THIS WILL COOL YOU OFF !

     In many places this has been a very hot summer. I for one don't like hot weather. I know many other people don't like hot weather either.

    People have many ways of keeping cool. Air conditioning! Fans! Shade! Cool drinks! Swimming! Ice cream! I think this list could get very long.

    I quite often think back to my summers in the Arctic. Yes, we had some pleasant weather. I even water skied above the Arctic circle! Believe me that water was cold . You didn't want to fall. The lake water was very, very cold.

   What I think about most often is when I lived on the coast for two years. I lived on a beautiful bay that was 24 miles long and the widest point was about 7 miles.  There were very high tides...45 feet. That was a lot of water going in and out of the bay twice a day.  At the mouth of the bay there were fast currents. When bay water met strait water there were some interesting waves.

    Now the bay didn't freeze until November because of the tides. Once it froze the ice got very thick. There were huge house sized rocks on the beach. When the tide went out in the winter the ice lodged up on the rocks. At times we would find a hole in the ice, stick a ladder down and walk under the ice picking mussels. Google this one and you should find some articles and photos.

    However, (are you ready for this?) one summer the ice went out on July 22. Now does that cool you off? I'll bet it did.

    The bay was completely covered in ice. We knew that the ice would be taken out with the tides but didn't know what day. All of a sudden you look out and you could tell the the ice was moving. In a few hours the ice would be gone. Everything stopped and we met on the beach to watch such an exciting spectacle.


    One year a hunter was on the ice and of course the ice leaves the shore. There was quite the excitement to get him off. At a place where the ice was near the shore another hunter took his kayak and got the guy off the ice.

    So if this doesn't cool you off, I don't know what will!

A MEDICATION REACTION

    Like most people, I sometimes read the information on the medication I've been given.  I'm always surprised at how many things are listed as side effects. Warnings are divided into three groups: warnings and precautions, interactions with this medication and side effects. This can be a scary list if you take some time to think about it. Obviously some of the risks would be a very low probability.

    As far as I know I've only had one problem with a medication and that's to get a mild depression.

     Well, this week the history changed in a very acute way. I recently had a medication changed because it might interact with some new medication. The doctor specifically said it may cause constipation. I jokingly said I don't need any help with constipation. I went on my merry old way with the new prescription. The medication was for arthritis and I was to take it as needed. I took one every 6 hours as directed

    I was doing my dishes about 6:15 and felt I had to go urgently. However , I could not make a deposit. That's weird. 15 minutes later another try. No success. This went on all evening and then I noticed that I couldn't pass any urine. Now I had two major bellyaches . I laid down about 10:00 Pm hoping to ease the pain and hoping that something might happen. 15 minutes later I got up and said this is serious and I have to go to the emergency.

    First, I told the Micro Manager I would go alone and by the time I was ready I said you better come with me.

    I went through the red tape to get into emergency and was told to wait. Okay, that's normal and fair. I paced the floor. Suddenly there was movement. What a relief.

   Would I leave the emergency then? No. I had to get checked out in case the problem continued. So lab work was ordered. A new gadget was used to see how much urine was in my bladder. An Xray was given to find out how much material was retained in my bowel

    Finally about 3:30 AM the doctor had everything together and visited me for a little chat.

    Now all of this was over a problem with a medication. It wasn't funny. It was serious. It was painful.

   I now have a different point of view about medications. If side effects or anything else become a problem it's serious.

I TAKE ANOTHER SWAN DIVE (FALL)

      In a few seconds of awkwardness I took a clumsy fall . Again there was no harm done and I know I'm going to get the same lecture about safety. And I'm not asking for any sympathy. But I'm going to tell my story anyway.

    Falls for the elderly are in slow motion. We know we're going down and we know where. Our butt hits the ground before our head knows we're falling. Our reaction time is too slow to halt or control the fall.

    So what was I doing? I was cleaning my car. I had my stepladder so that I could clean the top. I put the stepladder aside when I was finished with it. (You'll need to know this later. )

    I was cleaning the exterior below the doors and backing up. Somehow I tripped while going backward. Not a problem. You just fall on your butt which at this point is close to the ground. 

