Trailer show

The antique auction was held in the large ND State Fair building. In another end of the building a local mobile home company was holding an indoor trailer event. The company had moved ten large mobile homes into one room.

As I grew up living in a mobile home I decided to spend a few minutes looking at how trailers are these days. Trailers these days certainly are not like the trailers of my youth. All but one trailer were double wide trailers, that is two trailers attached together. This eliminates the feeling of the typical trailer, long and narrow. Old trailers were a long hallway with rooms off to one side. With the double wide trailers the floor plan eliminates the hallway feel to the trailers.

The double wide trailers can be quite large as one trailer had 2310 sq ft with four bedrooms and 3 baths. Most trailers seem to have jacuzzi tubs for bathtubs. These trailers are nicer than my little old house.

The number of people looking at the trailers were not huge, but most were young couples or young couples with parents. They were seriously looking the trailers over.

Here are a few floor plans ranging from a long 16 by 80 trailer to the 2310 sq ft trailer. The above interior photo was taken from the first floor plan. I was standing in the nook and took the photo of the kitchen area.

Antique auction

Sunday I attended an antique auction in Minot. I arrived 2 and 1/2 hours after the auction started. Part of the reason I was late as I couldn't start my brother's pickup. I don't have "the touch" and my brother had to come home. He was able to easily start his pickup. I am starting to think his pickup is "alive" and doesn't like me.

Even though I was late to the auction there were tables and tables of items left to sell. The auction was well organized with numbers on the tables indicating the order stuff would be sold. The items ranged from furniture, glassware, red wing crocks, old signs, clothes, metal toys, and so on. While the seller had enough items to stock an antique store, the ad said this was from his personal collection. I wonder where he stored it all? Most all items were in very good condition.

There were more people at the auction than I expected. The crowd was mostly older and seemed evenly divided between men and women. It also appeared a variety of buyers were purchasing items and not just a select few. It was hard to tell how many were antique dealers and how many were personal collectors. Some younger audience members had 'the look' some collectors have, that is they are focused on items and collecting and not so much on their appearance. Either due to their clothes or their hair styles, some people had the look of people who don't fit into a crowd.

I didn't recognize anyone at the auction. The only person I 'knew' was the auctioneer, Sundsbak. I 'knew' him from name only from back when I attended auctions around Minot 25 to 30 years ago. I didn't recognize him.

I hung around a half hour or so before leaving. There was nothing I wanted to buy. While I can fall under a collecting impulse, I just couldn't see the interest in collecting stuff like this. It is just more stuff to own, move, dust and store. I guess I am too young, and the items too old, for me to have memories of owning the items in my youth. It seems as if many collectors are people who are trying to purchase memories of their youth. As the years move on the 'window' of popular (or hot) collectible items also move. Items from the 1930s and 1940s seem to have given way to items from the 1950s and 1960s.

I believe the old cylinder phonograph sold for $500. After selling the phonograph the auctioneer then sold the box of cylinders for $30. Naturally the same person bought the cylinders.

Before selling the phonograph the auctioneer put his microphone up to the speaker while another person hand cranked the cylinder. The music sounded fine, just like what we hear when one of these phonographs are operated in movies. It is interesting to think that in the age of ipods and digital music, this phonograph was cutting edge technology around 100 years ago; and prior to the invention of the cylinder phonograph the only music heard was live music.

Devil's Pond movie

I hope everyone had a nice Valentine's Day. Me? I ended up watching the movie, Devil's Pond. This was not exactly a romantic Valentine Day type of movie.

"What starts out as a romantic honeymoon on a lonely island turns into a horrible nightmare as Julianne discovers that her new husband is psychotic."

This was a straight-to-video movie so I didn't expect much from it. But to my surprise it was better than I expected. Even though there were a few choices by the movie characters that weren't entirely realistic, and Tara Reid can't act that well, it was a solid movie nonetheless.

The movie was filmed in and around my hometown of Kalispell, MT by a small movie company. I had tried out for a part as an extra for the wedding scene that opens the movie but didn't get hired. The movie company was mainly looking for people in their 20s as they would be closer in age to the couple getting married. I was no way close to being in my 20s. Oh well, the wedding scene is very brief and the audience (extras) in the church were only seen for about 10 seconds.

