“Winter Today – Springlike Tomorrow”?

Copied and Pasted from “Latest News from Aerendel”

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Wednesday, February 3rd  ∞  -9˚C / +16˚F & snowing in Atlantic Canada @ 11:11 am ∴ I think it might be Ian Anderson’s Birthday ψ

Walking Dogs in Snow Photo

The CBC – Canadian Broadcasting Company – encourages regular people to send in photos and videos. I hope this is not to cut down on the number of employees they might otherwise  need to pay to do that.

— It just took me two hours to wade through a lot of beautiful and sometimes disturbing tweets. Eek.

Jefferson versus Corporations.

– Thomas Jefferson – Author of many famous quotes, including “Banking Establishments are more Dangerous than Standing Armies.” Who’d’a thunk an Aries could be so prophetic?

— I was the recording engineer for an interview between Dr John Battista – a Psychiatrist and Green Party Activist in Connecticut – and David Cobb – a Texas Lawyer who was part of a group that gad researched the history of corporations in the United States – and that group was fighting against Corporate Fascism – David Cobb, I do believe, ran for President of the USA as the Green Party Candidate in 2004 – After I had followed my heart to Canada and was trying to first become a permanent resident, and later, a dual citizen of the US & Canada. In 2004 I couldn’t leave Canada – unless I wanted to start the long and expensive process of applying for permanent residency all over again.

— & speaking of evil corporations – Canada has ruled that cable teevee providers must offer channels that they currently only offer as part of bundles – and so lower the cost that consumers need to pay to get what they want. Rogers Cable is blitzing the airwaves with propaganda commercials trying to lure customers into falling for their – “Get our packaged bundles now and lock yourself in to wonderful lower prices for three years!” b.s. — And Bell Aliant – who promised us three years of low prices and later informed us that we misinterpreted what they told us – had MTV in our channel line up on Monday, and no MTV was there on Tuesday, when the Shannara  Chronicles air. So I guess that proves that Bell is definitely on the side of the demons that the ‘Druid’ and the three young hero types in that series are trying to defeat. Yup, Bell is probably one of the bad guys.

Michael Moore advertizing his newest movie.

Michael Moore has another movie about to come out. He’s gotta be one of my favourite people.

— The Mouse that Roared? In Reverse?

Ground Hog Against the TPP

– Well, a groundhog with a social conscience? – Hmm – Don’t’cha wish the politicians and oligarchs who want to rule over you and run your life had as much intelligence and compassion as this guy? 😉

— Your government is lying to you. They want you to voluntarily give up every right and privilege you have. They want to say you voted away your rights. They want to be able to point their fingers at you and say, “They made me do it-” & When they get to Hell, they want to show the devils there that they really were on the side of darkness and deceit, so they can get a job as one of the demons torturing the decent folks they deceived into backing policies and programs that drove other good people into despair and economic slavery.

Fredericton Skies this morning.

But New Brunswick had a spectacular sunrise this morning, and this person from Fredericton caught it digitally on her camera.

— Today’s weather report, “Well, this afternoon we will experience Winter and by tomorrow it will feel like Spring.”

Opportunity or obstacle?

And here’s a bit of daily inspiration from Roy Bennett.

— I do like to have at least something positive to add any time I go through the trouble to write up what I see coming at us via the ‘Tweet-Us-Sphere’ and in real life beyond.

Very interesting waterfall.

And if thoughtfully reassuring words can’t inspire you right now, maybe a photo like this can –

— Looks like another place I’d like to visit and stay for a while.

