Death Pool 2024

The only one I got last year was Harry Belafonte.  I'm not very good at this, but I'll keep trying...

Pope Francis

Mitch McConnell 

Warren Buffett 

Tom Brokaw

Yoko Ono 

Bruce Willis

Chris Evert

Joan Collins

Rudi Giuliani

Dick Cheney

Death Pool 2023

 

I only got two right last year... Thanks to Larry Storch and Barbara Walters for not washing me out of the competition. And if Pope Benedict could have waited one more day I would have had an early score for 2023.

Here is the 2023 list:

Liza Mannelli

Anthony Hopkins

Twiggy

R. Crum

William Shatner

Bob Newhart

Maggie Smith

Harry Belafonte

Dianna Ross

Linda Ronstadt

Jimmy Carter

Shannen Doherty

Dick Van Dyke

Mel Brooks

 I Just Don't Get It

There are several things I still don't understand in the modern world we live in.  Here are some of them:

1. Beer.  Sure I can understand the joys of having an occasional beer on a hot summer day or with an occasional pizza, but how people worship this beverage to the point buying cases of it or not being able to go a day without bellying up to a bar to suck down several glasses of this often bitter brew is beyond me.

2. Bagpipes.  This is the instrument of awful dirges and why anyone would want this raspy crap played at a funeral is beyond me.

3. Neil Diamond. Growing up in the 60's his music was considered douchy at best, and was regarded right up there with Kate Smith and Andy Williams.

4. Golf.  The best thing I have ever heard about it is that it is a nice way to watch good weather on TV, or that is a good way to ruin a nice walk.  How one can consider dressing like a golfer and being an athlete while doing so is beyond me.

5. European love for Elvis. Granted he was groundbreaking in his early days, but he became a parody of himself as time went on ending up as a bit of an American embarrassment when he joined Nixon's war on drugs and eventually died straining on a stool from being constipated caused by his drug addiction. I constantly heard Elvis being played in chip shops in York and in other shops in London and Bath and Glastonbury.  We met a man and his two children in a garden in Wales and this man encouraged his children to ask us question as a cultural exchange and the first thing his five year old son asked us was if we have ever met Elvis. I don't get it.

6. Lima beans. Who the hell actually buys and eats them.  A friend once called lima beans the food of the anti-Christ.  I agree.

7. 70's music.  Sure we all have fond memories of the sound track of the times of which we grew up in, but seriously the music was actually really bad.  If you don't believe me, go back and listen to the Woodstock album.  The only highlight I can remember was Grace Slick shouting out "Good Morning People!".  Other than that it was a lot of noise that I care to never revisit again.

 Top Ten Absolute Worst Beatles Songs

Maxwell's Silver Hammer

Octopus's Garden

Why Don't We Do It In The Road

Rocky Raccoon

Revolution Number 9

Hey Jude

Let It Be

Long And Winding Road

Golden Slumber

Glass Onion

Aging Quietly

 I was in a waiting room for an appointment yesterday where I waited quietly to be called back for an annual eye exam. Everyone in the waiting room was old and I was probably the youngest old guy there.  The old women waited quietly and entertained themselves with their phones, but the men all took the situation as an opportunity to talk loudly.  It was like I was in a room full of Abe Simpsons "Back then nickels had bees on them and we'd say give me five bees for a quarter..." I heard all about RVing through the Arizona, and when you had to deplane on the tarmac at airports and how they took care of the family dog when they were young and how dogs like one twin but hated the other twin brother who wan never any good to start with...  It went on and on.

I had never been so delighted to be called back into the quiet dark room to get my pupils dilated.  Why do men become so talkative when they get old?  It's not like they really have anything useful to say.  Do they feel they have to purge everything in their mind before they pass?  It's like they are orally incontinent.  Perhaps they should be required to wear Depends face masks when in public...  

Perhaps I relate more with the quiet women entertaining themselves with their phones in the room due to lower testosterone levels as I grow older.  I am becoming an old granny and I think it is best because nobody wants to hear what I have going on inside this head.

Death Pool 2022

I know I missed posting a Death Pool for the last year or so but I'm back so here we go... Place your bets.
 

