Category: Random issues

Item #1: Eggs

How long does she have to sit on an egg for it to hatch?

‘Ice eggs’ covered a small section of a Finland beach on Sunday, Nov. 7th.
Recent story.

It was a small area and the ice eggs were smallish. The photo below is from the article, but the place is Nayda in Siberia and it was in 2016. Some were 3 feet across and they went for 11 miles.

Item #2: Thrill

This one is from Washington State, but there was at least one other this week someplace. Car going airborne, I mean.The top car in the above photo has Oregon plates. It is double parked in a driveway in Walla Walla, WA.
The yellow slash points to a large rock. This was a landscape item placed at the entrance to the drive. The working theory is that the car hit the rock, moved it, and caused the car to become airborne.
It is a large 4-door Jeep.
Late word is that the driver was having a medical issue.

Item #3: Toasted toaster

Does your toaster need cleaned out?
Most have small trays that slide out. However, there are things that do not fall through. Earlier this week a piece of bread broke away and lodged along the side.
I emptied the little tray. Then I gently shook the whole thing – a 4 slice model. No luck. I turned the toaster upside down and shook some more. With a little prodding from a wood stick – think popsicle – the large piece fell out.
After the cleaning – nothing worked.There are solutions. Photos above are not from me.

The last two mornings I fried breed in an iron pan.
Nancy has found a replacement. This is a 2-slice model from a divorcee. She got the toaster. It bothers her to use it.
Now ours.

Item #4: director of workplace morale

Dog story 1: Milo the border collie
Several others follow after Milo’s workplace efforts.

From Australia

Item #5: Travel by train

Dog story 2

The Dog Train Link

Strays: “We made a place for them to live.”
And the next obvious step is to build a dog train?

More dogs: Young pup talks to grumpy older dog.

And that, for this week, is the not so nasty news.
John

Item #1: Street scenes
The top photo is of the 17th worst traffic choke point in the Nation . That’s what it was like last week when we went to the big city. On the Naneum Fan, our traffic jams involve herds of cattle or flocks of sheep, both rare.

The photo with the plant and green water can shows another urban phenomenon we have missed. A current story is from India where the problem of potholes has gotten so bad the residents starting filling holes so often that authorities became worried (putting people out of work, or what?), and ordered them to stop. Among others who have taken up the pothole cause across India is an artist in the tech capital of Bangalore.
Earlier this year, he created a video of someone dressed in an astronaut suit walking on a street so badly pocked and broken that it looked like the surface of the moon. Authorities fixed the street the next day.
Last year “Pothole Vigilantes” in New Orleans showed what can be done with beer, sliders and 700 pounds of quick-dry asphalt. Elsewhere, pothole activists have posted photos of toy boats and rubber ducks bobbing in water-filled potholes.
There is also a fellow in NYC that plants flowers and then makes and posts videos of drivers navigating around them.
Coby Persin hit a pothole

Ask not what your city can do for you, but get out there and be creative. Search ‘images’ with ‘city potholes’ for ideas. You are welcome!

Item #2: $30 car tabs initiative
Tim Eyman has been the leader against high cost car registrations.
On the right side, note the 2 stick-on tabs. The partial left one is for the month – January is 1 – while the many colored ones have the year. 2019 = black, 2018 = green; 2017 = red; stuck on top of that for prior years.

This is complicated. Voters in Washington State just voted, for a second or third time, to set a yearly car license fee to the cost of providing the “tab.” That has been calculated to be $30.
Some years ago the State tacked on “fees” – taxes – to auto registrations. WA politicians do not have the word taxes in their vocabulary. They quietly add fees to things.
In the 1980s registering a car would cost several hundred dollars. As new residents we were shocked at the price, but did not have a clue about it. Then in 1999, Tim Eyman (pictured above) detailed what those fees went toward. The initiative was passed by voters with 56% but declared unconstitutional – and so it has gone for years. Voters say “charge us only what it costs” and government comes back with a legal challenge regarding the constitutionality of the initiative.

