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Just for fun: the random, useless announcements thread!
A similarity between poems & song lyrics & prose is all three have rhythm
0
federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
edited January 2017
Just to let you know, if it's of any use, you can edit a post and add to it, for something like 10 minutes before the edit period expires. It may help to prevent loads of consecutive posts. Check the little black cog top right of your posts. It gives you options, which expire after 10 minutes or so....
@Bunks said:
I've rediscovered a show called "Come Dine with Me" from the UK.
It's hilarious!
It pretty much has everything I like - cooking, eccentric English people who take themselves far too seriously and a very dry and sarcastic narrator.
I've bought a small aquarium and am looking forward to the arrival of my first residents at the weekend, a couple of zebra danios. It's quite exciting!
Ha @SpinyNorman - I actually went to school with Nicholas......
0
federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
We used to have zebra danios, guppies, Black Mollys (although they're susceptible to white spot) platies, tetras and loaches. Do not be tempted to get Angel fish. They'll kill all the others off...
Well I went to take a photo of the wasp nest I treated the other day, only to find there were still plenty of angry wasps buzzing in and out of the nest, no way were they gonna let me get close to take a photo, so this evening I had to go back to re-treat it...._ and boy it's a biggy...thousands upon thousands of wasps...all wanting a piece of me...
They had built the nest inside a large old tree stump, which is overgrown with vegetation and there are multiple entry points, which is somewhat unusual, I'm guessing this colony must have overwintered a few seasons, maybe three mild winters....did I say it's big ???...understatement.... it's "MASSIVE" ...
Now I'm normally fearless when wearing two pair of thick overalls bee hat and veil, long thick welders gloves and gumboots, but I must admit being covered from head to foot in angry buzzing wasps, all trying to find a way to get at my bare skin was a little unnerving, plus being german wasps (the more aggressive of the two Vespula species found in NZ), they will continue to follow you all the way up the garden path as you make a hasty retreat from their nest...I don't blame them though, they are only trying to protect their family
If this re-treatment is ineffective, I will have to go back again in a couple of days time...The stuff nightmares are made of
@federica said:
We used to have zebra danios, guppies, Black Mollys (although they're susceptible to white spot) platies, tetras and loaches. Do not be tempted to get Angel fish. They'll kill all the others off...
I'll probably just stick to danios, they seem quite lively. Maybe there will be the flutter of tiny danio fins in due course!
I would really like a pet seal, but the bath isn't big enough.
0
federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
...And they have an appetite for fish. Conflict of interests there.....
Thought this might be of interest to you @Bunks Edmonton Radial Railway Society, runs heritage streetcars at Fort Edmonton Park and over the High Level Bridge between downtown Edmonton and Strathcona on the south side.
I went back after I finished work this afternoon and managed to take a couple of photos, but I still couldn't get too close as there were straggler wasps flying around close by...and I was worried that they might have recognised me as the wasp lady who attacked their nest, and make a bee waspline for me
They had literally taken over the entire tree stump, using the woodfibre from the stump as readily available building material for their nest,(just bite and chew into pulp then mould into shape) plus the nest was ideally located in a microclimate pocket in the garden, so at winter time it wasn't too cold for them, the nest was protected by the overgrown vegetation...(The garden was more like a jungle )
The photos aren't the best.... I don't think the wasps would have been too happy having me take a close up of their nest....and I wasn't that keen (wearing shorts and short sleeve summer top) to get any closer
@Walker said:
Thought this might be of interest to you @Bunks Edmonton Radial Railway Society, runs heritage streetcars at Fort Edmonton Park and over the High Level Bridge between downtown Edmonton and Strathcona on the south side.
Ahhhh, yes! The old W class trams. They have pretty much all been removed from service here except for a couple of novelty trams on the City Circle line.
Edmonton has a pretty logical grid system as well, especially the inner core and older suburbs. Mostly numbered streets too, so there's less need to remember a bunch of street names, and where they are. In the newer parts of the city, the streets wander a bit more, plus the river valley running right through kind of messes things up.
We have one high-floor light rail transit line, with a short spur which will hopefully be expanded sooner rather than later. Plus we're putting in a new, low-floor line. The city is trying to increase density and promote public transit, as we're quickly becoming one of the poster childs of urban sprawl in Canada. Calgary and Edmonton need to change, or we'll be the Houston and Dallas of the North.