— But I have other real world stuff to attend to, so I better end here – Have a wonderful, spiritually enlightening day –,

~~~~~ Jim

Ground Hog Day – 2016

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2016 — -6˚C / +21˚F — Sunny & bright, clear, and colder than yesterday in Atlantic Canada @ 9:11 am — Birthdays today: Close Friend Lisa and Cousin Lyn in Connecticut 🙂 & I think our friend Angie ( née Shean ) up here has a birthday too – 🙂 —

"Icebergs"

I don’t know if this will be readable – but a friend impressed me by doing this on an obsolete computer with an obsolete operating system and an obsolete photo program.

— Draelen Shantivarta ( ‘Somewhere out west’ -) managed to download a screen shot from the game that several of us are still working on, and, using a G5 Mac running OS X 10.4-something which supports OS 9 “Classic”, where he used Photo Deluxe, a program from the early 90’s, to import, trim, and write every line ( one at a time ) then drag and resize the text (one line at a time). & to tell ya the truth, the screen shot looks like icebergs are floating close to shore somewhere.

Bernie and Barbara.

Barbara Walters interviewing Bernie Sanders before anybody had any idea that he could do so well in Iowa

— A lot of people were buzzing this morning about how well Bernie Sanders did in the Iowa Caucus yesterday. He started out polling in single digits and ended up in a virtual tie with Hillary Clinton, who is backed by big money and a powerful political machine.

Caucus Results

Hillary received 49.9% of the Democratic Votes tallied in yesterday’s Iowa Caucuses, Bernie received 49.5%? That should scare a lot of the wrong people. And six of the delegates were awarded by a coin toss?

— Hillary’s supporters were tweeting up a storm yesterday while Bernie had Michael Moore and a handful of activist celebrities ( including Susan Sarandon ( “Dammit – Janet!” ) and Wil Wheaton? – ( Wesley from Star Trek Next Generation? ) Plus a lot of dedicated grass-roots people. Exit polls cited by the BBC said 84-91% of voters under 30 years old voted for ‘The Bern’

California Bridge over shallow water stream

– This is in California? Wow –

— & As for me, I think I’d like to be in a nice warm place like the photo above right now. The person who tweeted it said, “California”? Must be upstate, north of San Francisco?

Water falling lazily around an old castle somewhere?

– And I have no idea where this is, but I do believe I could live there and love it. –

— Looks like the inspiration for the Elven City of Rivendel, as portrayed in The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings Movies.

Bridge over a river somewhere.

– And this is another beautiful, intriguing place that I think I’d like to at least visit –

— I think my friend, Draelen, knows more about where this photographer/Tweeter is from, I think he told me she’s from Germany – But wow – what a beautiful world we live in. I think somebody tweeted a photo of Leonard Nimoy as Spock with a quote that went something like, [ understatement alert ] “Anybody who would destroy their home planet – is illogical.”

— I spent yesterday doing carpentry stuff, reinforcing the wobbly legs to a computer desk, and then brought an overheating iMac back from its most recent ‘near-death-experience’, caught up with a couple of friends on effbook and twitter, and watched ‘Supergirl’ and ‘X-Files’ before making sure computers were still okay and hadn’t blown up yet and forgot to take one of my medications. ( And No – I’m not one of the people doug otterson cited as needing to self medicate after seeing the photograph of an upright black cat playing a guitar – 😉

— And – I’m still wracking my brains over how to handle difficult passages in a novel that I’m trying to finish.

— Happy Ground Hog Day!

~~~~~ Jim

Found a box we hadn’t opened since we moved here :)

Sunday, July 26, 2015 -( 15˚C / 59˚F & raining in Atlantic Canada @ 9:59 pm Atlantic Time 🙂 )-

2nd Prize for Comic Short Story 'published' on GEnie in 1991.

Cathi stumbled upon a couple boxes we hadn’t opened since we moved here in 2013 – I found this 🙂 in one of them.

— And this:

3rd Prize certificate.