The most recent fuss involved recently voted-in fees to help fund an extension of public transit, called Sound Transit 3, abbreviated as ST3. Only the auto owners in three counties [only King (Seattle) and Snohomish (north of Seattle) voted for this] would be charged the new fee.
It got interesting when the early renewals had to pay as much as 4 times more than they had the previous year. Why?
Authorities used a car-value-table that critics say is an over-inflated value for a vehicle rather than something closer to what the Kelley Blue Book thinks that vehicle is worth. This formula dates back to 1990 when legislators wanted more money so they quietly changed the way value was established – and the fee went up. Surprise! However, note that this was not a new tax.

I’ve called this method of funding larger government as “stealth taxes.” Such increases are not done in secret, but they are added in such a way that few folks realize it happens. Stealthy is the best description I can think of.
Others have provided descriptions more colorful.

Item #3: Oysters
I have nothing against oysters as long as they stay where they belong, namely on a reef in a bay. I think this is dependent on how close you are to an ocean while you were growing up. At a meeting on Thursday evening, a fellow told me his brother had brought dozens of fresh oysters from the coast near where they lived growing up. He was thrilled. I told him I preferred Hickory nuts and Cottontails. Anyway . . .

This story is from Australia’s Port Phillip Bay, between Melbourne and Bass Strait and the Southern Ocean.
discarded shells make oyster reefs

They used dredges to harvest oysters and ruined the reefs. Now, by using shells from restaurants to rebuild starting places in appropriate bays, behold, life is returning.

The shells came from restaurants.
My question: Where did the restaurants get the critters?

Item #4: Dental

Last Friday I had dental as Item #4. I had a double temporary crown procedure. That was on Wednesday morning.
It came loose on Saturday. Monday of this week it was “cemented” back on. I have no idea what the cement is. Terms such as adhesive and resin don’t help. How about Zinc-Oxide Eugenol (ZOE)?
Anyway, the permanent crowns (not linked to one another) are to be put in place on November 21st.
Just 12 more days.

Item #5: Latitude
Think of this: Here on the Naneum Fan we are 110 miles North of Ottawa, or 1,500 miles north of Miami. Hello Darkness.

And that, for this week, is the not so nasty news.
John

Item #1: Not all gone I’ve carted many Black Walnuts a respectable distance from the house, to a spot near numerous large trees. The little squirrels can have a feast.
After strong wind a few days ago most, but not all the nuts and leaves were gone from the trees. The image below reminded me of a short story by a writer that liked surprise endings. Here is the last bit from the story I thought of:
“ . . . it’s Behrman’s masterpiece – he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell.”

The Last Leaf, by O. HenryThe author is listed as ‘ O. Henry ‘ – not his birth name, and just one of several used with the stories he wrote. The Wikipedia entry for him is interesting.

Item #2: Another tree

Years ago I brought a well used long handled sledge hammer. This is the sort of tool used for busting rock, not the type for driving railroad spikes. Those are usually called spike mauls.
Video review of spike mauls

The handle on the tool was ancient, cracked, and wired round-n-round to hold it together. So it has been pretty much useless for the 10 years I’ve had it. I do have another sledge, so heavy it was designed for someone twice my size. Anyway, I bought a new handle.I was born and raised in the forest of Western Pennsylvania. Every fall we would gather Hickory nuts – leaving most for the squirrels. Tools with Hickory handles were common.
But why?, you might ask. I did.

At this link there is a table with North American and world woods showing specific gravity, compressive strength, bending strength, stiffness, and hardness. Wood Strength

If you are not “in” to looking at tables, here is a summary from Know Your Woods, a 1959 book by Albert Constantine, Jr.:
“Some woods are stronger than hickory and others are harder, but the combination of characteristics such as strength, toughness, hardness and stiffness possessed by hickory has not been found to the same degree in any commercial wood.”
Elsewhere the phrase “exceptional shock resistance” is used.
I have to shave it down a little to fit it onto the head. And that’s sad news, but expected.

