C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 43
July 5, 2015
flash copters…
If we happen to be home on the 4th of July, we hike along the street to the houseless hillside on that street that affords a panoramic view of the city—and the downtown fireworks display, which is quite something.
We are not alone in this. The police block the street, and a crowd of a hundred or more people turns up with lawnchairs.
Our skating coach lives at the prime address for viewing same, so we join her and her husband for a nice lawn-sit and a glass of wine in one of the best spots in the city, unless you want to stand on the bridge in the park and have them go off overhead.
Well, this year the kids in the crowd, and some of the adults, came armed with these wonderful glowing devices: you fire them with a rubber band, and they go high, high up, spread their wings and come down like little helicopters, right to the shooter, even if the shot was off vertical. They’re cold LED light, leave no debris, make no noise, and they’re absolutely wonderful reshootable little gadgets.
The crowd had almost as much fun with those as with the firework display.
July 2, 2015
A few more nasty days…
Then the temperatures go back to the high 80’s. The 4th of July is very often the height of heat for the summer here, as August tends to be fire season…I do hope the WOrldcon doesn’t get pink skies and the smell of smoke…
And we’re surviving. We lost the one tree. We’re thinking about whacking it back to the base and seeing if it can grow a new top.
June 29, 2015
We’ve now passed the hot air to Montana…
And it will not top 100 again this week. We’re back to more typical 4th of July weather.
Casualty, one tree, and several bushes which may not recover. We’ll give them til next spring to see if they rebound. Rhodies don’t readily replace leaves once lost.
But at least the egg is through the snake and Montana gets the weather…after Idaho’s stovepipe gets through with it.
June 26, 2015
Alas, our mitigating cloud cover will not materialize. 106 degrees on Sunday…
with a little cooldown Monday, then right back up in the 100’s by next week late.
Tricities gets 109. I am only glad we are not in the Tricities.
We are VERY glad of our patio canopies. It renders broiling into a gentle bake.
June 24, 2015
Sunday 105 in Spokane? Ugh…it’s been so cool most days…
An update however is saying that there is a chance it will ‘only’ get to 102. But Tri-Cities is forecast for 109. That’s brutal.
Still, folk down in the Tricities (Pasco, Kennewick, Richland) swear they like heat.
Not so much, us up here in Spokane.
They’re saying cloud cover and possible rain.
Which means 102 with humidity.
Monday will be, maybe 96. I am really not ok with heat. Over 72 and I melt. I had heat exhaustion one too many times as a kid in Oklahoma.
Our anniversary gift to ourselves was canopies over the patio. THis now seems a very nice thing.
June 21, 2015
Ace Hardware—not what it used to be.
I swear, everything we get from Ace breaks.
The plumbing parts? Bought a PVC to hose connector?
Broke right off when attaching a hose.
Tool handles break. What kind of industry machines a sound, metal blade, and attaches it to a handle that’s going to bend and break off.
Pump clip-on’s break…a bicycle pump should be sturdy enough to have a clip attach to a tire and detach without falling off in your hand the first time you use it. Fluke? Nay. We had two. I didn’t learn the first time.
I just do not get the economy of stuff that has good heavy, proper parts and then some ‘save-a-half-penny’ connector that’s a wonder it held up to get put on at the factory…
June 18, 2015
Jane got the leak fixed. Works like a charm.
She has now tackled hard-piping the front water feature. The hose gave way and created a mess. We think there were two problems, a rock that had fallen against the float-cutoff mechanism, and a split in the hose. So every time you turned on the hose the float would cause it to pour water in without cutoff, and the hose split would flood the area outside the valve box where the float valve is. Cure: remove the rock that’s jamming the cutoff of the float valve, and put a piece of pipe in, instead of the very cheap several-years-old hose.
June 17, 2015
Jane worked in the hot sun for 6 hours laying new irrigation line.
Today…she is sunburned and headachy. And it leaks. There is a split in the hose somewhere about halfway along its length.