The church used was the United Methodist Church, which is located in downtown Kalispell near the county library. The filming at the church was done on a Saturday.  I had seen the movie stuff outside the church as filming was going on inside it.

The Montana lake used for the lake and island is between Kalispell and Libby.

Other than the wedding scene in the beginning, and a short montage of driving scenes to the lake, the rest of the movie takes place at the lake and island, and only involves the couple. It was fun to see the landscape in the driving scenes as this is how the area looks west of Kalispell.

The Devil's Pond movie's working title was Heaven's Pond.  For those of us who remember the movie Heaven's Gate, which was filmed in and around Kalispell back in 1979, and which was a disaster that brought down the United Artists movie studio, Heaven's Pond was a bad name for a movie filmed in Kalispell.


Update based on a comment: images of Horseshoe Lake near Happy's Inn, Montana.

Optical illusions

Here is a fascinating web site with 77 optical illusions and visual phenomena. Most of the illusions are pretty good. Some of these illusions I have already seen in various past emails.

This link tests your Visual Acuity ↔ Hyperacuity. I was able to align the objects to within 0.07 pixels which is when I gave up.


If you like M.C. Escher circular illusions like I do, here is a link to a short animated 3-D movie based on Escher's circular staircase.

Trivia night loss

Monday night I attended trivia night. I missed the entire first trivia contest as I was late leaving mom at Manor Care. I wanted to talk with a nurse about mom's new back/side pain before I left and this took a bit of time.

Then I had trouble starting my brother's pickup. In the cold weather (around zero F) it starts hard. Earlier my brother couldn't get a parking spot near the electrical outlets so the pickup's block heater wasn't plugged in. When I couldn't get the pickup started I had to get my brother and he started it.

The answers to the first trivia contest were read shortly after I arrived. Rod and Alan had joined the same team as last week and they answered 18 out of 20 correct. That was only good for second place as the winning team got 19 correct.

The second contest went well and we again ended up with 18 correct. This was good for a first place tie with two other teams. One of the three teams had won the first contest so we answered a sudden death question with one other team.

"What year did Ford Motors stop making the Edsel?"

Our team and the other team both answered: 1960.

Wrong. Try again.

Rod mentioned 1959 and I mentioned 1961. The guy writing our answer down went with my answer. I thought there were three years of the car and thought 1959 must have been the first year as 1960 wasn't the correct answer for the last year.

Ed said both teams were wrong again and both were equally distant from the correct answer. This time we guessed 1959 and won. Or so we thought. We had the $20 drink certificate in our hands when Ed announced he had made a mistake and the other team actually had won.

The second guess when we answered 1961, the other team had answered 1958. 1958 is closer to 1959 by one year than 1961. Ed apparently is not good at math.

We gave up our $20 certificate to the other team. I felt bad as I was the person who suggested 1961.

I checked the Wikipedia entry for the Ford Edsel and learned Ford had stopped making the Edsel in November 1959. They did have three model years: 1958, 1959, and 1960. It is just that the model years run from the Fall of one year to the next Fall and the model year does not follow a calendar of December 31.

It was frustrating to have 18 correct for each contest and still come up losers.

The bar held karaoke after the trivia contests were over. The Captain was not there to sing this night but plenty of other people were. Quite a few people sang and half or more of them were women. All these people didn't mean that more people were good and could actually sing. A few songs I couldn't even recognize.

I had driven to the trivia contest so I didn't have the opportunity to walk/run home and partially air the bar's cigarette smoke out of my clothes. *sigh*

Cold here, snow there

A cold blast came to North Dakota over the weekend. Lots of -20 F temperatures with the highest temperatures nowhere near 0 F. But very little snow. I thought about visiting an antique and glassware auction this afternoon before visiting mom at Manor Care but decided against it due to it still being -12 F. There will be other auctions.

In Montana however, I am missing lots of snow. Peter and Edwina, in a snowier part of the Valley, said they have had 165 inches of snow so far this year - a little more than average. Here is a photo Peter and Edwina sent me of their place once they cleared the roofs of snow.