Item #3: Strays

Neighbors went to the hills for Elk hunting. Daughter-in-law met me while searching for a misplaced pony. After stirring up the neighborhood, all is well as the critter found its way home. Today, I saw a small dog (red collar) near our house. Would not come to me. So I was encouraging it to go home by following it at a distance. It did go somewhere but I lost track.
During that exercise I noticed a large tree had strayed from a neighbor’s property.
On its way to the ground (directed by the unusual East Wind) it encountered a four-strand barbed wire fence. This was an issue because the spot was where I have cleared brush and tangled vines so the young deer can have a passage through the neighborhood.
I cut the wires, pulled the tree out with a 4×4 truck, and rebuilt the fence. A bit more to do there.
All is well.

Item #4: Dental

Wednesday morning I had two teeth (side-by-side) prepared for porcelain crowns. The grinding, molding, and plastic restoration for the two bad guys took 2 hours. Being side-by-side allowed the temporary crown to be “bridged”, or a single unit.
This is expected to help hold them in place during the 2-week pause before completion. We’ll see. A single one last year lasted all of two days.

Item #5: 3.145926535

And that, for this week, is the not so nasty news.
John

Item #1: Change of Seasons thing

Early in the week, this was a WA DOT camera image from 4 miles west of Snoqualmie Pass at 8:10 AM after snow near the top. I checked about ½ hour later and it looked almost the same. Only difference was the headlights were turned out. Same cars and trucks, with the driver of the 2nd truck out walking around. Maybe he had too much coffee.
Later in the week there was an accident on the I-90 Vantage Bridge with a long clean-up time. Most recent was a semi-truck fire at the top of the Pass.
Not to be left out, limbs came down on the power line leading out our way. That was just before 3 PM. I tried to get Nancy to go to town to eat supper. Unfortunately, they fixed it before we could go. So, not only do I have to do something about supper, I have to get this posting finished.

Item #2: Sue inspecting Black Walnuts
When the wind blows hard, a lot of Black Walnuts fall. Because they fall on the gravel driveway there is a bit of work cleaning them up. So here is homeowner lesson #81.
Do not plant things that make a mess where you do not want a mess.

Item #3: Colors

The Cherry tree leaves are mostly a drab green/brown mix. But we have a volunteer tree that has yet to produce fruit. However, it does generate a nice color as cold and dwindling sun hours shut it down.
I noticed the color is similar to nearby Strawberry plants.
The image below has the berry plant image imposed on the tree leaves. I wonder if, when the tree does have fruit, will they be strawberries?

Here is another interesting combination of colors: Lichens and rock.The rock is made of white and black minerals. The blue-green lichen is about the size of a 50¢ coin. I’d like a better focused image. Wishes!
I’d also like to say something about these things but I can’t because I don’t know anything.
The Wikipedia entry for Lichen is quite long, with lots of photos. Link

Item #4: Cartoon to ‘list Song’

I saw this cartoon. Seems like some of us have survived more than 5 ends of the world. The singer, Billy Joel took a crack at making a list in the late 1980s, and in 1989 gave us We didn’t start the fire.

His list goes from the year he was born (1949) to 1989. I’m a bit older so I’d start with WWII’s D-Day. We could add events from the last 30 years.

Item #5: Science pun

There is not an image for this one, so the one here is just because.

And the old saying about a picture being worth a thousand words.
This is helpful because it allows us to derive the unit of feminine beauty.
It is written of oh so beautiful Helen of Troy that she had “a face that launched a thousand ships”.
From which we get the “Millihelen”.
Beauty sufficient to launch one ship.

More, in case you did not like that.
“You never appreciate what you have till it’s gone. Toilet paper is a good example.”
And:
“When I was a kid, I heard Excuse my French just after a swear word… I’ll never forget my first day of class when my teacher asked if any of us knew any French.”

