Tank birthday and I'm a Geezer

[Paul B]

Unfortunately, I don't think my new tiny filefish will last the night. He likes to lay against the powerhead and being he is so slow and doesn't swim like Tarzan, he gets stuck there. Also my 6 line is picking on him.

I put rubber bands all over the intake of one of the powerheads but the other one is 10" long and I can't protect him from it so I feel he will get sucked against it

 

[Paul B]

I am going for my very dark morning walk but I wanted to see if my little filefish was stuck to the powerhead.

Using a flashlight I don't see him stuck anywhere so he may be OK.

I will look for the little guy when the lights come on. Now it's time to go to the beach

 

[Paul B]

Nothing exciting on my early beach walk. I had to wait on the beach for a while for the sun to come up.

 

[mrehfeld]

I am going for my very dark morning walk but I wanted to see if my little filefish was stuck to the powerhead.

Using a flashlight I don't see him stuck anywhere so he may be OK.

I will look for the little guy when the lights come on. Now it's time to go to the beach

Mine was VERY shy and seemed doomed when I got him but I've had no issues and he holds his own.

 

[Paul B]

This one is about an inch long so really small. He is not stuck to any powerheads but I can't find him today. That is not unusual in my tank so hopefully I will see him soon

 

[Paul B]

Because of this illustrious hobby I have to replace a HVAC duct that is up against my tank and got rusty. I just ordered the duct and will have to squeeze myself under and behind my tank to cut out the old, rusty duct and install a new one. It doesn't look too rusty but the bottom is very rusty. I will also have to "rustproof" the thing before I install it.

It's the white piece on the bottom.

 

[Paul B]

It seems that I need a new right shoulder. I think it got jealous because I have a new left shoulder and left knee.

The pain level now is getting bad especially when I am not moving it, trying to catch a fish with a net or waving at a pretty girl (who then basically spit at me)
This will be my, I think 38th surgery. I broke and tore everything, so I am full of hardware and when I go through the airport metal detecting machines the agents there put on sound deadening earmuffs because their machines are alarming so much.

The surgery doesn't bother me as I enjoy the sleep, but my wife is very handicapped so I am not sure how I will do this.
I will have one of our friends here to help for 2 days but for a few weeks I won't be able to drive or put her walker in the car.

She can't even take anything out of the refrigerator or oven without dropping it and she falls a few times a week and being her right leg doesn't move, I can't pick her up.

Gone are the days when I used to be able to throw her over my shoulder. I have to figure out how I am going to do this.
Now I am going for some shots to calm it down until I figure this all out.

 

[Paul B]

Lets remember that today is the anniversary of the attack on the WorldTrade Center.
All Americans should Honor this day and especially New Yorkers who saw the towers fall.

I actually worked on the construction of those iconic buildings.

It was a horrible sight and the City was dark and full of smoke for days. Here, we all knew at least one person who died then. We will never get over it or forget.

 

[Paul B]

Everyone in New York knows at least one person who died that day. My friends Daughter was working there but she got out just before they fell. As she was running away someone who either fell or jumped out of the window fell on the sidewalk right in front of her. That will stay with her for life.

 

[Paul B]

On another note. We eat all of our meals on our outside deck in the summer and this time of the year we get a lot of wasps. I have this Zapper thing that looks like a tennis racket and it made me think of this wasp story that I posted a few years ago but it is a true story.

Ok usually bees, wasps, snakes, scorpions, or Paris Hilton don't bother me but today I went upstairs in my house, a place where no one lives but there is an apartment there. I go up there occasionally to clean or fix the exhaust fan.
Before I went up we learned that our phone, which is attached to the wall, doesn't work. It rings but you can't talk.
Anyway, I see this dead wasp on the floor so I get the vacuum to pick it up, then I see another, then another and so on. So I look around and on the wall air conditioner I see part of a wasp hive that looked old and dead.
Wrong.

I take the vacuum and suck up what I thought was a very small hive.

Wrong.
2,863 wasps come flying out and they were not happy, Most of them had a scowl on their face, if looks could kill?
Some of them were so big that they had to stay in the hive because their antlers wouldn't fit through the gate. Yes, this hive was so big, it had a gate.
So I stick the vacuum on the hole in the wall (which was really a gap in the Air conditioner side panel)
And I am sucking up wasps.
No problem.
Wrong.
The 2,863 wasps that had already come out are stinging me.