Henry Kissinger

Sandra day O'Connor

Bob Barker

Rupert Murdoch

Pat Robertson

Imelda Marcos

Jimmy Carter

Larry Storch

Pope Benedict XVI

Alan Greenspan

Gene Shalit

Jim Baker

Barbara Walters

Yoko Ono

I may be relatively young at 66 years of age (though sometimes I don't feel it), but I've  already out-lived so many.   Here is a list of people I've outlived and the ages of their passing"

Richie Valens 17

Buddy Holly 22

James Dean 24

Tupac 25

Sharon Tate 26

Amy Winehouse 27

Jim Morrison 27

Janis Joplin 27

Jimi  Hendrix 27

Kurt Cobain 27

Brian Jones 27

Caligula 28

Big Bopper 28

Hank Williams 29

Nero 30

Jim Croce 30

Jesus 33

John Belushi 33

Sam Cooke 33

Mozart 35

Jaco Pastorius 35

Jimmy Rogers 35

Princess Diana 36

John F Kennedy Jr. 38

Harry Chapin 38

Sam Kinison 38

Malcolm X 39

Martin Luther King 39

Cleopatra 39

Spartacus 40

Lenny Bruce 40

John Lennon 40

John Coltrane 40

Lee Alexander McQueen 40

Nate Dogg 41

Bobby  Kennedy 42

Elvis 42

Gilda Radner 42

Yokio Mishima 45

Fatty Arbuckle 46

Beau Biden 46

John F Kennedy 46

Alexander Hamilton 47 or 49

Harvey Milk 48

Diane Arbus 48

Richards Brautigan 49

Gianni Versace 50

Michael Jackson 50

Steve McQueen 50

William Shakespeare 52

Lou Costello 52

Babe Ruth 53

John Denver 53

John Ritter 54

Henry VIII 55

Julius Caesar 55

Christopher Columbus 55

Beethoven 56

Abe Lincoln 56

Steve Jobs 56

Prince 57

George Harrison 58

Anthony Bourdain 61 

Steve Vai 61

Elizabeth Montgomery 62

Lee Marvin 63

LBJ 64

Jackie Onassis 64

Sammy Davis Junior 64

Flip Wilson 64

Richard Pryor 65

Oliver Hardy 65

Howlin Wolf 65

So, in conclusion, I may be an underachiever, but I'm still kicking...

, , 

Vocations

 

My wife was recently telling me about a friend who lives for photography.  When he isn't out wandering the outdoors with a camera he is at home editing his photos.  This has been his lifetime obsession.  I admire him for this as long term obsessions have always been difficult for me.

I've had many obsessions in my lifetime, however I've abandoned each of them as time went on.  Here are a few of them:

Bicycles: At one point I was cycling 30 miles a day.  I had two very expensive Peugeot bicycles, one for racing and one for touring.  When I moved to Oregon the roads were too rough and the tires were constantly being eaten and it was difficult keeping the wheels true, I ended up giving them away.

Photography: This started in high school.  I was confident and pretty talented.  I was published several times.  I had a fully equipped darkroom for color and black and white, but I lost interest when I moved to Oregon.  I gave away all of my cameras and darkroom equipment over the years.  Now I rarely ever take a photo even though I always have an iphone on me.

Music: I started playing guitar in the late 60s. I ended up with a Gibson SG Special, a Baldwin Bass.  I blew out my hearing in one particular loud garage session, so I sold all of my electric equipment and ended up with a Yamaha 12 string, and a big box Guild, an Ovation and an Arita Classical.  I haven't played in the last 30 years.  I still have the Ovation and the Arita.

Records: Back in my college days I had a radio show.  The station library was lacking and only stocked music that they received as promotional recordings, so I bought records and lots of them.  I haven't listened to any of them in hears.  I sold about 500 of them a few years back and I'm thinking of selling the remaining 500.  I don't listen to music much anymore.

Fishing:  I grew up fishing on the east coast and in Canada.  I loved it but moving here I found it difficult.  It's just so different in Oregon.  I gave it up, but I've since rekindled my interest just in the last two years with very limited success.  It's nice just to get out and be lazy in nature and I can justify my lack of general success by stating that I'm weeding weeding the lake or river or ocean one cast at a time.

