C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 162

I've quit Facebook for a while: too little real stuff…I'll be here, depend on it.

Facebook was just getting more and more full of silly and just not the community this place is. So I'm devoting myself to the blog and to Closed Circle, which is where I'd rather be. Jane and I came to that conclusion pretty well a month ago, but hung on because we decided to try the ad-thing, just in case it worked—it didn't. And I think we've reached the conclusion here is better on a multitude of grounds.

So both of us will not be posting much over there, and I'm already feeling better about it.

Raining snowballs last night…quite spectacular!

The massive flowering quince that shades my bedroom totally collapsed flat. The snowplows just threw up a three foot berm across our drive, and Jane has thrown her back out, not unrelated to shoveling, I fear, but it looks as if this storm is mine. As soon as it's light I'm going to have to go out there and shovel a path—it makes the snowblower's job easier, if it can get one half of its body free—and it's deep, over a foot. The weight on our roof is getting a tad worrisome: it's impressively thick. But I have got to get that berm penetrated before it freezes solid, or our little snowblower can't do it. And that means a lot of kitting up and going out and a lot of coffee. I'm not short of mittens and gloves, but I sure wish I'd bought that other knit beret I saw the other day at Freddy Myers'. Mine will be sopped in one go with the snowblower, and it's going to be a long, long day of working in the snow.

Last night, after snowing nonstop for hours and hours, it really did rain snowballs. It reminded me of the night I was on a plane making its third try at a landing in Halifax. Huge balls of snow, the size of your head, were coming past my window in the lights, and a thick coating of snow was breaking off the leading edge of the wing, and while the lady next to me was talking about her will and what she was leaving to her kids, I was thinking, "Y'know, I wonder how many people have seen snowballs fly like this and lived…"

It was like that last night. I was thinking, heck, a few hours of this and we're going to be buried….but now we have a couple of days for snow to melt a bit during the day: it'll get up to two degrees above freezing for a few hours—

But I don't think we're going skating today: I'm just going to kit up and shovel.

Those of you in the South, not used to low temps, not insulated…

Pay close attention to the weather reports. An online correspondent of mine just had his entire house ceiling fall in. He went to work on a cold day, he lives in the far south, the cold froze pipes in the attic, and for hours and hours, a split pipe delivered water full bore to his ceiling. The whole thing became waterlogged and came down, bringing what insulation there was down with it, that—and a lake of water, as the pipe kept going and going. Got all the house, the furniture, the electronics—it's destruction like a river flood, but coming from above.

If you are in an area not accustomed to freezing temps, keep your house temperature reasonable, open the cabinet doors under your sinks, and keep a trickle of water running from your various faucets. Outside, if you cannot shut down your faucets, disconnect your hoses and tape styrofoam around your faucets, up against the house. That will hopefully keep them from freezing and splitting the pipe.

What a mess!

A new storm is coming…

And this one has a week more to run…it's not snowing today, but will tomorrow through next Sunday, and then the next BIG storm hits. We got over a foot from the last one, and had to clear our trees of snow; the snow was so wet you don't want to ask how much extra poundage was in the snow standing 3″ deep on branches that had felt no wind for days.

Jane's decorating for the holidays. She is very good at this. I am not. I'll pitch in for the slightly less artistic trimming of the tree!

Thanksgiving…an odd sort of holiday…

A British reader pointed out—Thanksgiving is kind of an anomaly among holidays. And Americans love holidays. Halloween has gone from kids trick or treating to adults dressing up and going about to their favorite pubs or parties, decorating in orange lights—black ones still elude the determined! —doing their front yards up with filmy spiderwebs and silly tombstones, not to mention jack o' lanterns. And then Thanksgiving follows it a month later and kicks off the Serious Holiday season, toward solemn Christmas and blowout New Year's. Since Americans actually have to get some work done, they've somehow neglected to connect New Year's to Valentine's Day, but give us another few decades.

What is Thanksgiving? In origin, it's a harvest feast, and commemorated survival. It's gathered legends of Native American assistance (there was,) celebrates New World foods (squash, corn, and turkey) and trappings of Victorian sleighs and rides (during the last of the Little Ice Age) to Grandma's house over snowcovered roads. Traditionally, it's the time for the reigning matriarch to hold a really big dinner for all her offspring at once, so in-laws and cousins meet, probably for the only time that year, sometimes alternates between 'his' mother and 'her' mother's house. Lately granddad and the guys have added (besides the football game on telly) the ritual attempt to fast-cook an entire turkey in a hot oil deep-frier in (hopefully) the driveway of the grandparental home—keeping fire companies on duty through the holiday.

