wcg (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wcg) wrote2025-08-01 12:14 am
wcg) wrote2025-08-01 12:14 am
Rabbit! Rabbit! Rabbit!
Happy Kalends of Sextillis! Are you ready for Nemoralia?
Happy Kalends of Sextillis! Are you ready for Nemoralia?
ianuk (ianuk) wrote2025-07-31 09:54 am
ianuk) wrote2025-07-31 09:54 amI'd like to be in a drunken stupor...but I have to adult.
I have had insomnia through the middle of the nights Ive seen too much of 2-430AM recently. But last night i was only up at 220am to pee and then back to bed. I've turned my fan on full blast and only slept in a a shelf bra and boxers. It was much better sleep than the days before. I've also been working on my hydration which I'm sure was lacking a bit.
I was so tired yesterday that I barely made it through knit night. I got home, make a gin drink and then hit bed early.
Knit night was good it was nice to see everyone. I knit on my sock and chatted with folks. I got Poke for dinner and that was super tasty.
Tomorrow I will not be in the office but have a limited day and have to drop Benton off for orientation, hit my waxing appt, and then I may just say eff it. Benton has a party at 5pm or so.
We will start our work on the declutter this weekend with the front closet and Front room. I'd like to start using the table again and if we are able to rearrange the room and get rid of some things or make things easier to store that would be helpful. I also want to streamline my tools for the house which are in the closet. So lots to do and work on and I'm sure a chunk to good will.
Death is hungry this week. Remy's mom died from Cancer yesterday. A coworker's FIL had an aneurism and isn't expected to make it. oof.
I was so tired yesterday that I barely made it through knit night. I got home, make a gin drink and then hit bed early.
Knit night was good it was nice to see everyone. I knit on my sock and chatted with folks. I got Poke for dinner and that was super tasty.
Tomorrow I will not be in the office but have a limited day and have to drop Benton off for orientation, hit my waxing appt, and then I may just say eff it. Benton has a party at 5pm or so.
We will start our work on the declutter this weekend with the front closet and Front room. I'd like to start using the table again and if we are able to rearrange the room and get rid of some things or make things easier to store that would be helpful. I also want to streamline my tools for the house which are in the closet. So lots to do and work on and I'm sure a chunk to good will.
Death is hungry this week. Remy's mom died from Cancer yesterday. A coworker's FIL had an aneurism and isn't expected to make it. oof.
ursulas_alcove (ursulas_alcove) wrote2025-07-30 06:40 pm
ursulas_alcove) wrote2025-07-30 06:40 pmEntry tags:
Imagine
With Climate Change, this will be the coolest summer of the rest of your life. It is currently 87° inside the house. It is 91° outside with a wet bulb temperature of 98° F. The humidity is down so we are no longer in a heat warning area. It's back to a livable 48%. It beats the 90% stuff from the previous week.
When we moved to the Pittsburgh area, some 30 years ago, it never got above 87°. When the temperature reached that high, the air quality was extremely dangerous. In a typical summer, it hit that 87 one or two days. If you did go outside and mow your lawn or exercise, your lungs would hurt. The air has been cleaned up a bit since then, but there are still days when it smells like a fire-breathing dragon just landed on your lawn. Except now, 90° temps are now the norm and for a much longer period of time. A couple years back, to prove a point, an artist pixelated the side of a downtown building with color coded air quality modules. You could physically see how bad the air was every day while the project was going on. Sadly, they took it down and moved it to another city.
They are now removing the air quality act from the EPA's mandate. It was created because of a deadly inversion in Donora, PA ,not far from me. The smog from the steel mills killed 20 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Donora_smog
They are reopening fossil fuel power plants to create a high tech data center, ie AI. His Highness was in town and although he fell asleep, he boasted 90 million in federal funding to make sure my air stinks again. I am not amused. Electricity prices are set to rise another 30% because of the data centers. They'll also be using a lot of our water.
Shell has also invested heavily in the region by building an exane plant to make plastics. It has not stopped violating clean air standards since it was built. It also had a toxic fire recently, causing another evacuation. I say another because the same area was hit with the toxic Norfolk Southern train derailment and fire. That area had prevailing winds hit it during the derailment event even though we are on the other side of a state line. And don't get me started on the nearby radioactive injection well/dump. The very first nuclear power plants were developed here. Pittsburgh is the home of Westinghouse. The power plant and injection wells are located in Beaver, PA along the Ohio River. I pity people down stream.
Madame Curie was here and discovered Polandium, way back in the day. You can see the radioactive dump in Strabane for the Zaire uranium mine trailings from when she came to the area. It's sealed off. The EPA checks it every couple of years. I hope they don't defund that program. Gases can build up and need to be vented. I have very unfavorable opinions on nuclear energy. PBS produced (and then made it disappear) a documentary about the missing Class of 1978 (Canonsburg, PA). All dead now. The Zaire mine trailings were used to create ball fields for the high school. They were considered low level radiation. After playing sports on them for their whole lives, all those kids died of strange cancers. They were the missing class. I have searched and can find no reference to the movie. It was probably produced by WQED, the same folks who brought you Mister Rodger's Neighborhood.
On the plus side, almost everyone I worked with 30 years ago, got strange cancers, causing this area to have some of the best hospitals and treatment centers for cancer. Lung cancer was the most common for people who grew up here. One of the sharpest guys in our manufacturing center had a brain tumor. It was inoperable but it wasn't growing and he was happy to receive early retirement. Can you imagine accepting that as normal?
What do I think of all this? I think no matter where you live in the US, there are crimes against nature. The above are the ones I know of in my area. Whether it is spraying for mosquitoes and killing all the bats, or spraying herbicides which kills the bees, using DDT which was prevalent in the midwest, killing the seagulls, the environment has been poisoned by humans. We did it to ourselves. We are causing the climate change, the pollution, and poisoning ourselves. We need to demand higher standards of our leaders. We need to make the environment part of the stupid polls. The pollsters don't even have it on their list of concerns when calling people during elections. Locally, our only group of activists is the Center for Coalfield Justice. Who stands up for the environment where you live?
When we moved to the Pittsburgh area, some 30 years ago, it never got above 87°. When the temperature reached that high, the air quality was extremely dangerous. In a typical summer, it hit that 87 one or two days. If you did go outside and mow your lawn or exercise, your lungs would hurt. The air has been cleaned up a bit since then, but there are still days when it smells like a fire-breathing dragon just landed on your lawn. Except now, 90° temps are now the norm and for a much longer period of time. A couple years back, to prove a point, an artist pixelated the side of a downtown building with color coded air quality modules. You could physically see how bad the air was every day while the project was going on. Sadly, they took it down and moved it to another city.
They are now removing the air quality act from the EPA's mandate. It was created because of a deadly inversion in Donora, PA ,not far from me. The smog from the steel mills killed 20 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Donora_smog
They are reopening fossil fuel power plants to create a high tech data center, ie AI. His Highness was in town and although he fell asleep, he boasted 90 million in federal funding to make sure my air stinks again. I am not amused. Electricity prices are set to rise another 30% because of the data centers. They'll also be using a lot of our water.
Shell has also invested heavily in the region by building an exane plant to make plastics. It has not stopped violating clean air standards since it was built. It also had a toxic fire recently, causing another evacuation. I say another because the same area was hit with the toxic Norfolk Southern train derailment and fire. That area had prevailing winds hit it during the derailment event even though we are on the other side of a state line. And don't get me started on the nearby radioactive injection well/dump. The very first nuclear power plants were developed here. Pittsburgh is the home of Westinghouse. The power plant and injection wells are located in Beaver, PA along the Ohio River. I pity people down stream.
Madame Curie was here and discovered Polandium, way back in the day. You can see the radioactive dump in Strabane for the Zaire uranium mine trailings from when she came to the area. It's sealed off. The EPA checks it every couple of years. I hope they don't defund that program. Gases can build up and need to be vented. I have very unfavorable opinions on nuclear energy. PBS produced (and then made it disappear) a documentary about the missing Class of 1978 (Canonsburg, PA). All dead now. The Zaire mine trailings were used to create ball fields for the high school. They were considered low level radiation. After playing sports on them for their whole lives, all those kids died of strange cancers. They were the missing class. I have searched and can find no reference to the movie. It was probably produced by WQED, the same folks who brought you Mister Rodger's Neighborhood.
On the plus side, almost everyone I worked with 30 years ago, got strange cancers, causing this area to have some of the best hospitals and treatment centers for cancer. Lung cancer was the most common for people who grew up here. One of the sharpest guys in our manufacturing center had a brain tumor. It was inoperable but it wasn't growing and he was happy to receive early retirement. Can you imagine accepting that as normal?
What do I think of all this? I think no matter where you live in the US, there are crimes against nature. The above are the ones I know of in my area. Whether it is spraying for mosquitoes and killing all the bats, or spraying herbicides which kills the bees, using DDT which was prevalent in the midwest, killing the seagulls, the environment has been poisoned by humans. We did it to ourselves. We are causing the climate change, the pollution, and poisoning ourselves. We need to demand higher standards of our leaders. We need to make the environment part of the stupid polls. The pollsters don't even have it on their list of concerns when calling people during elections. Locally, our only group of activists is the Center for Coalfield Justice. Who stands up for the environment where you live?
ianuk (ianuk) wrote2025-07-30 09:41 am
ianuk) wrote2025-07-30 09:41 amEntry tags:
I'm tired.
The last few days have been a lot. I spent a lot of time on the phone or text with the step family, my cousin, the landscapers etc to get the property cleaned up. I am having panic about the house not being fine and then another storm hit last night but no damage.
The sign in the photo in this article is a mile north from my house and you can see my cousin's farm in the back ground.
