Dead Squirrels & Lesbians

A few years back I was planting a geocache on my lunch hour and I came across a dead squirrel in the middle of a path I was taking to get there. It appeared to be pretty fresh(it must have gotten run over by someone on a bicycle or something). I did what any aspiring photographer would do. I took a picture of the dead thing. I've tried taking pictures of animals before ,and it can be pretty challenging. Taking pictures of dead things is a breeze though, they don't move or try to run away! So, satisfied with the picture, I go on my way and plant my geocache on nearby Victoria Island(note the cool totem pole). On the way back, I came across the dead squirrel again, but some birds or something had eaten it's eyeballs(first come first serve).

This made for a much more interesting picture! So out came the camera again. But this time, as I was framing the shot, I noticed two women sitting on a parkbench in the far background. They were kissing. I had a photographer's moment! "Dead squirrel in foreground with Lesbians kissing". Woohoo!

Unfortunately, they didn't see it that way. As I lined up the shot to include the girls with the squirrel they stopped kissing and looked at me. The dirty look that followed made me re-compose my shot and forget about my previous cool idea.... As they got up to leave I thought about shouting, "You can keep kissing, I'm just taking a picture of the dead squirrel"!

But thought better of it... Frig, I just left, didn't even take a pic of Mr "I'm dead and now I just lost my frickin' eyeballs!".

Now that I own a camera that fires at 2.5 frames a second, hopefully I can get shots like that in the future!

By the way, the geocache turned out to be a real hit with tourists. It was in my "try to look like a rusted hunk of metal" camo phase. It's stuffed in an old dock along with other bits of weird junk. It doesn't look like a geocache at all! It's made with Sintra, heated and bent to imitate metal fatigue, and painted with Humbrol paint.

Tripper's Worm Snuff film. "Snake's gotta eat!"

I just caught Tripper's new snuff film. Poor worm, he never saw it coming... (I don't think they have eyeballs). I love the Super Mario music in the background!

A visit to Proulx Farm

We visited Proulx farm on the weekend . They have scary wagon rides (well, not that scary. The outfit in Munster Hamlet puts on a freakier show, with guys running after you with chainsaws and stuff) for the kiddies and corn mazes and slides and stuff. It was s nice little afternoon, the weather was great!

When we were in the corn maze I caught sight of some big bird in the sky, no idea what kind it was, so I snapped a picture.. Running around in the corn brought back memories of when I was a kid, running away from someone I had kind of scared the crap out of, and right into a corn field. Those were the good old days!

One neat thing they have is these faces on the trees, with some kind of rubbery paste. I'll have to do up a geocache like that some time.

GAG9 Gnome's Crossing

I only managed to do one geocache on Saturday, but it was a great little hike. You had to cross this creek/small river. Good thing I brought the Fire fighter booties. Tripper and I found some abandoned mattresses on the way in. I wonder what they've been used for recently(they were comfortable though). I've been in this area before but not as far back as the geocache led us.
There were a ton of lightning struck trees, hit so bad they were hollowed out in some cases. Very cool! I'll have to come back here again..

GAG9 - Night-caching in the sewers with Tripper & GrizzlyG(sorta)

So this Friday and Saturday were GAG9 (stands for Go and Get Em 9, a big geocaching event in Ottawa). I usually do a lot of the caches the night of the Friday with Tripper and Grizz. Grizz was indisposed that night, not having any modern forms of communication, and we were unable to link up with him, but we had fun none the less. One of the funnest ones for me was one out in the west end called Bridlewood Brain Teaser 2 . We heard from another group of cachers that the cache was simply not findable and that piqued our interest. "We can find the dang thing!" We thought. So we got there at about 9:30 or so, it's dark as all heck and we search for 15 minutes.. Nada... Nothing.. Uhh Uhh... I break out the description in my PDA. It says something about going 15 paces North and finding a surprise.. Well, 15 paces North was a big bunch of nothing, but 15 paces WEST was a big storm sewer. An UNLOCKED storm sewer (well, it had some fancy closing mechanism, but if you fiddled around with it, that sucker opened right up!!). I opened the grate up, looked at my GPS and by gum, that GPS arrow was pointing straight down that hole! So we all know what that means. Down the hole we go!!!