And that, for this week, is the not so nasty news.
John

Item #1: it’s in the mail
Today’s mail brought a voter’s pamphlet (what’s going on) and the printed ballot for Washington’s ‘vote by mail’ proceedings.
Years ago we went to a polling place, stood in line for about 3 minutes, saw a few neighbors, filled in a ballot, and went home.
Now we get to do this at home, beginning about 3 weeks prior to the vote day.
We can drop our completed ballot in a box near the County’s courthouse. While this is about 12 miles away, we go past about 3 times per week. Thus, no big deal.
There are not exciting issues this year, in our State. Every few years we get to vote on keeping “stealth” taxes off of the car registration fee. This is one of those years.

Anyway, our voting is an easy process. There is almost no fuss compared to some other states. Some day all states will do it this way.

Item #2: Land on the move

A word common now in the news is unprecedented , such as this:
Major Southern California fault line eyed after study shows unprecedented movement. See:
Garlock Fault

The first line of the article is:
“A major southern California fault capable of producing a magnitude 8 temblor started to move for the first time in 500 years following a series of earthquakes in the Mojave Desert over the summer, . . . ”

It has moved before, so perhaps “unprecedented” is not the correct word. The Collins Dictionary defines unprecedented as “never having happened before.”
For synonyms, among others, it gives: exceptional, unusual, and ground-breaking.
My choice would be ground-breaking.
Think about it!

Item #3: colors

Winning photo of East Lake Ainslie, Nova Scotia, submitted by Verna MacMillan. See here Hope they don’t mind. Contest now closed.

My home town of Clarion PA calls itself the Autumn Leaf Capital of the world. The 2019 festival (over now) was the 66th annual. I was there for the 1st.
Now it is a 9 day affair, internationally recognized, and sponsored by Allegheny Toyota. Don’t know when Toyota got involved. This seems to be a car sales place in Franklin, a town 27 miles west of (and nothing to do with) Clarion.
Search using images for “autumn colors leaves clarion_county” and you can view many colorful pictures – some from the area.
The ones with the tall brick building, with clock, are of Clarion. We lived about 4 blocks (1/3rd of a mile) from that building – the Court House. Our school was another 3rd of a mile away.
Google Earth will show where Clarion is, with the River to the east and north. The green area is mixed forest, hardwoods and conifers, and very pretty in autumn.

Item #4: You may ask, how did I get here?

{a reference to a song titled “Once in a Lifetime” by Talking Heads}

on the banks of the Derwent River at Howden, south of Hobart, Tasmania
Only the first part of the link is about this photo.

The driver was a woman in her nineties. She, and the next guy are very lucky people.

Item #5: Too fast – 131 mph
” charged with driving under the influence, driving with an open container of alcohol, reckless driving, speeding, fleeing and eluding …”

he went airborne

I hope it was his car, and not stolen. I suspect neither car or driver will be on the roads any time soon.

And that, for this week, is the not so nasty news.
John

Item #1: Baby Pine cones

Above: Small 1 year old cones surround the new vegetative growth in the center – this young growth is called a candle and will become stem and needles.
Ponderosa pines have a difficult environment. Precipitation comes as rain and snow in the low-sun season, with dry summers.
Right: the cones look hard and woody but inside they are green; same with the “candle”, but my camera and the sun conspired to get that washed out.
As a fire prevention measure “firewise” folks suggest keeping the area under trees vegetatively sparse, and to cut branches off up to 20 feet above the ground. The bark is thick and resists burning and withstands low-intensity surface fires.
Yes, I’ve been trimming pines and cleaning up the limbs.

Item #2: Plastic antlers

A Pennsylvania bakery created a wedding cake resembling a life-size deer.
So what sort of cake was it?
What happened to the front hoofs?

Further, I don’t like that sort of hard icing. Vanilla-mocha buttercream it is not.

