I’ll try in the future while I’m editing my photos to choose some now & again pics & explain how I edited them.  Let me just say one thing up front while I’m thinking about it though.  I edit my photos manually which means I do not use Picasa’s ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button.  When I first came across Picasa years ago I used that button a lot & now whenever I go back to my early Picasa photos & want to use one of those ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ pictures I have to completely re-do the photo my way which is manually.  These are the Picasa tools I frequently use….Crop-Straighten-Auto Contrast-Auto Color-Retouch-Fill Light-Highlights-Shadow-Color Temperature-Sharpen-Saturation & Graduated Tint.  There are others such as Black & White etc. which I also use sometimes but those first 12 are my main manual tools.   It’s not that Picasa maybe doesn’t do an Ok job on ‘some’ photos it’s just that after working with my editing tools over the years I can now do a better job myself than Picasa’s ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button can.  You can too ‘if you have an interest & a desire to improve your photos’.  Just a thought:))

I remember someone asking a week ago or so if our Congress AZ house was in the flood zone with all the heavy rains in that area recently.  Far as I know it wasn’t but also do know we will see evidence in our back yard of where water has traveled across the back of our property.  I’m sure some firewood I had piled back by our fence will be scattered again.  We have neighbors keeping an eye on things for us & I’m sure if we had any leaky roof problems or water reaching our house they would have emailed us.  I think it’s a case of ‘no news is good news’:))

AN OLD CONCRETE BARN SILO REFLECTING IN OUR PARK’S POND

GROANER'S CORNER:(( You know how hard it is to talk to your dentist when your teeth are being cleaned or you are getting a filling? Well, I decided I would make up a sort of sign language that you could use to express yourself without having to mumble.  Below are 10 common things you might wish to say, numbered 1-10. These would be printed on a poster and mounted on the ceiling above the dentist chair. It would give you something to read since procedures can be boring. When a phrase seems appropriate, you would just hold up the corresponding number of fingers to express yourself. The dentist would not need to stop to ask you to repeat yourself and could fix the problem right away.
1. Everything is fine, but my nose itches.
2. When you get a chance, there seems to be spit running down my neck.
3. So, I guess you had garlic again for lunch today?
4. You realize that wasn't my tooth that you just poked with that incredibly sharp tool.
5. I would REALLY prefer you didn't do that again.
6. Could you please suction the chunk of debris that you missed before I gag?
7. Remember how I said I was numb? I think I may have been mistaken.
8. Wait a minute -- maybe I am allergic to latex.
9. Just so you know, if I don't get to take a break soon, I may bite you.
10. Please stop asking me stupid questions about myself or I will rip that paper mask off your face.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAY KELLY:))

I was totally determined not to write a post tonight & wouldn't you know it, here I am again.  Will I ever get away from this hobby I so enjoy.  Am having to take Pheebs for her walks earlier each night now as old Sol hurries to tuck himself in earlier & earlier every evening.   Always just a little puff of steam on the horizon as he quite daintily dips himself into Lake Huron.  

It's a wonder we never got ourselves thrown out of a Tim Horton's coffee shop today.  Despite Tim's investing a lot of money in the engineering of their their rock hard bench coffee shop seats designed to ache anyone's buns after 20 minutes, one of my best friends Jim & I parked our equally hard old buns on one of those seats for a straight five & half hours.  Good example of getting our blue jeans caught between a rock & a hard place.  Had been over a year since our last coffee shop meeting so of course we had a lot of catching up to do.  We met at 10 this morning in the little town of Seaforth Ontario & we never rolled out of Seaforth till 3:45 this afternoon.  I think the staff even went through a shift change while we were there but nobody hassled us.  Two teetering white haired guys slumped in the corner…………with muffins.  The entire Tim Horton's staff looked like they should all still be in school somewhere.  Now what Kid is going to come over & tell two shabbily dressed life hardened genuine crusty old cantankerous Curmudgeons to leave eh.  Jim & I have known each other for 35 years & I have posted about our marathon coffee blow-outs several times in my posts.  He & wife Barb celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary this past Tuesday.  I was best man at that wedding.  We talked today of how we seem to see less & less of each other as years go by.  We simply had to chalk it up to our Seniorly reclusive ways.

