Are You Not Moving?

Are you sure?

As you sit unmoving in a chair, you are probably moving about 750 miles per hour as the Earth rotates.  More if you are near the equator, less if you are closer to the poles.

But then the Earth is in orbit around the Sun.  That has you moving at about 67,000 miles per hour.

The sun is part of The Milky Way galaxy.  The Milky Way rotates at about 540,000 miles per hour in the main body of stars.

Our Milky Way galaxy is part of a local cluster of galaxies moving generally along together at higher speeds, and the local cluster is part of a supercluster moving faster than the local cluster, etc.

You are moving at something like a million miles per hour.  It gets worse than THAT but I'll spare you...  And you feel like you are sitting still.  That's what gravity does.

And yet gravity is weak.  You can easily lift a brick against the full force of the gravity of the entire planet!  The human record seems to be 1,102.3 pounds of deadlift (just off the floor).

So gravity is weak, and we are moving at about 1 million miles per hour...  Ever wonder what keeps us on the Erth surface and just not jumping away?  LOL!

Legal Property Ownership

Its maddening, utterly maddening. Insane and Inane! Completely beyond any failure of any system of records I ever knew in my career in government!  OH MY GOD, the dimmest nitwit I ever met in Federal Government was a FREAKING GENIUS compared to the State Government. 

There does not appear to be ANYONE IN THE UNIVERSE who actually knows who LEGALLY OWNS THE PROPERTY NEXT DOOR TO ME!   NO ONE!

I have spent 5 days calling various banks, real estate organizations, and local government offices and searching websites following all possible leads to offices seemingly connected with property ownership.  Not one single person in any office can actually say for SURE who owns the property

No one knows but everyone thinks they know who SHOULD!    I have talked to 100 offices and EVERYONE is truly sympathetic and really helpful, and has an idea who I should call next!  Even when I tell them that's the office that sent me to THEM!

OK, look, I spent years of my Federal Government career in "Administrative Services", the catchall Division of the catchall Office of the catchall Agency.  We were the office where questions were sent that no one else could answer, and I was the best at it. 

So the idea that "Who Owns That Property?" being unanswerable drove me completely NUTS!

Fanning myself down....................

Oh dang, apparently, no one actually DOES know who owns the property.  It has to be SOMEONE SOMEWHERE of course, but no one seems to actually know.  It is as if they had a stolen artwork and cannot admit it.

The resident has abandoned the property, some sites have notices that it was sold at auction June 14th, local newspapers won't claim to find any legal notice of the sale, no real estate agent can find a listing for it.  It is as if the property doesn't exist.

And that has got me royally upset!  How can you buy a property when you can't find out who OWNS it!?

Moves

My sister (and hubby and daughter) are moving far away.  She's the 1st of us elder children to leave MD.  They are really going "small" in the new place.  Some people do that after retirement.  I wish them happiness.

My neighbor has moved away.  He said he was coming back to get a trailer he can't store at his new place, and to cut down 2 trees that shade my flowerbeds as they grow larger.  But I'm betting he abandons or sells the trailer and doesn't cut down the trees.  I know how it is when you leave a place.  You leave and forget about the old place.  I wouldn't blame him in the least for "moving on" with his life.

I don't think he actually owns the place now, and I sure can't just go over and cut down a couple trees myself.  Unless I buy the house...

I COULD.  I've accumulated a lot of stocks over the years and they are at a high right now.  Selling some to buy a rental property MIGHT be a good idea, but you never know.  I'd really only be buying the house to control who is my neighbor and get rid of trees shading my flowerbeds and garden.

Yeah, they mean THAT much to me.  Not that I would expect to LOSE money, but breaking even on rent and maintenance over the years and making sure I didn't have a crazy neighbor there sounds good.

I would have the tall junk trees cut down and plant flowering ones, like dogwoods and star magnolias (to match what I am doing in my own yard).   And since it is a smaller 1 story house, I might move there someday and sell my split-foyer (2 level) house when I can't handle the stairs anymore.  I like to plan ahead.

But it is all just thoughts for now.  For all I know, the bank has already auctioned it off or something.  The neighbor doesn't even know who owns the mortgage now.  After several hours trying to find out by phone and internet yesterday, I can't tell either.  Everyone I talk to says it may take weeks for the records to catch up with the foreclosure as these things get sold/traded around very fast.