Luckily it was not a sewage sewer. It was brand-new storm sewer and very clean and only smelled a little bit. I was able to crawl down the hole into this inner chamber and there was a ladder there. This was 2 meters from the cache people!! I climbed up the ladder expecting to find the cache and!!!!!!

Nothing.... No geocache.. Shucks.. It's been my dream to put a geocache in a sewer drain for years, here I thought I was about to find one and durn it.. NOTHING!!!! But wait.. Perhaps the fun was not over yet.

As I clung to the ladder peering out the sewer grate I heard people coming by.. They were talking about meters.. These had to be geocachers. Time to have some fun.. I yelled from the sewer.
"Hey!!!! Can anyone hear me!!!!!" They ran over. After all, this man-hole is like, 2 meters from the posted cache co-ordinates.

"Hey! There's somebody in the sewer!" they said (or something deductive like that).

"Hey!" I yelled "Are you geocachers? Can you guys get that open from the other side! I'm stuck in here! I've been traveling the sewers for hours trying to get out!!" And they actually tried for a second, until one said "Hey, who is that!".

Turns out I knew them. We run into this group on the road every year! After they found out it was me, they stopped trying to pry it open(like it made perfect sense to them that I'd be in the sewer).. So I came back up and looked some more with this group with no luck again, then I did what I do when I can't find a geo-cache in this kind of situation. I went tactile and looked with my hands. I felt along the base of the boulder it might have been under and my fingers brushed plastic. The cache was in hand.. I was the first to find it, a FTF they say (second of the night. It's easier when there's like 47 new geocaches planted in the city!). This is very important to some crazed geocachers, who, if you'll excuse the analogy, liken it to defrocking a virgin. For the record, I do not(grin).

As I tell people when I talk to them about geocaching... It leads to you spots you've never been before. I never would have gotten to see the inside of that cool sewer if it hadn't been for that geocache!

GAG9 - More Friday night follies

We saw tons of deer on this night. From far away they look like hyenas eating something dead on the ground when they look at you with their reflective night eyes(I wish I had reflective night eyes). I got this new headlamp spotlight for the event, a new LED one with a powerful spot that can go about 72 meters. It's bright as hell and I was mistakenly blinding people all night with it until I realized that when I look at them to talk to them, I'm actually burning out their retinas. My bad!

Near the end of the evening, when we were coming back from a relatively wet slog in the brush, we spied some backyard lights and we made a beeline to them for a dry walk back to the path to the road where I had parked the car. Now we do this all the time, but I know I prefer to hide in the tree line when I walk back and not freak out the people in their houses watching CSI in Hi-def on their big screen TV's. For some reason Tripper decides to walk right along their backyard fences in full view. Well, not full view, it's dark out, and I'm pretty confident that when the home-owner who spies him walking on the edge of his backyard property carrying a flashlight a big back-pack finishes phoning the police, we have a good chance of getting the hell out of there before the cruiser arrives.

Still, I hiss at him from the bushes "Tripper, don't walk so close to the damn houses!" and he goes "It's ok, they can't see me..."
Just then there's this little click. Not the click of a rifle being loaded or anything, but the click of a motion detector light being tripped and the guy's whole backyard lighting us up like the Sun on steroids.
I plunge deeper in the bushes but this does not phase Tripper. He doesn't speed up but instead confirms his innocence by walking slower.

All I have to say is.. I got the keys!

HAH!

Planting The Body (geocache)

On Wednesday night I dropped my geocache for the upcoming Ottawa geocaching event GAG9. I had a feeling it was going to be a bit tricky to plant it since it was basically a huge duct tape dummy based on my own body proportions, and it was made up to look like a dead body stashed in the woods... So I did what the real wackos and murderers probably do. Waited until midnight to drag this thing in the forest and dispose of it so to speak.

