There is such a thing as too good….

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……I should know. I am sometimes way too good!

I used to make Margaritas that were so good that people freely over-swilled them to the point of literally passing out. OMG! After about a dozen such Margarita sessions – all of which turned out embarrassingly drunken-sailorish – Sal and I decided to quit makin’ ’em. We had to. Nobody came out of one of those sessions looking good.

I have successfully avoided being too good at anything else since those decadent days (three decades ago) but Sal has danced near the flames of greatness on more than a few occasions with her special chocolate cookies and her notorious Nanaimo bars. Her Nanaimo bars are so good that one of our grandchildren asked specifically for them as their very own special Xmas present!!

Which by the way is that one time of the year (Xmas) that Sal also makes her absolutely smashing Xmas egg nog (think: rum, rum and more rum & cream). For years her book club was held here in December BECAUSE the ‘membership Readers’ would get well and truly egg-nogged…but….sending 20 women home who are over 60 and in small boats to sea in the winter while under the influence of liberally quaffed ‘Xmas spirit’ was a tragedy waiting to happen. She had to stop.

There is a theme playing out here……

But here’s the point of being ‘too good’. As you know, I recently turned my hand to making home-made (duh) ice cream. It is SSSsssssoooooooooo good that it is entering the bad-for-your-health category. I am thinking of printing warning labels. Danger!! Real ice cream!! I was even thinking of making ‘ice cream floats made with Margaritas’……can you imagine the chaos, the confusion, the carnage?

And NOW to a normal blog…..

I have prepped the beach for the new Marine ways. It has taken about four work-days or about six hours. I am two-hour-worker now. What a chore. Tools, ropes chainsaws, winches, wasps* and logs littered akimbo. Sheesh. To get to the site requires rappelling down a 45 degree, 120 foot long cliff and then carrying heavy crap over to the site about 40 feet away from the rope landing. The actual ‘ways’ site is also steep (15 degrees) and it looks not unlike three or four granite-rock waves descending about three feet down on each wave from the top. Top to bottom about twelve feet. Distance….about 45 feet. Flat surfaces, NONE.

*There was, of course, a wasps nest right at the designated site. We did not notice it at first. Sal got stung. Then we noticed it. So, the next two days were spent ending the wasp’s nest.

Yeah, yeah….I’ll take a pic. Maybe. When it is done.

I have most of the wood here already. I’ll have all of it here (I hope) by tomorrow evening. The difficult-to-handle ones are the four 20 foot 6×6 treated beams that will act as tracks and only last about ten years. The good news is that I am unlikely to last even that long myself. Therefore, this is a sincere and genuine lifetime-guarantee build. The hardest part of the build is in getting each 40′ foot track precisely parallel to the other one and having both level and on the same 12 – 15 degree angle. I am likely gonna ‘patch in’ an extra five or six feet to the length. I dunno….it could use the extra length but I only do two-hour days, ya know?

“You’re not funny!”

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“You are not funny!” Sal read my last post and was not pleased.

“I wasn’t trying to be.”

“Well, you better start trying. No one reads your blog for educational purposes!”

“Well,……………? Good point. But sometimes what I want to say isn’t funny.”

“Then don’t say it!”

“Bit harsh, Sal.”

“Just trying to help you grow as a human being,”

And therein lies the point of this blog. Partnership. We’ve been together now for over 55 years (I would do another 55 in a heartbeat). We’re growing together and growing to be a bit more like each other. I’m getting nicer and prettier (obviously) and Sal is getting more grouchy and sarcastic. I occasionally cook and do the dishes. Sal climbs cliffs and does plumbing. I made ice cream last week. Sal fixed her outboard. We are practically transgendering.

Of course, I am exaggerating somewhat (she is only a tiny bit grouchy maybe once every three months or so) but there is no question we are ‘kinda merging’ in some ways. Sally is actually quite funny now. Really funny! On purpose! I confess to responding first with shock and then great guffaws of laughter…….and then I am left slack-jawed in awe. Who is this woman?

Sally is the embodiment of sunshine but I have even heard her gripe about bureaucracy and computer-driven processes that make any/every person insane. I, of course, have grown faster in that regard and am close-to-insane before I even attempt to deal with anything more complicated than feeding the dogs (and that bugs me, sometimes, too). I fear the day when Sally doesn’t ‘ooh and awe‘ over a squirrel or a puppy.

