'Showbiz 101' - The Show Must Go On.....

From USA Today

If Will Rogers was still with us, and some of us wish he was, he might very well ask, "So who's running this country these days?.... Us or those crafty Spin-doctors?"

He might also say, "Our country would be a lot better off if our politicians worked half as hard for us as they do for themselves." 

And now, for Tommy and all us kids, a message...

For Tommy, an apology for the 'forbidden words'

My abject and sincereablish apologies, Old Friend - I meant to say it is now just
seven decans plus four days until the Winter Solstice and Saturnalia once again, when the singing and dancing, feasting and drinking, revelry and wenching will once again be legendary,during which the merchants will derive nearly half of their annual revenues and us uncouth and only semi-washed peasants will be again enslaved for the coming year, paying for our momentary pleasures and longer lasting sins.....so here's a little music to soothe the savage beast in us.

Today's weather here...

If you think this is a little gloomy looking, just wait until I tell you that there's only 74 more days until Christmas - and all I want for Christmas is the 2nd of January!

Those little Pharaoh Ants: little-known fact -

I frequently re-warm partial cups of coffee, and I usually put a paper plate in the microwave as a 'catch-all' before using the oven. This time, when I put in the paper plate, I didn't notice that a Pharaoh Ant was hitch-hiking on it. I gave the cold coffee 22 seconds in this 1,200-watt oven, and when I opened the door to remove the coffee, that little ant was still very much alive, and running around on the plate as large as life. Go figure! The little bastards can survive microwaves for more than 22 seconds. No wonder it's so difficult to get rid of them if they're that tough.

However, even though baits and traps don't always work, because the ants are so small they walk right under them, and we aren't able to use insecticides around food preparation areas which those ants dearly love, there are other ways for us to fight back. The 99% pure isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol) from the drug store in a sprayer bottle such as an old Windex bottle works on contact to zap the little buggers without making a huge mess of drapes or upholstery. If they're running around on your kitchen counters or other places where you can't safely use chemicals to zap them, you can get a roll of painters' tape or masking tape in the 2-inch width, and cut off short strips which you can use to slap an ant found where other methods shouldn't be used. When the tape gets used several times and begins to lose its stickiness, toss it and start a new one. This works on desks, computers, or anywhere you shouldn't use a spray. It's not maybe as effective as hitting the little bastards with a hammer, but your stuff will last longer.

And even though these ants are small, they can pack a punch beyond their size. They do have a stinger, and if they use it, it can result in a small welt or wart-like growth developing on your skin, which will survive treatments with iodine, etc., and persist for up to three years before finally fading away. And if you get one of those in an X-rated location, you will not enjoy it, trust me.

"Seeing is believing" - It's also expensive!

Which one of these is the same as the others?
Answer is:- "None of the above!" 
But you're looking at $1,660 worth of vision products here, with my former prescription and its broken temples frames on the left, ($760) and the latest new ones ($900.) on the right. They all brag 'space-age metal frames' - Yeah, Sure! so's my ass! And they both have progressives lenses with Transitions option for automatic 'sunglasses', and they both have the Crizal coatings made famous by Essilor. So what's the difference, really? About $140, plus the updated prescription to tweak the settings for my right eye, which has been deteriorating slightly faster than the left one during the past five or six years.
These new ones, according to Doctor Debbie, and she should know, give me slightly better than 20/20 vision, which just proves that keeping the same Optometrist from when you first got prescription glasses away back when really pays off in the long run. The technology has improved wonderfully since the early 1980s, and Debra has polished her skills with time too, and the result is that nobody does it better. Want proof? I can spot a pretty gal from just as far away right now as I could in 1980! And it doesn't get any better than that!

So what's with all that plastic tubing on them, then? I'm so glad you asked! And I am happy to explain - it's an "instant repair" for a broken temple on the frame
above left. It worked so well, I went back for more tubing when I got the new ones, because using this idea I've discovered makes the glasses practically automatically self-aligning, and if the loop of tubing is cut the exact right length then there's no way you're going to lose your glasses or have to keep pushing them back up your nose to get the lenses close enough to your eyes for the correct optics relationships to your eyeballs. And for those who aren't aware of it, my spies tell me that with progressives lenses, the closer you can keep them
to your eyes, the better they work for you. And a note here: the newer ones have a whole other thing going on with their 'keyholes' of magnification now, and those have been modified and widened for smoother transitions from top to bottom and side to side. So it's even easier now to go around looking for your glasses while not realizing you're still wearing the little beauties! And we've all done that at least once.....