They got me good and those suckers really hurt, especially like now, 30 minutes later. My elbow is swelled up. I wouldn't mind if they stung me in my biceps, then at least I would look like I had muscles.
So as I am getting stung and holding the vacuum on the hole, sucking up wasps, I take out my cell phone to call my wife downstairs.
Yep, the phone don't work. So I am screaming but she has the AC on and I have the vacuum on. I didn't want to put the vacuum down, but I was getting stung and I think these were the friendly wasps, the nasty ones, the tatooed ones with the leather jackets on were stuck in the hose of the vacuum, that antler thing again.

So finally my wife hears me and of course she takes her time coming upstairs, then screams. I looked like one of those guys that win contests for having bees all over them. So I drop the vacuum, still sucking and we run outside.
I found a can of that bug bomb stuff that you set in the room and leave. The stuff was over 33 years old because I bought it when I bought my house but never used it.
So I push the button and throw it in. It is supposed to emit a mist, but i guess it is no good after 33 years so it just sputtered. I wonder what that did to the carpet?
Anyway, a few minutes later I go up and find many of the little suckers are writhing on the floor but you could still faintly hear, "We will get you"
"We know where you live" But it was very weak and I am sure it was an idol threat.

So I made a larger hole in the wall and after soaking the insulation with wasp killer I sucked out the remaining dead wasps. Before I opened the vacuum, I sprayed wasp killer into it just to make sure. Then I dumped out the bag which was filled with hundreds of dead and dying wasps.
So now I have no more wasps, just a big hole in the wall and a house that smells like Napalm



OK, I thought this was over. Today I go upstairs to patch that hole in the wall. So I bring my big shop vac, a ladder, wasp spray (just to be sure) some calking for the outside, some tools and plaster. So I remove the wasp spray soaked paper towels that I had stuffed in the hole to keep any new creatures from coming in and at the same time I am holding the shop vac hose up to the hole so I can catch any loose plaster.

This is not one of those Sissy shop vacs that is good for picking up belly button lint, this one will suck the brains out of your head through your nose from across the street.
So I take out the paper and I couldn't believe it, there seemed to be more wasps than there was two days ago when I killed hundreds of them.

They were wading through the puddle of wasp spray like it was "Glade air freshener".

No really, you can't make this stuff up. But this time I was prepared, this vacuum was sucking them out from 6" away. They didn't know what was happening. The only problem was that the hole to the outside was still open and as soon as I sucked them in, more came in from outside. So I was alternating spraying wasp spray and sucking at the same time, spray, suck, spray, suck etc.

I also found out what that means on the side of the wasp spray can where it says Kills on Contact" I thought that meant, it kills the wasps when it contacts them, but I think it really means that it kills the wasps after the wasp contacts you. They don't really die that fast, Dying the next day is not exactly the time frame I had in mind.

So I finally eliminate most of the creatures and I make the hole in the wall larger so I have good sheetrock to patch. I kept cutting bigger and bigger because I found their hive. They didn't just have a hive in my wall, they were turning my house into a hive. This thing was huge and it was filled with babies. So I kept sucking them out until I got to good insulation. I wonder what they did with all the insulation that used to be in the wall?
Then I stuck in new insulation that I also soaked with wasp spray
(although I think they were using it for cologne) and I calked the outside.

I had to hold the vacuum with me outside because they kept coming back trying to get back into the nest from outside.
So I am done, at least I thought so and I start to go downstairs but I figure let me go and check on my tomato plants on the upstairs deck which is off the bedroom on the opposite side of the house from the wasps.
On the way out I notice that the wall next to that air conditioner is wet. Great. I don't go up there much and everytime I go, it is a surprise. So I go outside to see where the hole is that is letting the water in and guess what I find?
Yep, wasps. I mean, are they freekin kidding me. This time they are "in" the air conditioner that has not been turned on in over 3 years.

Luckily for me, I have the wasp spray in my hand because I was bringing it downstairs. So I spray the coil in the AC and it happened. I got flashbacks from the other day. Wasps are all around me and I think they heard what happened to their cousins and I didn't have the vacuum in my hand so I had to run. A few minutes later I put on my sneakers so they wouldn't hear me and I snuck out armed with more wasp spray, the kind they sell to Sissies because it shoots like 2 football fields away. My deck isn't that big so I was fairly close and like I said this stuff kills on contact, after they contact me so i had to bob and weave but I didn't get stung.

They were mad before but now they just wanted revenge.