I could find someone moving in next week, or it could sit abandoned for months while some investment group collects a 100 foreclosed houses to sell to a commercial group.  All *I* can do is wait to see a foreclosure notice on the front door or a For Sale sign in the front yard some morning.

Arghhh!

Fare Well Good Neighbor!

Well, it turns out my neighbor really IS moving!  I'm glad I was out trimming my lawn this afternoon, because it turns out he was making his last trip.  I saw him glance over at me and I waved.  He waved back.  I went over and asked if he was moving.  He said he was.   I told him I thought he might be, but there was no For Sale sign, so it might have been his daughter was leaving for college or a place of her own.

It turns out that after failing to refinance his mortgage twice recently, he was turning it back over to the bank and just walking away!  That is very sad...  He says he has rented a place across town.  Says he never really liked the place; his wife chose it.

Not to be gossipy (I can't; I never KNOW anything), but that was a real mess!  I only found out a year later.  And I didn't know that I didn't want to know until AFTER I was told about it by a neighbor woman.  But YOU will never know any of them, so I suppose it doesn't matter. 

About 8 years ago, my neighbor guy had an affair with the woman next door, her husband found out and filed for divorce, she shot herself, and and his wife left him.  Unusually, the daughter stayed with him.  Tragic all around.

Of COURSE he didn't "seem like the type".  Who ever does?  I knew so many guys who cheated (and wives who made passes at ME) that little of that surprises me.   But it is still sad... Whenever I hear about stuff like that, I'm glad I am happy living peacefully alone!!!

But I do not judge, not knowing the situations.  He has been a good quiet neighbor (at least since he got rid of his motorcycle years ago), no loud parties, no barking dogs, etc.  The next residents may be loud and annoying.  He said I had been a great neighbor (I merely helped out with a couple small projects, but I suppose I'm quiet myself and keep the house and yard looking decent).

I asked him why he couldn't just sell it himself and he explained that he owed WAY more than he could get.  Personally I think he is looking at things short-term, as housing prices are rising again, but I don't know his finances of course.  Divorces and child care can be brutally expensive.  I mentioned that I was thinking of a rental property and it couldn't be more convenient than next door.


But since he was just abandoning the house and the mortgage, the bank will be selling it free of the old mortgage, and cheaper.  I would have an appraiser go in and estimate renovation needs and current real value, of course.  And of course it might not make financial sense.  But I'll see.  I mean, since he's gone, it all starts fresh.  I wonder if the bank knows yet?

I did ask him about some troublesome trees along our property line.  Mostly a mulberry tree that started from seeds from one *I* had and cut down years ago.  The roots and sprouts and shade are causing me grief in my main flowerbed.  Then, just before I asked if I could come over and cut it (and 2 other saplings that will only grow larger) down he offerred to come back this weekend and cut it down himself and haul off the debris.  WOW!

It will certainly be interesting seeing what happens...

Mosquito Problems

This Zika virus problem reminds me of an event in the past.  In 1999, I was suddenly getting bitten by mosquitoes in the daytime.  I managed to hit one of the little blood-suckers against my arm with a cupped hand.  It was completely dead and completely intact.  The air pressure killed it.

It didn't look familiar when I looked at it under a magnifying glass, so I did an internet search.  It was an Asian Tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus), only known as far north as North Carolina at the time (I'm in Maryland, 2 states north of there).  I put it in a small plastic container and set it in the refrigerator.  Then I called around looking for anyone who might be interested.

The University of Maryland Entomology offices weren't interested.  The Washington Post newspaper was not interested.  I should have called the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, but I didn't think of them at the time.  After a few months, I tossed it away.  After all, there were plenty of others around.

Then 2 years later, I read an article in The Washington Post about how Asian Tiger mosquitoes had arrived in our area.  Gee, I tried to tell them that 2 years before!  I keep wondering if it would have helped if they had listened to me then.

I have a mosquito-unfriendly yard.  I have some standing water (a 5' pond and a tub used for cleaning garden tools).  But I put Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) dunks in them that kill mosquito larvae.  I even have trap pots of Bt water around the yard.  But they are still here.  They don't travel more than a 100 yards, but I suppose my neighbors are less careful than I am.

My point is that that another mosquito (Aedes aegypti) is the most common carrier of Zika virus, but  is climate-restricted to the very far southern US.  Asian Tiger mosquitoes, however, have also been found now to carry it.  Asian Tiger mosquitoes survive as far north as New England.

