If a Man says He Will Fix it

Mike Holmes the Make It Right Building expert, is more than a man with a hammer. His simple philosophy is to do things the right way – with your head, your heart, and your hands. He educates and inspires viewers like us.

Our home is about 39 years old. We purchased it 28 years ago, and for the past 15 years it has supplied us with a never ending list of things to repair and upgrade. If Holmes had been called in to assess some of our reno projects, he would have said, “This should never have been built this way.” Other projects – he would have said, “This met code when it was built, but it doesn’t today. Fix it.”

Holmes has taken up residence in our head. Every time we pick up a hammer or saw, our first thought is, what would Holmes do? The fictional character Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek also lives in our head. He inspires us to “Make It So.” Armed with these inspirations and a good selection of sharp tools to occasionally draw blood with, we set off each day on a mission.

Home Renovator’s Serenity Prayer: Higher Power (internet, Home Depot, library, family) – Grant me the courage (balls) to fix the things I can, the humility to call in the pros when I’m in over my head, and the wisdom to know the difference.
– thissortaoldlife.com –

Home renovation shows make everything look pretty fast and easy. In just half an hour, an outdated, grungy bathroom is transformed into a candidate for Better Homes and Gardens. Real reality, as opposed to television reality, means that bathroom was a disaster zone for several months or more!

Real reality often means that the only reason the project ever gets finished is because the house is being put up for sale. At least, that was how it worked out in one of our previous abodes. The project wasn’t even a reno. Just a repair.

One cold and blustery Christmas Day, I was cooking a turkey dinner. Twenty guests were gathering around the table in anticipation of the feast. Just as I was taking the bird out of the oven, I heard an unexpected sound, like escaping water, coming from the nearby laundry room. The water was escaping all right, from a gradually enlarging hole in the ceiling. A water pipe had frozen and then burst. We turned off the water supply and had dinner. After a leisurely meal, men with glasses of wine in one hand and sundry tools in the other, headed for the laundry room. Several hours later, the pipe was repaired and the water was back on.

The laundry room ceiling now had a hole in it measuring about 1 foot by 1 foot. We decided to let the whole thing dry for a while. For a while stretched into a long while, which might have been forever had we not had to sell the house…

What reno project or repair in your house is still waiting patiently for the finishing touches?

Are plumbing repairs blue jobs or a pink jobs at your house? What about drywall repair?

Lazy Quotations

Cassandra always hid when she read, though she never quite knew why. It was as if she couldn’t shake the guilty suspicion that she was being lazy, that surrendering herself so completely to something so enjoyable must surely be wrong. But surrender she did. Let herself drop through the rabbit hole and into a tale of magic and mystery.
– Kate Morton –

Happy Sunday, or as I like to call it… ‘Lazy braless bitch in pajamas day.’
– relatably.com –

I always say “morning” instead of “good morning”, because if it was a good morning, I’d still be asleep.
– Author Unknown –

I can’t adult today.
– Author Unknown –

If I won the award for laziness, I would send somebody to pick it up for me.
– Author Unknown –

I’m lazy. But it’s the lazy people who invented the wheel and the bicycle because they didn’t like walking or carrying things.
– Lech Walesa –

I’m Super Lazy today. It’s like normal lazy, but I’m wearing a cape.
– Author Unknown –

In terms of procrastination, today has been wildly successful.
– picturequotes.com –

I prefer the word “indolence.” It makes my laziness seem classier.
– Bernard Williams –

It is better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all.
– James Thurber –

It’s true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?
– Ronald Reagan –

I’ve made it from the bed to the couch. There’s no stopping me now.
– Author Unknown –

Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.
– Jules Renard –

Lazy is such an ugly word. I prefer to call it selective participation.
– Author Unknown –

Lazy Girl Problem #86 – Drying your hands on your pants because you’re too lazy to go get a towel.
– lazygirlproblems –

Lazy Girl Problem #91 – Eathing cold pizza because you don’t feel like microwaving it.
– lazygirlproblems –

Lazy Rule: Can’t reach it, don’t need it.
– Author Unknown –

Life is all about balance. You don’t always need to be getting stuff done. Sometimes it’s perfectly okay, and absolutely necessary, to shut down, kick back, and do nothing.
– Lori Deschene –

Never put off to tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
– Mark Twain –

