Fake "Hints From Heloise"

Have you ever read the real ones in the newspaper?  Some of them are SO silly.  This is recent real one:  "Remove individual [computer] keys to clean and wipe the underside with a microfiber cloth. Some keys have springs and it might be tough to get them back in place."

Is she SERIOUS?  Even Martha Stewart wouldn't do that!

So I decided to make some fake ones to send...

1.  When I print out my local baseball team's annual schedule, I snip the printout into weeks and stack them on the refrigerator with rare earth magnets.  Just remove one each week!  Saves LOTS of refrigerator door space.

2.  Storing socks in the dresser drawer uses up a lot of space.  So I clamp mine between 2 cookie sheets.

3.  The easiest way to clean teflon pans is to spray them with oven cleaner.  However, you can only do that once.

4.  You want to clean your microwave fast?  Just put a bottle of window cleaner in there and set it on high for 10 minutes.  The replacement M/W oven will be clean as new!

5.  Birdseed is expensive.  Just visit a woodworking shop to get shavings for free,  The birds will get used to it.

6.  If you swallow a moth, just swallow a few mothballs afterwards and your discomfort will go away forever.

7.  You can make a perfectly good Halloween pumpkin from a soccer ball!  Just put it in a carved pumpkin first.

8.  You can improve your school report cards with Photoshop!  Mom and Dad will be SO proud.

9.  Buy a 3-D printer and put a $20 bill in the input slot.  Free money!

10.  Garden slugs are almost pure protein.  Think of them as "hamburger helper".

11.  Air Force pilots earn big money.  So get one of those computer games and "earn your way to the top".

12.  Garden trowels can be hammered into very workable spatulas!

13.  Online purchases come packed in long strips of brown paper.  Enough glue and you have unique wallpaper!

14.  Wall art is sold by the pound at charity centers.  Load up, it might be valuable someday.

15.  Use losing lottery tickets as coasters in parties.  Claim they are winning tickets too low in value to bother with.  Your friends will be very impressed.

16.  Save leftover paint and mix it all together.  Why pay for designer colors when you can make them yourself?

17.  Kitty litter works when dry.  So dump the used stuff in your dryer and its good for another round.

18.  Secret hint.  Newspapers pay for crossword puzzles.  So save old ones and submit them to another newspaper in a few years.

19.  Calendars repeat after 28 years.  Save them for future use!

I think I'll stop there...  No, I haven't actually sent those, but I MIGHT.  LOL! 

Busy, Busy

It's THAT time of year again.  The best time.  Planting seeds...

But that wasn't all today.  It was one of THOSE days.  Odd jobs...  Things that should have been done before.  I ahd all the cat-cards from Christmas stacked up and Iza trashed the pile.  So I stacked them (and lost some of the addressed envelopes with the cards) and got them up out of her reach.

But she is a real paper-chewer, so I had a pile of wasted printed paper I use for temporary notes and she chewed up those.  I better get her some jerky to chew up.

I tossed her mousies until she tired and wandered off into the bedroom to nap.

Saw Marley and Ayla snuggled up like spoons there.  Naturally, my camera was in another room.  As soon as I left to get it, Marley followed me out.  No picture of THAT!  I keep the camera in my pocket a LOT, but not that time.

Finished enclosing the garden.  I thought I had before, but I saw Marley in it earlier today.  He found a loose seam and was in enjoying the loose soil as a litterbox.  Quite frankly, I don't want my carrots fertilized by cat-poop, but I will sifting it soon for planting.

Getting near time to mow the lawn, so I'll drive the riding mower up on boards to clean the old grass clippings from under the deck, sharpen the blade, and then take out the spark plugs and such to pretend I know what I'm doing while I clean and gap them.  They are always just fine, but I have to look.  You do what you know to do and hope for the best. 

I suppose the mower would work better if it was worked over by pros.  And I know some good ones.  Every few years I go in for an "annual" tune-up.  Maybe next year;  the mower still works.

I think I need to pull out the chipper/shredder and see if I can start it.  Been 5 years since I used it and I have a lot of brambles to get rid of.  I could haul them to the recycling center in exchange for shredded mulch, but handling brambles is not fun.  Easier to shred then here.

Sanding plaster patches on the walls.  2 year old electrical work patches and I've ignored them too long.  You can ignore things a long time when you live alone.  But I will have family visitors some month soon and can't let those patches be unsanded, primed, and painted.