I had the spot all picked out, some little used woods off of the Innes road Eastbound Blackburn bypass.. I loaded the thing in my truck at 11:55pm Wednesday night and off I went! Of course it didn't start off smoothly. I have a new neighbor moving in right across the street and he pulled in late with some U-Haul trailer as I was stuffing the body in my front seat (I waved hello and went right on stuffin' - he pretended not to see me, we'll just keep it that way).

Then on the drive over I did a U-turn to get on the other side of the one-way street and ended up overshooting my entry point! Crap! I continued driving and thought I'd just pull another U-turn up ahead and do it all over again when suddenly the van in front of me jammed on it's brakes - and hit a deer. I stopped. The dead deer really did a job on the van and it's occupants were ok and already dragging bambi to the side of the road, so I went on my way. During that little incident I was reminded that my stupid dome light stays on inside the truck for 30 seconds after I open the door to get out, showing the body in full view to anyone driving by (grrrr)..

So I continued on my merry way, did my U-turn, then did another and was soon parked by the road right at the spot I had marked with my GPS earlier in the week. All I had to do now was wait for a break in traffic so I could open my passenger door, drag the body out and stuff it in the woods.. Traffic was particularly busy at midnight... It seemed like 10 minutes before I saw a break in both directions, but there it was and boom, that fake body was out of the truck and in the treeline in 2 seconds flat! I locked my truck with the remote and started tromping off into the woods with the body on my shoulder and a flashlight in my free hand when flashing red lights caught my eye

A police car with it's cherries on was parked in back of my truck. Now I figured there was NO WAY he could have seen me run into the woods with my body.. He had to be just checking out a truck stopped for no reason by the side of the road.. I was about 20 feet into the treeline and I threw the body to the ground (it was wearing a dark blue coverall, so it was ok, but I was pretty sure my MEC jacket had all kinds of reflective shit on it, so I turned mty light off, got down behind a tree and peeked around. The cop was out of his car, walking over to my truck and playing his flashlight around in the woods where I had just gone in. CRAP! I was thinking that if he came in the woods, I'd give a quick "Hi!" and come out from where I was holding the geocache container and try and leave the fake dead body out of it completely. Just explain to him that I was all alone, planting a plain old geocache, that's all, not trying to hide a body or anything, nope..

Well, he didn't come in the woods, he got right back in his police car and drove off. And then it occurred to me that he may have been responding to the van that hit the deer, thought my truck was the one involved, and maybe the deer had come back to life and ran into the woods to die (they do that sometimes I hear). Man.. I was lucky.. Very lucky.. If he would have come up on my sitting there with that thing in the passenger seat....

So I tramped another 150m into the woods, changed the spot I was gonna put him in after finding a cooler spot, and took a pile of pictures.. I even found a dear skull on the ground nearby and placed it in his lap.. He looked great out there! Hopefully it will creep people out a bit when they find it this Friday... Man, if I'd have gotten my act together I could have hired some teenager to just sit in the coveralls and jump when people came near (maybe next year). How'd you like to take a hike in the woods at night and come across this thing?

Desperate Housewives - The Game

I'm a fan of the show. Heck, someone went and made a PC game of it.. It's kinda like the Sims (and we all know how I like to play that particular game!). It got a bad rating on the one site I found that reviewed it, but the story was written by one of the scriptwriters and it has the voice-over suicide lady that does all the V.O.'s for the show.
First thing that happened after I installed and made my character was Edie barged in to show me my new house and made fun of my 23 inch television, then Bree came over and invited me for coffee. I didn't even have time to see if there was anyone tied up in my basement (actually I don't seem to have a basement - they missed the boat there - where will I put my sex-dungeon!) or buried under my in-ground pool!

I did find some pills in my mailbox (I pocketed them) and I met the women of Wysteria lane and found out at the gossip session that I'm a 40 something amnesiac that doesn't remember her past (did I mention I'm a woman?) and I rely on what my husband told me happened after we were 'married'.

It's all pretty hazy...

These twin brother neighbors came over and I let one of them install my computer while the other one told me what a wierd street it was. I can actually surf the web on my pretend Desperate Housewives computer (go figure). After that I was able to have sex with the mail man (some pretty funny dialog led up to that one). I hope the strange old lady across the street didn't see me do that with her binoculars...