Organized people are just too lazy to look for things.
– Author Unknown –

People who throw kisses are hopelessly lazy.
– Bob Hope –

Saying ‘Nevermind” because you are too lazy to re-explain the whole story.
– minionslifequotes –

Teens Relate #70: Lazy Rule: Why make your bed when you’re going to get back in it again?
– teensrelate –

There’s never enough time to do all the nothing you want.
– Bill Watterson –

Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy way of doing it.
– Walter Chrysler –

Who says nothing is impossible? I’ve been doing nothing for years.
– Author Unknown –

You can’t teach people to be lazy – either they have it, or they don’t.
– Dagwood Bumstead, Blondie Cartoon –

Ronald Reagan Quotations

Accepting a government grant with its accompanying rules is like marrying a girl and finding out her entire family is moving in with you before the honeymoon.

Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement.

But there are advantages to being elected President. The day after I was elected, I had my high school grades classified Top Secret.

California produces 40% of America’s fresh fruits, vegetables and nuts – the kind you eat. We have had a bumper crop of the other variety, too.

Detente – isn’t that what a farmer has with his turkey – until Thanksgiving?

Do what’s right and you’ll please some of the people and astound the rest.

Even Albert Einstein reportedly needed help on his 1040 form.

Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.

If more government is the answer, then it was a really stupid question.

I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the US Congress.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I’m in a cabinet meeting.

It’s hard, when you’re up to your armpits in alligators, to remember you came here to drain the swamp.

I have learned that one of the most important rules in politics is poise – which means looking like an owl after you have behaved like a jackass.

It’s true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?

I’ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born.

I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.

I was going to have an opening statement, but I decided that what I was going to say I wanted to get a lot of attention, so I’m going to wait and leak it.

Middle age is when you’re faced with two temptations and you choose the one that will get you home by nine o’clock.

Nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program.

One way to make sure crime doesn’t pay would be to let the government run it.

People who think a tax boost will cure inflation are the same ones who believe another drink will cure a hangover.

The most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

The one thing our Founding Fathers could not foresee – they were farmers, professional men, businessmen giving of their time and effort to an idea that became a country – was a nation governed by professional politicians who had an interest in getting re-elected. They probably envisioned a fellow serving a couple of hitches and then eagerly looking forward to getting back to the farm.

The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.

There were so many candidates on the platform that there were not enough promises to go around.

We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.

You can’t be for big government, big taxes and big bureaucracy and still be for the little guy.

You can tell alot about a fellow’s character by his way of eating jellybeans.

Tricky Questions to Test Your Reasoning Skills

Test your mental mettle! Here are some ‘trick’ questions to see if you are thinking ‘outside the box’!

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A clerk at a butcher shop stands five feet ten inches tall and wears size 13 sneakers. What does he weigh?
Answer: Meat

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A doctor give you 3 pills and tells you to take one every half hour. How long will it be until all the pills are taken?
Answer: An hour, assuming you take the first pill at the beginning of the hour, the second pill half way through the hour, and the third pill at the end of the hour.

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A farmer has 10 cows. Lightning kills all but 2 of the cows. How many are still alive?
Answer: Two cows are still alive.

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A 10 foot rope ladder hangs over the side of a boat with the bottom rung on the surface of the water. The rungs are one foot apart, and the tide goes up at the rate of 6 inches per hour. How long will it be until three rungs are covered?
Answer: Never. The boat rises as the tide goes up.

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A little girl kicks a soccer ball. It goes 10 feet and comes back to her. How is this possible?
Answer: The girl kicked the ball straight up. Gravity brought it back to her.

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A man was driving his car on a wild, stormy night. He passed a bus stop, and saw three people waiting for the bus:
1. An old woman who looked as if she is about to die.
2. An old friend who once saved his life.
3. The perfect woman he had been dreaming about for all his life.
Which one did he offer a ride to, knowing that there could only be one passenger in his car?
Answer: He gave his car keys to his old friend, and let him take the elderly lady to the hospital. He stayed behind and waited for the bus with the woman of his dreams.

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A man dressed in all black is walking down the middle of a country lane. Suddenly, a large black car without any lights on comes around a corner and screeches to a halt. How did the driver of the car know to stop?
Answer: It was day time.

