It has been a whirlwind indeed, and I have not had time to sort my thoughts, let alone my pictures, such as they are. We are (or probably were by the time anyone is reading this [anyone? At least realism is setting in, ed.] back in Ottawa, eldest offspring in tow, and now boat to be in tow as she and hubby are off to fetch the tow truck … as in the truck that will do the towing. We hope no tow trucks are involved as we take our caravan to the cottage, van with kids and dog, truck with parents and boat, but I did renew our CAA membership before hand, including long distance towing, just to frustrate the gods in their choices of ways to toy with their peeps.
But to tide you over until we get to Sunday at the cottage when the 60th wedding anniversary is over, and I can chill for two seconds, here is a picture of my favourite Quebec place name which also gives you a pretty good idea of yesterday:
And just so you will know I am still alive, me in the morning yesterday, leaning over to help include Mouse, at Les Jardins de La Republique provincial park in New Brunswick:
But now back to the races, or in my case the hobbles … and hope to be Bacq soon. I miss myself.
I hope you have a fruitful Friday …
Hi WoodPecker.
Site going sideways on me again. The old “duplicate comment” thingy and no edit feature.
Another attempt at the tune.
Good day. I hope the edit buttons are back – there were some updates lurking.
Woodpecker – learning to tie fishing flies while looking for the Higgs Boson Particle will make you go blind …
Back home safe and soundish, and head out this morning to take a picture of the vaunted blue hibiscus and both stalks had not broken, but had severely bent about 6 inches from the ground … leaves still green and all so I put in a stake and will hope for the best. I have learned a great deal in my cursory attempt to find a plant that looks quite like this one and obviously there are wacky plant biologists out there who breed crazy plants. But this much seems true – an hibiscus is a mallow, which makes me very happy because you can’t get marshmallows with marshmallow in them anymore but you can make them at home and it is one of my pipe dreams to make an old-fashioned marshmallow with actual marshmallow in it. I think it is meant to help soothe stomachs …. And in most locations a perennial hibiscus will die off to the ground in winter and slowly spread. I don’t know if I am just being obtuse but I cannot seem to find a picture on the web with similar foliage and while there is one bud there are no flowers out yet so the proof will have to be in the later mallow pudding.
And while I put you to sleep with horticulture, here was the site that seemed to tell one in a straightforward manner what to expect from the hibiscus family in words that even I could understand, as in it answered this important question simply:
(It was written with a South Carolinian audience in mind.)
http://www.clemson.edu/extension/hgic/plants/landscape/flowers/hgic1179.html
The bud on yours looks very similar to mine but the leaves are different. There is a neighborhood garden center that is family owned and has been around here for a long time, I’m going to go talk to them on Sat and see what I can find out and will report back.
Haven’t seen the robins around my birdbath much lately and i’m not sure why.
Oh and in my mind’s eye the flower was about 8 inches in diameter – but maybe it was more like 6, but certainly not 3-4.
Ok and I think this came up before, I have to refresh the page to make the edit option appear.
Crossed in the ether … I will also ask the fellow at our market and see if they have anymore or could name it.
The wildlife at the cottage was rampant … the water is up almost two feet and there were frogs galore. Brother saw a little rattlesnake. Osprey in the nest around the corner. Very busy. Hummingbirds in Penetang at the lillies.
i can’t believe you knew what that picture was Xty – well almost. i suspect a certain engineer may have helped you.
below is a picture of my castor beans. they are definitely not a mallow. the beans are the source of castor oil, and also ricin, a potent poison used by the KGB.
i have only picked two tomatoes so far. another extremely late year. luckily i planted these. i made Pico de Gallo for the first time yesterday, substituting tomatillos for the tomatoes. i have plenty of bell and chile peppers rolling in now also.
No engineering help – but I have learned a lot through osmosis.
Went to follow up at the Ortho Clinic at the hospital and things are looking pretty good. I am going to post exciting pictures.
Original fracture:
Immediately post op:
And today:
And in reverse as well where you can just see the line of the break, kind of following the white line of my bum:
The fragment has pretty much attached, and the funny bottle brush thing is the head of the screw, which then goes into a sleeve that allowed compression (the screw shaft can slide in and out) while the bone knitted – bones needing compression to grow and be strong.