Bees: Over the last 25 years I have kept bees, lectured, taught classes, appeared on radio and on TV news, captured swarms, wrote articles, sold colonies, honey, wax and balms and lotions from my efforts in beekeeping.  About two years ago I found that not only was it too difficult to keep bees alive due to varroa mites and climate change, but my annual crop of hundreds of pounds of raw honey dwindled to years of no honey at all in the attempt of keeping the bees alive through the winters.  I decided enough was enough and gave up bee keeping.

Books: Through most of my life I've been an avid reader, but something has changed either with my taste in literature or my attention span.  Now it takes me several months just to get through one volume.

Writing: In the past I've written several novels, and if you recall this used to be a daily blog. This blog has been running since 2006, but there was a point where I stopped writing for two years.  I've since resurfaced and now again I try pen my thoughts from time to time.  I've lost all but a few readers, but that's Okay.  I've always thought of this blog as a repository for my thoughts that I don't want to forget.

Chickens: We had them for several years.  We've kept as many as a flock of 20 and had a pretty successful egg business, but between marauding dogs and weasels, coyotes, rats  and once a bear or a cougar ripped the 1/2 in hardware cloth from the chicken yard... Well it just wasn't worth the trouble. I now park by tractor in the roofed chicken yard.

Boats and kayaks: I used to have two boats.  I sold the tinny (aluminum) because it was just too small at 14 feet and the engine I had for it was too heavy and powerful.  Then I sold the two kayaks because of rotator cuff issues, but took on another one which to too difficult ot get out of without getting wet. Now I have a 16 foot fiberglass tri-hull that I will be selling this spring.  It's just too much boat for me.

Horses: I got back into horses in 2002.  My little farm is based mainly around them. We've kept two horses here on our property continually for 20 years now.  I'm on my fourth and my wife has had several more.  We've lost count... I've had too many accidents on horses over the years and I just grew tired of getting injured.  That plus spinal stenosis made it necessary to stop.  I've had several surgeries on my spine since I stopped riding and I'm probably good to go riding again,  I  just don't have that passion any longer.  I am also looking forward to a second hip replacement so I am presently in too much pain to swing a leg over a saddle.

So in conclusion  I find it interesting when someone has a life-long passion and keep up the momentum.  I salute all of you who do.

Day Trader Blues

 When I was a lad around 12 years of age I became fascinated with the stock market.  I would hear my father and one of his friends talk about stocks often. My father was a small-time conservative investor of mostly blue chip stocks.  A lot of people dabbled in those days.  

I listened and read and learned as much as I could.  I followed stocks in the daily paper and drew graphs of the ones of which I was interested.. in hopes of detecting money making patterns.  I would often buy a copy of the Wall Street Journal and I would ride my bike to the next town over and visit a small stock exchange office to watch the boards with other local investors.  I must have been quite a site sitting there watching with intensity.  I was a future capitalist in the making.

Wanting to encourage me, my father was proud of my interest and decided to invest $325 on my behalf with the Uniform Gift to Minors section so the stocks would be in my name.  He asked me to come up with a stock to purchase. I had one in  mind as I was not a timid investor.  I had my eye on a company called Andy Guard.  It was a toy company and I watched and enjoyed it volitivity over recent months going from fifty-cents per share to sometimes to sometimes over $2.50per share.  I wanted to ride that dragon, however my father thought he new better with his conservative strategy. My plan was to buy low and sell high a couple times and then switch to another roller coaster with a larger volume.  As I said, my father was a conservative investor.  So he set me up with a company called Astrex which was a company that made electronic vacuum tubes.  He purchased 50 shares for me at $6.50.  

I told him it was a bad idea since vacuum tubes were going to go away with the advent of transistors.  He asked me to trust him.  Over the next couple of years I watched the anemic performance of the stock symbol ASI made little progress in my portfolio.  However like a sun that was about to go nova there was a change near the end.  The stock was having steady gains and when it finally rose to $12.50 per share I begged him to sell; he would not.  It went up to $16 and I told him it couldn't sustain and I begged him again and then it went nova.  With a bright flash it sunk over the he next few weeks where it sat between $2 and 3.50 per share.  It later became a black hole at 50-cents.  

