C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 164

Jane's a bit under the weather—

She's taken to her bed and is reading and sleeping and having food and reading and sleeping. Overdue, I think. She's been so tired.

I'm trying to work, but it's a sleepy sort of day. The light-alarm system is working well: both of us are waking up to it and not being jarred out of bed by the Tolkienian "Fire! Alarm! Awake!" sort of bell, buzzer, or audible alert. Daylight colored light streaming out overhead is the ancient signal for the body clock to say "It's morning."

I mentioned, I think, that our two hanging lights were designed as porchlights. Best for the purpose.

We had a hard freeze last night, into the low 30′s, and everything frosted white this morning: the koi came out, but clustered around the floating heater, then made a line, toured the pond, and went back under their winter cover. The waterfall is now off, which lets the water settle in layers, coldest at the top, warmest at the bottom, which is ultimately where the koi will congregate. The hawthorne and birch are bright gold this morning—ready to shed their leaves, and we will see how efficient our pond netting is at keeping them out. I have some cold-water bacteria I need to put in (Lord, that stuff smells bad!) but for the most part, no fishes need put their noses up until spring.

So what's everybody planning for winter?

We're redoing the bathroom, organizing the basement—we'll see how far we get with this. But we have plans.

Second day on the ice—-oh, have I become a couch potato…

Leaves and roots are next.

I skate 30 minutes, nearly fall down on a simple inside arc (because I stood up from proper posture, —standing up shifts your weight forward, your weight going forward on the blade slowed my glide down, and the laws of physics say that though that foot under you has braked, the upper part of you keeps going—stupid, eh?)

And I managed to get a charley horse, of all things, in, shall we say, where you sit. Because those muscles work a lot.

To add to it all, dropping 20 lbs (which I have, in total, since July)—means your skate boots can become a little loose.

We got the light switch in. We didn't get the front yard water feature unhooked. But our snow has piffled. We're going to be much the same all week.

Got a treat for you: anybody can make it, and it's diet-friendly for both Atkins and South Beach—another flavor of ricotta cream—this one tasting like Mounds bars.

THis serves 1—multiply it as you wish.

1/2 cup ricotta cheese.

add: tbs cocoa; dash of coconut flavor; 2 tbs vanilla; 2 tbs Splenda. Stir wildly, put into small cup, refrigerate a few hours.

Pond shutdown.

There's a job.

Our Shinmaywa pump (a monster) drives a 2″ hose 30′, the last 3′ of which climbs 4′, which is a pretty potent pump. A simple hose clamp to be undone every year has the potential to a) blow off or b) be a bear. So they gave us this magical connector called a "Gator Lock" ™ connector, with cams that flip a clamp on either side of the pipe to grab on and hold it. You cannot release the cams without pushing 2 buttons simultaneously, one on each cam, on opposite sides of the pipe. There is only room for one person. Yes, you add it up. You need one more hand, and you are working in nearly-freezing water in a pit the size of your typical bucket, while standing on your head.

Jane refuses to let me tackle that, so I gathered up the semi-frozen water hose, about 300 feet of it, that wends all over the garden. It won't coil except to the left hand, and I'm right handed, and the whole garden has now (after last night's rain) achieved that degree of muck and leaf mold last seen in 330 AD in a Gallic village. A poor Gallic village. I now look like a poor Gallic villager, since carrying a hundred feet of hose is a full-body experience. Three times.

Thank goodness for rain suits. But even so—glug.

I got both pond heaters installed, the bottom heater and the gas-exchange/floating heater.

The waterfall is shut down.

The netting is thus far holding at a stretch about 10″ off the water surface. It was rather pretty when it frosted this morning.

My fingernails are probably shot.

The fish are terrified after all the splashing about and have gone under their 6′ diameter winter shield, and probably will begin to stay there now that the heaters are under it and going. They're not stupid.

It's forecasted to snow next week. The average start for snow in Spokane is November 11. It's supposed to snow Monday through Wednesday of next week. How close can you be, weatherwise, eh?

Don't forget to sleep extra tomorrow morning.

Spring forward, fall back—it's the end of Daylight Savings Time.

Jane and I decided to do the ultimate alarm clock—instead of racket, a timed light with a bright bulb.

We couldn't find fixtures we liked—for ceilings with no wiring-box, but we had a sudden inspiration, looking toward the end of the display toward the porch lights. No few of those have a swag option, just plug in, and they're interesting-looking and waaaay cheaper than most lighting fixtures.

So Jane picked one which they called French-inspired black iron—if it's French, it's New Orlingean French, but I think it looks Japanese, which fits her decor; I picked one that's a ship's-lantern style, in old bronze, which fits my room—I'm decorated in piratical style, complete with musket, ship's wheel, and tricorn—

Well, it works great! That light (6500k white curlycue bulb) comes on, and I wake up instantly without having my circulatory system sped into overdrive by bells and alarms.

We're both happy with the decor, and we're just in time for winter dark.

They also make timers that fit in regular wall switch boxes, with just a new kind of face-plate, and Jane valiantly figured those out, installed the switches, and got the things programmed despite the lack of instructions that related to the precise model we bought. We have 6500 k T8′s going in the basement, over the plants we brought in, we have more in the kitchen, and now we have both those systems on timer. We are now automated as the Enterprise, eh?

Farewell, world! [going back on the ice]

We've decided for our mental well-being we desperately need to get back to the rink. So we're going to go—and we're going to be careful.

Spaceweather.com……a really neat site.

http://spaceweather.com/

Costs nothing. Has really cool videos. We just had an ionosphere disturbance. You want to keep track of your local star—this is the place.

The curse of 500,000…

When I started my webpage back in (mmf-mmf-mff) the 1990′s or late '80′s…I had a hit counter. A year or so on, it died, it died. I gave myself 350,000 posts (as a very conservative estimate) and reconstituted it. As it was in, I think, the 400,000′s…we moved north. When we set up again, I restarted it, and picked, oh, 350,000 posts as a fair start. The counter died again a few years back and I picked 350,000 as a starting figure.

I was so planning a celebration when it would finally, from all kinds of fair starts, top 500,000. We were somewhere aroun 490100. And it seems to have died the death. Waaa! There goes my celebration. I'm giving it a while in the case it will wake up and start counting visitors again. But witness, it was 490100 or thereabouts. I've been so determined to count only 'real' visits. I have absolutely refused to 'cheat' on the count, because, pardon me, many commercial sites lie through their teeth.

Sigh.

Blood Red Moon and Rusalka…

….are up!

Think of Blood Red Moon as the Starsky and Hutch of vampire stories—Jane will kill me for that; and Rusalka is a ghost story.

Happy Halloween, all!

We are VERY close to issuing two new books on Closed Circle!

Stand by. You'll note there are new items in the Closed Circle Bazaar.