    Okay the ladder was 2 ft away from the car. Some how, I got my feet tangled up in the ladder. My fall was rapidly picking up speed and the ladder was in the way. I knocked the ladder down and was tangled up in the ladder. I checked myself to see if I'd done any damage. Maybe, I should ice this bruise for few minutes.

    I came outside a few minutes later to finish the job. I noticed that the step ladder was in awful shape. Some of it looked like spaghetti . I picked the stepladder up but it would not stay standing. So my step ladder was injured. I carefully bent back some pieces of step ladder and I'm back in business again. 

MY TRIP TO CALGARY

      Yesterday I had an appointment in Calgary Alberta. Calgary is 147 km (95 mi) away so it's no big trip but for me it is a big deal.

       Calgary has a little over 1.3 million people. For me that's a huge  city but some of you will smile and some will scoff when I think that a city with this population is huge. When I came here in 1969 the population was not quite 300 000 so it's grown over the years. We used to go to Calgary 2 or  3 times a year. When our daughter lived there we went more than 2 or thee time a year. Since our daughter moved we rarely go to Calgary so we are not used to it. Calgary seems like a sprawling busy city with large industrial areas and many ugly malls.

     The highway to Calgary is a 4 lane divided highway but traffic is extremely heavy. There are many large trucks. The are also light trucks and they think they're big, so traffic an sometimes be chaotic. I saw one guy with an old beater of a motor home with a boat behind it and he floored the motor home and stayed in the left lane!

    I found the appointment location. It's in a mile long area with malls on both sides of the street. Malls and mall buildings are absolutely ugly. There were huge parking lots and very few empty stalls. I realized later that it was a Ctrain station so commuters parked their cars there.

     Now one thing I wasn't prepared for is to find 90% of the people in the mall were Asians.We tried to ask for directions a few times and they did not speak English. So I was surprised at the density of Asians.

    Part of getting out of the city is the dreaded Deer Foot Trail. It's a freeway with a speed limit of 110 kmph but everybody is doing 130. Except in rush hour the traffic can stop and stop and go. It's a mean piece of road.

    To add to an interesting situation a strong thunderstorm rolled in. First, there was dust then heavy rain and the visibility was poor.

    So you can imagine this little old man finding his way through a busy town that has grown so much that he doesn't recognize much of it anymore. I know the solution is go there and keep up with the times.
 

ON BEING EIGHTY

    A couple of months ago the micro manager turned 80. The occasion was marked quietly with a good lunch out. Life goes on.

    A few days ago I looked at the Micro Manager and for the first and only time I could see an eighty year old woman. What's been going on before this? 

    I tended to look at the Micro Manager as being a much younger person. I had an image in my head of her in her late twenties. This shouldn't be the case. We've gone through the ages and stages. We were a young couple. We had kids. Our kids left us. We worked hard and enjoyed freedom. Retirement came. Retirement goes on. All these things have happened and yet I still had the image of a younger woman in my head.

    For the most part this discrepancy doesn't matter but I got thinking about reality for a minute. Am I making the right decisions when I have an inaccurate image of age in my head? Do I expect more from the Micro Manager than I should? The Micro Manager is spunky and a hard driver. But still age has taken it's toll. She doesn't have the same energy anymore. However , she still wants to live the same old way. 

    I've heard many people say that they have an image of themselves which is much younger. The image of myself in my head is a young person who has just finished high school. 

     Now this is the first time I've noticed that I see another person as much younger than they are. 

    So I guess this is a time for me to stop and think about life. 

ERNIE

    When I lived in a far northern arctic settlement we had to have a person who looked after all of the maintenance required for daily living. This person saw that the generators were running for our electricity, that we had water, that sewage and garbage were looked after, that our furnaces always had a supply of oil in the tank and anything else that had to be done. On top of this the guy had to be able to work independently, have good communications skills, get  along with others, plan for a year ahead. So you see this person had to be just about everything. 

