zyzyly

I went for a run early this morning (~6:30 am) because according to the weather forecast there was a chance of rain from about 8 am onward. While I was out the sky was a clear blue and it was hard to imagine that it could change to rainy later. Because it was clear and the humidity was low it was also quite cold, around 42F/6C, and my clothes were just barely warm enough, so by the time I got home, although I wasn't feeling too cold my hands were chilled and for a while after I got home my fingers were too clumsy to do much.

Later in the morning my daughter asked if I could walk Eden and Aria to the library while Violet was at someone's birthday party at an escape room. It was cloudy by then but not raining, so we walked to the library and spent an hour or so there. By the time we were walking back it was starting to drizzle and we arrived home just as the rain was getting slightly heavier. I feel very well exercised now; I ran about 6 km/3 ½ miles earlier and the walk to and from the library is just over 3 km/2 miles.

I finished off Aria's purple octopus this morning, and she carried it to the library because she said it needed an outing. Now Eden wants me to make her a green one, and Violet wants one made of some pastel variegated yarn she has on hand. Luckily they don't take too long to make.

susandennis

The pool water was a couple of degrees cooler than normal and the jets were shooting out cold water. This is has happened on the weekend so often, that a month or so ago, I asked the facilities lead what I should do when this happens and she had to contact Security and have them call her. I contacted security. The guy did not seem at all interested. I sent the lead an email. It could just be that the boiler needs to be switched on. If they wait until Monday, it will take several days for the pool to heat back up. It might be ok for swimming tomorrow but by Sunday, it will be too cold to be fun. Oh well. I've done what I could.

At least volleyball was good and not terribly chilly.

Today's Mariner game starts right after Elbow Coffee which starts in 30 minutes so that's my day!

First I need to get dressed.

conuly

Don't get me wrong, I love doing them - five hours of reading, three hours of work, what's not to love? - but talking about them? Don't get me started. Every single time it's a back and forth to confirm the actual day the shift starts.

I got a shift through the staffing agency, and I say "So, to confirm, I go to work at midnight Monday?" and he goes "No, Sunday". "So, I leave my house at 11:30 today...?"

No, he meant midnight Monday to 8am Monday.

Every time I look at the schedule at the usual place I find myself momentarily baffled by the fact that the overnight shift is at the top, as the first shift of the day.

Also, literally as I typed that last sentence a spam text came in with the word "lpuuuu", which seems low effort even for a spam text. I get that their business model depends on weeding out everybody smart enough to say "Seems fake!", but seriously?

fflo

summersgate

Momma Alligator launches her babies. Chloe and I were talking yesterday about how alligators and crocodiles are good mothers who protect their babies before and after they hatch. They are more like birds than reptiles. A good picture to celebrate Mother's Day.

I hear from Dave that Rainy has taken to peeing on the kitchen rug while I've been gone. Her communications to tell me she wants to go out are very slight - sometimes she stands on her hind legs and scratches my knee if I'm sitting down (that's good) but sometimes it can just be her staring at me with soulful eyes till I ask her, outside? I think Dave must be missing the signs. I'm already planning how I'm going to wash the rug to get the smell out when I get home. Thank goodness there are enzyme detergents now a days.

I love summer mornings up north when I walk out in light clothes and can sit outside first thing in the morning and do my writing and drawings. I love that I've got a month or so head start on that here.

*****
Chloe just came out and asked me if I wanted to do yoga with her, so I did. Some of it felt pretty difficult but some felt good. I might get back into the chair yoga videos that I used to do a couple years ago.

rejectomorph

An exhausting shopping day. Imagine how exhausting it would be if I had to go out and fetch the stuff myself instead of just ordering online and having it picked up for me. Half of what I ordered for dinner was unavailable, so I ended up eating half of a dinner, as the half I got wouldn't have gone well with anything else I had. The store was also out of my favorite donuts again, so there will be two weeks of substitute donuts. But I also got a lemon cake that will last for a few days, so the true horror won't bein until later this week. I'll drink extra beer to soften the blow. And maybe sleep a lot more. We do what we can.

susandennis

Jan and Dick Gram live in Myrna's old apartment. Jan just came to my door and asked if I was busy. Their printer was offline and they couldn't get it online. Windows and Epson. I last used a Windows computer maybe 10 years ago. I'm not sure I've ever used an Epson printer.