The front door and garage door need to be painted.  I've dithered about the color.  The new house siding is medium green and the shutters dark green.  The doors are white.  Should I paint the doors to match the shutters or leave them white? 

I've had a fantasy about painting that garage door a really weird color/pattern.  Like a 60's Warhol. 











 Kind of daring for me, and my "cat" would probably look more like a rat.  I can't sketch worth a tinker's dam!  Should I dare try?

If my front door wasn't surrounded by brick, I would love to have a round hobbit door installed...  But maybe I can make it look like wood.  Fantasies that will never happen...

The older shed needs a new roof.  I recall shoving 4x8 sheets of 1/2" plywood up there when I was 35.  I can't lift the stuff now.  But cut in half, I could manage that.  And conveniently, I half 1/2 sheets stored in the basement from what used to be the attic flooring (which I can't use for storage now because there is 18" of blown insulation everywhere up there) and THAT would be manageable for the shed roof. 

My azalea cuttings from last Fall before the soil ridge was removed are all doing fine.  Amazingly, 34 of the 36 cuttings (12 white, 12 purple, and 10 red) have taken root.  I'm not sure where I will put them all, but I sure have plenty to use.

Backyard covered with wild blackberries and english ivy and poison ivy.  I hate to use herbicides, but if ever there was a good reason, this is it...

That's enough for now.

Happy Pi Day

To infinity and beyond -

3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307
8164062862089986280348253421170679821480865132823066470938446095505
8223172535940812848111745028410270193852110555964462294895493038196
4428810975665933446128475648233786783165271201909145648566923460348
6104543266482133936072602491412737245870066063155881748815209209628
2925409171536436789259036001133053054882046652138414695194151160943
3057270365759591953092186117381932611793105118548074462379962749567
3518857527248912279381830119491298336733624406566430860213949463952
2473719070217986094370277053921717629317675238467481846766940513200
0568127145263560827785771342757789609173637178721468440901224953430
1465495853710507922796892589235420199561121290219608640344181598136
2977477130996051870721134999999837297804995105973173281609631859502
4459455346908302642522308253344685035261931188171010003137838752886
5875332083814206171776691473035982534904287554687311595628638823537
8759375195778185778053217122680661300192787661119590921642019893809
5257201065485863278865936153381827968230301952035301852968995773622
5994138912497217752834791315155748572424541506959508295331168617278
5588907509838175463746493931925506040092770167113900984882401285836
1603563707660104710181942955596198946767837449448255379774726847104
0475346462080466842590694912933136770289891521047521620569660240580
3815019351125338243003558764024749647326391419927260426992279678235
4781636009341721641219924586315030286182974555706749838505494588586
9269956909272107975093029553211653449872027559602364806654991198...

10th Anniversary Of Retirement

Yeah, 10 years now...  I retired 10 years ago last week.  It doesn't feel like 10 years.  The first couple years were noticable.  The next few were less so.  These days, I have to think about my career life. 

As much as I enjoyed my career challenge (and I really did - it kept my mind busy and I saved my Federal Agency a lot more money than they paid me), it was a relief to stop. 

Some people can't stop working because it defines them; they only think of themselves as what they do for a job.  They have nothing to do other than their jobs.  Not me.  I always had a life outside my job.  I knew too many people who, while pretty poor at their jobs, that was all they had.  I'm glad I was not one of those.

I spent my career going full-out at it.  After my first month as a temp worker, I found I had done all my work one mid day and told my boss.  So I got more.  And the "more" was more complicated work.  I got made permanent shortly after that.  And advanced...

I got moved from office to office, always some duty new to me.  I loved learning new stuff.  It was a challenge, and I loved challenges.  From counting furniture, I went to writing telephone change orders to moving whole offices with all the furniture and equipment and ordering new carpet.  From there, I supported Presidential Commissions and Committees and then Senate and House Members' office.  I went on to inventory the White House assets.  I even got under the President's desk in the Oval Office and Private Study for several Presidents.  I saw Ford's football helmet, and I got a few of Carter's peanuts and Reagan's jelly beans.  I still have a pad of White House notepaper, tucked way in my treasure chest, LOL!