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A man has a fox, a chicken, and a sack of grain. He must cross a river, but cannot carry all of them at once. If he leaves the fox with the chicken, the fox will eat the chicken. However, if he leaves the chicken with the grain, the chicken will eat the grain. How can he get all three across safely?
Answer: He takes the chicken over first. Then he goes back and brings the grain, but takes the chicken on the trip back. He leaves the chicken, and takes the fox, which he leaves with the grain. Then he goes back and retrieves the chicken.

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A person fell out of a thirty story building, but lived. With luck and their landing pad not being factors, how could they have survived the fall?
Answer: The person fell out of the first-story window.

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A rooster laid an egg on top of the barn roof. Which way did it roll?
Answer: Roosters don’t lay eggs, so there was no egg to roll in any direction.

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An electric train is moving north at 100mph and a wind is blowing to the west at 10mph. Which way does the smoke blow?
Answer: There is no smoke with an electric train.

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As I was going to St Ives,
I met a man with seven wives,
Each wife had seven sacks;
Each sack had seven cats;
Each cat had seven kittens.
Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,
How many were going to St Ives?
Answer: Just one – I was going to St. Ives. The man with the seven wives was going the other way.

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Before the Mount Everest was discovered, what was the highest mountain in the world?
Answer: Mt. Everest. It was still the highest mountain even if it hadn’t been discovered.

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Billie was born on December 28th, yet her birthday always falls in the summer. How is this possible?
Answer: Billie lives in the southern hemisphere.

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Bob’s father has 4 children. Lance, Laura, and Larry are three of them. Who’s the fourth?
Answer: The fourth child is Bob.

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Can you name three consecutive days without using the words Wednesday, Friday, or Sunday?
Answer: Yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

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Every day, a cyclist crosses the border between Spain and France carrying a bag. No matter how much custom officials investigate him, they do not know what he is smuggling. Do you?
Answer: Bicycles.

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How many animals of each species did Adam take with him on the ark?
Answer: None, Noah took the animals on the ark, not Adam.

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How much soil is in a rectangular hole measuring 2 meters by 3 meters?
Answer: None. A hole doesn’t have any dirt in it or it wouldn’t be called a hole.

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How many legs does an elephant have if you count his trunk as a leg?
Answer: Four. Because calling the trunk a leg doesn’t make it a leg.

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How many sides does a circle have?
Answer: Two. An inside and an outside.

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How many times can you subtract 7 from 83, and what is left afterwards?
Answer: You can subtract it as many times as you want, and it leaves 76 every time.

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How many times can you subtract 10 from 100?
Answer: Once. Next time you would be subtracting 10 from 90.

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I do not speak unless spoken to, many have heard me but none have seen me. What am I?
Answer: An echo.

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If a red house is made from red bricks and a blue house is made from blue bricks and a pink house is made from pink bricks and a black house is made from black bricks, what is a green house made from?
Answer: Greenhouses are made from glass.

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If Mrs. John’s bungalow is decorated completely in pink, with the walls, carpet, and furniture all shades of pink, what color are the stairs?
Answer: There are no stairs, because bungalows do not have a second floor.

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If you had a match and entered a cold and dark room with an oil lamp, a candle, and an oil heater, what do you light first?
Answer: The match. You have to light the match before you can light anything else.

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If a plane crashes on the border between the US and Mexico, where do they bury the survivors?
Answer: Nowhere. Survivors are people who are still alive.

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If you spell “sit for a while in the bathtub” S-O-A-K, and you spell “a funny story” J-O-K-E, how do you spell “the white of an egg”?
Answer: E-G-G-W-H-I-T-E.

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If you put a coin into an empty bottle and then put a cork into the top, how could you remove the coin without taking out the cork or breaking the bottle?
Answer: Push the cork into the bottle and shake the coin out.

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I have a book where the end is in the first half of the book, the forward comes after the epilogue and the index comes before the introduction. What book do I have?
Answer: A Dictionary

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Is it legal for a man to marry his widow’s sister?
Answer: The man would have to be dead for his wife to be a widow, so he won’t be marrying anybody.

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Sam can make 11 beaded necklaces in an hour. Sue can make 12 beaded necklaces in an hour. In one week Sam made necklaces for 6 hours and Sue made them for 3 hours. Who makes more bracelets in the week?
Answer: Nobody was making bracelets.