Dick has a very large voice and he wanted me to know that the printer worked two nights ago and he put in new cartridges and why does it not work now. What is your password, Dick. The printer worked two nights ago and he just put in new cartridges and why does it not work when you need it. So you don't know your wifi password? Why won't it work when I need it?

I learned a while back, by accident, that an iphone will give you the wifi password you are using if you dig deep enough into the network info. Then I remembered that Jan has an iphone and so I was able to get the password which is about 25 characters long and has 3 dashes. Of course the Epson keypad has no dashes. My looking for it erased all the work I had done so far.

And, I need to mention that this was in a tiny room that is stuffed to the gills with furniture and papers. There is barely enough room to stand, much less get to the printer and it's about 85 degrees.

So I bailed. Sorry. Call IT. If they have left for the weekend, send your documents to the reception desk. They will be happy to print them out for you. I felt badly about it until I got home and did a search on how to get dashes out of that stupid Epson keypad and Google didn't know either. Now I no longer care. Those Timber Ridge IT guys are not paid enough.

p.s. BUT Google did know how to find the wifi password on an Android phone. I never knew that either.

summersgate

Yesterday's. Mirrors again. Circles reflecting more circles.

Today's. Sunrise. Quick sketch from the back porch looking east this morning as the sun was breaking through.

We've been having busy days. Yesterday we drove to Myakka State Park and explored there. Then last night we went to the beach and watched the sun go down. This morning we did some doctor office visiting to get some things straight for Kathy's upcoming laser surgery and then explored at Robinson Preserve and stopped at the boat basin where the manatees live. We saw more manatees than I've ever seen and saw them better. Usually you're lucky if you see a snout barely sticking out of the water. Today we could see the backs of them passing by. The backs look rough and like they have barnacles on them. By the time I got my phone out it was too late but I think Chloe got some good pics. Here's seven pix of other things from yesterday and today - not in order. Too fussy to have to do that with my phone. While I'm here I miss using my computer to write entries and post pictures with. ( Read more... )

Tomorrow will be another busy day. Going to visit Emerson Point in the morning then have family over later.

maju

Aria's class concert this morning was fun. I had an excellent seat, a few rows back from the front but with a clear view straight ahead to Aria between the various people sitting in front of me. When I first walked in she was looking very shy; I think she suddenly got overcome when all the parents started arriving. I'm not even sure whether she saw me, but I hope she did. Anyway, she perked right up when they started singing and was very animated, doing all the actions and obviously singing loudly. (She's a good singer.) I took quite a lot of photos and a couple of videos for her parents. After the concert we all went to the classrooms (there are three first grade classes) and there was a lot of milling around while the children ate their special "post concert snacks". This felt awkward to me, since most of the other parents seemed to know each other and I'm sure my daughter would have known most of them too, but I didn't know any of them. I've met the mothers of a couple of Aria's friends but neither of those friends is in her class.

I've got a virtual signing appointment for the sale of my house on Monday, and I've been feeling sort of nervous about that. I was also nervous about going to Aria's concert since I don't know my way around her school very well. I needn't have worried about finding my way to the concert, since the teachers let all the parents into the school at the same time and then we were thoroughly guided to where we needed to be, but this plus stress about the Monday appointment have been filling my mind and crowding out other things, and last night I couldn't get to sleep for a long time.

maju

From

thefridayfive

1. What decade did you attend/are you attending high school or college? High school: 1960s. University: 1990s, but by then I was much older and much less influenced by fashion and behaviour trends.

2. What clothing fashion from that time are you glad/do you wish went out of style? Stirrup pants.

3. Do you still listen to the music from your high school/college years on a regular basis? Yes. I often find some of my favourite 1960s songs on YouTube and go down a rabbit hole listening to them.

4. What hairstyle/hair color did/do you wear during high school/college? My hairstyle was the same as it is now - short, parted on the side, completely untreated, but back then it was blondish brown and now it's grey. In the intervening years it's been long, short, long, short…

5. What was/is "the cool thing to do" while in high school/college? I have no idea because I lived on a farm and had no way of hanging out with anybody outside of school hours.

mallorys_camera

Didn't make it to the garden yesterday (and likely won't today either, since temps are not forecast to rise to 60°). Instead, I devoted the morning to making money, went for an abbreviated tromp, and then settled down in a lawn chair on the back forty to chaperon the chickens and read Bob Spitz's The Rolling Stones: A Biography.