A little more 'this & that'...Oldest Living Blogger returns.

What can I say?
The Rocky Horror Picture Show is playing in a continuous loop on 'Bravo' as we speak. Just try concentrating on doing your blog, while the ravishing Susan Sarandon is prancing around in her black bustier and matching bikini brief with garter belt and black nylons. My Gawd, Janet, have you no shame? ( You sexy wench, you!)

Meanwhile, back here in Obscurity......

The latest in our continuing series of sunsets, while our gorgeous fall weather continues. That construction crane to the left of the sun's orb is at the site of a new tower going up just on the western fringes of Park Royal North, which is the north half of our famous Park Royal Mall, the southern half of which is built on our natives' home and native land claims pending as we speak - if you get my drift. In other words, the local buckskins own the land that most of it sits on, and they're collecting about $4-million rent on it, which probably explains why the nearby reservation, which also owns the land on which the north end of the famous Lions Gate Suspension Bridge sits, are now sporting bigger and better wheels and bigger and better wigwams than you & I can reasonably afford.
And they don't want this country back - they just want us to pay up promptly and shut the hell up about it. Did you know we have official aboriginal bands comprised of as few as a dozen suspicious-looking individuals?  And they're preparing to file a land claim as we speak? Oh, Canada! Our Home On The Natives Land.... Oh Say Can You See?.....Which way's the goddamned border?

Climatologically speaking, it's like this:-

The Chestnuts in the sprawl across the street are coming ripe, the maples are turning, and over on 3rd Street in West Van, another neighbor's vines are looking very colorful on the back fence. It's Autumn in West Vancouver, Folks!

The Morning Snow Report: What ? It's still summer!

Our lovely weather continues!

Plastic Bags 101: Air-tight, water-tight storage.

Please click inside the picture to enlarge it for reading the directions. This is how
to re-use those plastic grocery bags, if you're stuck for an air-tight or water-tight baggie for something like Junior's lunch, or some leftovers you don't want left out in the air to dry out, or whatever. Just don't let the kids try to put the cat inside one of these.... In the picture, the bag is a Safeway grocery bag, and it contains water, to test the bag for leaks and for strength. It passed on both counts. Thanks, Safeway! And as you notice, once you've sealed the bag with its new bottle top, you can then still use its handles to carry it or hang it up somewhere. 

Our sunsets keep coming.......

It must be luck, because it isn't good management - those clouds are basically jet trails scattered by the upper atmosphere's winds, to stretch them out into what looks like long thin clouds, but they're really high altitude pollution, if we were to get technical about all that. But it makes for a very nice picture. And our recent run of great weather continues, and today being Thanksgiving, we're duly thankful for it. So "Thank You, Heavenly Father, Everywhere You Are!"

The Sunsets of October continues....

This is a three-image panorama, thanks to Microsoft Research's 'I.C.E.' ( Image Composite Editor) which you can freely download here. As you can see, it does an excellent job of seamlessly combining images - and there's no manual matching required - this program reads and assembles multiple images itself, and it even has an 'automatic crop' feature to resolve the finished panorama to the largest possible dimensions within a rectangular 'landscape' configuration.
If you haven't already tried this one, you really should.

Summer continues, and we're lovin' it....

This flew past.....

While I was trying to get this one....

So here they both are! I hope you enjoy them...

Got my new glasses....

I had my annual eye test at the end of July, and the result wasn't a great deal different from the prescription I've been using, so my kindly lady Optometrist said that it was up to me- I could get new glasses or not, whatever I wished.

I opted to continue with the ones I had for a while yet, but while the lenses are still OK, the rather delicate frame they're in suddenly needed replacing, and it's now old enough that it is out of stock. It's a hand-made Japanese frame, of the latest space-age materials, but it had one weakness (aside from being owned by me, a compulsive 'tinkerer') - just ahead of each ear piece, there's an especially thin and delicate short little section of the temples, and the left one snapped while I was trying to adjust the fit better. So it was back to the Optometrist's for
a look at some other frames, and to finally order new glasses with the July prescription in them. They look like this......