I left work and came home and just laid down to dissociate for an hour before I picked Benton up from martial arts. I did not go to the gym but the previous night of sleeping on the couch for a few hours didn't help me and the day was mentally tiring.
We had to get Benton new shoes for school. He likes super bright highlighter colors for shoes and Famous Brand shoes had zip in any color. We walked out and walked into the newest Ross to open and found a hot pink size 12 that he liked and they fit for $55. And a new wallet for him of $7. So I call that good. We headed to the grocer to pick a few things up and they have converted our local Safeway to almost all self check out. Which I fucking despise. Got home and I was tired, over stimmed, and the kitchen was cluttered and I just could not cope. Benton tried to be helpful but I snapped at him cause it wasn't my way (not his fault he really did try and I was just not in the right mental state). I explained after I got dinner on the table (fresh veggie, sausage egg burritos) that everything was too much and I did not mean to take it out on him. I just could not regulate and that was on me not him. Too many straws, camel backs and not enough sleep.
I had a few beers and went to bed early. Benton did too. I woke up at 2am too hot, wide awake, and shaky. So I got up, drank a big glass of water with electrolytes and ice, took some meds and read for a bit before I finally fell back to sleep after 330-4am. I woke when the sun hit the skylight in the bathroom at 5am but fell back asleep until alarms at 6am. I need to set mine earlier and I've been pushing it back so tomorrow will be 545 and get up and move so I can get us out the door by 640am daily for bus drop off at 650am. We can do it. We used to do that all the time pre-Covid times. But I've gotten used to slacking on the schedule. If this all works this means my work schedule will shift to a bit earlier. That will be nice but today is to survive and then go to bed early and hopefully sleep the night away.
The sign in the photo in this article is a mile north from my house and you can see my cousin's farm in the back ground.
I left work and came home and just laid down to dissociate for an hour before I picked Benton up from martial arts. I did not go to the gym but the previous night of sleeping on the couch for a few hours didn't help me and the day was mentally tiring.
We had to get Benton new shoes for school. He likes super bright highlighter colors for shoes and Famous Brand shoes had zip in any color. We walked out and walked into the newest Ross to open and found a hot pink size 12 that he liked and they fit for $55. And a new wallet for him of $7. So I call that good. We headed to the grocer to pick a few things up and they have converted our local Safeway to almost all self check out. Which I fucking despise. Got home and I was tired, over stimmed, and the kitchen was cluttered and I just could not cope. Benton tried to be helpful but I snapped at him cause it wasn't my way (not his fault he really did try and I was just not in the right mental state). I explained after I got dinner on the table (fresh veggie, sausage egg burritos) that everything was too much and I did not mean to take it out on him. I just could not regulate and that was on me not him. Too many straws, camel backs and not enough sleep.
I had a few beers and went to bed early. Benton did too. I woke up at 2am too hot, wide awake, and shaky. So I got up, drank a big glass of water with electrolytes and ice, took some meds and read for a bit before I finally fell back to sleep after 330-4am. I woke when the sun hit the skylight in the bathroom at 5am but fell back asleep until alarms at 6am. I need to set mine earlier and I've been pushing it back so tomorrow will be 545 and get up and move so I can get us out the door by 640am daily for bus drop off at 650am. We can do it. We used to do that all the time pre-Covid times. But I've gotten used to slacking on the schedule. If this all works this means my work schedule will shift to a bit earlier. That will be nice but today is to survive and then go to bed early and hopefully sleep the night away.
Monica (cellio) wrote2025-07-29 08:08 pm
cellio) wrote2025-07-29 08:08 pmdesk experiments
Dani and I both concluded, at about the same time, that our office chairs were past their use-by dates. We both also want to test a chair, not just order blind, so we headed off to a well-stocked office-supply store and found replacements. (As it turned out, we both liked the same model.)
While we were there I asked if they had any kneeling chairs, because I'd like to try varying my posture. I had one of those 30+ years ago that I liked (at work), but also encountered several I didn't like, so I definitely want to try first. (Also, I don't know if it's compatible with the arthritis that is starting to form in one knee.) Alas, the sales rep said, that business has moved entirely online, so I gave up on that.
I had a height-adjustable (sit or stand) desk at my last job, back before Covid. Replacing my current desk would be a pain (as well as expensive), but after we got the chairs I started looking at "adapters", an adjustable thing you can put on your desk to raise a platform rather than the whole desk. Many of them make strong (maybe even binding) assumptions about monitor placement that do not work with my vision, but eventually I found a "just raise this (basically) rectangle and don't do anything else" model with metal, not plastic, core parts.
With nothing on it the platform lifts easily (there's a control on one side). With a monitor that is well below the rated weight limit, the first few inches of lifting are a fair bit of work, and then it goes fine. Lowering is easy. I switch back and forth once or twice a day, so that initial push is ok; if I were working full-time and wanting to change it up every hour or so, it might be more annoying.
I thought of half of a second-order effect. With this setup, even with the desk lowered the platform is about three inches higher than the desk surface. That's ok, I said; I'll just raise the chair. I rejected similar products that added more "resting" height; I did think about this. The part I didn't think about is that I'm short, so that change to chair height makes the difference between my feet reaching the floor and not. So now I am experimenting with footrests, courtesy of a friend, one of which is visible in the photo. I think this is the style I want, particularly if I can get a wedge of foam to stick in there to hold the "V" shape.
It all goes to show that you can't change just one thing. So far, though, I think this is working out.
kellan (kellan_the_tabby) wrote2025-07-29 03:51 pm
kellan_the_tabby) wrote2025-07-29 03:51 pmEntry tags:
Battlemoor: the boys
[Major Tom, a big grey tabby, lounges on his side under a camping chair. Sparse, yellow-green grass grows around him. He’s staring just to the right of the camera, whiskers perked but ears at ease.]
Major Tom did really well, & I’m proud of him! But it took him a couple of days.
He didn’t want to leave the van at all, during setup. He was perfectly happy there — purring, kneading, entirely content with his life — but actually _leaving_ the van was apparently Right Out. I had to pry him out eventually, of course, but I waited til it was time to park the van, & he had his Uncle Ivar to keep an eye on him. Once I was back, he actually came out far enough to realize that Uncle Ivar has a vardo, & decide that it was just as congenial a spot for a tomcat as my vardo is.
The next day he barely left the sleeping tent, but I hadn’t expected him to. He peeked out a couple times, & ventured over to Ivar’s vardo again, thus setting the pattern for the rest of the week, which was ‘spend as much time in a vardo as he’s allowed to’. Alas, the vardo in question is enough smaller than Tyrava that it heats up quite a lot more, so we had to pry him out in the early afternoon every day. He didn’t love it, but he accepted his fate.
… what worked to get him to actually stand up & head outside every time? Me telling him that his public was waiting for him.
He’s getting the hang of it.
[Major Tom, seen from above, is flopped on a pile of red, white, and grey fabric. His ears are firmly stuck out to the side.]
He also, of course, interfered with my sewing, but that’s what he’s a cat for.
Loiosh had his usual excellent time, spending most of his days asleep, & also a lot of his nights, but then, he’s an old man.
[Loiosh, an orange tabby wearing a green harness, is half-curled up, asleep, on top of a patchwork wool blanket. The end of his tail is curled round til it’s almost a spiral.]
He did have his usual shenanigans, which I mostly failed to get pictures of, but he did enjoy thwarting CJ’s attempts to keep him from being A Pest.
[CJ is sitting between the display tables; he’s wearing a long blue tunic and a white linen coif. Loiosh is standing on his lap, wiggling to try to get free of CJ’s arms, which are loosely wrapped around him. One of Loiosh’s forepaws sits right at CJ’s elbow, a claw stuck in the fabric; his head, twisted around to stare grimly away from CJ, is all the way over at CJ’s hand.]
But then, that’s the boy.
[Loiosh has unstuck his claw, and is now leaning dejectedly against CJ’s arms, head turned just far enough that he’s still not looking at CJ’s face.]
He also got to meet Marisol’s sister Alexx, who travels with Morgyn’s mom, & instead of promptly chasing her out of the booth he gave her a good long sniff — she actually growled at him first! So she absolutely smelled familiar. Alas that Alexx wasn’t feeling near so potentially friendly …
originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!
ianuk (ianuk) wrote2025-07-29 01:13 pm
ianuk) wrote2025-07-29 01:13 pmEntry tags:
Well that isn't as bad as it could be....
So there is no damage to the house that can be seen from outside. Yay. The clean up can be handled by my landscapers and we should be okay. Lost the tree I badly pruned on the SW corner of the house so I'm okay with that. But things could be a lot worse. There is also metal pieces from somewhere in the trees on the road side. Not sure if they are from Ruby's, somewhere else, or the silo.
Luckily my landscapers are fast and are heading over to start getting things cleaned up. The silo that I've taken many a good photo of and I do not own...is gone. Wow. That was the marker you could see our property for miles around. I'm kinda sad on that. but we lost about 25 trees.
In other news, my step brother died of a heart attack. Its not surprising since its genetic but still sad. Still no idea on if they are even doing a service.
Luckily my landscapers are fast and are heading over to start getting things cleaned up. The silo that I've taken many a good photo of and I do not own...is gone. Wow. That was the marker you could see our property for miles around. I'm kinda sad on that. but we lost about 25 trees.
In other news, my step brother died of a heart attack. Its not surprising since its genetic but still sad. Still no idea on if they are even doing a service.
ianuk (ianuk) wrote2025-07-29 10:20 am
ianuk) wrote2025-07-29 10:20 amEntry tags:
- death,
- storm,
- summerhouse,
- ugh,
- wtaf
When it rains it pours....