Further, I don’t like that sort of hard icing. Vanilla-mocha buttercream it is not. See: This looks nice.
I have a birthday in 84 days. Hint.

Item #3:

One ship:
Recall the old saying about a picture being worth a thousand words.
This is helpful because it allows us to derive the unit of human beauty.
It is written of oh so beautiful Helen of Troy that she had “a face that launched a thousand ships”.
From which we get the “Millihelen”.
Beauty sufficient to launch one ship.

I enjoy scientific puns, such as:
I think that angry flask completely over-reacted.
I like to hear chemistry puns, periodically.
Make like a proton and stay positive.
. . . or . . .
There are lots of chemistry puns, but many won’t get a good reaction.

Item #4: Beer

This is from Salt Lake City.. . . the semitrailer veered and fell from a street and into the church’s car parking zone after it was hit by a pickup truck that ran a crimson gentle . . .

crimson gentle
Say what? Well, it is a good day when I learn something new.
Do you have “Gentle” technology where you live?
Defeating Crimson Gentle Digital camera Tickets

Item #5: What to wear?

When you leave the house in the morning, take appropriate footwear.

From the weather center:
Denver goes from 83 to 19 degrees in just 18 hours

Will there be cold and snow.
You might want to take a jacket.

And that, for this week, is the not so nasty news.
John

I planned on looking at news stories while supper was cooking.
Then we got busy.
Then wondered how friends in Eureka CA were.
That’s one of the places where the electricity was shut off.
The conversation took almost an hour.
They were better than many others; had a working
generator, food, and wine. Heat and cooking with gas,
so no serious issues for them.

I do have a couple of things of the “not so nasty” type,
but will not post anything tonight.

Best to all,
John.

Item #1: Snow blanket

The photo I’m using tonight was taken from Phyllis and Cameron’s Mariposa Vineyard on September 30, 2019. Cameron says he was at approximately 900 feet (1000′ ?) elevation. [Need to measure that.]

View is looking west toward the ridges south of the Mission Ridge ski area. The snow line appears to be near 1,000 feet, also.
We live to the southwest of this view line, 25 miles away, at an elevation of 2,240 feet. From our driveway at Naneum Road, we can look north and see the west side of the ridges, to an elevation of 4,000 feet. On our side, the snow line was close to 3,100 feet.

Why the difference in the elevation of the snow line?

Cameron, years ago, noticed the area north toward Wenatchee and that to the east toward Quincy seemed to get more snow than did places farther east, toward Moses Lake. When he was preparing the proposal to have the area designated as a “wine region” – technically an American Viticultural Area (AVA) – he was pointed to a report on “cold air damming’.
It seems the ridges, with Mission Peak at 6,876 ft., are sufficiently high that cold air coming from the northeast flows into the Columbia River Valley and rides up against the ridge. The air can flow south, down the Valley (water level is 613 ft. north of Rock Island Dam and 575 feet south of the dam). The cold air has only a relatively narrow path to escape, and so it piles up against the hills.
The push from the northeast causes more air to rise up, with cooling and precipitation following. In the current case the precipitation fell as snow.

The air mass did, finally, push over the ridges and bring snow to our north. However, having gone up to well over 5,000 feet, the cold air could descend as it approached the Naneum Fan. Cooling stopped as the air came down into the Kittitas Valley. Snow did not reach us.
The snowline, from the end of our driveway, was about 2.5 miles away.
Incidentally, that is very close to the outer perimeter of the Snag Canyon Fire of August, 2014. We watched the fire, along with many others, from the wide area where our driveway meets Naneum Road. The snow did not attract a crowd.

