Memorial Day

 

Remembering On Memorial Day

Up On The Roof

I have a tremendous fear of heights so I think that anybody who can work way up high on roofs of buildings, in boom trucks, on scaffolding, etc. are really very brave.  I took a couple of pictures of the roofers working on what seems very close to the edge of the building. The puny little plastic flag string they have marking the edge of the building wouldn't save anybody from falling off if they tripped and fell that close to the edge...

Baby Bunnies

V found a bunny nest yesterday and I couldn't resist picking one of them up.



Golden Gate Bridge

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge.  The first time I was in San Francisco I was only 13 and I marvelled at the sight of that bridge, but my deep-seated fear of bridges was already in place and I was very thankful that I didn't have to go near the bridge.  The second time I was in San Francisco I decided that I would use that bridge to help me conquer my fear, so I braved that vast span and drove across it.  It seemed like it took an eternity, but I made it without passing out.

There are some pretty cool events planned for the anniversary this year, beginning with a treasure hunt that starts today.  Too bad San Francisco is so far away and I'm stuck at work...

Enter Nowhere

I watched a movie last night called 'Enter Nowhere' and I found it to be a very intriguing thriller.  It stars Scott Eastwood (Gran Torino), Sara Paxton (Last House on the Left), Katherine Waterson (Michael Clayton) and Shaun Sipos (Final Destination 2).  The storyline follows four strangers who end up one by one in a cabin together who have a connection to each other that they need to figure out in order to save their own lives.  There's not a lot of fancy cinematography, so the movie does rely heavily on dialogue and character building.  I thought it might be a gamble to rent after reading the jacket, but it paid off in the end. 

'Goodbye' by Night Ranger

One of my most favorite songs from the 80s is 'Sister Christian' by Night Ranger, but I have to confess that it is not my favorite song by Night Ranger. They had a single in 1985 called 'Goodbye' and that is by far my favorite song from this group. I had the good fortune of running across this live version from 2001. The quality isn't the greatest, but it's still awesome to be able to listen to it whenever I want. The original single is also included.

Useless Fact

The names of the Three Wise Monkeys are Mizaru (see no evil), Mikazaru (hear no evil) and Mazaru (speak no evil).

Ormie the Pig

Cookies...so close and yet so far.  Sometimes life's just like that...

This cute video was sent to me by a friend I used to work with. If you want a good laugh, watch here.

Mystery Solved

my full picture of the yellow weed

Thanks to my anonymous commenter...it made me wonder what this really is so I did some research and this is what I came up with:

Butterweed (Senecio glabellus) is most commonly found in wet areas.  It is an annual with smooth and hollow stems.  At times, there may be hair in the leaf axils, giving it a "cobwebby" appearance.  The leaves are irregularly and deeply cut to the midrib and lack hair.  Lower leaves have petioles while the upper leaves lack petioles.  Often, the foliage turns reddish purple after flowering.

I found the above about Butterweed here (pg. 4). There are also a couple of pictures.

Pool Foliage

Shhh...this one is actually a weed, but don't tell anybody.

Truck driver hurt in I-75 crash (see prior post)

Taken from The Courier newspaper


Local News

Tuesday, May 08, 2012

The driver of tractor-trailer was injured when he lost control of his rig on Interstate 75 in Findlay Monday night, causing a backup of traffic on the highway.  According to the Findlay post of the State Highway Patrol, Andres G. Curbelo, 34, of Windsor, Ontario, was driving south on I-75 near the Ohio 15 exit at 6:15 p.m. when he lost control of the rig, which traveled off the left side of the roadway, through a ditch and over the median cables. The truck ended up on its side, blocking both northbound lanes of the interstate, the patrol reported.  Curbelo was taken by a Hanco ambulance to Blanchard Valley Hospital with non-life threatening injuries, according to the patrol.  A pickup truck pulling a camper was damaged when the driver, Richard L. Ferguson, 42, of Oak Harbor, Mich., unsuccessfully attempted to drive off the roadway to avoid the truck. Ferguson and five passengers in the pickup were uninjured, the patrol reported.