So in the friends group we have Goblin who has now passed the rainbow bridge yesterday and now Gheeka is doing poorly. That was a blow last night at Ari's for me. She did not want my snuggles or my pets.
Figured out at the same time that power was lost at the Dahka and a huge derecho was expected. And it slammed Hudson. My cousin lost some outbuildings and lots of trees. My neighbor Ruby is okay and has lots of trees down.
Reports on the storm Sioux Falls News, Area news, more, and dont travel in Hudson .
Power finally came back up and I was able to see a lot of trees down. I will do comparisons later but damn. We needed to do more trees any way but sighs.
So before all of that mess I finished work and took Benton back to school shopping which included a cell phone. That part was actually easy though activation took a bit since he has a google account but his dad has the parental controls (this was setup for the xbox so yeah). I also got a new phone but the transfer took a few hours but that was okay. Benton got a Moto G Stylus and I got the new iphone 16 pro Max. They gave me like $1000 for trade in on my old phone so yeah. Shopping for clothes went pretty well. And I got $50 off at Old Navy using my card with them so that was nice. He got 4 pants, 4 shirts and undies. Tonight will be new shoes and other than trying to get us all on an early schedule we should be good for the start of school.
But yeah I just want to curl into a ball for a bit. But the weather is hot and the house is hot due to it being 40% humidity now so the evap doesn't work and I was so hot I went to the family room and slept in front of the fan on the couch for 3 hours last night. I'm tired but I got up, got going and amazon decided to deliver a package to my neighbors alley gate versus our front porch. WTAF? You had put on in the correct spot like 2 hours before that? UGH. Its maddening.
So yeah things are weird. I will see if we have house damage today with my cousin doing an inspection and then see about getting a clean up crew to come and take care of the downed trees. I will have to call an arborist to plant new ones and that was on the plan anyway for next year since some of the older ever greens were dying anyway. But this has just added so much to fucking MONDAY AND TUESDAY of our first week home? Ugh.
Figured out at the same time that power was lost at the Dahka and a huge derecho was expected. And it slammed Hudson. My cousin lost some outbuildings and lots of trees. My neighbor Ruby is okay and has lots of trees down.
Reports on the storm Sioux Falls News, Area news, more, and dont travel in Hudson .
Power finally came back up and I was able to see a lot of trees down. I will do comparisons later but damn. We needed to do more trees any way but sighs.
So before all of that mess I finished work and took Benton back to school shopping which included a cell phone. That part was actually easy though activation took a bit since he has a google account but his dad has the parental controls (this was setup for the xbox so yeah). I also got a new phone but the transfer took a few hours but that was okay. Benton got a Moto G Stylus and I got the new iphone 16 pro Max. They gave me like $1000 for trade in on my old phone so yeah. Shopping for clothes went pretty well. And I got $50 off at Old Navy using my card with them so that was nice. He got 4 pants, 4 shirts and undies. Tonight will be new shoes and other than trying to get us all on an early schedule we should be good for the start of school.
But yeah I just want to curl into a ball for a bit. But the weather is hot and the house is hot due to it being 40% humidity now so the evap doesn't work and I was so hot I went to the family room and slept in front of the fan on the couch for 3 hours last night. I'm tired but I got up, got going and amazon decided to deliver a package to my neighbors alley gate versus our front porch. WTAF? You had put on in the correct spot like 2 hours before that? UGH. Its maddening.
So yeah things are weird. I will see if we have house damage today with my cousin doing an inspection and then see about getting a clean up crew to come and take care of the downed trees. I will have to call an arborist to plant new ones and that was on the plan anyway for next year since some of the older ever greens were dying anyway. But this has just added so much to fucking MONDAY AND TUESDAY of our first week home? Ugh.
jducoeur (jducoeur) wrote2025-07-28 10:32 pm
jducoeur) wrote2025-07-28 10:32 pmDance!
Oh, and here's a little note worth calling out:
Over the past year, I've been getting more into Scottish Country Dance. I'm by no means an expert -- sadly, I've had to accept that I'm not as bouncy as I once was, and after fracturing my foot a couple of years ago I'm allowing my style to be loose and sloppy -- but I've become a regular member of the Gender-Free Scottish Country Dance class happening in the NESFA Clubhouse twice a month, and am quite enjoying it.
A couple of weeks ago was ESCape, the annual Pinewoods week co-hosted by the local English, Scottish, and Contra communities, which has become a highlight of my annual schedule. Classes all day and balls all night, it's a dancer's dream, and the community is relatively young, queer, geeky, and thoroughly fun to be around.
A particular tidbit this year was the day where Sorcy taught McCloud's Wedding (? I think that was the name), a delightfully weird, intricate, five-couple dance where basically everybody is active. Wild stuff, and at the end of the rather large class they asked for ten volunteers to perform a demo set during the ESCape Chocolate Party on Thursday. They got over a dozen volunteers, so I demurred, but told them that if they came up short, they should pull me in.
Not astonishingly, the party rolled around and they were short on people, so I got grabbed for a quick once-through and then on to the performance. And it was caught on video, so if you're curious what this SCD stuff looks like (in a rather complex form), give it a look!
ianuk (ianuk) wrote2025-07-28 08:31 am
ianuk) wrote2025-07-28 08:31 amTravel for the first home...complete
Thursdays pack up was pretty stressful. We were all tired and I was kinda in a manic mode. I really really did not want to go. Another week or so would have been perfect. But with Benton's school dates set we really couldn't. So, tonight after work will be getting him a cell phone and shopping for clothes, and a new back pack. I'm dreading the phone. We had hoped to only get him a flip phone for calls and texts but I guess we don't get to pick that. Sighs.
But with him riding the bus and friends etc it will be nice to get a hold of him but he really doesn't want one either. Lol.
But the packup and doing things around the house was exhausting and I was over tired and didn't get to bed until way too late but I was still asleep before mel came to bed even later. We slept in until 630am...had wanted 6am but with that 1am ish bedtime it was a no go. We got things loaded with a good clip and cleaning out the fridge meant some wild life will be living large on the offerings we left at the edge of the woods. But things went into our two coolers Though because of how we packed we didn't have the coolers accessible except when we stopped but that was okay. I drove the first leg to just into Kansas. We did get Taco Johns for our last taste of midwest texan mex food in Grand Island Nebraska. We arrived in La Junta Colorado 730pm local time and after we unloaded the cats and go bags we hit up Boss Hogg's It was basic and we had the local beer Tivoli's Outlaw Light. Its a light beer but perfect after the long drive.
We got back to the hotel and chilled watching Twister and then part of mummy returns. Mel crashed the hell out on the bed fully clothed. I got Benton to shower and got ready for bed and lights outed us at 11pm. I set the alarm for 7am but I was awake at like 615am. At some point mel had gotten out of driving clothes and properly into bed but I slept okay. The cats were snuggling at our feet here and there or on Mel's hip. My only complaint about holiday inn express is that the beds have a gap under them at the back that cats can get into. And Tasha was being a PITA to get in the carrier. But holiday inn breakfast, and easily accessible ice machine and on the road we went. I drove us to Albuquerque where we got lunch at 5Guys. Feeding the teenager has been "a thing" and with his meds he doesn't realize he's hungry just angry and snippy. So we've made sure to get "double" meals for things like a shake with his burger and fries and a quesadilla with his big burrito. Mel was still tired when we was taking over so I got him a coffee shake at 5 guys and that got a big thumbs up from him and he drove us all the way home to Tucson. Now we were a bit squirrely at the end but we did take some good walk/potty breaks so that was good too. Got home, got unloaded, and we noticed the center support on the middle shelf of the fridge was cracked. Mel pulled the shelf out and was cleaning the glass when it shattered. ooops.
Luckily I got online and found the parts we needed and ordered them but am currently on hold with the company since there was an issue and the order is on hold? But it should be an easy fix. Hopefully. I was hopeful on Saturday night but we shall see. Anyhoo. Mel got that cleaned up (with the use of the shopvac cause glass was into the disposal. I ordered pizza from Mod and headed to pick it up. We were all hungry but tired and warm. The house only gets down to like 83 when its 100+ out. So we had food, a few beers and then we were all in bed pretty early cause time zones are a thing. I awoke super early on Sunday 6am and just read on my phone for a while. My back was not happy with me and I was AWAKE. So I got up and out into the family room to ready and sit up for a while. Mel got up a bit later and made coffee. He was all about putting things away and I was just a lump but I got up after my first coffee was done, got dressed and started puttering. We got benton up and headed to Joe's for breakfast.
It was old home week literally, Mary was back in town and all of the waitresses that have known us for decades came to chat. Our waitress was like "well obviously you must be regulars" and "I'm new". We explained we weren't as regular as we used to be but we still come in from time to time. The food was good, chatting with Mary and catching up on things was good as well. We got back and then I started on my puttering to get things put away a bit. My back was unhappy when ever I got up from sitting down. I wasn't too worried since I had smartly scheduled a massage for that afternoon but boy was it angry. My massage was only 60mins and my body fought it but it did loosen and then I did a bit of walking to shop at Daiso and Petsmart and Ulta which were across the parking lot from my massage place. We will soon be getting a Bed Bath and Beyond there too which is nice. The walk did wonders for me as did when I got home I put all of my clothing from the trip away, picked up my studio and set it to rights for the work day and just tidied. Mel made potato/carrot mash to go with the cooked pork chops we transported from SD and we had a nice evening.
I slept well once I reconfigured to a big stiff pillow for my knees and that helped my back tremendously. But we will be shopping for a new mattress cause yeah. Today I've been walking a bunch around the house and once my afternoon meetings hit I will do standing desk as well. But its hot in the house and I have my fan blowing on me but not much more that I can do since its evap cooling and even though the humidity is stoopid low its 104F.