I do love me some celebrity dish, except I can't really relate to many current celebrities—their faces are indistinguishable, their names unmemorable, their ostensibly flagrant behavior mere bouts of exaggerated narcissism. Mais où sont les Keith Richards d'antan?

I saw the Stones in concert a couple of times in my late teens and early twenties. In fact, I went to the infamous Altamont Concert—although that wouldn't count as "seeing the Stones," I suppose, since I was at least a mile from the concert stage and very high on LSD. At that distance, we couldn't know anything that was happening near the stage, though the vibes wafting our way were bad enough to make us decide to pack up & leave long before sundown when the Stones were scheduled to perform. I was so high, my pals had to force-feed me a quarter of a jug of Red Mountain to get me into the car. Red Mountain, the vilest of the vile! I remember thinking at the time that it tasted like every human effluvia combined, like blood and sweat and tears and sperm and gastric spit-up all mixed up into one alcoholic beverage.

But mostly, I wasn't into the Stones' music as much as I was into their bad behavior. This was back when the beauty standards of the 1950s still weren't being challenged very much. The dolly girls of Swinging London with their bangs and long, straight, center-parted hair still had faces defined by the Golden Ratio, and Paul McCartney & George Harrison were the handsome Beatles. Meanwhile, I was struggling in the modeling industry because while I photographed well, my skin was too dark and my features too exotic for anything but lingerie catalogs and the middle of the runway.

And yet, here was Jagger, with his exaggerated simian features, the biggest Lothario of them all! And there was Keith Richards, doing lots and lots of heroin! Proving that it was perfectly possible to live a productive life doing heroin if only you had the money to pay for it! (I did not, which is why I gave it up before I developed the habit.)

Spitz describes the excesses of the 60s and 70s at exhaustive length, but crams the last 40 years of the band's career into only a handful of chapters.

You have to hand it to Jagger! He is completely unfazed by those feelings of personal responsibility that so often bedevil the rest of us. Does he care that the Stones turned Altamont into a shit show? He does not! Brian Jones drowns in a pool one month after Jagger kicks him out of the band? So what! His official girlfriend, L'Wren Scott, hangs herself after he takes up with a ballet dancer 25 years younger? Well, that's really sad, but not sad enough to stop him from parading said ballet dancer on a hotel balcony a couple of days after Scott's death.

No, Mick Jagger only cares about two things: making money and physical fitness. Maybe not in that order.

I am thinking I should have been more like Mick Jagger!

susandennis

I do not do well if I skip breakfast. So I don't but I also don't have a lot of patience with breakfasts requiring lots of ingredients, elaborate prep and/or dirtying of many items. I do have a tendency to find a good idea and have it every day until another good idea comes in to replace it. Currently I'm one egg scrambled with a fork full of cottage cheese wrapped in a flour tortilla.

Except now I am out of tortillas. So a trip to the grocery is on the agenda. I think I'll go to QFC and score one of their poke bowls which will do nicely 1/2 for lunch and 1/2 for dinner.

I just picked up next week's Timber Ridge menus and there are a bunch of good choices. The past couple of weeks have been stinkers but next week... yum.

This morning was the first morning that I had to lower the shades to enjoy my coffee. I love my shades. This morning situation won't last long - a month or so and then the sun moves on.

I had a wonderful swim this morning. That forced week off has benefits of double enjoyment now.

The Mariners are in the Midwest for the week so nice early times.

I have a load of laundry that I put in before I went to swim. It's now nearly ready to come out for folding and hanging. And I need to get dressed. Time to get on with the day!

p.s. This past week, I misplaced a very handy metal retractable tape measure that I've had for years. Gone. Just gone. And now FOUND!! And it's very clean.

rejectomorph

Waiting to hear back from my niece about Friday's shopping arrangements. I need to know when she can pick the stuff up so I know what pickup time to arrange and when I'll have to do the actual ordering. I didn't have a nap this afternoon, so I'm getting very tired and can barely keep my eyes open, but I need that information before I can sleep.