These are also space-age materials in the frame, and a slightly more substantial design than the previous ones. And while they perhaps don't look it, these have
all the 'bells and whistles' available: progressives with transitions and Crizal coating for anti-glare. And with them, I have slightly better than 20/20 vision.

While I was waiting for these to be completed, and using an older pair from two prescriptions back, I decided to try re-inventing a frame for the ones that had the broken ear piece. I figured that if I had a short length of flexible plastic tubing on the right inside diameter to slip snugly over the ends of the broken 
parts, maybe I could get them temporarily useful again. So it was off to the building supplies store, for a look at their several sizes of plastic tubing. The one
I settled on is 1/4" O.D. x .170" I.D. Black Vinyl, and 2 feet of it cost 88 cents.
So I've rescued a fancy hand-made Japanese frame with 88 cents worth of plastic tubing that works like a charm! I cut off the unbroken ear piece, so that
the plastic can be fitted to the size of my head, and it looks like this...

The girls at the Optometry had a look at it, showed it around the office, and said only half jokingly that I ought to patent this idea. That would likely be far too much trouble for anything I might get from it, but I'm passing all this on just in case you ever need a quick, cheap, and nasty fix for a pair of broken glasses.
If the tubing fits the end of the break snugly enough, but when worn the glasses aren't lining up exactly right across your eye line, simply roll the tubing between your finger and thumb against the metal it is gripping, to rotate the tubing just a little, and that will change the relative twist in it, and raise or lower that end of the bridge frame. This allows you to get a perfect alignment across the eye line and for me, it worked out better than trying to adjust the original metal frames.

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.)  

How about this Sunset?

A picture is worth a thousand words!

This morning's Moon - just for you!

Frosty Rooftop

This is the second morning this week we've seen frost on the rooftop across the street in the neighboring development. Sadly, this means the Bikini Season is definitely over for another year. But it also means the Ski Season is rapidly approaching, so it's not all bad.

Something on the wall...

Years ago, an uncle of mine was a 'bugologist' (entomologist) in Australia, and
rumor has it that he wrote a book about the little critters, but all of that was well before my time, so I can't really say for sure. My only interest in bugs has
been centered on whether or not I could wipe their remains off my motorcycle helmet's face shield with one glove while steering and giving it the gas with the other, or at other times, admiring the little rascals for their unique appearance.
Lately, if one lands nearby, and I can get close enough with a camera, I take its
picture, and this one is today's attempt at that. I have no idea what it's called, and I rather doubt it does either. Let's just call it 'Ralph', shall we?

And here's one I took yesterday at the construction site behind the North Mall at Park Royal, where Canada's first official covered shopping mall opened in 1950, and has gone through several expansions since, with this latest one in progress. This picture makes me imagine two prehistoric beasts, perhaps in competition, engaging in a 'feeding frenzy' over something's remains before them on the ground. There's just something about it that grabs me.... So the Question Everything today is: "Have I been watching too many of those old sci-fi movies like 'When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth' or 'One Million Years B.C.' or perhaps that other scantily-clad females epic 'Prehistoric Women'? Or is my imagination just working overtime?  And does it really matter? 

Anyhooo.... Our famous-for-being-first-in-Canada nearby mall is reinventing itself yet again, and becoming a veritable village and a town center of sorts for the affluent ( I almost said 'effluent'!) of West Vancouver's 'snob hill' region, where, if you really have to ask 'how much?' you simply can't afford it, Darling!
Many a trophy wife has nearly bankrupted influential husband while proving she didn't have what it takes to run a pricey boutique in our famous mall, where the turnovers are not all of the edible variety which are found in the Food Court.
The beat goes on, Folks - amid all that lust in the dust on the hillside there.  

Flora and Fauna in Lotusland....

Find the bee...

 

Manfrotto monopods are great!

 

This CoolPix P510 isn't bad either...

The zoom is handy...

 

Now say "cheese!"

And last but not least...

 

Pharaoh Ants: The Obnoxious Universal Pest

These little devils are like assholes - everybody's got 'em! I was going to do a rant about them here, but this informative article from the good people at the University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Science, Department of Entomology and Nematology saved me the trouble - and probably saved you from some of my more colorful language. I hate these little bastards with a passion! They're filthy and they go everywhere!