Filed under: family, Humor | Tagged: Covid-19, Puns | Leave a comment »
Lake View-Monet Vision-Durango Gold
Posted on 28/06/2021 by Grumpa Joe
It is pouring rain today, as it has been doing on and off for the past week. My wife called me to fix a TV which did not have a signal. I was pushing buttons to get the signal back when a very loud bang on top of a flash occurred right outside our window. I nearly jumped out of my skin. I thought the TV blew up, but it was thunder and lightening. It must have struck the trees behind our house. Being startled like that certainly woke me up.
I spent two and a half hours in the yard today pulling weeds and trimming shrubs. I came in soaking wet from sweat. The house was cool and I was cold. I like working in humidity but it wears me down quickly. After a shower and some clean clothes I’ve been spending time at my desk processing raffle ticket returns. My annual appeal letter is working and I am at ten percent of my goal to sell 200 tickets.
Why is it that gardeners must have flower beds that are as neat as a pin? We must attack any natural horticultural matter that we didn’t plant. Natives just don’t belong in a cultured garden. I must be careful for I will raise the ire of some radical group like Green Weeds Matter (GWM) who will demonstrate in front of my house carrying signs that say Stop Killing Natives, or Native Perennials are Flowers Too! I would love to dump the contents of my 90 cubic foot container of garden waste on them, but It won’t happen because I’m too weak to lift it.
I keep staring into the water of my pond searching for a glimpse of any of the twenty-five fish I dumped in there last week. To date, I have only spotted one small school of four cruising along the shore. I did spot a very large frog right under my nose as I savagely yanked the out of place natives from the ground. Froggy was out of the water and migrating into the Hosta bed to hunt for some delicious critter to eat. I slowly moved my gloved hand toward him to see if he would jump, he dd not. I had to gently touch his hind leg to get a reaction, and then he only moved about a foot before resuming his motionless posture. He does move fast when he moves, but mostly he plays dead until it is time to strike.
There is something soothing about a garden that has a manicured look, and neat flower beds surrounding a freshly mowed lawn, and a patio overlook from which to admire it all. I love summer! My garden does not look like that vision I just described. I have a scenic pond surrounded by flashy flowers backed up by a wall of fancy shrubs to add a colorful backdrop, and fresh cut lawns on either side. I sit on the patio and spend time thinking about how good life is as I listen to the birds singing from yard to yard. I have discovered that the loudest bird is one of the tiniest, a wren. If he sang in a choir he would be the one voice that rises above all the others. This is the fifth year the wren family has rented the middle bird house in the Bird-Tower apartments. The view from the entrance is Lake Joe. A low hanging branch from the huge poplar tree at the back of the yard affords them a hidden approach to the front door.
Filed under: Aging, Biography, family, Garden, Pond | Tagged: Native Perrenials, Weeds, Wrens | 3 Comments »
Read Carefully
Posted on 27/06/2021 by Grumpa Joe
1. ARBITRAITOR A cook that leaves Arby’s to work at McDonald’s.
2. BERNADETTE The act of torching a mortgage.
3. BURGLARIZE What a crook sees through.
4. AVOIDABLE What a bullfighter tries to do.
5. COUNTERFEITER Workers who put together kitchen cabinets.
6. LEFT BANK What the bank robbers did when their bag was full of money
7. HEROES What a man in a boat does.
8. PARASITES What you see from the Eiffel Tower.
9. PARADOX Two physicians.
10. PHARMACIST A helper on a farm.
11. RELIEF What trees do in the spring.
12. RUBBERNECK What you do to relax your wife.
13. SELFISH What the owner of a seafood store does.
14. SUDAFED Brought litigation against a government official.
Filed under: family, Humor, Uncategorized | Tagged: double meaning, Interpretation, Words | 1 Comment »
Passwords Rule the world
Posted on 26/06/2021 by Grumpa Joe
Lately my desire to write is waning. Why? Who knows? I just don’t get inspired anymore. For many years I was inspired by politics, but since the last election I have cooled to the political arena. I just don’t understand what all these new groups want, nor do I understand who they are. Just what is “woke”? Why is there a need for Black Lives Matter? Who is it that panders to all the weird minds that believe they are a new gender other than male or female? Open Borders? We have open borders between every state, but the way things are going I wouldn’t be surprised if some jack ass of a state will close its borders to anyone coming in. Spend money you don’t have, print some to make up the difference. I like that one for my own personal finances. If Uncle Sam can get away with it why can’t we? Think about that one, if you don’t have money to buy a house or a car, buy it anyway and print money to pay for them. Except, why would anyone work if they could push a button and print the cash they need? Without people working there would not be anything to buy, and then we would all get very hungry very quickly.
