Never a camera when I need one

I almost swallowed my spoon yesterday morning. I was well into a bowl of cereal when a bald eagle landed in a tree across the street.

Big one. Right across the street.

A nesting pair lives up the hill on the far side of the river and freeway, and I've seen eagles soaring a bunch of times in spring and summer.

This guy or gal came right down to the river. Sat in the tree around 3 minutes. Flew off heading west about 20 feet above the water.

Maybe it was in the mood for trout for lunch.

-30-

Brilliant but hypnotized

I just finished reading a book by Scott Adams, "Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter," which came out in 2017, right after DJT became Fantasist in Chief.

(I borrowed it from the Washoe County Library. Thanks, taxpayers.)

Adams devoted his blog through the 2016 election to praising FiC as a "master persuader,"  a rare skill. Adams considers himself a skilled persuader, making much of being a trained hypnotist.

I would have enjoyed the book more, learned more, without FiC as Example No. 1.

Adams, from Upstate New York originally, explains the threats FiC makes and the expressions he uses as NY traits. FiC's "win bigly," Adams writes, was really "win big league" but our unskilled ears misheard. FiC dines well on the syllables he swallows.

Adams still salutes Trump via blog. I wonder if it matters to him that his "master persuader" has the attention span of a goldfish and the self-control of a toddler? Shiny objects float by and off he goes. (Unless he is enraged and out for vengeance.)

Maybe it felt to Adams like FiC created an overall strategy to win the election, from gloriously broad ideas with no details (driving the News Media hilariously bananas) to editing his vocabulary to match his audiences. The News Media still falls for his bunkum; slow learners.

After FiC's semi-victory, he turned ethical monsters loose on innocents, and invited the me-first suckers to belly up at the Public Teat.

I scanned rather than read the final chapters, which are outdated by FiC's criminality and his real-estate developer's habit of cheating everybody.

The book does link FiC's behavior to specific actions of persuasion. 2020's presidential candidates should read it. Soon.

Don't look behind the FiC's curtain. Nobody home.

-30-

Smoke, no fire

Railroad trains are interesting, as they roll past where I live, Lockwood, Nev. Some are more interesting than usual.

A Union Pacific locomotive crawled past around 11:30 a.m. yesterday (Nov. 7), spewing the darkest gray smoke I have ever seen. It stopped just shy of blackness. Overheated engine, news reports said. Local TV news posted photos and video.

The smoke was so great that people in Reno thought Lockwood was burning.

Fire engines, Highway Patrol on the freeway to wave on rubberneckers.

There's a herd of 5 wild horses that comes out of the hills daily to munch in an open field, near the spot where a horse was killed on the train tracks some years ago. Not good.

The stallion walked toward a fire engine to see what was going on. Curiosity soothed, he returned to his 3 girls and 1 foal.

After 90 minutes, the train resumed crawling toward the Sparks yard, 4 miles west.

The horse photo's small; sorry.

-30-

Oh, my

The World rarely cuts me a break, but it did today.

Last Saturday, I noticed that the front license plate, and the plastic frame that fastened it to the car, were gone from my very old car.

Today, I visited places I've driven to recently, on the edge of desperation and madness. My calendar said I was at the car wash a week ago.

The car wash lady had it, in a box with other objects fallen off autos.

Upshot: I don't have to re-register the car with Nevada DMV.

This plate's the third linked to my favorite TV show. The first plates, late 1970s era, were on my sports car when it was stolen. Reno PD found it a month later, with fraudulent plates. The policeman speculated that my plates were in a trash bin or in the sagebrush.

I kept the new car I bought when the Z vanished, and got new personalized plates. DMV would not re-issue my original plates.

Four years later, the back plate was gone off the new car's bumper. I re-registered again, gaining my current plates. At that time, my original plates had been issued again, in Las Vegas.

Thank you, car wash lady and your box.

Thank you, World. I take back most of what I said about you lately.

Vulcan. Vulcan2. Vulcan9.

-30-

I want those 2 hours back

My new mission: track down every movie critic and reviewer who said "Ad Astra" is a good movie and break their kneecaps.

Boring. Boring. Man's daddy left and he never got over it. Boo frickin' hoo.