So tonight will be shopping with Benton and then heading to scriptorium. I've missed the girls and I need to start working on laying out Cael's scroll. The stones we've picked up aren't big but that means I need to get working on detail. I'm hoping we can flatten one a bit if not I will head to the stone places and find a nice piece again. But the fact we roadside geology things is part of the fun.
While I've been poking away at writing this I got two death notices:
1) My stepbrother was found dead in his room near flagstaff. Autopsy today. My eldest stepsister called me to tell me and that was all the info they had. He would have been 49 in October. I had not seen him in 19 years (his dad's funeral) and had no idea had had moved to Arizona.
2) Arsenda passed at dawn this AM. I had left messages and I hope they were read to her. This fucking sucks. I've since now texted her partner and got hugs in return on text. He was my cousin Baron so long love there. Sighs. This sucks so hard.
But with him riding the bus and friends etc it will be nice to get a hold of him but he really doesn't want one either. Lol.
But the packup and doing things around the house was exhausting and I was over tired and didn't get to bed until way too late but I was still asleep before mel came to bed even later. We slept in until 630am...had wanted 6am but with that 1am ish bedtime it was a no go. We got things loaded with a good clip and cleaning out the fridge meant some wild life will be living large on the offerings we left at the edge of the woods. But things went into our two coolers Though because of how we packed we didn't have the coolers accessible except when we stopped but that was okay. I drove the first leg to just into Kansas. We did get Taco Johns for our last taste of midwest texan mex food in Grand Island Nebraska. We arrived in La Junta Colorado 730pm local time and after we unloaded the cats and go bags we hit up Boss Hogg's It was basic and we had the local beer Tivoli's Outlaw Light. Its a light beer but perfect after the long drive.
We got back to the hotel and chilled watching Twister and then part of mummy returns. Mel crashed the hell out on the bed fully clothed. I got Benton to shower and got ready for bed and lights outed us at 11pm. I set the alarm for 7am but I was awake at like 615am. At some point mel had gotten out of driving clothes and properly into bed but I slept okay. The cats were snuggling at our feet here and there or on Mel's hip. My only complaint about holiday inn express is that the beds have a gap under them at the back that cats can get into. And Tasha was being a PITA to get in the carrier. But holiday inn breakfast, and easily accessible ice machine and on the road we went. I drove us to Albuquerque where we got lunch at 5Guys. Feeding the teenager has been "a thing" and with his meds he doesn't realize he's hungry just angry and snippy. So we've made sure to get "double" meals for things like a shake with his burger and fries and a quesadilla with his big burrito. Mel was still tired when we was taking over so I got him a coffee shake at 5 guys and that got a big thumbs up from him and he drove us all the way home to Tucson. Now we were a bit squirrely at the end but we did take some good walk/potty breaks so that was good too. Got home, got unloaded, and we noticed the center support on the middle shelf of the fridge was cracked. Mel pulled the shelf out and was cleaning the glass when it shattered. ooops.
Luckily I got online and found the parts we needed and ordered them but am currently on hold with the company since there was an issue and the order is on hold? But it should be an easy fix. Hopefully. I was hopeful on Saturday night but we shall see. Anyhoo. Mel got that cleaned up (with the use of the shopvac cause glass was into the disposal. I ordered pizza from Mod and headed to pick it up. We were all hungry but tired and warm. The house only gets down to like 83 when its 100+ out. So we had food, a few beers and then we were all in bed pretty early cause time zones are a thing. I awoke super early on Sunday 6am and just read on my phone for a while. My back was not happy with me and I was AWAKE. So I got up and out into the family room to ready and sit up for a while. Mel got up a bit later and made coffee. He was all about putting things away and I was just a lump but I got up after my first coffee was done, got dressed and started puttering. We got benton up and headed to Joe's for breakfast.
It was old home week literally, Mary was back in town and all of the waitresses that have known us for decades came to chat. Our waitress was like "well obviously you must be regulars" and "I'm new". We explained we weren't as regular as we used to be but we still come in from time to time. The food was good, chatting with Mary and catching up on things was good as well. We got back and then I started on my puttering to get things put away a bit. My back was unhappy when ever I got up from sitting down. I wasn't too worried since I had smartly scheduled a massage for that afternoon but boy was it angry. My massage was only 60mins and my body fought it but it did loosen and then I did a bit of walking to shop at Daiso and Petsmart and Ulta which were across the parking lot from my massage place. We will soon be getting a Bed Bath and Beyond there too which is nice. The walk did wonders for me as did when I got home I put all of my clothing from the trip away, picked up my studio and set it to rights for the work day and just tidied. Mel made potato/carrot mash to go with the cooked pork chops we transported from SD and we had a nice evening.
I slept well once I reconfigured to a big stiff pillow for my knees and that helped my back tremendously. But we will be shopping for a new mattress cause yeah. Today I've been walking a bunch around the house and once my afternoon meetings hit I will do standing desk as well. But its hot in the house and I have my fan blowing on me but not much more that I can do since its evap cooling and even though the humidity is stoopid low its 104F.
So tonight will be shopping with Benton and then heading to scriptorium. I've missed the girls and I need to start working on laying out Cael's scroll. The stones we've picked up aren't big but that means I need to get working on detail. I'm hoping we can flatten one a bit if not I will head to the stone places and find a nice piece again. But the fact we roadside geology things is part of the fun.
While I've been poking away at writing this I got two death notices:
1) My stepbrother was found dead in his room near flagstaff. Autopsy today. My eldest stepsister called me to tell me and that was all the info they had. He would have been 49 in October. I had not seen him in 19 years (his dad's funeral) and had no idea had had moved to Arizona.
2) Arsenda passed at dawn this AM. I had left messages and I hope they were read to her. This fucking sucks. I've since now texted her partner and got hugs in return on text. He was my cousin Baron so long love there. Sighs. This sucks so hard.
ursulas_alcove (ursulas_alcove) wrote2025-07-28 09:47 am
ursulas_alcove) wrote2025-07-28 09:47 amEntry tags:
Finding Inspiration
It can be fun and it can be depressing. No, I'm not talking about creators with immaculate picture perfect gardens. I'm talking about what it takes to provide enough food to survive on. I found a MA guy who broke down calorie intake and how much land that requires, just for carbohydrates. Yes, there is math involved. For a diet of 2000 calories per day, a third to a half should be carbohydrates. The video assumes you can plant several 100 ft rows, 30" wide. He assumes a 12" walkway between rows which he says you need an area 100 ft by 42 feet just for carbs. He also assumes food for 4 adults. The video further assumes you are getting your carbs from just four food types: potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn (for cornmeal), and sunchokes. I went and looked up calories per pound of food. I see why he chose these foods but I also looked at my pantry. I use maple sugar and honey as well. I admit I am addicted to sugar. I also have pasta, rice, and other carbs. If I lived in an appropriate area, by far, wild rice is the ticket. While I do have sunchokes in my yard, I can't eat them. They do horrible things to my digestive tract.
The math portion was that 2000 calories a day is 730,00 calories a year. I, in turn, looked up a whole bunch of foods to see what the calories per pound of food is. Assume that you eat 1/3 of those calories from carbohydrates, roughly 250,000 calories per person. That is a lot of food to grow. Several homestead books claim that you need a minimum of 2.5 acres to survive. Doing the math for my own family of 3 adults, it ended up being a minimum of 500 pounds of potatoes. According to the video, Russet potatoes give the biggest bang for the growing space used. My assumption was that I could divide up the calories equally between 4 crops. I would also need 469 pounds of sweet potatoes. I would also have to plant a grain of some sort. Sorghum or amaranth, something to make flour with. I'd need 150 pounds of grain which I learned mills down to 100 pounds of flour. Sunchokes and turnips are out of the question for us. Allergies are also fatal.
The same guy is going to do another video on protein. It hasn't been released yet. What I learned is that if the apocalypse happens tomorrow, don't come to my house looking for food. I don't have it.
I found inspiration in the form of a farmer in Uganda. It is a vastly different growing zone than here. My official zone keeps changing. Up the road from me is classified as 7a but I am now in zone 6b. We used to be in zone 5. Zones are based on your coldest winter temperature. Personally, I think zones affect perennials more. Will a pomegranate tolerate growing in zone 5? Maybe, maybe not. Chicago Hardy Figs are a good here. I am trying my luck at a pomegranate. Micro-climates are also a thing, but I digress. My inspiration is coming from Uganda on a video channel called Farm For Profit Uganda. She farms in containers, in reused feed bags.
https://youtu.be/ZCQ-Rot6AO4?si=3VfGfIGwbBXsnFRw
Other channels I've been following are:
Live on What You Grow out of Connecticut
https://youtu.be/n2gezZA0l2A?si=M35g5LcyKaHuT7DF
Sandy Bottom Homestead in coastal NC
https://youtu.be/E9BSD0Xb3Oo?si=gjG9XvSPNPRz8EFV
For something a little more aspirational, there is Planted in the Garden, Zone 5 Toronto
https://youtu.be/qE_NE7HOkR4?si=sDikz310OzD9gvAe
And Epic Gardening (which is a truly commercial site) in SanDiego, zone 10
https://youtu.be/7emSoU8PvwU?si=9HwHv5vko8oXyuBA
I have other playlists for food preservation and another for permaculture. Ben at Sandy Bottom is the most realistic I think. It really is more about frost dates for planning and planting. Succession planting is also a way to get better yield from your space. You have to know your micro climates. Each bed is different. It's sunlight dependent. Also sand versus clay soil, as well as soil biology. I had been following Lynn Gillespie at The Living Farm in Colorado. She can get two crops in a season. Some folks can get three crops. I find I can have two kinds of beds. One for two crops - spring and fall and another for only summer crops. It makes me think harder about what to plant where. Lynn uses 2 cinderblock raised bed gardens, 16 ft by 4 ft. She can grow a lot of food in that.
