Happy Halloween from Your Favourite Contrarian

~ Amusives ~ 7 Comments
My Halloween Tree

We need the security of conformity and we need the freedom to be a contrarian.
– Psychology Today –

The Contrarian versus the Control-arian

Often in November we read an admonishment from a ‘control-arian’ (a term I made up) that you must ‘Wait until after American Thanksgiving before decorating for Christmas’. My answer to that is – I put up my Christmas Tree in October and decorated it for Halloween! I will enjoy the Ghosts dancing amongst the boughs for a while, then transition into the decorations that traditionally go on my ChristmasTree – long before Christmas, of course.

My Contrarianism  also encourages me to ignore these other admonishments:

– Never divorce the salt from the pepper.
– Do not rest your elbows on the table during a meal.
– Do not walk under a ladder.
– Never wear white after Labor Day
– Don’t open an umbrella indoors.
– Never talk about money, politics, or religion.
– M&M’s must be eaten in this order:  yellow-blue-red-brown-green-orange.

Can you think of other ones?

The Ghosts dancing in the boughs

Some Quite Funny Made Up Rules (From the Net of All Things) 

What’s the #1 rule of kidnapping prevention?
Don’t get carried away.

Never pass up a chance to pee when you are on a road trip.

A little known rule is that all employees of IKEA have to stand in a line in the meeting room before every shift.
Assembly is required.

First rule of English grammar,
Double negatives are a no no.

The first rule of Thesaurus Club is
that you do not talk, whisper, chatter, mumble, rant, articulate, prattle, babble, describe, divulge, drone, confer, deliberate, squeal, converse, discourse, orate or speak about Thesaurus Club.

Dog Rules….
1. The dog is NOT allowed in the house.
2. Okay, the dog is allowed in the house, but ONLY in certain rooms.
3. The dog is allowed in all rooms, but has to stay OFF the furniture.
4. The dog can get on the OLD furniture only.
5. Fine, the dog is allowed on all the furniture, but is not allowed to sleep with the humans on the bed.
6. Okay, the dog is allowed on the bed, but only by invitation.
7. The dog can sleep on the bed whenever he wants, but not under the covers.
8. The dog can sleep under the covers by invitation only.
9. The dog can sleep under the covers every night.
10. Humans must ask permission to sleep under the covers with the dog.

What two secret organizations rule the world through control of important metallic elements?
The Aluminati and the Tinplars.

The three unwritten rules of life
1.
2.
3.

What do you think the three unwritten rules of life should be?

Who is Laughing Now?

~ Amusives ~ 12 Comments
The Political Circus. Clowns to the west and Jokers to the east.

While I do not want to belittle the politicians I feature in this post, the visual of Clowns and Jokers was just too hard to resist…

We had an interesting Political Circus in western Canada recently. When the ‘Big Top’ finally left town after an exciting week of performances (voting), the Clown was out of a job and the Joker was ‘put on notice’ that Alberta would continue to pursue a more equitable relationship with the Feds.

In Circus Ring One was the Alberta Referendum on Independence and Political Reform. The Clown and Joker, not to be upstaged by ‘traitorous far-right extremists’, held press conferences to criticize the Albertans who thought they had a right to express their opinions.

The Clown: Dave Eby, NDP Premier of the neighbouring province, British Columbia, the land of social democrats and greens (and anti anything Alberta produces in abundance like oil, natural gas, grain and cows) criticized: the Albertans who wanted to secede from Canada and Alberta’s Conservative Premier Danielle Smith for allowing a Referendum to even happen:

It starts when fringe ideas get treated as normal, enabled by leaders who won’t take a clear stand against them… extreme proposals, far-right proposals, were treated as normal…
– Dave Eby, now former BC Premier-

The Joker, Mark Carney, Canada’s Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Party, encouraged Albertans to vote No to the Referendum questions. His message was simple – nothing Alberta had to say was of any interest to the Federal Government.

