Living In The Northwest

Dreams

2010-12-29T00:21:00.000-08:00

I went to sleep and dreamed that I wasn't dreaming anything.

I dreamed that I was dead, and there was no afterlife. I couldn't wake up because I didn't exist.

I dreamed that I was awake, but after a while, I realized I was really awake.

I dreamed a huge complex story in a huge landscape and hundreds of people and a massive never-ending building with endless rooms and corridors, and the story went on and on and on, and then I woke up and forgot the whole thing. I think the people who bought the dream for me are demanding their money back.

I dreamed I was in some one else's dream, and then he woke up and forgot the dream, and I disappeared.

I dreamed I was asleep and couldn't wake up. Then I woke up and found that I was still asleep.

I had the same dream for five nights in a row. Then I woke up in the morning and discovered only one night had passed.

I dreamed that Dustin wrote another paragraph to add to the end of the Constitution that said the Supreme Court did not have the power to interpret the Constitution, but to only decide cases based on the obvious plain language of the document. Then the Supreme Court said Dustin's paragraph didn't really mean that.

I dreamed that Wendy went to visit Holly the same time Holly went to visit Summer the same time Summer went to visit Wendy.

I dreamed I had insomnia.

I dreamed we were all sitting around a fire in Summer's back yard having a good time. No, wait. That really happened.

Free Desktop Sharing Software

2010-12-26T22:23:00.000-08:00

My sister-in-law has a new computer. She understands nothing about computers. I have already served my time in hell in years past providing computer assistance by remote-control over the phone. Not wanting a repeat of that, I went searching for something that would allow me to have direct access to her computer from my home. I found the sweetest program for this: TeamViewer

This program is simple and fast to download and install. Connect within moments. No need to know IP address or any other brain-burning techno-junk. With each new session, each computer is assigned a new ID and Password. All I have to do is have my sister-in-law tell me her ID and Password over the phone and I'm connected. Ten stars!

This company offers this software free to home users. They also have variations on how you may access a remote computer. Check it out, sauerkraut!

Mudslide Stitching

2010-12-12T13:19:00.000-08:00

We had 40 degree weather, plus or minus a degree, day and night for the past few days. There was also plenty of rain. In just one week, my large wheelbarrow was filled to within an inch to the top with rainwater. A new weather system moved in from Hawaii last night, bringing tons more rain and warmer temperatures. At 2:00 a.m., the temperature had risen to 54 degrees, and the rain was pouring relentlessly.

Around 9:00 a.m., there was a mudslide just down the street from us on Kitsap Way. Our house overlooks this intersection. Whenever it rains like this, I imagine my backyard ending up in the street.

You will notice something funny about the second photo. This is actually a composite of two photos. When I took the original photos, I was not thinking about joining them together. I did not stand in one spot and do a couple of pan shots. Looking at them to the computer, I remembered I had a program called PhotoStitch that came with my new Canon SLR. I opened the PhotoStitch program, dropped the two original photos in, and hit the button. In an instant, I had the above photo. The final step in the stitch tool is cropping. I purposefully did not crop so that you could see the complete results. Here are the two original photos:

I have stitched photos before using ULead PhotoImpact. The utility in that program simply joins two photos into one. I had to do all the "stitching" editing manually to make the edges blend together and the shades of colors agree. Sometimes it would take half an hour to do one stitch. Canon's PhotoStitch is awesome. Push of a button.

Fog In The Trees

2010-12-11T23:41:00.000-08:00

I like it when the fog is in the trees. It does that a lot around here.

Early morning view from our kitchen window

Groovie Green Smoothie

2010-12-11T23:28:00.000-08:00

I Fights To The Finish Cuz I Eats Me Spinach

The Brazilians make a refreshing cold drink with avocados and other fruit. It turns out to be a thick green milkshake that is ever so delicious. My wife is making these spinach milkshakes now, and they are equally delicious.

Recipe

5-6 oz spinach

1 banana (chopped and frozen)

2 handfuls of mixed frozen fruit

2 heaping scoops of vanilla Spirutein protein powder (optional)

Cold water. If fruit is not frozen, add miniature ice cubes and subtract that amount from the cold water.