Astrex was then acquired by another company and they offered me $5.00 dollars to buy back my shares or I could keep them and get nothing.  At this point I was an adult and I finally had a choice in the matter.  

What could have been if my father only listened to me and purchased Andy Guard and let me ride that dragon.  Andy Guard eventually went belly up as well, but I knew when to get out of that one. My charts were undeniable proof that I understood the patterns of the market.

The residual bitterness of that experience of powerlessness changed me into a non investor even to this day.

 I'm glad I didn't become a vlogger.  In an earlier post you may have seen I was considering starting a Youtube channel, but thankfully I came to my senses.  Yes, I am retired now and I pretty much do what I want when ever I want.  I prefer to take things on with my full attention and not have the distraction of  how to turn all of my situations into content for the channel.  I don't have to set up my Gopro or wear one on my forehead like a tefilln.  I don't have to set up other cameras and iphones to capture it all and then go through the process of editing and posting.  I don't have to consider merch...

Case in point, something of a new experience happened the other day which would have made some good content, but I probably would have ruined everything in the process.  I was working with my backhoe the other day digging a hole in one of my fields in search of finding the water level before the rains came.  I found water at a depth of three feet and that is probably the level where it will be during the summer when I'd like to pump water to irrigate a field to keep the grass growing for the horses.  anyway a hydraulic hose blew on on the backhoe and I had to shut everything down quickly to prevent emptying the hydraulic reservoir onto the earth.

At that point the tractor was dead and I couldn't move it to a convenient area to work on it.  Though the backhoe has it's own isolated fluid system I could disengage it, but the problem was that I would need to run the system to raise the bucket and the outriggers arms which would purge more fluid.  

So I drag out some tools to remove the broken hose, then take a drive to England Marine and  $51 dollars later I have a new hose and then I was off to Auto Zone to buy a gallon of 10W-40 for another 30 dollars and I was back in business.  That is the recommended fluid for the backhoe.  Did you know that 10W-40 is actually hard to find these days?

Well, a half hour later I an home and back in business.  I scooped up the small amount of contaminated soil with the loader and put it on the burn pile to be purified with fire.  I am sure this would have all made good video content for tractor, backhoe and hole digging enthusiasts, but they will just have to read about it here.  and yes, there are these types of enthusiasts on Youtube.  That's where I go for such videos.  Hell, I even subscribe to two saw mill vloggers.  Sounds dull but it is anything but.

In conclusion, you won't be able to see a video of this adventure, but I leave it to the readers of this to picture it in your minds.  That is all for now...

But They Has So Much More To Give

 

In most cases I say bullshit to the title of this post.  This is in reference to young performers who die at the peak of their careers.  Very few of them would be worth a damn today and here's some of them.

Janis Joplin: Her Big Brother stuff was novel and when she branched out with the over produced Pearl album her work was becoming too pedestrian to sustain any brilliance in her future.

Kurt Cobain: Yes, he was at the top when he went out, but a predictor of his possible evolution leads me to believe he would just have become another Foo Fighter

Jim Morrison: His singing was becoming an unintelligible moan towards his end.  I think he would have realized that the printed word would treat him well in his old age, except no one gets rich from publishing poetry. Thankfully he would have had royalties to fall back on.

John Denver: Yes, he had some catchy tunes that have become ear worms of several generations, but he was becoming more of a parody of himself.  He was unsustainable in the long run.

Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson: Talk about being a parody of oneself...  I think his popularity in his later years was similar to the popularity of Andy Kaufman where you were embarrassed for him, but you couldn't look away.

Amy Winehouse:  I'm on the fence about her.  She had major talent and I guess she left us wanting more, but more of what I don't know. 

Prince: Has anyone actually listened to any of his stuff released after Purple Rain.  His best was behind him after that point.

Whitney Huston: I have no idea why she was famous in the first place with her caterwauling.

Now, there are some people I believe would have continued contributing to their craft and to the good of mankind for decades to come had they continued living and those would be Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, Tom Petty and Mozart. Aside from them the world has been full of one of a couple hit wonders who went out on a good note.

What a Good Day Looks Like

Some people have a high threshold for what a good day is to them.  I have only a very simple bench marks to check off to reach that goal.