I was hoping to get in a nice foot soak before bed, but the timing might not work out. It was a balmy day, and night is getting chilly, and my covers are looking so inviting, but I don't dare get under them before I get that return text. In this condition I'd just pass out and stay out for hours. I failed to eat dinner again too (slipped my mind.) A ramen bowl perhaps?

Oh, there. It's done. Instead of going to bed I fell asleep at the computer. The pickup won't be until late afternoon, so I can go to sleep now and not worry about not getting up early enough to order without rushing. There are always mistakes when I rush. More than there are when I don't. Oh cozy bed, who needs food when there are soft blankets?

conuly

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

************************************

Link

ranunculus

The results of yesterdays work on the water line were, um, disappointing. By this morning the tanks were just over 1/8th full and the water was just trickling in. So this afternoon, after mowing the parking and camping areas, and working on the bridge, it was time to look at the water system again.
The first project was to shorten pipe that brings water into the tank. ( Read more... )

mallorys_camera

Maybe I am getting my writing mojo back. Maybe.

On the drive to the upscale supermarket in Middletown late yesterday afternoon, I could feel the words clicking into place like metal filings against a magnet: I bought it so I could save it...polluting the local cripple creeks... (Why "cripple"? 'Cause I was listening to The Band.)

Driving is good for that. It often puts me into a semi-fugue state.

And beyond that, I could feel the ideas drifting across my mind, like a time-lapse animation of clouds on a windy day: The opening paragraph will include Flavia explaining why she bought the Catskills property and a brief imagined history of Riggsville, the paragraph after that will explore Neal's introversion, and the one after that will set up the tension between Flavia and Mimi when Mimi starts twisting Flavia's arm because Mimi wants to move into the cabin. Much of Flavia's section explores her guilt over being so fabulously wealthy when her friends and acquaintances are all struggling, so it's a good idea to set that up early.

I was going to make Daria Part 2. But whatever ideas and momentum I had for that Part 2 evaporated in the three months I spent toiling in the Schlock tax mines.

Flavia has a much clearer narrative arc: Rich girl/recovering Daddy's little angel doesn't know what to do with herself -> dabbles in architecture school (Pratt) -> develops a cocaine habit -> meets Neal -> gets saved from cocaine habit ->has intense physical relationship with Neal (lotsa sex scenes!) -> Neal dies -> feels obligation to take care of Mimi, the most obnoxious and helpless of the Sister Wives.

I'm still not sure what Daria's narrative arc is. Something having to do with the many languages she speaks, the linguistic pastiche inside her head. But I'm hampered in that, since really, I only speak English. How am I going to get inside the head of someone who exists in multiple linguistic dimensions? Now I won't have to for another couple of months!

###

Other than that...

For some reason, I slept poorly last night. No idea why. I did not feel anxious; I was sufficiently exercised, and I was tired. But there didn't seem to be any pathway down into unconsciousness.

So, this morning, I'm feeling clunky and vaguely headachey. Bilgy tummy, too!

I did have plans to go off to New Paltz and garden. The issue with the New Paltz community garden, though, is that it's so vast that wheelbarrowing pulled-up weeds, raked winter ground cover, and such involves transversing significant distances, and I'm not sure I'm up for physical work on just five hours sleep.

They'll be turning the water on at the beginning of May. I have to wrestle with my garden hose! Unlike the Hyde Park Community Garden, the New Paltz Community Garden makes each gardener get their own individual hose. My plot is a good 30 feet away from the spigot, so there are actual logistics to be calculated in the use of said hose.

Meanwhile, seen yesterday on my tromp through the Harried Plateau:

I wanna foster-parent a beehive!!!!

maju

There's always something with Aria! She's had a loose upper front tooth for quite a while; the tooth has just been hanging by a thread but stubbornly refusing to completely disengage. Yesterday she was at a friend's place (with her mother and Eden) and when they came home she came rushing down to show Violet, who was with me in the basement, that her tooth was out. And the way it came out was surprising: somebody, probably my daughter, tied a thread around the tooth and tied the other end of the thread to a remote control car. Then the car was set in motion and boom, the tooth was out. I wish I'd been there to see it.

