Mosquito Magnets

You know what I hate about this time of the year? Mosquitoes!

They are a damn menace and have a nasty habit of getting out of hand in my neighborhood especially around late summer.

Well, I have a nice surprise for those little blood suckers! I got me one of those mosquito magnets!

What, I hear you say, are mosquito magnets for heaven’s sake (read about them here: https://homesteadingnow.com/pest-control/mosquito-magnets.php)? Since when did those acrimonious little insects become magnetic?

Ha ha. Well, its not quite like that, but the device works on attracting the evil little critters and simply vacuuming them up!

Keep it Simple

It is a marvel of simplicity meets a little technological know how. The device uses a mixture of carbon dioxide, plant chemicals and moisture that attract the female mosquito (that’s the one that bites you, not the male) by simulating the attractants given off by an animal that it would like to bite! when the mosquito gets close enough, the vacuum sucks it into a bag where it dehydrates and dies.

Simple in its complexity, I say!

I got the device because I hate to use chemical sprays that for one I hate the smell of and two I’m convinced are extremely bad for a person’s health. And when you get to my age, you’re glad to have that health and don’t want some damn chemical cocktail messing with it!

Light traps are only so good and while I can keep them out of the house with mosquito nets up at the windows and doors, I can’t sit out on my patio and enjoy the late summer evenings and not attract enough of the nasty little things to cause me some damn itchy bites!

No Nasty Chemicals

So a non-chemical alternative had to be found and I believe this device is the one. It culls the mosquito population in the area by attracting all the females and killing them before they can lay their eggs and make more mosquitoes.

It also attracts them off my patio so they leave me alone and go for what they believe is more interesting several feet away!

So far so good and no bites in the last few evenings. So I’m confident that mosquito magnets are the clean way to go to beat these nasty blood sucking, disease spreading, flying insects.

Edwyn Prose

Small Bathroom Remodeling Time

That’s right, I was looking at the small bathroom I have on the first floor of my house the other day and was seriously thinking about how best to go about remodeling the room to get the best from the space available.

Now let’s face it, the room is pretty small and at present most of the space is taken up by the old bath tub, which no one even uses any more! So that got me to thinking why not rip that bath tub out and replace it with a nice shower unit? That will provide a sudden gap where the toilet can now go, freeing up one whole wall for heated towel racks and a bathroom vanity unit with a big wall mirror right behind to further create the illusion of more space.

Well, I sat down and sketched it all out on a piece of paper, as is my usual way of putting some of my more enlightened ideas onto a medium where I can better explain it. It looked pretty good, so I went down to the local bathroom store in town and had a word with their designer guy, who happens to be a friend of mine going way back.

He came over and took a bunch of measurements and went back to the store to put my plan into action. The next day, he had four options for me starting with the least expensive to the most expensive. I actually went for the second most expensive option because I liked the look of it the best and it was just perfect for how I envisaged the small bathroom remodeling plan to be.

Well, a week later, the guys brought all the stuff over, ripped out my old bathroom units and had the whole job finished inside two days. Now that’s pretty good going! I say that if you get some small bathroom remodeling ideas in your head, then you should get them down on paper while they’re stiff fresh in your mind and that way you’ll be better able to express your wishes to a professional and get a really great job done.

So I was pleased as anything since the end result was exactly what I wanted to see. My wife loved the new bathroom and it gets used a heck of a lot more than it ever did. So it was money well spent and time well used.

Edwyn Prose

Mens Wigs and Fashion

What’s this all about? Mens wigs? Well you’re probably wondering why I’ve picked on this subject for some of my unique insight and interesting views. Ha! Well, nothing so crazy this time around either as it just struck me while I was reading a magazine article about them that there is actually something interesting to write about men’s wigs!

Its not so much the hairpieces themselves, but more the current fashion ideals that have changed quite considerably in the last 30 years or so. You see, back in the 60s and 70s when young fellers were growing their hair long in response to the fashion at the time, it became quite a stigma to be going bald prematurely as is more common in young men than you’d probably think.

Back then, it was seen as a slight to have thinning hair and to have to drop out of the fashion scene because you had to get it cut shorter because you’d end up looking like a freak with a rapidly receding hairline and long hair trailing down the back of their necks like it was a silly wig sliding off the back of their heads!

Well, to counter that effect, plenty of young guys bought and wore men’s wigs to try to sustain their fashion sense and be appealing to the young women that they were naturally still chasing!

But fashions change with the times and the last 10 years or so has seen a shift to a much shorter haircut once more and also to the shaved head look as being seen as a more sexually aggressive look which has the effect of attracting women more successfully than most other things. This has been excellent news for young guys that are prematurely balding because it means all they have to do is shave the rest off and they are in the height of fashion!

That’s bad news for the mens wigs companies, but they won’t be hit too hard. There are still plenty of middle aged and older men who are trying to hold the clock back by covering their receding or thinning hairlines with matching wigs and hairpieces, often quite successfully I might add. See: http://bakeradio.com/station/mens-wigs/ for more information.