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Sam can guess the score of a basketball game before the game begins. How can that be?
Answer: The score of the game will be 0 to 0 before the game begins.

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Some months have 30 days, some have 31 days. How many months have 28 days?
Answer: All twelve of them have at least 28 days.

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Say ‘silk’ five times. Now spell ‘silk.’ What do cows drink?
Answer: Cows drink water. (Calves, however, do drink milk…)

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That attorney is my brother, testified the accountant. But the attorney testified he didn’t have a brother. Who is lying?
Answer: Neither, the accountant was his sister.

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There are ten birds perched on a fence. A farmer aims his rifle and shoots one. How many birds are left?
Answer: Only one – the dead bird that the farmer shot. The rest of the birds flew away.

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There are two coins which total 30 cents. One of them is not a nickel. What are the two coins?
Answer: Since only one of them is not a nickel, the other one can be a nickel, so the two coins are a nickel and a quarter.

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There was an airplane crash, every single person on board died, but yet two people survived. How is this possible?
Answer: The two were married, not single.

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What animal can jump higher than a building?
Answer: All animals, buildings don’t jump.

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What breaks and never falls and what falls and never breaks?
Answer: Day breaks and night falls.

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What do you call a person who doesn’t have all of his/her fingers on one hand?
Answer: Normal – most people have all their fingers on two hands, not one.

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What do you put in a toaster?
Answer: Bread.

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What gets bigger the more you take out?
Answer: A hole!

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What gets wetter and wetter the more it dries?
Answer: A towel

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What goes up and down, but still remains in the same place?
Answer: Stairs!

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What has a head and a tail but no body?
Answer: A coin

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What is always coming, but never arrives?
Answer: Tomorrow.

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What is the beginning of eternity, the end of time, the beginning of every end, and the end of every place?
Answer: The letter ‘e’.

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What is sticky and brown?
Answer: A stick.

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What is unusual about these words? revive, banana, grammar, voodoo, assess, potato, dresser, uneven
Answer: If you remove the first letter of each word, and put it at the end of the word, the same word will be spelled backwards.

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What occurs once in June, twice in August, but never in October?
Answer: The letter ‘u’.

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What two words, when combined, hold the most letters?
Answer: Post Office

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What word in the English language is always spelled incorrectly?
Answer: The word that is spelled ‘i-n-c-o-r-r-e-c-t-l-y’ is ‘incorrectly’.

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Without using a calculator – You are driving a bus from Calgary to Edmonton, Alberta.
In Calgary, 17 people get on the bus.
In Airdrie, 6 people get off the bus and 9 people get on.
In Innisfail, 2 people get off and 4 get on.
In Red Deer, 11 people get off and 16 people get on.
In Wetaskiwin, 3 people get off and 5 people get on.
In Leduc, 6 people get off and 3 get on.
You then arrive in Edmonton ..
Without scrolling back to review, how old is the bus driver?
Answer: The bus driver is you, so how old are you?!?

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You are driving a bus. When you begin your route, there is an old woman named Mrs. Smith and a young boy named Raymond are on the bus. At the first stop, the old woman leaves, and a salesman, named Ed, enters. At the next stop, Jack and his sister Jill get on, as well as three women with shopping bags. The bus travels fifteen minutes, then stops and Raymond gets off and a man and his wife get on. Next, a woman with a bird in a cage gets on the bus. What is the name of the bus driver?
Answer: You are the one driving the bus – so what is your name?

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Steven Wright Quotations

Cross country skiing is great if you live in a small country.

Do the people in Australia call the rest of the world ‘Up Over’?

Everyone has a photographic memory, some just don’t have film.

Five out of four people have trouble with fractions.

Honestly, I just go to restaurants to eat so I won’t die. If there was a pill I could take in January and then I wouldn’t have to eat again for the rest of the year, I would take it. Of course, I wouldn’t want to sacrifice my chocolate cake and ice cream.

How come abbreviated is such a long word?

How much deeper would the ocean be if sponges didn’t live there?

I am writing a book. So far I have the pages numbered.

I couldn’t repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.

I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.

If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

I finally got around to reading the dictionary. Turns out the Zebra did it.

If it’s zero degrees outside today and it’s supposed to be twice as cold tomorrow, how cold is it going to be?

