The ancestral doily collection

One of my great-grandmothers crocheted a lot of fine lace doilies, and I inherited these when my Mom passed away.  I've had these stored in a bag, wondering what to do with them.  They're so beautiful, but modern living isn't very doily-intensive.

I finally figured it out.  I bought a jumbo frame at Ikea, cut up some old clothes for a background, and laid them out.  I'll hang this in my bedroom.

Park City, Utah

Oops, I almost forgot I had a blog!  Not sure why, I haven't been busy or anything.

I almost forgot to wrap up my photos of the Utah trip from back in October... here are a couple of photos of Park City.  Some of the events for the 2002 winter Olympics were held there.  It's a cute little ski town, just over the Wasatch mountains from Salt Lake City.

One of the chairlifts leaves from town...

So, that was my trip to Salt Lake City!  It's a beautiful and interesting place, I really recommend going there.

Felzen South, Nova Scotia

I was there a couple of weeks ago, and took a few photos.  Felzen South is the village my Mom was born in, and her Mom grew up there.  My grandmother was a Spindler, and the Spindlers were in Felzen South since the foreign protestants from Germany settled there in the 1750's.

Here's the beach at Spindler's cove, which is right in Felzen South.  The sand there is black.  They get lots of sea glass washing up there, pieces of broken glass that have been smoothed by the movement of the ocean.  You can see Lunenburg and Blue Rocks on the distant shore.

Here's the cemetery, it's right on the water.

Lunenburg Harbour panorama

Here is a panorama I pasted together of Lunenburg harbour.  This is from October 7.

It's official: Twitter is stupid

After years of anecdotal research, I've developed my theory into solid fact and am ready to share it with @you: #twitter is stupid.

I get the concept of microblogging.  I believe in it.  I participate in several times daily myself, through Facebook.  (Which isn't to say I believe in everything Facebook does...)

I think it's wonderful to keep in touch with acquaintances who would have faded out of my life, and often turn these very loose connections into genuine electronic friends, who I then get together with whenever geographical challenges allow.  Some acquaintances from years past have resurfaced via my friend's friends lists on Facebook, and we know each other better now via electronic means than we ever did in "real" life.  I've never bought into the idea that face-to-face communication = real, electronic communication = fake .  You often see sides to people on Facebook that you didn't see when they were wearing a different mask when you hung out with them in real life.

It's great to be part of a bigger community of people, and stay in touch with what is going on in their lives.  This is true even when they're not someone I know in 3-D life... in several cases I've added someone to my friends list on Facebook whom I've never met, in fact have sometimes never even met electronically, and as long as they can construct a sentence, and aren't trying to "network" for moronic mogul-wannabe or religious reasons, I enjoy following their updates.  They become part of my community, even if they don't live next door or even in the same town.

I've concluded however that Twitter really doesn't offer that, despite the claim that it does.

I follow a lot of blogs, and lately many bloggers have been offering up their Twitter feed.  If it's a bright and interesting blogger, I go have a look.

What I inevitably find is a string of incomprehensible, uninteresting @replies they make to their 4756 followers or followed, who you can tell from the meaninglessness and randomness, aren't people they know either electronically or in real life.

There's no point in this.  This is not a community, this is not a useful addition to the real and well-crafted thoughts they share on their blogs.  There's rarely anything bright or compelling on their feed, there is rarely anything original at all.  Twitter's own character limit doesn't allow for bright and compelling... it often doesn't allow for a single complete thought before you've gone over your alloted Tweet-space.

So, if you were feeling Flintstonian for not "getting" Twitter (hey, plug the words "I don't get" into Google, and it's #1 suggestion for what you are looking for is, you guessed it...), rest assured, it's not you.  It's Twitter.  There's just nothing there to get.  I've been checking back for years, there is nothing there but noise.  If there is the odd nugget, it's lost in the noise.

There's nothing Twitter does that other electronic forms of communication don't do better.

It's safe to pee on the 401 again

As anyone living in or visiting southern Ontario knows, for the past couple of years they shut down all the rest stops along the 401 at once to rebuild them.

