Various Things

I finally ended up filing a complaint against my next door neighbor.  He has a 40 foot long, behemoth travel trailer that is sitting from the front of his property to the side of his house to into his backyard.  I didn't care much when it was IN his back yard, but this thing has been totally blocking my view of the street and anything west for months now.  He left town and left it that way.  I can't possibly imagine why he thinks his neighbors want to be subjected to such s***.  Again, if he would have left the thing in the BACK yard, I wouldn't have cared.

The older lady across the street?  I had a conversation with her yesterday.  She frankly stated her health is going down, she can't take care of the house or live alone anymore, she is trying to sell her property and get out of town - literally - moving up to where her family lives in Utah.  I feel bad for her, the only thing I can do is pray.  She has cancer, she is taking medications that are dragging her down.

Neighbors on the OTHER side of my house are just NOW getting their evaporative cooler going.  It was 103 degrees today, it has been warm for a couple of weeks now.  I can understand why I am hearing frequent screamings from kids yelling at each other coming from that house. 

Came home today to find the lower pond down 7 inches - it was full this morning.  The leak - apparently is turning into a gusher.  I immediately went to work setting up the new, big pond on the concrete.  I shored up the pond's shelves with pavers under neath so they wouldn't collapse.  The pond is filled with water, I have the waterfall filter going on it and I have put 9 plants in there so far.  Water has been treated.  I will probably put the fish in there tomorrow - although catching those mosquito eaters may be a chore.  I will probably have to  mostly drain out the ponds in order to do that, and hopefully find the 2 plecostomus - alive preferrably.  I haven't seen them since I put them in the ponds.  Easy for them to disappear. I haven't done anything on the waterfall project because - obviously - the pond situation suddenly became a much larger priority with the advent of whatever the leak is growing MUCH larger, apparently.

Weekend here.  Ponds will undoubtedly consume a good portion of this weekend since now, I am suddenly faced with pulling out fish, plants, ponds, digging out the hole for the larger pond, fixing wherever the leak is on whichever smaller pond, filling back up the smaller ponds, putting the fish and plants back into those ponds - above ground, putting the new, big pond into it's new hole, transferring the fish yet again.  If that sounds like work, I'm glad, because - IT IS.  Oh well, not the end of the world.

California owned companies have ramped up their advertising here in a BIG way in the last week.  California dairies; California wine; Seaword San Diego; and more.  Apparently, not ALL of California is opposed to doing business with Arizona in this ridiculous boycott that has gone to new depths of stupidity:  LA schools now want to teach how Arizona's Immigration bill is bad for America?  LOL! ROFL!!!  These people are only making themselves look like total morons!  Still, enough entities, businesses and people in California are spewing forth their bile that I am still on the boycott California bandwagon.  Why not?  A slew of states are now considering bills just like Arizona.  Is California also going to boycott every other state that comes along with the SAME bill, if such happens?

Highly doubtful. I know that us Arizonans consume a LOT of product that is manufactured/originates in California, besides having business ties that we have over there, not just the other way around as they would like everyone to believe, and the HUGE tourism business we give them in the estimated 2 BILLION dollars per year.  We could do SERIOUS damage to them if we stopped consuming their products, cut business ties and stopped going over there altogether.  In fact, I think it would be a devastating proposition.  How many Californians come HERE during the summer, spending tourism dollars?  I have no idea, but I would guess NOT TOO MANY, the reverse effect - them not coming here, would not be near as big as us not going there.

Several hours have passed since starting this entry.  A fire was lit under my feet when I saw the pond level go down 4 inches in 2 hours.  Plants have been transferred.  Goldfish?  Freaking crazy.  They did NOT want to be caught.  Took me an hour to get those 4.  2 of them ended up flipping out of the pond and onto the rocks when I was trying to net them.  One of them slipped down beside the pond into the ground!  Lol.  Grabbed that sucker by the tail fin, dumped him into the net and then dumped him into the pond.  I treated the pond for fish acclimation, they seem to be doing fine.  Catching those mosquito fish?  They dart around like bolts of lightning.  I figure the only way to catch them is to almost totally drain the ponds.

Anyway, it's almost my bedtime and I'm outta here.

G'nite.

ben

Friday

I dunno, but from my angle, after they cut that pipe under the ocean, it looks like a LOT more oil is gushing out of there now.  This will be an unparalled ecological disaster by the time this is done.  BP will end up going bankrupt if this goes on much longer, it will cost too much money to clean all of that junk up all over the place.  Okay, I don't know that they're going bankrupt, but even a company that large has finite resources.

So,  how do you form the top of a man-made waterfall to make it look a little like it wasn't - man-made?  Any way you please, apparently.  I have looked at pic after pic after pic, the most common method is to simply put a giant, flat rock over wher the water line is going to pump water into it.  Not exactly what I want to do, but I may end up doing it for lack of a better idea.  Regardless, phase 2 of the pool of water at the top is done, the final phase should occur today. 

Which doesn't mean the falls itself will be done, just the pool.  Or not. Who knows, I'm taking this one step at a time considering I have never done anything like this before.  I started running the pump I got off of CL yesterday, that thing must be at least 1,000 gallons per hour - meaning both ponds full of water are moving through that pump probably 7 times per hour.  Lol.  Everyone says that same thing: You can't pump TOO much water, you CAN pump too little.  Well, I am not running that big pump 24 hours. 

This guy comes in here every Friday morning, before our store opens, to deliver a freight shipment from one of our DC's.  I tell him every Friday morning that we open at 6:00 am.  He still comes in here, like he just did, handing me paperwork and obviously wanting me to go to work.  Sorry, Charlie, I sign in at 6:00, not 5:45AM, I come to work early for a reason: stimulate the mind with reading news and such, drink some coffee, wake up.  He was lamenting how he has 5 more stops after this.  I'm not sorry, that's his job - I did OTR for years, I had to wait and wait and wait at many of the places I was delivering to, too.  That's a trucker's life, if you can't get used to it, you probably need to find a new line of work.  I go to job sites and wait sometimes for 2 hours to get unloaded.  For a local delivery setup, that's a long time. 

Now, if a customer showed up early, I would have no choice but to service the contractor and get them whatever they need.  It happens, but infrequently. 

Anyway, just before I forget, I am printing out the vacation form: I am definitely taking a full week off during Independence Day week unless, for some reason, I am told no.  No reason that I know of, but, you never know.

BTW, I'll chime in my 2 cents on the Perfect Game that didn't happen.  I officiated games for 10 years, nothing like the level of MLB, but the concept is still quite the same.  Actually, it's far worse for a Little League umpire because of all the parents, spectators and coaches attempting to give you a hard time on every call that they don't like.  They are sitting RIGHT there, in MLB, the umpires are much further away from the crowd.  Anyway, umpires make mistakes, it's part of the game.  It IS part of the game.  Did the umpire blow it?  His own words, yup.  Is the commissioner going to turn that game over? I would hope not.  That would set a precedent for reviewing umpire's calls that - would not be good for the game, to put it mildly.  Live with it, that's what umpires have to do when they make a bad call and realize it afterwards: an umpire cannot change his own call.  Judgment calls are final.  A runner being called out at a base is a judgment call.  The best umpires in the world are found in the MLB and yes, they make mistakes and sometimes they are real doozies. 

Anyway, the work day approaches, there is a freight truck outside and I need to get offa here and get signed in.

G'day.

ben