Mix thoroughly in blender

Makes approximately 4 cups.

The bag of fruit shown here is sold at Costco and contains peaches, strawberries, blueberries, honeydew melon, etc. It provides variety without the normal prep time. You can substitute your own mix of course.

Bowls

2010-12-11T00:41:00.000-08:00

Our grandson Max made a pair of bowls for us for Christmas! They are made of yarn. Have you ever seen such a thing! Upon close examination, it appears he did an excellent job, too. That must have taken a lot of patience and care to get this to come out so well. Thanks Max!

Max wrote a letter to go with the bowls, and he said, "Good luck figuring out what to do with them." Well, it didn't take us long to figure that out. Gramma Faye was needing something to hold her Ghirardelli in, and I needed something to keep my bald spot warm.

Fun With GIFs

2010-11-27T22:28:00.000-08:00

Image files with the filename extension of ".gif" have special properties not available with other file types. GIF files, as they are called, can be set to have a transparent color. This property is used for protecting images from being downloaded from the internet. For example, an artist can display his art on a web page and prevent most persons from dowloading it by overlaying the image with a transparent GIF file. When a visitor to the web page attempts to save the image to his computer, he gets a transparent file instead of the image he is viewing.

GIF files can also be configured to present a series of images as a short animation. For example, someone recorded an interview with Emma Watson and created a GIF file from a portion of the video:

I imported this file into my GIF file editor. The editor displays the animation in one panel, and the series of images in another panel. I can edit the images individually and re-arrange them. From the above GIF file, I created the following:

Over the Hill

2010-11-21T18:27:00.000-08:00

GRANDMA FAYE SAYS: For my sister's birthday I treated her to dinner at Applebees Friday evening (her BD was Saturday.) She had no idea I was going to go all out with the purple beaded necklace, flaming glasses, and balloon--compliments of Party City--and Dave's contribution of the traffic cone which says, "CAUTION 60 YEAR OLD SENIOR MOMENT." He'd gotten it at work for HIS 60th BD and was happy to put it back into service for someone else's senior moment(s). It was pretty fun to surprise Mary with this stuff. She's threatening to give it all back to me when I "get there!" Yikes! I don't wanna think that far ahead, though it's coming up fast. The small "party hat" with curly ribbon is actually a gift card holder with a Ghirardelli dark chocolate/mint square and a Fred Meyer gift card inside. (Can't have a birthday party without chocolate!) We had a good time visiting, being goofy and celebrating this momentous occasion. Sisters are good ....except when they push you too fast down the gravelled hill in the little red wagon or tempt you to touch the electrified fence around the pasture. Of course, that was when I was only five or six. I've forgiven Mary since then. My skinned knees are healed and I never did touch the fence so.... YES, SISTERS ARE GOOD!

Clean Up

2010-11-14T12:54:00.000-08:00

Our fig tree had grown up into the power lines. Our grass was under several inches of leaves. On Friday, Wifey raked the leaves and filled the trailer to the top while I cut limbs with choppers and chain saw. She stomped down the leaves before we loaded the limbs into the trailer. We filled it to the top again and ran the load to the dump. The picture here shows the second load of leaves and limbs and branches, all from our front yard.

On Saturday, we took the second load to the dump right when they opened at 8:00 a.m. No waiting line! Then, we stopped in at the Pancake House in all our unwashed glory. That's the cool part about being old. You can look awful and nobody cares.

Changes

2010-10-30T17:31:00.000-07:00

Looking Out Our Living Room Window

The sun is packing his bags. The snow has set up shop in the mountains. The rain has rolled into the valley. The trees are putting away their summer outfits, and the birds have gone to their vacation homes down south. The squirrels are scurrying around, grabbing the last of their groceries before the stores close. Grandpa is replacing his woodstove bricks and checking his supply of firestarters. Grandma is dressing in her woolens, but throwing them off whenever there is a hot flash. The end of another year draws near, and the world spins her way closer to the Final Days.

