Lost Our Bearings
We have all lost our bearings — the bearings went out in our swamp cooler on Monday, and the bearings in Tristan’s MasterCool went south on Wednesday, and our nation has completely lost its bearings to hate and rhetoric of epic proportions.
I’m a simpleton when it comes to haters who rally for their cause — simply ignore them, I say. If the media and counter rallyers had stayed home, a few hundred haters would have had their say to a few like minded people, gone home and most people would not had known a rally took place, let alone who put it on. But simple minds don’t matter. “You can’t let them spread their hate!” yell the talking heads masquerading as deep thinkers. “You have to confront violent haters with, well, violence and our 'superior' hatred” according to many in the opposition. So as the haters anticipated, the media and opposition showed up and played straight into their hands. The haters got national attention, blood was shed, innocent people died, and now the media, the politicians, the talking heads, and the opposition can’t shut up about it — we have all lost our bearings, and our nation is divided more than ever. It’s like Evil won the lottery.
One common theme among haters is a desire to wipe all Jews off the face of the earth. I have struggled most of my life to figure out why Jews are considered such a threat that whole nations seem to dedicate their sole existence to exterminating them. Again, as a simple minded person when it comes to understanding matters of genocide and hating whole groups of people because they simply exist, I have found most of the explanations for the reason Jews need to be exterminated quite lacking. Thomas Sowell, an economist, gives a fairly convincing argument about Jews being middle men — everyone wants to eliminate the middle man, but I can’t buy into eliminating all Jews just to take out the middle man. But then I heard an interesting argument about how Evil’s war against God has tried for millennia to eliminate the Jews. God made a covenant with the Jews and if Evil, through forces of hate, can eliminate the Jews, God breaks his promise, sins, falls from perfection, and Evil wins the lottery.
Drained by the Swamp
The swamp cooler gave out this afternoon, so I set out to rebuild it. Two motors, new spider bearings, three trips to Lowe's and a lot of frustration later, it still doesn't work right. The next step is replacing the switch, which I will do tomorrow. If that doesn't work, I'll probably give up on it. Although I've been drained by the swamp, the weather gave me a great show with a partial rainbow and an interesting sunset between downpours.
Working Inside The Box
Loki spills over but manages to fit.
It doesn't seem to matter what size the box is, cats have a way of working inside the box.
Silver has to really scrunch.
Silver scrunched in well enough for a nap.
Spunk, Loki and Silver.
Spunk manages to get all fours in the box.
Only to spill out moments later.
He tries the old "tuck and roll".
The "tuck and roll" didn't work.
Cattle Ramp Quandary
Main gate on the irrigation ditch
It's just always been there. Never gave much thought about who it belonged to. Simply assumed it was part of the lot next to the road. I started the irrigation in the rain late in the afternoon, and then cranked up the old truck and drove up the road to cut down some weeds that had grown large and started to creep their way into the road. I cut the weeds on the north side of the road, loaded them into the back of the truck, and started whacking down some of the shorter weeds growing on the south side of the road. I worked my way up to the old cattle ramp near the top of the road, and noticed a recent surveyor's stake stuck in the ground designating where the property owners planned on splitting the lot on the south side of the road, and marking where the northern and southern edges of our properties meet. I looked west from the survey marker and noticed the old cattle ramp is sitting on our property according to where the stake is set.
After I finished with the weeds, I drove them back to the lower forty and piled them in a long standing weed pile. Then I went inside, pulled out the survey we had done a couple of years ago, located the survey rebar on the plat, grabbed a tape measure, walked back up the road, found the survey markers from our survey on the north side of the road, measured out 20 feet from the markers, and, sure enough, the cattle ramp is on our property.
