Where's Hazel? Pet Hazel. Hazel has an Amateur Radio
Call: ME0W.
 Geezer Discount Day at Fry’s
The First Wenzday of the month all the Elders of the Tribe
get 10% off their entire order. And Farmer’s Market at the
Food Bank. Lots of good grub if you don’t mind Dents
& Dings & Day-Old. At the food bank thrift
store we have an abundance of bulbs. People donate all sorts
of incandescents when they "upgrade" to LED. Then some
folks, perhaps even the same ones, come to donate LEDs cos
they don't like the way they make their food look weird and
buy incandescents they donated a few weeks back.
8 October Teething
Dentist yesterday. Never did get to the cleaning. Two hours
of exam to make up for missing two years of cleanings. Now I
have an estimate of 1800$ to catch up on. Most of the list
is not critical, preventative maybe. But the immediate
concerns amount to over 300$ for deep cleaning. Next week.
Along The Way To Next Week
Badger
Springs Hike. I always thought Geology was the
study of why you look like your father and if you don't, why
you should but on this short walk in the Agua
Fria National Monument I learnt there is more to
geology than being a chip off the old block. Yavapai
and Apache lived here A.D. 1200 to 1450
 Embracing
QR Codes
Get With The Programme is a phrase that gets thrown at my
Self more and more these days as I struggle to sharpen
my pencil in a “No Weapons” zone. Continuing to make
notes with pencil on paper can be seen as Ludditeish.
And then I suffered an awakening.
At many trailheads there is a registration book (so Search
& Rescue will have some idea where you might be when you
don’t show up for work the next day) and sometimes a map and
description of the trail. Think of all the trees this would
save if instead of several pages of brochure flapping in the
breeze (if you were lucky enough to find one in the
distribution kiosk) you could have the entire publication
and all the citations and references in your oblong.
AhHA! A QR Code can do that!
 241013
CometTsuchinshan-ATLAS
First find Venus, the Evening Star, immediately as Sol sets,
then keep your eyes at that level and look a bit to the
north to right above where the sun went down. Right
there, if there are no clouds in your way, you will see the
comet. Faint indeed but there was a comet. Click
on the comet for a larger image.
2024x21 Calendar SNAFU Faux Pas
Off to a rocky road start. The cards said so. TinyTruck
wouldn't start. On the verge of being late to my 0800
dentist appointment I walked up to Paul’s capannoni for the
Ranger key and was met by a racket of flutter and chirp.
Behind the fryer kettle on the counter found a thrush
snared by rodent glue trap. Loosed the bird and key in hand
hurried off to Ranger. The drive to dentist was uneventful
but for a motor vehicle incident blockade at Watson &
Sundance. Finally at dentist on time only to learn my
appointment is NEXT week! And so, I'm told, this gets
worse when I get older.
Telling Voters Where To Stuff Their Ballots 
Finished Poll Worker F2F training: Hectic. Immersive. Fast.
Arduous. Complicated new rules due to two-page ballot and
increased something or other. Scrutiny might be the
right word. The training manual is > 200pp. I'm to be a
Sheriff? Marshall. I want to find a bell with a wooden
handle and a tri-corne hat. The ballots will be headed
“Trick Or Treat”.
Memory Enhancement Eardongles
These old memories, recycled into earrings, with the proper
connexions to your ear lobes, will expand your brain storage
capacity, speedup mental processing, and wow your
guests. Not to mention give you a few extra gigabytes
of Artificial Intelligence.
29 October Off To The Dentist
I'm not sure about yesterday. Perhaps some sort of crisis of
conscious. All a blur that I have to study more. Cognitive
dissonance seems to be the watchword to explain my
frustration and anger. How to fix that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
Otherwise, cooler weather, a trace rain last night, shifting
from Summer to Winter without stopping much at Autumn.
Trick Or Treat—Vote Early Vote Often
Well, after a 15 hour day telling voters where to stuff
their ballots—not that my exhortations did any good—and a
busy day at the food bank—pork chops and kitty kibbles—I'm
ready for at least a couple of great sleeps. So now
America has a convicted felon for president. What
next?
2024xi8 Annual Poke & Prod
Good visit with my PCP doctor this morning. Lab tests all ok
except LEAD is still elevated a bit above normal but well
below critical, cholesterol (the kind that causes concern)
is one step over the line and I am advised to pursue a low
fat diet—have to cut down on the B&Js I suppose, and my
Vitamin-D is low—the doc recommends an 80mg supplement
daily. I told him I spend enough hours in the sun to keep my
DermaDoc in stitches and he said I was too pale and a
candidate for bone loss. So I add another pill to my daily
grind.
