Home life

Maybe I've read too many mystery novels, and watched too many junky murder movies. But... I'm worried that there's more to this bee swarm than meets the eye. Especially since the swarm is right at eye level, on a branch overhanging a trail that Family Dog #1 and I walk on often. As soon as I drove home yesterday and got out of the car, Laurel excitedly asked me if I had my iPhone with me. "Of course," I said. "Good. There's a bee swarm on the trail to the creek. My phone's battery is dead. I want you to…

Goodbye, dear Leaf. I had mixed feelings about seeing our Nissan electric car loaded onto an auto transport trailer a few days ago. The car was on its way to a new owner in eastern Washington. It needed a lift, given the Leaf's 100 mile range. I was happy to have sold the Leaf, since the Chevy Volt that we ordered to replace it is on a train at the moment and should arrive in a few weeks. Yet I enjoyed the Leaf and was sort of sad to see it go. (As described below, my wife felt differently.) After…

Sometimes doing a bunch of stupid stuff can add up to something sort of smart, like how multiplying two negative numbers produces a positive result. Yesterday I broke quite a few chainsaw safety rules. But if I hadn't ignored all of them, I probably would have gotten hurt. Chain saw stupidity... let me count the ways. (1) I stood on the top of a folding ladder while using the chainsaw.(2) I held the chainsaw high over my head while cutting.(3) I did the work with nobody else close by. (4) I failed to consider how a branch could snap back after…

Up to now I've taken my credit cards pretty much for granted. They've been pieces of plastic which have simply done their job: paying for stuff I want to buy, and giving me frequent flier miles on Hawaiian or United Airlines. But after Hawaiian dropped it's direct flight from Portland, Oregon to Maui (where we vacation frequently), the luster of our Hawaiian card dimmed dramatically. Even before that happened, I looked around for an awards card that could be used on any airline, for any sort of trip. And settled on the Chase Sapphire VISA card, which I extolled in…

Car has been sold. Sorry. Hope you find another used Leaf.  The all-electric Nissan Leaf is a terrific car. It's just turned out to be a less-than-ideal fit for our lifestyle. We live about six miles from the Salem city limits, so we use up twelve miles of range just getting to the edge of town. Plus, our aging dog doesn't seem to like the sloping Leaf hatch compartment (it slopes because of the mid-car battery stack). While that may not seem to be a big deal, you don't know how dogcentric my wife is. Whenever we look at a…

See 'em here. Absolutely free. No waiting.  Amazing (well, sort of) sights of animals in the wild, captured by our trail camera, which is ably managed by my wife, Laurel. She moves it around to where she thinks critters on our rural western Oregon property are most likely to do their critter'ing. Got some pretty good shots of...   A fawn nursing. Awwww... So cute.   A buck prowling around in the daytime.   Deer twins. More cuteness.   A raccoon family making a nightime excursion.   A coyote in our lower field.   Another shot of a coyote. A…

There were tears. More than a few. In fact, I'm feeling some start to flow right now as I begin to write about us having to return Pooka to the rescue shelter yesterday.   She was only in our life for three weeks, a young dog with a wonderful personality who my wife and I came to love. It turned out, though, that she didn't work out for us. Too fearful. We were so hopeful that we could give Pooka a good home after we adopted her. She had a rough early life, being taken in by a "Saving Paws" rescue…

My wife and I have quite a few words that finish off the title of this blog post. Jerks. Inconsiderate. Litterers.  It hugely bugs us when we see someone toss a cigarette butt out of a car window. But usually the offender is driving along in front of us, so it's difficult to see what sort of person is the inconsiderate littering jerk. Today I had a chance to get a close-up view of that odious species, Cigarettebutt discardiatis. I was pushing my shopping cart in the south Salem Fred Meyer parking lot. Nearing my vehicle, I saw a car…

Here's a can't-miss way to lose quite a bit of weight almost instantly. I'm sharing it with the world because I'd love it if this became known as the "Brian Hines Weight Loss System." (Don't hesitate to reblog this post and share it on social networks. Just make sure that my name keeps on being prominently featured.) I weigh myself every morning as soon as I get up, dutifully recording the result in my iPhone Weightbot app. I've noticed that my weight will mysteriously vary by a pound or two from day to day, even though I hadn't changed my…

Curses to the companies that drop unwanted "yellow pages" directories beside our mailbox. That's littering, and we hate it.  And double curses to Yellowbook for putting the Salem - Keizer 2012 2013 version of their unwanted directory inside our mailbox without postage or an address label. That's illegal, and we hate it even more. I've filed a complaint with the Postal Service, choosing "tampering" as the offense. If this happened to you, and you want to file your own complaint, here's the Yellowbook corporate headquarters address and phone number (this is needed to file a Postal Service complaint):  Yellowbook398 RXR…