The Furniture Move Continues

It was 13C when Chester and I walked along the Red River this morning and already, about an hour later, it is 16C.  They say it is going up to 28C this afternoon, followed by a chance of thunder showers.  I love the heat, but also love the fact that I have air conditioning in my house, my car and my workplace.

The Red River is continuing to rise again, after getting down to under 14 feet above winter level, it is now back up to 17.2 feet.  You can tell by the picture I took of that big tree this morning.

Big Tree July 3

The water is back up and around the base of the tree again.

the Bunny

Chester was stalking this little guy and he knew we were there, but I’m sure he figured that we didn’t see him.  At any rate, he was not going to be the first one to move and neither was Chester – so we stood there for some time before I finally moved, which got the bunny running and Chester trying to run after him.

As predicted, the furniture moving is taking several weeks – but it is slowly happening.  So far I have moved the two largest and most difficult items – the couch/hide-a-bed and the computer desk and equipment.  One of the hardest parts about moving them was getting the place ready to put them by moving all the stuff that was already there.

A lot of what is left to do is de-cluttering.  I have already thrown out a bunch of trash that has accumulated and filled my re-cycle box more than once.  Usually, I put out a bag of garbage every 2nd week or so and my re-cycle box every 2nd or 3rd week.  I have had about 3 bags of garbage every week and an over flowing recycle box every week lately.  Yet – there is still lots of stuff.  Much of what is remaining will be going out to freecycle but I have to sort through it first.  Then I will be able to move the last couple of pieces of furniture to their new places. 

One item that I found in my cleaning was a globe sent to me a few years ago by Lisa Shea who is the owner of BellaOnline, where I wrote the bird column for many years.  She sent this to me after 5 years and I never seemed to have a place to put it.  Now, it is on my nicely cleaned and moved desk where it has a place of honour.  When plugged in the globe is suspended in air and can turn freely.

BellaOnline Globe

Last night on Africam we watched a pair of hyaenas in a very dominate/submissive encounter.  It was amazing to watch, as usually we see families arrive together and hang out – but a single hyaena arrived and was acting very strangely.  I was thinking he was sick and was afraid he was just going to lie down and die – but he was being submissive to another hyaena who was just out of sight.  When the other one rushed in growling, it was obvious what was happening  -  the new arrival had the tail well up over the body and the original one had the tail tucked in underneath and the new one was standing over the cowering, submissive one.

There are pictures on yesterday’s picture topic here.

You can find today’s Africam pictures here.

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,300 times in 2010. That’s about 3 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 58 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 279 posts. There were 676 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 36mb. That’s about 2 pictures per day.

The busiest day of the year was September 22nd with 33 views. The most popular post that day was R.I.P. Dakota May/97 to Sept 22/10.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were africam.com, facebook.com, mail.yahoo.com, bellaonline.com, and en.wordpress.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for jan21cam, snow covered berries, giraffes giraffes, snow covered flowers, and peaceful snow covered mountains.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

R.I.P. Dakota May/97 to Sept 22/10 September 2010
3 comments

2

About Mavis August 2008
8 comments

3

June 11th June 2010
1 comment

4

August 19th August 2009

5

August 15th – Cheetahs, Lions, Wild Dogs and Elephants August 2009

January 23rd

I woke up to some fresh and very wet snow this morning.  The white stuff was still coming down – but with a temperature of 0C, it was turning to mush as it landed.  It is going to be very icy when this freezes but it is now +1C.

After my workout at the Y, I had the normal big breakfast special at the Red Top and then came home to take the dogs for our walk along the river.   Walking was difficult in the heavy wet snow, but it was very pleasant out anyway.  Then I came home and shoveled the sidewalks.  Then it was time for the dogs’ pedicures and some laundry.

The last week at work was pretty uneventful – so nothing to report about that.  The part that doesn’t seem quite right is that I do not have to write an article for the birds site at BellaOnline since I resigned from the position after last week’s article. I don’t know how long it will be before someone else takes over, but when that happens, all my articles will be removed and replaced. Until then, you can still read everything I have put up there over the past 8 years. Even after a new editor takes over, my articles will remain until overwritten – but they will not be featured and will not be in the archives, so they will only be found by searching.

A very interesting thing happened at Elephant Plains on Africam the other night. A hippo has been hanging around the waterhole at night and a couple of hyenas began harassing him when he left the water. Luckily, Morris was there recording this and you can see his video at Hippo Harassment. I don’t imagine that they thought they would be able to kill the hippo – so what were they doing? Were they like a group of bored teenagers (of the people variety) who just thought this was something fun to do?