Northbound I-75 Semi Crash

I was on I-75 southbound tonight on my way to the house after leaving the warehouse around 6:45. It's a
5 mile stint on the interstate. The traffic slowed way down and became little more than a crawl about 1/2 mile from my exit. I drove half in the emergency lane and half in the exit lane for just a few feet as I approached the exit when suddenly a BIG wrecker tooted his horn behind me so he could go around all the traffic. As I made my turn onto the exit ramp I could see flashers ahead, but couldn't make anything out. When I pulled onto my street (it's a no outlet street that runs
right up to the side of the embankment to the northbound side of the interstate), I could see more than I did getting off the exit earlier. I pulled
into the driveway and walked to the end of the street to join others standing in the rain
trying to get a glimpse of what had actually happened. The troopers had traffic stopped southbound to give room to the northbound side event...I was sick at my stomach immediately to see this truck turned over on its side. It was raining pretty heavily so I walked back to the car and drove to the overpass just south of the north side exit (you can see the sign in the background). I'm not normally an ambulance chaser, but this looked pretty serious. What you can't see in the
picture (to the right of the outer lane semi), is a pickup truck cap that was totally flattened and sitting on the embankment and other small pieces of debris. I didn't see the pickup. Maybe it had been hauled off already, but I'm fairly certain the accident had just happened not more than 5 minutes before I drove onto slowed traffic...the traffic hadn't backed up enough yet to have been longer than that. This little stretch of interstate is an accident prone area. I just pray no one was killed or hurt badly!

The Beauty of Trees Media Show

Several years ago I started making Media Shows using a program called MediaShow from Cyberlink. They are similar to slide shows.  The one below is one I made in 2005.  It uses pictures, quotes and music.  It's an executable file, but it is safe to download and open.  Since Blogger has such limited interface and uploading capabilities, I have started storing my files on a file sharing site and am able to embed them to Blogger.  Sucks to have to do it this way, but until something better comes along...

All Gone Argyle

The only thing left of the old Argyle building is a little bit of the common wall it shared with the neighboring building. Shame it had to go.

Wine Anybody?

E told me a story over the weekend about having gone to the Amvets and seeing the bartender washing out one of these nifty glasses. He asked her what it was and she told him it was a hillbilly wine glass. (It's a canning jar glued to a candlestick holder). Someone at the club must have been drinking out of it. He was so enamored with it that he was able to get one somehow for a friend at work. I noticed it on the table after work yesterday, but since he was already at work, I couldn't ask him if he spent money on it or if it was given to him. It made me chuckle...it's sorta cute.

Sorta Like On TV, But Not Really

One of the most interesting things to ever have happened to me, happened at work today. I will preface this short story with this...the roof is being replaced at the warehouse which means there are a sundry of construction workers on site in the building and on the roof. Now, back to the story...

My office is the hub of all the activity that goes on during the shipping and receiving process and also where the manufactured dishwashers come over on a conveyor from the plant to be sorted and stored. This requires three towmotor drivers stacking and storing all day. These drivers are bound to break and lunch times aligning with the manufacturing plant's break and lunch times which means they go at staggered times. This is also when J and I take our lunch break. This happens usually between 12:30 and 1:00 pm; however, J and I eat our lunch at our desks in the office. I was heating up my lunch (microwave in office) when the phone rang. I answered it and heard P (she's in the front part of the building in the main office area) tell me she needed me to come up there right away. I noticed a slight sort of urgency in her voice, but I paused anyway and started to say that my lunch was heating up when she said it again, a little more urgently this time. So, in my now panicked state, I jumped on my cart and drove the 1 minute course to the front of the building. It seemed like it took 5 minutes today. My million thoughts as to what could be wrong in that 1 minute trek kept coming back to somebody's dead...don't know who, but somebody must surely be dead. (Nope, nobody died...thankfully and whew)!!! Our supervisor had gone somewhere away from the building, but we have an engineer on site who has his office just inside the door leading to the front office area. P and the engineer pulled me into his office and closed the door. Oh crap, right? Nah...OH, SHIT! Here's what P told me (to the best of my recollection). "There are federal agents in the building and they are here to arrest one of the roofers for armed robbery. We need to get everyone in the conference room right now before the agents will make the arrest. You need to go back to the other end of the building and make sure you get everyone up here quickly...tell them there's an emergency meeting in the conference room or something." In my state of shock, but state of relief that no one was dead, I raced back to the other part of the building and collected J and the two other people out there and we hurried back to the conference room. V was just coming to work and was walking in the door when I got back up front, so I grabbed her and told her to come to the conference room. A few more people wandered in within a couple of minutes and we were all nicely tucked away. C, our manager, came in from outside with a couple of HR people from the plant who were already clued in to the situation and the plan to nab this guy off the roof. They told us we all needed to stay put for safety reasons. (Felt more like easy access to pick us off one by one from a central location if the mood should have struck the roofer). Anyway, the bust went down without a hitch and the bad guy got carted off to jail. Took only about a half hour for the entire process. I wonder why it never happens that fast in the movies or on TV...

Tuesday Humor