Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  Well, it now seems pretty certain that we are more regularly visited by deer than we thought.  Here's the “take” from our trail camera from last night:

The photos are time-stamped; our visitors appeared from just before midnight until just after 3 am.  Night-owls, to be sure!

The trail camera also caught about a bazillion photos of our neighbor's dog Annie, plus this one shot of a kitty (at right).  There were also perhaps a hundred frames that showed no animals of any kind – I'm guessing those were triggered by birds flying across the field of vision so fast that they were missed, or perhaps by the wind blowing branches around.

This morning when I was doing the kitty chores, I saw the rather startling sight at right (the rightmost photo).  That's a kitty litter jug, filled with water, acting as a weight on the cardboard box below it.  That cardboard box, in turn, stops one of our cats (Konani, aka “Devil Cat”) from playing with the controls for the air filter below it.  That jug is glowing as if it has a light bulb in it, but it certainly does not.  So what was going on? The other photo, from the opposite side, shows that the jug is illuminated by a small ray of sunlight poking in from a basement window.  This particular alignment only lasted 60 seconds or so.  Pretty cool while it lasted!  Even some of the cats were intrigued, and the aforementioned Konani went over and smacked at the jug to see what would happen (nothing!).

I spent most of today working on the electrical wiring for our new mud room.  I had one small disaster occur while working today: the plate for the motion sensor split in two places while I was screwing it in.  I'll have to make that one over again; a job for tomorrow.  The plates for the lights themselves are in, as you can see in the rightmost photo.  It's not obvious at the moment, but the doorway will actually be much larger than the existing hole; those lights will be slightly closer to the door than they are to the edge of the mud room.  Inside the mud room I have all the boxes in place except for the three outlet boxes on the east side.  The chandelier box is installed, and I'm very happy with the way that came out.  Much of the wiring is in place, including the fairly complicated wiring for the lighting controller.  There is also one more switch box to install, but I can't do that until we receive the front door, so I know which side it will open on (that's the side where the switch will go).  The left photo shows a small bit of detail that was interesting to work out.  The junction box is just a distribution junction for outlets; nothing exciting there.  But see that vertical row of steel plates?  Those are “stud guards”, intended to be hammered into a stud to prevent nails from puncturing a wire or pipe underneath it, where it transits the stud through a drilled hole.  I'm using them for a completely different purpose here.  I cut a channel in the OSB sheathing behind those plates, and routed three Romex cables through that channel.  Just before they get to the bottom of the steel, the three wires plunge through the insulation between the studs.  I'm hoping I can talk the electrical inspector into accepting that.  I have a good story all queued up! :)  The inspectors here are quite common-sensical, so I'm not really too worried about that.  One of those cables carries power for all the mud room's lighting, another connects to a three-way switch inside our house, and the last one carries power to an outlet box below.

More memories...

More memories ... from my mom's photo collection...

This photo is undated, but from my dad's appearance I'd guess it's the late '90s or early '00s; he'd have been about 75.  I recognize that jacket – he had it on several of the trips we took together, and often wore it in the cabins or B&B we stayed in: he liked to be warm.  It's a bit unusual for him to have been out in bright sunlight without a hat – he was always careful about provoking the skin cancers that he hated getting “burned” out (with liquid nitrogen).  There are a few other photos in this series that I'll post later; they include other people I don't know, but I'm guessing they were other horticulturists at some sort of function, possibly when my dad got an award.  He's standing in front of a specimen of American holly (Ilex opaca), the plant species he spent so much time studying and growing; I'm sure that background is not accidental.  It wouldn't surprise me a bit to find out that it was one of his varieties.

The lab dates this as August 1960; that's my dad and my brother Scott.  They would have been 34 and six and a half, respectively.  The fuzz visible below my dad's chin is glued to the original photo somehow; I was afraid to try to remove it.  I love the expression on both their faces.  I have so many memories of my dad's smile, with his jutting lower jaw and those wrinkles like a cartoon character...

This photo is undated, but from the gifts and some other photos I've already posted, I can say it's the Christmas of '55, taken in our living room.  This one was taken before we opened the gifts – my guess is that mom or dad snapped this on Christmas Eve after they set all this up.  One thing I see here I remember: the little Christmas trees just under the right side of the real Christmas tree.  Those were decorations that we had for years afterward.  To the right and behind the Christmas tree, you can get a good view of the closet we had in that space before my parents had a games closet installed high.  Inside that closet you see there was a very awkwardly shaped space created by the ceiling of the stairwell for the stairs down to our basement.  Sometime after '55, they took out the frame of that door and paneled it up with matching knotty pine paneling, making a fairly well-hidden and high built-in cabinet that we used for storing board games and the like.  I remember the carpenters trying hard to match the paneling when they did that work – I learned a few words I'd never heard before. :)  That brings up another memory of mom and dad: when we were young, it was very rare for us to hear either of them utter any word more vulgar than, say, “Darn!”  As an adult I discovered (as did my siblings) that both of them had a rather well-developed set of four-letter word vocabularies – my dad's mostly acquired during the war, in the Army Air Force, and my mom's from her dad and his circle of friends.  My own vulgabulary gained more from them than I was ever able to teach them. :)

The lab dates this as February 1954, and my mom wrote “Tom” on the back.  That's my dad standing in front of a magnificent Ilex opaca specimen on our farm.  I remember that particular tree; it stood along our driveway to the north of our house, and was a particularly fine example of the variety “Old Heavyberry”, which was discovered and developed by his dad (my grandfather) Earle Dilatush.  That particular specimen was one of the last of the large hollies on our farm that was sold and moved – labor got too expensive after that, and the giant tree-moving equipment available today hadn't yet been developed.

 This little fellow is my cousin Donald, son of my uncle (my mom's brother) Donald.  I don't remember ever meeting him.  The photo is undated.  My mom wrote on the back, in fountain pen “Donald MacLaughlin son of my brother Donald”.  Because of the fountain pen, I'm guessing it's circa early '50s.

My sister Holly, in an undated and unmarked studio portrait, possibly a school portrait.  I'm guessing she's about five or six, which would put this in '60 or '61.  I think I may have posted one much like this before, but I can't find it now.  The mark on her forehead is damage on the photo original, not on her head (though such an injury might explain some things :).  I'm sure you didn't miss it, but just in case: that's quite a gap in her teeth she's got there! :)

This one has handwriting I don't recognize, saying “The reason for the frown is a bad head-ache.” – followed by my mom's writing, in fountain pen: “Donnie Over”.  My mom's sister (my aunt) Betty was married to William Over, so I'm presuming that Donnie is their son (so my cousin).  I don't remember a cousin Donnie, though.  The photo is undated, but from the Army uniform he's wearing, it must be WWII or Korean War era – mid-'40s to mid-'50s.  There are sailors in dress blues in the background, and a ship, so I'm guessing he's at a port either returning from or going to a troop transport.  The plants look more like east coast than west coast (assuming this is in the U.S.); beyond that I can't tell what the location is.  Another clue on the time: note that the can of soda or beer he's holding is an old-fashioned steel can with the rolled lid.

I've been wondering...

I've been wondering...  If one was the parent of a teenager right now, precisely how would you be talking with your child about this election?  I might be talking with them about the need for a passport, and most definitely there would be weapons training...