If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn’t it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, cowboys deranged, models deposed, tree surgeons debarked, and dry cleaners depressed?

I have the world’s largest collection of seashells. I keep it on all the beaches of the world… perhaps you’ve seen it.

Isn’t the best way to save face to keep the lower part shut?

It doesn’t make a difference what temperature a room is, it’s always room temperature.

Last year I went fishing with Salvador Dali. He was using a dotted line. He caught every other fish.

Right now I’m having amnesia and deja vu at the same time… I think I’ve forgotten this before.

Tell a man that there are 400 billion stars and he’ll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint and he has to touch it.

What happens if you get scared half to death twice?

What’s another word for Thesaurus?

When I turned two I was really anxious, because I’d doubled my age in a year. I thought, if this keeps up, by the time I’m six I’ll be ninety.

When I was a little kid we had a sand box. It was a quicksand box. I was an only child… eventually.

When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any firearms with me. I said, ‘Well, what do you need?’

Why are they called buildings when they’re already finished? Shouldn’t they be called builts?

Why do banks charge you a “non-sufficient funds fee” on money they already know you don’t have?

Why doesn’t glue stick to the inside of the bottle?

Why don’t they make the whole plane out of that black box stuff?

Why isn’t the number 11 pronounced onety one?

Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?

You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?

Marine Life Quotations

Fish

It is much better to eat little fish like sardines directly from the ocean, rather than after they have been filtered through a larger predator.
– Deep Sea News –

If you can think of a better fish pun, let minnow.
– Author Unknown –

The codfish lays ten thousand eggs,
The homely hen lays one;
The codfish never cackles,
To tell you when she’s done;
And so we scorn the codfish,
While the humble hen we prize;
Which only goes to show you,
That it pays to advertise.
– Author Unknown –

What do you call a fish without an eye?
A fsh.
– Author Unknown –

What side of a fish has the most scales?
The outside.
– Author Unknown –

What’s the King of Russia’s favourite fish?
Tsardines.
– Author Unknown –

Fishing

A bad day fishing is better than a good day at work.
– Author Unknown –

A country church – people wonder when Jesus fed the 5,000 whether the two fish were trout or northern pike.
– Author Unknown –

Bait – Live Worms – Guaranteed to catch fish or die trying.
– Author Unknown –

“Carpe Diem” does not mean “fish of the day.”
– Author Unknown –

Bass fishermen watch Monday night football, drink beer, drive pickup trucks and prefer noisy women with big breasts. Trout fishermen watch MacNeil-Lehrer, drink white wine, drive foreign cars with passenger-side air bags and hardly think about women at all. This last characteristic may have something to do with the fact that trout fishermen spend most of the time immersed up to the thighs in ice-cold water.
– Author Unknown –

Everyone should believe in something; I believe I’ll go fishing.
– Henry David Thoreau –

Fishing is a quest for knowledge and wonder as much as a pursuit of fish; it is as much an acquaintance with beavers, dippers, and other fishermen as it is the challenge of catching trout.
– Paul Schullery –

Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach him how to fish and you get rid of him for the whole weekend.
– Zenna Schaffer –

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.
– Author Unknown –

Good things come to those who bait.
– Author Unknown –

I came across a tribe of cannibals who’d been converted by Roman Catholic missionaries. Now, on Friday, they only eat fishermen.
– Max Kauffmann –

If I fished only to capture fish, my fishing trips would have ended long ago.
– Zane Grey –

In Mexico we have a word for sushi: Bait.
– Jose Simon –

I think I fish, in part, because it’s an anti-social, bohemian business that, when gone about properly, puts you forever outside the mainstream culture without actually landing you in an institution.
– John Gierach –

It was always the biggest Fish I caught that got away.
– Eugene Field –

I used to like fishing because I thought it had some larger significance. Now I like fishing because it’s the one thing I can think of that probably doesn’t.
– John Gierach –

Last year I went fishing with Salvador Dali. He was using a dotted line. He caught every other fish.
– Steven Wright –

Men and fish are alike. They both get into trouble when they open their mouths.
– Jimmy D. Moore –

One man’s fish is another man’s poisson.
– Author Unknown –

Question: What do fishermen and hypochondriacs have in common? Answer: They don’t really have to catch anything to be happy.
– Robert Orben –