What no one covers if you have to grow all your own food is inputs. You can't just go out and buy more topsoil or fertilizer. You have to make it. That alone is a hell of a lot of work. I think about British gardens during WW2. The homesteading reference to 2.5 acres is also because you must raise cover crops to feed your soil and allow for bed rotation. (Leaving one fallow periodically) Having animals of some sort is necessary to create compost for a lot of these YouTubers, which means even more acreage. Humanure, if done appropriately, could also be done. It takes three years and is seriously frowned upon in most cities. Right now urban gardeners can get free resources but for self sufficiency, that has to be taken into account. How do you create enough compost?
At present, we are not in drought mode. Since I am redesigning the backyard garden, I am looking at water - save it, spread it, and sink it for the rainfall I do get. Living on a hill, it means looking at my grade and key lining it. Zig zag it down the hill. It means rehanging the garage gutter to drain at the highest point in my yard, the northwest corner. Then directing the flow, grading the land on contour and creating swales. The other side of the garage is where I save the water in rain barrels. The house gutters need a total clean out and evaluation. The gutter I want to use has a skunk living under it. I'll concentrate on the backyard for now.
For those of you who stuck with me so far, my work in the front yard has paid off. The hummingbirds are back. There are also butterflies we've never seen before. The Mexican sunflowers are very popular as are the salvia plants. Now let's hope for some relief soon from the heat dome. Stay cool my friends!
The math portion was that 2000 calories a day is 730,00 calories a year. I, in turn, looked up a whole bunch of foods to see what the calories per pound of food is. Assume that you eat 1/3 of those calories from carbohydrates, roughly 250,000 calories per person. That is a lot of food to grow. Several homestead books claim that you need a minimum of 2.5 acres to survive. Doing the math for my own family of 3 adults, it ended up being a minimum of 500 pounds of potatoes. According to the video, Russet potatoes give the biggest bang for the growing space used. My assumption was that I could divide up the calories equally between 4 crops. I would also need 469 pounds of sweet potatoes. I would also have to plant a grain of some sort. Sorghum or amaranth, something to make flour with. I'd need 150 pounds of grain which I learned mills down to 100 pounds of flour. Sunchokes and turnips are out of the question for us. Allergies are also fatal.
The same guy is going to do another video on protein. It hasn't been released yet. What I learned is that if the apocalypse happens tomorrow, don't come to my house looking for food. I don't have it.
I found inspiration in the form of a farmer in Uganda. It is a vastly different growing zone than here. My official zone keeps changing. Up the road from me is classified as 7a but I am now in zone 6b. We used to be in zone 5. Zones are based on your coldest winter temperature. Personally, I think zones affect perennials more. Will a pomegranate tolerate growing in zone 5? Maybe, maybe not. Chicago Hardy Figs are a good here. I am trying my luck at a pomegranate. Micro-climates are also a thing, but I digress. My inspiration is coming from Uganda on a video channel called Farm For Profit Uganda. She farms in containers, in reused feed bags.
https://youtu.be/ZCQ-Rot6AO4?si=3VfGfIGwbBXsnFRw
Other channels I've been following are:
Live on What You Grow out of Connecticut
https://youtu.be/n2gezZA0l2A?si=M35g5LcyKaHuT7DF
Sandy Bottom Homestead in coastal NC
https://youtu.be/E9BSD0Xb3Oo?si=gjG9XvSPNPRz8EFV
For something a little more aspirational, there is Planted in the Garden, Zone 5 Toronto
https://youtu.be/qE_NE7HOkR4?si=sDikz310OzD9gvAe
And Epic Gardening (which is a truly commercial site) in SanDiego, zone 10
https://youtu.be/7emSoU8PvwU?si=9HwHv5vko8oXyuBA
I have other playlists for food preservation and another for permaculture. Ben at Sandy Bottom is the most realistic I think. It really is more about frost dates for planning and planting. Succession planting is also a way to get better yield from your space. You have to know your micro climates. Each bed is different. It's sunlight dependent. Also sand versus clay soil, as well as soil biology. I had been following Lynn Gillespie at The Living Farm in Colorado. She can get two crops in a season. Some folks can get three crops. I find I can have two kinds of beds. One for two crops - spring and fall and another for only summer crops. It makes me think harder about what to plant where. Lynn uses 2 cinderblock raised bed gardens, 16 ft by 4 ft. She can grow a lot of food in that.
What no one covers if you have to grow all your own food is inputs. You can't just go out and buy more topsoil or fertilizer. You have to make it. That alone is a hell of a lot of work. I think about British gardens during WW2. The homesteading reference to 2.5 acres is also because you must raise cover crops to feed your soil and allow for bed rotation. (Leaving one fallow periodically) Having animals of some sort is necessary to create compost for a lot of these YouTubers, which means even more acreage. Humanure, if done appropriately, could also be done. It takes three years and is seriously frowned upon in most cities. Right now urban gardeners can get free resources but for self sufficiency, that has to be taken into account. How do you create enough compost?
At present, we are not in drought mode. Since I am redesigning the backyard garden, I am looking at water - save it, spread it, and sink it for the rainfall I do get. Living on a hill, it means looking at my grade and key lining it. Zig zag it down the hill. It means rehanging the garage gutter to drain at the highest point in my yard, the northwest corner. Then directing the flow, grading the land on contour and creating swales. The other side of the garage is where I save the water in rain barrels. The house gutters need a total clean out and evaluation. The gutter I want to use has a skunk living under it. I'll concentrate on the backyard for now.
For those of you who stuck with me so far, my work in the front yard has paid off. The hummingbirds are back. There are also butterflies we've never seen before. The Mexican sunflowers are very popular as are the salvia plants. Now let's hope for some relief soon from the heat dome. Stay cool my friends!
cvirtue (cvirtue) wrote2025-07-28 10:28 am
cvirtue) wrote2025-07-28 10:28 amWheel of Time is kinda really expensive fanfiction, much like the LotR movies
Posted this on other social media, and am also posting it here in case anyone is interested.
Wheel of Time (TV): I don't know if anyone has done a back-of-the-envelope analysis of the demographics of people who LOATHED the TV series.
I have a thought: the series, like any movie/tv adaptation, changed some things around. I have a lot of commentary on the LotR movies, for example, but I still enjoy them. But there were a number of people who thought the WoT adaptation was completely horrible.
One of the things that the series did differently from the books was to make it more of an ensemble show from the start; the first book is mostly centered on Rand, although that changes a lot with books 2 & 3, and onward - there are at least a dozen viewpoint characters. One of the effects of this is to give the women more prominence in the series. Moiraine (the blue wizard, who is also not young) gets good screentime, plus the two young women from the village, not just the three young men.
I'd be interested in the demographics of the people who loathed the show vs. demographics of people who like the books. Are men much more likely to not like the series than women? Is this because the male characters aren't the only ones in the spotlight? (If it is, not many men would admit to it.)
Running second to this is the inclusivity of race/skin color in the show compared to the assumed white European people in the books. Are there as many people annoyed with Lan being Asian as they are with more women in a central role?
So for the analysis, I'd want to see comparison of fan percentages, which might be something like this if my hypothesis holds water:
Fans of WoT: 55% male, 45% female
Fans of WoT TV: 30% male 70% female
So this would show a drop of 25% favorability amongst men compared with the books. I stress again that these are entirely made-up numbers.
That drop could then be compared to a different adaptation that doesn't have the gender emphasis changes -- what if the LotR movies only had a 10% drop in male fans compared to the books? One could then conclude that the difference (15%) might well be due to the race or gender emphasis.
I did find this, which is interesting, especially as I think the genre categories are extremely porous, so separating them might not be as useful as Harris thinks they are:
"the Harris Interactive study on 2015 adult reading habits shows that fantasy might be slightly more popular among women, with 25% of female survey respondents having read a fantasy novel in the past year compared to only 23% of male respondents. This is only a sliver of a difference, though, which means it is more likely that men and women read fantasy at mostly even rate. Science-fiction is a completely different story, though, with men reading novels published in that genre almost twice as often (35% to 19%). "
Re: porous: IMHO, if you're going to separate this into two categories, I'd want SF to have very solid science at its base -- and there are a lot of alleged strong-SF which do NOT have strong science underpinnings; a lot of the "SF" category is Science Fantasy. But this isn't the place for that argument - I'm sure you can find plenty online, by professionals in the field, if you're interested in the topic.
If you've seen any hints of this kind of demographic analysis for any WoT item, please mention it.
Wheel of Time (TV): I don't know if anyone has done a back-of-the-envelope analysis of the demographics of people who LOATHED the TV series.
I have a thought: the series, like any movie/tv adaptation, changed some things around. I have a lot of commentary on the LotR movies, for example, but I still enjoy them. But there were a number of people who thought the WoT adaptation was completely horrible.
One of the things that the series did differently from the books was to make it more of an ensemble show from the start; the first book is mostly centered on Rand, although that changes a lot with books 2 & 3, and onward - there are at least a dozen viewpoint characters. One of the effects of this is to give the women more prominence in the series. Moiraine (the blue wizard, who is also not young) gets good screentime, plus the two young women from the village, not just the three young men.
I'd be interested in the demographics of the people who loathed the show vs. demographics of people who like the books. Are men much more likely to not like the series than women? Is this because the male characters aren't the only ones in the spotlight? (If it is, not many men would admit to it.)