Considerations of the Universe

2010-10-24T22:49:00.000-07:00

Source: Hubblesite.org

Sometimes, I allow myself to wander off into the universe and eternity, and I always get into trouble when I do that. I usually end up with the same old question, "Why is there anything? Why does anything exist (including God)? The fact that there is material strung throughout the immensity of space forever in all directions gets the wires in my head smoking hot.

Hop in your space ship, set the speed to 99 trillion light years per second, and after one million years, you are still going to be dodging planets and suns and galaxies. As you fly past solar systems, you will be passing civilizations that have been there for a hundred trillion billion years. Wow.

First Stephen Hawking, and last week some knucklehead from the United Nations, said that we ought to avoid contact with aliens from outer space because, "Humans are most likely not equipped to deal with aliens from outer space." After making that brilliant comment based on nothing but their imaginations, they both said that if we ran into these scary aliens, they would most likely just be bacteria anyway. The ultimate advice from the UN official was that since most people were unequipped to deal with aliens, then we need to allow the highly-trained specialist from the United Nations to do the job.

How can smart people can be So Dumb!

When someone tries to tell me there is no God, I remind him that one would have to be a god to know for a fact that there is no God. Unless you have godlike powers to penetrate the entire universe and all the dimensions of existence, you cannot say there is no such Being lurking in the shadows of the stars and constellations.

I also marvel at the scientists who bother to estimate the size of the universe. They are like the mouse in the field, attempting to calculate how many blades of grass there are in the world. They have no idea. Start with Infinity and add two, bozo!

These scientist have messed themselves up because they have to base their calculations on the idea that the current universe is the result of an explosion. This means there is an outer edge of the universe of material. Beyond that, presumably nothing. This is so laughable when you and I know that there is no space where there is no kingdom. Whoa! There's a mind-blower when you start thinking about it. Does that mean all the real estate is taken? Hmmm.

Norah Jones Performs at Farm Aid

2010-10-16T21:18:00.000-07:00

I am signed up at the Norah Jones website for all her news and announcements. I received an E-mail today with a link to the YouTube website for Willy Nelson's Farm Aid concert. Norah Jones performed there along with many other favorite musicians. Here is one of her songs. Be sure to set the resolution to at least 360 for excellent video. Then go to the link above and use their scrolling sidebar on the right to select any number of other performances. Lots of good music.

Pitting My Brain Against Itself

2010-10-06T16:46:00.000-07:00

I have this brain who is not my friend. He likes to torment me with repetitious "music" early in the morning or when I'm working around the house. My only relief is to turn on the radio or TV. My brain also refuses to remember important information, such as what I was going to say in front of the group, or the date of my anniversary, or the name of the person I'm talking to.

While strolling down the sidewalk after work today, I was trying to think how could I remember my new phone number. Then I hit upon the trick. I would turn my phone number into a ditty! It is the perfect length, when set to music, for driving me nuts. My brain fell for it. Immediately, I was singing my phone number repeatedly in my head, over and over, and I couldn't stop. By the time I got home, it was burned into my memory.

I think I'm going to do the same with my license plate number, important dates, and so on. I'll shock everyone with my new-found knowledge!

What is to come of this? Either I will memorize all sorts of stuff, or my brain will rebel and refuse to torment me anymore with these little songs. In either case, I gain the advantage.

Prince Poppycock

2010-09-09T01:03:00.000-07:00

We have been watching America's Got Talent, and they are now down to their Top Ten. Nine of them are fantastic. One I don't care about. My favorite and Top Pick is Prince Poppycock. He is Fantastic! See for yourself...

New High Chair Cushions

2010-09-06T21:05:00.000-07:00

My wife is an artist. She is extremely talented with sewing, cooking, decorating our home, drawing, and other such things. She has spent around 16 hours perfecting her latest creation. All so her little grandbabies can have a nice soft seat for their already padded bottoms.

Made With Love by Grandma Faye

This is the second set of cushions she has made for this high chair. The last one was completely worn out. Someone else gets to make the next set of cushions!

