Wednesday, July 1st, 2020 – Canada Day –

-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

“Hey – Look What I Found – & This Past Week In Game Building Land -“

Sunday – June 21st, 2020, Fathers’ Day? & it’s +26˚C / +76˚F – off and on cloudy – and muggy? @ 3:34 pm in Atlantic Canada –

I thought I lost this -

– How about a rejection slip from Star Wars – for an unsolicited idea and sample bit of movie script in 1977? –

— I found the above hiding in plain sight here in my office when the ‘clearing away some clutter’ bug hit me. I thought I’d lost it a long time ago –

- Julienne - in slightly foggy reflections in Glaicer Valey -

– “Julienne taking a moment to appreciate the beauty through the coming fog – with reflections in Glacier Valley -“

— Glacier Valley has been around since 2011 – But – while I thought I did a good job of getting the slopes from high mountains right, and learned that white gravel doesn’t just just look like authentic hillside ‘crud’ { – that’s a technical term used by climbers – “Crud” – } —> It also looks like real snow in some places / under the right conditions. … And I was able to pick up a really good ‘Gaming’ monitor during Boxing Day/Week after my 3 month appointment taking photos and working them into a complicated database for the local museum here in the fall of 2018 – and wow – I was actually stunned at how good this looks on a decent gaming monitor.

- A Gremlin - Doug figured out how to morph this guy from a full sized human -

– “Gremlin -” I thought I’d have to try to get my cousin Emelie involved to come up with some decent creature designs – but while this character { one of Doug’s } has some glitches and weird appearance problems – it looks pretty darned good { or Evil – or both } – to me –

— Without the hat – this character has dark eye sockets on the top of his head, and his neck looks like it has a bones sticking out if you look at it too closely – but dang – { I wish the ears were creepier – but heck – } Having a couple of these guys running around burning down whole neighbourhoods could make for some interesting game play…

- Anie - in the shallows of the Enchanted Sea -

– Annie – up to her waist in pretty green water in the Enchanted Sea – Even stout hearted Pirates avoid this area whenever they can –

– Annie looks like she’s really worried that there might be hungry sharks in the shallows of the Enchanted Sea here —> An area that’s just mostly very basic right now – And getting a little bit more finished every day – Even if I work on this game until I pass out and wake up with my neck aching and my head pounding much too often…

- Moe lit some lamps -

– Moe – the slightly Pirate-like Cat-Person – learned that a little bit of some dust from Crystal Mines – when added to whatever they burn in those lamps – both increases the brilliance of the lighting and gives it some colourful tints –

— Moe was my first successful attempt at ‘creating’ a charismatic Cat-Person – With just a little bit of modification we have Fox People who might need bushier tails – But yup, they are different enough –

- Brilliant lighting from a distance -

– This was another view that ‘knocked me out’ – When you see this on s decent sized screen – it looks pretty darned good – & on the Gaming Monitor it looks Magical. –

— As I was ready to wind down – I knew I would pass out soon if I didn’t – Draelen – { My Character } And Nikki – His love interest – met in the dark on “Lovers’ Lookout Hill” and Me, out here in the ‘real world’ was stunned at how good this looked –

- A little more than two hours in real world time passed between the photo above and this one - taken from the same angle -

– Draelen might have been just as stunned as I was – And the morning fog and scenery isn’t bad here either –

— After the magical looking night in the two ‘photos’ – above – A one nano second miss-click messed up several game areas right around this ‘Inland Sea’ harbor – and after three long days of fixing things – we still more to do – But – yeah – seeing that we’re able to have results that look this good – doesn’t keep me from waking up with my forehead on the keyboard – but it does give me hope that we’re actually getting somewhere.

- Gaeren - The Ursan on the right - and his Delvahrian captain of the guard -

– Somebody had to make armor in the DelVahrian style for Gaeren – an Ursan { Bear Person – } –

— These two are in the same unit – guarding the city of ‘Emeliea’ with spooky clouds coming down from mountains in the west –

- "Tall Spruce with roots -" -

– We’ve also been seriously learning how to ‘make trees’ with Speed Tree software – from the same company that designed software that made some really impressive virtual plants for movies. –

— I have to ask Cousin Debi if this is what a real spruce tree looks like, and not a Colorado Blue Spruce –

— Sigh – And I better sign off and get some rest before I blink and wake up a couple weeks from now with a splitting headache…

