Tag: humor

Back to the Roller Window Shades?

I just heard about the new regulation banning cords on window shades. I didn’t know that window cords were so dangerous.

We recently moved into our new house and need window coverings. We’ve had corded window coverings (mostly blinds) for years wherever we moved. I guess we’ll have to consider other options.

This reminds me of the old roller shades we used to have. I couldn’t find a free picture of them on pixabay, no matter how I worded the search term. The ones I remember were white and had a mechanism in the roller which retracted the shade—if you had just the right wrist motion.

Many times, the shade ended up in a heap at your feet. You could injure yourself by tripping over the shade, or sometimes by the shade suddenly snapping upwards and smacking you in the face.

There are newer versions of roller shades and they’re all expensive. You can still get old-fashioned roller shades, but I think they cost a lot more.

There’s an old photograph of a room with several roller shades on this web page.

Bathroom Fan Timers are Now Required by Code!

OK, so maybe you already knew that bathroom exhaust fan timers for reducing moisture are required by code.

But we didn’t, which is why we were both a little spooked when the hallway bathroom fan came on all by itself on our first evening in our new house. It has done that a few times, even though we barely use that bathroom. It’s the only bathroom in the house which has a fan timer. I don’t think it’s supposed to come on by itself, so it’s probably haunted.

It’s made by Intermatic and Sena finally flagged down an electrician working in another house under construction on our street who found an instruction manual for our model. He told her it was installed because it’s code.

Imagine if every bathroom in your house had a bathroom fan timer in it. I’m sure some people love the idea. I also realize some people might think it’s crass of me to admit I would love to disable it.

I don’t think I can disable it. The initial setup instructions alone contain 28 steps. Then you get to actually program it, which gets you to 41 steps. If you ever have to edit the programming, you’ll need to develop a serious drinking problem. You have to scan a QR code to get your latitude and longitude. That’s not a joke.

The unit runs partly on batteries. I think the model we have is the ST01 and it takes a single CR2 battery. A newer model takes a different kind of battery and you need two of them. They control the clicking noise and the time and date. You also need strong fingernails or a tiny flat head screw driver to open the battery compartment. See the video below.

If you figure out how to disable it, please comment. Otherwise, I guess you could call the 800 number in the manual to access what might be an automated recorded answering algorithm which ends up recommending mayonnaise or Miracle Whip for your Braunschweiger sandwich.

ADDENDUM 9/10/2024: I pressed the MODE button once and the timer went from AUTO to MAN (manual). We haven’t had it turn on automatically so far after that.

Bird Watching Stories Are Like Fishing Tales

We finally got a couple of videos of a goldfinch! It has been years since I’ve been able to catch a brilliant male goldenrod and it happened last week on the Clear Creek Trail.

In fact, we saw a few birds with the usual idiosyncratic behavior. Goldfinch are rocket fast and hate getting caught on camera.

On the other hand, robins seem to be aware of when they’re being watched and ham it up.

Catbirds also seem to know when they’re being observed and flit away just as I’m getting the camera focused. The one I caught seemed to moon me with its rusty-feathered rump as it took off.

Cardinals also show off and can sit for several minutes preening while you get decent footage.

Birdwatching is a lot like fishing. When you tell others about the whoppers you lost at the lake, it’s a lot like birders telling you about the rarely seen, mysterious birds everyone but experts almost always never see.

And I swear I saw a blue bunting while we were out that day. It flew right in front of me. You should have been there. I haven’t seen a blue bunting in decades!

I almost got the shot.

Practicing the Reverse Cascade Juggling Pattern

I’ve been practicing the reverse cascade lately. It’s slow progress but faster than the shower pattern.

You start with the regular cascade pattern and gradually work into making every throw over the top instead of under.

I still do a lot of windmilling. I’ll get there-I think.

Excelsior!

The health benefits of climbing stairs are well known and I’ve talked about them before. However, you haven’t really seen stair climbing in action until you’ve watched Sena ascend the stairs in our hotel.

There are 4 flights of 10 steps each. Doing it just once can puff you out. The keyword for this is “excelsior” which is Latin for “ever upward.”

Have a little sympathy for the cameraman who had to walk backward up the stairs, which is no small feat.

Thoughts as Train Cars Visualization in Mindfulness Meditation

The Iowa Interstate Railroad train rumbles past our hotel a few times a day and it reminds me of the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course I took 10 years ago. One of the exercises the instructor mentioned was the train visualization mindfulness exercise. I don’t know if I remember what our instructor actually said about it, probably something like what the instructor says in a mindfulness video.

One thing I do remember is that it’s OK to notice my thoughts as train cars running through my head. The other thing is the train cars can sort of hijack me and off I go on a tangent, like a hobo hopping a freight car. And, what if also I notice the spaces between the train cars? What would that be like?

The side of my nose itches.

My left eye is tearing up.

