TCC for 11/3/08

The Caretaker's Concern 11/3/08

Lake Temp. 51.5 F.
Ghetto temp. 49 F.
Island tmp. 49.75 F. Yesterday's L/H: 36/44 F.

Current conditions: Faint touch of wind if any at all, totally cloud covered night sky.
Totally cloud covered sky all day, strong wind from the South for most all of the day.

11/3/08
It's Election Day here in the States, add your color:

Go Vote! Go Vote! Go Vote!

9/27/08


7/30/08


The Caretaker's day did not exactly go as planned, not that he ever expects it to, but overall it was a good day. An unexpected turn of events was losing a cap to one of his back molars, luckily for him he happened to have some tooth adhesive on hand and so was able to glue it back on. One day, a while back he was in a pharmacy and came across this tooth glue product and figured that since he lived on an Island and dentists being a very scarce commodity on the island he figured it could possibly come in handy some day, and sure enough it did. The Caretaker is glad to know that his 7 dollars and change didn't go to waste. Unless of course the glue lets go at night while he is asleep and he ends up swallowing his cap, then he will have wasted his money because should that happen he would have been better off just living without the cap until he can get to a dentist. Oh well, guess he will find out the true adhesive powers of this tooth glue. Now the Caretaker is debating between finding a local dentist or going down to Jersey to use his own dentist to have the cap reattached--proper.

For those who are interested, the Caretaker finally got the narrative for yesterday's post up, it focuses almost entirely on his description of irisation.

Another unexpected turn of events for the day was the Caretaker's proofs from RedBubble came in the mail, this wasn't totally unexpected, but he hadn't much of an idea of what day it would be they'd be coming in. Well today was the day, and since he was very pleased with the results he shifted his schedule around to do more work on his Redbubble site. For those of you who are interested to see the results so far, you may do so at the following website:


http://jeffreydmoore.redbubble.com/

So the Caretaker ended up spending much of his day in front of his computer, but since it was mostly cloudy, gray, and windy outside for most all of the day, it was probably a good use of his time.

A voting we will go, A voting we will go, high-ho the derr-io a voting we will go.
--The Caretaker

TCC for 11/2/08

The Caretaker's Concern 11/2/08

Lake Temp. 51 F.
Ghetto temp. 41 F.
Island tmp. 39 F. Yesterday's L/H: 40/50 F.

Current conditions: Relatively clear starry night. Blush of wind from the East to North East.

11/2/08


10/15/08


10/17/08



Given the extra hour added to the day, the Caretaker decided it was time to go play, and so off to Log Bay to leave behind all worried concerns, upon the land he went to go rambling about any which way. The Sunset photo for this post was take from over on the East shore at the North mouth of Log bay. It was a grand day of hiking, however, since the Caretaker has other business to attend to he's thinking he will save the details for his other blog, when it posts he will be sure to let you know.

Now, for a description of, irisation (although by now many of you will have probably long since lost interest, and more importantly, with all the build up and false starts, this will probably be a let down) but never the less, here goes:

So the Caretaker his driving along, minding his own business when he spots a colorful curiosity in the sky, so he pulls off to the shoulder so he may get a better look. The irisation was occurring upon the clouds on either side of the Sun, but the irisation was only visible upon the clouds in the immediate vicinity of the Sun. As stated prior, while viewing without sunglasses the glare from the Sun was too overpowering to see the effect of the irisation. What the Caretaker would do is alternate between holding is hand up to block the direct light of the Sun and look to either side, or he would position his head so as that the driver's side support post for the roof of his car would serve to block the direct light of the Sun. When doing either of these two things, and while wearing his sunglasses, the irisation was clear as day.