And the June 2016 issue of Smithsonian magazine has a cover article about how we can kill off mosquitoes using genetics.  The method seems convincing, effective, and relatively straight-forward.

Yet there are people in the article who question the morality of deliberately causing the extinction of mosquitoes.  REALLY?  We are killing off much more advanced animal species almost daily and they are worried about MOSQUITOES?

Sharks kill about 6 people per year, scorpions 3,250, snakes 100,000, and mosquitoes 725,000.  725,000!  Most mosquitoes don't transmit diseases.  KILL ALL THE DISEASE-CARRYING MOSQUITOES!!!

Sign me up to "push the button", "throw the switch", "give the order", whatever!  I'll accept the ethical blame...  With peace in my heart...

Random Thoughts

1.  Why are the Summer Olympics being held in Brazil?  No offense to Brazil, but it is WINTER there!  They must have warm Winters...

2.  My neighbor appears to be moving out.  That will be a shame.  Not that we ever talked much, but he has been a good one.  Quiet (at least since he stopped idling his motorcycle a half hour in the driveway each morning at 5 am a few years ago), no loud parties, no barking dogs, and mostly absent.  There is no "For Sale" sign, but he might be doing what I would do:  Move out, clean up, THEN sell it.

3.  Last Fall,  after years of one side of the front lawn settling lower than the drainage easement along side it and flooding periodically, I had a landscaper add 2 truckloads of topsoil and raise it 2 feet.  It was part of a larger project involving removal of several trees and leveling a 6' high ridge in the back yard.  I roto-tilled the soil, added compost, and planted new grass seed (a high quality brand).  The grass is now dying (and the older part of the lawn is fine).  I hope there wasn't something bad in that soil! 

4.  Donald Trump is self-imploding.  YAY!  I have previously wondered if he was doing it deliberately to avoid the restrictions of becoming President.  But now I think it just comes naturally to him.  Republicans are starting to bail out all over the place.  And I won't call that "rats deserting a sinking ship".  I would call it sensible people trying to escape a burning building.

5.  By the way, what is bad about rats deserting a sinking ship?  It is a rational thing to do.  I don't even think CAPTAINS should go down with their ship...

6.  I surrendered to the cat claws.  I can't clip them (my hands aren't steady enough anymore and they resist)!   In spite of having scratchers they use and running around outside briefly, they were starting to stick to blankets towels and carpet.  So when the vet announced he was offerring clipping for $13, I brought Marley in yesterday.   He is far more compliant at the Vet, and there are 2 people to do it (one to hold and one to clip).  Iza goes in tomorrow! 

7.  I had a new bathtub installed end of May.  And the room needs to be painted.  I painted the entire interior of the house 15 years ago.  I haven't painted the bathroom yet.  Suddenly, the task seems daunting.  All that wall-cleaning, all that taping, all those drop cloths.  And all those accessories to be removed:  towel rack, TP holder, toothbrush holder, soap dish, light switch cover,  outlet cover, mirror!  I can't get myself to start...

8.  On the other hand, my garden is finally starting to produce!  I have home-grown heirloom tomatoes again.  I have heirloom flat italian beans again!  I'm getting carrots and zucchini.  I'm getting cucumbers.  I have some Fall crops started.  And the chicken-wire enclosed garden structure is keeping the squirrels and groundhogs out!

9.  I had been having constant battery problems with my 11 year old Toyota Highlander and my equally old riding mower.  The recommended batteries weren't lasting.  In Spring, I replaced them with ones recommended by Consumer Reports magazine.  Well, who would have thought that Walmart sold the best batteries for my 2 vehicles?

10.  I love the odd little butcher/deli/liquor store in town.  They were selling filet mignon whole for $8.99/lb this week.  They trim it to perfection and slice it to your desire (I like 1.5").  They normally toss the trimmings, but I have them save them.  I can get another whole meal from those with a little knife work (which I enjoy doing).  So I end up with six 6 oz filet mignon steaks for $4 each. 

They also sell frozen large deveined shrimp at $6/lb.  And they used to sell a Zinfandel (Twisted Zin) that I really loved but dropped it.  But they special order it just for me.  I get a case of 6 1.5 liter bottles for $10.  They really appreciate their regular customers.