Right now I have the Nkorho waterhole camera up and am listening to the night sounds in Africa.  A critter could come for a drink at any time so I have to watch for that too – but just listening is fine.

I am still trying to get my computer back to normal.  It is amazing how much we have in these little boxes.  My problem right now is that I can not find my disc for Money and I know I had it right after Christmas because I re-installed it after the first crash.  It is not with the rest of the discs and I can not figure out where I would have put it.  Anyone have any suggestions as to where I can find it???        Just as I typed the above, I moved one more piece of paper and found it.  I guess I’ll be installing it again now!

My neverending battle with MTS continues.  Last week I e-mailed them after my frustrating conversation with one of the employees.  Their response a few days later was that the bill would be sent out on the 21st, without any indication of the amount – but I assume it is what the employee told me and is therefore way too much.  I haven’t received it yet, and I expect to be giving them another call when I do.

January 16th

I finally have my computer back and can get back to a normal life again!

Hello everyone!

It is a beautiful day again here. It is hard to believe that this is January because we NEVER have temperatures this mild in January. We normally have a February thaw once the ice sculptures are being worked on for the Festival du Voyageur – but never a January thaw. It is very messy out – the dogs come in with mud on their bellies after our walks – the cars are filthy – public places have dirty and wet floors, etc – but I love it!

I think I mentioned that I switched phone/cable/internet providers at the end of December. I also moved to wireless for the internet, which I love! I am having problems with the outgoing provider though because they seem to have a problem figuring out what I owe to cover me to the last day I had service.  MTS requires a 30 day notice to cancel and will charge for that 30 days, whether it is used or not – so I made sure I gave them 30 days this time. After a 30 day notice, they still sent me a bill to cover 3 weeks past my 30th day. The bill also still included a charge for an extra IP address for the internet that had been removed more than 3 months ago as well. I phoned them on January 4th to have the bill adjusted and after a lot of talk about me having to pay for 30 days after the first 30 days, they finally agreed to adjust the bill to December 26th and to give me a credit for the overcharge on the IP address. They said I could expect a revised bill in the mail in the next week.

Twelve days later and I still do not have an adjusted bill, so I called them today. This time, they are going to mail it out on January 21st, but he told me the amount of the bill. The bill has only been reduced by $20.00 which is the amount extra that I paid for the IP address – it has not been adjusted to December 26th and it seems they expect me to pay for that extra 30 days after the 30 days notice I already gave them! Of course, he could do nothing because the billing department does not work on weekends, so I have to call them back on Monday.

OK – that is my rant on MTS. I do not think I will every leave Shaw again!

So – with my computer back, I can now view the cams at Africam again. I am still in the ‘just missed it’ club (where else would I be?).  Today, I just missed a leopard and a pride of lions at Nkorho.

I have decided that I can no longer find the time or the energy or the brainpower to write for the birds site at bellaonline.  It was an extremely hard thing to do, but I sent in my resignation today, which will be effective tomorrow. I have one last article to go up in the morning, a jigsaw puzzle of Siggy, the Cockatiel and one last newsletter to go out. After eight years, it is going to be strange to not send a newsletter out every Sunday morning before work.

Sorry – no pictures today.  I haven’t got my photo editing software back on the computer yet.

January 4th

Today is a very nice winter day here.  It is -16C as I am writing this.  If winter was always like this, I would not mind it at all.  Its that -30′s stuff that I don’t like, especially with a wind.  The dogs and I had our usual morning walk along the Red River.  We didn’t see any wildlife, but we did see that someone has plowed a skating rink.  I guess someone who lives right along the river needs a hockey rink of their own.  It looks good.

skating ring

Well, I had another computer crash on New Years Day.  This time I couldn’t get it back up and the diagnostics indicated no drive was installed.   Best Buy was closed, so i had to wait until the 2nd to take it back, since it is still under warranty.  Just before going, I decided to try it one more time and it started, but the diagnostics said the drive was corrupted, so we took our trip to Best Buy to see the Geek Squad.  They will replace the hard drive, but did not have any in stock, so I now have to wait for a couple of weeks.

I had bought a wireless router, so I could use my netbook at home, but had not installed it yet and with just a netbook in the house, I do not have a CD drive to get the directions.  I called Linksys and they took over my baby laptop and had it all up and working very quickly.  So, I am now learning to type on the tiny keyboard.  All I have used the netbook for is just to play on facebook during my lunchtime at work, but it is getting easier to use all the time.    The small monitor makes it impossible to take my tweet shift at Africam though.  There simply isn’t room for 2 cams and the Boma chat at the same time.