I spoke with my neighbors Bob and Jan. Jan had checked on my house last week and everything is fine. Due to the snow she had to walk from the road to reach my house. Another neighbor who other years had plowed my driveway a few times as a courtesy hadn't plowed my driveway this year. Other than a few deer tracks Jan noticed no other tracks in the snow at the ranch.

Glacier Park has closed more of their roads. The cross country skiing must be fantastic.

Snow closes Glacier park road

Posted: Feb 9, 2008

Officials with the National Park Service at Glacier National Park have been forced to close down St. Mary's Lake Road on Saturday at the entrance.

Snow caused the road to be blocked off. Previously, it was open to the foot of St Mary's Lake.

There's no word from officials on how long St. Mary's Lake Road will be shutdown.

Drake Livestock show

Wednesday I drove 50 miles to Drake, ND to attend their annual Drake Breeders cattle show. Each year in early February the small town of Drake has a showing of cattle on their downtown Main street. This event is held to get cattle together in one place rather than have potential buyers travel miles on back roads to check the cattle out.

I have not visited the event in the past as the weather usually was poor. I remembered the livestock show as being on the first Wednesday in February, but I wasn't positive. I tried to find an article in the local newspaper listing the event's date and time but found nothing. And I couldn't find anything about it on Google when I searched using "Drake", "cattle", "livestock", and "February 6". After attending the event and learning it was called the "Drake Breeder's Classic" I found a listing online about the event.

Even if I wasn't positive I had the correct day for the event, what the heck? I decided to drive down to Drake in hopes the event was being held.

The weather was ok for my drive to Drake. There was little traffic on the road - as usual. Halfway there the wind was blowing the loose snow across the road. ...Winter in North Dakota.

Along the way I watched jet contrails in the sky.

After waiting for the long Canadian Pacific train to slowly move down the track past the railroad crossing I was able to drive from the highway into the town of Drake.

Drake, population 322, is an old slowly dying small town. The buildings on Main street were old and could use sprucing up. The mainly brick buildings looked to be past their prime. A few bars, a cafe, and I'm not sure what other businesses there were.

For about a block and a half in length I found about 30 pens in the middle of the Main street. The street was wide enough that traffic could pass on each side of the pens, but I saw no vehicles pass by.

In each of most pens were three to four head of cattle. The cattle appeared to be mainly bulls. Signs were on many pens listing the farm/ranch the cattle were from, and a number of pens had fliers and brochures for upcoming bull sales. The brochures had statistics on bloodlines, birth weight of offspring, semen count... stuff that is helpful in finding the right bull.

The cattle all looked excellent. I found the number of Black Angus cattle to be lower than I expected and the number of other breeds like Herefords, Simmenthal, and Gelbvieh to be higher than expected.

At the far end in a pen by himself was a huge Hereford bull. In another pen, as I made my way back to my car, were five bulls. Two bulls did not like each other and were head to head in a pushing contest. As the pen was relatively small they pushed one side of the pen out slightly and the owner occasionally had to push the panels back and encourage the two bulls to quit their pushing contest.

I noticed that most all of the signs listing the cattle's farm/ranch listed both a man and woman's name and not just the man's name. It makes sense.

It seemed to me that the only people around, other than me, were other people showing their cattle. Small groups of two, three, or four people were here and there discussing farm stuff. I spoke for a little bit with one guy standing alone, but between my lack of in depth knowledge and the North Dakota farmers' natural reticence, the conversation was slow going before another exhibitor joined us and the conversation moved elsewhere. I wandered down the line of pens.

While the temperature was around 20 F, the sharp wind and cloudy skies put a chill in one's bones. I left after 20 minutes of looking. The exhibition left me wanting. Maybe I would have been more excited by the exhibition if I was in the market to buy a bull.

During my drive back to Minot I drove through a weather front. I passed under a thick line of gray clouds and it began to snow. Less than 20 miles later I passed through the front and returned to the same type of weather as prior to the front.

Trivia and karaoke

Monday I attended trivia night again after missing last week's event due to the snow storm.

I arrived late to trivia as I had come from visiting mom at Manor Care. Over half the questions from the first contest had been asked by the time I arrived.