But even that had advancement limitations, so I got into telecommunications management.  That was amazing.  It was planned to be a 17 person office.  But I was the only one hired before a budget cut stopped the hiring.  And for 20 years, it was just ME! 

I wrote the first telecommunications manual for my Agency (General Services Administration - GSA), and received the first telephone call records.  On paper (useless) at first, but then on pre-internet vendor-specific data mag-tapes (still useless). 

I found a company that could read the vendor data tapes on a (then) fancy bit of hardware.  It took 36 hours to process a month's calls.  Then I found how to do it in 24 hours, then, 2 hours, and finally I could get it into something Microsoft Access could read.  After that, I learned to get the data from Access to Excel.

I created an entire procedure across GSA for sending offices their long-distance calls.  You wouldn't believe how many people call non-business numbers.  Let's just say that some employees had private businesses running and some called "naughty" numbers.  I put a stop to most of that!

With the call records available to office managers, I turned my attention to video-conferencing.  My supervisor and I visited all our regional offices to help set up videoconferencing rooms nationwide.  We not only designed state-of-the-art non-acoustical walls, we found ways to to that for ceilings and floors too! 

I designed a spreadsheet that kept all video rooms schedulable across time zones.    I was also dragged around by higher management to other agencies to show them how to red the contractor data in Access and Excel, and also how to use my scheduling system (it seemed simple to me but usually got an "OH!" response.

I gave the office a year's notice of my retirement.  They were shocked; apparently most people just gave 2 weeks notice.  But I wanted a good replacement.  And to management's credit, they acted 4 months before I retired.  My supervisor and I were the interview team. 

From a couple of dozen resumes, we chose 5 and interviewed them with a set series of questions.  One guy was so tightly wound (nuts) that I was looking around for a letter-opener to defend myself.  Another had no apparent connection to the skill set described and his own.  2 others were "decent".  The last one had a sense of both managing a program and relating to customers. 

After she left, I said to my supervisor, "We have my replacement".  I spend the last 4 months training her on the details of my system.

On my last day, my supervisor's supervisor gave me a project and I just laughed at him.  I packed up my stuff and walked out the door.  It was funny.  We had various work schedules, and mine was the latest of the day.  So I was alone in the office that last day. 

I had filled my car with my potted snake plants and personal stuff at lunchtime.  I spent the last few hours emailing my regional co-workers about how great it had been to work with them, and hoping they trusted my replacement to help them as I had.

And then, I walked out the office door turning out the lights as I went, locked it behind me, and drove silently off into the sunset. 

I kept in touch with my replacement and a few trusted co-workers for a few months.  My replacement couldn't handle the work.  I guess it was the right temperment but not the ability to work "flat out crazy".  I was eventually replaced with 4 full time employees.  And THEY complained about the workload. 

From my first year to my last day, I always outworked any 2 co-workers and at a higher accuracy.  Each office I left needed at least 2 people to do my work.

To this day, I am STILL pleased about THAT!  I TOLD them they needed more people to do what I did, and they didn't believe me.  At first...  LOL!

So Happy 10th Retirement Week To Me!

Yeah, I'm bragging...  ;)

Political Stuff

I'm worried about the Republican Party.  When I could first vote in 1968, I thought Richard Nixon was extreme!  His "Law and Order" platform against freedom of expression was scary.  This was when there actually were liberal republicans (like Senator "Mac" Mathias of Maryland and most of the New England republicans).  I considered myself a Republican back then (fiscally moderate and socially progressive).

Then came Reagan (aka "Ronald Ray-Guns" to my college and young professional crowd).  He was scarier!  Bush The Elder followed and he wasn't too bad (except that he once stated that he didn't think atheists should be considered legitimate citizens).

Then came Bush The Younger.  I didn't agree with him much, but at least he seemed sane (although a lightweight thinker, an embarassing mangler of language, and apparently controlled by that extremophile Dick Cheney.  "Mission Accomplished" and "Weapons Of Mass Destruction" will follow his administration down through history.  His utter inability to judge foreign leaders (“I looked [Putin] in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy" says it all.

And now there is The Donald.  The scariest Republican yet...  The man is deeply disturbed.  A neutral psychiatrist would have a field day with him.  Not that he is the only person like that, but he is a possible US President and that makes a WHOLE lot of difference.  I would try to describe all the problems, but a cat-blogger I visit said it better than I could and in more detail.  Read it HERE.

