Friday, October 7, 2011

Wonder.

Or should I say Wondrous? The Lake at 6.30 this morning was indeed a sight to behold. The water was perfectly still with the trees on the opposite shore exactly reflected in it's placid surface. There was just the trace of a thin line of mist laying just above its calm surface. Such peace and tranquility. If only our lives could be so quiet, at least for a brief while. Well I suppose they are sometimes, and this, for me, is one of those times.
The trees are starting to turn to their wondrous shades of gold, copper, red, yellow and every other color that they magically show us.
Right now the mist is rising and growing at differing rates at various spots on The Lake. I wonder what that is? Why? Soon the haze will all be burned off.
Two nights ago I woke up at 1.30am and there right outside of my bedroom window was a huge orange disc, no it wasn't some alien spaceship, it was our very own moon. Not quite full, but close, it seemed to be settling directly into the trees across from me. Big and bright and beautiful. In minutes it was gone.
The mist is starting to disperse and small ripples are beginning to appear on that still surface.
Yesterday, when I walked down to our little pier, there was a large log lying quietly alongside the dock looking almost as if it had tied up there for the day. It was a commercially cut piece of timber about a foot square and 20 foot long. It would soon drift away. It looked useful, I could not think at that moment for what, but it did look useful, so I tapped a stick into the The Lake's sandy bottom to hold the piece in place. I would think about it.
It was completely waterlogged, lying so low in the water that its upper surface was at the same level as the waters surface. If it weighed the same as the water that it was floating in, which it must do, it would weigh in at 62.5 pounds times 20 feet = more than 1200 pounds or well over a half a ton. How could I possibly get it out of the water? Could several people drag it out? Could I hook a come-along to it and a tree and winch it out? Why would I want to? Once it was out how would I move it? Where to? For what? It was treated so I would not want to burn it and put its poisons into the air.
On the other hand once it was out of the water and laying on dry land it would dry out and lose maybe half of it's weight. I still had no idea what to use it for. And still don't, but the log is sitting there quietly and motionless waiting for that inspiration from my brain that will decide it's fate.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

New bank fees.

Just a quick comment on the new bank fees. First, we bailed out the banks because their "get rich quick" schemes emptied their accounts - theirs and ours - and drove the US economy to the brink.

Now they are whining that they don't have enough money. (For what? Their bonuses, that were huge in the years they were bankrupting themselves and us, and even bigger when we gave them money to rescue themselves. Now I suppose they are afraid they may not be able to pay themselves even bigger bonuses.)

So they are going to charge us $5 a month to spend our own money! Five dollars for a transaction that costs them almost nothing to process. That is $60 a year. I guess if they have a customer base of several million that will give them another year of their obscene bonuses. Let me see 5 million accounts times $60 equals $300 million, yes that will give us all a small bonus this year. (That would be one bank)

And don't think it will end there, these people have huge immaginations when it comes to ways of stealing our money.