Go back in six weeks – doctor super nice today and all in all I am surely through the worst. Had to speak to an osteo nurse because of age and falling and breaking bones, but it really doesn’t seem likely – couldn’t answer any questions to point to such a problem – no ancestors had posture or broken bones, I did impact sports, including karate in my late thirties and forties and we sparred and threw ourselves around and practiced falling. I am constantly bruising myself and have never managed to break a bone despite my incredible ability to be a klutz. So that isn’t really worrying me. Many other things to worry about, why add one?
And good morning, and beware I am making another appalling movie, stringing together my not very inspirational photos from the trip to Miramichi (somehow not quite in order) and set to the dulcet tones of the Captain who did such a Canadian bilangue speech that I just have to share. This is really how it often can be, living in Canada. And yes. there was a gentleman from Virginia who was looking into his ancestral past.
your post op pics a tough act to follow, but i must proceed. i had prepared my breakfast, thoughts and a picture before logging in…
my dream job – to cook for people that don’t have a lot of money. all included this mighty breakfast cost less than $1.50. pork shoulder on sale at .99/lb. tomatillo salsa made from garden veggies. in season potatoes. i rubbed the pork with instant espresso coffee powder, ground allspice, and adobo paste, then smoked it over apple wood on the baby Weber for about 3 hours. baked potatoes on the grill also – secret – boil or bake potatoes ahead of time for your breakfast potatoes. peel the skin off once cold and prior to frying. yup – i am living the dream, though it doesn’t pay much at all.
everybody have an awesome day. everything you got is right now.
Luckily my pictures weren’t actual photos … must show ignorance … what is adobo paste? And yes to always cooking too many potatoes.
Enjoy you next half hour … the movie is slowly uploading (I don’t think youtube and google much like iMovie) and soon you can nap through 6 painful minutes. There is actually about 40 minutes of the audio, so any gluttons for punishment can listen to the whole thing once I put it up because I will throw up the whole mp3, and then you can throw it up and out.
for you Pete
sorry Xty. i need to refresh this page before posting. skipping over you was not intentional. i only rarely do “iggy”. 🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobo
you can make your own adobo dry rub or paste, but i live down the street from a Mexican grocery that has it cheap enough and they need the business. if they close down, the neighbohood’s nearest grocery store is at least 5 miles away as i live in the typical dead mid-western city downtown, post WalMart apocalypse.
Even worse than Canada, America redesigned itself for the automobile and it was a terrible mistake. We are surrounded by small groceries, and also have two major chains within walking distance – less than 2 kilometres. Not trying to make you feel bad, it just happened that a really great market opened recently with local meat, etc., and we already had granola stores around and about. But I do live in a pretty nice pocket of Canada – but it is hard to find the kind of vast roadways and one story mall lands that you find throughout the States. I was horrified to learn that your interstates were the genius brain-child of Eisenhower, so impressed with what they could accomplish with war-time massive scale insane projects that he had to pave the country for his own glory. We do have the trans-Canada highway, and a rail-line, but they forgot to pave everything in-between.
gee whiz. here i thought everything was “awesome”, well at least that is what we are being told. but even using the official gubmint numbers, something really plainly stinks.
“How can the economy grow by roughly one-third in real dollars while real median household income drops like a rock and real wages/salaries are essentially unchanged for 15 years? ”
my answer is that i believe all the gains “trickled” up… while the (edit) f******g wing-nuts with their completely discredited theory and policy are to this very day still going for broke… as in everybody else but them.
well, argue the facts if you wish…
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogaug15/GDP-wages8-15.html
sorry for running over you again. some more progressive, er i should say evil communities, are revitalizing their down towns. but it is going to take a long time for cities like mine to have the change in attitude, and also find the money. this town was for all intents and purposes a General Motors company town for almost 60 years. not only was GM the biggest employer in the city of 60,000, but also the entire county. when GM picked up and left, it soon became starkly apparent that they had invested nothing in Janesville’s future. but such is the soulless and myopic evil incarnate entity known as the corporation.
btw – the U.S. interstate system was actually designed after the Nazi’s brainchild, the “Autobahn”. its first and foremost objective was to enable fast and efficient movement of troops and war machinery. economic benefits were a known and acceptable “externality”.
man, am i on a roll today or what. (way too much coffee)
Yes many evil people were inspired by the ability of the war machine to transform society. And there are plenty out there who still believe that “the economy” depends on the defence industry. It beggars the mind. Kind of literally. But I am sure it was Eisenhower who designed the interstates.