Running second to this is the inclusivity of race/skin color in the show compared to the assumed white European people in the books. Are there as many people annoyed with Lan being Asian as they are with more women in a central role?
So for the analysis, I'd want to see comparison of fan percentages, which might be something like this if my hypothesis holds water:
Fans of WoT: 55% male, 45% female
Fans of WoT TV: 30% male 70% female
So this would show a drop of 25% favorability amongst men compared with the books. I stress again that these are entirely made-up numbers.
That drop could then be compared to a different adaptation that doesn't have the gender emphasis changes -- what if the LotR movies only had a 10% drop in male fans compared to the books? One could then conclude that the difference (15%) might well be due to the race or gender emphasis.
I did find this, which is interesting, especially as I think the genre categories are extremely porous, so separating them might not be as useful as Harris thinks they are:
"the Harris Interactive study on 2015 adult reading habits shows that fantasy might be slightly more popular among women, with 25% of female survey respondents having read a fantasy novel in the past year compared to only 23% of male respondents. This is only a sliver of a difference, though, which means it is more likely that men and women read fantasy at mostly even rate. Science-fiction is a completely different story, though, with men reading novels published in that genre almost twice as often (35% to 19%). "
Re: porous: IMHO, if you're going to separate this into two categories, I'd want SF to have very solid science at its base -- and there are a lot of alleged strong-SF which do NOT have strong science underpinnings; a lot of the "SF" category is Science Fantasy. But this isn't the place for that argument - I'm sure you can find plenty online, by professionals in the field, if you're interested in the topic.
If you've seen any hints of this kind of demographic analysis for any WoT item, please mention it.
ursulas_alcove (ursulas_alcove) wrote2025-07-27 11:07 pm
ursulas_alcove) wrote2025-07-27 11:07 pmEntry tags:
Filling the Pantry
So much going on! Tariffs hit on August 1st. We looked over everything we could think of for things we won't be able to afford afterwards. For the moment, many companies are trying to hold prices. Several, including myself, ordered last December to prepare for this. As inventory dwindles, tariffs must become part of the retail price. It'll show up gradually in the financial data. 🤞🏼
What did we get? Since my DVD drive died, I ordered another to replace it. The old drive was circa 2011. The computer it belongs to, needs a bit of repair for other problems but is still going strong. I ordered a mini chainsaw but it has yet to ship. I have a lot of trees to maintain. We also picked up a bit of necessary clothing in July. My husband got shorts (organic cotton), my daughter got bras (also organic cotton) and I bought a black skirt (organic cotton, fair trade certified). I also picked up 2 Birdies raised beds. I only did it because a different order was cancelled as no longer available. I have work to do before building those raised beds. One will be a dedicated sweet potato bed. Birdies beds will get hit with 2 tariffs, one for steel and another because it's from Australia.
Before I can even think about next year, trees must be trimmed. There is too much shade covering my garden and also power lines to avoid. Both the tree and the line to the garage were here before I bought this place. I have the breaker switched off regardless. I'm anxiously awaiting that chainsaw.
Fall planning has begun. There will be beets. We'll see if the peas take. It's too hot for germination. Same goes for the late season beans. Lettuce, spinach and cabbage need to be planted. Harvesting is ongoing. Still have more potatoes to harvest. Tomatoes are picked daily or every other day. We watch for cucumbers, zucchini, and beans. Today, the first batch of cucumbers got turned into bread and butter pickles. I also made jam out of the farmer's market cherries. The jams and jelly shelves are full. The empty half pint jars are almost gone. I'll probably watch for plums at the market. Last week the plums weren't quite fully ripe. They did have apricots. I'd like to dry some of those. Maybe next week. . .
I have a long list of other foods I want to "put up". It's in the 90's through Thursday. Not happening until after that date. I'm looking at the baking I can get done using the solar over. I could do more zucchini bread or muffins. I freeze it. I have to remember it'll have to last a year so maybe another batch would be good. The neighbor has also promised me her extra summer squash. You may think me mad, but zucchini has a hard time here. Ground hogs love it. Last night, (probably) the skunk hopped the fence and landed on my best producing zucchini. Leaves were smashed, not eaten. One zucchini was missing. The skunks like to climb my fencing. They can usually manage to climb 4 ft before falling. The runt can only climb 3 feet. The fence is 3 ft. It has poles across the top to keep deer from reaching over. Deer would have gone for the beans. A ground hog would have gone for the squash leaves. Mice go for the squash seed inside the fruit. The juvenile skunks just think fence climbing is a wonderful game. Teenagers!
We are at about 50 pounds of produce so far. The zucchini each came in at 1.25 #s. The cucumbers are for pickling so they are about a third of a pound each. The big black containers I got for seed potatoes house 2 plants each. One pot yields about a pound of potatoes. The grow bags only house only 1 seed potato. The yield varies between a third of a pound and a half a pound. The big containers work so much better. They hold very close to the same amount of soil as the grow bags but yield so much more. I've tried 2 potatoes in a grow bag before. Still only yields a half pound. The potatoes are in the curing process. I pulled some for next year's crop. The earlier harvest has already been stowed, either for use or for seed potatoes. I did blanch some and dried them for scalloped potatoes. I'd like to do more.
It's been a busy week.
What did we get? Since my DVD drive died, I ordered another to replace it. The old drive was circa 2011. The computer it belongs to, needs a bit of repair for other problems but is still going strong. I ordered a mini chainsaw but it has yet to ship. I have a lot of trees to maintain. We also picked up a bit of necessary clothing in July. My husband got shorts (organic cotton), my daughter got bras (also organic cotton) and I bought a black skirt (organic cotton, fair trade certified). I also picked up 2 Birdies raised beds. I only did it because a different order was cancelled as no longer available. I have work to do before building those raised beds. One will be a dedicated sweet potato bed. Birdies beds will get hit with 2 tariffs, one for steel and another because it's from Australia.
Before I can even think about next year, trees must be trimmed. There is too much shade covering my garden and also power lines to avoid. Both the tree and the line to the garage were here before I bought this place. I have the breaker switched off regardless. I'm anxiously awaiting that chainsaw.
Fall planning has begun. There will be beets. We'll see if the peas take. It's too hot for germination. Same goes for the late season beans. Lettuce, spinach and cabbage need to be planted. Harvesting is ongoing. Still have more potatoes to harvest. Tomatoes are picked daily or every other day. We watch for cucumbers, zucchini, and beans. Today, the first batch of cucumbers got turned into bread and butter pickles. I also made jam out of the farmer's market cherries. The jams and jelly shelves are full. The empty half pint jars are almost gone. I'll probably watch for plums at the market. Last week the plums weren't quite fully ripe. They did have apricots. I'd like to dry some of those. Maybe next week. . .
I have a long list of other foods I want to "put up". It's in the 90's through Thursday. Not happening until after that date. I'm looking at the baking I can get done using the solar over. I could do more zucchini bread or muffins. I freeze it. I have to remember it'll have to last a year so maybe another batch would be good. The neighbor has also promised me her extra summer squash. You may think me mad, but zucchini has a hard time here. Ground hogs love it. Last night, (probably) the skunk hopped the fence and landed on my best producing zucchini. Leaves were smashed, not eaten. One zucchini was missing. The skunks like to climb my fencing. They can usually manage to climb 4 ft before falling. The runt can only climb 3 feet. The fence is 3 ft. It has poles across the top to keep deer from reaching over. Deer would have gone for the beans. A ground hog would have gone for the squash leaves. Mice go for the squash seed inside the fruit. The juvenile skunks just think fence climbing is a wonderful game. Teenagers!
We are at about 50 pounds of produce so far. The zucchini each came in at 1.25 #s. The cucumbers are for pickling so they are about a third of a pound each. The big black containers I got for seed potatoes house 2 plants each. One pot yields about a pound of potatoes. The grow bags only house only 1 seed potato. The yield varies between a third of a pound and a half a pound. The big containers work so much better. They hold very close to the same amount of soil as the grow bags but yield so much more. I've tried 2 potatoes in a grow bag before. Still only yields a half pound. The potatoes are in the curing process. I pulled some for next year's crop. The earlier harvest has already been stowed, either for use or for seed potatoes. I did blanch some and dried them for scalloped potatoes. I'd like to do more.
It's been a busy week.
jducoeur (jducoeur) wrote2025-07-27 05:46 pm
jducoeur) wrote2025-07-27 05:46 pmEntry tags:
State of the Justin
Wow, I've completely failed to do any long-form posting lately. Mastodon is a seductively easy outlet, encouraging quick thoughts (and occasionally rewarding them highly with boosts and faves) without the effort of serious writing. I'm kind of disappointed in myself in principle, but not sure whether it's likely to change.
That said, it's been A Lot recently, so let's catch up on some stuff. This is going to be a bit of a long wander across several topics; hopefully it won't be entirely boring.
Work
As promised, I took three months off for a sabbatical, before starting to look for a new position at the beginning April. I did talk to a few companies, but in practice, it turned out to be all about Networking, as usual.
When I say "it's all about Networking", mind, I don't mean spending all my time pressing the flesh at cocktail parties. Real-world networking mostly consists of being good to the people around you, helping them out when you can, and being pretty clear about when you're looking.
In practice, I got Just Plain Lucky this time. Right around the time I started looking, I got a ping out of the blue from Carlos, asking, "Hey, Justin -- would you happen to be in the market?" After a response of, "Wow, good timing", we got to talking.