On the way home from work I picked this book up in the local op shop
today...wow I've just checked out the Amazon prices for new and used copies...and to think, I bought the book, a pair of light summer pants, and a sunhat for $4 nz
The 28th day (today Kiwi time)
"Arouse Your Sense Of Wakefulness"
"IN THE FUNDAMENTAL SENSE, Buddhist meditation does not involve meditating on anything. you simply arose your sense of wakefulness and hold an excellent posture. You hold up your head and shoulders and sit cross-legged. Then very simply, you relate to the basic notion of body, speech and mind, and you focus your awareness in some way, usually using the breath. You are breathing out and in and you just experience that breathing very naturally. Your breath is not considered holy or evil; it is just breath."
I went to the beach this morning and on my way back up the track I stopped to take in the view and this crossed my mind...
Somewhere in the world right at this moment, people are dying, from starvation, or shot, stabbed, bombed, strangled, murdered...The minds of all the people involved (perpetrator and victim) are deeply disturbed... their minds overrun with projections...
Then another thought crossed the mind, somewhere close to home a person surrounded by all this beauty, but their mind too is projecting over the what is screen, creating a mental scene far worse that what actually 'is' happening in the moment...
One often gets taken in by one's untrustworthy perception that's projected onto the big screen, projecting over what actually "is" ....
The mind's such a fickle thing...It pays to be ever vigilant of these projection mind games...
As I reached the top of the steep track, that leads down to the beach, looking hot (not sexy hot...just perspiringly hot) a car pulled up with two young boys in it...The boy on the passenger side, smiled and said "Hi" (as people do on such a friendly island) I said "Hi" back and as I was walking to my car he calls out " You have still got it ! Don't let them tell you otherwise!" ...
The comment made my day, not so much as in the flattering compliment ( he looked younger than my youngest son whose just turn 24 ) but the cheek of it...It cracks me up just thinking about it...The cheeky little monkey
Talking of trams ...
These pics were taken near a tram stop yesterday. It is a newly installed bird viewing walkway ... I was taking part in the RSPB 'weekend of twitching'.
Wot no pics of garudas? I only caught her tail feathers in the form of a rainbow, a robin flying under the platform, a few winter parakeets overhead and nearby an egret going for a jog ...
The world is my back garden ...
Does anybody know where they put the USA?
It seems to have been replaced by something from an alternative reality somewhere. Or is it just a painful dillusion?
Seriously, we face 4 years of extreme challenge.
Somebody please hide the codes.
2
federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
Yes, I think you'll find it's been relocated to "Betweenarockandahardplace". It's a massive location, but nobody wants to be there. The Realtors are conniving sheisters and the mortgages are blood money....
Today my bus crashed into the bus stop. Only a wing mirror was damaged. Still, most had to transfer to a new bus. Nobody hurt, just inconvenienced. I walked home, had a great time.
Now that kkk-lite is running the mid Americas, history and karma will judge us for our alignments, crashes and petal collections ...
I had to go back four times to retreat the wasp nests, the last time I actually had to break through the bark of the old tree stump (it crumbled quite easily, it was just a shell) to get at the tiered cell layers of the nests, and I say nests plural because the multiple entry points that the worker wasps were entering were entrance ways to different tired layers of this gigantic compound nest ...
I'm 160cms (5ft 4 inches) and the tree stump (when I stood next to it) was about my height...and the tiered layers of cells reached right from the bottom to the top of the stump...
It's an amazing piece of social insect architecture, a city of sorts (buzzing with activity), every piece delicately moulded into shape and every part made of papier mâché , wood fibres rasped by the worker wasp's mandibles from the surrounding woods and no doubt the old tree stump, then chewed into pulp...Amazing, truly a work of wonder, a work of art and such a pity to have to destroy mother nature's master builders... But one must weigh up the odds...Do I leave it and risk the property owner or their family getting stung (which could include small children) ? Or do I remove the potential danger ? I opted for the latter....
Surprise surprise there were still angry wasps flying around when I went back to inspect it after work this afternoon ...The colony or colonies must have been in the tens of thousands...
silverIn the beginning there was nothing, and then it exploded.USA, Left coast.Veteran
@Shoshin said "The colony or colonies must have been in the tens of thousands..."
And many of us humans look down on one or two of these diminutive powerhouses of nature. It scares me just to think of those tens of thousands. I think I'd wet myself if I had to deal with something like that.
@silver said: @Shoshin said "The colony or colonies must have been in the tens of thousands..."