I ran inside and quickly shut the screen door. They were crashing into the screen making a horrible noise so I closed the glass door, they were still coming, smashing their heads into the glass, wasp brains splattering everywhere, then I turned on the air conditioner and as soon as I did, I could hear "Ping, ping, bing ding" Yes they were flying into the fan and getting thrown all over the inside of the AC unit. There were wings, abdomens, tiny chains, little broken bottles, flying all over the place, these guys were preparing for war.
But they didn't know who they were dealing with. This reefer Geezer now has wasp experience.
The next time I go up there I will probably find snakes, but I do have to go again to remove the wet sheetrock and calk the AC

 

[redfishbluefish]

They are HERE....between your post above and just tonight on ABC 7 news with their report on yellow jacket wasps.....I find a nest just above the door to my pool shed. I've been walking in and out of that door all summer and never noticed it until yesterday. They are boldface hornets, not as aggressive as yellow jackets, but still pretty nasty. On top of that, if I get stung, my throat closes down and I can't breath.



Because I'm allergic, I'm not vacuuming or using hornet/wasp stray. I put together a DIY trap that truly isn't a trap, but a source for poison for the wasps to bring back to the nest and kill them off. Just put it together today and haven't noticed any of them going in. The YouTube said you have to wait for the solution/food to ferment and start to rot and stink. FYI, the poison is boric acid (Borax for the old timers who remember 20 mule team Borax).

 

[Paul B]

This morning on my beach walk I came across this poor creature. He didn't have any bites and looked in perfect shape. Except of course for that dead thing.

 

[Paul B]

I removed the old duct. It was getting rusty because it is behind my reef tank.

I had a new duct made (Quack Quack) and installed it yesterday.
I first coated it with a very expensive rust preventing paint.

 

[Paul B]

I wanted to hire this nurse to help me out for 6 or 7 months while I recuperate.

But my wife wants to hire this one.

 

[Paul B]

My first choice has a PhD as a Neuro Surgeon, Phlebotomist, agriculture,
Entomology, sheetrock, Canadianologist, archeologist. volcanologist, ichthyologist,
Beyonce ology, Captain Kangaroo, gemologist, horticulture, ESP, and pole dancing.

While the other one went up to 5th grade but she got an award for having the shiniest hair.

 

[Paul B]

So, I got my MRI back, and the surgeon said, when do you want to do this?' I said yesterday. This is for my new right shoulder. It got jealous because I have a brand new left shoulder and left knee. I think this will be my 38th or 39th surgery. I'm not sure what the record is.

If you get to my age and didn't have 10 or 20 surgeries, you didn't do enough in your life or have enough fun.

So, I am scheduled for the surgery in 4 or 6 weeks. (The operating room will call me, or the people working there will) The surgery doesn't bother me because that's the only time I sleep, but my wife needs constant care, so this will be "interesting". I just hope she can abstain from falling for a few weeks or a couple of months, but I know that's asking for too much.

My friends and neighbors are all taking turns telling me they will cook for me. However, in the fall, many of them go to Florida, so I need to complete this task promptly.

She can't really take anything out of the refrigerator or stove, so I will practice doing these things with my left arm and maybe foot.

 

[Paul B]

I have to go to Manhattan today for a wedding.

There is no place in the world I would rather "not" be, although I worked there all my life.

I would much rather be up to my waist in the mud of a rice paddy in Vietnam, burning leeches off the skin under my arms with a cigarette while 7 Vietcong are shooting at me and a monkey is in a tree pointing out my location while it is monsoon season and it is Christmas day, and everyone I know is back home partying.

I want to blow my brains out. I could use my shotgun but that would make a big mess.
At least when I had my boat, I could just speed by the place.

 

[Paul B]

So, about the wedding we went to this weekend.
We took the Hampton Jitney from our house on Long Island for the 80 or 100-mile trip to Manhattan. The bus isn't far from us, maybe 15 minutes so I gave us half an hour. We were behind farm equipment which I couldn't pass so we just made it at 1:00 when the bus was supposed to depart.

I get my wife and our luggage out of my car and run into the terminal. The guy says "the bus is 25 minutes late". OK, we have plenty of time, so we can relax.

The bus comes and we get on. Keep in mind my wife is handicapped so it is very hard for her to get up the steps into the bus, but we get on and head to my "favorite place" Manhattan. The day I retired the first thing on my mind was OMG, I never have to go to this Hellhole again.

Wrong. Our Daughter marries a guy from there and now lives downtown near New York Harbor.