     My person was Ernie, a French Canadian, who was born and raised in a fringe area. The family eked out a living by working part time in the bush and producing their own food and many other necessities of life. This background made Ernie  an all round handy man. In these communities they only spoke French.

     Ernie was a bachelor and a very jovial , amicable kind of guy who enjoyed life with very little.

    Ernie joined the army early in the war as it was a place to eat and get some pay. Ernie purposely chose an English unit as he wanted to learn English. On his first day his group was lined up and they asked for someone to volunteer for a job. He stepped out and said yes which was probably the only English word he knew. What he'd volunteered for was to type. He'd never seen a typewriter before . He always laughed about that one.

    Now after the war a high percentage of government employees were veterans. So Ernie came by his job in our settlement. He was well able to live in isolation and was a good cook and housekeeper.

    The only vehicle in the community was a J-5 which was a small tracked vehicle like a pick up truck. This vehicle was used to haul things around the community. Every time it moved it was loaded with kids who wanted a ride. Kids visited him every evening. Ernie liked the kids and they liked him.

    Ernie kept the diesel engines running to produce power. He was creative. They expected him to keep our houses supplied with water, but they didn't give him a water tank. Ernie got some plywood and built a big box to haul the water. He knew that a wooden box would hold water just like a metal tank. He had a pump and pumped water from the lake into the box. He came to our house and used his trusty pump to pump water from the box to a tank in the house. In the winter he oversaw the cutting of ice that was used for water in the winter. Again he built a sledge to haul the ice to our house. 

     So it was a great situation but Ernie had one major flaw in his character. He was an extreme binge drinker. Many men like Ernie would come to an isolated settlement or a "dry" camp where they could limit alcohol consumption. Two or three times a year Ernie brought in some booze. He would drink until the bottle was empty. He became a completely different person. Anger raged. He would turn off the electricity hoping that I would challenge him. I never did and after a few minutes the electricity would come on. I would avoid him at these times as it could be more than unpleasant and completely unproductive.

     When Ernie left for summer holidays he would always say, "I don't know if I'm coming back." For his summer holidays he would go to Montreal and it was one long binge. Three or four weeks later Ernie would show up on a plane and with a big smile would tell us he was happy to be back.

     I've often wondered what demons drove Ernie to the extreme binges.

ELLIS BIRD FARM

      In my last post I told how we had been visiting the Ellis Bird farm . Some asked questions about the farm. I had on my list to do a post of the bird farm.

 The entrance with all kinds of nest boxes

The original gate and driveway. Notice the 
Texas gate.


     First some history.  The province of Alberta in Canada is rich in oil and gas. For a number of years some Petro chemical companies had been planning some large plants to process the gas into other products. In the 1970's they started building these plants.
  

      Modern industry thinks they need large acreages to build on. They also build away from urban areas. It's no big deal for them to build pipelines or railroads to their plants.  At one time they had 4000 construction workers so it gives you an idea of the size of the plants. They've added since that time.

    So one of the farms that was bought was owned by Charlie Ellis.  Charlie and his sister Winnie owned 800 acres.

     Charlie was an excellent farmer and naturalist. In the 1950's he noticed a decline in the bluebird population. Being a resourceful man he set up blue bird nesting boxes. It was new territory. He had to experiment to find the right size of the box and the hole size.

    One of the interpretive centers

 One of Charlies tractors

 The original barn and coral.

  Beautiful rolling farmland now used for hay production

Another one of charlie's tractors.

      Naturalists were horrified that this property was going to be used for industry. Well, part of it was going to be used. The Ellis Blue Bird farm was set up to preserve the land and habitat. The land was still going to be farmed. The Company agreed to this arrangement and sweetened the pot with lots of money over the years.

     All habitat has been maintained and the original homestead has been developed into a tourist destination. Most of the original farm buildings are still there. The house has been made into a tea room.

    Now in photos you will see hundreds of nest boxes. Most of them are fund raising projects. Interpretive centers have been developed with all kinds of information.

    Unfortunately the blue bird population has continued to decline. I saw only two bluebirds on June 18,2018  There are more on the property. On that day in 2 1/2 hours we saw thirty species of birds and did not cover the whole property.