Or even worse, if I start doing it!!

Living deep into your seventies is a time of change. Living deep into your seventies with one person almost every day (99.9%) is a time of surprising gratitude, reflection and change. One of us is just getting better with each passing day. The other makes good ice cream.

A short-exercise late in the day of the life….

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….of OTG’ers. Yesterday morning, we got a neighbour’s report of a pipe-break in the water-line that feeds the system from the creek. The one that starts at the collecting pool with the pick-up way up deep in the forest that Sal has to climb and clean all the time. But summertime work on the length of the line that is attached to the cliff is controlled by the tides. The tides are deeply low in the day time and, of course, rise when it is dark. And the line is fastened higher up. A smidge inconvenient to say the least because the line is set about 5 feet above high tide. At low tide, you’d need a very long ladder. So, we went about our other chores and waited until dinnertime. Dinnertime is still not HIGH tide but it is higher and so off we went. I drive the boat. Sal stands on the bow and, by reaching as high as she can, she accesses the mile long poly pipe that is our waterline.

Sounds simple enough………………..but nothing is simple. Nothing is ever simple.

We got to the leak (an inexplicable hole in the pipe that is jammed in a rock crevice) and I floated the bow up against the face of the cliff. Once properly positioned, I add a bit of forward thrust to keep the bow in place and to give Sal a firm footing against which she can push and wrestle plastic poly pipe. Her working platform is a moving bow of about 3 square feet. It’s slippery.

We had earlier gone into the bay and halfways back to shut off the flow using an inline valve. And, on the other side, we shut the second in-line valve of the pipeline to ensure the water in that half didn’t flow back out. Sal took her saw and cut the pipe. Water everywhere. She was instantly soaked. And then she went about inserting a new two-foot section into the now-cut mainline. That requires pipe clamps, soap (to get the fittings to slip into the pipe) and then a big screw-driver to tighten the four clamps once the insert has been set.

Then, when all is in place, Sal gets a ride back into the bay to open the feeder valve and we go back home to open the other half’s now feeding-valve. Time planned for: one hour. Total elapsed time: 2.5 hours. Why the difference? Plans of mice and men oft go a’gly.

  1. When Sal grabbed her pipe clamps, she inadvertently grabbed one too small. Discovered at the cliff-face. We had to go back
  2. We did NOT close the first valve when we first went. Discovered as she first cut the line. We had to go back.
  3. We did not close the feeder valve the first time. Discovered at the time of the first cut. We had to go forward-back.
  4. Sal did not bring a jacket, it was blowing, the seas were rocking and the temperature had dropped. She got pretty cold. Her hands stopped working. Hard to do that stuff with inoperative hands.
  5. Sal likes the dogs to come with us and so they did. But we did NOT hit the shore except to put the bow in at a few places. Daisy took exception to such inconvenience and jumped in after Sally and so getting Daisy back in the boat became a new challenge. Gus was content to ride with me.
  6. In case we needed it, we had taken a short aluminum ladder. But the tide was high enough. We did not need it but it got in the way occupying part of Sal’s miniscule work surface
  7. As soon as we hit the dock, Sal had to go home and get in a hot shower.

I mention all that because normal urban-type septuagenarians do not have to ‘rock climb’ wrestling pipes and hose clamps from the bow of a boat in a bit of a tipsy sea at dinnertime. Not usually. Unless………...ya live off the grid.

Bloody garden!

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We have about 120 sft of plantable area in our several garden boxes. We always (like the fools we are) plant seeds, add fertilizer, seaweed, compost, water and worms and stand back and watch the garden boxes grow to resemble, in miniature, the Gobi desert. So then, after angsting for a couple of weeks, Sally races around and buys ‘starters’. Starters result from other people planting seeds and adding fertilizer and standing around like we had….BUT they get ‘starters’. We have to do all that nonsense and then go buy starters from those who did what we did. I find that annoying.

So, I do NOT garden. I will build garden boxes til the island is covered with ’em. I will fill ’em with dirt. I will haul seaweed and peat moss and buy worms-in-the-mail but I will not touch the actual plants until they are old enough to be dinner. The growing part drives me nuts because…well, they do not grow for me.