Rod and Alan were there, and since neither Austin or I were there when the contest started they had joined another team. This team is a good team and is one of the higher scoring teams. I pulled up another chair and squeezed to a corner of the table next to Alan.

Before I arrived Rod had won a "Jim Bean" t-shirt for answering a "quarters" question correctly. The correct answer was "Brussels sprouts". I don't know what the question was.

In the first contest our team had 16 correct, good for third place. The team of lawyers and judges won with 19 correct. For the second contest our team got 15 correct and tied with the lawyers for first place.

Since a team can only win one contest each night, by default our team won the second contest's $20 drink certificate. I credit the team we joined for the bulk of our correct answers as Rod and I only contributed a few correct answers. For example, Rod was the only member of our team who knew that a flounder is a fish whose eyes migrate to one side of its head. I knew that it was "in his heart" that Buddy Holly was talking about where it was raining. Our team spent much of the $20 on drinks after the contests were over as we stayed and socialized while karaoke was performed.

Ed, our trivia host, sang a couple karaoke songs. The old man, who sang the previous time I attended trivia night, sang a few "old style" songs again. I learned his nickname is "The Captain". He used to operate a tugboat as his job. Where that was I don't know as I would be surprised to find any tugboats in North Dakota.

I walked (ran) home from the bar. I had no hat or gloves with me and the temperature was near zero F, but I survived. I walked (ran) because I wanted to air my clothes to get rid of the cigarette smoke smell on them, but they still smelled when I got home.

Cold weather photos

Here are a few cold weather photos.

The first two photos show the electrical post for plugging vehicles in at Manor Care. The first during the day, the other at night. This is a big help for these -20 F days and nights.

The next photo was taken after 1 am just before I went to bed. The "orange" color is a neighboring house's furnace smoke in the cold night air. Think cold when you look at the photo.

Today is warmer as the temperature is finally above zero at 10 F. And it is sunny too.

Window Frost

Another cold morning.

How cold was it? The thermometer outside the kitchen window said -27 F when I first got up at 8:30 am. A bit cold. By the time I took a photo after 10 am it had warmed up to -22 F and now it is a "balmy" -13 F.

Also my bedroom window was completely frosted again over this morning. This time I took a photo of it after carving the word "Hi" into the frost. As the sun has come around to this side of the house this morning I have been soaking up the water as the frost melts.

People who know me know I like it cool when I sleep, so my bedroom was cool to begin with as I had closed all the heat vents in the room to keep it comfortable (for me) for sleeping. I think the cooler room made it easier for frost to cover the window.

Even though it is cold I just saw a squirrel bounding down the sidewalk in front of the house. Don't those pests ever rest?

At least it is sunny outside so it looks warmer than it actually is. Oops.. wrote this too soon as clouds are starting to arrive.

No trivial snow

Late Monday afternoon a strong and stormy cold front came through town.

The day had started off nice - for North Dakota - with little wind and a temperature of 19 F. Around 4 pm I could hear the wind pick up and see the leafless tree branches sway in the wind. The wind increased to a low roar and soon snow either began to fall else merely get blown in from Canada miles away.

I had planned on attending Trivia Night at the Landing Bar but dropped those plans. The temperature fell to zero and with the very strong wind (gusts to 40 mph) the wind chill was well below zero.

My brother was at Manor Care with my mom but he came home after 5 pm before it got dark. It was hard enough to see to drive in the blowing snow much less try to do so in the darkness. He said it was hard to keep the pickup's window defrosted during the drive home.

Here are a couple photos I took of the weather as the storm came.



My brother had bought a bunch of bananas earlier that day and had left them in his pickup when visiting mom. The bananas were frozen by the time he got home. This morning their skins were black.

This morning the temperature on the thermometer outside the window was at -24 F. Officially the overnight low temperature was -20 F. The wind was still blowing at 27 mph with gusts to 34 mph. The wind chill all morning was -46 to -48 F. A little cold.

My brother and I waited until noon to drive up to visit my mother. The temperature had warmed in the clear sunny sky to -14 F and the wind chill was still less than -40 F. I must have psyched myself up to the cold as it actually didn't feel cold as I swept the snow off the driveway. The sun made it feel warmer.

