C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 125

Daylight Savings Time…and spring has sprung…

The kittehs: due to extreme kitteh terrorism and the climbing ability of Shu-shu—if he had Seishi's thumbs it would all be over—we have gotten very strict about 8 am feeding time…no budge in that hour.  Today they are smug. They think they won one.

The garden: most mornings the pond has been iced over. Now, quite suddenly, there's a gentle rain falling. Ari appeared yesterday: I note that the algae has started growing on last year's lily stems, and there's a hint of pink on the buds of the quince that screens my window. I love quince. Its blooms look tropical, but it's hardy; and it branches at a right angle, which makes its habit open rather than thickly leaved. I can always see out quite well past it, and in spring, it blooms all along its branches with apricot-colored flowers. My little crew of house sparrows lives there—they own the pond, just ask them. And I am going to have to get out there and resurrect the wisteria stake—a thick bamboo pole that collapsed when a windstorm blew a neighboring trellis down. The other trellis was only propped against the fence…my fault.

We have to do some carpentry out there: we decided to trade the moon gate for a rectangular arch with no swinging gate, in front of the garage door, so we disassembled the moon gate and moved the rectangular gate in the L to do that job, but the same windstorm blew it down and did some damage to it. It is now propped against the fence so it can't tip again.

We will secure it when we set it in place, do some repair on it. Then we will assemble the moon gate where it will frame the short bit of the L: we have trees back there, including an espaliered apple against the fence, and we will one day stair-step the ground back there to make a little pond for lotus and a little recyclling stream running from the high part.

No fish in that one. Just a lotus. That little bit has quite a rise in it, back by the apple, so all we need to do is terrace it with a notch for the little stream…it's only about 15 feet from the high part to the level where we will put the lotus pond. We won't connect it to the big pond: the big pond sits in a berm we don't want to mess with, and the waterfall is there, but it will provide a harmony for that problematic part of the yard. Right now it also contains our tool shed and lawn chemical storage, and we are going to screen those with trellis or flowering bushes that will meet the wing of the moon gate. Which will have its pretty gates closed more often. And it will be firmly anchored. We've discovered landscape stones, those with the trefoil design in cement, make real good anchors if you fill the open part of the design with gravel. The swing in the front yard would go over with every wind until we thought up that solution, and we are going to fix the gates in back so they are storm-proof.

But we are NOT obsessing, this year. We are going to do these things in a sane and occasional manner.

 

 

 

Rolling!

Finally!

I think it's getting all the work done and Jane getting back at writing and everything all at once—I haven't hit stretches where I just don't want to quit in the evening (and actually keep going) in years.

Life is good.

And—I saw our largest koi, Ari, put her gold nose out from under the winter shelter.

 

Has anybody had any difficulty getting onto Closed Circle or downloading?

We know there's some work being done on the server, —one chap had IE unable to find the site and we want to be sure it's a fluke, not a major problem.

 

If you want one of our hardbound books—CJ personally has some copies for sale…

Do check it out. Our inventory is down to 12 now, out of 25, and we have also put the other hardbound and paperbound physical books on sale, too …I'd like my faithful blog readers to have first jump on this. These will be signed, personalized to whatever person you specify, and sent. By CC policy, if you buy more than one of these books, we combine them into one package to do postage in the most economical way we can figure and refund the excess back to your Paypal account.

Continue hopping onto Closed Circle and trying to break it…

We just, thanks to a very, very kind, persistent, and thorough Wave member, patched a major problem, did some more moving, plastering and painting—and then the webhost advised us they're doing a major server software upgrade within the next day or the day after—and we are to look for 'issues.'

WordPress is so big I can't conceive of them doing anything to screw up a WP installation—they'd be inundated with howling users. The only thing I can say is that both Jane and I, and then Lynn, once she ironed out a disaster at her digs, spent all yesterday doing our own patching and fixing, and we are, I think, grateful that OUR work did not happen to be half-done when they started theirs.

Or as Lynn put it, when she got the notice late last night, when it rains, it pours…

Intruder should be here tomorrow…but it's landed at my house, today…

The boxes have arrived. We'll be selling signed copies direct from Closed Circle as soon as we can get a listing up.

Anytime you want a signed copy, do recall we do that—the list of physical books we have is on CC.

 

 

Browser Check, Please!

Jane here!

I adjusted the code for the Closed Circle banner images last night so that they should adjust for various screen configurations, e.i. they should now be a percentage of the column width rather than an absolute size. Problem is, WordPress wants to mess with the manual html code, and it took out the code that should keep the image proportions the same, so…if you would mind clearing your cache and taking a quick dive over there with whatever browser and version you use to see if it displays right, I'd sure appreciate it. If you would window rather than full screen and "squish" the page to see if it changes, that w/b even wonderfuller!

 

Closed Circle upgrade is pretty well done—still some tweaks, but go bounce on it…

..,and see if it holds together.

 

Also if you want to see the before and after bathroom, Jane's slideshow will show you the pit as it was Iexcluding the hole in the tub wall] and what we did. Notably, we added five new outlets, added a display shelf above the medicine cabinets, repaired the rotted subfloor near the tub, leveled that, retiled that, pulled ALL the tub plumbing down to the ironwork of the house drain, redid that, pulled the old counter, stripped the old tile, including the sink backsplash, plastered, repainted, did new tile, including the koi mural, did a new bath counter, installed a new type of sink and faucet, new metalwork throughout, including the tp dispenser; new shower curtain, new wall medicine cabinets, one triple-wide each, with mirrors, new lighting wiring, new lights, new ceiling ventilation fan [attic work] and new insulation around the exposed studs: the tub water now holds its heat longer. I helped sometimes, as in hefting those cabinets up, steadying things while Jane attached same, and we hired two guys to cut and position the tile and to install backerboard and do a new countertop of plywood and backerboard with a smaller sink opening, plus positioning the tile on that, plus the display shelf. We did all the grouting and cleanup, all plumbing and electrical, all plastering and painting…and of all that work, I probably did 1/10th and Jane did all the rest.

 

We are gaining on the upgrade of Closed Circle.

We're going to be moving and renaming things, which could give you some issues viewing. Don't forget to 'refresh' your browser. But you can take a look around.

Dear friends—a name has slipped my mind and didn't get written into the notebook—

What is the name of the Reunion stationmaster?