Category: Adventures in Blogging –

Wednesday, July 1st, 2020 – Canada Day –

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-Wednesday, July 1st, 2020 —> +18˚C/ +68˚F – grey and cloudy @ 10:45 am in Atlantic Canada on Canada Day & Martha Sturgeon’s Birthday ?-

- Volffe standing Night Watch on Lovers' Lookout Hill -

– “Vollfe standing Night Watch on Lovers’ Lookout Hill.” – Looking North of North East at Del-Vahria from Keltic Vale. –

— The above screen shot shows the only thing I did in the past couple days here – Volffe planted weeds amid the ‘summer grass’ on Lover’s Lookout Hill – then stood there all night watching the clouds roll overhead.

— There is just a little bit of lag here – possibly due to the number of ‘assets’? and maybe the lag is a lot worse for builder characters – who probably carry a lot of memory with them – Shrug – I know there is a lot less lag when a character comes in opting to ‘play’ instead of  ‘edit’.

— I started totally rearranging my office here – disconnected all the computers and moved the heavy schnarr around – & I have been aching pretty much all over.

— I haven’t moved everything I moved out of the office back in – I’m not satisfied with a couple things and right now I’m waiting for Cathi to wake up { She’s on vacation all week, plus today is a Holiday up here & she’s a night person to begin with and is enjoying her much deserved rest. }

— And I got alerts telling me that a couple of my WordPress blogs ( This is one of them ) were messed up – & I think that was just a nasty marketing ploy to try to con me into paying premium prices for stuff that has been free for as long as I can remember – “Dangit!” — A conspiracy watch dog type warned me that the next thing they might do would be to deliberately mess things up bad to convince me that I need to pay like $30.00 a month for their protection scam ‘security’ schnarr- If that happens I’ll be writing to self publish and, “So screw them…”

— One interesting thing – other — more highly visited and written to blogs – don’t show their twitter feeds and freeze the left and right ‘Widget’ columns – even give up trying to load the widgets, especially when there’s a weather widget in the mix – but here, with this blog, there isn’t a problem –  “hmmmmm-?”

— Sigh, I was going to do my Pranayama and meditate at 11:00 am but I suddenly and rapidly became ‘blehhhh’ – { felt nauseous } and realized I better eat something – so I did, and now I gotta wait until 5 pm to do my Yoga stuff –