People think of Trump as a successful businessman.  He isn't really.  And I don't mean that he is a failed businessman.  Its that he isn't really a "businessman".  He is a marketing genius!  He sells his name.  He is like a Kardassian...  When anyone looks inside his enterprises, all they find is his name.  No substance, no product, no employment.  He is like a terrible driver who leaves a long string of bad accidents behind him and escapes them all.

Demagogues like Trump come along in politics every so often.  They usually fade soon enough before causing too much harm.  And there ARE some signs that Trump is beginning to fade as well.  He has lost a couple of State primaries he was expected to win and the next round of primaries are not suiting his style of ideology as well as the earlier ones.  So he may fade like Ben Carson (another lunatic) did in the past couple months.

One can only hope...

But you know what scares me the most?  His followers...  I don't care too much if some individual politician has delusions of grandeur, makes bizarre unrealistic promises, is ammoral, unethical, and changes views  as often as rock stars change outfits in concerts.  It doesn't fool ME.  But it sure fools his supporters.  And there are a LOT of THEM...

It is THEIR existence that scares me, keeps me awake at night, and worries me while watching the news.  No generally decent civilization ever fell overnight, but there was one day when they suddenly "weren't" anymore.  The ancient Greeks were suddenly Roman subjects, the Romans were suddenly bending their knees to the Vandals, the Visigoths who created Spain were driven down by the conquering Moors, the Incas to the Spaniards, etc.

No country lasts forever, and democracies especially are fragile and need constant vigilance to survive.  Demagogues are ever-present, needing only one opportunity to succeed.

Trump has to lose...

Baseball Season Starts Soon

I love baseball.  I understand it better than most other sports.  And I just finished re-watching Kens Burn's 'Baseball' PBS production. 

It "nicer" than most sports.  Many people have decsribed it, but to MY mind, none better than George Carlin.  I won't post the whole statement here, but it's HERE.

I'll paste SOME of it though: 

"Baseball has no time limit: we don't know when it's gonna end - might have extra innings.
Football is rigidly timed, and it will end even if we've got to go to sudden death."

"In football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.
In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe! - I hope I'll be safe at home!"

"
Baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game.
Football is a twentieth-century technological struggle.

Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park.The baseball park!
Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium."

And I'll add some gleanings from the Ken Burn's production...

Baseball is the only game where the Defense has the ball.

The is no clock in baseball.  The batter comes to the plate, the pitcher steps off the mound.  The pitcher returns to the plate and the batter steps out to wipe his eyes or adjust his grip on the bat.  The umpire sweeps the dirt off the home plate.  The pitcher begins his delivery, the batter swings.  Or doesn't.  Theoretically, a game could last forever.  And some seem to.

A batter who only hits the ball safely 1/3 of the time is a hero!

Batters "hit safely" and if they round the bags they come "home".  In football (American), they battle their way into the END zone leaving fallen players scattered around on the field.

In baseball, if you hit a home run, you get to trot around the bases at a leisurely slow speed, assured that the fans and teamates know it was YOU who did that.  In football, no one ever really knows who did what to cause a play to work.

And while where is some contact in baseball, it is not routine.  In football, basketball, hockey, boxing, and wrestling, players are pounding each other, throwing elbows, slamming each other with equipment, etc. 

Baseball players have most of their original teeth.  In other sports, teeth are just temporary things.

I can't wait for baseball season to start again!

Gardening Season Starts

I'm more than ready to start the new gardening season.  I've BEEN ready since the last one ended.  I went through my saved refrigerated seeds last month and bought replacements for the ones getting too old or that had been used up last year.  I emptied old soil out of planting pots.  I cleaned all the pots and planting trays.  I threw away the damaged ones and got new replacements out of the shed.

A little story on that.  15 years ago, I bought a nearly lifetime supply of trays and 6-packs.  It made sense.  At the bulk prices, more started to become almost free.  I'm only 1/2 through the BIG BOXES now.

But what I didn't have was seed-starting soil.  And that is slightly a technical term.  It's not "potting soil" (though I have often used that in the past and it seems to work pretty well).  Seed-starting soil is sterile and has no fertilizer.  That helps avoid moss growth, fungal diseases (a seedling's worst enemy), and weeds.  Plus, the stuff is very loose so roots grow quickly.