To explain this, I have to step back half a dozen years. From around (it's complicated) 2017 through 2021, I was working for Rally Health, primarily on a project called Rally Recover. Recover was great -- a product I was really proud of, to help surgical teams keep in touch with patients post-op. There was a lot to it, but the backend was mainly three of us: me (the Scala expert), Steve (the Ruby on Rails expert), and Carlos (not quite as expert in either, but solidly good at both, so he acted as the essential glue).
Sadly, Recover got cancelled -- great though it was, Optum (our Corporate Overlords) weren't figuring out how to sell it effectively. So our team got shunted onto A Project Of Which We Will Not Speak (suffice it to say, it was a political clusterfuck, and largely collapsed after six months), and thence over to start building a new product called OnePass.
I laid down a good deal of the technical foundation of OnePass (built in my preferred stack: Scala, using the Typelevel functional-programming framework), and was having fun on it when The Merger happened.
Like I said, Rally had been a wholly-owned subsidiary of Optum (which itself is part of the UHG empire). We'd known for most of a year that Optum had decided to absorb Rally, and a lot of folks were nervous about that, but I'd initially blithely said, "We build all of the best software in Optum -- surely they won't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, right?"
But some months later, one or two senior folks who I particularly trusted abruptly left, so I started to get nervous. I wound up interviewing at Troops while on vacation in Hawaii in late 2021; by the time I got home, the merger had happened, and I survived precisely one day at Optum before noping out, giving notice and joining Troops.
Anyway...
After four years "incubating" at Optum, they apparently decided that OnePass was going to thrive better as an independent company, so they were spinning it off. Carlos knew that I don't enjoy working at a corporate giant like Optum, but a scrappy startup like OnePass is becoming is right up my alley.
So basically, I'm boomeranging back to my old project, even through it's a completely new company. I know that I like the tech stack, and I can probably bring a lot to the table -- it seems like the right move.
My first day is tomorrow, so I'm preparing for the roller-coaster now...
Querki
During the sabbatical, and even more during the subsequent months while negotiating things with OnePass (we agreed to wait until the company was fully established before starting the process, so it's taken a while), I've been finally making progress on Querki.
Reminder for those who haven't been following it forever: Querki is my little garage startup, which I've been working on (with a lot of help from Aaron, who also owns a chunk of it) for a dozen or so years now. It's a hybrid between a wiki and a database, designed for "small data" problems -- enabling individuals and small communities to keep track of and organize stuff.
Fairly early on, I made a decision that seemed like a good idea at the time. Querki was built using a product called Conductr -- an early "containerization" system that was optimized for the Scala/Akka architecture that Querki is built on. It seemed like a good fit, and as a result I wound up as the smallest customer for Lightbend, the consultancy behind Scala, Akka, and Conductr: we had a handshake agreement that I would alpha-test Conductr and help them work out the kinks.
But things change over time. Lightbend decided not to be the primary supporter of the Scala 3 language (which is instead managed by the Scala Center), and has instead doubled down on Akka; indeed, they changed the company name to Akka recently.
And Conductr? It just kind of quietly died. It was a clever idea, but Kubernetes sucked all the air out of the containerization room, and there was no point in competing with it.
Querki was, AFAIK, the only third-party product ever built using Conductr (that is, the only one not built by Lightbend). And by the time Conductr was clearly dead, I had a dayjob, and didn't have time to extract it from Querki's architecture.
But there was a huge problem: Conductr was invasive. Much of its power came from the fact that it was actually laced through the application itself, not just wrapped around it. And it was built using Scala and Akka.
Which meant that Querki was bound to the specific versions of Scala and Akka that Conductr had been built with. And Conductr was dead.
So Querki has been stuck on an increasingly antique platform for the past ten years. I was able to make some progress on features during that time, but have been more and more stuck because of that.
So the sabbatical was spent learning enough about AWS to figure out how to do the things that Conductr had been providing, and then "ripping out the tablecloth" -- rewriting Querki so that one day it was built on the Conductr architecture, and the next day it wasn't.
Since then, I've been speed-running a decade of ecosystem evolution: step-by-step upgrading Scala, Akka, Play, and dependencies. That's not yet done (indeed, there's quite a lot to do yet), but making progress has been extremely satisfying, and I'm probably halfway there.
(The next step is upgrading from Cassandra 3 to 5, because Querki's Cassandra host will be removing support for 3 late this year. Thank heavens I've gotten as far as I have, or we'd be in serious trouble come November.)
The plan is to get it all up to Reasonably Modern -- probably not Scala 3 (which is a big jump), but modern versions of Play and Akka (or more likely Pekko, the open-source fork that got set up when Akka locked down its license). Then I'm going to fix a few horrible long-standing bugs (eg, Eric discovered the hard way that Querki Spaces start having serious trouble loading if their history becomes very long), and make some long-desired architectural changes (in particular, rewrite the heart of the QL engine to use cats-effect and fs2). And then I can figure out what comes next.
Typelevel
I've mentioned before that I'm on the Steering Committee for Typelevel, the above-mentioned organization that OnePass (and many other companies) is built on. Suffice it to say, there are some changes coming there: it's not all public yet, but I expect my responsibilities to grow in the coming months. I've been avoiding taking on additional responsibilities elsewhere as a result.
SCA
That said, it's been a busy year for me in the SCA, especially for my two offices.
Chatelaine
I've been Baronial Chatelaine (the new-people officer) for just about three years now. I mostly enjoy the work, but I've been getting a little toasty, and was starting to get quite worried by the beginning of the year: I wanted to hand it off, but had no idea to whom.
Once again, I got super-lucky. Within days of each other, around the time of Birka, Thorfinn and Revna -- both of them young, energetic fighters -- asked whether I was looking for a deputy. I gratefully said absolutely, and suddenly found myself heading a Chatelaine team, which is a vastly healthier state of affairs.
Both of them have been very helpful, and Thorfinn in particular has been a force of nature, doing much of the work to drive the new Baronial Discord, working with the Webminister to improve our site, and generally help new folks. So I'm happily trading places with him around now (we haven't really worried about exact dates, but Pennsic is my three-year anniversary), with him stepping up as Chatelaine and me stepping down to Deputy. I expect that to continue to work well.
Dance
One of the questions I kept hearing from new folks was, "Do you have a dance practice? I'd like to try dancing!" And of course, we allowed Dance Practice to go quiet a year or two ago, so I didn't have anything to tell them.
So early this year, I basically declared that I was coming back as Dancemaster, but changing it up a bunch.
Aaradyn managed to get us the "friends and family" discount for the church she works at, which eased the way a lot -- having a nice site within walking distance of Harvard Square made it much easier to get things going again.
Since we've had difficult sustaining a frequent practice in recent years, I decided to scale it back to monthly for the time being. That allows each Dance Practice to be a bit special, and lets me lean into the publicity harder.
And I decided, entirely on my own recognizance, to start running it using the gender-free "Larks and Robins" protocol. That replaces "Lords and Ladies" -- it's mnemonically brilliant, and I've been using it with great success for the Arisia Renaissance Ball for the past couple of years. The younger dance community in this area are largely used to it, and I'd very much like to bring in some of those folks, so I decided that we're going to follow along.
It's going reasonably well. We're not getting the 30-40 dancers we had in our heyday (much less the 150 who show up for the BIDA contradance in Porter Square), but we're generally getting a decent critical mass, including a fair number of new folks. I'm taking the summmer off, but plan to continue in the fall -- it's being a good deal of fun.
General
Suffice it to say, I'm trying to keep my head on straight during these "world on fire" times. It's not easy, finding the right balance of staying engaged while not letting myself fall into fear or depression, but so far, so okay.
I miss y'all! I'm trying to stay social, but opportunities don't present themselves enough. I hope to see folks more: we need each other, if we're going to stay sane through all this.
As always, comments and questions on any of this highly welcome...
Monica (cellio) wrote2025-07-27 02:50 pm
cellio) wrote2025-07-27 02:50 pminherited iPad
My mother has never learned to use computers, aside from a smartphone that she uses for calls and texting with the grandkids. After my father died and she asked me to do something with my father's several desktop and laptop computers, she cancelled their Internet service that she wouldn't be using. But she held onto my dad's newest tablet, thinking she could use it to browse news and look at photos. This requires a network connection, so I set up her phone for tethering, set up the tablet to automatically connect to that network, and showed her how to turn that on and off on her phone. (I described this as "turning on Internet for the tablet".)
In the end she found this too difficult and she's never used that tablet, so this week she gave it to me. It's an iPad Pro (3rd generation, 12.9") and comes to me with a keyboard cover and a couple of Apple pencils. I'd already downloaded his Apple cloud backups more than a year ago, so I could safely reset the tablet. I'm new to iOS (I use Android), so I figure this is a chance to check it out before the next time I need to replace a phone or tablet. I'm happy to accept pointers, app recommendations, and warnings. I do have a Mac desktop, but their mobile setup is new to me.
Apple aims for intuitive user interfaces, but that doesn't mean they always succeed. When deleting personal information as part of resetting, I had to enter first the PIN and then my father's Apple password. That makes sense. After I entered the password I hit return, but there was no visible change. I hit return again, thinking it hadn't taken, then tried delete to see if that changed anything, and concluded that it was stuck. I let it sit there for a while. Five minutes later, I got a "no connection" popup. Ok, yeah, now that you mention it I should have realized I'd need to connect it to my WiFi for that to work, but if it had given me any indication of what it was doing ("connecting...") while it was doing it, I would have known (a) that it was doing something and (b) that I needed to fix that. Instead, the interface just gave me a mystery for a while. Oops.