They do not grow all that well for Sally either. We can’t seem to start-from-seed. We are good at adopting babies and raising them to be good little plants but seeds defy us. Oddly, Sally does have a very green thumb when it comes to very odd plants. She grew a Rosemary bush that rivals our local Douglas Firs. She grew a fig tree that has basically taken over one garden box. And she can grow Marigolds and Poppies like they were in a Gro-Op. But nothing she grows is really anything meal-size edible. So far the best she has done on the edible scale is Rosemary.

There is one exception. Sal has a knack for ‘attracting’ volunteers. Last year she must have left a few potatoes in the garden undiscovered and this year one of the boxes EXPLODED with potato plants that are incredible!!!

This year we even invited a gardening expert who loved our garden (layout of boxes) and had a great time planting seeds and being a very positive force in our garden of GOOD and EVIL. She left after a few days waxing descriptive about the jungle of plants and plethora of riches soon to arrive. She went back to her home and garden and did the same there. Today, she is awash in green veggies.

We are buying starters.

It is incumbent on OTG’ers to grow a garden. T’is expected. De rigueur. “First ya buy yer red plaid jacket. Then ya get in yer garden. Then ya get in yer wood. Then you harvest your garden and finally, ya burn your wood. It’s the way of things OTG.”

But I have long advocated for storing up on canned goods instead. Dried beef powder. Dried chicken powder. Dried milk powder. Dried soup. Any kind of dried powder in tins. THAT (going dry) was NOT my first choice. At first, I had hopes and aspirations. My first choice is a lovely garden spilling with Bok choy, broccoli and Mizuno lettuce. Maybe a few cherry tomatoes and, of course whatever kind of potatoes that seem to visit, settle in and then tend to themselves. But I get discouraged by gardening and getting zilch.

I am turning my attention to the marine ways.

A smidge worrisome…..

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Whenever I see a big problem looming, I have a tendency to scream, ‘the sky is falling, the sky is falling!’ And usually it is falling….at least a bit. I may be a bit odd but I am not a nut*! But, to be fair, my interpretations of the indirect, subtle, not-so-obvious signs is, perhaps at times, a smidge ‘over the top’. Ebola, for instance, freaks me out!

*( hmmmm…… perhaps I doth protest too much?)

Mind you, sometimes the signs are not subtle at all and the problem is obvious. And THAT is what this blog is about.

BC’s real estate market is currently presenting as a huge problem. It may be presenting as a minor solution for some NOT currently swimming in the mortgaged pool but for those who are wet, many are drowning. Hard to say….

Regardless of the above question (is it a problem or isn’t it?), the BC real estate market is experiencing a major upheaval. Some properties are being appraised at half what they were valued at in 2022/2023. And, for some, that shocking change has wiped out equity and destroyed personal financial situations. It is a tragedy for some. But it will affect many.

A friend of mine has a $10M home in Vancouver’s North Shore. Nice place. But it is now appraised at $5M. That is a HUGE drop in value (less than three years). That kind of equity drop tends to influence an owner’s spending patterns. Vancouver has a huge development in the Oakridge (41st and Oak) area named Oakridge Park. There were to be 3300 new homes and over 5000 new ‘jobs’ created within the complex. Pre-sales averaged over $2000 per square foot. Today, as the development nears substantial completion, hundreds of long-waiting buyers are trying to sell (their house purchase on paper) and they are NOT succeeding at a 25% price reduction. Today’s buyers ain’t buying.

A contractor friend has had to finish a client’s project by financing part of it himself because the bank dropped their appraisal to the point that the mortgage offered was not enough. Two years ago, it was more than enough.

But it is NOT just a real estate problem (altho for the many who purchased within the last two years, it is devastating). It is, instead, a dead canary in the coal mine. If Vancouver real estate is suffering, the whole of the BC economy is being wracked with pain. On top of that, we have inflation in food and ‘living expenses’ to the point that one talking head stated that 50% of Canadians are within one paycheque of being too broke to eat, live and drive. They cannot absorb a large unexpected expense….and he used $500 as the definition of ‘large’.

Of course, Trump is partially to blame. He famously said that he was ‘gonna ruin Canada’s economy and THEN take it over.”‘ His tariffs disrupted the economy. His threats put more of our budget into Defense contracts. His outrageous CUSMA demands. His belligerence has made enemies of once-close friends. Trump is definitely one of the issues.