————— Love you guys!

~~~~~ Jim

Welcome to September, 2018 —

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Sunday, September 2nd, 2018 — +25˚C / +78˚F with a humidex or +27˚C/ +81˚F @ 6 pm Atlantic Time in New Brunswick, Canada —

 

— After a conversation with my friend, Doug Otterson, I realized he has a lot to say, but isn’t quite sure his comments have enough validity in a lot of situations, being that he’s still living in New York State and only spending every second he can spare here in New Brunswick —

— So I’ll repeat a lot of things that resonated as being reasonably topical for us here and now, especially during this political – Provincial Elections – season.

= = = = =

– Tweeted by @paulEDawson – ‘We need a new economic model… [ That won’t kill the only planet we’ve got here ] ‘-

— “With New Brunswick Provincial Elections coming very soon, we don’t hear enough credible information from the Green Party on any issue that might get them elected in any significant numbers,” – Doug Otterson ( in love with a New Brunswickian )

 

Andrew Scheer tweet

– This is not an endorsement of any political party or philosophy – The above is a copied and pasted political spin Tweet – Do not blindly accept anything in a political message as being true or worth contemplating –

— “Every time I see the head of your Federal Conservative party on television, either in a paid political ad or sound bite in a newscast – I cringe. I don’t know whether it’s just that this guy, Andrew Scheer, has the unfortunate bad luck of having the facial expressions and demeanor of a psychopathic compulsive liar who believes he has the right amount of charismatic presence to convince the weak-minded that anything he says is the truth and that he should be granted unlimited political power and have every word he utters worshiped by everyone – or is this guy a complete Trump-like jerk whose body language should warn us that he can’t be trusted at all? Or is this just my Astrological Scorpio-ness clouding my ability to see the real world through untarnished clarity?” – Doug Otterson, { who might only admit to not believing 1,000% in his perceptive judgment to anyone but a very close circle of good friends. }

 

Anti Trump Tee Shirt

– “Make America Morally Bankrupt Again?” –

— “Oh, cool, I gotta get me one of those tee shirts, too bad I couldn’t wear one at work -” — Doug Otterson on seeing the above photo and message while checking in at twitter this afternoon.

 

– Tweeted by @OffGridFestival —

— “Enterprising engineers in India have turned garbage into cheap, almost free, prostetics – especially for impoverished children. Hey come on, guys, get on the stick over here – Instead of complaining about the amount of garbage clogging up your land-fills and crying about the supposedly incredibly high monetary cost of collecting and dealing with that garbage – wake up and get out there and find stuff that is highly use-able and use it -” — Doug Otterson.

 

= = = = =

 

— Okay, so whenever Doug blasts through on his way to hanging out with his lady-love for a couple of days or weeks, we do have some interesting conversations and the phrase, “Jeeze – we gotta learn to ignore this political nonsense before we waste all our time reacting to it -” comes up half a dozen times a day.

 

— & Now my own two cents worth: “If a politician, at any level of government, says anything along the lines of, ‘As you know – the only revenue we get is through taxes.’ That politician is a bold faced liar. According to a forensic accountant, WalterBurien@CAFR1.com, taxes comprise only 1/3 of the real income stream at any level of government – Federal, State or Provincial, County, or local municipal – and they have learned to ‘cook their books’ in such a fashion as to make assets look like liabilities. ‘We should demand that politicians at all levels submit to forensic budget auditing and threaten the { ‘ice holes’ } who have been lying to us all along with public humiliation and possibly – evisceration. They have been receiving multiple income streams all along to the point where all levels of government can and should cease collecting taxes altogether and should have no problem at all providing everybody with more and better services than they currently do, all the while they are falsely crying poverty.’ Any time a politician opens his or her mouth and the words, ‘Jobs’, ‘Leadership’, ‘fiscal responsibility’ – or they point their fingers at members of another political party and try to blame them for everything that’s ever gone wrong in your life. — They are lying!”

— “I do believe that what we should laughingly refer to as our ‘modern culture’ has left itself wide open to a severe attack of HONESTY – And if the ice holes who are holding political power realized how many of us out here have functioning ‘B.S. Meters’ connected to our brains, they would all be running for their lives.”

 

~~~~~Jim

Politix As Usual?

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Thursday, May 24th, 2018 —> +14˚C / +57˚F —> ‘Kinda Grey’ & partly cloudy @7:27 pm in Atlantic Canada —

Democracy in Trouble -

– “Politix As Usual” Romanian Style? ‘Coming Soon’ to a street corner near you? –

 

— I almost missed the above tweet – I’ve been avoiding Twitter and Facebook lately – && ***! – The European Union is instituting some strong Data Privacy legislation. – We probably need to do that here, too –

 

7:27 pm web cam shot

– 7:27 pm Web Cam Shot –

 

— Um, with all the political sleight of hand going on lately – I’m pretty much in the same boat with everybody else – I get a nightly “WTF?” reaction to the network news political reporters. …

 

— I started writing this ‘post’ to tell you about my latest possible insight into the Donald J Trump – Kim Jong-un circus. —> I can’t be 1,000% certain that I got this right, but it occurred to me that Kim Jong-un probably seemed a little too happy to announce the ‘denuclearization’ of Korea. — It hit me like a flash of lightning that he probably believed that his sabre-rattling tactics had won him a very clear { in his mind } victory and South Korea would ‘behave itself’ and not allow the big bad Amerikans to point their nuclear weapons at North Korea ever again. – I’m thinking that the Chinese probably guessed that he believed this and set him straight, saying, “No – if you go along with this – Donald Trump wins and you will have to give up all your nuclear ambitions and hand over all your nuclear weapons and allow United Nations inspectors free reign over all your future research.”

 

— Like I said, I can’t claim this is the pure Gospel Truth from the vocal chords of God Himself { or Herself } but it felt like a divine flash of insight when it occurred to me.