And don’t be fooled by the idea you can “send a message” with your vote…
– Mark Carney –

So,  Alberta held their  Referendum of ten questions. The result was that a majority of voters did not want to separate from Canada and they did not want Constitutional Reform. They also did not want more Federally imposed immigration if it continued to impact provincially funded health care, education and social services.

The Flag of Alberta

Meanwhile in Circus Ring Two in British Columbia, Eby called a snap election shortly after the Conservative opposition party announced their leader had resigned. Eby figured he would take advantage of an opposition in disarray to extend his party’s power for a longer period of time.

… Eby and his NDP party were soundly defeated – now that is funny!

Personally, we are okay with Alberta remaining part of Canada, though we will continue to fly the Flag of Alberta, as opposed to the Flag of Canada until we get a Federal Government that thinks of us as more than their personal piggy bank.

Yet Ottawa still acts as if the country begins in Windsor and ends at Quebec City. The same decisions are made by the same people in the same rooms. The result is a government trapped by its own reflection, convinced it represents a Canada it can’t even see.
– How to Fix Western Alienation –

Thinking about Clowns and Jesters and costumes,  I was wondering

If you had to wear a costume every day but it had to be subtle enough that people weren’t sure if it was a costume or not, what would you wear?

Leaf Me Alone – I’m Just Fine

~ Amusives ~ 20 Comments

My Fall Photos – Playing with Pixels

Double Flowering Plum (Prunus triloba ‘Multiplex’)
An Impasto filter

A dispute between two vegans at a green grocers shop turned violent when one of them started throwing a leaf vegetable, with somewhat jagged leaves, at the other! The second vegan responded by picking them up and hurling them back! It was either kale or be kaled.

Mountain Ash (Sorbus americana)
Oil Pastel filter

What did the vegans say when they were captured and put into a small space?
Kelp! Lettuce leaf! There isn’t mushroom in here!

Fireweed (Chamaenerion angustifolium) seeds
Sketch filter

Two ants, Jack and Rose, are sitting on a leaf on water. Suddenly, a small tide comes and capsizes the leaf. Only the girl ant sinks… because the other is a buoy ant.

Needles of the Larch (Larix), a conifer of the family Pinaceae. They shed their needles in the fall. HDR filter
Oil Pastel filter

Why is the forest floor covered in leaf litter?
Because nature abhors a vacuum.

Why does lightning always strike trees? They are the path of leaf resistance.

My dad owns 4 camping tents which he uses at different times of the year. Each one is named with a musical genre. In spring he uses the Jazz tent, in summer he uses the Pop tent, in autumn he uses the Classical tent….
But now is the winter of our disco tent.
– All quotes from the Net of All Things –

I could ask you which of these photos you like best, or which quote was your favourite – but instead

I was wondering:

If you had to defend yourself in combat with a vegetable, which one would you pick and why?

Currant-ly – Fall at the Red House

~ Amusives ~ 15 Comments

It is Fall at the Red House (though last week-end we had a few days of snow and cold). Fortunately, before the brief bluster of winter, I took fall photos of the plants in my yard.

Golden Flowering Currant – Ribes aureum:  This shrub has vibrant red leaves in the Fall. It is a laid back bush that grows well in full sun or full shade; is very adaptable to both dry and moist locations and is okay with whatever soil type or pH it encounters.

Camera – Canon Rebel SL2 with EF-S60mm Macro lens

Did you hear about the man who drowned in a bowl of muesli? He was dragged down by a currant.

Currant photo altered with a user designed pastel filter in the old Topaz Studio product (which only runs now on my  PC Laptop).

Did you hear about the news program dedicated to berries? It was a currant affairs program.

I’ve got 40 raisins in my savings account
…oh no wait, that’s my currant account.
– All Punny Quotes are from the Net of All Things –

Do you call this season Autumn or Fall? Both terms were born in Britain and came to America. Autumn was the more popular term for quite a long time, but eventually it migrated back to Britain, while Fall stayed behind.