The exact same story translates to a modern navy, a West-bound wagon train, and a trudge to the North Pole.

Lots of floating spacesuits, scenery and sets to look at, but did I mention boring?

Except for the idiots who think it's a good idea to fire guns in a spaceship.

And the baboons.

-30-

Joys of the Urban Interface

Last night, Linda calls for her outdoor cat, Gizmo, off and on over two hours.

No-show Gizmo.

Around hour 1.5, there's a skunk on the back deck, drinking from the water dish she leaves out overnight during the summer.

No Gizmo, which is great.

One skunk or another visits every few nights for a drink or for the peanuts on the front lawn intended for the scrub jays. Sometimes 2 together on the lawn.

The skunk goes stiff, tail bolt upright, does its little front-leg stamp dance. Its line of sight leads to a racoon, which looks at the skunk like "what's your problem?"

Racoon drinks, leaves.

Skunk leaves.

Still no Gizmo. He goes to ground somewhere, which is good because the racoon's bigger than he is and this fire-point Siamese weights 16 pounds.

Around 11:10 p.m., I wander out of my bedroom. Linda's in the kitchen, calling Gizmo through the side window.

Gizmo's sitting on the deck, bolt upright, staring at the door.

After he's inside and Linda's calmed down, she tells me about the other 4-legged, furry mammals. She left her chair by the door only 30 seconds before I spotted him.

Which means Gizmo showed up an instant after she walked the width of the house to call him from the Far Side.

 -30-

Hot, it's not

This photo of the old cottonwood on the Truckee River's bank at Lockwood, Nevada, was taken in October 2015.

I tried to fool myself into feeling cooler just by looking at the mist. Did not work.

And August is just around the cliche-corner.

-30-

Anywhere you park your butt is home

This cat has hung around for almost two months. It is very friendly and wants in the house desperately, but we have three cats already. The youngest, Charley, 3, goes apeshit when the visitor's on the back deck.

-30-

Toughest tree in Northern Nevada

This tree's older than the hills ... probably. As seen from the south bank, it makes the lowly Truckee River's north bank captivating.

-30-

Bird-zilla

I ride in a short road trip twice a week past wetlands that have an ever-changing, seasonal  population of birds.

First trip this week, I noticed that there were no hawks in the air, and few waterfowl on the ponds.

A quarter mile north came the answer: a bald eagle perched atop a utility pole, surveying potential lunch menus.

Gorgeous animal, but I'd rather have egrets and ibis.

I'm less enamored of Big Baldies after a too-short visit to Alaska, with its flocks of bald air rats.

##

That enlarging wet spot around this block's electric transformer turned out to be oil, not lawn sprinkler run-off, so today NV Energy crews and men in trucks showing other logos swapped the leaker out. Shovels, chain saw for tree roots, two huge trucks with hydraulic cranes. And our power was out only 1.5 hours.

The working-man show was free.

-30-

It's always something

Interstate 80 east of Reno-Sparks in the Truckee River canyon is a moving banquet of oddities.

Yesterday morning, out the kitchen window, I saw a tire bouncing in the westbound lanes.

Yes, a tire, all by itself. Blue sky visible through the center. It bounced tractor-trailer high, then lower twice more before it disappeared in (rough estimate) four seconds.

While I wrapped my mind around that, I realized there was a metal framework stopped on the freeway, whatever it was attached to hidden by the guard rail.

Trucks and cars slowed down for five minutes, but did not bunch up or stop.

Little over an hour later, a flat-bed tow truck stopped ahead of the framework. A truck with a camper shell holding the framework, maybe a canoe rack, was hauled onto the flat-bed and off it went.

I'm glad the bouncing tire didn't cause a disaster. But it would have been cool to watch, from a distance.

###

My laptop's home. The display on the monitor is finally close to what I'm used to. My cheap-o Word won't run, so I downloaded Pages, free. My cheap-o Quicken won't run so I bought a subscription for a year to the cheapest offered.  I immediately ran into a High Sierra bug ... it would not  open the Quicken .DGM, until after a full restart.

Congrats to the evil genius who thought up making people pay every month or year for software we used to be able to buy and own forever. Or, until the OS changed.