No, I don’t wear a wig myself and never would, as I think if you’re getting older, then hell, act and look your damn age! OK, I guess I’ve been pretty lucky in that my hair didn’t all fall out, although its a lot thinner now than it was and of course its almost pure white! But them when you’re in your 60s, who gives a rats ass! Ha!

Edwyn Prose

Stair Chair Lifts

You know, plenty of folks who are getting along in years and those with disabilities, as my last post made reference to, have a tough time getting up and down the stairs in their homes. My own parents had just that problem until we had a stair chair lift fitted to their main stairway.

The transformation was incredible. The pair of them went from just sitting around dejected and waiting for something to happen to being active and happy again. It was all down to the sudden freedom they once more enjoyed in their own home. That’s because long before we had the stair chair lift fitted, they had simply lost interest in many things simply because they couldn’t easily get around the house.

It saddens me to say that they had taken to sleeping downstairs in their sitting room because it had actually become too painful to climb the stairs to go to bed in their beloved bedroom which looked out over the beautiful grassy fields of the golf course opposite. Of course, they were too proud to tell anyone about it so the first I knew was on a particular visit to their home where I’d stayed on later than planned and asked to stay over night. Then the truth came out and the next day I went and did something about it.

You know, I found a good local stair lift company and the guys came out that day to take measurements. The installers came a day later with all the equipment and fitted it there and then. Sure, it took the day to get it all correctly installed and there was some mess, but it was all cleared up soon enough and the guys did a real professional job.

It was up and running by the evening and at first my mother was a little wary of it but she soon got the hang of it and was cruising up and down like a pro!

My father took to it straight away too and they were soon fighting over who got to ride it first!

Now that’s the kind of happy ending I like to see! So if you have a person with disabilities in the family or parents or loved ones who are keeping quiet about their ability to get around their own homes, for want of a good stair chair lift you can transform their lives for the better in one fell swoop!

Edwyn Prose

A Nephew With Disabilities

Hey everyone, I’m back here again with a post about my Nephew, Josh. he’s coming up to 12 years old and like every kid his age he should be out riding bikes, skateboarding, roller blading and all the other fun outdoor activities that are available to growing youngsters these days. Unfortunately for Josh, he spends most of his spare time in front of a computer console playing computer games or surfing the Internet for lord knows what.

It seems that most kids these days have forsaken the activities that my generation and that of my own grown up kids spent our free time enjoying. In Josh’s case, he doesn’t have much of a choice in the matter as he is what we now call a person with disabilities.

Ok, I’m not looking for any sympathy here for the guy and he certainly doesn’t want any. As far as he’s concerned he’s doing the same as all his friends are doing, so he’s actually not an outsider. If it had been in my day, then he certainly would have been shunned by the rest of the kids for not being able to go out and play like we used to because of his physical limitations.

So in a way, while I would be tearing my hair out if I had a 12 year old son who never saw daylight because he was surgically attached to his computer, I’m not so annoyed with the way things are turning out. At least for Josh’s sake.

Wanna know what upsets me about all this? Ha, even if you don’t you’re gonna get it anyway! This is my rantin’ blog and Ahm a gonna use it! (Picture Yosemite Sam with red face, bristling mustache and jumping up and down in fury!)

The kids that have two perfectly good arms and two perfectly good legs are squandering their future health by spending all their time doing no physical activity. When I was a lad, my friends and I used to run, ride bikes, swim, roller skate (that was before roller blades, by the way) climb trees and all sorts of stuff. No one wanted to sit inside watching a TV when there was so much to do outside! We were fit as anything and we ate good home cooked meals so we got all the nourishment we needed. We here healthy and we grew up healthy. That was my generation.

My kids also spent plenty of time outdoors, although they were more inclined to want to also spend some time in front of the TV. I guess the TV shows were better then the ones we had when I was a kid!

But this generation of kids? They don’t want to do a damn thing except play computer games, surf the Internet, watch TV and text each other on cell phones! They eat junk food and practically no fresh fruit or vegetables. They are not building their bodies into fit, healthy specimens that will ensure a healthy and long life. In short, they are condemning themselves to an unhealthy adulthood and possibly a shorter lifespan than previous generations.

Why is this happening?

You tell me! I’ll be long gone before it comes to pass, but it’s a damn shame to watch it happen from the beginning. While my own nephew is looking at handicap shower accessories to brighten up his life, all his friends have their heads stuck to the monitors of their games consoles and when they’re bored with them, they don’t even get up off the sofa, but grab the remote and flip on the TV to be fed up a diet of brainwashing garbage from reality TV shows that are the dregs of entertainment.

Lord help us in the next 20 years. Because unless attitudes change, we’re gonna see some changes that we really don’t want to see.

Edwyn Prose.