Let There Be Light

Leave it to the Chinese.  Gotta love it.  These days everything appears to have been made in China.  Americans won’t pay more for American made ‘It’s cheaper and we get what we pay for. The Chinese have mastered cheap labor and cheap products.  You can’t find anything that isn’t made there.  Go to any department store shoe store.  You can’t find a reasonable pair of shoes made anywhere but China.  I’ve tried and given up.  I now resign myself to shoes that cost at least $100 to avoid the garbage that hurts my feet for less.  Well it’s come home and was disguised as a task lamp.  We went to a lighting specialty store and purchased a rather modern task lamp for our bathroom which we have remodeled.  No way to tell on the plain white box that my lamp was made in China.  It looked great and appeared to have been well made. Thank god JT is a jack of all trades and can install just about anything without help or instructions because we quickly discovered our lamp was made in China.  Thank god they didn’t skimp on the product itself.  They just skimped on the translation of the instructions. See below.  Gotta love it.

On To Bigger Things

It’s time to seriously start the planning for the John Muir Trail

I have allotted double the number of days to do the JMT; a month should cover it very well. Now I’ve got to get my boss to get as excited as I am and part with me for a month.  My plan is to hike a day or two and rest 24 hours, hike a day or two and rest 24 hours.   This will give me plenty of recovery time and a few spare days in case I have a bad spell.  Of course this means carrying more but that really is no big deal.  I’ve cut my essentials down to 15 pounds and the rest is food.   The last time I did Mt. Whitney as a 3 days trip my pack was 25 pounds and I came back with at least two full days extra food/snacks and fuel.  Better to have more than not enough.  I could have shaved some weight off some items I never used.  I’ve gotten better at predicting what I really need and have cut things back considerably. I have also become obsessed with weighing everything and trying to find a better item that’s lighter.  If it comes down to cutting my toothbrush in half I will to save weight.  That being said, I’m looking forward to taking the extra time to just kick back and enjoy the views, the people and the experience as a whole.

On Cats and Trees

Why is it cats won’t learn from their past mistakes?  I don’t get it.  Jack’s done it again, gotten himself stuck in a tree.  He does this about every 8 months like clockwork.  He has spent 2-3 days stuck in trees through snow storms and rain storms and blazing heat in the summer.  Once up there he just can’t figure out how to get down.  He doesn’t pick particularly difficult trees to descend but still gets stuck.  We have climbed trees using ladders, rock climbing gear and just brute strength.  We have had him fall out of them with exhaustion and injure himself afterwards.  This time he selected a  reasonable tree which normally if he had picked one like it anywhere else we would have just gotten a tall ladder and retrieved him. NO, this time he selected the one tree that has lots of branches….but it happens to be planted just above a 30 foot straight drop off a cliff.  No way were we taking any chances falling down that while on the ladder.  He’s nuts.    This is a cat, who aside from his tree problem, has gotten trapped in the neighbors have a heart trap for raccoons, for three days through a rain storm.  He has also taken a ride in our dryer….and lived.  The person who said that cats have 9 lives was wrong.   They are immortal.  Well at least this one is.   His survival instinct is not the greatest but his will to survive is.  I’ve coaxed him down with fish…. By the way that works the best, especially if the neighbor’s cat appears from behind a bush to claim this treasure before he gets down.  Competition really sparks motivation ...even in felines.

Aliens Among Us

The Aliens are confirmed to be here. In my backyard (figuratively).  I have always thought they were here but now it’s confirmed. 

I have always thought they have substituted normal, reasonably intelligent humans with their own less developed and more primitive life forms. I see them every day, you do too. Drive on any freeway and they can be spotted within minutes.  They drive cars that look just like yours and mine but they do it differently.  It’s because they haven’t figured out that they are supposed to focus on the road, no one has told them.  I see them going 70 miles an hour while putting on mascara and traveling less than a car length behind the car in front of them.  I’m sure you’ve seen them driving with their wrist (not the hand but the actual wrist) at the top of the steering wheel while talking on the phone with the other hand.  Occasionally they even master grabbing a cup of coffee while talking on the phone and steering with their legs.  All the while they slowly drift side to side in their lane 20miles an hour slower than the rest of the freeway traffic around them.  Multi tasking is not their strong suit they aren’t that developed yet.

The head and right foot is connected on the Alien.  An Alien can move one without the other also moving.  When they look over their shoulder to check for oncoming traffic before switching lanes they ALWAYS hit their brakes as their necks look over their shoulders while traveling 70 miles an hour causing everyone behind them to freak out and do the same.  I’m sure somewhere behind them there is an accident, it’s like dominos but the Alien will never know.  They merrily go about slowly infiltrating our population assuming no one will ever discover they are here.  Well the gig is up!  They have been found!  They live on arsenic.  I should have known it all makes sense now. 

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2373775,00.asp

Next time you get on the freeway and wonder if the car in front of you is clueless, an idiot, a jerk or just plain rude, take a second and contemplate this new alternative.