Scholars have long known that fishing eventually turns men into philosophers. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to buy decent tackle on a philosopher’s salary.
– Patrick McManus –

Sell a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a man how to fish, you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.
– Karl Marx –

Some fisherman view catch-and-release salmon fishing in much the same light as drinking crème de menthe and showing an unnatural interest in soft furnishings. They know some chaps do it – but they would not want one marrying their daughter or putting up for the Club.
– Author Unknown –

The best way to a fisherman’s heart is through his fly.
– Author Unknown –

The fishing was good; it was the catching that was bad.
– A.K. Best –

There are two types of fisherman – those who fish for sport and those who fish for fish.
– Author Unknown –

Three-fourths of the Earth’s surface is water, and one-fourth is land. It is quite clear that the good Lord intended us to spend triple the amount of time fishing as taking care of the lawn.
– Chuck Clark –

Sharks

Interesting fact: a shark will only attack you if you’re wet.
– Sean Lock –

Sharks aren’t so bad. If a stranger came into my house wearing a speedo, I would probably attack him too.
– isfunny.net –

Sharks have been swimming the oceans unchallenged for thousands of years; chances are, the species that roams corporate waters will prove just as hardy.
– Eric Gelman –

There are 350 varieties of shark, not counting loan and pool.
– L.M. Boyd –

Other

I have a large seashell collection which I keep scattered along the beaches around the world. Maybe you’ve seen it.
– Steven Wright –

It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel, New York, wars and so on — whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons.
– Douglas Adams, The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy –

I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be without sponges.
– Variance on a quote by Stephen Wright –

Whales

Dory: Okay, he either said, “move to the back of the throat,” or he “wants a root beer float”.
– Dory the Blue Tang fish, while inside the whales mouth in ‘Finding Nemo’ –

Fiction was invented the day Jonas arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale.
– Gabriel Garcia Marquez –

…if swimming is so good for the figure, how do you explain whales?
– Charles Saatchi –

You can’t catch a whale in Oklahoma. There’s a law against it. You can’t catch a whale in North Dakota, either. No law, just no whales.
– Gus McLeavy –

When Life Gives you Lemons

“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” This is a motivational phrase that encourages optimism and a positive attitude in the face of adversity or misfortune.

So, here is my Lemon story:

Bad news: My Lenovo Computer got fried and it was going to cost a grievous amount to fix it.
Good news: The ASUS Computer I bought to replace it had more features than the Lenovo, and cost less than the Lenovo had… maybe that should have been a warning sign.

Bad news: The ASUS was temperamental and did not always play well with Windows updates.
Good news: The store where I bought it has a helpful geek who could always fix the computer within minutes of my arrival (unannounced).

Bad news: The ASUS got stuck in BIOS diagnostic mode last weekend. Diagnosis: the hard drive died. The computer had to go to the computer hospital for repairs.
Good news: The computer is still under warranty.
And more good news: There is an ASUS repair depot in my Canadian province – otherwise the computer would have had to be shipped to Texas.

My 9 year old Sony laptop – slow, but steady. Built to last!

Good news: My last data back up was 7 days previous, so I didn’t lose too much stuff.
Good news/bad news:  My back-up computer is a nine year old Sony laptop with Windows 7.

It was a speedy machine back in the day. Today – it is feeling its age. It took a few hours to prod it into action. I updated the OS, installed a Security system, and downloaded a few of the programs I like to use for photos. I was good to go. The computer, on the other hand, has let me know it has a few strict guidelines:
– it will not say, for certain, that it will work and play well with any of those newer, snooty programs that believe Windows 7 is old and outdated.
– it doesn’t like to multi-task. Therefore it will not guarantee that any task I ask it to do in the morning will be completed before mid afternoon, if I am also asking it to do something else.

A bit more bad news: It is also dawning on me how many things I didn’t back up – like web browser bookmarks and all the little digital post-it notes on my ‘desktop’. I’ve also lost quite a few flower photos that I had recently downloaded from a new camera.

The Lemonade part of the story. I’ve had a home computer of some description for over 30 years. This is the first time a hard drive has failed and the worst case scenario is I’ve lost a very, very small portion of the data I’ve accumulated in that time. In the big scheme of things, this is a nothing event!

When you have finished backing up the data on your computer, do tell me the worst computer failure you have had!