At Manor Care I saw a woman scrape frost off a window outside mom's room so she could use her remote car starter from inside the building to start her car. Later I noticed someone had pressed one of their hands against the frost and used their body heat to melt a hand print in the window. This window is on the north side of the building which is why the today's sun hasn't melted the frost on this cold day.

My brother has an engine block heater in his pickup so when we left he was able to start his pickup rather easily even though it was -18 F with a wind chill of -41 F. There is a post with many electrical connections for vehicles with engine heaters - and many vehicles were plugged in.

Annoyed during a mid-Winter thaw

Things that annoyed me today:

• It is a very warm and sunny 46 degrees outside and I am inside buildings most of the day.


• My fix last night to the washing machine worked, but the washing machine this morning had another problem - a small water leak.


• A checkout cashier at Walmart who moved so s... l... o...w.... "Why me? Why did I have to get the cashier who moves in slow motion?!


• Two women in line in front of me at a Walmart checkout. You'd think one of the women - who were perfectly able to do so - could have put each grocery bag in their grocery cart when the cashier moved on to putting items into a new bag. Instead we all had to wait until the cashier gathered up the bags and walked around the counter to place them into the cart. This delayed our items from being checked out. I could make a comment about some women who expect everything to be done for them even though they are well able to do it themselves, but that would be politically incorrect now, wouldn't it? Whatever happened to feminism where a woman could do anything a man could do? I never see guys standing around and waiting for someone to load their bags into a cart.
  


• A man walking in traffic in the parking lot who seemed oblivious to the traffic. He slowed down even further the slow traffic as vehicles had to stop and/or drive around him. I stared at him as my brother and I drove by. He didn't seem to be on drugs. I was wearing sunglasses but I wonder if he got the drift that I was not happy and was shooting visual daggers his way. Walk on the sidewalk, or if you are looking for someone, stand on it.
  


• I planned on buying some small dumbbells for Mom to exercise with. Walmart was out of them. *sigh*


• Hollywood starlets and want-to-bes: Britney, Lindsey, Paris, Nicole, and on and on. And all the TV time and spent discussing their actions and what they are wearing, etc., etc. You know, if a causality of the Hollywood writers strike is the cancellation of the award shows and red carpets, I will be fine with that.
  


• I should be enjoying the nice day but later in the afternoon a line of clouds moved over blocking the sun. A harbinger of the cold - well below zero! - weather that is forecast to arrive in a little over a day.

• Springtime is suppose to be nice, but early Spring - or a mid-Winter thaw - is not,
  
  
  • the nice weather is temporary,
    
  • it is muddy and sloppy outside, and
    
  • the trees are bare and no color is seen other than a dirty white and a muddy brown.
  
  I like my hometown but as we drove through some of the residential neighborhoods I wondered why anyone would live here. The houses and properties seemed old, close together, and drab.

I tell you... I am in some kind of mood today. I didn't think that I had gotten up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, but maybe I did.

E Pluribus Unum

Isn't it nice to have smart friends? My friend Francis found out about the phrase, "E Pluribus Unum". He knew the correct spelling and sent me a link to the Wikipedia entry that has information on the phrase. I actually found it to be quite interesting.

"Never codified by law, it was considered a de facto motto of the United States until 1956 when the United States Congress passed an act (H.J. Resolution 396), adopting In God We Trust as the official motto."

"E PLURIBUS UNUM", in capital letter spelling, is included on most U.S. currency, with some exceptions to the letter spacing (e.g. the U.S. dime reverse side).

Hmmm... maybe the reason on Trivia Night that Rod, Austin, or I (Alan is blind) couldn't find the phrase on the currency we looked at was because:

• the lighting in the bar wasn't all that bright,
• we all are getting older and need bifocals,
• some of our group had a bit much to drink.

I like the motto's meaning: "From many, one", or "Out of many, one". This appeals to the part of my personality that likes order. Now all I need to do is remember how to spell it, and to practice with pronouncing it. For me, saying the phrase correctly is harder than it looks.

