Mr. Totoro, here (with a pretty flower on his head!) - he was a (wedding) anniversary present...
O.K., So; November has just-started, in case you were
sleeping a few weeks ago; we had a 'fly-by' (close-call) with
Hurricane Matthew (in EARLY October).
And - again - in case you were sleeping, Seattle and the Pacific
Northwest had a close-call with a Typhoon!. -
But - we all fared well - and not much happened except a LOT of yard-work, which I'm STILL trying to 'catch-up-on'!.
But - we all fared well - and not much happened except a LOT of yard-work, which I'm STILL trying to 'catch-up-on'!.
AND I
discovered, much to my 'patting-myself-on-the-back' (when I got-home)
that there wasn't 'much but yard-work...
NOW I find - about a month after the hurricane, MOST of the trees are really GREEN, BUT the limbs that broke, but didn't fall on the ground, after a month of 'no-food' - those leaves have turned-brown - so I have a LOT OF TREE_WORK to do, now - stuff that I didn't see after the Hurricane, because it was still GREEN? _ UGH _
NOW I find - about a month after the hurricane, MOST of the trees are really GREEN, BUT the limbs that broke, but didn't fall on the ground, after a month of 'no-food' - those leaves have turned-brown - so I have a LOT OF TREE_WORK to do, now - stuff that I didn't see after the Hurricane, because it was still GREEN? _ UGH _
Pictures
here in this sub-directory: http://www.vikingasia.org/Misc/BHa
OH and I'm still tricycling, mostly, 3 days a week. Went out yesterday morning (3 November) for a '3-hour-ride' - and - well, the RAIN gods did NOT have the same 'goal' in mind that I did -so I 'got a little-wet'. - But, like usual, when this happens, I FULLY EXPECT the sun to come out and dry-me-off and warm-me-up... - SORRRY - all I got for my trouble was MORE RAIN, but when I finally got home I got a third shower, but it had HOT WATER and SOAP! -
the 'clean-up' of the tricycle continues - ! -
New Lights, though are AMAZING! -
AND, JUST THIS MORNING for the FIRST TIME this fall, the 'OmniTemp' says it is 69F.. - so the FIRST TIME the temperature has dropped below 70 when we get up in the morning?! - WOWie ZOWie Batwoman - the temps are cooling-off...
Out
with the old (like 25 years old) - in with the new ones (mattressess
that is!) - back feels better, not as much room for bears (and
Billy) but - well - nice bed!
AND the above is a result of a stop at the Ikea place down around South Miami, that we stopped-at on the way back from the Florida Keys - where we spent a few days for Ms. May's Birthday... - BUT _ Mr. Bill got a chance to go kite-boarding and it was awesome good... - Still Picture Here and Video-File Here
Pokemon GO progress / setbacks / status: getting there! (Level 21 and still counting!)
(a picture of 'Ms. Oddish'- - then Mr. Pikachu - just a couple of the MANY Pokemon Go characters.
and just ONE of the PokeMon Stop 'logos': we found in Bonita Springs (while running from Hurricane Matthew)... - PokeStop
TV Shows (On Netflix-streaming and/or other places, Like iTunes, as well as "Amazon Prime" - lots of places to watch...
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One show that I really liked, recently, has to do with 50-75 years ago in the UK, "The Bletchley Circle" - VERY VERY interesting statement of what women did during the war in the UK (when most of the men were off doing 'combat' duty. a Companion to this would be the Alan-Turing movie starring the famous British actor Cumberbatch.
OVERALL a LOT of "NEW" shows, (and some old-ones) now explore the 'Terrorist' basis, and fundamentally throw 'privacy' out the window in favour of saving the country from Terrorists. I'm not sure that this is a 'valid' thing, but then I'm not sure it's not, also. The other thing that MANY of the 'new' shows seem to have in common is the use of 'background-songs / music', and I'm not sure I like that, either?