First, if I sleep until 7AM a good day is possible.  If the first cup of coffee is excellent I move the needle up a smidge. Then if I have a hot breakfast I'm sailing along.  If I can get in a nap before 1PM, the bells are starting to ring.  If I don't have to visit an auto parts store it becomes a banner day.

By the way, I rarely get away with going to just one auto parts store.  I usually start with Auto Zone, and they will have only one when I need a set of two.  Then to O'Riley's and they have no idea of what I'm talking about.  Then I go to Napa and they know what I'm talking about but they have to order it and it will be there the next morning by 8:30AM, which means I will be visiting an auto parts store two days in a row...

In addition to the auto parts stores, it is a good day when I don't have to go to a feed store or a marine supply store.

So to sum it up so far, if I meet all the criterion of the second paragraph I am sailing along.  If I get to look at a body of water things are really looking up. If I get home a nd have all my chores done by 5PM, I am stellar.  If Pizza is for dinner I'm sliding into home plate.  If my entertainment consists of post from my favorite You Tubers, my goal is within sight.  Finally if I am in bed and falling asleep by 10PM I have won the good day award.
 

Covid 45

 Oddly, of all the ways to die I have never personally known anyone who has drowned.  On the the hand I know a great many people who have taken their own lives.  To me it is a sad and lonely exit for which I initially feel deep sorrow and pity, but then I get angry over each occurrence, as do most people.  I suppose it is a competitive selfish factor.  Their selfish desire to be removed from existence is competition with my selfish desire for everyone I know to live happily ever after, even though we are no longer close friends.

Until today I had not personally known anyone who died from Covid.  I find that I am pissed off about it because in this case it was totally preventable and in my book it seemed to be akin to suicide.  I don't know why they didn't get vaccinated, but I suppose it came from a misguided political leaning.  

Nothing could possibly be pleasant leaving life behind in this way.  I feel enormous sadness for their close friends and family that they are leaving behind.

Seriously, this is really bad, and resisting doing something about it is potentially going to spread this sort of sadness to everyone you know and everyone who cares about you.  Please consider sneaking away to your pharmacy and getting a Covid shot.  No one will ever know.  If you do it will hasten life getting back to normal for everyone.  You can continuing hating Biden and continue driving around with your Trump flag and your Timberstupidity stickers.  Just do yourself and humanity this one little kindness and all may be well again. 

OK Millennials

 Yes, I am a Boomer and that doesn't bother me, but it seems to bother millennials who think my generation never had any challenges and that everything was handed to us.  We didn't grow up in a Rockwell world as many would think.

First of all our entertainment was very limited.  There was a stiff guy on TV on Sunday nights that thought we needed to see a Singing Nun, and a puppet mouse and people twirling plates on the end s of sticks.  We were patient and hoped that something good would come out one day, and it finally did.  The stiff man introduced us to the Beatles.  Besides that wonderful achievement we were still mired in radio stations that played songs like, "How Much is that Doggie in the Window."

We had to buy music in the record store, or record it from the radio on our reel to reel tape recorders with the DJ stepping over the beginning and the ends of each song with their artificial voices.  We didn't have Napster or Pirate Bay.  We didn't even have tape cassettes yet.

If you had a car you were lucky if you had windows that you didn't have to roll up and down manually.  A car with air conditioning was still a miracle futuristic thing that we all dreamed of.

Later we all worried about being sent to be a capitalist sacrifice in Viet Nam.

Sadly we were the last generation that learned everything we needed to know to get a family wage job straight out of high school.  Shop classes taught us how to weld, work with wood, type set and print, type and learn office skills.  Today you need to enroll in a community college for two years to learn what they should have taught you in high school, especially in math, language and social studies. 

Generations that came after us should be thankful that we pulled back the curtains on the insidious nature of government and corporate America.  Unfortunately we didn't wield any power at the time that would have prevented people like Ronald Reagan from ruining our future.  Christ, we even still have trouble counteracting Trump.

It isn't that the Boomers took advantage of things back in our early days.  These advantages were granted and free flowing back then.  Later these advantages were reeled in by greed and it remains to be seen if the good days will ever be seen again.  People may now be too suspicious when good things come around,  Think of all the people who are suspicious of a vaccination that costs nothing out of pocket.  

