I've decided to start a new blog on my website.   It gives me a little more control over how it looks and means that people who don't have myspace accounts can leave comments and stuff.     So I may well post place holders linking to the new blog here, but otherwise, that's it's for myspace.

Go check it out.   http://www.phillipdrawbridge.com 

Here's teh EVP that I recorded last year. This time with captions. I uploaded to youTube to get a wider feedback.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLfbOsFW6Y8

Sunday was a day of DIY.  I had two project.  One was to replace the wax gasket on our toilet.   I never even knew they had wax gaskets. I was pretty sure I needed to replace the sleeve, but didn't know anything about wax gaskets.  But a few google searches later and I was pretty confident I could do it.  I mean, how hard could it be?

The second project was to replace a hanging light in our great room.  I've done this loads of times, so no worries.

We go off to Lowes and get everything we need.

I decide to do the toilet first since I figured that would take the longest.  But  emptying the water, undoing the bolts and lifting it up, replacing the old wax seal (which was yuck) I ended up scraping it off with my expired car plate (It's all we could find), and putting the new one on, and bolting it to the floor only about 40 minutes had passed!   I was impressed with myself and ready to tackle the much easier job of replacing the light.

Sigh!

I held up the new (very heavy) light fixture in place and cut enough of the cable so I could wire it in.   And then worked out the the cable had to actually go through the centre of the colt that held it in place.   Anyway, after feeding the cable through the bolt it wasn't really long enough to wire it in.   SO I had to splice the short cables to longer cable and then wire that to the power cables.   But there was now so much cable, not to mention connectors that When i screwed it to the ceiling it shorted out.   SO I had to take the new lamp apart to rewire it.   Mind you it has 9 bulbs!  it's like a chandelier , so 18 wires!  BLAH!   I rewire it and feed the new longer cable up through and, woohoo, manage to wire it up and then find out the the bolt is too long for our ceiling, which has a metal cross beam which meant the lamp was hanging with a gap.   The only option it to get a shorter bolt.   Off we go to Lowes again and I show them what I want.  "Aha," says the guy, "You need a steel nipple."   I do a double take and then follow him with some trepedation.  He hands me a packet and woudln't you know it, on the packet they are called steel nipples.   I take my nipples home and use the shorter one to hang the chandelier.  Put in a bulb and flip the breakers and OH MY GOD IT WORKS!!!!   Amazing how bright 9 40watt bulbs are.  We'll probably never turn the thing on again.

It took over 4 hours to put this stupid lamp up.   But Gale loves it, so it's all worth while.  Next project is to get a dimmer switch for it, so we can actually turn it on without burning our retinas and stop planes trying to land in our garden.


Here's the Lamp

I was watching the news just now and there are two new surveys that caught my attention.

People who eat too much too fast are more likely to become obese.

And

People who eat unhealthy food are more likely to have heart disease.

I'm glad that the hundreds of thousands of dollars are being pumped into research like this.

Gale being the queen of paper that she is came across this website and I had to share it.

http://www.petercallesen.com/index/A4PAPERCUT_000.htm

I have my fancy new computer, which is pretty nifty.  Which means I've managed to cut the EVP down to a manageable size.

For those of you who don't know, EVP stands for Electronic Voice Phenomenon.  The idea is that in a haunted place you have a recorder recording and you ask questions of the spirits.   "Is there anybody there?", "Can you tell me your name?"  but you don't hear the reply when you are there, but the electronic recorder will pick it up.

We went to a graveyard a few weeks back and I was recording the whole time.   This recording was part when we weren't asking questions.  You can hear Phil reading the names off gravestones and then you hear what sounds like a higher pitched voice.

Listen first and then scroll down to see what we made of it.

EVP MP3 format.


You hear Phil say "Winnifreda Bird 1912 to 1922"  then you'll hear a high "Whooo!"  like an owl.   And it could have been an owl I guess, but we didn't hear it at the time.  Then a few more chirping crickets then a repeated sound.  
Then you'll hear "over there"  and then a few seconds later "please"   none of this was heard when we where there.
A few seconds after this you can hear them say something else, but I was moving so it's hard to make out.

Let me know what you make out.

With Gale cheering along,  I finally ordered a new computer.  I suspect she just doesn't want my club ands bashing her laptops keyboard anymore.

It's a Compaq Presario but I got a good deal from Newegg.  Intel Dual Core and 2gb ram with a 250GB HDD for less than $400! 

I'm happy.  Just got to work out how to get stuff of my old hard drive.  Hopefully the new computer can accept old IDE drives and not just SATA.

I didn't mention the police.

When we were ghosthunting, the others went back to the car and  a police car drove past them and asked if they were OK.   They replied yes and that we were ghosthunting.
"Ghost Hunting?!" said the cop and then said that he would tell all the other cops that we were ghost hunting, without guns.

Then on the way home we stopped so that Gale and Phil could take photos of a sunflower field.  There was even a sign that said you're welcome to take photos.  Up draws a police car and sounds the siren and makes us move on.

2 run ins, no ticket.  A good weekend.

My Kin wanted to go ghost hunting, so we decided to check out a few cemeteries in Michigan. I didn't hold out much hope, since graveyards normally have people who are at rest. And this seemed true the first night when we caught nothing. It was calm, peaceful, comfortable even.

The second night though was different. We went to an older graveyard and from the moment we entered both Phil and myself felt uneasy. There was something different. We did some EVP and wandered around. I was alone in one corner at one point and heard footsteps int he dry grass as clear as anything. To the point that I thought one of the others was coming to join me. I also heard a low growl. I asked if they could make the sound again but heard nothing else.

When we returned to the car Phil told me he had heard footsteps too and he was quite far away from anyone. Plus my niece and step son also had hear footsteps where they were. So we had all heard something.

We stopped at another graveyard and Phil and I walked around. Phil had the EMF detector and was picking up a constant signal. At one point it went to a 3 and even in my sister-in-law's house it only managed to get up to .5

All pretty cool. I had a digital recorder running the whole time and my Brother-in-law listened this morning and heard the growl very clearly. So I'm going to play that myself and see what else I pick up.

A great weekend all in all. Great food. We had sausages and sweet corn. And I made caramelised onions which went down well.

I'll let you know about the EVP.

Coincidence is a funny old thing.

Last week we were watching a programme about really tall people and Phil mentioned that the tallest women in the world lives in Indiana.  I'd never heard of her and thought it was pretty cool, but thought nothing more of it.
The next day she died!    What are the chances of that?
The following day i was pricing nostalgia books and pulled out a signed copy of her book!!!   What are the chances of that!!! 

Gale and Phil are putting some cosmic significance on it and want me to buy the book.   I just shrug these things off.  The universe is a weird place and stuff like this probably happens all the time, we just don't notice it.

Another coincidence I've noticed is that when I have a bonus coming, something happens to eat it up.    This time it's a biggy.  My computer died yesterday.   I thought it was the graphics card, but I had it tested and it works fine.  The monitor works fine when plugged into Gale's laptop (which I'm using now).  I get BIOS beeps, so know the MB is working, but it doesn't do anything else.   I suspect the processor is fried or the MB is failing.  Gonna have to buy a new one I guess.    I've seen a Presario Dual-Core with 2GB ram and 350GB hard drive for just under 400 which is a deal.    Just need to wait for my bonus.

I feel somewhat strange.  Like I've lost a pet or an arm or something.   Weird feeling.   I've not been without a computer for over 20 years.   I'm just thankful that Gale lets me use her laptop.   But hey, it could have been worse.  My hard drive could have failed.   That would be devastating.