Upon the clouds were all the colors of the rainbow, marbled about in no particular order, or at least none that the Caretaker could discern. All of these colors shimmered like mother of pearl. Another comparison would be like some of the colors seen on chrome exhaust pipes getting hot for the first time. Or, much like those newfangled paint jobs all the kids down in Lodi, N.J. are having applied to their "hot rods", the kind that shifts color as your perspective changes. In other words, a metallic glimmering that speckled all throughout the clouds catching and reflecting the sunlight all throughout, it was a mother of pearl that glowed. All the colors from a rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet with the addition of white and black (white from the cloud itself and black from shadows of the cloud. All the colors of the rainbow were there but there were also varying shades of many of the colors of the rainbow, reds, greens, blues, all varying from light to dark and in between, and there was more than violet, there were a few patches of distinct purple, all of the standard colors of the rainbow and then some, all mingled about, shimmering and dancing upon these clouds. It was like two giant colorful palettes on either side of the Sun, perhaps the sort of palettes that Jackson Pollock would have used if he worked in mother of pearl, that is if he even used palettes (Did he? When you just throw paint, why bother with a palette?) Anyway, one of the great things about this is that there were all of these colors, so vibrant, so bright, so shiny, so intense, but not a touch of the gaudy like there is with neon.

So there it is, two rainbow filled palettes, and then some, floating upon either side of the Sun, shining bright colors, applied to the constant blue background rarely seen upon the sky. Too bad the Caretaker didn't have his camera with him, however, chances are he would have probably needed a special filter to capture the irisation. He does have one filter that might have done the trick, but probably not, the only other option would have been to hold his sunglasses in front of the lens, but that probably would not have worked so well. Either way, the irisation actually lasted for quite a while, the Caretaker was able to view it all the way up until around exit 21 on the Norhway, at that point the sun had fallen behind the mountaintops. It's a shame the Caretaker didn't put two and two together, if he did he would have found a pleasant place to stop and watch the irisation for as long as it was to be visible. Oh, well, there is always next time.
Ha. Not likely there will be a next time.

--The Caretaker

TCC for 11/1/08

The Caretaker's Concern 11/1/08

Lake Temp. 52 F.
Ghetto temp. 44F.
Island tmp. 45 F. Yesterday's L/H: 34/55 F.

Current conditions: Mostly calm night, mild wind from the North East, few if any clouds, mostly clear sky, stars rather bright, about as bright as can be expected for this time of year, still a number of people still in the area, thus still a bit of light pollution. Wood smoke accents the wind, blowing in from a property in the area of the Narrows. The wind was from the Narrows all day, blowing rather fast throughout the day. Come early evening it began to slowly settle down, come nightfall it has been a mere whisper so far causing but a gentle lapping of the water along the shore.

11/1/08


11/1/08


10/24/08


For the most part the Caretaker's day was rather uneventful, most of his morning was spent culling bad photos from his hard drive to make way for plenty more bad photos (and the occasional few good ones that he lucks out on). His afternoon wasn't too exciting either, moved a refrigerator, an oven, some lawn furniture, collected old magazines for the dump, etc. It certainly wasn't a bad day by any means, just not all that exciting, which is, pretty much what the Caretaker had planned for.

And so, now, without further digression, the Caretaker presents: The Rare Thing of Beauty as Sighted from his Wreck of a Car on Route 254 (it is 254, he checked a map) While heading West towards the Northway to go home.

So the Caretaker is rambling along in the slow lane, never wanting to push his wreck of a car too much, when for some reason he glances up at the sky, not sure what it is he has seen, but being rather impressed by it he takes his eyes off the road again to look back at the sky. No he did not see a flying saucer, but it was impressive enough to prompt him to pull over to the side of the road so he could concentrate on the sky with no worries about the road, and more importantly, the traffic. These past six months have been chuck full of solar "anomalies", up until now all of them have been just rare, but that which the Caretaker saw this past late afternoon of the 30th of November, 2008 seems to be undefinable, at least from what he has researched on it thus far (i.e. a brief search on Wikipedia). The Caretaker is certainly no expert in such things, and knows what he did not see. He did not see a sundog, the following photo is an example of a Sundog, the Caretaker photographed this from the Island.