June 15, 2015
The layover from hell…not mine, thank goodness.
United puts passengers in military barracks in Goose Bay
Once upon a con, I waited for nearly 6 hours in Toronto while Canada’s Eastern attempted to roll up one working plane to send to Halifax. Little did I know that legendarily the union feud within Eastern was so bad that at one point pilot and co-pilot were not speaking to each other, but frostily involving ground control as an intermediary…
Well, I had booked on this airline, in the winter, and thus far 3 planes had failed…they’d roll em up, and send ’em back to the hangar. Finally to get our way belated flight off, they borrowed a plane from Canadian Air, and off we went.
Engine next to me sounded wonky. Lot of vibration. Our delay meant we weren’t going to make a storm-free entry into Halifax NS.
In fact, we reached Halifax and aborted 3 landings with bushel-sized chunks of snow breaking off our wings and flying back through the lights. I’m beginning to think, “People who’ve seen this sort of thing probably didn’t survive.”
We came around again. Terrible turbulence. Stew grabs a bullhorn and yells, “We’re going down…” And turbulence hit, throwing her up, and then down. Magazines from the seat pockets flew up and all over. Stew valiantly crawls up over a seatback with bullhorn in hand and finishes… “…in Monckton, New Brunswick.” General applause.
Our left engine still sounds sick. We’re tossing all over the sky. The dear lady next to me starts chattering about which doilys and silver and china she’s leaving to which kid…
We finally get there, park in the snow at the end of a long line of stranded airliners, and have no transport. We hike toward the distant lights of the terminal in the dark—I’m wearing strappy high-heeled sandals. Frozen. Absolutely. But that one light, like a distant star, guides us on.
We collapse, shivering, except one man does a total meltdown at the desk howling that his wife is waiting for him at Halifax. Uh, guy, we’re alive. Shut up.
Other people are being told they’re stuck here for a while. I brightly realize–I’m an INTERNATIONAL passenger, which gives me priority, and manage to claim a vacant seat on a morning flight.
We have no luggage. It finally arrives. We have to pull it loose from the iced-over cart, and it’s frozen shut. We do get a bus to a hotel. That’s the good news. The bad news? We no sooner get checked in than we all get calls saying the bus will be back in an hour and a half, which will be dawn, and they’ve put those of us with seats on the first flight out.
Didn’t even undress. Just ran warm water on my feet, flopped on the bedspread, and tried not to sleep through the wakeup call.
We got airborne, on an ice-cold plane with one side of the tires sorta frozen and thumpy, and the pilot saying to us all, “Belt in and hang on. We’re first out and we don’t know what we’re going to run into…”
We did get to Halifax, but that’s another story.
We were, at one point during the bouncing around, told that if we couldn’t land at Monckton, we’d have another chance at Goose Bay.
Reading the above, I can only say—I am very glad not to have been in a barracks in Goose Bay.
June 12, 2015
The dreaded juniper—a chainsaw and a win…
Today’s gardening?
Juniper bush. I think it was original to the house, ca 1954. It had spread, from a central trunk about 10″ in diameter, to a woody mass about 5 feet in diameter, and had radiated out branches each as thick as a lady’s wrist, about 8 in number to a radius of 15 to (we’re still not sure if some of those bushes still green are independent or connected) 30 feet.
It had also grown up tall enough (hip-high) the city wanted it removed, because it’s on a corner.
So—two women both over 60, with a bitty Poulan electric chainsaw, a pair of loppers, a pair of hand clippers, and a bottle of Aleve… have, today, reduced this thing to a 15’x10′ patch of dead dust with a knee-high stump we are going to declare a permanent monument….plus a big pile of thick juniper branches we can’t put in the green bin, and a big pile of juniper foliage we CAN put in the green bin. We are going to move in three small junipers from the retaining wall, move two small burning-bush plants from the side garden where the junipers were, and we are declaring it a victory. If that stump’s still live, and sends out more branches, at least they’ll be little ones.
And that’s BEFORE we actually get to work today.