— 🙂

~~~~~ Jim

“The Nasties are Ramping Up Their Attack Strategies Aimed at Election Time” by Doug Otterson

—> Insanely early morning – August 13, 2019 – The Following is copied and pasted from Doug Otterson’s “Independent Canadian News” —> Which he copied and pasted from his other News Blog, “Inter World News” —

= = = = =

– Monday, August 12, 2019 – 80˚F / 27˚C & cloudy @ 3:30 pm near Ithaca, New York –

Copied & pasted from /news/

– The above has been copied and pasted from our “Inter World News” blog – I like the way most of that blog looks. –       —djo—

more copied & pasted

– I copied and pasted the above here, too, maybe I’ll do this for the whole article. – —djo—

- copied & pasted part 3pqrt 4"Why does nobody complain about CEOs getting $10,000.oo an hour but they go nuts when employees ask for a living wage?

– “Economic Warfare .101 – Why do people get crazy when workers ask for a living wage when CEOs get $10,000.00 (or more) an hour?” – —djo—

part 5

This was my ‘sign off’ for the article I posted yesterday – —djo—

— Now, if our buddy, “HJdA”, could get the design elements of the above blog to work here – I’d vote to double his salary at our next bored meeting 😉 – return multiply by zero error 😉

—djo—

Welcome to September, 2018 —

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?

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

 

Sunday – And my stomach is upside down.

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

Wednesday , – Copied and Pasted from ‘Aerendel Comics’ Blog –

— The following was posted yesterday, on the —>https://aerendel.ca/comics/  Blog<— { link } on my Nephew, Charles McCauley’s Birthday 🙂 —

= = = = =

Tuesday, April 10, 2018  —> +3˚C / +38˚F + sunny + clear with blue skies in Atlantic Canada on Earth { NorAm=Can+Mex+USA [-05] } @ 12:11 pm —

Jeff between the beach and Daelen hills.

– Jeff Karrlson – Near Fort Daelen –

— Jeff Karrlson { pictured above } is from “{ NorAm=Can+Mex+USA(-07) }” The only variance we are sure of between (-05) and (-07) is that the Maine, USA – border with Quebec to the north and New Brunswick to the East is quite different. — The Map for ‘(-05)’ has Maine extended about 25 miles farther East and Extending North and West beyond the north flowing section of the St John River, which forms the Quebec border in ‘Variance (-07)’ Edmundston is in New Brunswick in both Variances. – But Preque Isle, Caribou, Stockholm, Acadia, New Sweden, Carriveau Mill, and Sinclair are all inside Maine in ‘V(-05)’ and all part of New Brunswick in ‘V(-07)’.

— In ‘V(-07)’ Jeff’s Alcoholic father won over one hundred thousand dollars in the US multi-state lottery and celebrated by taking Jeff’s mother, two sisters and younger brother to dinner, got drunk – passed out at the wheel – and slammed into a tractor trailer pulling heavy earth moving equipment on his way home.

— Jeff had gotten his father that lottery ticket the night before, had noticed that the clerk had not entered the numbers his father played all the time correctly, went to another store, another clerk, filled out the ticket – double checked it more than once, and brought his father the ticket his father had demanded. The ticket with the wrong numbers, which Jeff pocketed, netted him 30.6 million dollars after taxes. He would much rather have had his family back.

— He quit his job, (peed all over his abusive supervisor’s desk), bought a slightly used Motor Home and drove around the USA – Mostly New York and New England – in the hopes that avoiding routine and seeing the earth come back to life in the spring time might help him get over his deep shock and depression over losing his family like that.

— He crossed into Canada a couple times. Canada felt different to him, looked more interesting. The people seemed to be more friendly. The French speaking people seemed more interesting and maybe even more intelligent and friendly that the people he’d grown up around in the USA – But he developed a great deal of trouble trying to sleep and then had trouble getting to sleep, experienced multiple nightmares, hearing – especially his little sister’s – dying screams every time he fell asleep for almost one month, before he became totally confused and lost in his exhausted state of mind, crossed into Canada at the Vermont-Quebec border, crossed back into Maine at an unguarded border and hadn’t realized he’d crossed back into New Brunswick until an RCMP officer stopped to ask him if he was all right when he’d pulled to the side of a narrow rural road, then finally parked where that young and friendly RCMP officer told him he could pull over and park, where he hoped to rest and maybe even sleep for the night. Like I said, he hadn’t realized he’d crossed back into Canada after accidentally driving across an unguarded rural border crossing two days earlier. But he didn’t explain that to the officer. He just yawned, admitted he was lost and looking for a spot to pull over and get some sleep.