3rd Prize Certificate for another story I ‘published’ on GEnie

— So, yup, I won second and third place in ‘Comic Short Stories based on Multi-player Games’ that were interactive and live on GEnie in 1991. (( “No brag, just facts-” ? )) 😉

~~~~~ Jim

Weekending-

Sunday, July 19, 2015 -( 16˚C / 61˚F @ 10:45 pm in the dark and damp here in Atlantic Canada )-

Messy office.

This ‘Office’ is technically transitioning from ‘completely freaking messed up’ to ‘I just might be able to find something I’m looking for in here’.

Yes, we had a weekend. Of course it rained, but- We got things done, and moved forward into a more optimistic state of mind, no matter how many idiotic bits of political lies and rule bending b.s. the current administration is bombarding us with constant commercials on just about every station in Canada, and maybe especially New Brunswick and a couple other target areas. If it wasn’t for the fact that they are so obviously lying and trying their damnedest to get away with immoral bull [ chips ] by playing their propaganda clips before the election has actually been scheduled – which is unethical, immoral, not quite fattening, but should be illegal, and will probably help convince the majority of Canadians who are not brain dead to vote the morons out of office that much more quickly… I might be able to shudder and shrug my way through it. But the evil sonuvaguns are trying to convince vulnerable people that if any of the other parties get to form the next government they will steal the candy out of their babies’ mouths, take away their pensions, and, in general, peel the skin from their bodies as painfully as possible, and set their private parts on fire. The politix of fear are alive and well and Canada.

Pallets, lumber & garbage can cover.

Pallets (& plywood) R us. I got a little bit done, pulling nails out of interesting pieces of lumber that used to hold three decent pallet together to form shelves for plant sales at a nearby chain type hardware and lumber store. They do have Home Despots up here, but this is a more local franchise. The thing on the far left is something I built out of plywood and 2x2s to discourage the local racoons from messing with our garbage. That’s my white hat reflected in the window.

We got out and about on Saturday afternoon after a pleasant brunch. & After grabbing a couple necessities (like food?) at the nearby supermarket, we stopped off at a ubiquitous hardware chain store and stumble upon a couple goodies, like stain for our projects on sale. 🙂 And we were checked out by one of the most friendly and pleasant young cashiers we’ve ever encountered there.

And then I convinced Cathi to check out the free pallets one company leaves out in the hopes that they won’t have to pay somebody to haul them away or whatever business they’d have if nobody came along and took advantage of the free pallets.

What we found there this time was three surprisingly good pallets and one smaller pallet with split pieces but a couple good two by fours. So Cathi said she was happy we checked. We also found the last of the season’s small potted herbs for sale for $.24 each. I think we got two small plastic square things of lemon balm and a couple other intriguing plants, one was peppermint? some kind of mint and the other had tiny light purple flowers.

This morning Cathi went around and planted the herbs along with the ivy she brought home a couple days ago-

Ivy surrounded by grass, climbing a fence.

You probably can’t tell with a casual glance, but there is some newly transplanted ivy in the center of this photo. I told Cathi I’d like to see some ivy and she found some in the bargain/closeout section of one of the stores she frequents. We had nine little pots of English Ivy, which I hope really likes the climate here, and when we set them on the outside porch they thrived, sort of said, ‘thank you’ and now there are something like 4 plants around Jassper’s fence and a couple more in not so easy to spot places. But Yum- They should enjoy the rain we’re supposed to get in the next several days.

And, beyond my usual feeling like I’ve lost my mind, we did okay. – It had rained overnight, and it’s supposed to rain every day for the next four days? At Least?

— As long as you don’t dwell on the fact that, for a promised interview with a local Author I was trying to get an old mac computer to work with the old free version of ProTools and when I struck out with the best computer I still have here for that option I tried to wake up an older G3 (“cute”) MacBook and which, for all its 640 megs of RAM started up and charged the nearly dead battery really well, but when I tried to restart using Mac OS 9.2.2 the hard drive with that operating system had a coronary and played dead. I tried another external Hard Drive with a similar Operating System, but it was even worse. — When I took the worse HD into the office here and connected it to another Mac, that other Mac saw it long enough to know it was there, but when I tried to ‘verify’ and then repair the danged thing, it disappeared and said it was beyond help, but I should back up what I could and then it wouldn’t mount the danged thing and reformat it. But if it ain’t mounted ya can’t back anything up- bluddy idjits- so I tried repairing it again a couple times with the disk utility and it finally gave up trying to tell me it was too far gone (or too old, or too riddled with planned obsolescence???) to fix- well, surprise surprise, it fixed it enough so it would mount. I then tried backing up files. First the routines thought it might take an hour, then a couple hours, then 16 hours. So I went to bed & when I woke up and checked it, it looked like it had been backing up nicely for several hours and then hit a bad file with a name that was about two miles long and full of heiroglyphics- and the only thing it had actually backed up was a stupid icon. grrrr. So I spent most of today manually backing things up one file at a time.

All the time I was gnashing my teeth and backing up stupid files etc. Cathi got up quietly and went outside and transplanted things, thinking it would be raining later.

Garden gnome hiding in ferns.

I wanted to upload a photo of Cathi on her Gazelle, but I need to straighten it out so I’ll upload the photo of a gnome hiding in the ferns by our stone wall.

— And there a very interesting story at https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/stop-greedy-companies-making-products-that-break that says France has a law against planned obsolescence. 🙂