10/17/08


He also knows it was most certainly not a rainbow, for an example of a full rainbow as seen from the Island scroll down to the very bottom of this blog (that is if you haven't done so in the past, side note, the rainbow photo at the bottom of this blog was taken on the 6th of October, 2008. Since the Caretaker does not currently own a panoramic lens he took two separate photos, one of each leg of the rainbow and then used stitching software to join the two photos. The software did a much better job than he expected, however, for those of you who know the Lake, not that it can be seen too easily given the small size of this photo, but if you look closely at Black Mountain you will see that it comes to a much sharper and distorted peak than as it exists in reality. The Caretaker tried running the photos through a couple times but either got the same results or worse, for the most part the photo is close enough, but someday when he gets the time he will do the stitching by hand in photoshop.) Anyway, the point is he did not see a rainbow.

The other day "Anonymous" had asked if what the Caretaker saw was "day time Aurora borealis", the Caretaker doesn't think it was that, he did do a brief bit of research on the subject and could find no reference to such a thing existing (at least not on Wikipedia, not that they are experts), but either way, if day time Aurora borealis does exist, the Caretaker is pretty sure that what he saw wasn't that.

Just now the Caretaker glanced up at his wall of books and noticed a reference book that he thought was boxed up and stored. He'll be right back...

... ... ...

Riddle, solved. What the Caretaker saw has been seen before, and it has a name. The Caretaker saw: Irisation.

Apparently it is not too common, at least not in word programs, because it is marked as a misspelling of a variety of words, not like that is any measure of anything. The Caretaker will be right back, he is going to check his Dictionary...

... ... ...

Nor is the word "Irisation" in his Dictionary, however, that is probably because the word most likely falls into the subject of rarely used technical jargon.
Anyway, the definition for Irisation is dead on for describing what the Caretaker saw. Here is the definition from his reference book:

Irisation:
When a thin cloud of water droplets passes across the sun, it may cause a complex optical phenomenon called defraction. To the observer the thinner parts of the cloud can take on all kinds of colors. The mother-of-pearl-like effect often has many red and green highlights. The effect is most common in altocumulus clouds.

Above definition used without permission from:
"The Handy Weather Answer Book" 2nd Edition by Walter A. Lyons, Ph.D. Fellow, American Meteorological Society, Published by Visible Ink Press, ISBN 0-7876-1013-5

The Caretaker's edition of this book is from 1997, there may very well be an updated version, but even if there isn't he highly recommends this book to anyone who is even remotely interested in understanding Weather. A very easy read, the information is very accessible.

So, thus concludes the mystery, there is a name for what the Caretaker saw, Irisation. The above definition does state what he saw, but the Caretaker must say that it is rather lacking. The Caretaker is going to sign off for now, this post has gone on for much longer than he had originally planned to spend on it. However, in either tomorrow's post, or Monday's, the Caretaker will describe what it is he saw in the sky that day, for now he will say this:

"Irisation is the second coolest thing nature (Luna Moth still tops the list), but as far as weather phenomena it is absolutely the coolest thing to see. If someone ever, ever, says to you, 'Look, Irisation.' Drop whatever it is you are doing and go look, even if it is the baby and the bath water, drop it and go look."

Until tomorrow...

--The Caretaker

TCC for 10/31/08

The Caretaker's Concern 10/31/08
Lake Temp. 52.25
Ghetto temp. 52 F.
Island tmp. 50 F. Yesterday's L/H: 36/40 F.
Current conditions: Some night time haze, stars obscured, rather dim, mostly a dark night. A touch of wind from the South. For most of the day the wind raged pretty good from the South, quite a bit in the way of white caps. Come sunset the wind began to slowly calm down, as nightfall wore on, the wind continued to diminish. As the day carried on, it became warmer and warmer, 50 degrees Fahrenheit is definitely the new 60 degrees Fahrenheit, at least for now.



10/31/08


10/30/08


10/31/08


The Caretaker would like to be able to say that yesterday's omission was an act of cleverness, however, it was really just the result of a drastic shift in priorities. While writing up yesterday's report the Caretaker was also doing some surfing on the web. Being on dial-up, pages often take a while to load so he usually does other things while he waits. So, when the Caretaker was getting to the end of the narrative at this point in his web surfing he was just about to make a purchase on-line (it was a goose down house coat, this is another story that the Caretaker will get to shortly, in the mean time,) just as the Caretaker was expecting to have to get his wallet to finalize the purchase he realized that he didn't have his wallet, he didn't know where it was.