Trivia Moon

Monday night I attended another Trivia contest at the Landing Bar. Rod, Austin, and Alan were also there to make up our team: Bicycle Built For Two (BBF2).

I was home prior to the trivia contest so I walked the 3/4 mile to the bar. Or I should say "ran" as I was late and the temperature was on the cool side. The temperature was above zero as it was 8 F, but with the wind, the wind chill was -5 F. Fortunately the wind was at my back.

Because I would be spending time in a smoky bar I didn't over dress, choosing to wear the least possible and still be warm. That worked for being in the bar, but made the run to the bar a little chilly. Some people had cleaned this day's snow off their sidewalks, others had not. The snow was light so it didn't make much of a difference.

The contest started just as I arrived. Rod, Austin, and Alan were not at our usual table. They decided to move to another table as they wondered if the usual nearby team was over hearing or seeing our answers. That team's table was a tall table with stools to sit on. This team had been caught in the past texting for answers. Apparently my group's suspicions were unfounded as this other team scored higher than us in both contests, and won the first one.

I thought were were in good shape in the first contest as we had solid answers for all but one question. However we ended up with only 13 out of 20 correct.

For the question, "What is the motto of the United States?", my suggestion of "In God We Trust" was overruled as the others felt that was a saying only on our money. They went with "E Publius Union". I was right. In fact, I just tried to do a search of their answer and came up with nothing. No wonder they could not find it written on a dollar bill when they tried to figure out how to spell it.

I wasn't as optimistic of our chances in the second contest as we had more guesses. I needed one of my former girlfriends as one question was "What was the circumference of a bowling ball?" A clue was that the ball's diameter was a little under 9 inches. I am a rancher now and have left my computer science / math background behind. Rod came up with a formula and I have still enough math skills to run the numbers of a piece of scratch paper.

"Ummm.. I think 61 inches is wrong. That is over 5 ft."

I re-ran the numbers. Still 61 inches. Rod came up with a new formula. Now I got 14 inches. In hindsight that would be too low but by now the contest had moved on several questions into the future, and with no other formulas we went with 14.

We were wrong. The correct answer was 27 inches.

We only got 12 of 20 questions correct in the second game. I wasn't drinking like the others so I had no excuse for our declining performance. Still, in both contests we finished in the middle of the pack.

Rod won one of the "quarters" contests. While I knew that the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson started in 1962, I didn't guess and therefore didn't win. The prizes were one's choice of insulated lunch bags. Upon reflection, one of these would have come in handy to keep my lunch cool when I go on summertime hikes.

Several teams were the regulars (i.e. the lawyers/judges, and the 'cheating' team), with others that were new. No "birthday girls" - with or without cleavage - were in attendance this night.

The host, Ed, came over after the contests were over and chatted. I've yet to write about the trail hike Rod and I did a few weeks ago where we passed by a sweat lodge. Ed has participated in a few of the sweat lodge ceremonies so I had a number of questions about it. Some day I would like to participate in a ceremony for the experience of it.

A short time after the trivia contests were over the lights were dimmed a bit and the karaoke started. The first singer was a late 20-something mild mannered man who sang a heavy metal ballad. I wasn't familiar with the song but Austin thought it was originally by the band, Queensrÿche. The karaoke singer wasn't too bad.

The next singer was an old man. I mean an old man. He must have been over 80 years old. Age wise the bar mainly had 20, and 30, and some 40 year old somethings. I never noticed this old man earlier, and he would would have stuck out from the crowd when I earlier scanned for signs of "birthday girls".

The old man used a cane to walk and it took a while for him to climb the few steps to the stage. The karaoke host had to go over and show him how to turn on and work the microphone as the old man needed to have one hand on his cane as he stood.

We were curious as to what he would sing as we couldn't imagine him singing any pop or heavy metal songs. He ended up singing some old cowboy song that probably came out of the 19030s or 40s. It was fitting as a number of trivia questions this night were about cowboys; their horse names or sidekick names. But, who wold have thought an old cowboy song would be in the karaoke machine?

The old man was a pretty good singer and it was fun to listen to him. He was singing a second song when we all decided it was time to leave. Some of the group had to work the next day.