About 5:30 Wednesday night I heard Kelly talking to someone outside by our porch.  A few minutes later she came in with the words, "well that's a scam for sure".  With a brochure in hand regarding 'water heater rentals' she immediately headed for the computer to type in a company by the name of National Home Services.   Twenty minutes later she came back saying, "it's a scam alright."  With those words she affixed a piece of tape to the brochure they had given her, slipped on her coat, climbed on her bicycle & pedalled on over to the Park's mailroom whereupon she taped the brochure to the chalkboard with a warning & signed her name.  But she wasn't through with the Spammers yet.  She had spotted them not far from the mail room having a smoke break.  Approaching them she asked if they had permission to be soliciting in our Park.  She also asked if they had signed anyone up & where did they get a list of people living here.  They hummed & hawed around.  Kelly then told them she was a member of the Park's management team (she's not) & asked them to leave the property.  They headed for the Park's entrance & Kelly watched to make sure they had left.  Here's what the BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU had to say about National Home Services.    Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Kelly:))))))
ALL THE LITTLE SPECKS YOU SEE IN THIS PHOTO ARE NOT DUST ON MY LENS, CAMERA’S MIRROR OR MY CAMERA’S SENSOR….THEY ARE A WHOLE HERD OF GNATS FLYING AROUND MY HEAD
I don't know what 4 centimeters equals in inches but the weather channel said they had 4 centimeters of snow in Wawa Ontario.  Wawa is on the Trans-Canada highway which in turn is on the route we are hoping to take in a few weeks.  Needless to say we are beginning to keep a close eye on the weather patterns north of Lake Superior.  Whenever temperatures are low enough to have snow it is very likely salt could be spread on the roads to prevent ice & I don't think there is anything more damaging & corrosive to vehicles than rock salt.  Our Big EEE has never been on salt laden roads & we intend to keep it that way.  We do have our fingers crossed for warmer weather along our route in a few weeks.

AUTUMN CROCUS
Been quite awhile since we have heard from Debra over at FIND AN OUTLET and she hasn't lost any of her feisty fine writing abilities.  Many will identify with what she has written in her latest post.  Here is Debra's opening paragraph...."What kind of term is Human Resources anyway? Doesn’t it evoke images of exploitation? Fine, if that’s what you call employees, I’m a human resource—a good one—but it doesn’t matter how reliable, ethical, or conscientious I am, I wouldn’t fit into your corporate culture".

THIS WAS THE LAST PHOTO I MISTAKENLY PUT IN MY WEDNESDAY NIGHT POST….I HAD FORGOT TO ‘SAVE’ MY CHANGES TO IT IN MY PHOTO EDITING PROGRAM

THIS IS THE SAME PHOTO AFTER REMEMBERING TO ‘SAVE’ THE CHANGES I HAD MADE TO IT IN MY PICASA PHOTO EDITING PROGRAM

GROANER'S CORNER:(( Back before he became an instantly recognized celebrity, when Albert Einstein was first making the rounds of the speaker's circuit, he usually found himself eagerly longing to get back to his laboratory work. One night as they were driving to yet another dinner, Einstein mentioned to his chauffeur that he was tired of speechmaking.
"I have an idea, boss," his chauffeur said. "I've heard you give this speech so many times. I'll bet I could give it for you." 
Einstein laughed loudly and said, "Why not? Let's do it!"   When they arrive at the dinner, Einstein donned the chauffeur's cap and jacket and sat in the back of the room. The chauffeur gave a beautiful rendition of Einstein's speech and even answered a few questions expertly. Then a supremely pompous professor asked an extremely esoteric question about anti-matter formation, digressing here and there to let everyone in the audience know that he was nobody's fool.
Without missing a beat, the chauffeur fixed the professor with a steely stare and said, "Sir, the answer to that question is so simple that I will let my chauffeur, who is sitting in the back, answer it for me."

A FEW PHOTOS TONIGHT

SAW THIS SEAGULL JUST HANGIN OUT AT STAPLES TUESDAY MORNING

 

  

   

 

GROANER’S CORNER:(( A man was wheeling himself frantically down the hall of the hospital in his wheelchair, just before his operation.  A nurse stopped him and asked, "What's the matter?"  He said, "I heard the nurse say, 'It's a very simple operation, don't worry. I'm sure it will be all right.'"  "She was just trying to comfort you. What's so frightening about that?"  "She wasn't talking to me. She was talking to the doctor!"