~~~~~ Jim

Friday the 13th is a Monday this week.

Monday, July 13th, 2015 -( 21˚C / 70˚F — Sunny & Pleasant @ 10:45 am in Atlantic Canada )-

odd things on a blue background.

It took me forever to scan this stuff into the form you see here. After installing the software that came with the scanner the scanner refused to work with the computer it worked with fine before we found the disk and installed it. So I scanned it to another Mac, and the pictures kept trying to tip to one side or another and the other little things kept moving. Finally I just said the ‘heck’ with it an kept the last scan.

Yeah, it’s been a tough morning. I woke up aching all over, put the garbage and recycling out, had problems with the scanner after installing the software it came with on a computer that it worked fine with before I installed its software. Fed Jassper, fed Moe, fed me- Sighed a couple times-

I think my graphics/workhorse computer should be officially pronounced dead. It craps out without doing anything now. Planned obsolescence? May those who plan such schnarr things suffer from everything they ever need in the future falling apart when they need it the most. And if those morons manage to re-incarnate in the past, may the same curse follow them there?  Okay, now that I’ve voiced my ire, I can probably forgive them. I don’t think you’d want to be Bill Gates at the Pearly Gates if St. Peter called me over to consult on whether you could go to Heaven, or be condemned to the other place. I’d have to think long and hard about that one.

— Sigh–,

Cathi’s back to work. I ache all over. It’s a Monday.  and yes, to quote Pogo “Friday the 13th is a Monday this month.”

~~~~~ Jim

Talkin to Mom and Cathi’s found her first novel :)

Monday, July 6th, 2015 -( 19˚C / 66˚F @ 12:59 am in the dark up here in Atlantic Canada )-

Lighthouse.

The Lighthouse on the Green in Fredericton, one of our favourite Ice Cream, seafood and sandwich places- We’ve had our second visit of the season, and it ice cream is sensational, as ever. 🙂 Photo taken in September 2013.

Talked to Mom and Sharon (my sister) tonight via Skype. They’re in Alaska. And I’m on the other side of the continent. I tried to take a couple screenshots of the conversation, but in my hurry, I pushed the right keys on the wrong computers and then wondered why the pictures didn’t take. -duh!- Both Mom and I felt slightly under the weather for part of today. I thought my problem was going through a box we haven’t opened since we got here and maybe breathing in mold or something. After I ate something for dinner and chilled for an hour or so I was fine. Maybe the electromagnetic atmosphere around mother Earth isn’t feeling all that great and sharing her blahs with us sensitive human beans. 😉 Anyway, I had a very nice talk with Mom and my sister and we’re hoping we can talk again on Friday when we may experience fewer interruptions. 😉

& recently – Getting ready to clear 757 photos from the card in my camera, I uploaded those to a backup computer and founds lots of yummy stuff from the past five years – much of it might only have been on the backup computer, which now has a couple lovely screenshots that were not of me and mom skyping happily earlier tonight. I’m thinking some of those older photos should be on a History page here in this Archives blog

For right now, let me say that the Lighthouse on the Green here – the above photo is from a stormy day two years ago – is charging $2.00 Canadian $’s for people to climb to the top and look out over the city- proceeds to benefit SPCA Fredericton 🙂 🙂 🙂

Al Fresco

This is a shot of the Lighthouse on the Green’s ‘Dining Room’ taken on September 27th, 2013. See what you’re missing?

— Achy but optimistic in Atlantic Canada –,