I often imagine what the world would be like if there was no gasoline to power our cars. Most times these thoughts come to me as I’m driving along on a crowded tollroad with thousands of cars burning gas like crazy, except the Tesla’s of course, they are burning electrons from their batteries. -Right now I’m a few pages into a book titled “This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends.” The topic is cyber weapons. I’m not sure I can complete the remaining 400 pages if the horror coming toward us via computers continues for that many words. The author describes how the Country of Ukraine mysteriously and suddenly went black. No one knows why it happened, but the Russians are very suspect. It happened because some hacker got into the electrical grid and shut all things electrical down. Think about that one too. No lights, no TV, no iPhones, no internet, no computers, no refrigerator, no water, no toilets, no stores, no gas to pump, the list goes on and on. Imagine your life without electrical power. Life will get interesting but sure. It would make the COVID-19 lockdown seem easy.
There is a complete underground economy developing in the area of cyber security. All of it is secret, in order to keep it from causing us to panic. Remember the name Snowden. He was the young man who walked out of the NSA with a pocket full of thumb drives filled with our best kept cyber secrets. At the time Obama made it sound like it wasn’t a big deal, but all the talk lately about Russian hackers taking over our elections is leaking from the Snowden defection. I don’t think he will ever be allowed to return to the USA again. I hope he likes Russia, cold weather, and vodka.
At my age, I keep telling myself to become more involved, but at the same time my body says, slow down. My mind says enjoy life and forget about the terrible things that can happen to the USA. You won’t be around to see or experience it. Or will I? The cyber criminals can inflict big damage very suddenly over a huge area. Maybe the answer is to swallow a bullet when that happens.
I will finish reading this book and no doubt have nightmares along the way, but maybe, just maybe I’ll be able to help the world solve the problems caused by too many systems that are too lightly protected by easily hacked passwords.
Filed under: Aging, Book Review, Education, family | Tagged: cyber security, Cyber warfare, Hackers, Passwords | 3 Comments »
I Remember It Well
Posted on 24/06/2021 by Grumpa Joe
Special Group / Born Between 1930 – 1946. Today, they range in ages from 75 to 90.
Are you or do you know someone “still here”?Interesting Facts for you.
You are the smallest group of children, born since the early 1900s.You are the last generation, climbing out of the depression, who can remember the winds of war and the impact of a world at war which rattled the structure of our daily lives for years.
You are the last to remember ration books for everything from gas to sugar to shoes to stoves.
You saved tin foil and poured fat into tin cans.
You saw cars up on blocks because tires weren’t available.
You can remember milk being delivered to your house early in the morning and placed in the “milk box” on the porch.
You are the last to see the gold stars in the front windows of grieving neighbors whose sons died in the War.
You saw the ‘boys’ home from the war, build their little houses.
You are the last generation who spent childhood without television; instead, you imagined what you heard on the radio.
With no TV until the 50’s, you spent your childhood “playing outside”.
There was no little league.
There was no city playground for kids.
The lack of television in your early years meant, that you had little real understanding of what the world was like.
On Saturday afternoons, the movies gave you newsreels sandwiched in between westerns and cartoons.
Telephones were one to a house, often shared (party lines) and hung on the wall in the kitchen (no cares about privacy).
Computers were called calculators; they were hand cranked.
Typewriters were driven by pounding fingers, throwing the carriage and changing the ribbon.
INTERNET’ and ‘GOOGLE’ were words that did not exist.
Newspapers and magazines were written for adults and the news was broadcast on your radio in the evening.
As you grew up, the country was exploding with growth.
The Government gave returning Veterans the means to get an education and spurred colleges to grow.
Loans fanned a housing boom.
Pent up demand coupled with new instalment payment plans opened many factories for work.
New highways would bring jobs and mobility.
The Veterans joined civic clubs and became active in politics.
The radio network expanded from 3 stations to thousands.Your parents were suddenly free from the confines of the depression and the war, and they threw themselves into exploring opportunities they had never imagined.
You weren’t neglected, but you weren’t today’s all-consuming family focus.
They were glad you played by yourselves until the street lights came on.
They were busy discovering the post war world.You entered a world of overflowing plenty and opportunity; a world where you were welcomed, enjoyed yourselves and felt secure in your future though depression poverty was deeply remembered.
Polio was still a crippler.
You came of age in the 50s and 60s.
You are the last generation to experience an interlude when there were no threats to our homeland.
The second world war was over and the cold war, terrorism, global warming, and perpetual economic insecurity had yet to haunt life with unease.
Only your generation can remember both a time of great war, and a time when our world was secure and full of bright promise and plenty.
You grew up at the best possible time, a time when the world was getting better..
You are “The Last Ones.”
More than 99 % of the 1930 to 1946 group are either retired or deceased, and you feel privileged to have “lived in the best of times!”
Filed under: Aging, Biography, family, Warm and Fuzzy | Tagged: History. The greatest Generation | Leave a comment »
