Did you ever get a letter from someone that lit your fuse? A friend of mine recently did, and asked for my advice for a response.
I recalled a response that I heard many years ago when I worked in a bank..
The response:
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Dear Sir,
I am sitting in the smallest room in the house and I have your letter before me.
Soon it will be behind me.
Yours truly….
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Spotted this little gem whilst searching for another picture on the internet. Thought it was worth sharing 🙂
GD&R
Our neighbour saw a possum a few nights ago so he set up a small live animal trap in our front garden. It was armed with a peanut butter sandwich.
I peeked out early this morning, and yes, there was an animal in the trap.
Problem was, that it was not a possum! It was a SKUNK.
At that stage there was no bad odour around, so I phoned the neighbour to alert him to the facts. Dang, his wife answered the phone and advised me he had gone to church and would not be back home until around midday.
I was not going to go anywhere near the thing, and we had people coming later this morning and we certainly did not want a bad smell around.
My wife had the presence of mind to phone the local Live Animal Control centre. And, Sunday morning, we managed to find someone on the phone.
About 45 minutes later, a young woman, (about 23 years old, dressed in t-shirt, shorts and wearing flip-flops – no sign of the protective gear we expected) arrived and assessed the situation. She sneeked over to where the trap was and peeked around the garden wall at it.
Then she came back and assured us that she would take care of it!
We withdrew back into the house and were dreading what would happen.
It seems she managed to cover the cage with a sheet of plastic, and then proceeded, with much caution, to anaesthetise the beast.
It took about 15 minutes, and she soon had the sleeping animal in a small bag.
She certainly knew what she was doing, and looked as if she had done so many times before.
Reminds me of an occasion, back in Western Australia about 40 years ago, when my Father set a trap near a hole in our back garden. He used a rat trap like this:-
We approached the trap the next day and could not make out just what was in the trap. We could determine that it was a reptile, and that it had legs.
It was all curled up inside the trap. After cutting the trap open, we discovered that it was a…
… a Race Horse Goanna. He was about 4 foot long and once free, headed for the bush.
Morale of the story:- Animals are not aware which specie the trap is set for!
We have just returned from a road trip to the Denver area. It is very impressive to see the Rocky Mountains up close. We drove up to the Rocky Mountain National Park and would recommend the drive to anyone. I will add a photo or two here as soon as I get time.
Denver is a nice clean city, and there is a lot to do in the area. This was my first visit there and I will surely return again.
Here is a photo of me at about 12000 ft. in mid summer at the top of Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado.-
John Griffiths
My wife and I have just finished three weeks hosting some great friends Skip and Sharon from South Carolina. We toured the wine growing districts around Perth, Margaret River and Albany in Western Australia, then off to South Australia where we toured the Clare and Barossa wine growing districts.
We all had a lot of fun and sampled some GREAT wines.
Recent security scares on flights from London Heathrow reminded me of a BA flight I took back in 1997. I was able to do something then that will probably never be possible again for a member of the travelling public.
I was flying on a BA Boeing 747 to Miami, Florida. We headed North-West from London over Ireland and out across the Atlantic toward Nova-Scotia.
I was travelling in the upper deck, and had a chance to chat briefly with one of the cockpit crew when he wandered down the aisle. I asked if I could have a look in the cockpit sometime during the flight. He was not definite that it would be OK, but I could check with one of the cabin crew “in a few hours”.
So, I did! I pestered the steward and he got permission for me to pay a visit to the cockpit.
When I got to the cockpit, things were pretty quiet, and I think “George” was in control. At that stage we were about an hour from Nova-Scotia and the crew were performing intermittent checks of dials and their multi-function video screens.
I asked several questions about what they were doing, and the Captain took great delight in answering, and giving me a full rundown on the features and information of their video screens.
The co-pilot would occasionally chat on the radio for a few seconds at a time. Otherwise he was running his eyes over flight systems as we went.
I was there for about 45 minutes, before the Captain said that they were about to get busy as we were getting close to land and were about to turn southward down the east coast of USA. It was time for me to return to my seat.
It had been a great experience, and before leaving I thanked the crew for their time.
It was a daytime flight, and I do not recall really “looking” out the windshield. If I did look, there was certainly nothing to see apart from blue sky.
With the “Locked cabin door” rules in place since 9/11, I am certain that I would not be allowed this experience again.
A Bedouin family are travelling across the desert, when Son asks Father “Are we there yet?”
Father replies… “No Son, we never will be there. We are nomads!”
Found these pics recently from Halloween last year. This was my first year we had stayed later than usual in Texas, and I just had to see what these pumpkins were all about.
We bought one at a roadside stall, and I set about to carve it.
All going OK so far.
The finished product.
and in the dark, with a candle inside! Success!
Have you actually ever listened really closely to the actual words used in a radio or TV interview?
There, I actually just did it here to show you what I actually mean.
Got it yet?
Well, it is the over and superfluous use of the words ‘actual’ and actually’.
I first discovered that I was doing just this, about 15 years ago. I was lecturing in “C” computer programming at a college with about 90 students in a large lecture theatre.
When lecturing, it is not too hard to detect when the crowd is becoming bored. Also, detection of the odd smirk is easy.
I detected both these things and it took me a couple of weeks to figure out.
By watching the group, and trying to figure out if I was gesturing in some particular way that would trigger their reactions, I noticed that it looked as though they were ‘scoring’ my presentation. Several were marking their notes as I was speaking.
By watching them, I finally determined that each time I said either ‘actual’ or ‘actually’, I was being scored. And I was saying it a lot!
So, I realized that I had to stop adding this word where it was not needed. This did not take much effort.
Soon I had my lecture group back in tow, and they were able to concentrate (I hope) on learning to program in “C”.
Next time you listen to a person being interviewed on radio, or TV, listen out for them using ‘actually’ and ‘actual’. It drives me mad now to hear it so much!
Aloha. We are heading to Hawaii next week and will be there into the new year.
This will be my second trip to “Sandwich Islands” having previously been to Oahu and Maui about 15 years ago for a few days.
This will be a family gathering on Kauai. Hoping to do some zip lines, bike rides and ATV ride. Plus sit back and relax a little, or a LOT!
Hawaii |
Mahalo