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Squamidian Report – Oct. 23 / 21
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#1013 From Karl From Russ The Ontarion
Hi All, Have any of you ever experienced an ‘atmospheric river’? It’s a weather system that sets up as a long, seemingly endless line of rain events that pump in from the southern Pacific ocean riding on the jet stream and tends to stay in place for days, and, tends to dump said rain onto the same area during those days. We’ve had almost none-stop rain since the beginning of September and for several days last week, it was in the form of an atmospheric river. The southern coast of BC was the target and we got hit hard. Picture the hardest rain event you can think of, then imagine it going on none-stop for about 4 days and nights. Imagine an almost limitless amount of water falling from the sky. This type of event is quite common in November but this one took place in mid October. But, like I’ve said, we’ve been having ‘November’ ever since the beginning of September. Luckily for most of this area, our terrain is basically ‘down hill’ all the way to the ocean. If our lands were flat, we’d be flooded out long ago. As it is, small streams become raging rivers. Rivers become swollen monsters, and so on. Because of the almost none-stop rain that has lasted almost 2 months and has no end in sight, I’ve pretty well given up on this year’s riding season. If you recall, I managed to find a short weather window a couple of weeks ago that let me take my motorcycle in for it’s 8,000km service. The rains started up again right after that and the bike sat dejected in the back of the garage until this past Tuesday when I was able to take her out for a short, half hour toot. And thats been it. There is no break in sight, no reprieve from the rain. So, I must admit defeat and call the riding season not just over but long since over. The bike is now tucked away along the back wall of the garage. The battery tender is plugged in and tending. The bike cover is covering the bike. This is the same bike cover that I used on the old big Electra Glide and is WAY too big for my little Sportster but it works. It sort of looks like a little kid wearing a grown-ups coat. That cover had been designed to fit the old bike perfectly, and it did. It just fits rather loosely, baggy and sagging, over the Sportster. I guess I can always be hopeful that at some point the sky will run out of rain and the sun might come out somewhere in the future, and if that were to happen, and if it were warm enough out that the roads were safe for riding on, I could always pull the cover back off and ride a bit more. Those are a lot of ‘ifs’. Perhaps I shouldn’t hold my breath. Last week we had the audio version of my cover of the Eagles’ song, Lyin’ Eyes. As promised, this week we have my video version of Lyin’ Eyes. How’s that for keeping my word? Finding the time to put these kind of things together is certainly not a problem given that we have not had more than about 4 rain-free days in the last 6 weeks so there can be lots of time to work on various musical projects as long as the house is quiet. Coming up with the material for the musical projects is the hard part. Just because I, or you, are familiar with a song does not mean I, or you, know that song. Some of this stuff I have to learn, or re-learn once I’ve decided to give it a try. I have to then come up with an arrangement for the song. Actually, I have to come up with 2 arrangements because my video version will not be the same as my audio version for obvious reasons. Last week you listened to the audio version with it’s multiple instrumental parts and multiple vocal parts. All of those parts must be decided on, invented, and put in place. As for the video version, I must come up with a workable rhythm that I can play on my guitar, and a workable vocal line that I can get through. With any given video version of a song I may try to do, it’s a 1- shot all or nothing deal. I can’t stop once I start recording, or at least I can’t stop without losing the whole thing and having to start over and every time I have to abort and start over, it loses something. Usually I can make it work on the first take, as I did with this song. Once in a while it has taken a few tries because I blew a chord or a line of lyrics or got interrupted and I can always see a difference, a lesser spontaneity. This one was a first-take video episode, hope you like it. doug **** From Karl Hi everyone Thank you all for a great read again. Looks like we are finally going out of lockdown on Friday so by the time you read this we will be out and about for the first time in a LONG time as you know Melbourne has been the most locked down City in the WORLD we will be able to have family over up to 10 people at a time as long as they have been fully vaccinated but we cant go out of Melbourne like to another town I guess that will come later on but until then life goes on I still go out taking photos within me limit from home I get my walk in and I take photos. Lately I have been taking Bird shots and Sunrises from my local area we never have enough birds here there is one species that comes all the way from Northern Siberia just to this spot in our wetlands and nowhere else in the world. I will post some photos from my archives of some local birds and thanks again for the great read from everyone involved stay safe everyone. Ps the birds in the water with the brown heads are the ones from Siberia the Black yellowtail cockatoo. Karl