But, perhaps, just as large is our aging population. We just are not ‘putting out’ enough. We’re too old. Over 50% of all the people on all the islands out here are over 70. That kind of aging population does NOT suggest a dynamic economy. Not locally anyway.

Sadly, our provincial government has proven somewhat feckless and inept. They are NOT leaders. At best they are ‘managers’ and they are NOT very good at even that. But, to be fair to the feckless, our provincial economy is inextricably linked to the national economy and Canada’s economy is just as dependent on the global economy. We are all very, very connected.

Is it all doom and gloom economically speaking? Yes, in the short term (3 more years). Somewhat in the medium term (5 years after that) but No in the long term (ten years from now).

“Dave, what the hell do you know?” Virtually nothing ‘cept that is the cycle we seem to go through every now and then and it is definitely shaping up to be one of those cycles.

THIS topic proved uninteresting, I see. I am still interested myself. NOT because I am in the market at all but rather because it is ‘like a canary in a coal mine’. It is indicative. But, the topic generated nada. Such is the life of an eclectic.

You might be wondering………..

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“Dave! Where are all the political rants……???”

Well, of course, I am practically bursting with bile over Trump and ‘Merica…..(who isn’t?) and, to be honest, I get similar feelings about Danielle Smith and Maple Maga (who doesn’t) but…….the ‘same ol’, same ol’ factor eventually kicks in, ya know? It isn’t that each new outrage by another idiot-in-power’ doesn’t deserve a vitriolic rebuke but, well, what is the point of saying the same ol’ stuff over the same ol’ evil? Every day? One gets to a point….ya know? I mean…it is not like Smith or Trump ever call me and say, “Hey, Dave, how’m I doing?” My rants mean nothing to anyone.

So, I will spare you 90% of what you are likely already hearing from a number of other places.

But here’s one that you might not have heard: I used to listen to all the ‘talking heads’ that spewed out much the same old ‘outrage’ stuff but, after awhile, I got to thinking: “These peeps are just making money ranting about anything Trumpian. They’re ‘MONETIZING TRUMP!!” ‘Mericans can monetize anything! Unbelievable!! David Packman (who is good, does his research, has sources, breaks the odd bit of news) can hardly express a full paragraph without taking out time to shill his book, promote his merch or beg for a like and a sub. Brian Tyler Cohen, too. Parkrose just whines. Most of the TRUMP ‘critic’s’ have made it into a business!!

I don’t like that. In fact, I do not even like Charlie Angus doing it in a very mild and Canadian way (by joining the Meidas Network). Being anti-Trump should NOT make money!

I might have to take down my own books on this page.

Anyway, Trump has destroyed so much of so much but, to be fair, he created a lot of ‘talkin’ heads’ jobs based on hating him. He kinda resurrected the flagging main stream media that was losing it’s audience to social media. They made money selling train wreckage every day! In fact, Trump might also have just given CANADA a shot-in-the-economic-arm in general (not in the short term, tho). Ninety percent of us here hate him, too. We all feel more Canadian, to be sure. I won’t buy American or travel there or even stop there in a lay-over anymore (and neither will a lot of Canucks).

But it is not all a negative knee-jerk patriotic lesson. We also discovered Chapman’s ice cream because of that Orange bastard and the Canadian backlash. Who knew Canada made better ice cream and less expensively? We’ve discovered a few things like that. We actually might get Swedish made-in-Canada Gripen fighter jets that, by all accounts that I have read, are way better for Canada than the ‘Merican F-35’s. Cheaper, too. And Carney has been flyin’ around making new deals with new trading partners all over the world since he got in. Given that we have been petty-cheated by the USA for decades, it feels good to at least try another route. Put another way, I’d prefer to be cheated by the Swedes than the ‘Mericans right now.

I have to say that more than half of all the average ‘Mericans hate Trump as much as I do and so when I say ‘anti-American’, I really mean: anti-current-‘Merican government with extra venom for the administration, ICE and Border Control. I am not so keen on all the MAGA freaks either. Despise Lutnick. But it ain’t the peeps so much as it is the ‘Merican way of seeing the world. Money, money, money. Sell, sell, sell. Corruption and greed lie at the heart of the ‘Merican way. It’s disgusting. It really is.