11.  Speaking of local businesses, the barber shop I used to visit suddenly started wanting appointments.  But the barber shop close by them, that used to be busy as heck is now a no-wait place.  So I tried them.  Hey, I have dead-limp straight hair, I'm retired, and I'm not fussy.  Who COULDN'T cut that?  And they do just as well as the previous place.

Crown Of Gold

Well, I'm sitting here contemplating the Gold Crown on the table in front of me.  Unfortunately, its not the kingly type of crown.  Its the kind that comes loose from a tooth!

It hardly seems fair.  I don't eat hard candies.  I don't crunch on ice cubes.  I don't eat really sticky stuff like taffy.  I was simply eating a bit of marinated boneless skinless chicken breast.  But it seems there was a tiny flake of bone in there.  It jammed in between 2 teeth like an ax into a log.

I was careful, I really was!  I used a wooden toothpick, I tried to remove the bone flake with downward pressure front and back for several cautious minutes.  When it finally seemed to loosen slightly, I OH SO CAREFULLY tried to lift it back out the way it entered. 

The length of time between feeling a slight movement and the realization that it was a crown coming loose was infinitesimal.  Seriously, I didn't even know that tooth HAD a crown.  I have a half dozen scattered around and after a month I can't tell where they are.  That's kind of the whole point of having them...

If dental stuff is icky to you, you might want to just skim ahead...

The last thing I was expecting earlier today was having to call a dentist tomorrow for an appointment.  But life is what happens when you aren't expecting it.  I suppose I should have though.  I may have gotten good cold and flu resistance genes from my parents, but the tooth genes were not so good.  Dad had only half his teeth by my age and a mouthful of partial dentures that seemed to come loose every 3 or 4 years.  He complained about it a lot.

In fact, my wisdom teeth never emerged.   X-Rays show them, but apparently they are blocked or something.  Side note:  Wisdom teeth are slowly vanishing from humans.  Some people don't have them, in others, they don't emerge.  Someday we won't have them at all.

I don't hate dentists!  What they do is valuable for relieving pain and making it easy to eat, etc.  But I DO hate dental work.  I was cursed with a small jaw and therefore crowded teeth.  When I was in my 20s one dentist wanted to pull a couple of teeth "to give me a better smile".  That sounded miserable and I wasn't concerned with what I perceived to be cosmetic dentistry.  I wish he had been more straightforward!  I only learned many years later that there had still been time for the remaining teeth to slowly spread to normal positions (or so another dentist told me in my 50s).

And some dental work is seemingly worse for most but easier for me.  I'll just say that layin on my back while someone is messing around in my mouth is physically horrible (2 words - "nasal drip"), but sitting upright is OK. 

So when a tooth utterly broke 2 years ago and the dentist had to pull it out, I was worried at the time, the the pulling was mostly just boring.  And when he told my the tooth root was interlocked with the one next to it and had to come out too, I just said "sure"... 

I haven't had any problems with the 2 removed teeth.  Can't even tell they are missing when I chew.

But last year, suddenly 2 small fillings came out in upper back molars.  I had been planning to (and delaying) making an appointment.  Now it's forced, so I will have something done to those.  I hope they are refillable, but if they have to be removed I might find that easier.

And since I'm going on a dentist journey, I may see about implants for the 2 previously pulled teeth.  If (and only if)  they will be essentially permanent. 

Some day, we humans will learn how to grow new teeth as adults.  And there IS research toward that end.  Until then - AARRGGGHHH!

Threatening Notice

I received an interesting notice yesterday:

European Union laws require you to give European Union visitors information about cookies used on your blog. In many cases, these laws also require you to obtain consent.
As a courtesy, we have added a notice on your blog to explain Google's use of certain Blogger and Google cookies, including use of Google Analytics and AdSense cookies.
You are responsible for confirming this notice actually works for your blog, and that it displays. If you employ other cookies, for example by adding third party features, this notice may not work for you. Learn more about this notice and your responsibilities.

Your HTTPS settings have changed. All visitors are now able to view your blog over an encrypted connection by visiting https://cavebearslair.blogspot.com. Existing links and bookmarks to your blog will continue to work.

I can't say that I have ever been threatened with violating any European laws before, and I'm not sure I care.  I don't expect to visit there in the remainder of my lifetime, since I never have previously.