 

~~~~~ Jim

 

May Day, 2018 & “The Great White North” – isn’t as white (as in snow-covered) as it was last week-

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Tuesday, May 1st, 2018  —>  +7˚C / +44˚F & ‘overcast’ in Atlantic Canada @ 12:34 pm —> on Rosalie { Née “Short” } and Sharon { Née “Woods” } -es Birthday 🙂 —

- Cathi's Outdoor Zen Corner.

– In the last couple years, this corner of our lot kept its snow until Mothers’ Day – This morning it was almost all gone already –

— Cathi’s outdoor ‘Zen Corner’ where last week we were happy to see just a little hint of the top of that square outdoor fireplace peeking above the remaining snow pack back there. I think the snow will probably be all gone before tomorrow morning.

Snow pack last week.

– This was at Sunrise last Monday, April 23rd – { Cousin Debra Ann -Née Austin-‘s Birthday } –

— & In case you haven’t noticed { Or if you live in the USA where too many weather maps don’t believe there’s anything north of your border – } the St John River through New Brunswick is approaching record High flood levels – They expect we may exceed 2008’s high water mark and come close to 1973’s. I think 1973 was the all time record – although I think an earlier flood took out a bridge from the south to the north side of Fredericton in the 1930’s (?) – The stone support things are still there and were almost covered in water the last time we drove anywhere near the river –

— Shrug —

— Enjoy whatever comes your way – Cathi said she read some horoscope stuff that looks very optimistic for the month of May 🙂 —

— xoxoxo —,

~~~~~ Jim

Friday, April 27, 2018 – Flood Waters Threatening Near the River In Fredericton, NB –

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Friday, April 27th, 2018 —> +7˚C / +44˚F – Still Dark & Mostly Cloudy @ 5:45am in Atlantic Canada — Today would have been Uncle Tom’s Birthday —

- Web Cam Shot This Morning -

– Web Cam @ 6:40 am Atlantic Time – Most of the snow has melted from this angle –

— I didn’t get out to see it – Still at least slightly under the weather with a stomach bug – But the St John River is rising higher that we’ve seen it here since we moved into this area in2014 – The 6:00 pm news showed a guy pointing to a tree with flood waters rising to a point almost near the ‘generational high point’ of 2008 with the all time high from 1973 a little bit higher than the 2008 mark. I think the markers were bits of wood nailed into the tree trunk 🙁 – But I hope the tree isn’t in any pain over that.

— I took the plywood tent off from over our Smoke Tree after Cathi got up and got herself ready to work from home today. 🙂 – I hope I didn’t hurt the tree by limiting the amount of sunlight that reached its leaves in my attempt to protect it from damaging snow and ice falling from the roof of the porch beside it – I guess we’ll see in the near future.

— Anyway, Not quite as ‘blehhhh’ as yesterday – but nowhere near 100% yet – Sigh –

~~~~~ Jim

Sunday – And my stomach is upside down.

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Sunday, April 15th,  2018 —> +3˚C / +38˚F & ‘clear’ @ 6:08 pm in Atlantic Canada —

gradual snow melt in driveway and up the wall.

– WebCam shot around 12:30 pm today –

— Got up around 9, waddled to the washroom + back into the office – checked email and made sure my computers hadn’t blown up over night. –  I was going to exercise and meditate at 11:00 am —

 

— But – as 11:00 am approached – I felt my stomach flip over and it was so weird I thought something awful and major had happened on the world stage – so I ate some instant oatmeal and parked in front of the television and there was nothing that drastic in the news. – Nothing very positive either.

 

— I forget when Cathi got up,  but I fell asleep and woke up with Justin Trudeau trying to justify demanding that the proposed new Kinder-Morgan oil pipeline out west go through B.C. from Alberta – and his arguments sounded like the big business oil baron elites bought and sold him. He belabored the same stupid points over and over. He did not show the map of all the pipelines all over Alberta that make one more look like the world’s most intense maze. He tried to convince everybody that Canada will go bankrupt { some idiot said the price of gasoline will go up by $2.00 per liter if we don’t put that pipeline through} – { Bull Chips! }

 

— He tried to say that this new pipeline will generate lots of good paying jobs for nice Canadian workers.  I have noticed that any time a politician opens his mouth and  “Jobs” comes out –  you might as well stop listening because nothing like the truth is about to follow. In other words = “Bull Chips!”

 

— Many times more jobs are generated by renewable energy resourses and the manufacturing and service industries that surround renewables. It’s like fourteen times more jobs are generated by renewable technologies than those monopolistic big oil b.s. jobs.

 

— “We can’t depend on our long time best business partner – the ‘USA’ – because, well you’ve heard the news – we have no idea what they’re going to do next.” —> So he wants to get in bed with the Chinese??? Gaaa! { The Chinese people I know are wonderful. Their mainland government is nuts. }

 

So yeah, blehhhhh – I’m still feeling uneasy here – there may yet be another shoe about to drop.

 

— blehhhhh —,