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From Russ Chef It's like being on a cruise ship - only we're not moving - much. As I'm typing this, he's preparing a 'simple' breakfast - cheese, bacon, butter (always lots of butter) in a bun. He's already planned dinner, chicken thighs with Maple syrup dressing. We've had salmon; beef, ham, pork, eggs done as many ways as one could imagine! My favourite breakfast is 'eggs benedict' (sp?) Yesterday, we drove all the way to Heidleburg for pigtails, saurkrout, mashed potatoes, and beer/wine. Before his arrival, I needed to punch another hole in my belt (stomach shrinking) - now, I have to 'let-it-out' a notch or two! My blood-sugar is off the chart! And, me a diabetic, treating same with diet and exercise! Wait 'till Dr. Louise Moist hears about this! (Yes, Rose Mary, that's her real name) Got to go now - he's called me to my 2nd breakfast. Who's he? He's my #1 son, Mac who is visiting me for a week from Calgary AB Russ. **** ONTARION REPORT Hello everyone! It’s Thursday morning and I’m up and baking bread for the day! I’ve become the resident baker for the household bread at least! Carole does all the other baking! We have had a bread maker for the past 25 years or more but it wasn’t made use of on a regular basis until this Covid-19 pandemic hit! Now we no longer buy bread at the store, we make our own bread daily right here in our kitchen. With the bread maker you have several choices on how to go about baking the bread. You can follow the instructions and let the bread maker do all the work or you can just prepare the dough in the bread maker and let it rise for an extended period of time and then remove it from the maker and bake it in the oven at 35O degrees for 30 minutes. For us this is the preferred method of baking our loaves! It’s not a very complicated task so I’m usually the one to perform the bread making! About two weeks ago, I put all the ingredients into the bread maker and turned it on as usual. However I hadn’t placed it back far enough on the kitchen counter to account for the movement of the maker when mixing the dough. These devices tend to move around on the counter due to the moving and flopping around of the heavy dough as it mixes and is tossed around inside the maker for the first half hour! Consequently, while I was outside tending to other needs in the yard, the bread maker was moving closer and closer to the edge of the counter and neither Carole or Adam noticed the movement! Eventually the bread maker suddenly crashed to the tile floor of the kitchen and spilled it’s contents onto the floor. Adam came out into the garage where I was working with a hand full of sticky dough and tossed it into the garbage. When I asked where it had come from , he told me about the mishap in the kitchen! Well, since it was my fault that it fell of the counter and smashed the machine, I immediately jumped in the Jeep and headed out to replace the bread maker with a new one. Since we use it daily, I figured I should find one that day. I went to Canadian tire and bought a new one. Since out maker was several years old, I couldn’t get the same model again. So, I bought the newer model of the same brand. Of course it cost me more than twice as much as the old one! I think I spend close to $200.00 for the one from CTC. When I got home, Adam told me he had purchased the original one for only $69.00 at Wal-Mart so, I took another drive to the nearby Wal-Mart to check out their prices. He of course was right about them being cheaper at Wal-Mart! So I returned the bread maker that I had bought at CTC and got my money back. I then went to three different Wal-Marts trying to find the same brand and model that we had. I was told by two of the Wal-Mart stores that they could no longer get that model. However, I was determined to find one if possible. I went to the third Wal-Mart on Bridgeport Rd in Waterloo and picked up their latest model out of desperation, thinking I would not find the original model. As I walked the isles of the small appliance section with the latest model in my cart, I spied a red and white Bread Maker box on an upper shelf. Lo and behold wasn’t it the exact same model I had broken that morning. I grabbed it and put it in my cart and set the other one in it’s place on the shelf. As I walked toward the checkouts, I passed a “price checker” machine and decided to check the price of the Bread Maker in my cart. I passed the box under the scanner and it came up on the screen that the price was only $32.00! I was in shock as all the others I had priced were well over the $100.00 mark! So, I asked one of the ladies working in that section if the price checker was working properly and she said she thought it was but would gladly check the price on her hand held computer! She again scanned the bread maker box and again it came up as only $32.00! She said it must have been marked down as one of their last ones in stock! I couldn’t get to the check outs fast enough! LOL! After all my effort to find the same model as had broken the search had finally paid off! I rushed home to give Carole the good news about my find and the great price! As I walked into the kitchen, I noticed that she had the old broken bread maker working on the same counter it had fallen off of earlier! She told me that Adam had repaired the plastic casing on the broken maker and that when he plugged it in, it was still working. So I immediately thought my search of the Wal-Mart chain had been in vain! However, for a paltry $32.00 I decided to keep the new one in it’s box in case the broken one stopped working in the near future! That was two weeks ago and the old cracked bread maker is still working every day doing it’s duty! I now make sure it’s placed back far enough on the counter that it won’t walk off the edge again! So endeth the Bread Maker lesson for me! The one advantage of making one’s own bread is the lovely smell off the bread as it bakes in the oven! Some days I get on a roll and make up to three loaves in one day. It takes up most of the day and most of the kitchen counter space for that day but the loaves that we get out of the effort are absolutely worth the effort! I don’t think we’ll ever go back to eating store bought bread even after this pandemic is over! That’s about it for this week folks! Thanks for tuning in and I’ll look forward to talking to you again next week in The Ontarion Report! Bye for now …. Greg! PS:
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