They painted the signs advising travellers of the closure a brilliant yellow, to remind them that their bladders were exploding:

This is what the old ones looked like.  I think they kept this one just west of Kingston open just to tease people:

I liked the round space, the dome ceilings and stone interior walls of the old ones.  The new ones aren't too bad, here is the new one at that same site under construction:

Here's a completed new one, this one is the Mallorytown westbound station:

I think most of them are open now.  I like Ontario's rest stops, I find them faster than leaving the highway and looking for a gas station or restaurant off the road.  They're a little pricier for food and gas, but so easy to pull off and on the highway.  In the States I would exit at a sign for services, and sometimes they were quite a convoluted drive off the highway, and sometimes pretty far too, so I appreciate the convenience of the Ontario version.

I guess we're safe now for another few decades before they close all these at once to serve us better yet again.

My neighbor, the diplomat

My house in Ottawa shares a driveway with the house next door.  This is pretty standard in the older neighborhoods in Ottawa.

The driveway is a deeded right-of-way.  Three feet of the right-of-way is on my property, and five feet is on my neighbor's.  It leads to our respective parking spaces at the backs of our houses.  It's to remain clear to allow passage of people, vehicles, and animals (it's over 100 years old, so animals actually get a mention in the deed.)

My neighbor has never been happy about this right-of-way, and he's convinced that since he owns the wider 5 foot share, that he calls the shots on use of the driveway.  I should note that the neighbor doesn't actually live in his house, it's always rented out.

Well, my house was also rented out for a few years.  My neighbor moved back into his for a couple of months in 2007 (he does this periodically, followed by a rent increase for his new tenants), and took a disliking to my tenants.

Now, for all I know, my tenants could have been annoying (I never met them, an agency rented the house for me.).  However, he was very upset at the fact that my tenant's kids would play in the driveway.  The kids once left a toy wagon in the driveway (I know, because he sent me a photo of it), and I guess that was the final straw.  Previous offenses had included toys left in the kid's own back yard (he didn't like the sight of them), and one of the kids asking his adult daughter once if he could borrow their hose to wash his bike.

To try to keep my tenants off "his" turf, he painted this:

It's faded somewhat in the intervening years, but yep, it is what it looks like.  It's a "do not cross" line.  Right down the property line.  Even though the driveway is a right-of-way, and residents of both houses (as well as the utility companies) have the right to use it to access parking and the back yards of their houses.

Want to know what my absentee neighbor does for a living?  He's a diplomat with Foreign Affairs.

Malibu Canyon road

These are from Malibu Canyon road, east of Malibu.  Very pretty mountains.  That big cross in the first one is at the entrance to Pepperdine University.

Destination is Malibu Creek State Park, to hike to the old set of the M*A*S*H show.  So stay tuned, don't touch that mouse!

The Pacific Coast Highway through Malibu

Earlier this week I was on the pacific coast highway through Malibu, heading to a hike in the Santa Monica mountains north of Malibu.

This highway goes through some great scenery, but as you can see it's hardly untouched wilderness, at least not down by the road.  This is just north of L.A. (just north of Santa Monica, to be specific):

You've probably heard about beach houses in Malibu that sell for outrageous prices.  What I don't get is, why would anyone pay such big bucks, when this is your back door?  It's right on the highway, which is 4-6 lanes moving at up to 60 mph, just a few feet from the back of the house:

Here are a few photos taken as we passed through the commercial district of Malibu:

Someone's house high on a hill... but again, right above the highway.

The new bridge at Hoover Dam

On our way to Phoenix, we crossed the Colorado river at the Hoover Dam.  This used to involve driving across the dam itself.  A couple of months ago, they opened a new bridge and diverted the highway onto it and off the dam.  They installed a pedestrian walkway on the bridge so that people could cross on foot to view the dam.

This is on the approach to Lake Mead, which is the reservoir behind the Hoover dam.

This is where we should have exited, but from the research I'd done, it made it sound like the parking lot for the bridge walkway is right beside the bridge.  We didn't want to go to the dam itself, so we kept driving.

