dec 9 2020

 in my opinion.......

if you teach a golden retriever to open the icebox and get you a beer

he will open the  ice box and get y ou  a beer. 

if you teach a dane to  open the icebox to get you a beer

 he will  learn to open the icebox and  eventually get you a beer

and then he will think about what else he saw there

and go back and help himself and he will also realize it must be done when you are not there....    

danes have a way of utilizing what they  learn  in my opinion...

 i taught "brownie" to open the  car door   and i forgot about it

until i was in a big market and the loudspeaker annaounced 

" there is aN emergency come to the front o=f the store---- a huge animal IS  loose in the store..." 

  brownie was huge   37"   but also perfectly trained... he was just looking for me. and had come thru their  automatic doors.

it is that kind of thinkiing which george is using while helping bella down th e  flight of stairs...   we could not teach that...

that is why i say we educate our dogs...

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2020 12 9-- (  THE DICTATED PART)

There are places in the world to be clever and it's always fun to recognize them .. someone sent me a gizmo to keep on the desk which could have every date for the month with two cubes .. and it took some thought to figure out how you get every date of the month on 2  six  sided dice like wooden cubes .. simp[le but  did have it’s “wait a minute” moment.

 

Since so many inventions are the product of accidental behavior there are A FEW  that really make me wonder .  who exactly was doing what when... discovered that dryer lint stuffed in an empty toilet paper roll made a good firestarter ....

There is a story behind that firestarters that the older camera people here have heard before .. at dogfest one year I had arranged a fire pit with a bucket of water hanging over it in which I was going to boil corn ..

and as I walked by the  already set up wood  there was a camera person there so i asked her if she Would just start the fire she immediately whipped out her phone Google "how do you start a fire " .  she was joined by a second camera person with a second phone and as the two of them tried to figure that out Steve meat cutter Steve walk by and said “ I always start my fire with an empty toilet paper rolls stuffed with dryer lint “ so those two camera people who eventually became a thing one and thing 2 went around the place it collected dryer lint to start the fire which did work ..but as the story goes on and on there's hardly a week goes by that at 5pm mail call.....I don't get a box full of toilet paper rolls stuffed with dryer lint ..  people who don't know that story could really begin to wonder why on earth people send me that stuff but it does work .... and we have a little pile of it next to the fireplace ..

now... that fireplace..... 

The chimney repair guy is supposed to be here today to super clean the chimney and they tell me at that point I can have small fires in the fireplace .. this crack in the chimney which everyone is so upset about is I have seen the picture about 1/2 inch by 6 inches of place where the mortar is missing between two ceramic tiles it's probably been that way for 30 years .....seeing as once  almost every year we burn too much Cardboard and the creosote in the chimney catches fire and flames come out the top and then they stopped coming out the top then we go back to life in  general .. This chimney is about 6 foot by 6 foot by 30 feet tall of fieldstones

so that a small piece of missing mortar would have a long way to go to catch anything else on fire .. with the possible exception of Sparks coming out the top and landing on the roof ..

 

I have to repeat these stories because we have a lot of new people lately

my chimney story is....   after one of the fires I noticed there was a tiny flame right next to the skylight where the pine needles had caught fire .. and I I knew about things like roofs burning off buildings – (my husband went down the driveway TO “PULL THE CALL B OX”... HE WAS A CITY PERSON...)     BUT    I screamed for Janine who was living in the guest house   across the driveway .. she recognized that scream as an emergency and came running in her best Victoria's Secret wear  I held the 8 foot ladder up almost against  the  9 foot high roof  She clambered up  ONTO THE ROOF.... -----I handed her the fire extinguisher and she sprayed the area liberally-----she  had everything very much under control just as the fire Department came up the driveway ..  so the men in their 85 pound oxygen tanks and boots  really didn't have anything to do except help get Janine down off the roof where she was sliding around in foam in her Victoria's Secret wear  ..  needlesS  to say  most of them in  the fire Department remember us .. so this last fire that we had the chief came and said “you  should call us when this happens , we don't charge for house calls “   ... but with that ---  it got in the paperwork Department and the insurance people got in a great flap and all of a sudden I couldn't use the fireplace until I get it fixed .—I tried last January when it happened..   and ran into too many “little old lady with  a problem and a checkbook”   kind of things and decided  to let it go til July.. when I forgot it.

 So here we are  -- it can be easily repaired if the temp[ is over 48 degrees—  BUT IT IS NOT 48 DEGREES...

----  it is 30 degrees... with no warming in sight...   but  I have 2 bullet heater --- a bunch of left over stove p ipe,---- 2 cases of moving blankets. A lot of tarps.. a 30 foot ladder.. so somehow  I need to put all that together TO KEEP THIS GOOP WARM SO THEY  CAN POUR IT DOWN THE CHIMNEY AND SEAL IT....or I will not have any fireplace til next may,.

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The The expression I already knew about was “I'm at sixes and sevens  today  “.. I just got an email from someone in Britain who says she's a twos and threes today

interesting I wonder how those expressions developed

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Carlene, 

 your Tommy Nugent story of the  shoe strings in the green car working the window wipers,  brought me back to an earlier, more “make do” time. I was a young married with 3 kids and a part time job. We needed a second car and being a little bit hippie we went for a retired Mass Electric Econoline van. It had seen better days and it was ugly to begin with. Inside you would find a playpen and part of an old sectional with the feet removed. I prayed that, going around a corner, the side doors wouldn’t open and the playpen slide out!  It never happened but I worried.

  As things fell off or stopped functioning, we (me) adapted.

My Dad was born in 1900 and one of 14 children, he taught me skills.  In this van were 3 oak tomato stakes of various lengths. Stake #1 held up the engine cover when I needed both hands to fiddle with the engine. It was located inside between the driver and passenger seats. When the automatic choke failed I took off the air filter and cupped my hand over the carburetor while turning the key and giving it gas. Worked pretty good.

The starting motor had an iffy connection to the battery. #2 stick could apply pressure to that connection, worked like a charm!  If I needed to choke and help the started, one of the kids would hold the #2 stick. I used #3 to push the linkage on the manual transmission when it would get stuck in reverse. This all kept me on the road for a good year while I saved for a better vehicle, an AMC Gremlin. Don’t judge.

Sue