 Long Storey of Ignition
Failure
Correspondent Steven’s several recent epistles have been
most interesting and instructive; now I have some experience
to relate of a similar convoluted nature: A year or so
ago my 1986 Isuzu TinyTruck, after some 25 years with me at
the wheel, failed to accelerate as I approached the hill on
SR87 leading up from PHX to Payson. I was able to coast to
the verge and commence WTF troubleshooting, however after a
while gave up and called for a tow. Time and a half later at
Allan's garage (dirt strip AZ85, not to be confused by the
highway of the same designation) we eventually determined
that the ignition module in the distributor had failed. Took
a day or so to replace twice--the first one, a cheap China
knock off failed right away--and TinyTruck was ready for
another few hundred-thousand miles of road.
 A fortnight ago pretty much the same
failure happened. Slightly different scenario. Wasn't that
the motor stopped but that the motor wouldn't start on that
first cold (45f) Wenzday morning after our long hot Simmer.
No spark was my immediate finding. Fortunately I was in the
yard, ready to leave for my volunteer work at the Food Bank,
and Paul's Fix-Or-Repair-Daily Ranger was close to hand so I
quickly changed horses and went on my way. Later, the
afternoon had warmed forty degrees, and TinyTruck started
right up no problem. Thursday was the same routine. Cold
morning--no start; warm afternoon--started ok. On Friday
morning same thing so I put on the towbar and used Paul's
Ranger to drag TinyTruck up to Allan's garage by the time
which the day had warmed and my Isuzu started just fine.
So a week went by with Allan troubleshooting, confirming my
No Spark diagnosis, in the few hours of the cool mornings
and pondering how & why in the warmer afternoons. WTF
Over? Usually things like this fail when they get hot, not
when they are cold. We read and researched and listened to
other folks tales, reluctant to just throw parts at the
ignition system and just as reluctant to simply spend 300$
for a rebuilt distributor.
One of the tidbits of auto mechanic folklore was that either
the magnetic personality of the "reluctor" in the
distributor had been lost or that the surrounding engine
block had become magnetized and was desensitizing the
circuit of the pickup in the ignition module. One test
offered by this lore was to use a degaussing tool—remember
those from the old days of picture-tube televisions? Bring
the energized degausser within a foot or so of the
distributor and see if you get a spark. WOW! Indeed we did!
That more or less means that the module is functional and
the "reluctor" is at fault. Any idea of the convoluted
search hoops one must jump through to find a "reluctor" for
an antique Isuzu (Japanese pickup) that was most likely
built on a Chevy Love assembly line in North Carolina? Part
numbers are basically useless. Picture searches actually
helped the most.
So now we are waiting on delivery of a NewOldStock part from
a fourth party reseller. In the meantime we have found a
leak in the radiator... And the reluctor, when
arrived, is reluctant to fit.
241109 Hodgepodge Melange Olio
The images in the section supra: Intruders Caught on
CritterCam—The Obverse of Hurricane Hazel-Rah’s
Cushion--Octopipus
 This Just In: Christmas Season Movies
Hot Frosty [you want to boink a
snow-what?] Miracle on 69th
Street. Here Comes Santa Claus
...and To Build A Snowman you’ll need a carrot, two avocados
and
an.........................................................................
Sunday, 17 November—Hiking in the Hills & Gullies
Hike was OK. Mostly wandering around in some deep
washes-gullies looking at rocks and wondering who lives in
the deep holes in the banks, who leaves the piles of this
scat or that. After the hike Paul said: Let’s go
exploring” so we went driving up into the hills over the
pass and down the other side. 4WD Low Range most of the way.
Paul did all the driving, I held on tight. Old mines, lots
of cacti, roads that go straight up and straight down,
tilted, mostly to the outside edge, as well. We
finally got home about 16 o'clock. I slept late this morning
and now have all my Sunday chores to do.
Way Past Sunday—Chores Still Wanting
I'm proposing to rename Linda; she is now larger
than Hurricane Hazel-Rah and becoming more pushy in getting
at Hazel's food bowl which she vacuums clean in a
minute. Henceforth Linda will be known as Hoover
Linda. Off to Dr Nitro my DermaDoc.
How to Make Food Network’s Best Tuna Salad
To make it, mix two cans of white meat tuna (packed in
water) with minced celery, minced red onion (that’s been
soaked in cold water for 5 minutes, then drained), minced
parsley, mayonnaise, whole-grain mustard, salt, and pepper.
Give the salad a squeeze of lemon to your liking. Humble.
Quick. Easy.
 Thanksgiving Eve
Busy day at the food bank shop fixing stupid toy things for
sale in the thrift store. You would do well to invest
in Duracell Batteries. Then shopping. What a
circus. So many people one had to wait on queue for a
shopping cart. I get around that bottleneck by
bringing a cart in on my walk from the far end of the
carpark. After all that was the Community Thanksgiving
Dinner where I head up the Trash Team but mostly the team
does the work whilst I work the wash-rinse-sanitise tubs and
play in the water.
Rabbit-Rabbit!
Happy Decembre my dears. Still cleaning up after
elections here. This week I picked up most of the roadside
signage the various candidates, won or lost, have neglected.
Some of that corrugated plastic material is worth saving to
repurpose if printed on one side only. I use a few four-foot
square ones from several years ago as sun shades for the bus
wheels.
