C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 207
October 19, 2009
Darn, darn, darn—I fear we're coming down with the pig flu…
We've both had the regular flu vaccine, but we're feeling rotten, edge of a sore throat, cough…simultaneously for both of us. We are very suspicious…
We're ba-a-a-ak!
Jane's bro has just moved, so we landed in the middle of a new house set-up. The cats were confused…they know Jane's bros, but the house was new, and there were (dreaded) boxes: they were really on best behavior.
We contributed to the move-in. Jane installed a new icemaker in the fridge and rearranged the attached storeroom, plus unpacked the china and hung pictures and repaired favorite broken sit-abouts. My contribution was a shower curtain set-up and some unpacking and box-shifting. Plus...
October 18, 2009
Headed home…
One of Jane's birthday requests was a visit to her bros in Seattle…so cats and all, we were off. And OSG was watching the fishes, but the last we heard, OSG has come down with the swine flu and so has Joan's husband. The whole circle of our friends is becoming swine-flu'ed! We certainly wish all well!
October 14, 2009
Well, poor Hank may have broken his wrist in that collision…
He hit the wall before he slid on down and hit me, and the collision started apparently by clipping the wall with his skate, meeting an open doorway and then sliding on down the barrier into me. We knew he'd hurt his wrist, but he was flexing it okay—but after a little rest it went on to give more trouble. We hope it's only sprained.
We had lunch with OSG, and then I just flat folded up and went to bed for a while. Skating's hard work, sort of like swimming, and I'm out of shape.
It's...
October 13, 2009
Back to the ice…wish us luck. And luck to Joe…
We will report how it went, and we hope Joe will when he can.
October 11, 2009
So what are you going to do this winter?
We're headed back to the rink soon: we could have skated through the summer, but there was so much work we needed to do, and of course personal events intervened—so we hope to get back onto the ice without cracking our skulls or anything else essential.
We're still working on Closed Circle, and hope to have that going very, very, very soon.
And we are actually making progress with the house organization, which has every room but the living room and the basement in good shape…those are next on o...
October 10, 2009
Cold. I tell you, cold. And 93,932 words.
We had a real arctic blast come down: leaves are still green, and it hit 19 last night, and will go lower tonight. As Jane says in her post, (with pix), we shut down the pump for the pond, for one thing to let the sunwarmed shallow water get to the depths, where the fish are.
I pulled the water hyacinth today: shame, but it's going to rot and be a problem. That left our poor cold-stuporous fish with no shade, and right now they are sleep-swimming: threatened or disturbed, they dart on...
October 9, 2009
We have anti-raccoon measures in place…
The scenario: a riot between foxes and coyotes was met with pepper spray and precipitated a urological crisis…
Which is the way a bloodhound would read the neighborhood of our pond, between fits of sneezing.
I used 2 products: Havaheart pepper compound, which smells like black pepper, but has eau de habanero somewhere in the mix. The instructions on that one—do not put on plants and wear gloves while applying.
The other is Shake-Away coyote/fox urine mix, which should be pretty broad spectrum...
October 8, 2009
Jane's been on the roof again…
Gutter cleaning. We got a couple of wheelbarrow loads of compost out of it: gutter-guard keeps the big stuff out, and the chaff composts really nicely. Darn the luck.
I meanwhile hauled out the garbage, the recyclables, and the yard clippings, and clipped the roses back pretty severely, piling mulch over them. We're due for a 20 degree night.
OSG told us a pond near Joan lost its koi to a raccoon. We're going after some repellant. But I think one may already have tried and failed with our...
October 7, 2009
Nearly lost the new Foreigner book…
I told you the ac adapter burned out last week.
I was using the alternate one, the oldest, pending the arrival of the new one from Dell.
It arrived. I waited until evening, when I like to use my computer in the living room, and plugged in there. Immediately—
The battery-charge light began blinking, two yellows and a green. This is not good. Not only that, all the programs I had running were no longer running, and the machine began showing me update notices and all sorts of crap, as if it were...