From a passenger car you can't even tell you are on the bridge when you cross it, but we did clue in once we were in Arizona that we'd missed it!  It was easy to turn around though and go back.

This is the pedestrian walkway, heading south from the Nevada side

Great view of the dam, eh?  It's huge- I pasted two photos together in this next photo:

Another look from further down the bridge.  The reservoir was at it's lowest level since the dam was being finished in 1937.

There are several interpretive panels about the bridge construction along the walkway, this is one of them:

Here's the state line on the walkway, you can see my toes at the bottom.  Right foot in Arizona, left in Nevada.

View back along the bridge from the Arizona side.

I liked these leaning towers of Hoover on the sides of the gorge:

I can't imagine how they lived for so many decades without this bridge.  Supposedly traffic would get really congested as everyone waited to cross the dam itself.  I'm really glad they took the opportunity to put in a viewing walkway too.  The Hoover Dam is one of those iconic American symbols that everyone seems to go see at some point, and now from this bridge, they can see it really well.

Look, a plane!

Well I thought it looked like a plane.

Milestone

I don't usually notice these interesting numbers when they pass by on the odometer, but this time I did:

Just look at all those 3's!  Stay tuned for the next 11111 km, to see if I catch the next one...

Morro Bay

This past weekend I was up in Morro Bay, which is north of Los Angeles.  The photo above is of Morro Rock.  (It's big... the scale in the photo is deceiving.)  I did a couple of hikes and visited Hearst Castle, so stay tuned... photos to come in the next couple of days!

Moonrise over Mount (maybe?) Baldy

I'm not good at taking night photos, but here is tonight's moonrise of the full moon. I think that's Mount Baldy it's coming up behind, but I'm not sure. So much to learn about mountains and photography! It came up really fast- I have a zoom lens but had no time to change to it, that was a moon on a deadline I tell ya.

Actually, you CAN get good help these days

It was very windy today, and one of the downsides to having no screens is that things can get blown in. They rarely do; I'm on the 9th floor so almost everything is below me. But today's winds were creating quite the updraft, and leaves and dirt were coming in quickly before I got the windows closed.

But what to do about the mess!?!? A perfect job for plucky little Roomba, who with a push of a button and a cheery little chirp was right on the job.

I love my robotic vacuum cleaner. This place was really clean when I moved into it, and that's the perfect situation for a Roomba, if you run it once a week or so it just stays on top of things. I recommend 'em!

Ulnar Nerve Entrapment

I'm pretty sure I'm developing a repetitive stress injury in my elbow that is affecting a nerve in my hand.

This summer, I started developing some numbness in my right pinky finger and ring finger. I could tell it was from bicycling (I was doing between 50 and 60 km a day on good days), so I tried to watch the way I was leaning on the handlebars, and made sure to take pressure off regularly and rest often. It would wax an wane, but I usually had some numbness in those fingers.

My first time on the group bike ride out here, I met a woman who was recovering from surgery on her elbow. She was a video game tester, and her symptoms sounded exactly like what I had been experiencing during the summer (but since I had not done much biking at that point since moving here, I was feeling OK again.).

It's called ulnar nerve entrapment, and it's similar to carpal tunnel, but a different nerve, and affecting the 4.5 and 5th fingers instead of the 1-4.5th fingers (the ring finger is shared by both nerves.). On one webpage they listed computer use and "avid cycling" (oops) as causes.

I'm much better here in L.A., and never really numb any more, but only because I have not been biking as much. This week I went for 3 bike rides (although two were only medium-length) and I am feeling it just start to act up again, so I will have to be careful. Computer use also affects it, so I'm being careful with positioning and not doing too much at once there too. There are also some exercises I found that I will start doing, and sleeping position matters too, have to be careful not to sleep with the arm bent.

It should get better with time through rest, proper exercises and sleep positioning. I'll just have to go for more walks (and of course lots of swims) instead of too much biking for a while. I'll still do at least the weekly ride with the club though.