So, they set up a dating website for her benefit named Date My Single Daughter. Well, they said that it’s for her benefit, but I suspect that they are thinking of themselves as well.

Anyway, their idea is for the parents of un-married sons to check it out and see if there might be a possibility. Kind of like an old traditional matchmaker, except for the modern age.

The couple said that they are willing to help other single girls get some exposure also, so this could turn out to be an interesting idea. And since parents usually have more money than their daughters, they can afford to pay.

Hmmm, I wonder if their daughter would like to live in a small resort in the woods and deal with bears, septic tanks and cranky guests…

I asked him what was up in the photo restoration business. He said that many baby boomers are discovering drawers full of old, damaged photographs from their childhoods (or earlier). He said this brings a constant stream of new, and returning, customers.

He said that his company has recently created some versions of their website in foreign languages. For example:
Danish
German
Greek
Spanish
Hebrew
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Afrikaans
Czech
French
Italian
He figures that there must be people in all those nations who have lots of old, scratched, faded photos that need restoration.

I asked him what he will do when somebody actually sends in an order written in Romanian or Greek. He scratched his head and walked away.

Not the Naugas Inn, But Maybe The Birds Want to Refinance their Second Mortgage Also?

So, we have been looking into second mortgage refinancing. The local mortgage guy says we can refinance the second mortgage into a fixed-rate, and lock in some low interest rates for the next 20 years. He even says that our monthly payments will barely exceed what we pay now, and be much less than what we will be paying when the second mortgage resets.

So this low interest rate is generating a high rate of interest around here!

Either one is fine with me, but I hope we can prevent any partisan squabbles among the guests.

We bought one of these deer repellent sprinklers online. You put a 9-volt battery in it and hook it up to a water hose. Then you turn the knob on the back to adjust the sensitivity. When a deer walks within range of the deer repellent sprinkler, it suddenly starts spraying water in a variety of directions. It will startle a person, and scare the deer from here to the next county.

We tried other deer repellents of all kinds, and this deer sprinkler is the very best.

We’ve decided to get a couple more, to protect the shrubs out front and the garden. Let those deer eat somewhere else!

We had an interesting visitor last week, a professional genealogist. She said that the lost-relative business has been strong, probably because all the unemployed persons sitting at home have time to research their family roots online. When they reach a “dead”-end, they call her for help.

She mentioned that many clients have some old photographs of great-great-grandma and grandpa. Some of the old photos are faded, some are torn, marked-up or creased. Many color photos have shifted to reddish or yellow. Some photos were behind glass and stuck to it. They ask her if there is a company that can restore those old photographs. She said that she recommends American Photo Retouching for photo restoration.

She herself is often surprised at how much better the damaged old photos can be made to look in the hands (and computers running Photoshop) of photo restoration experts.

I asked her about the idea that scientists have recently found a lemur that may be an ancestor of the human race. She laughed, and said that she doesn’t research back that far.

The idea of a strategic foreclosure is that you quit paying the mortgage, then invite the bank to take over the real estate. They don’t want it, so you are able to negotiate a workout and pay less on the mortgage.

The idea of saving money on the mortgage is certainly interesting, and perhaps a strategic forclosure is the best course of action.

Anyway, the lady is a scientist working on a method to predict when a woman will enter menopause…the time left on her biological clock. She said that the ratios of 3 hormones could give a good idea, within 6 months, of when a woman’s uterus would release its last egg. This would tell the fertility years remaining on her biological clock. She said her research team hopes to commercialize the test, but that getting it through the FDA is time-consuming and expensive. Some biological markers must be monitored every month for a year. Fortunately, this test does not detect disease (menopause is not a disease) so the regulatory requirements are not so strict.

He said that Merlinpeen is the Celebration of Mouth Pleasures, as observed by Verdukians.

Well, whatever.

The good wildlife are the birds. We have bird feeders set up to attract hummingbirds and songbirds. Our guests love that!

Deer and rabbits are the troublesome wildlife. They eat the plants in our vegetables garden, and the deer eat the shrubs also. We tried all kinds of ways to repel the deer and rabbits — ultrasonic devices, bobcat urine, nets, stinky chemicals. Nothing that we tried was an effective deer repellent or rabbit repellent. That is, until we found the deer sprinkler!

The deer sprinkler has a motion detector and a noisy rotary sprinkler. Whenever a deer or rabbit walks within range, it sprays them with water. They flee from the noise and the big arc of water shooting toward them. The deer sprinkler is the most effective way to repel deer (and repel rabbits) that we have found.