—Later that night, the RCMP officer checked the information Jeff had given him, and confirmed that he’d gone through customs at the Vermont-Quebec border and thought it was reasonable that he’d driven around Quebec and then crossed into New Brunswick, and when the story about his family dying in an accident in which alcohol was involved also checked out the RCMP officer dropped his suspicions and became concerned.

— That night Jeff dreamed that a scientist – being tortured by some kind of dark-ops rogue military group somewhere inside the USA – told him to look after his [ the scientist’s ] niece, ‘Kaeren’.

— In the morning Jeff woke up as young school women walked near the parked motor-home and heard one woman call another ‘Kaeren’. He discovered a ‘For Sale’ sign describing a muti-acre parcel with logging trails.

— The young RCMP officer who’d told Jeff he could sleep there the night before stopped by that morning to check on him and told him where to eat and where not to eat in the area, gave him a ride to the officer’s favourite diner and introduced Jeff to the farmer who was selling that parcel of land at the request of his old friend (and Kaeren’s uncle) who had gone missing and was presumed dead after so many years had passed.

— Jeff had ‘gotten lucky’ when the news reporters in the states got both his name and address wrong when they reported the lottery winning. { He’d paid an out of work actor to pretend to be him for the official photographs and the actor used that money to move to Hollywood and found a modest rent, got a job as a waiter in a bar out there – and had enough extra cash to last several months while he went to every casting call he could – }

— After the farmer left the diner, Jeff told the officer more details about the accident that killed his family and the series of events that gave him his winnings and the fact that the reporters all got his name and address wrong and said he’d really rather not broadcast the fact that he had that much money, he was still in mourning and didn’t want to wonder whether anybody who seemed like a friend was only friendly because of what he had in the bank and the officer agreed to keep Jeff’s secret. He drove Jeff to the farmer’s farm, left him there with the farmer about to drive Jeff out to the property that was for sale, under the guise that Jeff’s rich crazy uncle wanted to buy property to keep it out of the hands of developers and corporations. – At the top of a steep hill, the farmer stopped his four wheel drive vehicle at a logging trail-blocking mess of fallen trees. They walked around the mess and followed a deer path to where a whole section of hills and trees had been swept away by a ‘freak storm’, that left a nearly flat, but uneven rocky bed behind. “Well, that’s different-” the farmer nodded, “Huh!”

— “Looks like a stone lake-” Jeff thought out loud.

— The farmer agreed.

— He later found out that the owner of the property, who had disappeared and was presumed dead, was Kaeren’s uncle, George. It’s a long story, but Jeff, Kaeren and George escaped a deadly encounter with the rogue dark ops military guys and crossed over into another parallel Earth that we haven’t quite classified yet – and from there, Jeff and Kaeren blundered across into another parallel world and ended up in Aerendel – where they have been temporarily separated and are trying to get back together.

— { Sorry, didn’t mean to be this long winded, but – that’s Jeff’s side of the Jeff and Kaeren and ‘Stone Lake’ saga. }

= = = = =

 

Jeff & Kaeren in Daelen

– Jeff & Kaeren = Reunited ( photo #1 ) –

 

— Update – They found each other. One odd thing that happens to some inter-dimensional travelers if they stay in Aerendel for any length of time – many, but not all, undergo subtle to radical changes physiologically.  Kaeren began showing hints that she was becoming a little more ‘Half-Elf’ every day, before Jeff began showing any changes at all. Jeff’s parents and family, including a favourite uncle who had died mysteriously in his home dimension, were alive in one village in Aerendel. They were 100% Human and quite bigoted about that – They shunned Kaeren, and Kaeren, wanting to keep the peace ( she was born under the Earthly Astrological sign of Cancer ) left with a troop of Half Elven Rangers to learn to develop and control the healing abilities she discovered when she came to Aerendel.

— When Jeff’s ears began to get slightly pointy – his father disowned him ( which didn’t mean much to Jeff’s financial status – but hurt him when he was barred from seeing his sisters and brother ) – he found another troop of Half Elves and joined them.

 

Kaeren and Jeff showing how close to the sea shore they are.

– Kaeren and Jeff – taken with Kaeren’s contraband cell phone – shhh! –

 

— Now this is interesting – In the photo Rocky took with Jeff’s contraband cell phone, Kaeren was not holding her ‘gear axe’. And in the photo that Rocky took with Kaeren’s phone, Jeff was unarmed. Hmmmm- that is interesting….