But Google has a long reach.  So I willingly state that,  to the best of my knowledge I will not and have not violated any cookie rules and do not plan to. 


Which is easy, because if there are any "cookies" in my blog, Google put them there...

Hurray!

The first tomatoes are turning reddish!   It may be a week, but finally the long lack of REAL tomatoes is near an end. 

Which is real good because the corn is just sitting there knee-high, the melons vines are 18" long, the cucumbers are just starting to grow up the trellis, the zucchini haven't set fruit yet, the carrots are coming up only 4" long (but with great flavor),  and my recent radishes have no radish.

At least the flat italian pole beans are producing.  Only a half dozen a day, but it sure beats the frozen or canned ones.  And they sure taste better than the regular ones.  When Dad was still here 4 years ago, he said those were the best beans he had ever eaten.  And he remembers growing regular beans in a garden himself.

It may sound silly, but I go out and look at the ripening tomatoes a couple times a day.  I CAN'T WAIT.  I am SO tired of of supermarket tomatoes (buying the cherry ones because they sure taste better than the larger ones but not by much). 

Those regular ones taste so bland because the stores have learned how to make them red without actually ripening them.  Its an enzyme trick.  And then they refrigerate them.  What little flavoroids (technical term - really) develop in the fake ripening process are killed when they are kept below 54F.  And the producers store them below 54F...

Reddening and ripening tomatoes work together on the plant, but they are actually 2 separate procceses.    Tomatoes turn red in the presence on ethylene gas (which they naturally produce during ripening, but produce-sellers apply to unripe tomatoes to turn them red).  Green tomatoes ship best, so they apply ethylene gas to redden them for sale.

Plant that produce fruits do it so the fruits will be eaten and (hard-to-digest) seeds pooped out  by fruit-eating critters all over the place.  I'm not sure if you wanted to know that, but that's why there ARE fruits.  And to go a step further, that WHY we see colors well.  To recognize fruits with ripe seeds in them.  The PLANTS did that to let us know when to eat them.  Which is WHY ripe fruits have sugar - to reward us fruit-eaters who successfully learn WHEN to eat the fruits (by color) when the (unimportant-to-us) seeds are mature.  And you thought they were "just" tomatoes or cherries, etc...  LOL!

The naturally ripe flavor of a tomato is a whole different thing than reddening.  There are about 400 chemicals involved (internet search), but carotene and lycopene are the 2 major ones.  Most of the rest involve soil minerals and a starch-to-sugar transaction that the tomato plant produces in its actual ripening stage (which is why commercial suppliers can fake the red color but not the ripe flavor). 

Yeah, I know I sound going overboard about my first ripe tomatoes, but I look forward to them all Winter and Spring and half of Summer!  And these are heirloom tomatoes naturally ripened with real flavor.  If you haven't had one of those, you just don't know!

And now you know why...

Astonishingly Stupid Blogs

I am constantly amazed by the horribly bad advice given out by some blogs that seem to purport to know what they are talking about. 

For example, a friend mentioned a wasp sting, so to be careful of my advice, I did an internet search of sites referring specifically to wasp stings.  The top 5 results said to carefully remove the stinger without squeezing the venom gland. 

I'm so pissed reading that, I can barely even type!

Thats BEES!!!  Wasps don't sting the same way.  Bees lose their stingers when they sting and part of their insides come out that continue to pump venom.  And that causes them to die.  Bees sting once.

But wasps don't sting the same way.  They can sting over and over and don't lose an inside part, more like fangs on a snake.  They don't leave the stinger or any part behind.

So the advice was so stupid I nearly screamed in frustration.

Bees and wasps are not very closely related.  The stinging aspect is called "covergent evolution" (where some animals get similar traits indendently).

If I recall correctly, bees evolved from termites (thus the solid body structure) and wasps evolved from ants (thus the segmented body structure).  They both have stingers, but from entirely different origins.

But, OMG, if you were a parent of a child who was stung by a wasp and searched these "first up" sites, you would be desperately searching for the stinger in the child's flesh and you wouldn't find one!  Well of course not, wasp's don't leave stingers behind!!!

And their advice tells you to look for one.  AAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!

I can't even tell the site how bad their answer is.  I would have to join it and that would mean weeks of scammy emails until they gave up on me.

The site is http://www.lifescript.com/.  Based on the wasp sting post, DON'T EVER GO THERE FOR ANYTHING...