This year, the only seed-starting mix I could find was ridiculously expensive and even the potting soil was poor (highly-fertilized Miracle-Gro or a cheaper brand that was (I discovered last year) dyed to look better than it was and wouldn't retain any moisture.


So I decided to return to my past habits and mix my own seed-starting soil...  My gardening book had a good recipe:  4 parts compost, 2 parts peat moss, 1 part vermiculite, and 1/2 part perlite.  I can't tell you what vermiculite is (does "hydrous phyllosilicate mineral" tell you anything?  Me neither).  All I know is that it is lightweight, non-compacting, and retains water.  Perlite looks like ground-up styrofoam, but it seems to be like popcorn made from volcanic ash.  It is also very light and holds water.



I don't have to know that, just that those 4 items make a really good seed-starting soil.   So I found all the ingredients over the weekend and set about mixing them together today.  OMG!  It took 4 hours.  I had to sift the peat moss and compost through 2 meshed screens (when you are filling 2" planting cubes, you can't have sticks and pieces of bark in there).  Then I had to mix the sifted peat moss and compost with the vermiculite and perlite.

I have to laugh.  It took four 5 gallon buckets and 3 large trash cans and a small 1 gallon bucket as a scoop, a lot of lifting and dumping, and when I was done I had enough on the basement floor to fill a 5 gallon bucket to add into the finished product.  I filled a 40 gallon trash barrel right to the top perfectly! 

Its the best-looking seed-starting soil I've ever seen.  I figure it cost $50.  An equal amount of commercial product (with fertilizer I didn't want, dyes I didn't want, and less of the vermiculite and perlite I did want) would have cost almost the same ($48).

But I still have 2/3 of my raw materials leftover!  So for 4 hours work, I have a better quality seed-starting soil at 1/3 the cost plus more raw material for future use.  I am very pleased with my work.


Tomorrow, I plant seeds!

Comparing THE BIG THREE

Yeah, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Close Encounters.

And I don't mean the actors or the tech.  I mean, it's the past, the future, and the present.

Every time I talk to friends about Star Wars, they describe it as the future.  They don't remember the opening sequence:  "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..."  Star Wars is in the past!

Star Trek is in the future, 300-400 years give or take a century. 

Close Encounters is the present.  Assuming the meetings continued to today, of course.

But it just amazes me that so many Star Wars fans keep thinking it is our future after we spread out among the stars...

Baseball

I love baseball.  I understand it.  You hit, field, catch, pitch.  You stand around and watch a lot. 

I tried other sports.  As soon as I reached minimal competence, I was bored.  In some I was simple unable. 

The minimal competence ones were tennis, golf, and soccer.  The unable ones were basketball, football, and rugby.  At 5' 7" and 135 pounds out of high school,  I was too short for basketball, too light for football, and I never figured out the "scrum" in rugby. 

I could play tennis a bit.  It was basically ping-pong on a larger field.  And the phy ed teacher had us doing some skill exercizes of bounces the ball first on one side of the racket then the other.  When he saw me bouncing the tennis ball on the edge of the racket, he dragged me off to more detailed play.  But I never could serve the ball hard or accurately, so off I went. 

Golf was similar.  I could hit the ball, and putt well enough, but I actually got worse the more THEY tried to teach me.  Went from a soft hook to a wicked slice under high school coach "help". 

But baseball always made sense to me.  And I mention all this only because I just finished re-watching Ken Burns' PBS Baseball series.

I started off bad! 

The pictures there are fake.  Well, "posed".  Truth be told, I kept my bat on my shoulder in play and the one time I recall swinging, I hit it just over 2nd base.  Dad cheered that I finally got a hit.  I usually got a walk though and was a demon on the base paths.  I stole 2nd base a lot.  But my team was so bad I seldom got any further. 

I was a good 2nd baseman.  I knew how to drop on any ball near me and get it to first base.

I even got an unassisted triple play once!  I jumped up high to catch a line drive,  touched 2nd base to catch the runner going to 3rd thinking it was a hit, and tagged the kid running from 1st to 2nd who also thought it had gone into the outfield.  My high point in little league.  Also my last year playing because the pitchers got much better and I couldn't even get walks.

