TubaOrNotTuba

Weather watching is fun. So many statistics, with more value than sports or stock swapping. There is always something happening somewhere’s. I can easily sit by the window with a cup of coffee and just let the weather roll by. But I am taking it too easy. There are others who take this to heart. I think their jackets say storm chaser and this morning we left the audio roll by from a channel listing to a group in northern Florida as they tracked the arrival and passage over hurricane. Scorekeeping seemed to be whether or not certain fast food restaurants had closed or if their signs had blown away. There was even video until a camera would disappear due to the tempest. These events are short lived. A day or so at best. However it requires keeping up with geography because when they tell me that a certain road has closed in a certain county of say Georgia I have to dig out the map and try to figure where they’re actually watching from. Not enough to know that it is many days south of me. I want the details. And I wonder, when someone measures a storm surge of a certain height or depth how do they judge this? Do they race out with a measuring rod and stand in the brunt of the storm trying to get a reading. Or is this all by estimate. Similarly the intensity of the wind. In my experience when the wind gets too strong the weather vane blows away. Maybe I need to investigate what kind of equipment you need to live in a storm zone. I will not be moving there obviously. I have enough right here from my living room window.

According to the rules we name our big windstorms in alphabetical order. You can get an idea of how many storms go by and a given season by starting at the top and counting down. Last year near the end of September we were already up to F. This year still in August we are already up to I. I guess that is a sign that we’re getting more storms than they used to. I pay attention to these things now. I have learned that there is a definite difference for me between a spaghetti track and a cone. Nothing to do with supper or dessert. We will be waiting to see what the month September brings because the conditions for big storms are seriously in place. Warm water mainly when you read that off Florida temperatures are running around 100 degrees Fahrenheit that’s a sign that the local waters are far too filled with energy. And that will transform into a storm whether you are ready or not. Last year before our big storm the government told us to put away our lawn furniture. This time long before we get a storm that same government is warning us to get our emergency kits ready to decide how we’re going to handle an eventual big storm and what will do about keeping ourselves alive. Real changes for those who think these things are not going to get bigger and worse. I am happy to be where I am because we have no large dangerous trees beside the house. It will take something special to get a tree branch through a window. Would I like to go on a tour of the South right now? Not a chance.

In the background I can hear an uptempo version of blinded by the light. That is not exactly my reality but the song will do in a pinch because I do get overcome by too much light. This evening another challenge. Half of the house is away to a meeting and I received the offer to do my own supper plate. Nothing elaborate just serve a slicer to have ham and some potato salad from the fridge. I know the plates are kept so I can do this until I can’t. Here is the thing the ham required slicing and I could easily have added digits to the mix. Not a great idea. The salad was in a store bought container that you had to unlock, as near as I could tell by touch. Yes I could have broken my way in or found an axe but usually you try to open a container the way the manufacturer designed it. I surrendered I had my plate prepared before the rest of the house cleared out. There are things that I will no longer do. Stovetop reheat is fine but I do not take out the pan and get a steak. No way to tell if I’ve actually cooked it or not unless put my hand in and burn it and we’re all taught not to do that from an early age. I can always eat fresh fruit. Like a small animal. If I lived closer to town I could phone for takeout that is not an option. Or I could drop into subsistence mode and forge for potato chips in the cupboard. Once in a while there’s a bag up there and if I don’t open it upside down all is good. As you can tell I am adapting slowly. I will not be giving courses to anyone else quite yet but the chance to talk to me about what goes on is always there. Go ahead. Call my number. I eventually will find it (the phone) by its sound.

I am the first to admit that I do not understand the rules behind advertising. There’s a good reason I guess why others do not come to me for advice. Too many mysteries. Take as a point that YouTube provides ads. All good all logical. I mean I might need a new car someday. But I am confused by the recent ads by someone who would like to be the Prime Minister of Canada. These are very much the kind of ads you would present if you were trying to convince people of this was the best candidate for your country. Except that he’s not. He is the candidate in a single small riding where he is not lost an election in years. He will be reelected. And that will not automatically make him the next prime minister of canada. For that he has to have a lot of aid. A lot of other people who are also elected in their writings. And his add talking about his first job as a paper boy is not going to do it for him. Perhaps he received advice from someone with experience in another part of the world. You know, like down south of here. But for me his ads are a waste of time and money. My time and his money. If I ever figure out how to simply block the ads I will do so. And when my local candidate comes up for reelection these ads will not affect my choice at all. Just a thought. Maybe I do need a new car and YouTube has figured that part out. You know a car that i will never actually drive just like I will never actually vote for the Prime Minister of Canada. I am collateral damage in all cases.

Trying to keep track of restaurants is akin to playing whack a mole. In this sense where the number of holes where you can put a restaurant is a defined number but the number of people with a dream seemed to be endless. I find myself trying to describe where I would go to have a meal by giving the location except that I have not been out to many of these restaurants in a long time. Years in some cases. And as sure as I name a place the company that was there before is now gone leaving behind nothing more than a mysterious name and possibly a menu. Makes it very difficult to find where you want to go eat once you move beyond the limited menus of a fast food chain. Even there they can be known to change places. I do not understand the model of business because I’m not in that model but I am sure that there is a good reason for wanting to close and open restaurants with such frequency. After all they all serve similar things. Like fast food. So when I go to a restaurant I will suggest a location that I’ve been to before and then I will wait to learn what has happened since my last visit. Is the new restaurant at the same level as the old restaurant? Will I find items on the menu that will please me? Maybe I should just stay home and see what comes out of our kitchen. At least there i have expectations that will be realized. It is hard I imagine to keep a business open when everything around you is changing. Supply chains and staff and taxation and all the other roadblocks are placed in the path of someone wanted to offer a good table. And, I can wait for suggestions from others. I may not grow it often but others do. As for tourists please take my advice with a grain of salt. Not too much salt as that will change the taste but I realize that I do not have a clue when I’m talking about in many cases.