And many of us humans look down on one or two of these diminutive powerhouses of nature. It scares me just to think of those tens of thousands. I think I'd wet myself if I had to deal with something like that.
I've lost count of the number of stings I've had over the years, one time they got inside my overalls and had a field day, they stung me left right and centre...It was karma at work
I like wasps. I used to leave offerings of sweets for them on a stupa. I like spiders. Ants are doing a good job too. Bees are excellent. One sting and they die? Heroic. Shouldn't really steal their baby food
I hear hornets may be arriving in the UK. Eh ma ho!
I went to the Onetangi (pronounced Oh nee tangi ...it means weeping beach in Maori ) Beach Races Day today...It's held every year around this time...I took a couple of friends along, one moved to the island quite recently and the other was her friend from Taiwan (she's also from Taiwan) ..
It's a fun day out and originally it was just locals getting together to race horses, tractors and whatever...but now it's become quite commercialised with a big company sponsoring...
The Tractor Race...
The Horse Race (one of many)
After which we went on a nice short bush walk to see the Kauri trees ...We all had a nice day out...
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
I've lived my whole 43 years of life in a snowy climate and thought I'd seen it all in terms of types of snow. But driving home from work today I was hit with a short downfall of soft hail like snow pellets.
@person you don't get graupel there regularly? We often do up here, especially the first snows in the fall and the last in the spring. But I'm a weather nerd and track and report weather to the NWS, lol, so it's a term I use sometimes. Interesting to me you hadn't seen it before! We had thunderstorms and flooding rain the other day, we still have plenty of snow and the ground is frozen so all the water had no where to go. Just made troublesome ponding on all the roads and awful fog. Even for March, weird weather.
Comments
or he/ I typed fast.
Btw I'm a published author.
I used to write poems & don't these days.
Poems don't have melodies or chord progressions which also makes a song not a poem per se
A similarity between poems & song lyrics & prose is all three have rhythm
Just to let you know, if it's of any use, you can edit a post and add to it, for something like 10 minutes before the edit period expires. It may help to prevent loads of consecutive posts. Check the little black cog top right of your posts. It gives you options, which expire after 10 minutes or so....
Just information.
Thanks for the info/ I'm going out the door right now/ I'll post later today on other threads Peace & kindness/
Katherine
I've rediscovered a show called "Come Dine with Me" from the UK.
It's hilarious!
It pretty much has everything I like - cooking, eccentric English people who take themselves far too seriously and a very dry and sarcastic narrator.
it's 02.27, and sleep eludes me. Oh, insomnia, you unwelcome bed-fellow.....
Bummer.....if it's any consolation it's 1.30pm here! A glorious sunny day.
Sorry, that probably doesn't help.
You're so right. It doesn't. Bugger off.
Hope you can sleep sometime tonight
Katherine
Finally managed to get some shut-eye.... But the pesky alarm did insist on ringing...
Six rings and I rise, wipe the sleep out of my eyes....
I enjoy this Australian show:
I've bought a small aquarium and am looking forward to the arrival of my first residents at the weekend, a couple of zebra danios. It's quite exciting!
Ha @SpinyNorman - I actually went to school with Nicholas......
We used to have zebra danios, guppies, Black Mollys (although they're susceptible to white spot) platies, tetras and loaches. Do not be tempted to get Angel fish. They'll kill all the others off...
Well I went to take a photo of the wasp nest I treated the other day, only to find there were still plenty of angry wasps buzzing in and out of the nest, no way were they gonna let me get close to take a photo, so this evening I had to go back to re-treat it...._ and boy it's a biggy...thousands upon thousands of wasps...all wanting a piece of me...
They had built the nest inside a large old tree stump, which is overgrown with vegetation and there are multiple entry points, which is somewhat unusual, I'm guessing this colony must have overwintered a few seasons, maybe three mild winters....did I say it's big ???...understatement.... it's "MASSIVE" ...
Now I'm normally fearless when wearing two pair of thick overalls bee hat and veil, long thick welders gloves and gumboots, but I must admit being covered from head to foot in angry buzzing wasps, all trying to find a way to get at my bare skin was a little unnerving, plus being german wasps (the more aggressive of the two Vespula species found in NZ), they will continue to follow you all the way up the garden path as you make a hasty retreat from their nest...I don't blame them though, they are only trying to protect their family
If this re-treatment is ineffective, I will have to go back again in a couple of days time...The stuff nightmares are made of
I'll probably just stick to danios, they seem quite lively. Maybe there will be the flutter of tiny danio fins in due course!