It's a time in which if you haven't got a huge family feed, or sometimes if you do, you invite friends to get together: restaurants and bars, jails, and hospitals switch their menus to include the traditional fare, and people who are out of touch call each other.

It's not a religious or political holiday, so much as it's a beginning-of-winter, we've survived, let's get family together sort of holiday, celebrated around a long table, or a tv football game or event (I kid thee not) —the latest being the efforts of otherwise sane people to fling innocent pumpkins as far as possible with a mediaeval catapult; or sometimes in a restaurant, with memories or at least imaginations of the big Dinners. It's a time to take a second thought, refocus, and be appreciative of the good things we have.

So that's what we do.

Round 2 with the snow: this time Jane and I both ran the blower…

…much easier the second time around!

BTW, overstock.com is offering a refurb Nook for 99.00.

Jane's doing what she dearly loves this time of year: decorating for Christmas!

We're hanging a stocking for the cats, and we have wall to wall stags, mostly of crystal…lots of sparkle!

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

…we are particularly thankful for our friends in the Closed Circle network. Thank you all so much for your kindness.

Our plans for the day, now that we have had breakfast, are to be thoroughly off-diet. The day's fare will be (not just 'include') coconut cream pie and carrot cake and bubbly. Straight to the stuff we REALLY like!

-13 last night here: 0 at 9 am, pond completely frozen over…

We're not going skating today: a forecast daily high of 9 is just a little unreasonable for the winter clothes we own: we are not equipped for Fairbanks or Nome. I have an important scene to write today, and over all—we're just going to be homebodies.

The pond froze despite the heater, but it is thawing as sunlight hits that area. It's a good thing. The heater is not to keep the koi warm, but to prevent the pond from freezing over, because it is vital to allow gas exchange with the atmosphere: notably co2 needs to escape from the pond.

If a pond does freeze, the way to fix it is to go boil water and use boiling water to melt a hole in the ice. You cannot break the ice, because the shock from the impacts on the ice could kill the fish. This is why you do not throw rocks in ornamental ponds: it's painful to the fish.

I didn't get much sleep last night—don't know why. It was cold, but I had a warm spot. Ysabel was cold—that was much more to the point: she couldn't figure out where she wanted to be and kept clawing at my face, or my arm, or the covers—"We'z changed our mind agin. we wants to be unner teh coverz, plz…"

There's nothing more annoying than a claw on the cheek at 3 am.

Look out, nation. Snowpocalypse has arrived!

We're under a blizzard warning and asked to stay off the roads…the city services have got all they can handle.

Jane says the snow-viewing lantern looks like a Russian onion dome. We have about 5″ down so far and it's still coming. We were going to skate today, but it looks as if we'd better rig up our little snowblower and get at it before it freezes. We're going to have snow all week, temperatures as low as -13 at night, highs of 10, and then, this weekend, we have one warmer day and it could rain atop all this, which will create an ice topping on all this.

The pond has frozen…

…and we spent yesterday afternoon hacking frozen ground and moving semi-frozen mulch. Our neighbor now thinks he doesn't want a wall where we were going to put it, so we had to rip up a wee bit more sod and (in a mild wind) get the newspaper down and then weedcloth and then mulch over a final pile of lawn waste and dirt, so it will compost. Jane did the lion's share of the mulch-moving, and I laid newspaper and weedcloth and moved a little mulch; plus got the brussel sprouts disconnected from the giant stems of brussel sprouts they had for a bargain at the store. Brussel sprouts are generally so spendy we don't get them often, but these were two huge stems (read, 3 gallons) of sprouts, which grow like hollyhocks, for 5.00. Couldn't resist. I brought home these things that look like alien life, and we had steamed brussel sprouts for supper, with cinnamoned ham. Yum. I have enough brussel sprouts to go until Thanksgiving or beyond.

I also got the pump I'd ordered for the skimmer for the marine tank: good thing: I don't like the tank to be skimmerless for 5 days!

If you wonder what a skimmer does, it's the surf of a marine tank. When the ocean laps the shore, the amino acids of dead sea life make this froth, which is (in a marine tank) allowed to decay to a nasty green soup, which is then thrown out with some distaste. There was some viral video last year of a beach in Australia where 15′ high banks of froth had gotten kicked up, and people were letting their children frolic 'in the sea foam'….

Every marine hobbyist in the wide world was shaking his head and going…"Oh, yuuuuuckkkk…"