TIRED TONIGHT & NOT TOO WORDSY

After several days of cloudy cool rains it was nice to wake up to clear sunny skies.  Pheebs & I didn't waste any time in getting ourselves into the Jeep & off down the road.  Had a coupon for an A&W breakfast so that's where we headed first.  Picked up some gas, some peanut butter, & we were off for a little ride in the countryside.  Nice morning with big white fluffy clouds.  It was another windows down with the heater on kind of day.  We found our way home by noon.

Added some water to the rig's fresh water tank & decided it was probably a good day to shut off our units outside water for the season.  With some new ROXUL insulation I re-insulated the main water pipe where it come’s out of the ground & enters our house.  Just another check mark on my long 'to do' list before we hit the road.  Seven months from now it will again be on my ‘to do’ list when I once more turn the red tap the other way to start our outside water flowing for the summer.

Talked to Aunt Jean in Sarasota Florida Sunday night & she has had to shorten up her morning walks a bit.  Had to sit out a few holes on the golf course as well last week but she is determined not to let her aging 87 years get her down.  Aunt Jean has always been an extraordinarily determined person.

Again tonight I am feeling tired & not too wordsy so think I'll call it an early night.  Maybe try spending a little more time with my Kindle……………………….

GROANER'S CORNER:((  Instructor: "Isn't it remarkable how quickly the kids learn to drive the car?" Parent: "Yes, especially considering how slowly they catch on to running the lawnmower and operating the vacuum cleaner."
---
A man is giving a speech at his lodge meeting. He gets a bit carried away and talks for two hours. Finally, he realizes what he is doing and says; "I'm sorry I talked so long. I left my watch at home."  A voice from the back of the room says, "There's a calendar behind you."

TOUCHING A FEW BASES WITH FRIENDS BEFORE WE RIDE OUGHTA TOWN IN A COUPLE WEEKS

More reports coming out about the shooting in the Hullett Marsh north of Clinton Ontario.  Seems it was a targeted shooting.  The man shot to death is from Toronto & is vice president of a large construction consortium in Etobicoke.  Seems a blue car drove up to him & his wife in the Marsh & he was shot.  The shooter has not been found.  We know the Manager of the Hullett Marsh & Kelly did send those photos I had in the blog to him.

Amazingly enough despite my reclusive latter years & hermit like ways I do have a few true & trusted friends left.  Friends I feel comfortable enough with to let my guard down & have meaningful at ease conversations with.  One of those best friends lives just a couple hundred yards from me but we don't make it a practice to hang out together.  Richard is every bit as reclusive as I am & trying to get a couple recluses together long enough for a meaningful chat can be a bit of a chore.  We have our short little occasional chats when we bump into each other around the Park here & there & we do have our occasional 4 hour coffee blow out every summer.  This morning we agreed it was time for another most enjoyable Yak Fest.  Richard drove & we headed ourselves up to Goderich.  Picked up a couple coffee’s & carrot muffins at Tim Hortons & headed on down to the beach.  Nice just sitting in the van by the water.   We cover a lot of bases & there are no breaks in our conversation.  Richard & I are both realists so we are always on the same wave length understanding perfectly what the other is talking about.  Everything is right to the point & we both very well understand the conversational path we are on.  I immensely enjoy these talks & always come away from them feeling very good inside………….

I'll be meeting another true & trusted friend shortly & we too will be off like a couple of manic magpies in another 4 or 5 hour in depth coffee blow-out.   We call them coffee blow-outs from the days we would consume vast amounts of coffee in our many mind melting sessions.  Jim doesn't even drink coffee anymore & I will only have one coffee in the whole time we are flapping our gums.  Again it is a non stop conversation from which I always emerge feeling better.  And I should emphasize it is conversations I have with these two friends, not story telling or small talk & not one sided where one does all the talking & the other is stuck having to do all the listening.

I’m a little short on words tonight so I’ll just wrap it up with an Archive Memory.  Wrote this in February of 2011 & it is quite clear in this post what I really think about America’s South-West.  And I might add my opinions have not changed one bit since writing this.  Decided to throw in some photos from our stop at the WHITE SANDS NATIONAL MONUMENT near Alamogordo New Mexico as well.