Bastard.

#

Lost and losing it

I'm grateful to use my Best Friend's laptop while mine's in the shop, but ...

Five times a day, I find myself saying, "Hey, I've got that."

On the computer that's getting a new hard drive to replace the one that croaked.

Urgh.

#$%&&&*!!

Monday afternoon and/or Tuesday morning are far off. Like my cats, I live in the constant "now."

May I please have my computer NOW?

In an attempt to calm myself, here are my Best Friend's cats, Charley, left, and Gizmo.

-30-

At least they stay outdoors

There was a falcon perched in the flowering cherry tree in the front yard for about 5 minutes yesterday afternoon. Possibly a falcon. It had red eyes and peregrines do not. Cooper's hawks have red eyes and there are a bunch of them around. Sharp-shinned hawks, too.

Earlier yesterday, there were 3 or 4 birds whitewater surfing on the river, floating downstream at speed. Dark heads and white bodies. Little guys. A couple birds on the Nevada waterfowl list appear similar, but not enough white on the body.

Late last week, and late in the day, a young mule deer paused in the front yard, examined the house, then strolled on east along the gutter. About 5 minutes later, the deer returned on the jogging path on the far side of the street, hopping and skipping and covering ground in a hurry. The rose bushes and boxwood bushes out front had a hard winter, with bare spots left where deer nibbled on the leaves. Deer had a hard winter, too.

A couple weeks ago, there were pigeon feathers splattered across the back walkway, in two spots. No bodies, just feathers. One pool of blood and bird seed, diluted by the rain.

Nature, red in claw and tooth. Yuck.

-30-

Higher education?

Gee, thanks, University of Miami, for the robo call Feb. 12 warning that you are going to turn off my Internet connection.

At least, the Caller ID tagged you with the number 786-392-3281. The 11 other calls (within 6 hours) came from similar numbers.

Seems our IP address was "compromised in a foreign country," you said.

Dear scam artists: go fornicate yourself, then fornicate your mother.

-30-

Starshine rising

A great lady, Carol Channing, has gone to the Great Green Room in the Sky.

Or somewhere.

She was a class act and gracious when I interviewed her at the Nugget in Sparks. I think she spotted that I was unseasoned and gave me her best.

And, a few days later, an actual Western Union telegram arrived for me at the newspaper thanking me for the story.

When I cleaned up my junk jewelry box a few years ago, I kept the little bracelet I caught from the batch she always tossed to the audience during her nightclub act curtain calls.

I don't know about diamonds, Miss Channing, but a mensch is unmistakable.

RIP.

P.S.: Tell Debbie I said hi, please.

-30-

You don't miss it until it's gone

Thank you, whoever plucked the graffitied clothes dryer that spent three months in the mud, dust, and more mud across the river from where I live. The dryer showed up with a washer and with a small kitchen stove. The other two vanished, one by one.

Bright red scribbles appeared on the dryer.

But they were on private property empty of everything but weeds and dirt (and the illegally deposited machines), and the Washoe Sheriff's litter squad could not touch them.

Last month, the dryer fell over on one side, its door open and twisted.

I hope it didn't take too long for me to notice that it was gone.

##

I faced a dilemma today and probably did the wrong thing. There was a car key, the kind with the computer chip, on the pavement where I parked at the U.S. Post Office in Sparks. It had a bright yellow paper tag with handwriting, like the tags auto repair shops attach to keys. Maybe like a parking valet might use. No name, no contact number.

I set it down on the curb, about 10 feet from where it was dropped. If the owner makes the rounds of "where did I have it last" it might be spotted. Or, some punk will take it and drop it in the sewer.

-30-

First idiotic moment of 2019

I enjoy "Doctor Who" more than I probably should, but ...

The New Year's episode begins with 9th-century humans killing what turns out to be a Dalek scout.

They cut it in three parts and send them to the far ends of the Earth for secret burial.

9th-century humans knew how to burn things. Why didn't they burn the Dalek? Why keep it around?

Because then there wouldn't be a movie, as director John Ford said, apocryphally, about why the Indians didn't just kill the horses pulling the stagecoach.

-30-