~~~~~ Jim

Found some more old photos

Friday, July 3rd, 2015 -( 14˚C / 57˚F @ 11:59 pm Atlantic time – in the dark here while we’re using “Startup Repair” to see if the windows 7 machine might still have some life ahead of it.)- Nora K.’s and Matt Kantrowitz’s Birthday today. 🙂 🙂

— Not all of these photos are in perfect shape, but wow, we had some beautiful cousins and friends-

Wallet sized photos

Our cousins, April, on the left and Jamie on the right. Jamie signed her photo with “6th grade” in 1984. There is a bit of dust on the photos that wouldn’t go away.

 

people and dogs posing in the shade.

Nora K. – I think in her back yard in Putney, in September of 1984 – Me on the right with Harley (who became ‘Charles’ when he grew up.) – more or less on my lap, he never was much for sitting still anywhere, and I don’t know if I ever knew the dogs’ names or who they might have belonged to. This photo is a bit fuzzy because of the weird finish.

Normal woman with tall, hairy guy.

Nancy A. – Cousin Lori’s friend, who I never knew all that well, but I rememer her birthday is July 16th? I look like a refugee from a rock band like Three Dog Night. This was some time in the 1980’s.

Two young women with annoying shadows.

Cindy G. and Denise M. (Now Lavery) – Two young women from the post office we used to work at in the 1980’s- in very bad lighting.

Nice looking young woman.

My friend, Lyn, in the late 1970’s, in Rutland, Vermont. The photo was in a plastic sheet for years and that might be what caused the strange lights or whatever that are dancing in front of her here. Looks like a special effect- fairy dust being sprinkled on her or something.

Me in my Navy uniform, around the time I graduated from boot camp.

And, me – from a nightmare I once had that I volunteered to serve my country and was subjected to the demonic company of ‘superiors’ who had been thoroughly warped by the insidious mindset of the military industrial complex. I survived, I think. This might have been a photo taken by a shipmate on a destroyer tender.

— It took me over 5 hours and an incredible amount of grief to get these photos scanned and then loaded into this blog from this computer. The computer played dead, and just before I buried it or chucked it into the nearest river, it said, ‘hey wait a minute, try running a ‘Startup Repair’ program.’ That may have worked. Meanwhile I scanned the photos into a G5 Mac because I was expecting to talk to my sister and mother using Skype and the Yummy MacBook was waiting for them to come on line. Which they never did. And the only other available computer that could do the job was the G5.

— But WordPress no longer likes G5’s because Apple, which, before they made deals with the devil- and/or Bill Gates and company – had been real good about making sure that all the latest and greatest software etc. would run on older Macs. But then the devil, Bill Gates, and the ‘Breedy Gastards’ of this world went out of their way to make sure a whole lot of planned obsolescence was built into anything worth having so people who should be relaxing and enjoying their lives have to be slaves to the demonic economic system we’ve been living under lately- oh never mind- So after I got an older version of “Mail” to work on the G5, then had to restart it because the danged thing would not allow me to ‘compose’ any email- and then I had to add another account because it couldn’t send anything from the original email account I set up with that app. And then, when I got the email message I sent to a gmail account that I can use on this stupid Windows 7 machine, six images came with six ghosts of themselves and I had to download 5 of those images twice because the ghosts insisted I wanted broken graphics for this = should have been really easy = project here. And the sixth image- I had to download three times to get it right.  Grumble, grumble, grumble – But anyway – Here we are. It’s almost six o-freakin clock on Nora K.’s birthday (I forgot her new last name- shame on me. But her husband’s name is Jim and he plays a guitar. Or at least did when I met him.