The Usefulness of Those Coffee Cup Rings

~ Amusives ~ 12 Comments

If you are a coffee drinker, maybe now and then the bottom of your coffee cup draws a diagram like the one on the right (without words of course)! If yes, then your coffee cup has drawn a Venn diagram, which is a series of overlapping circles that can show possible relations between sets of things. (I drew a conclusion with this Coffee Venn – Blogger Herb can confirm whether I am right.)

Another example, what if you wanted to know what ‘Bank Robbers,’ ‘DJ’s’, ‘Preachers’ and ‘Mom Taking a Sweater off a Kid’ have in common? With a four circle Venn diagram you could figure out the commonalities.  A few clues: the overlap for Bank Robbers and DJ’s is ‘Everyone is on the floor’ ;  the overlap for Bank Robbers and Mom is ‘I’m not asking twice.’

Here is another one – what does ‘Immortal’, ‘Emerges at Night’ and ‘Invades homes’ have in common? One clue: the overlap of Emerges at Night and Invades Homes is Cockroaches.

The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected to see. – John Tukey –

On a more personal note, I found value in a Venn diagram exercise called Ikigai (a Japanese concept) that attempts to define your Life Purpose.  I modified their circle criteria and ended up with these three circles. After much pondering, I confirmed what I already sort of knew, but now it was much clearer to me why I do what I do – why I blog, why I make BowBoxes, why I grow plants, etc. My life isn’t as random as I thought it was!

Venn diagram of food: One circle is ‘Healthy,’ the other is ‘Delicious,’ and the intersection is ‘Salad with dressing.’

Parenting Venn diagram: ‘Frayed Nerves,’ ‘Lack of Sleep’ and ‘Why is there pasta on the ceiling?’ The overlap is ‘Kids are out of school’

I have never been a coffee drinker, but I love the smell of the stuff and enjoy The Car Guy’s morning ritual of preparing and drinking it. Though it is not a rushed experience, I don’t think he would call it a ‘mindful ‘Zen’ like ritual’ either.

Do you have a coffee (or tea) ritual?

The Nailed It Delivery Service

~ Amusives ~ 6 Comments

The Car Guy and I have been very socially busy in the past three weeks. That puts a big tick in one box of “Five strategies to Stay Relevant in Retirement”. Making Bow Boxes ticks off two more boxes – a new hobby and planning time effectively.

The #TakeBox Idea

The Social Part – we delivered Seven BowBoxes on our recent two week trip to Vancouver Island and four boxes at a Meet and Eat with many of The Car Guys Cousins.

– The first two boxes went to family members (who were also the recipients of the eight two-cube boxes that we had been storing at the Red House. In all honesty, only four of the boxes were filled with their stuff. The other four boxes were things of ours that they had said they wanted to have. Divesting of these things felt a lot like the #TakeBox idea.

Dear All my Stuff. Thank you for reminding me of all the hobbies I abandoned in years gone by. Turns out that I’m not a ‘future knitter’ after all.

Even Murray could only give me a best guess on this bird!

– One BowBox went to an extraordinary birder, Murray. He is my go to guy when I am uncertain of an avian identification. Murray is a ‘real’ birder, in that he goes on trips to add birds to his Life List. Murray has the patience to ‘wait owl day’ to see a bird. In contrast, I am an accidental backyard birder. Most of my Life List consists of birds I just happen to see in our yard.

Birdwatching is a hobby where you get to wake up at an ungodly hour and spend a significant amount of time watching squirrels.
– A Birdwatcher –

Whenever something goes wrong, I ask myself one reasonable question: Are the squirrels to blame for this? Of course, the answer is invariably yes.
– The Dog –

– Two boxes went to Andrew Roman,  who is making me a wood Mantle Clock. Andrew is a talented wood worker and photographer.  I might jokingly say that Andrew is a ‘fellow blogger’ but his career credentials, knowledge and experience form the basis of the insights that put his literary body of work in a very  different league than mine!