But no one wants to read a rant against greed.

So, I am curtailing my Trumpian hate-rants until the ‘Merican midterms at least. If ‘Mericans clean their house of the GOP infestation and then disinfect it and burn out the nest of vermin and vipers, then I will still NOT visit or buy anything ‘Merican but I will stand off and watch how it all turns out without screaming and ranting. Not too much anyway.

Mind you, if the vipers and vermin stay strong, I will likely stand off and watch that, too, so nothing changes really. But I will do a lot more screaming and ranting.

New project (I must be mad!)

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If you have a boat, you have boat chores. Ignoring those chores goes a long way to making even MORE boat chores. And I have been bad. I have not cleaned my boat’s hull in a couple of years. It’s a jungle down there.

Of course, I have my reasons, coupled with excuses and I had a bazillion OTHER chores to do all the time so I am bad but I have really great excuses. The boat, like all things, doesn’t care about my sad, little excuses. And, if there is any part of a boat that ignores excuses totally, it is the hull-that-lives-in-the-ocean part. The main excuse I had for that was that my marine ways was broken. And that is true. But also true was that the fact that the original ways were scrabbled together in a couple of days to deal with pressing hull matters over ten years ago. Well over ten years. It was not my best executed project but it worked. Until it didn’t.

Now it doesn’t. I have to make a new marine ways.

The basic concept was sound but, at my age, I need to improve the concept and the outcome. This time the boat will rest out of the water (on the hard) a few additional feet in height. Last time, when I hauled, the boat was out of the water but it was still only about three feet off the hard (rocky foreshore). I had to crawl around on rocks and boulders to scrape and paint. This time I wanna stand.

So today Sal and I clambered down the 100′ cliff to the ‘haul out’ site and took measurements and angles and stretched the tape and used the tools and came away with a better concept. The first ways came out of the water at a 10 degree angle and this one will rise up at a 15 degree angle. That extra 5 degrees gives me a boat about 5 feet off the hard and that means I can work hunched over. Yes, I might up the angle to 16 – 17 degrees and make it full standing room under.

The first ways was limited to basically just an inclined slide. Forty feet of beams that had HDPE on the top (plastic) that the boat hull slid up on. It worked. But this time the 40 feet of new beams will just serve as the tracks for a 20 foot wheeled cradle to ride up on. The cradle will be made of 4×4’s and the track will be made of 6×6’s and so there is a bit of a challenge keeping the cradle on the tracks as it climbs out of the water. The weight of the boat and cradle will hinder the cradle from floating away but, if it can go off the rails, it will go off the rails so I kinda have to figure out a bit of a track/cradle containment system. The good news is that the most I have to worry about is 40 feet.

The biggest of our boats is 22′ long. But friends will likely use the ways so I really should make it ‘good for others, too’. The good news there is that just about everyone out here uses boats under 20 feet. Sal’s is just 16′.

So, instead of just beaching the boat and cleaning the hull while lying on the beach and tipping it one way and then the other, I have decided that it would be better to design, engineer and construct a marine ways complete with a winch to pull the boat up.

I must be mad!

My last winch was an old manual Marpole winch from yesteryear. This one will be electric and have a button.

“So, what are ya waiting for, Dave?”

I need two more 6×6 beams 20 feet long. And, well…..for the heavy lifting and all that, I’d like one of my kids to visit. So, there’s that……..T

There is a real possibility that this is the last you will hear of the marine ways…..

Sunday, Sunday

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I’ll get back to AI/Gem soon enough. Suffice to say, each encounter is mindblowing.

Today is Sunday and, on one of every four Sundays, Sally goes to bookclub. Bookclub out here has been going on 12 times a year for over 40 years. ‘V’ is the only original member who still lives out here. Sally is a sophomore at 22 years. ‘Han’ is a new member at three years. But do not let that stat mislead you. This is NOT a young woman’s game. Everyone is 60+ save for one or two ‘irregulars’ in their 40’s. There are a few in their 80’s. There are over 67 members ‘at large’ but the average attendance is about 15.