I help prune grapes in the early part of the year – we started in snow this year, 2019. I help with bottling as needed at the White Heron Cellars.
White Heron now has a presence at Pike’s Place Market. Here is a link:
Northwest Tastings

Item #2: Another odd event

We have another temperature related incident occurring on the same day. At the end of the article there is a reference to a warm area of water in the Pacific Ocean called the blob. This could be the path the turtle took to get to the cold water, or maybe it just wanted a taste of the famous food of the region.
You may not have heard of Port Alberni, B. C., but maybe you have heard of or even tasted a Nanaimo Bar, named after the town of Nanaimo. The two towns are located about 40 miles apart on Vancouver Island. This story comes from the part of the world not know for tropical sea turtles.
An Olive Ridley sea turtle, nicknamed ‘Berni Stranders,’ was found ‘cold-stunned’ in Alberni Inlet, Vancouver Island’s longest inlet. Rehabilitation is underway.

Berni Stranders

And that, for this week, is the not so nasty news.
John

Item #1: Snow I think the photo is by Joel Moreno of KOMO News – Seattle.
Stevens Pass, WA

We are at an elevation of 2,240 feet and 54 miles SE of the Pass. At this time – Sat. Noon – we are along the edge of the airflow bringing the coldest and wettest air to the region. That is off to our east, in western Montana, with the coldest air now still north of Edmonton, Alberta.
We may, or may be not, have 5 inches of snow by Monday morning. Then it will melt rapidly.
I’m hoping for a nice October so I can do the things I put off while hiking in the Cascades.

Item #2: Nothing is “tougher”

Toughness is actually a technical term meaning a combination of strength (resists being pulled apart) and ductility (deforms without rupture). Spider silk is tough and the silk of a Darwin’s bark spider is twice as strong as any other. The orb-shaped web usually begins as a single strand called a bridge line, it is the toughest and has been seen 80 feet in length.With clothing, the term “silk” is used but that word is most often associated with the material taken from the cocoons of the larvae of the Mulberry silkworm; that is, a moth. [Bombyx mori – if you care to look.]
Now there is a jacket [ Moon Parka ] ready for Christmas sales made from silk from bacteria. My guess – I can’t afford one.

Moon Parka 1

Moon Parka 2

Item #3: Cute

A photographer had an idea. Worked out well.

Follow this link, if you haven’t seen the sequence.
.
.
.

Item #4: I hope he was dressed!

“Rescuers say the man somehow survived despite only carrying a pocket knife.”

Rescue

In various ways the items in the photo below are called hiker essentials. Don’t hit the trail without them.

And that, for this week, is the not so nasty news.
John

Image above is from the web. {classic cars dot com}

Note the non-metal roof — oak wood covered with water proof material.

Fordy was a 1935 Ford belonging to Nancy’s dad. We had her until sometime in our Idaho days. She needed costly repairs from age and nasty weather and we did not have a garage. We could have paid for restoration or build a garage – but not both.
We knew a lady that wanted Fordy. While a young girl living in San Jose, her father had a dealership and they owned a car like this one.
So we sold the car to her. She sent it off to SE Oregon (I think) to have it restored. Two years and ten thousand dollars later, she got it back. We’ve lost track.
Nancy learned (young) how to drive Fordy from her dad. At 16 she used it as her ‘around town’ car. And we used in for our honeymoon travels.

So what brought back this memory.
Well, recent Hurricane Dorian did a lot of damage but missed an opportunity to follow the path of the 1938 New England hurricane.
Link

While searching historical storm damage, a fellow found the following image. It made me sad to see the cars – new then – standing in water. I’d bet that in the water somewhere there is a 1935 Ford.
They were made of steel, and quite heavy. New cars float.

Toowomba, Australia – January 2011

The 1938 storm did not have a name. The US began using female names in 1953, and in 1978/1979 names came from both female and male lists.

Item #2: Going fishing

Not really, but we are going to be busy the next 3 days. I haven’t run across really neat news to report, and – come Sunday evening – it is doubtful I’ll be feeling like working on Nancy’s entries for the week. I’m thinking Monday, but, who knows?

And that, for this week, is the not so nasty news.
John