Electronic Nail Clipper?
I have several of these
handy torches and found this one which has three
brightness/power levels to have a strobe light effect
on rotating fans. Trimmed my index fingernail a couple
nights back. I was outside reading the numbers off my
weather instruments using one of these 18650 lights. Usually
I use a small single AAA light that lives in the weather box
but on this occasion I happened to have the larger light for
some other reason.
This flashlight has five operational modes: Full Bright,
Less Bright, Least Bright, Blink-Blink-Blink..., and S-O-S.
I was reading the Wet Bulb Thermometer which sits in the air
stream from a repurposed computer muffin fan when I noted
the fan was rotating slowly, as if coasting down from a
power outage. Klutzy wiring and all that... I checked the
terminals and the 12v plug--all OK, and noted the
fan--coasting I thought--had not yet stopped so I went to
touch the slowly rotating blade and received quite a
surprise. Only took a few seconds and a try with the AAA
powered torch to suss out the puzzle. The 18650 torch
apparently does not "dim" the LED for intensity control but
rather uses some sort of pulsing. A variation on the Blink
and S.O.S modes I suppose. Fascinating! And somewhat
hazardous too. Right-Click on the fan & Download a
five second video.
The Day That Shall Live In Infamy
I spent most of Pearl Harbour Day working with Friends
of Saddle Mountain picking up roadside drivers' trash
along a two-mile length of Salome Highway and Court House
Road bordering the BLM Dispersed Camping Area north of
Saddle Mountain. We filled a dozen big orange 30-gallon bags
with beer cans & bottles, water plastics, sacks of human
waste and household garbage, three large truck tyres,
sufficient to fill two big pickups. I should like to
erect a billboard admonishing those asses who throw out
their beer bottles and cans along the road to at least leave
their refuse along the verge and not beyond the tree line or
in the bushes. Be a lot easier to clean up after these
shitheads if we didn't have to get all scratched up wading
through the pucker-brush.
The Ides of December | Friday The Thirteenth
Found this “Universal” Toaster with a patent date of 1912
from Landers Frary & Clark of “New Britain Conn” at The
Food Bank. Works great! Very fast. Sends
up a smoke signal when toast is ready.
Testing Candles
Massive cleaning spree. Once every too often I move some
trinket and find a nest of dust bunnies surrounded by
cobwebs. (There is a difference between spider
webs—occupied—and cobwebs—vacant) Dusting and cobbing always
uncovers a lower, dirtier layer. Two hours later I'm
stopping for tea and then will dump the vacuum and the wash
bucket. Tis the season to light candles. Tall,
short, thin, fat, paraffin or bee’s wax... From long ago and
far away I still have a pair of as yet unlit rolled bee’s
wax candles that predate Etsy.
Yule Branch
Every year about this time, last year’s branch in hand, I
visit the Tree Yard at a nearby Shopping Center.
Showing the decrepit twig from last year to the Tree Farmer
I explain: There is no room in the Inn for a full size fir
or even a pint size pine—I look for a sprig of spruce that I
can hang in the corner and smother with stale candy
canes. My pet Dragon Fly holds the traditional candle
to light our Way into the New Year...
“In the old days, it was not called the Holiday
Season; the
Christians called it “Christmas” and went to
church; the Jews called
it “Hanukkah” and went to synagogue; the
atheists went to parties
and drank. People passing each other on the
street would say “Merry
Christmas!” or “Happy Hanukkah!” or (to the
atheists) “Look out for
the wall!”
~Dave Barry
Christoph S, that little kid with a bear in his rucksack
from 50-some years ago, sending his Annual Letter reminded
me. Hard to find anything I’ve not already published
in these pages so I was obliged to invent a few
squibs. Now I need to get this Winter Solstice Letter
of 2024 to the printer before I run out of year.
But Wait! I’m Not Out of Words Yet
TinyTruck is still at the garage. New distributor
installed and starts. In the process of removing the
radiator for that leak Allan found the water pump
leaking. Removing the water pump Allan said: Well,
we’re in this deep we may as well replace the timing
belt. And the list goes on... But there is no
way I can afford to replace TinyTruck. Do you know of
any small pickup that has windup windows?
Welcome To Winter
Solstice Food Pantry was pretty busy. More than 200
cars through the line. Clear warm day. TinyTruck
is moving closer to completion, only a few more nuts and
bolts to find and torque.
For Unto Us A Truck Is...
Christmas Eve Eve Allan called: Your truck is
ready. I will gift wrap the invoice to leave under my
Yule Branch. Twelfth Night is nigh.
 Beyond
Boxing Day
The intrepid astronauts aboard the International Space
Station are sending Season’s Greetings down to all of us
mere mortals. Images are carried on beeps and whistles
through the ether to be netted by the antennas of earthside
radio operators and shared by whatever means.
|
2024 Winter Solstice — Greetings Virtual Travellers and Pen
Friends: 