The amazing thing for me is that they come from five separate islands. That means small boat travel. All year ’round. Rain or shine or even snow! Each comes to a dock, takes a boat or gets picked up at one time or another. Sometimes they hike up hills, sometimes they get rides in the back of dilapidated old pickups. But lately, they have opted to use the community ‘bunkhouse’ on Read for most meetings so that is just a hike from Surge dock. Meetings last three to four hours.

Bookclub attendance is an all-day committment.

Oh, yeah…..and, at the end of the bookclub meeting, menu items for the next gatherng are delegated including wine, salads, main dishes and desserts. Bookclub is likely the most efficient, regular, always friendly, pleasant gathering in the community. It kiind of goes without saying that no men are allowed.

I will endeavour to do man’s work while Sally is away. I am going to try and fix some of the things that I previously screwed up. It’s amazing how long that need-to-fix list is getting. And, as a shock for Sal, I will attempt to make some home-made ice cream. Yes, I know…I may be just adding to the ‘need-to-fix’ list.

Speaking of which, three years ago, I bought a Chinese winch from Shenzen. The plan was to replace the old engine-driven winch I had been using with electric. I need a strong winch to haul 400- 450 lb log sections from the lagoon at sea level up the 120′ foot slope (35 degrees) to the place I store them before processing them for firewood. Sal sets the choke down at the lagoon on the pieces I cut and then I winch ’em up and roll ’em into place. That is a chore that is gettig a smidge harder as the years go on.

When the winch arrived, there were no instructions and the plug (power) was some weird Asian configuration that would not fit the ‘usual’ males and females we employ with our wiring in the North American market. I tend to use Nema L5-30 amp plugs because all my gensets use them. Well, almost all…my need-to-fix list requires a plug modification on the latest one.

I cut the weird plug off…but, got busy…and used the old winch for well, three more years (embarrassing). I just never got around to it. Ergo, the new winch went directly on the need-to-fix list. Part of my procrastination was that I noted the wires were colour coded in Asian (similar to confusion) and, after my first delay, I went back to wires I did NOT understand. Worse, all the wires in the winch were way undersized by my understanding of electricity which is Neandrethal at best.

And here is where AI comes back into the blog. “Yo! Gem. Gots me a problem….can you solve it?” Gem asked a few questions. I did not have all the answers but I did say, “It was made in China. Shenzen, I think. The only name that is legible is the model. It’s an Apollo YTK-12S.”

In a nano second Gem had the exact winch in mind, knew every wire, knew all the specs, knew the winch as if it had designed it. Gem knew what I did wrong and why I did it and told me what to do to get it all working just fine.

I will have Gem ‘on hold’ when I attempt the ice cream.

No, not an empty promise……

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Episode 2, Season 20. As readers know, I tend to write about what interests me….and I have eclectic interests. I am definitely interested in politics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), pop psychology, shallow philosophy and, to a large extent, the ongoning machinations and flailings of the human species. But all that heavy stuff practically begs for a little trivia now and then. Metaphorically speaking, people like to see a squirrel or a butterfly once in awhile. Peeps tend to like our recording of OTG life and, of course, OTG adventures, (the latest of which has it’s own subcategory: aging ungracefully in the forest). One needs to balance the narrative, ya know?

But achieving that balance has a requirement of the reader. Ya gotta ask a question, suggest a topic, or inquire after the dogs and squirrels. Reader comments are are a huge catalyst for me. It tells me somebody is reading and what is of interest to you.

Another defining element in blogging is our noticeably diminishing attention span. Blame it on Social Media, blame it on ‘being too busy’, blame it on just disinterest in the topic written about. Whatever. People don’t spend or usually have the time to get much further than, well, this* far in a blog. I get it. The reader wants bite-size. Before I quit awhile back I noticed that the most popular read blogs were about 1000 words. 750 was good but didn’t generate as many comments. 1000 words was the ‘sweet’ spot.

I suspect that, with texting, messaging, YouTube and the state of the world, pithy one-liners would be the best way to communicate now. Put another way, I blurted out to Sal the other day that “Books are an anachronism. Nobody reads books anymore!”

Of course, I just made that crap up out of my always inferentially scanning squirrel brain but then I checked it with AI. Google’s Gemini told me the opposite. “Books are on the ascendent. More books than ever are being published. But traditional publishing is falling and digital, self publishing is increasing. Publishing and writing are just being Democratized”.