We as a people can be strong in mass but the fear of the power of the masses may doom us all.

 

This is the 1955th post on this Blog, which coincidentally is the same year I was born.  I feel obliged to share an old-timey story.

I had a dental appointment today.  I had to wait nearly two months for this appointment.  Everyone at the office was dressed in their Covid 45 space suits.  I couldn't see the doctor's eyes because he had magnifying loops attached to his glasses under his astronaut helmet.  I could hardly understand what he was saying to me.  It was as though I had been abducted by aliens, but without the anal probe.  I'm sure this sight would frighten any child on their first appointment.

I was not terrified by my dental visits as a child.  It was a neighborhood institution, two doors down the street from my home. It was Doc Meyer.  His office was a two room building, what we would be called tiny home today.  Doc Meyers didn't live there, it was simply his office. There was a waiting room with 8 chairs, a coat rack and a table with magazines on it.  There was the front door and a door with waive glass that connected the waiting room with the operatory.  

Doc Meyers was an older gentleman, probably in his 60s.  He was friendly and had a smiley disposition.  He had short cropped silver and his teeth were far from perfect.  His teeth were probably very healthy because there were gaps between every tooth that were wide enough that he could probably slide the thick middle of a round toothpick between every tooth from tongue to gum without touching either tooth in the process.

The office I went into today was a calculated overdesigned nightmare.  Vaulted ceilings to make the rooms look larger. The use of fake stone walls to make the building look more permeant.  A fake fireplace to make the place look homey.  There was no scent in the air.

Doc Meyers office looked like it was out of a Rockwell painting with the scent of clove oil in the air.

The modern office has space age dental chairs.  Radiographs are processed immediately onto a flat screen monitor.  Anesthetic is disbursed by a machine that beeps.  There are halogen lamps, and yellow lights that assist the staff in seeing what is going on when they are using ultraviolet lights to cure the fillings.

In Doc Meyers office he had to process the X-rays in the cellar under the operatory. He would numb you with reusable needles in a syringe filled with Novocain, which was in use before carbocyanine or lidocaine. The seat was a barber chair.  His instruments were belt driven, not air driven.  There was no suction tube, but instead a cuspidor.  I don't think that he even kept chart notes.  I don't recall how he was paid.  I'd just walk in without an appointment, he'd work on me and then I would walk home.  No note or bill to take with me. He must have sent a bill in the mail.

I know I'm over romanticizing the old days and I wouldn't want to go back to those pioneer days of dental treatment. However the amount I paid today was nearly 1/4 of the cost of my first car that I bought off the show room floor in 1972. 

Finally

 Those of you who have faithfully followed this blog over the years will surely remember that the one thing that has always been on the top of my want list has been a shinny new backhoe.  Well, I finally got one.  It isn't new nor shinny but it works like a dream.  It is an 80's Mitsubishi Satoh Buck.  It is a 3 cylinder, 18.5 horse diesel.  Other than surface rust on the loader arms; there is nothing wrong with it.

No longer will I need to turn the compost by hand.  No longer will I need to dig out stumps with a shovel.  No longer will I have to cut sod and dig trenches by hand.  No longer will I need to hire someone to burry a horse. 

Every day I've been doing something with it and I've only wrecked one wisteria arbor, which I will get around to fixing one day.  I've also dug a trench to burry a water and electric line to one of the pastures.  I cleared over a hundred feet of berry vines that were obstructing a pasture fence line.  I've turned the horse manure compost pile twice and leveled another compost pile.  I pulled a near death spruce treee out of the ground.  Soon I will re-stone the driveway and then I plan to add some drainage tiles and stone and then top coat the round pen so we can exercise the horses during the rainy winter months.

After working on this tractor for several hours yesterday I came away with the feeling that I had an excellent day and I feel I will have many more to come.

Fishing

 

One of the biggest challenges I've found in my retirement is fishing.  I grew up fishing on the east coast. I had a good grasp of fishing there and it was easy.  I'd generally go out and get my limit no matter where and when I'd go fishing.  Oddly here in Oregon I haven't developed the local skill. I have been successful on the odd occasion which only emboldens me to embrace future failure.  