Between Christmas and New Years, I was switching phone/internet/cable companies.  As I expected they might, MTS cut me off earlier than they indicated – but only 1 day, so I survived without the services from the night of December 26th until the late morning of December 28 when Shaw arrived.

Then, even though they had obviously had 30 days notice to cancel MTS, I received a bill in the mail for another full month.  I expected a partial bill to cover the services until the 26th or 27th, but but this bill covers me until mid January.  So, I phoned them today to get them to update the bill and was told that I would have to pay for 30 days past the stop date.  I’m pretty sure I had a new girl, so I patiently explained to her that they already had 30 days notice.  I also explained that I wanted the bill adjusted to remove the additional charge for the 2nd IP address that I had now tried to have removed for the last 3 months.  I was on hold more than I actually talked to her as she must have been going to someone for advice.  Finally, she said she was going to transfer me to a supervisor – which sounded good to me, since then I would likely get someone who could read the record and figure out how to adjust the bill.  Then, she finally came back on herself and agreed with everything I said and told me that a new adjusted bill would be sent out to me.  She said they would be taking the charges for the IP address back to when I made my first call and that the entire bill would be adjusted to end on the 26th.  I have a hard time believing that they will finally get this right – but I’ll have to wait to see what is on the adjusted bill.  Of course – that bill will arrive too late for me to make the payment on time, so it will be a past overdue bill!

Of course, Shaw did not make the change seamlessly either this time.  The installer forgot or someone forgot to tell the him to set up one of the television services – so he (or another installer) will be back again this  Friday to clear that up.  Because that work order is outstanding, they are unable to initialize voicemail on my phone, although there is a note for them to do it.  I hope the Geek Squad calls me when I’m home.

The house next door now has another variance sign on it indicated they want to build a triplex instead of a duplex!  I’m now wondering if this is a sneaky way of getting tot he 4-plex that the others owners were going for – just one step (or plex) at a time.   The notice about the duplex was huge and this notice is just a tiny one on the door.

My latest article at the birds site at BellaOnline is about how to cut bird nails.

December 29th

Well – one holiday is over and I now have to go back to work today. I only have 3 days until the next holiday though!    

The temperature has chilled a bit with it being -20C when the dogs and I walked this morning. There is enough wind to chill it down even more, but I don’t have the windchill info in front of me.

I am still rebuilding my computer, but haven’t found my paint shop pro yet. I’ll have to find another program if I can’t find it, but I’m sure it is saved on a disc somewhere.

The good news is that I did not loose my sunrise photo. Luckily for me, I had emailed it to myself to put as a desktop on one of the computers at work and I hadn’t deleted that email.   

I switched my phone/inter/cable provider yesterday and after being cut off by my previous provider a day early, I spent over a day without any services. MTS decided that the 27th meant 12:01 am on the 27th, so although I’m paid until the 27th, I didn’t get services except for that 1 minute into the day when I was sleeping. I haven’t actually paid until the 27th yet as I have 1 more bill coming from them to pay from the 19th to the 27th. I will be calling them to adjust the bill, since it would surprise me greatly if they have ever removed the charge for the extra IP address that I canceled in October anyway, so we can talk about the 27th at that time. It was actually that extra charge that they promised to remove twice (after 2 phone calls) that prompted me to call Shaw to switch and I told that to the person I talked to when I canceled MTS.

Anyway – that is enough ranting for this morning.

It is spring in Africa and it is wonderful to see the beautiful green grasses and trees again through the cameras of Africam. There are babies everywhere – Wildebeests, Impalas, Egyptian Geese and more. You can see today’s pictures at December 29 Africam photos.

In between computer problems, I posted my article at the birds site at BellaOnline. Luckily, I had it already posted and just dated for the 27th, so it went up at the right time. I then had to go to work with my little laptop and send out my newsletter, since that is not something I can do in advance.

Hope you have a wonderful day!

December 26th

Well, we survived another Christmas – but my computer just barely survived.  I started off Christmas morning with a major crash.  There was no recovering other than to use the recovery discs that I made when I purchased the computer.  The result of that was that I lost everything since my last backup (which was months ago).

I lost the beautiful sunrise photo other than the small copy that is posted here and on facebook.   It took awhile for me to find my blog to post, I had to re-install FireFox and get dozens of updates.  There is still lots to do, but its not until I think about going to a site that I realize I don’t have the link for it any more.