— Can I scream now? Or should I just chill? Lemme try to chill, sit back and smile and think I may have plowed my way through trials and tribulations that were hurled at me by the forces of schnarr, designed to ruin my outlook on life, liberty, love and the pursuit of happiness – And I came out on top. Or should I sit down and count my fingers and toes to be sure I’m still more or less all here?

( Um, I needed to update this a couple times do to spelling errors and schnarr like that there- )

— ( Laughing to myself at 6:00 am )

~~~~~ Jim

Planned Obsolescent Schnarr –

Friday, July 3rd, 2015 -( 22°C / 72°F @ 11:45 am under sunny skies on our side of the river here in Atlantic Canada )- -My friend, Greg’s daughter -Kyla-‘s birfday 🙂

Domino, looks like he was complaining about something or other- IN May of 2013

Domino, looks like he was complaining about something or other- In May of 2013

— Okay, let’s see. I can’t say this morning got off to a rough start because I’m still up since last night. The computer I rely on the most, the one I’m writing this on right now, is going blind on me- if I’m doing any graphic-heavy 3D stuff- the monitors suddenly go black and say “hey- we’re not connected to anything-” and since I got this computer specifically to work on completing my game world, and the game that’s supposed to happen inside that world- this is disconcerting. I better look up the spelling on that one, it doesn’t look right. Must be okay, the spell checker doesn’t like words with dashes attached to them, but ‘disconcerting’ passed their test.

— Planned obsolescence –  Do you think that anybody who ever thought it was a good idea to make sure stuff fell apart more sooner than later so they could sell more stuff should be drawn and quartered in public? I mean why wait until these mudder fuppers die and have to face their karma in their life reviews? For the same reason that judges are all going to be in big trouble when they have to explain themselves to the Man who told them “Judge not- that ye be judged-” It’s not my place to condemn ice holes for making everybody’s lives miserable? -Shrug- But every once in a while I want to be there when one of those ‘persons’ is in dire need of a quick ride to a hospital and the parts he so cleverly had his engineers make out of plastic instead of aluminum the way they had always been in the past- fall apart and the ice hole has to die alone in his vehicle because his clever designs worked so freakin well? I mean the height of this revenge type thinking would be, the poster child for planned obsolescence opens the door of his planned obsolete automobile, falls to the pavement and gasps for help and some homeless guy whose life he ruined comes over to him, blind drunk, opens his zipper and pees all over the slime ball while that evil ice hole gasps his last breaths and dies in an extreme state of fear. Grumble grumble grumble —

— But- on a lighter note – I did download over 750 photos (not all of them worth keeping) onto three different computers last night while dealing with computer catastrophes. The stupid ‘We know better than you do what you want to do’- routines inside one computer decided that I wanted all 757 photos to go get lost somewhere on a cloud, and told me my drop box was full. So I swore at that computer and told it to take those photos down from the flippin cloud and put them in a nice new file on my desktop. When it – obviously scared half to death – did what I told it to, I discovered a couple lost gems in that flippin cloud, that I never wanted anything to do with in the first place. No danged cloud has any business grabbing my stuff like that. And, oh yeah, the nearly lost gems on that should be lost cloud? – the above photo of Domino the Bengal Cat was one of them. Yum.

— And now I should belatedly get my posterior to bed. I’m going to skype with mom tonight, and she’s delighted to be able to see me and hear me when I do that. And now that I got my grumbling done, I won’t have to darken our conversation tonight with angry thoughts about ice holes who so freakin cleverly design things to fall apart a long time before they need to. – I won’t say, “May they rot in hell.” Because we’re already there, so how about, “May they open their eyes and realize they’ve created a living hell for themselves right here and now.” – Shrug. I often think I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy, because I don’t collect enemies and sort them according to how rotten they are to their cores- But- Waking up in hell is a blessing that us truth-seeking ‘Angels-In-Training’ wish upon ourselves so we can continue our mission to manifest Heaven on Earth. & No, it’s not too late to keep trying to do that.

— Yay?