I would really like a pet seal, but the bath isn't big enough.
...And they have an appetite for fish. Conflict of interests there.....
Thought this might be of interest to you @Bunks Edmonton Radial Railway Society, runs heritage streetcars at Fort Edmonton Park and over the High Level Bridge between downtown Edmonton and Strathcona on the south side.
One of the cars is originally from Melbourne.
I went back after I finished work this afternoon and managed to take a couple of photos, but I still couldn't get too close as there were straggler wasps flying around close by...and I was worried that they might have recognised me as the wasp lady who attacked their nest, and make a bee waspline for me
They had literally taken over the entire tree stump, using the woodfibre from the stump as readily available building material for their nest,(just bite and chew into pulp then mould into shape) plus the nest was ideally located in a microclimate pocket in the garden, so at winter time it wasn't too cold for them, the nest was protected by the overgrown vegetation...(The garden was more like a jungle
)
The photos aren't the best.... I don't think the wasps would have been too happy having me take a close up of their nest....and I wasn't that keen (wearing shorts and short sleeve summer top) to get any closer
Ahhhh, yes! The old W class trams. They have pretty much all been removed from service here except for a couple of novelty trams on the City Circle line.
I remember coming across one in Denver, Colorado!
They're everywhere it seems.
We ride in a bit more style these days.......
Bloody trams. And don't get me started on hook turns......
For @Bunks - following on from above.
NSFW
...And ^^^ here's why... ^^^
Interesting!
Edmonton has a pretty logical grid system as well, especially the inner core and older suburbs. Mostly numbered streets too, so there's less need to remember a bunch of street names, and where they are. In the newer parts of the city, the streets wander a bit more, plus the river valley running right through kind of messes things up.
We have one high-floor light rail transit line, with a short spur which will hopefully be expanded sooner rather than later. Plus we're putting in a new, low-floor line. The city is trying to increase density and promote public transit, as we're quickly becoming one of the poster childs of urban sprawl in Canada. Calgary and Edmonton need to change, or we'll be the Houston and Dallas of the North.
On the way home from work I picked this book up in the local op shop
today...wow I've just checked out the Amazon prices for new and used copies...and to think, I bought the book, a pair of light summer pants, and a sunhat for $4 nz
Well according to Chogyam Trungpa's "Ocean of Dharma"
The 28th day (today Kiwi time)
"Arouse Your Sense Of Wakefulness"
"IN THE FUNDAMENTAL SENSE, Buddhist meditation does not involve meditating on anything. you simply arose your sense of wakefulness and hold an excellent posture. You hold up your head and shoulders and sit cross-legged. Then very simply, you relate to the basic notion of body, speech and mind, and you focus your awareness in some way, usually using the breath. You are breathing out and in and you just experience that breathing very naturally. Your breath is not considered holy or evil; it is just breath."
How awesome would it be if they'd gone with the original name of Batmania?
Just think of the team names for the AFL @Bunks
Yes!! We could have made the entire city a theme park based on the movies and comics!!
And Car mechanics would have had a Field day.....
My daughter (bless her!) decided 2am was time to get up today.......
Much patience and coffee will be required today I suspect.
Give it 10 years @Bunks She'll be getting up at 2:00pm
You, @Walker sir, just won the internet....!
I went to the beach this morning and on my way back up the track I stopped to take in the view and this crossed my mind...
Somewhere in the world right at this moment, people are dying, from starvation, or shot, stabbed, bombed, strangled, murdered...The minds of all the people involved (perpetrator and victim) are deeply disturbed... their minds overrun with projections...
Then another thought crossed the mind, somewhere close to home a person surrounded by all this beauty, but their mind too is projecting over the what is screen, creating a mental scene far worse that what actually 'is' happening in the moment...
One often gets taken in by one's untrustworthy perception that's projected onto the big screen, projecting over what actually "is" ....
The mind's such a fickle thing...It pays to be ever vigilant of these projection mind games...
...And on a lighter note....
As I reached the top of the steep track, that leads down to the beach, looking hot (not sexy hot...just perspiringly hot) a car pulled up with two young boys in it...The boy on the passenger side, smiled and said "Hi" (as people do on such a friendly island) I said "Hi" back and as I was walking to my car he calls out " You have still got it ! Don't let them tell you otherwise!" ...
The comment made my day, not so much as in the flattering compliment ( he looked younger than my youngest son whose just turn 24 ) but the cheek of it...It cracks me up just thinking about it...The cheeky little monkey
Talking of trams ...