He did know this though, he last knew of having it in a public space and so there was a possibility that it could have been picked up by someone else. So now the Caretaker was somewhat concerned that this possible someone might get the idea of running-off with the Caretaker's wallet. So, rather than just end yesterday's narrative with either a lengthy explanation or an abrupt: "Sorry, gotta go." The Caretaker decided to quickly work in his heart felt sentiment that he carried over from the report of two days prior to conclude yesterday's report. He was aware that he was leaving his readers hanging, but the Caretaker's concern had shifted drastically from writing his daily report to trying to locate his wallet. So, he combed the places on the Island he had been to since he had last returned but found nothing. He then checked his accounts on-line to see if this possible someone had gone head over heels with the Caretaker's credit. Nothing appeared there, so by this time the Caretaker was tired and instead of finishing up his report proper he decided he would just go to sleep.

The next day, this one, today, the Caretaker got up and headed over to the mainland to retrace his steps from the dock to the public place where he knew he had his wallet last. Found nothing on the ground, at this point there was nothing he could do until the public place opened up. Eventually it did, and there was his wallet, with a few other things, basically where he had left them, which when he placed them there the night before he observed the fact that if he left them there he will probably forget them there. As you have just read, he did indeed do just that, leave them there. So, as much as the Caretaker would perhaps like to be clever, he is decidedly not.

Today wasn't all too eventful, after finishing up with his stupid wallet trick, he spent some time on the Island doing some of this and that, fired up the grill to cook some lunch, enjoyed his lunch, then did a few other things that don't really standout in his mind all too much. Yes this is Halloween, and the Caretaker supposes he could have gone to town for the Trick-Or-Treating, but really has no interest, not so much because he has grown out of it, but instead has become much smarter about it. The Caretaker went Trick-Or-Treating on the 30th of October, the day before Halloween. He only stopped at one "house" and didn't even have to bother with the expense of a costume. Dressing up as something you're not, and going from house to house begging people for candy is so...so... What's the word? Ah! Childish. Not that childish is a bad thing, the Caretaker, when he was a child was a big fan of Halloween, although he must say, there was always a few bad apples, the type that give out say, Apples! Thanks for looking out for my health Mr. Brinkton. Nooo, of course 68 cats in one house is normal. Oh look, there's the ASPCA, wonder who could have called them?

"All right Mr. Brinkton, we understand that you can't be separated from your cats, but you will have to come with us for questioning, in the meantime these representatives from the local chapter of the ASPCA will make sure that all 68 of your cats will be taken care of properly."

"Don't forget the ones gone feral living in the garage," chimes in The Caretaker from behind his Halloween mask.

The officer looks over at the Caretaker, frowns, not sure what to make of his costume, then the officer walks to the back of the yard to open the garage door. Mr. Brinkton starts to stammer nonsense, shifting back and forth from foot to foot. As the garage door opens up a wall of cats come pouring out into the yard, some running away, others running around, some lying down, up trees, in and out of the garage, it's total cat pandemonium all over Mr. Brinkton's yard. The police officer draws his gun, repeatedly taking aim at cats then switching to another, not knowing what to do or which one to shoot, with so many cats how can you tell who is the ring leader? Then it occurred to the officer, Mr. Brinkton probably knows, so he marched over to the squad car to interrogate. Mr. Brinkton, realizing what was up, began to pee his pants.

"Now you tell me right now, which one of these cats... What on Earth is wrong with you man."

"I, I... I don't know. All I do is open the door enough to slide in a unopen 40 pound bag of cat food and then quickly shut the door. They come and go as they please through a back window that is missing a pane."

In the meantime, the top dog of the ASPCA had begun to shout into her walkie-talkie, "Calling all units, calling all units, we need back up, we need back up, bring every available cat travel box in a 40 mile radius."

Then she pointed to one of her underlings. "You. Get on the horn with the local markets, we need every bag of kitty litter they've got. There must be ton's of cat doo in that garage, and there will be tons of cat doo to take care of until we can find homes for these cats. Everyone else, you've been in this situation before, you know what to do, everyone get moving, stat."