~~~~~ Jim (who tortures spelling checkers for fun, and has the poetic license to prove it can be done.)

Multi-Cultural Festivities and Canada Day

Tuesday, July 2nd, 2015 -( 25°C / 77°F – Muggy and bright @ 6:26 pm in Atlantic Canada )-

Face Painting at an Asian Indian booth.

Face Painting at an Asian Indian booth.

— We got our first dishes of Lighthouse on the Green Ice Cream of this summer and then wandered across the street to where they were having their annual multicultural festivities. They don’t have their home made ice cream at the Lighthouse this year. 🙁 But they still have yummy stuff.

Gaelic guy in a kilt showing off his drum.

We talked to this guy for quite a while about Bhodrans and Celtic-Gaelic things. He reminded us of the upcoming Highland Games, where there will be drumming and suggested I might bring my drum and join in. While Cathi was distracted nearby, the guy realized that he did know her from somewhere, when we first got here, before her group got their new building, they worked in the same building across the street from the big shopping centre up the top of the hill in Fredericton.

— As we wandered around, Cathi began to listen to her inner gourmet, and no, we did not walk around like Jassper might have, drooling from both sides of our mouths. As I was eyeing the menu at an Indian (Curry etc.) booth, Cathi glanced toward the booth beside it and the man behind the counter caught her attention, “It’s chicken and rice-” So we got to sample some Iraqui food. I wondered how the local Iraquis might get along with the local Iranians, or how Hindus might get along with Islamic people, or if there are any problems like that at all around here, where we have this convenient common enemy- the cold, ice and snow in winter?

Cathi with flowers and a bridge.

Cathi wasn’t sure she wanted to stand there and let me take her photo as we were heading back for our vehicle. That’s Fredericton’s interesting foot bridge behind her, one of the city’s nicest -paved- walking trails would be on her left -our right- along this side of the Saint John River. There are just as nice walking trails on the North Side of the river, too.

— Later on this summer the city of Fredericton will host a world class Jazz and Blues Festival and several other events I can’t remember right now, but they’re all worth seeing. ( We survived the big ‘Rib Fest’ last month – I had a grilled cheese and turket sandwich while she had ribs and after we stood in line for almost half an hour she got disgusted with her favourite rib place because they wouldn’t take a debit card and it cost us something like $2.50 and another ten minutes to use the nearest ATM machine and stand in line again. )

— July First is Canada Day in most of Canada. People in Quebec have a bigger celebration of their own later on, and Newfoundland has a somber rememberance of a nasty battle in World War One in which way too many Newfoundlanders lost their lives. Something I didn’t know before I came up here, Newfoundland didn’t become part of Canada until 1949.

— And Cathi has been investigating a bunch of do it yourself web pages and has become fascinated with, among other things, what people have done with wooden pallets that most companies throw away. The pallets have to be checked out, often de-bugged with bleach or something like that and sanded down and painted or stained, but some of the examples of lawn swings and day beds as well as patio furniture are amazing and look like professional workmanship and you’d almost never guess they were made from ‘waste lumber’. We”ve been checking around town lately and come up with a couple good spots to pick up unwanted, -Free- pallets, and have a nice starting supply for her first week off this summer. & Now she’s slightly worried about somebody in the neighbourhood complaining about the junk we’re trying to keep hidden behind the shed etc. There will be more photos coming when we get cracking on her projects there. 🙂

— Yay! & This summer has been buggy, with aggressive mosquitos so far, but it’s been unusually cool, and that is fine with me. I have relatives who thrive in heat that makes me want to fall down in an icy lake and chill until Autumn, but I am not a real summer person.

— sigh–,

~~~~~ Jim