Aria is very excited about me going to her school performance tomorrow. She keeps reminding me, in case I forget.

I was thinking of going for a run before breakfast this morning but when it came to the time I just didn't feel like it, so I decided to go after breakfast instead, when it would be a bit warmer. It was above freezing early in the morning but the temperature rose slightly more later in the morning. By the time "after breakfast" rolled around I didn't feel very motivated but I made myself go out and did enjoy being out in the sun, but the humidity this week is higher than last week so it wasn't quite as enjoyable being out as it has been. Unfortunately I know it's usually very humid here all summer so I'm resigned to sweaty runs and walks.

susandennis

It was good to get back to volleyball this morning even if the game itself was pretty meh. We have one guy who is only about half there mentally and he's really a pain to play with. He rarely shows up any more but he was there today. But it was ok. At least it was good to get back to moving.

About once a quarter, they have a Resident Update Meeting where the heads of the various departments give a, hopefully brief, state the state address. Yesterday of the 6 presenters, 4 were, indeed brief, and provided good info. 2 were dreadful - presented nothing interesting and presented it in as lengthy and boring way possible. At least most of the presenters have now quit reading the slides to us.

The sections of nursing care, memory care, and assisted living are full up and always have been. The lines to get in them are long. Timber Ridge contracts with other places to take the overflow - like Jim Across The Hall - but that is expensive in inconvenient for all. They have been saying for as long as I've been here that they are looking at various solutions to the problem. Yesterday was the first time I got the impression they really were. They are looking at expanding and, it sounds like, building something adjacent which ain't gonna be easy since two sides are occupied - a school and apartments - and the other two sides are steep hillsides.

I've developed a sore spot on an important finger from the doll knitting so I switched to one of my other projects last night. A blanket of very large squares. I finished a square before I realized that I had done it exactly backwards. So I ripped it out and got the first row started correctly before bed last night.

I may do laundry today - or tomorrow - I have an Amazon return that is not worth much so no hurry. I need a haircut. No baseball today. I'll finish my book but I have several candidates for Next.

rejectomorph

Head as empty as the night, wishing I could remember what I was thinking when I first woke up from my evening nap and imagined I had solved all my problems and now I can't even remember what the problems were, let along the solutions. They were probably imaginary too. Meanwhile, in the real world (or what passes for it) I need to figure out what to buy at the store this week. Shopping again.

If I could just quite eating all that stuff I buy, I wouldn't have to shop anymore. But I always reach that point where being hungry is more unpleasant than eating, and then I eat. Now that's a real problem I for which I can't imagine a solution. Maybe I should wake up again. Oh, but I'd have to go to sleep again first, and I just got up. Well, I can see how this might is going to go. I'll bet I even get a snack. Damn, can't win for losing.

ranunculus

This morning, for reasons I cannot now remember, I turned off the water pump. It is noisy, and not totally necessary most of the time. It is nice for showers and needed for laundry. Water slowed to a trickle. Uh Oh. I was due to meet Glenn to resume bridge building, but instead he diverted up to the house and we set off to see what was wrong. Item 1: No water coming into the tanks. I had thrown tools in the Gator, so we took off up to the springs*. The spring was fine, but lower down water was backflowing out a pipe that is supposed to pick up water, not let it out. From there the pipe goes down and joins a larger pipe in the bottom of the stream. About 50 feet downstream there was a kink in the pipe. In fact there were two kinks, one where a log had fallen in the stream, branches had jammed into the log and sand and rock had buried the whole mess. The second kink was where a tree trunk had slid down the steep slope and pinned the pipe to the bank of the stream. Glenn dug down through the first mess, eventually extracting the pipe, while I dug out the second kink. The pipe is extremely thick black plastic so I had to cut the kink completely out, and force a fitting into the rather oval ends. We were wet and covered in poison oak when we finished.
Back at the tanks the water had resumed splashing into the tank, so eventually we will have water at the house again. At the house I found a drip line that was on, which is now off.

* Here is a link to a post that has pictures of the springs and their environment. https://ranunculus.dreamwidth.org/667312.html#cutid1

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Mais Où Sont Les Keith Richards D'antan?

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