C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 117
July 5, 2012
The heat is coming…
We spent the 4th down the street at our coach’s house: Joan has a house facing an overlook of the downtown, and they let off a big display down in the heart of town, in Riverfront Park: thousands gather down there, on the bridges, and this year on a friendly parking garage rooftop; but those of us up on this ridge all hike to this hill…must’ve been 500 or more out there, last night. Joan and Buzz served us a lovely supper. Then we sipped wine and watched fireworks from the front porch…then walked a couple of blocks home to spot the NYC display on telly. Can’t complain.
It’s supposed to turn for the 90′s this weekend: the door to the desert has opened and finally pushed the Pacific air aside. So we’re going to do a little yard work today before the heat hits.
One strange recommendation for anybody who’s in the market for new sheets and wants something cool: the SleepNumber Bed store (or website) has some sheets and mattress-covers that are made out of a spaceage fabric that disperses heat. Dunno how they do it, but even a pillowcase keeps your pillow cool, and a full set of it is real nice. I’ve got the pillowcases and a mattress cover. I think my next sheet replacement is going to be their sheets. Even in the winter, I could like that.
The littlest fishes have discovered the whole pond is safe, now. They’re coming out to join the others at feeding time, and they’re so darn cute.
Writing is at one of those sit-by-the-pond-and-think stages…I’m doing outline, so far as involves just writing down the sequence of events; the plot, I’ve got; but the sequence of events comes next.
July 4, 2012
July 3, 2012
New shoes. You have to understand—this is an Event.
You may know I’m not keen on shopping. I’ll tend to wear something that’s ‘still good’ until it’s clear it isn’t. But now that Jane wants to start walking again—I began to realize the shoes have sort of reached the ‘not good’ stage. After a lifetime of never being able to wear any sneakers/gym shoes I have ever bought—I have paid big bucks for some that were supposed to be great, and on one notorious occasion, I ended up with horrendous blisters at the top of Doomsday Hill on our 7 mile Bloomsday Race—bandaids were not sufficient and I had no choice at the 3/4 mark but to take the shoe off, flatten it to a sandal-sole by standing on it, and using the laces to tie it to the wounded foot. Heck, yes, I wanted my ‘finishers’ tee-shirt. I limped—OSG kindly stayed with me—and finally crossed the finish line. We ended up at one of Spokane’s trendiest restaurants, near the finish, and I still was wearing my impromptu sandal—and still limping. It took weeks to heal.
Well, that’s typical of my relationship with tennies. Pain and suffering. I have a very, very high instep, and lacings usually cut the blood off to my lower foot—or if I don’t lace, I get blisters.
To my astonishment, I finally, after all these decades, found a style I can wear: Reebok’s Easy Toner—not the walking or running version, just the old original, fat black tennies with inflated half-ball soles that can get a little tippy (understatement) if you injudiciously squat to look at something and throw your weight to your toes: you’ll go right over and feel very silly. But they are the most comfy thing I’ve ever had on my feet. And now that I’ve ordered a new pair, and gotten them, I can say that, yes, the pair I’ve worn for about 3 years is a little underinflated now. Thorns are not good for these shoes. Rose thorns. Yew thorns. Nope, nope, nope. I’ll use my old pair for the garden, the new one for going out on the town, or for long walks. I also got a pair of sandals: those are kind of underinflated, too, and the straps have stretched, which makes it hard to keep them on your feet and turn around on steps—a safety thing.
So I have New Shoes. And in a day or two I will have New Sandals. Yay! Jane is now looking at them critically — her last attempt to order some got the wrong ‘last’ (probably the ones for ‘walking’) and she couldn’t use them. She believes these are the True Article and she will likely order a pair, because her sneaker-soles have gone flatter than mine have, and she needs the support worse than I do.
The pond is very clear right now. Everything is great. I feel guilty enjoying our beautiful 70 degree weather with so many people in misery with power-outs and fires. The only thing I can suggest is what I learned living in the south—a neckerchief soaked in water will keep your brain cool; ditto soaking your hat or cap. Don’t drink alcohol: drink cold drinks. I just do not tolerate heat well at all, and I learned that a wet scarf and a hand fan can bring the temperature down measurably. Shade in the out of doors is better than shade in a house and tree-shade is even better, because the leaves cool the air.