~~~~~ Jim

– Copied & Pasted – Cathi’s Tribute To Moe –

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— Copied from Cathi’s WordPress dot com blog — { Copying from one WordPress Blog to another proved to be a royal pain — Cathi had the text of her poem centered beneath the photos, left justified. And whatever WordPress did with it’s last insane update would not allow me to do that – after a dozen tries.  So I gave up. } —  { Okay, I spent over an hour and a half this afternoon, trying to get this to format something like the way Cathi had it formatted on her “MRS SAUGA” blog.  I just tried one more thing and I think it worked, —> Formatting with tables was disastrous —> But now WordPress has this second row of ‘tools’ in its ‘you’re doing things the hard way -‘ old fashioned editor. and one of those tools is the “Increase Indent” tool and in the editor, what you see is not what you get so I had to go trial and error and save and back up and try again for another twenty minutes to get it right. I think I got it right – I’ll go show this to Cathi and see what she says…. } { —jrw— }

— { To see it the way she posted it goto —>  https://mrssauga.wordpress.com/2018/04/13/magical-mysterious-moe/  <— } —

= = = = =

Magical Mysterious Moe

April 13, 2018 —   / MRSSAUGA

An orange face peers out
From a hole in the wall
Where were you my boy?
Where did you go –
Oh there you are
Looking for mice between
Ceiling and floor in the
Basement closet and
Somehow you found a
Way up from the top shelf
Through a broken tile
How did you get in there
Anyway
My magical mysterious Moe.

 

Everyone’s a friend
Cranky visitor cat
Giant Black Lab
Timid Tall Bengal Cat
Strangers who come to the door
Bosses with wide shoulders to jump on
Kids selling cookies or
Asking for Hallowe’en candy
No problem there
He could sport a purple cape like
The best of them and wear it proudly
Our magical mysterious Moe.

 

He would sit on a sofa near the
Bottom of the skinny stairs
Yet at the end of my climb
There he would be
Laying comfortably at the top
I have no idea how he could do that
And yet he did
This magical mysterious Moe.

 

He could purr away any ill or pain
At 528 Hz and suitably kneaded
I could drift off knowing
I’d been at least healed at a
Soul level
By magical mysterious Moe.

 

So it doesn’t surprize me
That on a long Easter weekend
When vets offices were closed
And snowbanks were blocking
A favorite catnip spot in the garden
He spent it close by me in the living room
Beside a fire warm and comfortable
He seemed to feel fairly well on my birthday
Then slipped away in the first clap of thunder
Of 2018 when nobody was looking the next day

 

And

 

I know someday soon these tears will
Turn back to smiles for our
Big marmalade mischievous man
But forgive me if
I just can’t get over
The suddenness just yet –

 

You Magical Mysterious Moe.

 

(c) Catherine M. Harris – April 2018

um – Tuesday, March 13th, 2018 –

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Tuesday, March 13th, 2018 —>  -0˚C / +31˚F —> Dark & I think it’s snowing @ 7:59 pm here, in Atlantic Canada — I think today might be Dana Delaney’s ( of China Beach teevee series? ) Birthday. & It’s Doug’s Daughter’s ( Rachels’s ) spouse for life – Derrick Kenwood’s Birthday ( He uses a forest elf’s image from our game as his facebook avatar 🙂 — Yay? —

Smiling Snow pyramid?