What can I do about anything?

Are we all alone in the universe?

Why is David Attenborough’s voice so calming?

Why do I joke around so much?

Even after 10 years of mindfulness practice, I still notice my thoughts jumping around. I’m still hopping from box car to box car.

Dirty Laundromania

Because we’re staying in a hotel waiting for our house to be built, we have to take a different approach with our laundry. There are laundry facilities at the hotel, but there aren’t many machines. Sena usually takes it to a place called Laundromania. The motto is “We Never Clothes.”

I went with her the other day for the first time. There are a lot of machines. As it turns out, there’s also a lot of history at Laundromania. Back in 2008, Iowa City suffered a major flood and Laundromania was under water for a while. There’s even a picture inside of the water line painted on one of the windows. We remember that time. What a mess. You can see a very dirty sign that was framed and which describes the flood.

Laundromania is a modern facility. You can put your cash into a machine which pushes out a sort of debit card-which can only be used in Laundromania. You want to be careful with that. Depending on how long you live in the neighborhood, it could be either a good or a bad thing.

Even though it’s a modern facility, Laundromania does have some quirks. The day we were there, we tried to use a dryer which turned out to have a broken door latch. We lost a little money in it. Sena put one of the Out of Service signs on it. There’s no on-site manager there but, coincidentally, shortly after she put the sign on the dryer, the service guy showed up. I guessed he fixed it.

For a short time, I tried to keep track of the dryer time using the old analog clock on the wall. Two things wrong with that: the clock doesn’t work and all the machines have digital timers on them anyway.

You can buy laundry detergent and other stuff there from a vending machine, but they’re pretty expensive.

There are a couple of old grade school desks that bring back memories. One of them is pretty dirty.

If you’re ever in Iowa City and you need to do your dirty laundry, try Laundromania.

Flora and Fauna Under the Hot Iowa Sun

The other day we walked the Terry Trueblood Trail (when do we not do that?) and saw interesting sights. I finally got a video clip of a goldfinch! And a male northern cardinal either sang to us or cussed us out. It was hard to tell.

It was a scorcher out there. We started out looking for a walking trail a guy gave us directions to a week or so ago. It’s a great place for birding. We found it, but here was no parking anywhere close. He told us that we could park in a farmer’s field, but we saw the farmer out there and decided not to chance it.

While we were out doing that, we drove by a cornfield, which really impressed Sena because we could drive right up close to it. She’s never detasseled corn. I have and I don’t think she missed anything. I walked the rows with fellow detasselers and we yanked them. We were in rows right next to each other. We could hear each other collapse from time to time from exhaustion. When you pulled the tassels out, they sort of squeaked. You could hear us: Squeak, squeak, squeak, thud.

On the other hand, we had a pretty good day birding out at Trueblood. I got a better video clip of a dickcissel.  We saw a couple of geese scare a turtle off a rock in Sand Lake. We didn’t notice it at the time, but saw it on the video clip after we got home (which is still the hotel, by the way).

We saw several dickcissels. We still don’t think they sound like they’re singing “dick, dick, dick.” I think that’s a load of squeak, squeak, squeak. They are pretty birds, though.

The Hotel Gets Busy Handing Out Faux Cufflinks!

Several days ago, a large wedding guest caravan arrived at the hotel. Fascinating group. The line of people checking in could have stretched outside beyond the front door.

 There was this guy who was there for the wedding, but arrived without cufflinks. So, he asked the front desk to help him out. They gave him what might have fooled some people some of the time—big safety pins. They didn’t work out. A couple of women guests also got safety pins, for what I couldn’t guess.

He left and came back later with a Dillard’s shopping bag. He got some smart looking brand new cufflinks! I think the last time I wore cufflinks was in the 1970s in Austin, Texas. They came with a suit that the husband of my English Literature professor, Dr. Jenny Lind Porter, bought for me. They didn’t resemble safety pins.

The hotel staff were pretty busy because the place got hit by the CrowdStrike Outage. The inconveniences included a little more work with programming room keys. One guy asked for a room on the second floor, but it was booked up with extraterrestrials. I doubt they were with the wedding group. And they couldn’t fix the outage-so much for the advancements of those from other galaxies. They probably don’t even know what cufflinks are.

There was a couple of guys (also not with the wedding crowd) who were in town for a disc (what we would call frisbee) golf tournament. It was near the Clear Creek Trail. They were solid in the standings so far.

I don’t think first prize was a pair of cufflinks.

Single Leg Sit to Stand Redux

Well, we’ve been working on the single leg sit to stand exercise. After I did a little more reading about it, I think it’s really an exercise for runners. We don’t run, but this seems more like a game when you do it together.

It’s a lot easier to do if you find a seat level higher than a regular chair. We found out that our hotel bed is high enough for us to come closer to doing this with one leg raised off the floor.

Our form? It needs a little work.