There are no bad pictures; that’s just how your face looks sometimes.
– Abraham Lincoln –

The driftwood on the top of the maple pile came from a ramble on a beach a few days earlier. Left to his own devices, The Car Guy would have brought many pieces of driftwood back to Alberta.

– Two boxes went to The Car Guys cousin (and husband and dog) who hosted us on Salt Spring Island.  In what can only be described as a woodworkers pot of gold, they invited us to go through a pile of scrap wood left from the building of their house. We found some very nice kiln dried maple.

-Four boxes went to more Cousins at the recent Meet and Eat lunch. (What better way to connect than to share a meal!)

A cousin is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost.

Getting back to where I started – Relevance in Retirement.

The last two strategies are
– Stay in Shape because that is good for self-esteem. (It is easier to Stay in Shape than Get in Shape…)
– Embrace Personal Evolution because the only expectations we need to live up to are the ones we choose for ourselves!

Reminder that Winnie the Pooh wore a crop top with no pants and ate his fave food and loved himself. So you can too.

Last and Probably Least – some things only slightly related to what I have already talked about:

It feels good to be home again, blogging about non-earth shattering things, while sitting in my favourite chair!

The Unexpected

~ Amusives ~ 20 Comments

We just returned from a two week trip across the Canadian Province of British Columbia. The way our Durango SUV was loaded down, you would have thought we were settlers planning to colonize a barely habitable new country. Knowing we would be driving through mountainous terrain during unpredictable weather, we packed clothing that ranged from t-shirts to winter jackets. We also had eight two-cube boxes of goods to deliver to family who had stored stuff in our garage – and not a single item was of any use on this adventure, unless we needed to know who our great great grandfather was (genealogy research binders) – likewise in regards to a box of  LP records and sundry other such memorabilia.

So it was no surprise, really, that we encountered things we were not totally prepared for:

I did not get a photo of us sitting around the fire. Here is the AI version.

– we did not anticipate we would spend as much time as we did huddled around an outdoor propane fire ring in the campground. (It was a cold and wet few days.) My assigned task was to keep Ghost Dog’s tail from catching on fire – dog has absolutely no awareness of what her back end and tail are doing…

– we did not expect the power to go off at about 8:30 PM on a very dark and stormy night, while we were lounging in the hot pools. We were able to navigate to our room thanks to someone who  turned their headlights on, which illuminated one side of the hotel somewhat. Once inside our room the headlights cast just enough light for us to track down our cell phones so that we had flashlights.

– we did not anticipate we would see so many seals on the beach near Craig Bay in Nanoose. We also did not expect to like that area so much that we began to think about selling the Arizona house and buying something on Vancouver Island…

I did not know that a seal’s whiskers curve on the ends!

– we did not expect to arrive on Salt Spring Island and discover our GPS had no knowledge of the place we were going to and our cell phones were not in range of any cell towers. We eventually found a spot where there were 2 bars of cell phone coverage and we could phone for directions.

The Rustic Cabin was beautiful.

– we did not anticipate that the Rustic Cabin near Revelstoke (that The Car Guy booked through Travelocity) would not be as advertised. Travelocity said the room amenities included a Bathroom (shared). Reality was – the sink and shower were in a small hut in the nearby woods and by ‘shared’, we concluded it meant the bear that was sighted in the area might want to enter behind us. The toilets (porta potties) were in the woods too, but not nearby. Since it was raining cats and dogs and it was really dark outside, we asked the resort for a different room and were quickly given a place with indoor plumbing.

Home Again!

It was a very fun and interesting trip that has given us a lot to think about in terms of where we might want to spend part of the winter if Arizona becomes impractical.

In the meantime, my body is reminding me that all those trips to DQ and long days of sitting in the Durango, come at a cost…

I’m at an age when my back goes out more than I do.
– Phyllis Diller –

When you’re as old as I am, getting lucky is walking into a room and remembering exactly why you’re there.

If I ever decide to buy a horse ranch in my old age, I’m going to name it Pasture Prime.