Now it's off to the mall to see my shrink! Cute little game..

Zart goes Hi-DEAF!!!!!!!

So there I was, 18 feet up the tree in my front yard, pulling up a saw I'd attached to a rope around my torso so I wouldn't have to climb the tree with it in my teeth - and that's when I got busted... My daughter was in her room (which I was kind of looking down on, being up in the tree and all) and she exclaimed loudly

"Daddy! Why are you cutting down the tree!?!?"

My wife hears this..... She comes into my daughter's room holding the telephone(which is for me by the way).

"No way!" She tells me through the open window. Crap!

"Your friend Jim is on the phone, he is going to that big park off Trim road.. And you are NOT about to cut down half the tree so you can watch TV!"..

I got an HD satellite receiver on the weekend, finally ready to join the HD revolution. I first put a sat dish up about 4 years ago, but it was pretty easy.. A single LNB, I even left it to the default Azimuth, 90, hit the sat bird in the sky no probs, Bob's yer uncle.. But TODAY! No luck.. A High Def install needs a second LNB, you need to hit sats 89 and 91, and you need to tilt the dish to 100, Heading 208, elevation 38.4. You run a whole mess of wires into a switchbox, an SW-44 in this case, you power channel 1 on it and that's all there is too it..

Needless to say it was dead in the water.. All I had was 55% on transponder 11. Not enough for a lock. And on a clear day at that. Add a little bit of snow or rain and you can kiss the reception goodbye! So I took a good look at the tree, and how much it had grown in the last 4 years, and figured I had a line of sight problem after I tilted it ever so slightly.. That had to be it. Hence the trip up the tree for a surgical sawing of a major branch which would give me a clear path to my TV programs. As we discussed the matter, I started to get tired of holding onto the tree with one arm and one leg and suggested to my wife that we discuss it further with me out of the tree. Poor Jim on the phone had no idea what he had just stepped into(grin). I took a break and went to the park.
After I got back I decided that my wife was right, I let the tree off the hook and played with the dish pointing some more, with no luck. It was then, after about 4 hours that I gave in, and called frickin BELL. I'm too stupid to install this, please send someone and charge me money!!! They were happy to oblige. As it turns out, my stupid dish was pointed right all along. I had a bad cable coming down from the roof into the switch, which threw that all off (because it is powered) and after the Bell guy changed the ends, it all started to work..

Crap.... I bought a new coax stripper from Home Depot that day.. I won't be making any more cables with my knife anymore. $100 later. Easiest call the guy had that month I'm sure..

BUT HI DEF TV IS COOL!!!!!! You can see wrinkes and zits and stuff on the actor's and actresses faces. The Desperate housewives all look like they are in their mid-40's(like they are in real life).. Hockey is a blast as well..

Me Likey Hi Def!

Car trouble in the Twilight Zone

This thanksgiving dinner I overheard my brother and my cousin talking about swapping cars. When this happens it's because something is broken or about to break on my brother's car and he gets my cousin in Winchester Springs to fix it because he's a car whiz. I asked him what was wrong with his car.. he said..

"I had a Gremlin on the side of it the other day, he was ripping wires out and stuff. Damn Gremlins!"

Gremlins.. (grin) I have to use that sometime.. That was one of my fav Twilight Zone episodes. If you've ever seen the original one with Capt. Kirk. It's a classic. I hated the Gremlin though. It looked like a frickin little green leprechaun bigfoot. The one in the 1980's John Lithgow movie remake is better. And the Simpsons.. When it tried to scratch Ned's eyes out and he thought it was cute.. Classic!

Farador!!!! D&D - 44 points for stabbing a mostly dead guy.

This is a hillarious short about some french D&D players. I found it while looking for something to do for my french class. I'm going to air an "edited" version of it (minus the Deliverance scene - Ohh, I betcha you're all gonna watch it now eh?) next project I have to do. Pointing out the new french words I learned from it.. etc.. hehehehe

The guy has a blog . I hope he makes more shorts like this one!