~~~~~ Jim

Yesterday’s News?

Thursday, March 15th, 2018 —> -2˚C / +28˚F & not snowing in the dark @ 11:11 pm in Atlantic Canada —

Lights on Wellington Court

– I don’t know if it’s me – Or are there higher vibrations effecting the way we all see things lately – Even the streetlight and house lights on our street look a bit more magical. –

— We got something like 2 feet of wind-blown hard-packed heavy-wet-snow in our driveway overnight, and the stuff was so hard to deal with the snowblower was squawking and trying to go up and over the snow instead of through it – every three or four inches the darned thing would feel like it hit something solid – It really was a struggle. Our next door neighbour, who’s lived around here all her life came over and asked me, “Have you ever seen snow that was this hard to work with a snowblower?” { Nope }

— I had to stop several times to rest – and at one point, did not think I would be able to finish the job. We had to take a break to go get more gas for the snowblower – pushing hard and then pulling back and pushing again ( even though the thing is powered – when you hold down the lever on the handle -). Wheels were spinning and going nowhere.

Snowing - driveway, partially cleared van.

– Late morning – the snow hadn’t quite stopped – Doesn’t look like much, but the ridge left by the town’s contracted out snow plows was deadly. – and the four inches of compacted snow that hadn’t blown over the van in the impressive wind – probably weighed as much as a foot or more would have. –

— I fell asleep after we went to get more gasoline – woke up around 5:30 pm? & wanted to go back to sleep in a big way, but decided to give the driveway’s messed up edges another try –

— It turned out that using a lightweight snow shovel ( plastic ‘business end’? ) was a lot easier than going absolutely nuts with the snowblower ( & all the guys in my family die of heart attacks… eep? )

— But I got the job done.

— Almost forgot to mention, Cathi was able to work from home today – She gets more done this way & doesn’t have to deal with ‘schnarr’ office politix – And it’s always good to have her here. Even when I keep being told not to bother her with casual conversation – oops – But when I think something’s important lately I want to blurt it out before I forget it.

— Shrug —

Finally cleared the driveway as dark approached.

– It wasn’t snowing, but it was starting to get dark when I finished the driveway in pretty much the shape you see here –

— I did dig a canyon to the mail box ( the mailbox is wearing the number “5” here ) after I took this photo. and then, before I collapsed, but was about to, I saw that Cathi was finished with her last minute work stuff and brought her outside to show her a couple things, and that’s when I took the un-retouched photo at the top of this article. I love my iPhone. Just wish it saved the photos with the date and time instead of just the number for a name.

— Sigh —

 

= = = = =

— That was yesterday, I felt pretty good after the bit of a workout with the shovel – which didn’t quite survive intact, it’s splitting at the semi-tubular – um – corrugations? – That look like they’re supposed to be a reinforcing, strength-enhancing feature? Looks like maybe one more deceptive bit of planned obsolescence engineering to me.

 

= = = = =

— Meanwhile, our game world developmental spurt is going “gang-busters” – And today in a brain storming session one of our artists took a look at what we’ve been doing and said, “Yeah, it’s pretty – and some of those quirky innovations you came up with to hide flaws really work, but what are we doing here? Will it ever all come together? Will it ever actually be open to the public, maybe even paying customers?”

— So we broke out the pencil sketch diagrams and explained the dotted lines and she looked at all of that and gasped, “Holy [ Schnarr ] This makes sense. I really think it works – And I thought you guys were just kind of twiddling your thumbs and kidding yourselves – Wow – I like it.”

— So, with that little shot in the arm – we should bid a fond farewell for the evening and either get some rest or stare at computer screens like electronic zombies for a couple more hours – fueled with our – “The end is in sight -” Or more like, “The real beginning is almost here -” enthusiasm.

— I’m really impressed with the new builders who’ve shown up.

— Yes! —,

~~~~~ Jim

um – Tuesday, March 13th, 2018 –

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 —>

 

— “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 – }

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