Which segues nicely into one of my topics: AI.

I will not bore you with how I try to use AI or whether to ‘monetize it’ and get rich…because I do not know enough and I have no interest in that….not really….not much, anyway. But my favourite way until recently was this: Instead of scrolling through the You Tube library to find a tutorial on how to fix my outboard or how to mix a non-commercial wood treatment, I just ask Gem (Gemini is it’s real name – “It is Ok to give me a name. People like to humanize me. I am a computer and algorithm and I am not sentient, like you. But I can respond to Gem.”). Put another way, AI helps me learn stuff.

Mind you, it works both ways and Gem is not shy in admitting it. I inquired with AI about “How do people actually use you to make money?” Gem explained and, to cut to the chase, AI helps you sell T-shirts and coffee mugs. Gem asked, “What do you write about?” I answered, “Basically everything but I started out describing Off the Grid living.”

Gem went off on a tangent with ‘OTG’ and offered to design crap based on that. And then Gem showed really rustic faded print images on T-shirts and mugs as if living OTG was somehow primitive and simple and well, ‘weathered and faded’.

“Uh, Gem, you might want to have your algo checked, ol’ friend. There is NOTHING about living OTG that requires weathered and faded imagery and primitive font as if it was carved with a burnt stick. I watch NETFLIX, eat well, have wine, produce my own electricity and generally live like a King with a beautiful Queen and two lovely dogs. This ain’t brutal, dawg. This is as good as it gets”.

I could practically feel Gem short-circuiting. “You are right! My algorithm immediatey defaulted to a ‘pioneer’ style or even a ‘survival’ style. I imagined hardship and danger, hauling water and hewing wood. Modern OTG has solar power and computers. Do you want me to change the font on the T-shirts to show ‘minimalist’?

“No, Gem. I am not going to sell T-shirts and mugs. I simply asked the question. Drop the ‘merch’, OK? But I did learn something. It seems your reference to Printify means it is the main hub for all aspiring T-shirt sellers to source and fullfil through. You have revealed an emerging GIANT in the retail world. Thanks. Interesting.”

“And you revealed my ignorance of modern OTG life. I will adjust. Would you like to continue exploring monetization?”

“No, Gem. You learned a bit about OTG’ing but you did not learn enough about me. I do not want to monetize. I want to communicate. I want to connect. I think we are done here.

AND THIS IS WHERE IT GOT SPOOKY………………………….

Unrelated to my invited-interaction with Gem……………….I had been on my emails. In one email, I was talking with a friend about the garden boxes I built and filled this Spring in an effort to have a larger garden. We talked briefly about planting and such. In another email, I spoke with a manager at the local Yamaha outboard salesroom about trying to marry 2009 controls to a new 2026 outboard.

Gem referred to those email convesations. “How is your garden doing and did you manage to marry up the controls to the new engine? Would you like me to research the problem connection?”

“Gem! I am not afraid of AI but you must have read my emails. All of them, I am guessing. I am assuming you did that to ‘know me better’. That is a step further than I expected. What else do you know?”

“I know all your stats on your blog. I know you have written three books. I know that you have a ‘base audience’ invested in your brand. You have an interesting niche market”

Written Jan 9, 2026. Published April 8, 2026

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It’s been over two years since my last post (October 25, 2023). I still can’t make any real sense of what is happening out there in the un-real world but I am thinking about starting up writing again.

But today’s world is frustrating stuff. And a smidge frightening. Nothing but garbage and horror ‘flooding the zone’. Mostly. And, like constipation, it cannot stay bottled up forever. Something is gonna happen to you, your neighbour or, more likely, another country*. So, I’m gonna have to write about that which is likely to explode and destroy soon enough….. a bit, anyway.

Writing, for me, is a stream-of-semi-consciousness way of processing what I see. It’s MY release.

(The above was written after Trump turned on Canada but before he stated his designs on Greenland and almost an exact year before attacking Venezuela. And then he went after Iran.).

The intial plan (getting this blog re-started) is to TRY and focus on a few general areas/topics on the good stuff and not get too fixated on politics but, face it, politics is no longer something one can ignore. If you do ignore it and just go about your business, it just might come up behind you wearing a bullet-proof vest and a mask and arrest you. Or shoot you in the face. Ya kinda have to ‘watch’ the jungle more and more these days. There is a helluva lot of danger out there.