When I was in Vietnam (in the war, not as a tourist), I was attached to a field artillery battery as a COMMO chief, and we fired these huge cannons 24/7, six at a time. I also got blown up when 40 tons of ammunition blew up not far from me, knocking me and everyone else out. which left me with tinnitus.


That is a severe ringing in the ears that gets worse with loud noises.
Because of this, I bring custom made ear plugs to weddings or places where it is very loud or when I listen to Humble talk about fish diseases.

We get off the bus (which took 2 1/2 hours to get to a place that usually takes less than 1 1/2 hours due to traffic) and call and Uber to get to our daughter's house about 30 blocks away. ($50.00 for the Uber) My wife couldn't go in her house because it takes too long and we wanted to get to this wedding on time, so I take the luggage up to her apartment on the 19th floor while my daughter and granddaughter came down to sit on the steps of NYU across the street to keep her company, (and safe from muggers, homeless, rats etc.)

I run into the apartment and throw the suitcases on the bed so I could run out and get back downstairs to my wife.

Now we call another Uber to get to the wedding "about 2 miles away". That trip took about 45 minutes and cost $40.00. I could have walked it in 15 minutes.

Ever since COVID, the City allows restaurants to put tables on the side of the already narrow streets, and some stupid people double park, so the traffic often stops. The speed limit in the city is 25 MPH, which is ridiculous because you rarely get to go 10 feet before you have to stop, and that 10 feet is normally closer to 10 inches. Of course, because it's the city that never sleeps, the roads are wall-to-wall with people who have gone to too much college, so they have no jobs and are all out wandering about with nothing else to do.

We finally get to the wedding place.

The building is a 60-story, all-glass building, which I may have helped to build, but I don't remember. I try not to remember any part of working, especially if it was in Manhattan, which was 99% of my working career. I really hate Manhattan, I mean, like really. I spend a lot of time trying to think of what disease I would rather have than go into Manhattan.
If someone asked me to drive them there, I wouldn't do it for less than $7,000.00 plus tip.

We get inside and take the elevator to the penthouse. As I said, the place is all glass and taller than most of the buildings downtown, so we have 360-degree views of New York Harbor, including the Statue of Liberty. Now, most people were gawking at the view and loved that stuff. To me, it is just buildings and 9,000,000 people, most of whom I don't know and don't want to. And I worked in most of them as a construction electrician. I prefer oceans and beaches, and I go on vacations to get away from buildings and people I don't know.

That's the "Freedom Tower" in the center.

 

[Paul B]

About 100 miles past that bridge in the background is God's country, where I live on eastern Long Island.

The place is very crowded, but the good part was that they put out a huge oyster bar. My favorite food, so I stood there and slurped them up as soon as they hit the ice.

As we waited, I noticed the "Band" walking in. There was really no band as they had a DJ, so I was perplexed to see these four guys walking in.
One had a bugle, one had a trumpet, one had a Saxaphone, and the last one had a bucket of what looked like dynamite.
After seeing this, I figured they wouldn't play any Linda Ronstadt or Celine Dion music.

After the cocktail hour and a half with just raw oysters, we were ushered into the main room, which was the same thing, all glass with wide vistas of the city. We find our names on the menus at the chairs and take our seats. We know absolutely no one there except, of course, our friends, the bride's Father and Mother, and the bride. A guy sits next to me and immediately, my wife recognizes him.

To me he could have been Soupy Sales or Houdini. My wife says to him, "Are you the Father of the bride's cousin Bob, Bill, Harry, whatever"?
He says yes. It turns out that when my 56-year-old Daughter was 14, we were at a party and he asked her to dance. What a coincidence.

Anyway, he was with his new wife, and she says, You mean you were hitting on their 14-year-old Daughter? He didn't remember.

So they announced the bride's and groom's parents, and that's the last I saw of anyone because the dais was behind a 10'X10' column, so I never saw them.

I did have time to take this interesting picture from our table. It shows out the window with the reflections of the interior of the room.
Confusing but cool.

Then the "music" started, and I realized why the guys were carrying in a bugle, trumpet, and saxophone. The "music" which was just noise sounded like....Let me think. You know those big pneumatic hammers they use to chop up the sidewalk, which is connected to a large truck with a huge air compressor? The guys wear big sound-deadening earmuffs. Picture standing next to five of them, inches from your head, all hammering in a square glass and granite room with no acoustics, while behind them, a group of musicians plays a bugle, trumpet, and saxophone, and someone is scratching their fingernails on a blackboard and just outside the windows, every 10 or 15 seconds, they are blowing up Dynomite.

