The Squamidian Report – May 19 / 18
 
Issue #834

Including:
From Russ
From Lorne
The Ontarion

Hi All,

I for one have had a quiet uneventful week with very little of anything happening to catch my attention. Well, there is the playground pissing match the premiers of Alberta and BC are having, and there is the record breaking flooding thats happening here in BC even as the forest fire season gets under way. There have been several nice motorcycle rides down to Horseshoe Bay and up to Whistler, but thats about it. Oh, there is one thing I've been playing with a bit that is not at all new to the world although it is new to me and thats taking pictures through my telescopes. People have been doing that for years but I'd never bothered with it until, well, this week. Its called 'digiscoping' as in 'digital meets telescoping'. Basically, you just point your camera through the eye piece of the scope and take a picture of whatever you are looking at. Its actually not quite that simple as its almost impossible to just point a camera through the eye piece because it must be lined up fairly well with the axis of the eye piece. To that end there are gizmos of all sizes and price ranges that hold your camera in place. The most common system is using your cell phone's camera (because everyone has one and not everyone needs to take super high quality pics) and therefore using an adapter that holds the phone. The one I'm using clamps to the eye piece of my scopes and with a bit of fine tuning and wiggling things around until everything is lined up, you suddenly see on your phone's screen what you had been seeing though the scope. You can do the two finger zoom in or out just like when doing a normal picture, you can tap the phone's picture button to take a picture, and so on. I've got some great shots of Jupiter and 4 of her moons.

Now here's where it gets really cool, using technology that we already have here in our house. Because we use Mac computers and because we have Mac TV (whatever that means, Ryan set it up), we can have our computers talk to our TV. Therefore, we can have our iPhones talk to our TV. So, not only can we view any pictures on our phone on the TV screen, as long as I'm within signal range of the router I can display whatever the camera lens is seeing through the TV in real time, as I'm doing it. As an example, if I mount the iPhone to the scope and focus in on the mountain peaks across the valley, those peaks can be seen, in larger format because the TV is larger, on the TV. As I pan around, the display on the TV mirrors what the iPhone is seeing through the scope. Cool. So, instead of people trying to look through my scope and it not working for them because they have bumped it or whatever, they can simply look at the phone screen, or the TV screen if I've turned that on. Again, cool.

We picked Lorne and Cindy and Gale up at the Vancouver airport Thursday morning. They are out here for a two week visit, mostly to go up the gondola although there is no way they will ever catch up to my times up. The drive through Vancouver was its usual nightmarish self but we made it. Anyway, now Cindy will be able to see those moons of Jupiter as I point the scope at them. Again, cool. And thats it for me for this week.

doug
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From Russ

Among the “sounds that hurt”, may be the sound of Alberta shutting off the floe of gas/oil to BC......Gas is now $1.60 per L at the pumps....When will it reach $1.70 ?.  Doug, will this affect your riding the Harley this summer?
 
Westjet will now allow it’s passengers to bring “comfort pets” on their flights....Almost “any animal, as long as it sits on their lap!”
ANY animal?  How about a pet horse?  Yes!  It’s been done...it was a miniature horse!
The “sound that hurts” here, is the groan made by passengers sitting in next seats if it’s a pig!
 *
We had him when he was just weaned; he had to leave his mommy and nine brothers and sisters behind in a barn owned by a Brubacher family who bread Poodles as a “side line” on a farm near Linwood, Ontario.
Bobbie(Barbara) held him on her lap as we drove back home to Cambridge.  It was a long ride for an infant, and when she set him on the grass to pee, he fell flat on his belly....all four legs ‘went south’....a posture he took whenever he was frightened. My wife named him Donny, after a puppy she had when she was a child growing up in Owen Sound (no ‘she’ didn’t ‘have’ the pup, it’s mother did).
 
When the Vet. said, “Donny has chronic kidney failure....he has less than six months to live”, of course I went into denial.
 
NO WAY! He’s too young(only 10)...too healthy...too happy...they must be wrong! But, when we could see he was suffering and realized he had to be put down, we asked them to come to our home so he could “be put to sleep” in his familiar surroundings. As we laid him on his blanket, the Vet. and Vet-Tech Assistant, spoke softly and with sympathy.......
 
“He won’t feel a thing”
 
But I did....I felt I’d just assisted in ‘suicide’.
Donny peacefully accepted his death....He made no sound....But the ‘muffled’ sound of their van as it drove away carrying the limp, dead body of my Donny....who I’d ‘never see again’, screamed in my head!
 
Such are the “sounds that hurt”
 
*
 
On a lighter note; when you are really feeling down and out, there is no better ‘cure’ than to cry in your beer while listening to “hurtin’ songs” sung by your favourite Country & Western Artists:
                       He Stopped Loving Her Today, by George Jones.
                       Help Me Make it Through the Night, written by
                       Greg Payne’s favourite; Kris Kristofferson 1970,
                       Sung by Tammy Wynette.
                       Hello Darling, by Conway Twitty.
                       Heartaches, by Patsy Cline.
                       I’ve Never Been a Cowboy, written and sung by
                       Doug Brubacher.
 
Such are the “sounds that hurt nice”
 
By your old Uncle Russ.
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From Lorne

Hello fellow Squamidian subscribers from the very keyboard that produces the  Squad each  week. Thats right.  Cindy and I and daughter Gale as chaperone left our respective beds at 2.30 this morning, may 17, caught the early plane out of Breslau and here we are at the editor's computer.  Arrived  in Vancouver, we then stopped on the way to Tobermory Drive to ride one of the 20 gondola cars up to the chalet making 1005 trips for Doug and only 33  for some of us  Ontarions.  34 for me because I sneaked an extra trip while they weren't looking.