– I thought the snow pyramid to the left looked like it had a jolly, almost Santa Claus-like face, & to me at least – it looked like it was smiling. This was yesterday –

 

— My sister, Sharon, in Alaska – who has been having problems with connecting to her Skype account, heard from our friend, Chris, that ‘effbook’ has a free video chat function and she was all excited to try that – like I said, Skype has been making it impossible for her to log on and use it. & today we had a very nice, but slightly blurry ‘effbook’ video chat – Yay? – Yeah, always good to see her smiling face. 🙂

 

= = = = =

— & Now this from our sister in Utah, Nancy —>

 

 Nancy Wellington Aylward –

— “I found out some information which I think might be helpful to all. We have been using a large amount of our cellular data these last two months, even though we all use WiFi when at home and other places like the gym. Yesterday I went online to AT&T to view our data usage. I looked specifically at my usage and noticed charges for data at 12:00 am, 3:00 am and 6:00am-every day! I am NOT on my phone at these times. When I told the agent this he told me that even though I am on WiFi I need to turn off my “cellular data” or my phone will look for the stronger signal and use the cellular data if that is stronger than the WiFi-which it apparently is at our house!! So for those of us who did not know this and were not told this by our carriers-always turn off your cellular data when using WiFi!!!!

= = = = =

 — Meanwhile, over the border, in Aerendel, Laerry’s { Métis } cousin, Julienne, has apparently ‘gone native’ as a forest elf, perhaps with a little bit of Ottahrian blood? When it was time for her portrait, she quickly changed out of her work clothes ( she did a lot – pulled millions of weeds up and fed them to somebody’s cows – worked all night – I think – ) and, um, from the looks of things, she’s trying to catch somebody’s eye. Back home in the ‘Real World’ she was quite the musician – a prodigy with the ‘fiddle’ { she wanted to stick to mostly Celtic stuff – but could play the heck out of um, —> “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” – with a flair and enough rasp to sound like she owned it.

 

Julienne in the morning fog.

– by-line ‘TaleRocker in Aerendel’ –  (Using a contraband smart phone ( “No Service – EVER!” ) for a camera ) — Pre-Dawn sun rays on this planet in this ‘parallel’ dimension do some wild things with something in the atmosphere to give us some very interesting sky and fog colours – Julienne appreciates that, but she is, after all, a Bard – and can’t resist getting all dolled up and posing –

— Yes, Julienne has gone native, I think if you hang out with members of one race or another, you really do start to look, and maybe think and feel a lot like them – And ‘T-R’ hasn’t told us how he keeps his iPhone charged over there –

— shrug & 1/2 —,

~~~~~ Jim

The Play Of Light And Shadow { No – we’re definitely not in Kansas – }

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Sunday, March 4th, 2018 —>  +1˚C / +34˚F with light rain { actually looked like very fine – almost invisible snow was falling here } @1:23 pm in Atlantic Canada —> On Marcia Logan’s Birthday { And Michaela M.’s & a couple more people who might not want to be reminded that they’re aging —

 

Fashion Statement?

– “Fashion Statement” –

 

 

— { I did not expect the above photo to load full sized. }

 

= = = = =

 

1.

 

I count my ‘mindless pursuits”

among the most productive form

of therapy

available to me

-when in the course of another day’s

fierce concentration

I find my ‘self’

where my brain says, “NO!”

and flatly refuses

to even attempt

to solve another

mind numbing

dilemma –

And then

a mindless game on a computer

or other ‘device’

may not seem like much

but if it’s engaging

enough

the deeper reaches

of my mind or soul or -?

-whatever-

often sighs with relief

as my ‘conscious’ mind (fried)

allows that simple solution

(I couldn’t see)

come bubbling up out of nowhere

in spite of all the conventional wisdom

our contemporaries spout

and try to live by

and act like they believe

we all should-?

 

 

2.

 

“Getting Somewhere?”

 

Moving the new desk into my cluttered office

I can’t move without knocking something over

but I look around

And hey – there’s more space in here –

 

( don’t tell Cathi – I’ll never hear the end of it?)

March 4th, 2018

 

 

 

“the Play of Light and Shadow”

 

Working all night

on keeping this world together

with duct tape and anybody else’s discards

after an un-predicted

catastrophe

brought earthquakes –

shattered homes

shattered lives –

 

There’s nothing to do

but keep on moving

-pull one more

piece of debris

from another collapsed

home

in the hopes that

someone under that mess

may still be alive –

 

Then – in the morning’s first light

old “Rescue Central”

sent in the relief team

and, exhausted –

we turn around and blink

dumbfounded at the piles of rocks and bricks

that just the other day

was a thriving neighbourhood

And I stare at the friend I’ve been working along side –

wonder where she finds the strength to do this –

and the two of us gasp and stumble toward nothing like ‘home’

numb to everything around us

until the play of light and shadow

on the one untouched masonry hacienda anywhere

for miles in any direction –

takes our breath away

we can almost imagine children

running around, playing

happy and free and

care-free?

Yes, we’re both  mesmerized –

Then she sighs and looks around at the hills and the jungle and the river –

“This place really is beautiful, ya know?”

March 4, 2018

 

= = = = =

 