More Bowboxes

~ Amusives ~ 23 Comments

It has been a few months since I did an update on the Bowboxes.  We have made 80 of them. We kept 13 and the rest have either already been given away or are ready to be delivered to their new homes.

Here are some of the more recent ones (and a few funnyish quotes from the Web of All Things):

The lid for this box is two contrasting woods. It has a laminate bow that picks up the colors of the lid.

My lumberjack friend occasionally gives me pieces of wood to build my boxes. It’s his random axe of kindness.

This is the first of two hexagon boxes we made using Lowes cedar fence boards. The texture is interestingly rough and we left it that way. We inlaid laminate strips over the seams in the lid – to cover the not yet perfected method of making the lid out of six triangles. The bow is walnut.

Eye Doctor: now normally we replace it with a glass ball, but for you we have one made out of cedar. Would you like that instead?
Patient: Wood eye? Of course!

This is the second box made from rough cedar fence boards. This time we inlaid simple wood strips on the lid seams. The bow is a laminate made from oak and walnut. This box, and the previous one are good examples of how the decorative elements (bow and ribbon) can change the look of a box.

I pine fir the good oak days, when it was poplar to spruce up the living room with a real tree.

This box has a wood and epoxy inset that features wood strips that were set in a round epoxy mold. The bow is a laminate made from wood and epoxy.

I made a custom coaster by pouring silicone over a crucifix. 24 hours and one epoxy pour later… and Christ is resin.

This is the first of two boxes we made from walnut and oak floor boards. The bow is a laminate made from the same two woods.

What’s the difference between Walnuts and Deer nuts?
Walnuts are $2.95. Deer nuts are under a buck.

This is the companion box to the previous one.The oak strips in the bow demonstrate color variances between two different boards. It is rather liberating to have a lot of oak and walnut flooring to experiment with! Many thanks to the lady who gave us the wood in exchange for a Bowbox!

A buddy of mine and I have decided to go into business making truck bed covers out of oak, maple and teak. The business name will be U-Like Products.
When someone asks what that contraption is on the back of your truck, you can proudly respond, “Wooden U-Like tonneau.

This box is made from cedar we salvaged from a wood hot tub. The bow is made from epoxy. It was my least favourite bow – but turned out to be a real asset to this box. Who knew…

Photos of all the Bowboxes are at my blog WestWood Bowboxes. I have documented the process for making bows in three posts that start with this link: How to Make Wood Bows.

My Previous stories about boxes are at Craft Bowbox.

Linguistic Irony

~ Amusives ~ 11 Comments

If anyone knows how to send Ontario’s Premier Ford over the edge, it is President Trump. Trump got Ford riled up by renaming Lake Ontario – to Lake America . Seemingly lost in the uproar that followed is that Canada (and New York) can and will continue to call it Lake Ontario. USA Federal Agencies, maps and documents will refer to it as Lake America.

The Internet had much to say about this with perhaps the most interesting observation being this one on X.com:

“How dare Trump rename Lake Ontario!”
“Anyways, here I am at Sankofa Square…”

Sankofa Square was formerly Yonge-Dundas Square in Toronto, Ontario. It was renamed, along with many other landmarks in Canada, as various levels of government, (in a smug certainty sometimes based on partial truths), insist on removing the names of the often flawed people from our past who ‘built our country’. (And who among us today could do a better job than those people under the circumstances of the time…)

Ironically, Sankofa, a word derived from the Akan people of Ghana, means ‘one should remember the past to make positive progress in the future’ or ‘retrieve things of value from our knowledge of the past’…

At least Sankofa is a word most Canadians can pronounce. Various governments in the  Canadian Province of British Columbia, gleefully declaring a win in the woke/unwoke power struggle, have introduced a number of real tongue twisters like this one for the Victoria, BC Public Library: sxʷeŋ’xʷəŋ taŋ’exʷ or the new bridge over the Fraser River which is called stal̕əw̓asəm. 