That was wikipedia, but I think we can accept these basic facts.
Except for the construction costs which I expect were actually much higher and probably do not include maintenance, making them a complete farce.
Yikes – I didn’t realise you could hear me editorializing so much on the audio – “that’s what you’ve been supporting”, “wow” – “ballast wharfs – that’s really interesting” … that would be me – and the loudest vote on no, you are not talking too fast – I am a speedy talker and do wish people could listen more quickly.
I think Roger what’s his name has scrubbed anything that says Supertramp off youtube. I always liked this song a lot. One of the first bands I saw in concert. Maybe this will play.
This seems odd, but I feel much better than I should. I couldn’t really lift my head on Saturday and now I am looking forward to going out for dinner on the last day of my daughter’s visit. Calories in. Because to be horribly honest – I now seem to only weigh 103 pounds, and 125 was awesome, and 130 was my black belt weight. But this has gotten silly. Eating every carb in sight. All my life I have watched my weight and now I can’t find it …
Sorry. I was already cued up (too much action jamming the site!)
Off to watch and listen.
I really don’t expect anyone to listen to 40 minutes of franglais, it just tickles my Canadian funny bone some how. We were the people who were late. But we tried to drink our way into the captain’s favour.
i too only just noticed your video in the side bar. i will check it out after a mandatory daily bike ride.
but first, my retort to above… this is what i meant by “designed after”. speaking of franglais, i think any disagreement is due at least in part to the vagaries of language.
“In the immediate aftermath of the war, Eisenhower was the military head of occupied Germany. Writer Phil Patton pointed out in Open Road that in this capacity, “Eisenhower oversaw the ‘debriefing’ of the Reich, the creation of a series of reports that included close study of the Autobahns.”
The autobahn was a rural network, without segments into and through Germany’s cities. This seemed appropriate to Eisenhower, but in Washington, Thomas H. MacDonald and Herbert Fairbank of the U.S. Public Roads Administration (the name of the Federal Highway Administration’s predecessor during the 1940’s) saw the absence of metropolitan segments as a flaw that made the autobahn a poor model for America’s future. Unlike Germany, traffic volumes were high in America where car ownership was widespread. Congestion in America’s cities had long been a serious complaint that MacDonald and Fairbank would address in their vision of the Interstate System. (For information, see “The Genie in the Bottle”)
In short, where Germany had intended to build the highways first and the vehicles second, America had the vehicles and no clear plan for building the highway network.
For Eisenhower, the vision of the autobahn was strong in his mind as he became President. Years later, he would explain that “after seeing the autobahns of modern Germany and knowing the asset those highways were to the Germans, I decided, as President, to put an emphasis on this kind of road building. … The old [1919] convoy had started me thinking about good, two-lane highways, but Germany had made me see the wisdom of broader ribbons across the land.””
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/reichs.cfm
I wasn’t disagreeing, but just knew it got enacted later. Yes, nothing like those efficient Nazi’s – even Italian trains ran on time!
Yes Yes Ok, I was just thinking that after watching the video…only that I’ll have to get my mind right for it. Fascinating stuff tho, to get a look around and learn a little bit while you are there.
I went on a company sponsored trip to Las Vegas once and the helicopter tour (that actually flew us into and landed in the Grand Canyon) and the extra couple of days I spent visiting the Hoover Dam (went all the way down to the very bottom of that monster) and just riding around was so much more fun and rewarding than anything that the Vegas strip had to offer. Thanks for sharing. Go eat something. Pete.
The Hoover Dam – a mega project that has had the most appalling long term effects on the world, including that wholesome strip, so well named. I think I would be terrified to be at the bottom of it – and at the top of the Grand Canyon. I’ll take the top of the dam and the bottom of the canyon for two hundred, Alex …
But dams are amongst the grossest environmental things we have concocted. I am pretty sure if I remember correctly that Confessions of an Economic Hitman might have started with a story about a dam …
I do appreciate cheesy local tours – nice to know what the locals think and feel for one thing, and there is a common man tone to the east coast that I like … hating the rich and quite genuinely not wanting their useless crap. I am worried though that if I went to Vegas it would just put me in a complete rant mode, unable to enjoy even a renewal of vows in an Elvis chapel.