AND we recently watched "Fair Game" (Starring Naomi Watts & Sean Penn) (2010) about the Valerie Plame Affair (where the _Bush_Administration_ trashed her 'covert' status with the _CIA_) .. She and family now live out west, and she writes 'spy/mystery' novels with someone else. I've read one of her books, and am now into the second - they write pretty-well, and I'm certain a lot of the subject-matter comes from Valerie's work. However, especially, now, after having seen the movie, I look at this genre of books (Spy-books) in a way different manner than I did before, knowing that our 'government' treated her this way...
One movie that disappointed was '_Destruction_' - thought it would be "A" and it turned-out to be "Z" - don't waste your time...
One that DID PLEASE (shoot-em-up and car and motorcycle-chases galore, though!) - Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
AND Books:
"The Kill Room" - by Jeffery Deaver (same guy that did the "Bone Collector") - pretty good writing - lots of interesting cooking in this book, too. Basically a 'murder-mystery' - but he talks a lot about wine and food, also...
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I've also been watching a lot of Netflix (both streaming and DVDs) - and one I came across recently was "The Cat Returns" from the same studio (Studio Ghibli) that produced "My Neighbor Totoro" -which is EXCELLENT. - ANYWAY - 'The Cat Returns" has a very interesting song sung over the 'closing-credits' - now WHO sits-around and listens to the music for the closing credits, much less reads them. - Well - DUH - apparently I didn't have enough-else to keep me busy so I did this and I heard the tune and so-on and so-forth: - look this up in your favourite method / browser / whatever?: Artist: Ayano Tsuji Song: Kaze Ni Naru (sometimes spelled Kazeni Naru) - means "Becoming the Wind" in English - - Well - enough for the easy stuff - I'm now trying to learn to sing the song in the 'native' Japanese - turns out there are a LOT of resources out there to help a (dumb (pitch-un-aware))
type like me to learn this stuff - wish me luck!)
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AND we have a bee-hive (in our old 'owl-box') - and the bee-hive needs to GO - -WELL - we had an 'expert' in Hunny (but not Bees) - so we got a library book for Mr. Pooh - the expert in Hunny, so he could learn more about bees... - AND then on Mr. Bill's tricycle-ride, one day he talked to the lady that owns / runs the local 'bee-farm' and she allowed as how they would come and get our bees, "Please don't try to handle it yourself" - good words, I suspect...
AND - this - which most have seen before, but I've been doing a lot more for the SCORE people and this came-up in one of my talks / sessions - For more details, read the article by Arnon Rotem-Gal-Oz
1. The network is reliable
2. Latency is zero
3. Bandwidth is infinite
4. The network is secure
5. Topology doesn't change
6. There is one administrator
7. Transport cost is zero
8. The network is homogeneous
Pottery-Kiln Design, modeling, etc-ing... Bill is expanding his 'realm' and doing different types of kilns, now - and the people in Seattle (at McNeel (who write and sell the 'Rhino3D' software he uses)) have / are working on some 'bugs' on his behalf, but MOST of the WORK still comes from Rhino3D on the Macintosh version...
Learning a LOT, these days about XML and how to parse it in Python, and then how to get the parsed-parameters into the Rhino3D model...
ALSO learning a LOT about 'layouts' - (how to get the 'model' onto a piece of 'paper' in an elegant and structured way!
Yet another "Pottery-Kiln" was going up in early October, near Bisbee, Arizona. here's a picture - here's just one more picture
Yet another "Pottery-Kiln" that was never built - here's just one picture
AND - AND
- AND
- if you want to see something REALLY OLD (LONG BEFORE the concept of the Go Pro!) - you can click on this link to an OLDIE (but a goodie) - this video was done in 'about' 2002 (14 years ago? (we think (Ms. May is videoing, I'm sailing (or trying to?))) but we're not sure...??) - click-here
- if you want to see something REALLY OLD (LONG BEFORE the concept of the Go Pro!) - you can click on this link to an OLDIE (but a goodie) - this video was done in 'about' 2002 (14 years ago? (we think (Ms. May is videoing, I'm sailing (or trying to?))) but we're not sure...??) - click-here