It is  much harder to get from here to there if you are unfamiliar with the local  language. We learned that when we tried to navigate our rental car in Spain or Austria or Turkey or Germany in the days before GPS… (Image above generated by AI and does not represent anywhere in particular.

Speaking of controversial renaming, some people were upset when President Obama renamed Mount McKinley in Alaska. President Biden’s administration went one step further and formed the Derogatory Geographic Names Task Force. It renamed nearly 650 geographical features that were deemed as racist and derogatory.  The word ‘Squaw’ was one of the words that was removed. Squaw is now referred to as the ‘S-word”, though it had a long history of congenial use – it was used by English settlers who adopted it from the Algonquian language as early as 1634 as a word meaning woman. Today the word has been declared to be a ‘tool of colonial conquest’.

Ironically, while the S-word is considered highly derogatory, the F-word (which is generally agreed to mean to strike or to have sex and has been described by some writers as a “risky social nuclear option” word) has now entered the main stream vocabulary where, for some, it is the “Swiss Army Knife” of English expressions.

My Other Post about Irony: Irony from the Net of All Things:

It is ironic and sad how a group of squid is not called a squad.
– BoredPanda –

Apparently, the tree that was planted in a park in Los Angeles in memory of Beatles guitarist George Harrison, later died after being infested by beetles.

Is it true that the only place you can buy a Confederate flag is on the black market?

Notice the irony of the words “Hyphenated” and “non-hyphenated”?

Apparently the most shoplifted book in America is the Bible.

Isn’t it just a little ironic to see a group of pro-lifers
throwing eggs at an abortion clinic?

The Dog Ate My Homework

~ Amusives ~ 23 Comments

Maybe the excuse “The Dog Ate My Homework” has some validity… consider this story:

It is of course well known that careless talk costs lives, but the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated.
– Douglas Adams, from the Sci-fi Novel ‘The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ –

To summarize the rest of this section of the Book: Arthur Dent, an earthling, happened to say “I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle” at the exact same time that a wormhole opened up in the space-time continuum. His words were carried far back in time to a distant galaxy where two warlike entities had agreed to meet. At a critical point in their negotiations, Arthur’s words drifted across the room. When translated, these words were a dreadful insult to one of the parties, which set off a war that was waged for centuries. (This may sound far fetched, but the Falklands War, The War of the Roses and the Franco-Prussian War were initiated by verbal tensions.)

Getting back to the fictional war, the two sides eventually realized the whole thing was a mistake so they joined forces and launched an attack on the Galaxy that was identified as the source of the insulting remark.

Adams continues: “… The mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across – which happened to be the Earth – where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.”

This may sound far fetched… okay, it is far fetched, but military blunder determined the outcome of some very famous battles:  the French who miscalculated the accuracy, range and firing rate of English longbows at the Battle of Agincourt  and Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

So, the starting point of this post, the dog eating the homework may in fact occur sometimes.

And circling back to the miscalculation of scale in this story – in our world, ‘On a scale of’ usually has a range of one to ten – but here are some other ‘Scales’ to think about From the Net of All Things

The best measure of a man’s honesty isn’t his income tax return. It’s the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
– Arthur C. Clarke –

On a scale of Voldemort to Pinocchio, how Nosy are you?

On a scale of Under the Porch Mat to Osama Bin Laden how good was my hiding spot?

On a scale of Sitting on a Stuffed Toy to Stepping on a LEGO, how much pain are you in?

One a scale of one two five, how good are you at proof reading?

On the Home Front

My normal blog writing schedule of one post a week is not something I can maintain right now. So rather than letting that bother me, I’ve decided to give myself permission to not feel like I have to write one post a week.

I might still post once a week, but I won’t feel compelled to do so. So you might not notice a difference in my output, or I might not post for a couple of months and you might wonder if I was transported to another galaxy where I was sadly swallowed by a small dog.

Chances are that did not happen and I am safe at home and have just given myself permission to not write for a longer period of time…