Agreed . (the dam) but still an absolute engineering marvel, truly fascinating structure and place. And if the place collapses while you’re at the bottom, what the hey, I’ve never worried too much about stuff like that.
And the very first thing that struck me once we were air borne was all of the sprinkler systems watering the excessive number of golf courses and peoples yards, you know their drinking water….stuff that really blows my mind…and now the water is gone and the rivers are drying up and people actually seem surprised and confused.
If you ever think you might be a dumb ass on this planet, all you have to do is look around a little to get your confidence back.
The coolest thing I saw in Vegas was ( and I’m not sure what it’s called..fresco?) was a lobby that connected a couple of hotels, where they have the indoor gondola rides and the ceiling was painted so well with such a magnificent blue that you could swear that you were outside, truly impressive.
Local weather guys and gals have been pimping a severe weather forecast for days now. They all claim to have the latest and best “Super Doppler” technology and they had me hoping for 2-3″ of rain (and I’m quite fond of storms), current radar not looking so promising.
must be consulted.
Yes, I think I would actually be able to enjoy the faux Venice etc., and if I had someone else’s money, I would happily play black jack I am sure.
The bottom of the dam isn’t a fear about it breaking, it is claustrophobia – it is the towering over one … like inverse vertigo. Not rational. I expect they monitor that sucker closely. Many people must want to destroy it. I think Barbara Streisand turned out to use an incredible amount of water a day on lawns etc., and had something like 10,000 dollars worth of fresh flowers flown in daily … a truly great environmentalist. Like Larry David’s wife who turned out to be having an affair with the guy building their 10,000 square foot summer palace, which was undoubtedly super “green”. I remember that because he made some comment about turning on all the lights once she was gone …
David Suzuki and his 50 bus tour …
And 50 million people living on the California coast and no desalination plants … because they would be bad for the environment – but a dust bowl is just fine. It felt like you were surrounded by flushing toilets, draining any remaining creeks. It is so wet where I live that the contrast was stunning.
I have that c(longword) trouble as well. And now that you mention it, it’s scarier looking down from the top than being down at the bottom. And everything was clearly old and worn. Except the turbines which were a feat in themselves and very well maintained.
We’ve screwed up a lot of stuff here with the land. Still a lot of beautiful places and pockets all over, but sadly it’s getting difficult to get to many unless you are wealthy.
I used to dream that I could always just get in a car and just drive away to somewhere else, but even that is difficult these days.
Hey Xty, was going to ask you to rate this on your cheesy scale. I don’t think it’s cheesy at all, but I think many do.
73 tonight is going to feel like an arctic blast and I currently have thunder. f-it i’m opening some windows.
trying to keep up, and good point about desalination, i’m pretty sure that our navy has fantastic technology already (ships at sea and such), stinks of money and politics as usual, apparently it hasn’t become profitable for the right people yet.
you were practically begging for it. may i present a cheesy local tour, of the Rock River, by bicycle. 😯 🙄 😮
I was wondering about you earlier. And if it’s not to personal to ask, where you raised there or near-a -bouts where you are now.
i grew up about twenty miles from here. i have lived further away, but still in Wisconsin. i do regret moving back here because the economy is beyond wasted. we cannot seem to escape this place – one of us (my wife or i) must find a decent job somewhere else to get us out of here. we plainly have run out of time, out of money. never in our worst nightmares did we expect the economy to tank so thoroughly, and especially then to not ever recover. and the Janesville area has been hit worse than the rest of Wisconsin, even much of the USA too.
but as you can see from the pictures, there is some peace and quiet. sadly very few residents here even know about these trails. no one walks, rides bikes, etc. fat and stupid just like GM wanted. that is the in your face and ugly truth!
i like your and Xty’s conversation above. i believe capitalism is finished. but it is going to be a rough transition to a better place. way more than half of the population of the world will have to be completely miserable before things change, what i’ll call nothing left to lose. but come hell or high water, the concentrated power, money, and corruption will be beaten down. history repeats.
well, more than you asked for, but i am chatty today. 🙂