May 18,  to-day we all added another trip up to what I had called a chalet but they refer to it as the summit lodge. I crossed the suspension bridge just to say I did.   That amounts to a bit more care than walking on terra firma.  We are comfortably  lodged by Doug and Sue although there are 30 more  steps in their house than I have in mine.  Kyra and Olivia, their granddaughters,  therefor  my descendants,  are staying here as well until Tues. Evening.  Makes for a lively time.

Lorne
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THE ONTARION REPORT

Hello everyone!
Another week has gone by and another medical challenge has arisen. Being a hairless person I can easily keep track of the marks and bumps on my head. I tend to keep banging and cutting my scalp on anything that hangs out or sticks out of whatever. Two weeks ago I cut my head open while cleaning the MG. I managed to strike my head on the “no draft” window of the driver’s side of the car and of course a head wound bleeds like the dickens! I got it stopped but in the process I noticed that I have several rough blemishes on the top of my head. I attribute these to an over exposure to the sun. I do wear hats but not all the time. One of the blemishes was rather large about the size of a dime and quite thick. They usually dry up and flake off but they do come back every few months. This one was of concern and I booked an appointment with my family doctor just to check it out. He decided to have me see a plastic surgeon just in case it might be skin cancer. I went to see this doctor Evans on Wednesday of this week and he asked me to come back on Thursday to have a biopsy done on the spot. So on Thursday I went in to his operating room and he and a retired doctor who works along with him on occasion put me under the knife and removed the questionable spot to be sent to a lab to find out just what it is! It’ll take a week or more to get the results and I’m hoping it’s just a benign blemish. I have to return to see Dr Evans on the 30th of May to have the stitches removed and to find out just what the verdict is on the test. I went under the knife at 12:30pm and it took the two of these surgeons 40 minutes to complete the removal of the chunk out of my scalp. I asked how many stitches they put into the scalp to close the wound and the nurse said they put in 11 stitches. The Surgical opening was apparently two inches long by one inch wide by a half inch deep! WOW! I didn’t know that my scalp was that thick! I now have a large patch on the left topside of my scalp and it’ll take 13 days for the incision to heal so they tell me! As a kid it was always cool for someone to have stitches to show the other kids at school but I was never one of those kids to be lucky enough to have any to show off! LOL! Now that I’m an old fart, I’m riddled with long incisions from the heart surgery but the surgeon did such a great job that the three large stitch jobs he did during the heart surgery are almost invisible! I guess that’s a good thing! I have three of them over a foot long each, one on my left forearm, one on my right calf and one down the middle of my chest but there’s barely a trace of any stitching. Now however I will have a visible scar so the doctor said to show the girls at school! LOL! Hahahahaha….. !

If this one turns out to be healed, the doctor will use liquid nitrogen to “burn” the other spots of the same nature off the rest of my scalp and I’ll once again have a clear start on a healthy head of skin. At least with no hair I can see when I have something suspicious up there not like people who have a thick head of hair that hides the bumps and cuts and scars. From then on it’ll be hat wearing and sunscreen usage for evermore! Especially when we’re out in the MGB on the sunny days! Once the doctors had finished the surgery on my scalp the nurse asked me to sit up so she could place a large band-aid over their work. She asked me if I was dizzy or anything and I said that I was ok. She said, “Do you feel anything?” and I said my scalp felt a little tight from the stitching together of the two sides of the incision. I also said that I noticed that the wrinkles in my forehead had disappeared! LOL! The three of them laughed like crazy! Doctor MacTavish who assisted Dr Evans quipped that at least my breasts weren’t enlarged and the four of us laughed our heads off at that one! I’ve heard of plastic surgeons making a mistake during surgery but that would really have been a goof up!

Oh well, this time there were two of them doing the job so less chance of a mistake for sure! Thank goodness! My head is throbbing like a jackhammer and I’m making good use of the extra strength Tylenol tablets that the heart surgeon gave me to quell the pain if needed. Good thing I still have a hefty supply of them left over from that episode!

I’m looking forward to the 30th when I’m healed up from this go round and things are again back to normal! Hopefully it’s not skin cancer but if it is, let’s hope they managed to remove it all! This sort of stuff is just part of life when you get into your senior years I guess. I’ve had my share for this year so it’s time for some healthy senior years ahead!
I wish you all a wonderful May 2 4 weekend and may the sun be shining in your part of the country!

I still haven’t heard back from the body shop on the MG repairs but I guess I can’t rush them if I want them to do a good job. It would be nice to know however what the cost will be in the end to me and just when they’ll be able to complete the job! I want it all done for the rest of the summer so we can enjoy it! Here’s keeping my fingers crossed that it’ll be all fixed and looking lovely within the next few weeks!

That’s it for this week folks! Thanks for tuning in and I’ll look forward to talking to you all again next week in The Ontarion Report! Bye the way, I just found out the other day that the University of Guelph has a student news paper that is called “The Ontarion” …. What a coincidence eh? They named it after my column! LOL!

Bye for now … Greg

PS: Something To Think About>
The Royal Wedding is today! I wonder when the first baby is due? I hope they name him Prince Gregory! LOL!
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Have a good one..
the doug
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