Stat?

She then turned to Mr. Brinkton as the officer was just ducking his head to get him into the back seat of his squad car, "what's with you guys who live alone?"

The police officer closed the squad car's back door before Mr. Brinkton could utter a response, before getting into the front seat to drive off, the officer said, "I don't know, but they sure do seem to pee there pants in response to a lot of things."

And off went the police car.

At this point the Caretaker and his fellow T-O-T's, in their Halloween costumes had grown bored of the situation, and so they walked on to the next house to Trick-Or-Treat. As they walked up the path to the next house the Caretaker turned to his friends and said, "If these people know what's good for them they won't be giving out apples."

"Yeah, we sure showed that other guy!" Piped up a ghost.

DING-DONG. "TRICK-OR-TREAT!!!"

Tooth brushes and toothpaste? Oh no...

The Caretaker must say, that all of the above is fiction, it is not a recount from his childhood. It is merely the result of him sitting here feeling like making something up. Which in turn is a result from him checking the weather, originally he was thinking of cutting this post short because he wanted to get up early for a field trip tomorrow, but the weather looks to be no good for field tripping, perhaps another day. Anyway before the Caretaker went down the weird road, which he has drawn a map to for many people, many times in the past, he was going to share how he went Trick-Or-Treating this year.

At a certain point in his life the Caretaker realized he didn't need to go begging for candy from strangers. He could just go buy it. So, this year, the Caretaker did not bother with a costume, went to one "house" i.e. a store, and bought one of those giant mixed bags of candy, a variety of like everything. It's basically instant night of Trick-Or-Treating in a bag without all the hassle. On the surface it may seem clever, but after a day of having this bag around the Caretaker has quickly become rather tired of the candy. Too bad he doesn't get any Trick-Or-Treaters out here on the Island, he could have given it away to them. Perhaps he'll instead just pee his pants.

--The Caretaker

P.S. The story of the thing of rare beauty will come out on November 1st, the Caretaker promises, if not, you can always pee your pants.

TCC for 10/30/08

The Caretaker's Concern 10/30/08
Happy Cabbage Night to all those who celebrate.
Lake Temp. 52.5 F
Ghetto temp. 40 F.
Island tmp. 40 F. Yesterday's L/H: 37/36 F. (The morning was warmer than the evening.)
Current conditions: Stars are out but not brilliantly so, thin clouds here and there throughout the night sky with mild haze. Gentle breeze from the North, North West, mostly calm. The Caretaker was off Island for most of the day so he can't tell you how the day went here on the Island, but when he left there was a mild breeze from the North, some clouds with sun, getting progressively sunnier.

10/30/08


10/30/08


10/30/08


The Caretaker had much to do on the mainland today so he got up early and got himself off the Island without even having breakfast, although, he did have his morning dose of wheat grass juice. He took the past six months off from wheat grass farming and he did rather miss the juice, so he decided it was time to get back on the tractor and start sewing seed again. His first crop came in rather nicely, his second crop still needs some time before he can harvest, he tried something different this time around, the Caretaker is not so sure that this new method is working out the way he would like. He may just have to lay in a third crop now to hedge against the possibility that the second planting won't harvest well. Talk about boring, unless of course you juice your own wheat grass, but even then, how many out there bother with it? Probably not many.

