More Musings with 'Oldest Living Blogger'.....

Now that I've got a camera with a really nice zoom (meaning 'really big') I can at last have a look at many things not formerly seen in close-up, like this.....

Looking at it, I got wondering if the guys who operate these cranes develop any chronic breathing problems from being hunched over and looking down most of the time. Do they take breaks to straighten up and inhale deeply? And did you notice that old trumpet-style car horn mounted above his cab?  Can you imagine this?......" I blew the horn, Ossifer, but that damned bulldozer kept right on coming...."

And after taking the "Feeding Frenzy" picture of the two backhoes the other day, I thought maybe a close-up of one might be nice....

Considering the kind of bucks this guy makes, he doesn't look like a very happy camper, but then he's got both hands full, it's hot, it's noisy, it's dusty, and there's no pretty girls going past even if he could take time to look at them.

And I sure hope he doesn't dig too close to the base of that Hydro pole, because there's a sectionalizing disconnect switch on it (See that handle about level with the backhoe operator's head?) - which means that it can be used to join or to separate two separate distribution feeder circuits. So if he knocks it over or it falls down from lack of sufficient dirt around the base, then a lot of people are going to be very upset. And if that power line falls on his backhoe, he could very likely get fried like bacon. And a lot of those guys really don't understand what's involved with these seemingly harmless-looking poles with wires on them. They aren't there just for the pigeons to roost on, guys.

Moving right along, (and it's about time!) I got my new glasses on Thursday,
and I'm now trying to get used to them. Actually, I'm not! I'm still wearing my
older ones at the moment, because these feel better, and they've been in the family now for years.....and I broke the frame on them the other day, trying to bend one of the temples for a better fit. An expensive hand-made Japanese frame. No spare parts available. So I fixed it myself, by sliding a short length of
plastic tubing over the broken temple and then over its matching one on the other side, which I cut off to get a better fit for the tubing. So now, instead of two separate temples and ear-pieces, there's a curving but flexible plastic tube running from the hinge on one side around behind my head and onto the remaining piece of temple on the other side. It looks OK, it fits my head very well, and my glasses can't possibly fall off while I'm bending over. In some respects (including price: 88 cents at the building supply store) it beats the hell out of the originals. So I'm still wearing these, because they still work, and they work even better right now than they did before! Necessity being the mother of invention. I showed these to the folks at the Optometry where I get my eye wear and they were quite impressed. The girls were showing them to other staff members, and saying I ought to patent my idea. (Nah! I wouldn't live long enough to cash in on it.)