"Why is there an old cattle ramp at the top of your road?" You might ask, and it would be a good question. The person who owned the lot at the top of the road fifty years ago had cattle on it. He had a cattle feeder that ran the width of the lot south of the cattle ramp (it's mostly still there, aging like the ramp), and the cattle ramp was there to load cattle on trucks to take them to market. The original property we are on did not have a road coming in from the west. My parents accessed the property from the ditch bank shown in the first two photos. My parents did some dealing, swapping and buying to get the road and better access to the property from Corrales Road, the main road that runs north and south through Corrales. Like I said, the cattle ramp has been there as long as I can remember, and if there was any assumption about ownership, everyone assumed it was part of the lot on the south side of the road, but, as I discovered today, that is not the case. The ramp sits on our property, so we must assume ownership of it and take responsibility for it.
Now we have to decide what to do about the old cattle ramp. One neighbor who lives along our road wanted to tear it down some years ago, but the property owner of the lot next to the cattle ramp assumed it was on his property and said no. While I was working on the weeds, another neighbor stopped to talk on his way out and said he liked the cattle ramp and wanted me to keep it there. The quandary is that the old cattle ramp is leaning toward the road and if it falls over it will temporarily block the road. So I was thinking I should either take it down before it falls over, or straighten it up and stabilize it so it doesn't fall over. I'm leaning (kind of like the old cattle ramp) towards straightening it up and stabilizing it at the moment.
I was thinking that if I stabilized it, I could put planks on the ramp, get some bulls, run the bulls down the road, up the ramp, and into the back of the truck, and then drive them back to the lower forty. It would be fun to have a "running of the bulls" on the road every now and then.
Our gate in on the left. It started raining hard when I walked out to open our gate.
Our old Ford F100 full of weeds.
The old cattle ramp from behind, looking toward the west.
The old cattle ramp from the front looking toward the southeast.
Daisy With A Mohawk
If you are the type who believes yellow daisies are pansies, well think again. These babies are feisty florals, sporting the latest punk petals, and making strong statements with their sorrel stamen. Yellow is the new black in the fashionable and flowery world of Rudbeckia hirta, with styles like metal petal, green and yellow spiky fellow, and speaking with forked flowers. Strong, tough and rebellious, these yellow daisies refuse to be pansies.
Hair
Laurie has gone for a new look on her hair. This is an ombré style that will be a rose gold ombré when they are finished. To get to the final rose gold is a multi step process that will take another session to complete. I used both light and dark backgrounds behind the mirror with strong lighting to show off the variations in highlights and colors in the ombré style. The last two photos are a direct comparison of how the light and dark backgrounds affect the highlights and colors in Laurie's hair.
Nails One Oh? One
Lola guarding a new bottle of Rose Gold nail polish
Here's an easy guide to doing your own nails:
1) Clean off the counter
2) Get out the nail supplies
3) Set up your computer so you can watch Italian music videos
4) Sit down and start working on your nails
5) Watch the cats swarm
A swarm of kitties
Loki: "Wacha watching Lola?" Lola: "Some crazy rappers named J-AX and Fedez!"
Loki waiting for Spunk to finish jugging so he can jug and get back to the nail scene.
Lola: "I can look like that dude!"
To jump or not to jump? That is the kitty question.
Silver: "Well?" Spunk: "I'm not impressed!"
Jugging
We have a fountain, bowls of water, plus we often leave a bathroom faucet dripping so the cats can get a variety of water sources. Yet, in their infinite kitty creativity, they found yet another preferred water source — old distilled water jugs filled with tap water, in which they go "jugging", sticking their tongues in the neck of the jug to get a drink.
We run hot or cold water from the kitchen faucet into the jugs while we wait for the temperature to change. Then we use the jugs of water to fill the kitty fountain and water the plants. The kitties especially like the jugs as a water source, because they lap the water down below the neck of the jug fairly quickly to where their tongues won't reach the water. Then they give us sad eyes and start sticking their paws into the jug, getting them wet and licking the water off their paws until we top off the jug.
It's a sad show, and if we don't top off the jug so they can lick the water again, the eventually get their paws stuck and dump the full jug of water over. Then they proudly watch as the water glugs out of the jug all over the floor or table. Jugging is just another way of controlling us and forcing us to give them even more attention.
Sasha is especially cute when she goes a jugging.