July 2, 2012
July 1, 2012
Mortal Kombat…
…with the iris. That one by the bridge had to be pulled before it shoved the bridge over—
The roots/rhizomes are about the size of large Irish potatoes, and getting in there…gasp…was a bear.
I started modestly with clippers to take off the leaves on one side.
I graduated to a spade, which I attempted to get underneath the clump and lift. No-(bleep)-way. It wouldn’t budge.
I got the big mattock. This got a few out and began to break up the clump…or at least…5″ of it.
I got the little mattock. This got a few more. I began to get to the center of it.
Back to the big mattock, using it as a lever with my entire body weight…no joy. Wouldn’t even budge.
I used the big mattock pick-end, and broke it up some more. I have now a mound of iris on the patio. I tried hooking the pick under the clump and pulling to try to break it up. I am in danger of a fatal accident, if that thing should give way totally—because I’m poised above the rock steps—but no joy. That thing ain’t moving.
Finally I take after it with the pick, deciding mortality among the iris is better than my own—and broke it up enough I doubled the size of the pile. I got rhizomes out as thick as a man’s wrist. I have now gotten that one iris clump dealt with: we will pick three good rhizomes and replant.
I still have the clump at the OTHER end of the bridge. This one took me 3 tries. Each time I would have to come in, cool down, and plan the next assault. It’s been about 4 hours, intermittently. I have a pile of iris to be trimmed and clipped. I think THAT will be my next project, and let the other one wait a bit, for one thing so we don’t mix the colors up.
June 30, 2012
Morning in the garden…
Yesterday’s bread was a bit, well, I had some ado getting it out of the pan last night, so the scrappy end of the loaf ended up in the skillet with a little butter, then some blueberry jam, we optimistically put the umbrella on the patio table, had breakfast out by the pond, then did a little gardening. The pond is clear! The crud has melted off the rocks, the fish are happy, the new babies are getting the idea that food happens here, and it’s lovely out there except the bog I created by forgetting to turn off a watering hose last night.
Clipped the suckers off the monster flowering quince, got into the plastic bins that have been sitting on the concrete since April—discovered they are not water-tight; and one had our lights; but solar lights are tough. I got our little hanging solar lanterns distributed about, hosed out the stagnant (ugh!) water, did a little weeding, and now my day starts…
I love our garden in the morning. The recipient of the water was my snapdragon patch—and the pretty tall red ones are lying over. Of course we are forecast for 3 days of rain. But sitting as we are atop glacial till with a pond, we do handle excess water well.
Curiously enough I’m not at all sore today, and the troublesome knee is responding to the hyaluronic acid/Joint Juice combo: it felt so good that, after I got too hot to work in the garden (I am not at all heat tolerant above 72 degrees) I did some stair running to the basement, taking stuff that should be down, down, and stuff that needed tossing, upstairs.
June 29, 2012
Doing better today…but oh, my back!
In the depression of yesterday, we got up this morning, went to Waffles n’ More, blew our diet, and went plant shopping: we got some summer annuals to brighten the garden along with the roses—an everblooming hydrangea, a freesia, which MIGHT be annual if we put it in the right spot; a few snapdragons, some portulaca (well, both those freeze, but they seed; I even sneaked a petunia into the mix—Jane is not enamored of petunias. So…we arrive home and start putting those in, carrying out the house plants from the kitchen, all of which have scale, then cleaning up behind them, plus weeding, plus talking to the friendly Mormons who want to see the garden—they were quite nice, actually, and really did like the garden; and digging and cleaning the filter—snapdragons love our place so much they seed onto the walkway, so we pull them up and put them back in the bed. And we Cloroxed the tables where the plants were—an operational note. Go to a place that sells marine fish and get a product called Prime: it instantly neutralizes chlorine, so it gets that awful smell off things, makes things safe, AND can rescue a shirt Clorox splashed on if you’re fast enough. Use it straight.
Then, good news, not only did our lone survivor from the previous batch of babies show up, a gorgeous black and gold butterfly fin—but the two new babies, a showa (kind of black and orange and white patchwork) and a black and white, both butterfly fins, and very pretty—they showed up with her: they’re about the same size, and while koi will eat fish, they will not eat young koi, so they dive fearlessly to snatch food from really huge mouths…it’s a very nice sight; and if we can just raise these three to adulthood, they’re going to be really pretty fish.
Nothing is safe: Shu and Sei have spotted a fly that got in with all our going and coming with plants. No, wait: they’ve gotten distracted and decided to wrestle each other, forgetting about the fly.