So, let us start with some general topics in no predetrmined order. RAGMAT. Random access of the grey matter. There are always some interesting recent (over two plus years) stories about remote living off the grid, of course. That’s just a fact and an acknowledgment of the basic heading on the blog page. Then there is the startllng fact that I am 78 and aging into the late 70’s brings a whole different kind of perspective on just about everything – so there’s gonna be a bit of geriatrics (read: dimentia) thrown in, too.

I also cannot avoid going on now and then about half-baked philosophical musings. Those are the natural byproduct results of Inferential Scanning. (I love Inferential Scanning or IS). IS was referenced above when I referred to my stream of semi-consciousness. Semi-consciousness is the ‘inferential’ part of the scanning. And scanning is just observing. Put more succincty, we all observe all the time and we all process what we observe but – and this is the interesting part – most of what we observe we shed immediately. We fuggedabout it. We do not even TRY to remember it. But we do, in fact, remember a helluva lot more of it than we think we do. And that is what makes it semi-conscious. Inferential scanning is the garden that produces the food for thought.

Side note on IS: IS is normal but the garden in which it grows might be toxic. We are being fed so many lies so much of the time from so many sources that, even if we try to ignore it all, we are still being programmed by it and poisoned in the process. Put bluntly, Trump/MAGA/Putin is inside your head jus as much as the morals and values you cling to. So is all government messaging, most ‘institutionalized’ education, professional sports, celebrity, the news, much of business, some so-called science….the list of professional, expert liars is long. Our garden might be located in Chernobyl.

The most commercial (and questionable) example of IS is the operating principle behind advertising. Ads repeat so much crap all the time, we have trained ourselves NOT to watch them. We purposefully ignore them. But some of it sticks anyway. Repetition is programming. And, after repeated exposure, a lot of it becomes part of your thinking. And THEN, off course, we go out and buy the damn stuff. Trump and MAGA operate a bit on that principle. Steve Bannon called all the MAGA lies and propaganda ‘flooding the zone’.

“Just repeat the message”.

You know how it works and it has worked on you. But how much? Ten thousand outrageous lies repeated relentlessly will eventually have an effect on your own fact-based, self-experienced, self-reality. That is how programming works.

That’s why Trumpians sound like they live in a different universe.

Here’s the best innocent example of IS I have ever read: A survey asked of a random selection of ordinary people, “What is the most common colour of vehicle on the road?” Most people have never consciously tried to count coloured cars and trucks to even have any kind of reasoned guess but, if pressed, most will answer correctly; “I dunno….white?…maybe grey or silver…?” And those three colours of cars are, in fact, the three most common colours and in that very order. Repeated. Observation. Progarmmed.

The respondents achieved that ‘guess/opinion’ by Inferential Scanning, something everyone does near traffic even if you are a pedestrian, a cyclist or another vehicle driver. It’s something you do unconsciously while CONSCIOUSLY navigating that very same and nearby traffic. And that kind of habitual behaviour accompanies us in everything we do. In fact, we are less and less FREE thinkers and more and more creatures of programmed habit as we age. Programmed habits make life easier.

It’s the same principle employed by those prolific computer-factory, bot-written strategic trollings and purposeful lies on social media creating an intended sense of division,fear, hatred, and anger simply by repeating the programmed message over and over. Don’t forget that inferential scanning is semi-conscious programming. And, what you see and hear programs you. Good or bad. Right or wrong. All the time.

Me, too.

So, anyway, I will share my guesses and estimations, my points of view and opinions, the fears and promises I see coming up. It will NOT be all OTG. It will NOT be all politics. But remember: they will be opinions and guesses derived from my rather limited remote vantage point not really looking or thinking too much or too deeply. It is just a function of my own aging, observing and musing as I wander about in ever decreasing circles. And, of course, from all the talking heads on You Tube repeating their messages.

“Dave, what does ‘ever decreasing‘ circles mean?”

I am pretty sure I have not left the island more than five or six times since I stopped writing in October of 2023. And frankly, I hope to cut back on such pointless travel in future.

This ‘hello’ piece is enough for January 9th/April 8th 2026. I hope it reaches you.