NOVEMBER 26TH 2008
ARCHIVE MEMORY:: Written in February 2011………………The lifestyle between our home in Ontario & Arizona is so totally different that it is like stepping back into the past for us every time we travel into the great American South-West.  I sometimes refer to it as having to put our southwest heads on & look at things with our South-West eyes.  Ontario & Arizona are so different in so many ways.  And, it is that change I find so interesting, invigorating & luring. 

YOU CAN SEE OUR DAMON CLASS A, KELLY, & CHECKERS IN THIS PHOTO
 
THERE’S OUR MAXWELL BOY

AND THIS IS THE ONLY KIND OF WHITE STUFF I WANT TO SEE ON THE GROUND IN THE WINTER TIME

 
SCHOOL KIDS PLAYING IN THE SNOW…UM, I MEAN SAND:))
 
 

We find people very friendly & laid back in the South-West.  Not nearly as many rules & regulations here as back home & I like that.  In the small towns there is still a wild west flavor & a closeness amongst the people.  For anyone who has read any South-West history they will know that is how the west has always been.  People could only survive by helping each other in the violent & turbulent times of the late1800’s especially.  There is a sense of that still present because life can be harsh in them there parts.   I’m not talking about the large towns & big cities, I’m talking about the dusty little towns & burgs out in the rustic & quaint wind swept desert backcountry.  Out there where you can see for miles & miles in any one direction & not set your eyes on a single car ahead or behind you.  People don’t look at you funny if your wearing a 30 gallon cowboy hat or have your boots on backwards.  If you want to grow your hair down to your knees that’s just fine because there are lots of good old down to earth characters in the west looking just like that & I like their sense of freedom.  Doesn’t matter if you got a ripped shirt with an acre of dust in the top pocket or if you have an old beat up Ford truck with half a dozen mis-matched or missing fenders, a dark hole where a headlight once shone oughta 20 years ago or a couple dozen dents in what once was looked at as an actual paint job one time.  Or bullet holes in the doors for that matter.  Half a dozen cracks in the windshield is alright too.  I like the idea a feller can just kinda fade away & become a part of the landscape. I love this southwest lifestyle, feel totally comfortable here & fit right in like an old gray weather beaten barn board on a tumble down 49’er miner’s shack.

 
 

Aside from the scenic advantages of spending the winters in the southwest we have always known how much healthier it is than staying trapped in a house by the ice, snow & harsh freezing temperatures of a northern winter.  I was first hooked on the southwest back in May of 1992 when I made a fairly quick trip to Utah & back.  Kelly & I rocketed to & from Big Bend Texas during a Christmas Holiday break in December of 2004.  We had a Class C at the time & that trip sealed our love for the South-West.  We have returned to New Mexico, Arizona & California every winter since beginning our Snow Bird travels in earnest back in October of 06.

We have friends back home who have never been anywhere south in the winter & have no interest in going south despite being retired & financially stable.  That is a hard one for me to understand.  After having spent well over 60 years enduring all the aspects of full blown Canadian winters I do not want to ever have to do that again.  We have had enough of being trapped indoors day after depressing gray day by blinding snow storms, freezing rain, closed highways & power outages, etc.  In the South-West we can be outside about 99% of the time walking, hiking, day tripping, working on outside hobbies, soaking up warm sunshine, rock scrambling & all the time being surrounded by beautiful scenery, sunrises & sunsets.  We are not stay inside television people so the South-West is a natural & healthy place for us to be while we are still able.  We know this will not last forever but while we are healthy & still have control over our lives & destinations we will not be sitting around on our cans in Canada during the winter!!  We know the sands of time are not in our favor anymore but we intend to hang onto that southern hourglass for as long as we possibly can…10-4:))

GROANER'S CORNER:(( A young officer is working late at the Pentagon one evening. As he comes out of his office about 8:00 p.m. he sees a General standing by the classified document shredder in the hallway, a piece of paper in his hand.  "Do you know how to work this thing?" the General asks. "My secretary's gone home and I don't know how to run it."  "Yes, sir," says the young officer, who turns on the machine, takes the paper from the General, and feeds it in.
(PAUSE)
"Now," says the General, "I just need one copy....."