And I tell you that to tell you THIS:

I got a lot better years later after college.  I had a temp Summer job with the navy and they had a softball team needing "anyone" and I became catcher.  Not much of a respected position in softball, but hey, I was on the team.  I there I was among big tall strong navy guys.

But I discovered I could hit the ball!  Pretty much anywhere I wanted...  I had completely changed from 12 to 22!  I became a fearless swinger.  My specialty was hitting between 1st and 2nd basemen, but when they shifted for that, I just hit between 3rd and shortstop.  And when they pulled the shortfielder (there were 10 players in that league), I just stepped into the plate and hit it over the right-fielder.  The right-fielder was always the worst player on any team...

What mattered to ME was that it DIDN'T matter that I was smaller than the navy guys because I could hit the ball wherever I needed to.

So all this is going through my mind while I watched 'Baseball' on DVD.  And there comes some celebrity saying that every fan thought they could do as well.  The difference in hitting between pros and "wannabees" was really only about 40'.

And then they showed close-ups of the pro hitters.  Their arms looked like my legs!  Only with more muscles.  LOL!

I'm sure glad I went to college and got a degree in something that demanded I "think" instead of "hit"...

To this day, I am "competent" at nearly anything sportswise, but not "good" at anything in particular.  And I'm satisfied with THAT!  So, don't worry, nothing profound here, I'm justunspooling some memories I guess.

You ever do that?

Random Thoughts

Why does "cleave" mean both to join and divide?

I used to be a Republican in the 70s, but they left me, so I vote Democrat (usually).

Can it get worse than seeing Donald Trump running for President?  Sure!  What if he actually won?

What happens when the umpire in baseball throws the ball directly to the pitcher?  If the ump throws a wild toss, can the guys on base run?

Why is a mouse when it spins?  OK, that's an old Dad joke.  He never showed much sense of absurdity, so I always remembered that one.  BTW, the answer is "The higher the much".  It shows that even staid old engineers have an inner sense of humor.

Speaking of Dad, he once bowshot a front-facing deer just as it lowered its head.  The arrow got it right in the forehead.  Which wasn't immediately fatal, but crashing into a tree trunk as it ran away was.  Likely the only "deer death by tree".  Even Dad felt sorry for the deer.  What a weird way to go.  At least it was sudden...

Cleaning old bathtub tiles is awful.  I found this stuff that I tried today (Kaboom with Oxy-Clean) that melted the old stuff right off.  And dont worry, this isnt an ad; they don't have the slightest idea I exist.

And speaking of bathrooms, I found something that cleans the inner shower curtain nicely.  Any house vinyl-siding wash... 

I seem focused on cleaning right now.  You want to protect your hands from harsh chemicals?  Hardware stores sell disposable latex gloves 200 for a few dollars.  Want permanent gloves that are longer on your arm than the household-style rubber gloves?  Pond supply companies sell gloves that cover almost the entire arm.

Have outdoor planter saucers that hold water and breed mosquitoes?  The hardware store sells packs of "mosquito dunks".  Those are time-release doughnuts that last a month and contain a bacteria that infests mosquito larvae and kills them.  They are designed for small ponds, but if you crunch one into small bits, you can sprinkle a pinch into plant saucers each month.  Harmless to people, pets, and beneficial insects.

Most folk remedies don't work.  Moles don't eat bits of chewing gum put into the tunnels and die from their stomachs being clogged.  Dandelion root pulp does not clear skin conditions.  Sage leaf paste does not regrow hair (if the hair follicles are dead, they're DEAD.  Forever)!  On the other hand, aloe does relieve surface skin itches, and willow bark teas does relieve minor discomforts (we call the synthetic compound "aspirin").

Hair is almost pure nitrogen.  Add it to your compost.

Speaking of compost, if you are a kind of "natural" person, add pee.   It's mostly water, and nitrogen with other minor organics and minerals.  Composting microbes LOVE that stuff.  And it repels varmints.  You might want to do it at night, though, if you have watchful neighbors...

And more about compost...  "They" say never to add meat or fats to your compost pile cuz it will attract varmints.  That's only because most compost piles are open.  In one enclosed with hardware cloth, it is a good addition for trace elements.  Seriously, do you think dead animals just lay around unreturned to the soil?

You can snip a lot of perennial plants and stick them in soil to root.  I did that with pink, purple, and white azaleas last Fall, and some are flowering now.  At 1" tall.