I am so tired—I find shopping exhausting; and we shopped; and then we gardened; and now I am sitting here with a cuppa iced coffee and two Advil.
Work did not get done this morning, but hey, we changed out the icemaker filter (Jane took a bath: one of the filters was defective and leaked like a fire hydrant) and I cleaned out the freezer and washed the thing; and raced to the curb in time to catch the garbage truck with a bag of stuff from the freezer that could have gotten really unpleasant by NEXT Friday—so that was lucky.
I am back to taking hyaluronic acid caps and Joint Juice (glucosamine-condroitin) or I don’t think I’d have survived today.
I am thinking about demanding dinner out, but in the midst of the chaos I did get some bread on to bake, and we have salad, so I may just do the Parmesan Chicken Salad with hot bread for dinner. Hot bread is hard to pass up. By morning it will just be morning toast.
June 28, 2012
Tragedy in the pond…we lost our littlest koi—four of them. And then another…
Best I can figure, we had a slow clog of the waterfall filter that really developed while we were gone for 2 weeks. We THOUGHT it was running slow. Now the waterfall is what provides aeration. And I had some water conditioner which can adversely affect oxygenation. WE then had a deep cold snap. All chemistry slowed…but it also drives the fish to the deep water, the smaller ones more so than the larger ones, who take longer to chill; and the cold didn’t let the bacteria-stuff clear the water. The big guys were not quite so deep in the water of the deep end. The little guys would have sat deepest. And they just..quietly expired down in that oxygen-poor layer.
Today we pulled the whole waterfall apart and hosed it out. My brilliant idea with the foam bag is at fault in this: it created the clog. We hauled it out and it was a mucky mess that weighed a ton. WE got the waterfall guts reassembled—a 2 person job this time—and finally got it to run the way it did last year. Finally!
We went out and got 3 pretty baby koi. Very baby. Breaks our hearts to have lost the others. I take it very personally because I really take care of the pond, I’m good with fish and water, and I understand the chemistry. I kept fighting the flow problem in the waterfall and telling myself it was, maybe, just a settling of the waterfall-frame in the pile. I’m the one that added the filter medium that caused the clog that did the real damage and really slowed it.
So I’m good at fishy things. Just not this time.
To top all, I put the bag with the new fishes in it where I was so sure it was secure, and it immediately fell over as I backed out of the store parking lot. Which killed one of the replacements. I hope that the other two are ok. Sometimes you don’t know for a day or two. Even somebody hitting ice with a hammer in the winter can kill fish. I feel so bad.
These that I hope are survivors of my stupidity are pretty little guys, butterfly-fins, and about 3″ long. The pond is on its way to clear water, and we really hope these guys will thrive.
June 26, 2012
Just a caution, or, how I got snagged.
This site that of COURSE hits the top of the search engines–freeze.com (don’t go there) —managed to offer a legitimate download of a useful program, Filezilla, but AS the legit program downloads, about the time your normal little black and white ‘Accept these conditions’ screen pops up—viola! you get a popup made to look exactly like that familiar screen that says Accept and once you do, then starts wildly downloading everything but the kitchen sink. I was tired, I was rushed: at the last instant something didn’t ‘feel’ right about a sudden new start of downloads and I aborted it quick as I could hit the button, but not before I had 3 of the blighters AND the Yahoo toolbar. Going into ‘add/remove programs’ showed NADA, nothing.
That’s how they get past the watchdog programs — you’ve ‘Allowed’ it.
Once on, they mask themselves so that they don’t show as what they are in ‘add/remove programs’ and don’t show in Firefox’s ‘add-on manager’ —so you have to go another route: look for things that just installed and nuke them forthwith. It’s still a pita to do and you risk blowing off something essential by mistake. The date-installed is the best guide.
Hot spot in Hell, for sure, and I and most other computer people would take a stint turning the spit.
Be careful in downloads. My protection suite didn’t take alarm at this site; didn’t stop the downloads; and it dumped icons on my desktop that, had I clicked on them, would probably have unpacked God knows what.
The purveyors of these programs have enough computer-un-savvy grandparents and mostly-confuseds out there in internet-land that they can keep themselves in clover just from the clicks. Dis-gusting.
If you’re not sure about a download you want, ask on Wave. One of us is bound to know a safe download site. This morning I was pre-coffee and too complacent. I should have gone to CNet. Those usually are clean.