I remembered my earplugs and immediately looked for them. Then I remembered I left them in our luggage at my daughter's house.

That was the majority of the "music". Now, I know I am old, and I grew up in the disco era, which was also loud, but there was real music with some sort of rhythm and sometimes actual words. There was none of that.

I have been to dozens of weddings and normally like them, and I also like to dance. I learned that there is no more dancing, just jumping with no rhyme or reason. younger people have no concept of dancing or music. Unfortunately, all those people will be plagued with tinnitus in 30 years.

I was going to call the police, not because I thought the music was loud, but to tell them to clear the street before the windows burst out, killing 6 or 7,000 people on the sidewalk.

Due to this tinnitus, I couldn't stand it and had to run, very fast, out of there as far as I could, which was to the other end of the building near the kitchen. There was a chair near there, which I sat in for almost the entire affair, because loud noises cause my ears to explode in pain like a Phillips screwdriver is being inserted in each ear, and the person doing it is trying to make them meet in the center of my head.
I made friends with the waiters and barmaids.

I always have this infernal ringing, and loud noises make it very painful. This will take 3 or 4 days to calm down to normal infernal noise.

After a while, my wife called me and told me the meal was served, so I went in and had a piece of salmon, then ran out again.
I stood there for the 4 hours until we left. I never saw the bride, dessert or anyone else in the wedding party, and I was holding my head, so I must have looked like I was having a stroke.

As we left, there were favors to take. Little boxes of Baklava, which is delicious, chopped walnuts wrapped in filo dough covered in honey.
I threw one in my wife's bag as we ran for the elevator.

Downstairs, we called for an Uber and made it back to our daughter's house. There is a step getting up to my daughter's lobby where my wife fell flat on the sidewalk. The doorman ran out and helped me get her up. She didn't get hurt, but my daughter brought down a wheelchair to help us.

I can't sleep normally, but in Manhattan, I waste my time closing my eyes because of the constant sirens and horns, and I am not used to that anymore.

The next day, our daughter made a delicious pasta dish, and it was thankfully very quiet. We played a game with them and our Grand Kids which I enjoyed. We had a 4:00 Jitney bus to get home, and the place the bus stops is on 41st St. We are on 4th St, so it is only 37 blocks away, and city blocks are short, but just to make sure, we gave ourselves an hour to get there. We called an Uber, and when the driver got out, he immediately recognized me. He was the husband of my wife's cleaning girl who was upstairs then. There are like 10,000 Uber drivers in Manhattan, so what are the chances?

We have an hour, so I am relaxed that we will get there in plenty of time.
Wrong. It took exactly one hour to go the 37 blocks, and between my head bursting from the pain and noise, I almost had a nervous breakdown because if you miss the bus, I guess you have to sleep on a subway grate on the sidewalk because you can't just get on the next bus, as they are reservation-only and are usually full.

Thank God, the bus was also in traffic so it was 20 minutes late. The Mexican Parade in the city didn't help because they had to close streets, and the mariachis with their banjos were all over the place, and the streets were full of tacos and enchiladas.

WE got home at about 6:30, and I tried to help my wife by emptying her bag. I stuck my hand in there and immediately noticed the bottom of the bag had about a half-inch of honey in it from the Baklava. Her wallet with all her credit cards, like 20 of them, her license, insurance cards, car registration, and about 30 bills were covered in honey.

I had to take everything out and wash it in hot water. Now I know what money laundering means, as I had to wash all the bills in boiling hot water.
The day was thankfully over, and to sleep I took medical marijuana, Zoloft, Magnesium, Valerian root, vodka, Tylenol and melatonin. I still got up at 3:30 this morning.

 

[Paul B]

Yesterday I took my Grand Son Teddy fishing for Porgies. We tried to get on the boat we went on last time but they raised the boat owners docking fees by $5,000.00 so he sold the boat. We found another fishing boat in another place and got on that.

This boat goes to deeper water, over 100' so the fish were much bigger. My best friend also came.

We each caught about 12 or 15 Porgies, and they averaged about 14" or 15" which is good for porgies as they only have to be 11" to keep.

As soon as my hook hit the bottom, I got these two at the same time.

I still have about 100 of them in my freezer so this week we will be eating a lot of fish. After I check them for ich and urenema of course.