It is working though and its good that I can still stay in touch with my world.  

Last night I could not get the cams to work at Africam at first, but had that solved (with the help of TMan) , so I am sitting here watching a peaceful scene at Nkorho lodge, with  Wildebeests and Impalas – although a report from the lodge indicated that the Styx pride of lions were lounging by one of the cottages, out of our sight.

Now for the weather here.  We have had it good all December – until Christmas day.  Wind and snow made traveling difficult and in some cases hazardous.  The temperature isn’t bad (although I don’t know the exact temperature now because I haven’t re-installed my weather icon yet), but the wind continues to build up snowdrifts everywhere.

I had been planning on going to an exercise class at the Y this morning, but one look at my snowed in car and the mess in the lane from someone getting stuck there this morning, changed my mind.  I shoveled the back steps and sidewalk and left the car alone for now.  I still have to shovel the front steps and sidewalk, but with the wind, that will get blown in again very quickly.

I had a wonderful Christmas dinner yesterday at my brother and sister-in-law’s place.  I got to spend some time with my nephews and their families who I don’t get to see often.

Getting home wasn’t too bad, but when I was about to get into my parking spot, I knew that I would not be able to stop from when I turned off the street.  I gave the car a bit of extra gas to get into the lane and then right into my spot.  Luckily, I am only 2 houses from the street or I might not have been quite so lucky.

Now, I think I had better start getting my links to my birds site at bellaonline back up since an article is due tomorrow morning.

But, first – the dogs are looking at me in anticipation of our walk. I think it is mukluk time to plow through the snow.

December 5th

OK, we now have snow and cold.  I guess it is back to a typical winter here.  The Red River is freezing up, as you can see by the pictures I took this morning while walking the dogs.

looking north along the Red River Dec 5

looking west across the Red River Dec 5

looking south along the Red River Dec 5

I got my new fridge yesterday and am very happy with it.  The delivery guys from Lockport Appliances arrived when they said they would.  They removed the old fridge and brought in my new one, giving me just enough time to clean the mess left under and behind the old one before they brought the new one in.  Of course, I took pictures of the new fridge 

the new fridge - its just a basic fridge.

You can see how tight the spot is for a fridge.  My old one was 2 inches wider and was very difficult to move in or out because there was absolutely no space to maneuver it.  I won’t need much room to maneuver this one though because it is on wheels.

a look inside the new fridge before anything was added

There is so much more space in here than there was in my old fridge!  I love the wide shelves on the door.

I picked up a poinsettia plant when I went grocery shopping yesterday.  It was only $5.00 at Superstore, so I couldn’t resist.

Poinsettia

Since it is time for a new jigsaw puzzle on my birds site at BellaOnline, I thought it would make a nice picture to have Jewel post in front of this plant.  Jewel wasn’t as thrilled with this idea as I was though, so it took several shots to get a good picture.

Among the shots I decided not to use were several like these two.

blurry Jewel - retake required

another blurry Jewel - another retake required

You can see the new puzzle at   Jewel and the Poinsettia

If you are on Face Book, I would love it if you become a fan of the birds site at bellaonline.

November 20th

It is hard to believe that we are nearing the end of November and the temperatures are in the +C and absolutely no snow!  Right now at 6pm, it is +6C.  This almost makes up for the nasty summer we had this year.

My Christmas Cactus is pretty much in full bloom now.  

I have just created a fan page for my birds site at BellaOnline.  If you are on facebook, please take a look and maybe join me as a fan.  It is set up so that you can post on the page and put pictures of your bird(s) on as well.  Hope to see you there.

So far I am my only fan, but the page just went up today.

Birds at BellaOnline on Facebook

November 4th

It is a chilly -1C this morning with a forecast high of +4C.  I am anxiously waiting to see if their forecast for my weekend (Friday and Saturday) is true though, as they say +11C for both days.  I might actually get some yard work done before the snow flies if that happens.  I did get a couple of bags of leaves raked up last weekend, but I get about 25-30 bags normally due to all my trees.

The Boma Babbles newsletter for November is now out.  You can find it at November Boma Babbles.  This is the newsletter for Africam, which as you probably know, I am addicted too.

My article for my birds site at BellaOnline went up on Sunday also. You can read it at Time Change and Your Bird.

I haven’t been taking any pictures lately. I have been bouncing around at different times for work and it is often dark when the dogs and I go for our morning walk along the Red River. When we get to walk at our normal times, there is nothing around posing for pictures.