~~~~~ Jim

Aggrivation With Scanners & One More Reason To Hate Google

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Saturday, March 3rd, 2018  —> +2˚C / +35˚F — Overcast and ‘Dark’@ 905 pm in Atlantic Canada. —> on multiple Birthdays day – Tom Poplawski, Elsa C., Ian Punnet — and the anniversary of the release of  ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ by Pink Floyd. —

 

— Moving stuff around in my “office” here these last couple days, I found some real treasures when I opened envelopes I don’t remember seeing before. { Might have been something someone handed me at a ‘Life Celebration’ { A funeral by a euphemistic name? Although we did try to keep it positive, my mother always was an ‘Earth Angel’ – She just dropped the ‘Earth’ part} }. And trying to get these scanned has been a buster-

 

Brookses, Bordens, Georges + Wellingtons

– Extended Family Portrait – circa 1950 –

 

— Really don’t know when the above photo was taken. Standing, left to right, Dorothy May Brooks Borden, Robert H Borden, Dorothy Eleanor Borden Wellington, Robert C Wellington Jr, Edith Grace George Wellington and Robert Carlson Wellington ( Senior ). Seated: Willie Brooks ( nee Willie Brooke ) Eliza Morgan Brooks, Clarence  George. & dat’s me on my Great Grandmother’s lap.

 

– I think this is World War II Liberation Money. It was the last thing my father gave me before he shuttled off to the Spirit Realms. –

 

— I thought he’d given me Liberation Money from the Philippines, But this looks Dutch to me.

 

Backside

– Back side of the above Liberation Currency –

 

— So, the first thing I tried to scan – on our mono laser printer ‘all-in-one’ got as far as ‘Scan to PC’ – and the danged thing would still be spinning, looking for the PC if I didn’t mercifully ‘pull the plug’ – { Hit the ‘Off” switch. }

 

Me in the 70's

– Me in the early 70’s at my Borden Grandparents’ 45th Anniversary Bash –

 

— Don’t know the exact date on this one either. There was a big party at my Aunt’s ( & Uncle’s ) in Milford. The photographer was a young guy, friend of my sister, Sharon.

 

Me?

– And, This was me at a ridiculous hour of this morning, trying to figure out a clunky old data base. –

 

— Weird things happen when your cursor gets too close to the ‘camera’ icon.

— And a lot of very odd and frustrating things kept coming at me today.

— So I soaked in a bathtub full of hot water until my brain turned soggy – { shhh, I won’t admit that the brain was soggy before the incident with the tub full  of hot  water –

— And later I reconnected an old scanner that seemed to be working, but it wanted to save everything as pdf files. { What the —- }

— The latest schnarr frustration came when I had to email the photos in small groups because the computer that can connect to the clunky old scanner doesn’t know any other way to do things, and now it decided it can’t use firefox and google chrome wants to send everything to a google drive so it can steal all your private information and sell it to the highest bidder. — and after I said “NO! Do not involve Google Freakin Drive! – it did anyway and then google freakin drive would not let me download from their freakin cloud, I could look at it, but I couldn’t touch? Or use anything? — Are you kidding me?

— Yup, so – every step of the way between thinkin’ I could scan and share a couple photos and now as full of flying monkey wrenches.  – Which – I hope – I managed to duck –

— { Quack quack already — }

— Sigh —,

~~~~~ Jim