What We Did On Our Summer Vacation (Yesterday)

2010-08-15T08:46:00.000-07:00

Western Washington is fantastically beautiful when the sun shines, dismally dreary when the clouds reign. Most of the time, the clouds get their way and turn everything gray. As a result, every sunny day is rare. There is a sense of panic to use each one the best way possible.

Yesterday was Saturday, and it was one of those rare true summer days. Ninety-five degrees, no clouds, slight breeze. Any sane person would pack up a picnic and go to the mountains, head for the beach, or go boating. Unfortunately, we are insane, and we spend our precious sunny days working around the house.

My wife's day consisted of picking blackberries in the early morning and early evening, attending a wedding, and doing the laundry.

Cleaning Blackberries

I normally help pick berries, but this time, I had something more fun to do. I spent all day pressure-washing the south side of our house.

South Wall After High-Pressure Washing

When you stand on a ladder and spray the house, all the water comes right back on you. So it wasn't so bad being outside in the heat because I was soaked the whole time. I used the little electric pressure washer I bought at Costco. The spray nozzle makes a circular spray about an inch in diameter. It was powerful enough to blast the paint off immediately, but it was still like scrubbing the side of the two-story house with a quarter.

We have two more days of hot weather, and then it will decline into normal. As usual, I have that still, small voice of panic in my bosom quietly screaming at me to hurry before the rain comes.

Introducing Jackie Evancho

2010-08-12T20:17:00.000-07:00

Hold on to your heart. She's already stolen mine!

August Rain

2010-08-09T22:24:00.000-07:00

Friday was hot

Friday was dry

I scraped paint

til I thought I'd die

Saturday had

a different tune

It rained all day

From Sun to Moon

House Of Mystery

2010-08-07T09:50:00.000-07:00

The rental house across the street has always been a great mystery to us. Whoever lives there loves to congregate outside in the front regardless of the time of day or the weather. It seems only a good rain can force the occupants inside. Even when it is freezing outside, they will sit in the front with the front door wide open. The house has been vacant for over a year, but now we have new neighbors! And here they are, dutifully filling the entrance instead of sitting in the spacious living room on furniture.

The occupants have usually been sailors or low-lifes who like to sit outside and drink beer and yell at each other. This time it is a family or two families - I cannot tell yet. They have so far entertained us with a daily shouting match from the adults with lots of profanity. The children also like to run around the street swearing at each other.

There is a second mystery to this house: From our street, they have to climb stairs and go up a steep sidewalk to get to the house. However, the back of the house is level with that street, and it is a short, straight shot from the car to the back door. Where do they park their car? Even when they buy groceries? In the front.

Happy Birthday, Wifey-Pies!

2010-08-04T21:24:00.000-07:00

This is my wife. Isn't she cute! I took her to Anthony's on the waterfront in Bremerton for her birthday, and we had a wonderful meal. We also played Scrabble with our Travel Scrabble game while we waited for our dinner and afterwards while we had dessert.

They told me on the phone that they had a little piece of cake and a scoop of ice cream, but this is what they brought out! Wow it was SO GOOD! It is called a Chocolate Melt Cake. When you cut into it, a soft goo of chocolate oozes out from the center. It was the perfect dessert.

Everything was good until the cold set in. My little wifey gets cold every time she has a meal, and by the time we were ready to leave, she was freezing in the air-conditioned building. So I sent her outside to warm up a little while I paid the check.

One More Attempt At Blogging

2010-08-04T01:13:00.000-07:00

This is Max, my grandson who lives in Texas. He is ten years old. And that's his pet frog he's holding. He recently started his own blog, and it looks cool. He's been posting every day. I talked to him on the phone a few days ago, and said that I had tried several times to make a blog, but it never worked out. I would write something and then think, "Who would read this garbage?" And then I would delete it and there you go. No blog.

Max, in his infinite wisdom, offered a simple solution: Just post a photo and write something about it. I was speechless. Wow, what a simple idea! Come to think of it, that's probably what all the popular bloggers do. So here I go again, trying out Max's method. Thanks, Max!