Rod was giving Alan a ride home in his pickup. I lived out of the way so I declined Rod's offer of a ride and I walked home. Or "ran" as I ran much of the way home only slowing down to walk backwards to give my face a rest from running into the brisk wind.

Walking (normally) the last block allowed me to see the almost full moon high in the night sky. The sky had some high light clouds which acted like gauze to partially veil the moon. The moon's edges were easily seen.

The bright light from the moon strongly lit the clouds in a wide circle. The light changed from white to yellow to orange to red at the edge of the circle of light. I don't know where the colors came from unless it was from ice crystals in the cold night air. At any rate it was quite pretty and I mostly forgot about the cold.

Frosted window

Winter has arrived in North Dakota. There is a little snow, a lot of wind, and cold temperatures with sub-zero wind chills. This is weather where one buttons up their coat and shrinks down inside it. The temperature today never got above zero Fahrenheit. The weather man is predicting we won't get above zero until next Tuesday. At least the sky was clear and the sun shone brightly today. It looked warm even though it wasn't.

I believe I had mentioned that my brother's newer pickup had shifting problems last week. This past Monday he took his old pickup to a repair shop to have a couple heater cables replaced and he has been driving it ever since.

Last night after we left mom at Manor Care my brother's old pickup had several problems. First, the pickup didn't want to start in the cold night air. Eventually it turned over and started. *whew* But then we had another problem: the heater's blower didn't work. Two warm bodies in the cold air of the pickup cab meant the inside of the windows were rapidly frosting up, not to mention there was no heat blown out of the heater.

Our breaths hung white in the still cold air inside the pickup. That was better than being outside where the cold wind whipped our breath away.

It was after 9 pm, little traffic was on the road, and the outer lights lit the way. We drove home on the back streets to further reduce sharing the road with other vehicles. We tried to avoid scraping the window as the frost would come back more solid and not as speckled.

We found that as the pickup warmed up our forward driving movement would encourage warm air to flow out the defrost vents. Soon small circular areas were clearing on the driver's and passenger's sides of the window. By the time we got home the clear spots were relatively large and we could see out the window without scrunching down low.

After we got home, and my brother had swept the dusting of snow off the driveway, he banged a few times on the pickup's dash and the blower started to work. *argh!* We're guys and are suppose to bang on things to make them work. Why didn't we think of that in the beginning?

Life expectancy map

Here is an interesting web site that lists people's life expectancy in countries around the world. The United States is ranked 31st.

Life Expectancy web site

Trivia night starts again

After taking a few weeks off because of the holidays, Trivia Night is back.

I arrived late as I came from visiting Mom at Manor Care. The contest was already on the 7th question. More people were at Trivia Night this week than the previous time, but not as many people as the first time I attended before Christmas.

Rod, Alan, and Austin were already there. They were joined by Jason, a friend of Ed, the host. Originally from Minot, Jason now lives in Minneapolis where he works as a chef.

Our team did fairly well. We had 14 correct out of 20 each time. In the first contest we finished in the middle of the pack. In the second contest we tied for second. The winner of the second contest were the lawyers/judges who won with 18 correct.

The next table over was a '4 women and a guy' team. It was one woman's birthday the next day. She was feeling good and was not afraid of saying what was on her mind. When the lawyer/judge team won their third "quarters" contest, this woman made a slightly humorous comment for everyone to hear about the lawyers/judges winning so much. After the contests were over I saw this woman talking with the lawyer/judge team so apparently there were no hard feelings. Of course the true answer would come out if she every appeared before one of the judges in court.

On our team Rod won one "quarters" contest and Austin won two of them. Between our team and the lawyer/judge team we won all the quarter contests. Our team would have won one more "quarter" contest if I was more forceful with my answer.

"On which island is the tallest mountain on earth?"

I wanted to say "Hawaii" but when the previous guesser said "Mauna Loa" and was wrong, I had doubts as I didn't know the exact island name. The correct answer turned out to be "Hawaii". The "Mauna Loa" guesser was unhappy as he claimed his was the correct answer but Ed ruled against him as the guesser gave the mountain name and not the island name. It was just as well I didn't win as the prizes this evening were t-shirts of various liqueurs and whiskeys. With all the t-shirts I have, the last thing I need is another t-shirt.