When people walk by and ask if I'm catching anything, my reply is often, "I'm weeding the lake or river one cast at a time", which is often the case.

I go out mostly to relax and enjoy the outdoors.  Yes it would be nice to have a catch every once in a while, but I don't get upset when there is nothing, except the other day.  I was fishing the south side of Coffinberry Lake. I had the dock and the picnic table all to my self when along comes this guy asking if I minded him sharing the dock.  I agreed and he was a nice enough guy, but a bit on the talkative side. I don't go fishing to socialize. I know I could have moved off to regain my solidarity, but somehow there was little discomfort.

We both started off trying different lures and nothing was working, and then we both switched to Power Bait.  Suddenly this other fellow got a hit, a strong hit and then he pulled in a nice fifteen-inch trout.  On the next cast he got another, and then on his next cast, yet another.

We were casting in the same general area, using the same baits and setups.  He nailed three trout and I got none.  Was it dumb luck?  Skill?  Karma??? 

I will continue putting in my time on the lakes and streams.  Perhaps I will learn to improve my odds against the house, or hone my craft, or pay off my karmic debt, but I will not give up...yet.

Sellers Remorse

 We are all familiar with buyers remorse, but I have only felt sellers remorse twice in my life.  The first time was when I sold a nuc of bees to someone who didn't take my beekeeping class.  It was a total disaster.  At least twice a year for several years after I was called to this person's house because their bees had swarmed.  Sure I got to keep the swarms, but I feel bad for his neighbors who had to suffer through the swarms and bees moving into their structures.  At the time I felt comfortable selling him those bees because he showed me he had the proper equipment and a couple of books.  I was wrong.

Last week I had sellers remorse again.  I sold our pop-up tent trailer to someone who was too eager to buy it. I know that campers are a hot item right now, and the idea of owning a compact unit like a pop-up is much better than the reality.  I hope the buyer has some retention of my warnings, though I'm not sure their attention span was fully present.  There are simple things that one must know like being level really matters if you want the sink to drain, or have the refrigerator work, or even have the door fit correctly and close.  There are other things like how to fold up the camper, and not putting the camper up for the winter if the canvas is damp.  

Then the winterizing instructions have to be followed.  One year I didn't winterize and the next year I had to replace the water pump, the flushing pump for the toilet and the propane regulator.  

In short, my remorse isn't from selling I truly cherished.  We already have a new truck camper that we will be using.  My remorse is for the buyer who I'm not sure can handle the responsibilities of ownership.  This type of camper is not something someone should have if they don't have strength, follow-through and patients to handle all the challenges that come with this type of camper.  I didn't see these qualities in the buyer or any of the family members.  I wish them luck and by writing this I wash my hands in the deal.

 

Banking on Human Stupidity

 Have you ever gotten notice of a price increase of a product or service where they state, "we are increasing our price to stay competitive"? Does that make sense on any level? My cable company has done this in the past and I recently got one of these notices from Netflix.  

If they want to be competitive they should lower their price so people will flock to them rather than Paramount, Disney, Hulu... So rather than pay the higher price I lowered my service version from the now over $15 per month to the $8 a month service.  My former plan allowed me to watch on four devices and the half price allows me to watch on one TV and one other device.  I only watch on one at a time anyway.

My cable company has just begun offering a streaming service for $15 per month which I am considering ove my current cable plan.  I am actually at the point where I'd do just fine cutting the cable all together and watching everything I need through YouTube and what ever I can find with my VPN.

Corporate greed is not good and I do not want to perpetuate it.

Top 10 Worst Drivers in Oregon

 Every state should be able to produce a list such as this, but after living in Oregon for one year shy of half of my life I think I am qualified to produce a list for my state.  I present the top ten worse drivers in Oregon.  Here goes...

10. Ford Mustang drivers.

9. Any car or truck with flags.

8. White pickup trucks.

7. Washington Drivers.

6. All muscle car drivers 

5. Anyone with a TimberStupidity# decal.

4. Most any Toyota driver.

3. Cops

2.  All small Toyota trucks with big tires.

1. Low-riding Hondas with a loud exhaust system

That is all for now...