While down in the local consumer center, otherwise known as Queensbury, N.Y. the Caretaker saw two rather interesting sights, one more so than the other. Just now the Caretaker realized something else about Queensbury, it is just like a town down by where the Caretaker grew up, the town is Paramus, N.J. The Caretaker lived two towns away. Both Paramus and Queensbury have no "village center", there is no walking around town, both are dominated by shopping centers and malls. Rather convenient when you need stuff, not so convenient when you need a community, not that neither of these towns lack a sense of community, at least not that the Caretaker is aware of, but there is not main-drag to walk down, at least this Caretaker wouldn't want to walk down. For Queensbury it is basically route 9 and route 246 (or is it 243?), which isn't too terrible, the Caretaker has done it out of necessity but he would prefer to not make a habit of it, you're basically walking alongside traffic going 30 to 50 mph. In Paramus it is routes 17 and 4, these are major highways, the Caretaker has walked part of 17 once, a long time ago, he would prefer to never have to do it again, and route 4? You only walk that road if you have a death wish, on both thoroughfares the traffic goes from 40 to 80 mph. The Caretaker's opinion: poor community development, lacks pedestrian space. Although both Queensbury and Paramus each have a great pedestrian path that links to parks and is closed to automobile traffic, a lot of towns don't have such communal amenities. The Caretaker's heart goes out to those whose towns lack pedestrian paths and/or parks, if you've never had such things then you are probably not missing it, but still, it must be hard to go without such things, especially for the elderly or those who have small children.

While driving South on route 9 towards the hardware store in Queensbury, N.Y. (which happens to be one of the greater hardware stores in the country, so sad that they are a dying breed), off to the East, over in Vermont, upon the Green Mountians, the Caretaker noticed they were white with snow cover, brilliant in the light of the sun. In the immediate foreground to the Caretaker were trees with Autumn colored leaves, uncloaked of snow, Autumn here, Winter there. The contrast of the two seasons made for a rather wonderful sight. The views of the Green Mountains from both this spot on Route 9 and the East parking lots of Aviation Mall are rather splendid, the foreground scenery works well to couch this part of the Green Mountain Range. Now that the Caretaker remembers it, there is also a pretty nice view of the Green Mountains from the old dump in the town of Fort Ann(?), well, where ever the old Canal Path Locks are, the ones in immediate succession, where the defunct dump is, the one that some crazy developer seems to be building on, sure it's a great view, but do you want your home on top of decades of trash?

The other interesting sight, which is actually an understatement, this other sight down in Queensbury was probably one of the coolest sights the Caretaker's seen in Nature second only to a Luna Moth in the wild. After the Caretaker left his favorite tea shop in the whole wide world, he stopped in at the tool rental place to fill up a few propane tanks (yes the Caretaker would like to use as little fuel as possible this season but eventually it is going to get too cold even for him, so, better to have than have not when the time comes for turning on the heat. What was I saying about the Caretaker?) Oh yes, so he's driving down route 246, West, heading back towards the Northway, when he notices up in the sky something he had never seen before, it was so impressive he had to pull over to the side of the road so he could view it better. The Caretaker was wearing his usual sunglasses which have gray lenses, they serve to raise the contrast of everything he sees, making things more vivid, as far as the Caretaker knows these glasses do not fabricate sights out of thin air, but he must say that when he took his sunglasses off at this time what he saw with them on he could not see with them off. At the time he was of the opinion that with his sunglasses off he couldn't see this rare thing of beauty because of the glare from the sun. Basically you had to look directly at the sun while holding up your hand blocking it out. Later on down the road, while heading North on the Northway at one point while observing this phenomenon, he took off his sunglasses again and at this point in time he was able to view it with his naked eyes, but much of the brilliancy that was seen through his sunglasses was not seen without them. Because of this the Caretaker expects that few if anyone noticed this rare thing of beauty. The Caretaker's heart goes out to all of those who have never seen such a thing in Nature, and it's probably true that to have always gone without probably means little has been missed, but still it must be hard, especially for the elderly, and those with small children.

You know, the Caretaker has been toying with the idea of switching to the First person.
--The Caretaker

TCC for 10/29/08

The Caretaker's Concern 10/29/08
Lake Temp. 52.5 F.
Ghetto temp. 39 F.
Island tmp. 36 F. Yesterday's L/H: 38/42F.
Current conditions: Cloud filled sky, occasional wind gusts but mostly calm. Throughout the day the sky was cloud covered, wind from the South, West, and North, mostly just a breeze with occasional gusts. Off and on snow flurries, no accumulation, snow fall from last night did accumulate on the surrounding mountain tops, here at Lake level the precipitation was just rain. The forecast calls for some Sun tomorrow, the Caretaker is looking forward to that, and the temperature is supposed to rise to the fifties, the Caretaker is really looking forward to that. So far the Caretaker has gone without heat, he's a little low on propane since he never refilled from the end of last season, also, he still has to locate some hoses and get his heater out. Until he does that he will be pursuing the pleasures of life in the mid to upper 30's degrees Fahrenheit, which to be honest, he's finding it to be not all that bad. Usually during the Winter he tries to maintain the Ghetto at around 60 degrees F. but he's thinking he might look to lower the temperature, probably not as low as the high 30's, but probably at least to the low 50's.