This wasn't the only question where a controversy erupted. For the question "What gun did James Bond use?" It appears everyone answered "Walther PPK". Ed said the correct answer was " Beretta". Ed wouldn't back down, and when the protest continued, he said this question/answer did not affect the outcome of the contest. Wikipedia says James Bond initially used the Beretta in the first five novels, then the author switched to James Bond using the Walther PPK when a fan complained the Beretta was a "ladies gun". Click here for the article.

Before the second contest was over Tammy, a co-worker of Rod's, her husband, and another guy arrived and joined our table/team. It was Tammy's birthday this day and she was out celebrating as she had the next day off work. Tammy already was in a good mood. She has a loud voice which made it difficult to keep our answer discussions quiet enough so as not to help nearby teams.

After the contests were over Ed joined our table for post game socializing and to set a date/time this week for Ed to join Rod for bottling some of Ed's molasses wine Ed and Rod were making.

While several conversations among our team members were going on I was distracted by the other table's birthday girl. She was in my direct line of sight. She was wearing a light low cut dress and had some cleavage. She was sitting sideways to me and... she had a nice cleavage curve going on.

She and all the women at her table smoked a lot. I think that between all her smoking and drinking the birthday woman looked older than what she may have been, and she looked to be in her early to mid 30s. Her face seemed a bit older than her body.

The guy at their table appeared to be 40ish. He had dark and graying hair. It was long enough to be tied back, but not long enough to show a ponytail. He seemed to be "with" the women but not really part of their group. The birthday woman was the only one with much life in her as the other people just seemed to "be there". After the contests were over a 20-something guy showed up and sat next to the birthday girl. I'm not sure of his status; whether he was just another drinking buddy or where she was going to get "lucky" on her birthday.

People knew the answers to the "quarter" questions that night so the final "quarters" question for the "bucket" netted the winner less than $5.

lolcats website

I like cats and I learned of this web site recently where people take interesting and/or amusing photos of cats and put humorous captions on them.

Some of the photos have themes and it may help to go to the last few pages and look at the initial photos. The last page has the original lolcat photo and the reason behind the web site's name (icanhascheezburger). A few pages from the end is the original 'walrus and bucket' photo.

icanhascheezburger web site

Moose on the loose

Interesting story from Flathead Valley about a moose who has been scaring the local skiers and snowmobilers. Click for moose story.

I also found the snow in the photo interesting. Apparently it has been snowing there and they have plenty of snow. The mountain snow pack is in good shape so far this year. December's mountain precipitation was 123% of average.

Friends of mine live in this part of the Valley, which gets more snow than my part of the Valley. They told me they have had 31" of snow so far this January and 90+ inches this Winter. I am happy I don't have to shovel all that snow, but I am missing out on some great cross-country skiing.

Set back

My mother had a set back in her recovery. She was improving quite well and last Friday one of Manor Care's occupational therapists had scheduled a home visit to see how mom could manage at home. They do this when they plan to soon release a person from the rehab facility.

However Mom had leg pain in just her left leg slowly building last week and was not feeling good enough for a home visit Friday. Dawn, mom's orthopedic doctor, believes Mom has spinal stenosis (narrowing of the spine). Dawn thinks this is the reason behind Mom's recent leg pain. Not a whole lot can be done as surgery is not a good option now.

• Spinal stenosis: WebMD
• Spinal stenosis: US News Health
  

Manor Care's nurse practitioner prescribed more pain medicines for mom, and over the weekend the meds may have built up as by Sunday night and especially on Monday afternoon Mom was extremely sleepy and loopy from the meds. She could hardly stay awake much less stand on her own. Monday afternoon I got the nurse practitioner to cut back on and discontinue some of the pain and muscle relaxant meds.

This seems to have done the trick as mom has come out of her fog, can stay awake, and is more alert. She still has some leg pain, but it is not as constant and doesn't seem as quite as intense as initially. Also she and my brother figured out that when the pain builds, sometimes using a hand to apply pressure against the muscle above the knee where it hurts makes the pain go away after a few minutes.

Now mom has to return to the level of strength she had before this recent over medication.