Buy some childhood toys.  Did you use a top as a kid?  Buy one and learn to use it again.  Gyroscopes are neat too.  And get one of those cheap radiometers that spin around in the bulb in sunlight.  Don't get old...

Old crockpots work better than the newer ones.  Those removable inserts don't heat evenly.

Speaking of old stuff...  If you are as old as I am, you remember your parents having the Circus glasses.  They are still available on eBay.

Changing a waterbed mattress is harder than it sounds.  Emptying the old one and refilling the new one takes a LOT of water and that water doesn't warm up for a couple days.  And woodstain that is supposed to take 8 hours to dry takes 3 days!

A bucketloader that removes snow from your street in big piles is not as nice as a real snowplow that just spreads it on the side of the road evenly.

My Alma Mater men's basketball team was #2 and lost to an average team.  Then was #6 and lost to a conference team that had gone 0-13.  The will be lucky to stay in the top 10.

Donald Trump criticized The Pope for criticizing his idea of building a wall to keep illegal immigrants out (saying building walls instead of bridges wasn't "Christian").  I'm not discussing THAT, but Trump said ""No leader, especially a religious leader, should have the right to question another man's religion or faith,".  Wait, isn't that what religious leaders DO?

I once read that every deer thinks every hunter is a shrub and that every turkey thinks that every shrub is a hunter.  So turkeys are hard to sneak up on.  But every squirrel thinks every noise (like a very slowly opened window) is a hawk! 

Baseball season is slowly beginning in training camps in the southern US.  I've read that half the teams are predicted to get to the World Series.  I hope that is only true for MY team and one other.

The past 3 Winters, my car battery died routinely.  So I bought something called a "battery minder" that keeps it charged.  So naturally, THIS WINTER the battery is staying charged just fine!

I was re-arranging the basement and there were several bags of particular bolts and nuts.  For some project I never finished.  I hate that!  Now I label such bags with the intended purpose.

"Hints From Heloise" have some of the dumbest hints I've ever seen.  I read one recently about knitting covers to the tube tops of squeeze ketchup and mustard bottles.  WHAT???  Some people have no real lives...

I think I will make up some fake "Hints To Heloise"...  Good mental exercise.

Keep a last year's calendar on the wall.  Makes you think about what day it REALLY is.

Walmart is infamous for double-bagging.  Today, they hit a new mark.  High mark or low, mark I cannot say.  They double-bagged, alone in a double-bag, a 4 roll pack of toilet paper!  What did they think was going to go wrong with a single bag?

Grocery-store shoppers drive me nuts.  What is the instinct that makes them all leave their carts in the middle of the aisle?  Half of them are oblivious and at least apologize.  But the other half seem offended when I politely do the "coff, coff, excuse me please?" request.

Do you have some favorite observations or complaints?

HAWKS!

WARNING, bird guts.  But not from cats...

There is a hawk around here lately.  I noticed it first a couple weeks ago.  It flew through the back yard catching nothing. 

Then last week, I happened to walk out onto the deck just as the hawk was going for a dove.  The hawk panicked and flew off.  The dove it was chasing panicked and crashed into the side of the house (flew away unharmed).

Yesterday morning, as the snow was falling, I looked out the bathroom window to see the finches at the thistle feeder and the other birds at the sunflower seed feeder.  None!  Huh...

Then right below the window, the hawk lifted off with some (ahem) mangled bird in its talons.  Well, that was sort of exciting; not something I've seen out the window before.

It took a few minutes to find out what happened (snow-blindness after just waking up from total bedroom darkness).  Then I found the spot.

It was some blackbird from the feathers.

The hawk apparently felt safe enough a few feet from the house!

And ate happily.

The other birds stayed away for 15 minutes.

I don't blame them.  But the lure of the feeders is strong.

They returned.  They have to.  Too much food.

I suspect that few birds live as long as they could.  They have many predators.  Hawks, weasels, snakes...  Cats too, but I doubt that cats kill as many as the other bird predators.  Hawks need a few birds every day.  So do weasels.  Snakes get some, but perhaps more eggs than adult birds.

So keep the cats from killing birds and it probably won't make much difference.  Fewer cats killing birds, more weasels and hawks.

But seeing that hawk fly off with the remains of the bird is caught WAS very impressive.

You never have a camera ready when the really SURPRIZE things happen!