These pics were taken near a tram stop yesterday. It is a newly installed bird viewing walkway ... I was taking part in the RSPB 'weekend of twitching'.
Wot no pics of garudas? I only caught her tail feathers in the form of a rainbow, a robin flying under the platform, a few winter parakeets overhead and nearby an egret going for a jog ...
The world is my back garden ...
Hey @lobster, if you get the chance you should read The Big Twitch - it is an excellent book! I thoroughly recommend it.
Does anybody know where they put the USA?
It seems to have been replaced by something from an alternative reality somewhere. Or is it just a painful dillusion?
Seriously, we face 4 years of extreme challenge.
Somebody please hide the codes.
Yes, I think you'll find it's been relocated to "Betweenarockandahardplace". It's a massive location, but nobody wants to be there. The Realtors are conniving sheisters and the mortgages are blood money....
I'm learning about the KKK in History. So sad that anyone would do stuff like that.
KKK is sad to say not history ...
Today my bus crashed into the bus stop. Only a wing mirror was damaged. Still, most had to transfer to a new bus. Nobody hurt, just inconvenienced. I walked home, had a great time.
Now that kkk-lite is running the mid Americas, history and karma will judge us for our alignments, crashes and petal collections ...
I found a Buddhist group in my town!
I had to go back four times to retreat the wasp nests, the last time I actually had to break through the bark of the old tree stump (it crumbled quite easily, it was just a shell) to get at the tiered cell layers of the nests, and I say nests plural because the multiple entry points that the worker wasps were entering were entrance ways to different tired layers of this gigantic compound nest ...
I'm 160cms (5ft 4 inches) and the tree stump (when I stood next to it) was about my height...and the tiered layers of cells reached right from the bottom to the top of the stump...
It's an amazing piece of social insect architecture, a city of sorts (buzzing with activity), every piece delicately moulded into shape and every part made of papier mâché , wood fibres rasped by the worker wasp's mandibles from the surrounding woods and no doubt the old tree stump, then chewed into pulp...Amazing, truly a work of wonder, a work of art and such a pity to have to destroy mother nature's master builders... But one must weigh up the odds...Do I leave it and risk the property owner or their family getting stung (which could include small children) ? Or do I remove the potential danger ? I opted for the latter....
Surprise surprise there were still angry wasps flying around when I went back to inspect it after work this afternoon ...The colony or colonies must have been in the tens of thousands...
@Shoshin said "The colony or colonies must have been in the tens of thousands..."
And many of us humans look down on one or two of these diminutive powerhouses of nature. It scares me just to think of those tens of thousands. I think I'd wet myself if I had to deal with something like that.
I've lost count of the number of stings I've had over the years, one time they got inside my overalls and had a field day, they stung me left right and centre...It was karma at work
I like wasps.
I used to leave offerings of sweets for them on a stupa. I like spiders. Ants are doing a good job too. Bees are excellent. One sting and they die? Heroic. Shouldn't really steal their baby food 
I hear hornets may be arriving in the UK. Eh ma ho!
Now we're leaving the EU these hornets will be refused entry to Britain, and will have to set up camp in Calais.
I went to the Onetangi (pronounced Oh nee tangi ...it means weeping beach in Maori ) Beach Races Day today...It's held every year around this time...I took a couple of friends along, one moved to the island quite recently and the other was her friend from Taiwan (she's also from Taiwan) ..
It's a fun day out and originally it was just locals getting together to race horses, tractors and whatever...but now it's become quite commercialised with a big company sponsoring...
The Tractor Race...
The Horse Race (one of many)
After which we went on a nice short bush walk to see the Kauri trees ...We all had a nice day out...
I've lived my whole 43 years of life in a snowy climate and thought I'd seen it all in terms of types of snow. But driving home from work today I was hit with a short downfall of soft hail like snow pellets.
Looking it up online it is known as Graupel
Interesting!
Don't the inuits have at least 30 names for (different types of) snow....?
@person you don't get graupel there regularly? We often do up here, especially the first snows in the fall and the last in the spring. But I'm a weather nerd and track and report weather to the NWS, lol, so it's a term I use sometimes. Interesting to me you hadn't seen it before! We had thunderstorms and flooding rain the other day, we still have plenty of snow and the ground is frozen so all the water had no where to go. Just made troublesome ponding on all the roads and awful fog. Even for March, weird weather.