Caught: Trout at last

Sunshine, wind, and fishy aspirations. . .

My catch

My husband and I accepted the sunshine’s offer (the wind was thrown in with the deal) and we returned this morning to our favorite pond to fish for trout. I caught two trout, 8-1/2″ and 10-1/2″. Vic is cooking one of them now for his lunch. (I am very allergic to fish.)

Please, Nobel Committee, consider this

It always seems to me that there is a Nobel Prize for everything, but millions of women, including myself, rue the absence of a useful, nifty, lightweight, silent dusting tool.

Rags require us to be in close proximity to the dust, and feathers and mop-like twisted rag fragments simply scatter the dust, most of it into the face of the individual using it.

I have been frustrated for some time  that no competent lightweight manual dusting device has entered the marketplace. I think a Nobel Prize for such a practical tool would be a strong incentive for development of such an admittedly mundane, prosaic object, and it would be an invention the time of which has arrived.

My own improvisation. A pony-tail elastic binds a duster (I don’t recall to what it was formerly bound) to an adjustable pole handle from something else, I have no recollection what. Trust me, it’s inefficient and frustrating, and places me at no risk of having to fly to Sweden to accept a Nobel Prize.

Effie and blackberries

I took this photo last summer, of Effie slavering over the unripe blackberries she had been checking out. This year she has shown no interest in them at all, even when they were ripe. I think she does really cute things with her tongue.

Her cute look elevated my morale after reading the NOAA wildfire reports and predictions. It was a tad demoralizing to learn that I am not cut out for life on earth, but hey, I’ve had a fair number of decades to prove I am blessed with some kind of knack for survival–aka God’s preserving grace.

I have a wonderful husband, a compatible cat, a pleasant home, and a well-matched church. Smoke happens. I’ve been outdoors only briefly, to run up the hill to get any eggs our hens have laid, and down the hill to pick up our mail. I feel a little cooped up, staying in the house so much, and very ready to get back to fishing in the Snake River again. The fires have kept us from fishing for three whole weeks.

Like most nuisances, smoke doesn’t stay forever.

A powerless morning reclaimed

We get up at 5 a.m. At 5:10 this morning, our electricity went out. Lights, microwave, bathroom fan, washer and dryer (today is laundry day)–virtually every component of our typical routine. I called our power company and responded with my keyboard to the bot’s questions. Was it our house only, or the whole neighborhood? I pressed “2” for the latter.

I am blessed that my  resourceful husband is a true Renaissance genius. He hooked up our generator so I could use the microwave to thaw my bread and cook my egg. He set up our gas camp stove so I could make my coffee (he had already made his before the power shut down). It was already sunny and warm outdoors, and we ate in the garden, aka Effieland, with Effie.

The power outage affected some 130 homes, all across the valley. Happily, power was restored around 7:00 a.m. The outage lasted just over two hours. I don’t know the cause, but I would speculate that the heat has urged inordinately heavy use of air conditioning.

It was fun having the camp stove on the patio and eating in the garden. I would enjoy having our breakfast in the garden more often, even if our electricity provider gets its act together.

 

Plug it in, Lady. . .

My camera quit immediately after I took the photos for the previous post. I plugged in its charging cord, which is plugged in to a four-outlet surge strip, which is plugged into a wall socket, same as always—except that my camera’s red charging light did not come on. This did not at all portend a good thing.

I called my husband, and gave him the model number of my camera’s lithium oxide battery. Owners’ manuals are good things to have for such occasions. My husband thought it was unusual for the battery to die so young. He would order two new batteries and spring for 2-day shipping. They were guaranteed to be delivered Memorial Day.

I conjectured aliens with remote devices, destroying all the lithium oxide camera batteries in the world, to keep conscientious terrestrials from photographing them when they finally invade the earth.

After talking to my husband for 23 minutes, I needed to charge my phone. I plugged it in to its jack, which was plugged into its USB outlet, which was plugged in to the surge strip, which is plugged in to the wall. My phone wouldn’t charge either. Now, this was truly weird.

Everything was properly plugged in. Aliens never come on Fridays. I looked at the surge strip. Maybe its switch was off—who remembers whether its black or red side is supposed to show? I switched the switch to see the red side. My camera’s red charging light came on. My phone’s charging screen came on.

I called my husband and confessed my mistake that the surge strip was somehow turned off. I have no idea how it came to be off. I never purposely turn it on or off; it’s always on, or should be. Effie certainly is not taking the rap for this. My husband belayed the battery order. A fairly good time was had by all. . . .

That red charging light on my camera looked so terrific. . .

Red on the surge strip means “On!”

I took the photos with my phone, which was charged first.