10/29/08


9/27/08


10/29/08


The morning began considerably calmer then yesterday as far as the weather goes. It was actually a few degrees cooler then yesterday but with a lot less wind so it didn't feel too cold. Although, in comparison to others in the greater New York area and beyond, yesterday's weather here on the Lake was a lot less severe than for others--power outages, loss of heat, water, etc. The Caretaker's heart goes out to those people, to lose such amenities when so accustomed to having them is a little tough to deal with, especial for the elderly or those with small children.

The Caretaker's day today was actually quite productive, he did some work for the Island, became further organized in his preparations for the Winter, took care of some things in town, AND, managed to get in another hot shower this evening even though his on-demand water heater was trying to give him the business. His heater doesn't like to operate in these colder temperatures, well, actually, the battery for the water pump for his on-demand water heater doesn't like to run at these colder temperatures, so the Caretaker warmed up the battery a bit and got hot water, on demand-ish. Tomorrow the Caretaker is going to try and see if he can come up with an AC/DC power converter that will plug into the wall thus allowing him to bypass using the battery. If this could be arranged, the Caretaker would have no problems spending this Winter in the Ghetto in the mid 40's.
Got to lower that carbon footprint.
--The Caretaker

TCC for 10/28/08

The Caretaker's Concern 10/28/08
Lake Temp. 53 F.
Ghetto temp. 43.5 F.
Island tmp. 42 F. Yesterday's L/: 38 F.
Current conditions: Blustery winds from the North West to the North East, mild breezes gusting up to 25 mph at times, rain off and on, heavy at times, total cloud coverage, fog. These current conditions pretty much describe the weather for the entire day, The Caretaker rarely lets the weather get him down, and not that today's weather got him down, but talk about a miserable day of weather, he didn't even bother to get out his camera.

10/24/08


10/24/08


10/24/08


The Caretaker picked up the plumber and brought him back to the Island to shut off the water. For a fourth year in a row the Caretaker is subjecting himself to 6 months of no running water, it's a long way from here to the beginning of May when the water will be turned on again. The Caretaker spent part of his day doing work for the Island, the other part of his day was spent getting his "No running water, water system" up and running. He was planning on getting in one last shower off the house water system before the plumber shut off the water, but the weather outside was so dark and stormy this morning that he decided he would wait for this evening to use his "no running water, shower system" instead. He just recently finished up taking a shower, still works rather nicely.

There have been times when people have wondered how it is that the Caretaker gets by on no running water through the Winter months, wonder no more, well, wonder not for long, in about a week or two the Caretaker will reveal all on how he does it: hot shower, filtered water, cooking, dishes, etc. For much of this he will probably resort to video which will be more convenient for him and most likely more instructive to you the reader.

For the most part it was a rather uneventful day, so, given that it is less than seven days away from the Presidential election for the United States, the Caretaker has decided to take this time to impart some advice:

Go vote on election day. Not registered? Go get registered. The Caretaker doesn't care who you vote for, just go vote. As citizens of a Democracy, it is the one responsibility you should never shirk.

The Caretaker will not be endorsing any candidates, personally he feels neither of the two main political parties are working to serve the interests of the populace--special interests seem to be their only concern. However, the Caretaker will say this, of the two main presidential candidates, one scares him while the other bores him. So, of the these two evils, the Caretaker would rather be bored than scared for the next four years. After the election the Caretaker will take the time to share his thoughts on why neither party serves the interest of the people, and, the Caretaker will share with you what he would do if he were to be elected President of the United States.

Until tomorrow...
--The Caretaker