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Woke up to news of a 7.0+ earthquake that had hit Haiti.
The Haitians had plenty of problems to deal with without this…It put the economic problems of the world firmly in perspective for me.
Misc
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design, earthquake
I started the day with a doodle: Cat on a bottle. It’s obviously not a cat – A cat with that length of neck wouldn’t do well! I know that from experience….
It used to be that respect and trust was earned. An apprentice would live with his teacher from age 14 to 21. If the apprentice was a good learner, and the Master a good teacher, he would become a respected craftsman at 21 and the cycle continued. During the formative years of his life, the boy would live in the Master’s home, on his floor, by his fire. The Apprentice would pick up the skills and knowledge of the Master, building a reputation for good or bad – character, temperament and skills. When he was finished with the apprenticeship he would have proved he was worthy of whatever respect he received.
We moved from this labour-intensive method of passing on skills to respect for intellectual endeavours. And now to virtual… Just because I type “15,000 people in Wisconsin have XYZ disease.” it doesn’t make it so. If I quote someone else on the internet for the “fact” it still doesn’t make it so. But we seem to believe what we read that is written by ANYONE. If I told you the same thing face-to-face you might be able to pick up on my lie – I am not a convincing liar. The look in my eye, my body language, the tone of my voice. All of these unintentional interactions are lost on-line.
“lol” doesn’t mean I actually laughed out loud – it means I acknowledge that someone made a “funny”. I might be just being polite. The façade I present on the internet is how I want you to see me, but it might be blown away by how you felt after shaking my hand.
The rise of social networking makes instant “friends” of unlimited numbers of virtual people. But we know nothing real about them because in fact they don’t exist. Reality is airbrushed (Photoshop tutorial to follow…?)
The truth was always what we chose to believe at the time. Now it is difficult to know who to believe.
Here is my 2009 collection of interesting sites found on the web. Some are links to blogs or web sites. Some are podcasts.
Happy New Year!
The next estimated Jackpot in Massachusetts is $68 Million, or about $41.4 Million if you opt for cash. That is a LOT of money..
I would be thrilled beyond words to win a million dollars. (I was actually quite pleased to win $10 on a $2 scratch ticket yesterday.) But, I don’t think winning $41 million would make me 41 times more thrilled.
Forty other families could be as thrilled as me, if the lottery people limited the winnings to a single million apiece, and paid out to more people.
One of the joys of a home in the woods is the plethora of furry animals you can watch cavorting on your lawn, with and without their young, in the early Spring. They are very attractive until they decide to take up residence with you and your family, in your home.
I was less than thrilled when a squirrel decided to prepare the area directly behind my bed in our attic for a nest site last Spring. It was noisy and I was concerned by the possibility that I would lose electric service to my upstairs. Being grumpy due to lack of sleep, I banged on the wall and told it in some quite rude words that it needed to leave. The squirrel was seen to “fly” from the attic vent across the lawn, landing a bit unsteadily in the woods surrounding the lawn, and scurried off … I felt guilty and even checked to see if it was OK.
A few days later, she was back! I borrowed a “hav-a-hart” trap and enticed her with chunky peanut butter into this fiendish contraption. This took a couple of days, probably because I used a store brand peanut butter – but I was thrilled to finally relocate her in a conservation area a couple of miles away.
Not having a head for heights (abject fear of anything over 3 rungs on a stepladder) I cut away the wall board from inside the room, and screwed in place a BarBQ grill over the inside of the vent. Large amounts of insulation had been wadded up and removed from a large area of the wall and I was patting myself on the back for not waiting any longer as I re-insulated and replaced the patch of wall board.
The war escalated this Spring! I had been very complacent about the vent at the other end of the attic being less accessible. As a consequence, a slat of the vent was promptly removed – no messing about this year – insulation was ripped about and seen wafting down onto the driveway, and a sun lounger on my deck looks like it exploded and the guts fell out!
A family of squirrels was born a few inches behind my pillow and could be heard squeaking at all hours of the night. I didnt have the heart to remove the mother by the Plan A method. Also, I didnt fancy dealing with orphaned squirrel babies in the attic. After a week or so of sleepless nights and sleeping on the couch I thought I had reached my limit…
In the early hours of one morning, a raccoon was looking through my skylight! The next day, the squirrels were gone. Sad, but apparently nature really is cruel. The bad news was that raccoon babies make even more noise than squirrels!
There was no chance that this mother was fitting in the trap…I felt doomed.
Once the babies started moving about I scoured the internet for ideas. Moth balls were mentioned… Lavender moth balls do not work.
I don’t know what comes higher up than a raccoon in the food chain but I am sure I don’t want them in my attic. Plan C was short, sweet and brilliantly effective. I softened their resolve with 12 hours of country music played full volume up against the wall…then just when they thought I was done, switched to talk radio.
This is the final cure for attic rodents : Loud, unrelenting talk radio.
Keep England’s countryside open for all. If this law is not repealed, some of England’s ancient pathways will cease to be available for public use because they haven’t been registered. This is an important resource for all.
If you are British – sign this petition online at #10 Downing Street
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