Those two Apple pencils are an as-yet-unsolved puzzle. My mother gave me one that was with the tablet (there's a magnetic connection) and one in a box that she thought was new (my father ordered it but never got a chance to use it, she thinks). The two pencils look identical to me, except that the one in the box is missing the plastic cap that should be on its stylus. The plastic cap from the other one does not fit it -- so they seem to be different, but that's my only clue. The box says "2nd generation". Something I found online describes the first generation as round and the second as mostly round with a flat side (because it was too easy for the first generation to roll off of desks). Both of these have that flat side, so I conclude that my father replaced one second-generation pencil with another, but if so, I am left wondering why the cap from one doesn't fit the other. I have no idea which of these is actually newer; maybe he did replace it (maybe he broke his first one?) and he put the old one in the box the new one came in? So many mysteries.
The tablet is now busy updating from iOS 17.1 to 18.5. Yeah, it's been offline a while.
hrj (hrj) wrote2025-07-25 07:49 pm
hrj) wrote2025-07-25 07:49 pmEntry tags:
Maybe the Last Retirement Preparation Post?
I've hit another key milestone: the first payments from my annuities are in my bank account. When I get the account statement at the end of the month, I should be able to figure out exactly what's being withheld for taxes. Evidently it isn't what I calculated from that they told me previously, because one account sent me more money than I thought they would and the other sent me less. (Overall it's about what I was expecting to some in. I just like to know exactly to the penny what my money's doing.)
At this point, other than watching my budget, the next stage in money neepery will be doing taxes, which will take a couple years to settle in. (Maybe more, given T's messing around with this-is-not-actually-a-social-security-tax-cut-and-will-expire.)
I'd calculated how much "take home" would feel comfortable for me, and currently I'm getting several hundred more than that per month. If you look at what my Bayer take-home was (after taxes and retirement and everything was taken out), I'm currently getting about 90% of that. Some of my expenses are higher (e.g., healthcare) and some lower (though for various reasons I'm averaging about the same amount of driving at the moment, which I was expecting to be a bigger savings). So...not bad. Not bad at all.
At this point, other than watching my budget, the next stage in money neepery will be doing taxes, which will take a couple years to settle in. (Maybe more, given T's messing around with this-is-not-actually-a-social-security-tax-cut-and-will-expire.)
I'd calculated how much "take home" would feel comfortable for me, and currently I'm getting several hundred more than that per month. If you look at what my Bayer take-home was (after taxes and retirement and everything was taken out), I'm currently getting about 90% of that. Some of my expenses are higher (e.g., healthcare) and some lower (though for various reasons I'm averaging about the same amount of driving at the moment, which I was expecting to be a bigger savings). So...not bad. Not bad at all.
cvirtue (cvirtue) wrote2025-07-25 05:13 pm
cvirtue) wrote2025-07-25 05:13 pmEntry tags:
Arguing despite bad faith from fascists, and the paradox of tolerance
I'm bringing together a couple of related things here.
First is the essay linked below. It addresses a frustration I have inside
my own head -- how can regressive/evil politics be fought against when much
of it is presented in a slick and appealing format? When it seems the
loudest proponents are outright lying, they know it, but pretend
otherwise?
Fighting on that ground is against my religion! We must treat
bad faith as disqualifying.
How Liberalism Sabotages Itself Our intentional blindness to bad faith is a loophole fascists use to gain respectability and power. -- Brian Beutler
CV summary: You can't win a discussion with people who view deception as fair means to their political ends. Liberal freedoms are merely loopholes to exploit in their pursuit of power.
Quote: "means-to-an-end-style of bad faith in discourse is endemic on the right—not just among ascendant fascists—and has been for a long time. ... Estelle lays out the method plainly: Rightists appeal to whomever they can with whatever false commitments they intend to break, knowing that, once delivered to power, they will pull the rug."
https://www.offmessage.net/p/how-liberalism-sabotages-itself
The related second idea is in the graphic below. Here is the text (which of course I corrected punctuation, because I can't not do that.)
The paradox is: should you be tolerant of people who are IN-tolerant? The people who are jerks will insist you tolerate them.
thoughtportal wrote:
The Paradox of Tolerance disappears if you look at tolerance, not as a moral standard, but as a social contract.
If someone does not abide by the terms of the contract, then they are not covered by it.
In other words: The intolerant are not following the rules of the social contract of mutual tolerance.
Since they have broken the terms of the contract, they are no longer covered by the contract, and their intolerance should NOT be tolerated.
commasameleon replied:
As someone who teaches rhetoric this is a wonderful response to the Paradox
of Tolerance.
I cannot tell you how many times my students have had debates about this.
This is the response. This does indeed fix it. I cannot wait to tell this
to my classes now.
Philosophically and rhetorically, this completely resolves the Paradox of
Tolerance and I am floored by its simplicity, and I am angry I never saw
it before!
ianuk (ianuk) wrote2025-07-24 06:27 am
ianuk) wrote2025-07-24 06:27 amEntry tags:
T minus 23 hours
Well, we are at the end of this summer. I'm sad. We really need another week but so be it. Work was okay yesterday. Got some things done including reviewing a lot of drawings for our TE team. The dinner plan had been pork chops on the grill and mel got me some otu of the freezer. When I went to start the marinade we figured out one of the packages was chopped up for stir fry. ooops. So we pivoted and got more out and did a quick defrost and I made two batches (one lemon juice/shallot, one last of the ketchup, montreal steak seasoning, dukes mayo, chili crisp) and taht worked out well. But when I went to start the grill I opened it up (as you do) and found a huge birds nest inside. I grilled a bit over a week ago! and there were eggs. I had to deal with that with Benton's help (and grumping). So dinner got going a bit late but it was good.
Ruby came over early (as midwesterners do) and oh I'm so worried for her. She is in her 80s and her hubby Rodney died suddenly last October. She is not coping well and being by yourself in a big farm house is not a thing many can deal with. They had been married 68 years. She ate like a bird but had a bit of everything. We made sure to send her home with a few thick slices of friendship bread. I made sure to give her all the hugs cause she is obviously needing it but stoic about it. The weather was turning while we had dinner and chatting. She got into her car with a few drops falling. About 20 minutes later the skies opened up.
One thing I forgot was the rolling thunder here. In Tucson due to the mountains the thunder comes and goes. Here is starts and just keeps going for minutes. It growls across the plains. After dinner cleanup Mel went to finish his clean up of the his workbench. I started internal projects like labeling the fuse box, setting up the lock box for keys, changing out the batteries in sensors that are low. I heard the that thunder rolling constantly. It was neat. We then got the seal done for the underside of the counter for the dishwasher. Its a "sticker" to put on the underside of the counter top since this dishwasher will pop the door to help the drying cycle. We work really well together sometimes and a few pieces of blue tap, a well placed pie server we had it done in less than 10 mins.
Today will be packing and shutting things down. We have a nice procedure and we've updated it as we've noticed things. I will need to do one small load of laundry but that will be it I think.
One of the projects I started very late this summer was backing up photos from my ancient lap top. I've gotten through 2007 to summer 2019. Its weird seeing things I'd forgotten, people we've lost or lost touch with. so many weddings, coronations, investitures, peerages, cats etc. I have 46k photos on my laptop. Some of which are on flickr but most are not.
So yeah wish we had more time. The pace when we get home will be quicker and boo. But we did get a schedule for Benton's bus schedule and I drop him off a mile from the house at 650am and he can walk home in the afternoon. So that will make our mornings early but I can get to work on time and not have a stoopid commute! Yay!
Well work is calling and things to do. Monday we will recap the voyage home.
Ruby came over early (as midwesterners do) and oh I'm so worried for her. She is in her 80s and her hubby Rodney died suddenly last October. She is not coping well and being by yourself in a big farm house is not a thing many can deal with. They had been married 68 years. She ate like a bird but had a bit of everything. We made sure to send her home with a few thick slices of friendship bread. I made sure to give her all the hugs cause she is obviously needing it but stoic about it. The weather was turning while we had dinner and chatting. She got into her car with a few drops falling. About 20 minutes later the skies opened up.
One thing I forgot was the rolling thunder here. In Tucson due to the mountains the thunder comes and goes. Here is starts and just keeps going for minutes. It growls across the plains. After dinner cleanup Mel went to finish his clean up of the his workbench. I started internal projects like labeling the fuse box, setting up the lock box for keys, changing out the batteries in sensors that are low. I heard the that thunder rolling constantly. It was neat. We then got the seal done for the underside of the counter for the dishwasher. Its a "sticker" to put on the underside of the counter top since this dishwasher will pop the door to help the drying cycle. We work really well together sometimes and a few pieces of blue tap, a well placed pie server we had it done in less than 10 mins.
Today will be packing and shutting things down. We have a nice procedure and we've updated it as we've noticed things. I will need to do one small load of laundry but that will be it I think.
One of the projects I started very late this summer was backing up photos from my ancient lap top. I've gotten through 2007 to summer 2019. Its weird seeing things I'd forgotten, people we've lost or lost touch with. so many weddings, coronations, investitures, peerages, cats etc. I have 46k photos on my laptop. Some of which are on flickr but most are not.
So yeah wish we had more time. The pace when we get home will be quicker and boo. But we did get a schedule for Benton's bus schedule and I drop him off a mile from the house at 650am and he can walk home in the afternoon. So that will make our mornings early but I can get to work on time and not have a stoopid commute! Yay!
Well work is calling and things to do. Monday we will recap the voyage home.
Ursula (ursula) wrote2025-07-23 06:06 pm
ursula) wrote2025-07-23 06:06 pmEntry tags:
(no subject)
My local library interviewed me about North Continent Ribbon!
It was an interesting conversation because the interviewer isn't a habitual science fiction reader. I'm always curious about what non-genre readers focus on.
It was an interesting conversation because the interviewer isn't a habitual science fiction reader. I'm always curious about what non-genre readers focus on.