Our visitors had spent the afternoon exploring the local area and they wanted to know more about that big white building down at the end of the road. The one with the big light on top. And so I took time to explain the basics of what lighthouse did back in the days when they were really important. Speaking as a bystander because I’ve never owned a boat. And of course we And of course we move to the next chapter in my life experience what did you do when you were out of sight of the lighthouse. Out on the ocean. I had an answer for that as well because as a boy I read far too much about things that we have not much interest. I understood that with the right time and training and equipment you could look at the sky and get a pretty good idea about where you might be. Again speaking as a bystander because I had never actually done this in real life. Things are much easier now with equipment that allows you to use satellites for navigation but until the last century someone going to see needed to be able to find where they were. You would take the time to look at the sky look at the stars check the clock and come up with an approximation of where you were on the earth surface that was good for a few minutes. If you did this often enough you could then decide that you were heading in a general direction. All necessary all quite practical and quickly becoming lossed skills. I have never actually met a young person that knew how to navigate by the stars. Other than spotting the north star and deciding that the Big Dipper was nearby. Fun but not enough to get you back home. I think that the GPS is a wonderful invention. A chance for people to go beyond sight of land and then find their way back. Even in the fog. Our discussion it also turned to fog alarms that’s a story for another day.

We’re getting a new ferry. The announcement was in the papers today which means it must be true. I need to provide some context. I live on an island. Yes we already have some ferry boats and we have a bridge but everything wears out eventually. One ferry boat purchased back when I was starting university caught fire several weeks ago and made us people needing to borrow a ferry from the neighbour. Not everyone has one spare and we will have to give back to when we borrow it. It also takes time to build a new boat or buy a new boat or whatever you do to get one so this won’t happen tomorrow think a couple of years from now. I do not take the theory very often but I do like the idea that it’s there. Sure beat swimming and driving the dragging the car along behind me. Now who pays the bills? Well we all do in one sense. This will definitely be taxpayer money. A good return on investment I would say. But to get a fairy someone has to build it and that does not happen as often as people in Canada would like to think. Most of our vessels come from Europe where they already have accustomed to build ships more than they need. Do we pay a good price for a used ferry? In the sense that we can afford it as a large prosperous nation I guess it’s not so bad no need to mortgage my house for the government to buy a fairy. And when it finally arrives there be a flag and photos just like any other big purchase perhaps perhaps not flags but you know what I mean I’m actually very happy to hear it because the bridge is going to wear out eventually and the ferries we have are all getting old and I want to know that if I need to leave for whatever reason I can do so without building a boat in my backyard.

I awoke sometime through the night to find herself standing by the end of the bed holding a telephone. I asked the only question possible. Are you a ghost? Nothing quite so simple she was actually undertaking field strength tests on our Wi-Fi system. I know the theory but I did not know that there was an app to do such a thing. It used to be a lot more difficult than that. Her results explain why I have so much time spent trying to connect in different parts of the house. We have dead zones. Like I said are you a ghost. Right now I’m sitting at the end of a bed after a complete reset of the system and it does seem to be working better. Almost a miracle after a week of not knowing where to sit to do things. I was even able to start up my language app and have it load immediately which has not happened for many days. Will it continue? No idea. All those kind of things date back to when I actually was a working stiff and I’m far from that now. The list of houseguests is dropping and before long will be back to our usual winter solitude. We may travel or we may not. I’m watching the weather. I no longer believe Four Seasons are all we get. If I go away I want to make sure that the house does not leave in my absence. You see, my concerns are based on life experience. And climate change.

This is the time of the year when paying someone to prepare a meal for you becomes a challenge. Let me explain. As we approach the opening of school the staff at local restaurants diminishes. With no real return. What happens when you decide to go out for supper is that you have to play a careful game of checking schedules and seeing who is still opened and when. Not always simple. Tonight I decided to stay here and work on leftovers in the fridge so as not to make the vote of others irrelevant. Let them choose their own supper I have food on hand. And so it went my supper is done my dishes are done and they’re just getting home from somewhere out. We’re still in bright daylight so I am hiding in the back bedroom in order to give myself a little bit of a chance of seeing what’s on the screen. I do not actually read but I look for motion which tells me that my talking is being interpreted by this magic machine. It was a quiet day here in the country no visitors at the door like yesterday, no unexpected deliveries. A few animals around but that was it. That’s partly why we wanted to go for supper just to make sure we understood that summer is over. Locally there is a big horse race that is used as the marker point on our calendars. I do not go to the races but I am quite aware that for some people they are an important distraction. Something about betting and hopefully become rich. From what I can tell few do. Not even the horses who have to do the running around the track. I also understand that I could find tractor races if I was interested but somehow that doesn’t seem to have the same grace as horses running in a big circle. My take on things of course.