C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 66

OMG—the fence is here.

We haven’t gotten our permit.

We haven’t lined up help to take down the old fence.

They told us two weeks.

[racing in useless circles, here]

typical, typical of our projects!

Spring has truly sprung here…iris are sending up shoots, buds on trees…

are increasing.

The pond is now clear, clear to the bottom. All our fishes are happy. I can’t feed them yet.

I’m doing the final edit on the NEXT Foreigner book before writing the ending.

The house is a mess. But we are bringing order out of that chaos. Slowly. While working on the garden and two books.

Morning, and I hear birds singing…we don’t have the more colorful prairie birds this deep in the city, but I have my silly sparrows, and they’re back in the quince bush outside my window, in mating frenzy. They like our pond—they’re the cleanest birds in north Spokane; and they’re not afraid of the cats—who watch through the window. I miss our rosy house finches, but not the apartment where they visited.

So I’ll take my rowdy little browncoats, and enjoy them at very close range—only 3 feet from my chair. They’re not afraid of me, either. And they’re back every year.

The quince is about to bloom: it’ll be pink when it gets the blooms going—monster bush, high as the eaves.

April Fool’s day…

Beware.

Articles you read won’t necessarily be on the level.

Another quote from the Science Channel…

From How It’s Made.

“…quote from How It’s Made…Science Channel…

“Now full of sweet fruit, the worker positions the crust over the pie…”

Discuss. [facepalm]

OMG—accidentally caught a bit of Ancient Aliens by error…while trying take a nap….

…I was SO tired, but I could feel my brain draining.

Aliens from across the galaxy coming here to mine gold to replenish their atmosphere…

I had to get up. The stupid was so strong in that program…

I had to turn it off.

The stupid was so strong it could alter DNA in the hearer…

They’re sending the guy back with the mobo…

He’s not happy. He’s complaining how much time he spent on us.

But hey, we want what we want.

And if his company isn’t paying him for his time, that’s between him and his company.

It never fails that when Jane is nearing the end of a book…

We have a flood, fire, or a computer calamity…

In this case we are both nearing the end of our respective books and it’s my computer…

We called Dell; after days of fixes, from loading new USB drivers (the problem is ‘dancing’ up and down a set of USB’s) to flashing the bios—they concluded I need a new MOBO (motherboard) and sent one and a repairman, who began by saying he didn’t think it was the mobo, that the ‘dancing’ is indicative of a virus or spyware and that I should decline the mobo fix and undertake virus removal…which entails wiping the disk. He took away the new mobo and wished me luck with wiping the disk and reinstalling Windows.

Well, we pulled the affected laptop drive and first used a cable to connect it to the drive of another Windows computer, which threw a catfit, apparently—I wasn’t there— The object was to run Norton Antivirus via a Windows installation on THAT computer, which would be able to scan the ENTIRE disc.

So I was computerless all day, with the notion that we would have to re-image (trash and wipe) my hard drive, so I spent time backing up files, and calling Dell to arrange the disks needed to do that operation.

By evening, we got hold of Lynn, who does computers as a side job…and she said the dancing is more often than not a hardware problem. We called Dell and told them we had changed our minds, told them what the repairman had said, and that we weren’t convinced, and we wanted the new mobo instead. I had copied files to CD which the repairman had said couldn’t be done reliably with the virus he suspected; and I also ran Norton on the machine, which reported no virus…it couldn’t, from there, analyse the part of Windows software running it, but we were getting the most of it. AND the problem we have been having with the router the guy said was due to the virus…we are pretty sure has not ‘infested every computer in the house’ but is really just the crap modem Comcast gave us about the time we started having troubles with it.

So I called Dell for the multip-leth time and said I wanted the mobo change. They’re sending a new one. I hope they send a different repair guy.

Well, it was a stressful day. Really stressful. Wipe and reload every computer in our network? At tax time and with 2 novels near their ends? Gimme a break!

So this morning Jane pulled the drive again and this time put it into direct link with the desktop computer, and it ran Norton clean, no objections, no virus.

So Wesley has had his joke. All’s normal again—I’m waiting for the new mobo. I still have this computer working.

What can I say?

And….not quite perfect re the water project…

Woke up this morning to the big waterfall doing the surge and stop it does when water level is low…

ran out to see that the little filter is leaking bigtime…clogged.

Ah, me, first filter-pass of the season. I’ll add more water and haul out the filter pads from the little filter, which will weigh a ton, and wash them, then restart, and may have to do this more than once. We’ve never started the pond with the little filter engaged: live and learn, eh?

Took the drive up to Priest Lake, and…

it was great. 80 mile round trip, with beautiful scenery (Priest Lake is still frozen and there is snow along the roadsides) and one of the best hamburgers I’ve ever had up there in the town. Ardy’s Cafe, if you’re in the neighborhood. Bacon cheeseburger with avocado. Yum.

We got a moderately warm day and broke out the shovel and mattock to a) sink the Matala filter (storage-bin sized) into the berm of the pond so it won’t be so obvious, which for Jane meant sitting in mud and stagnant water. And I got out the mattock to skim the ground down to level along the new fence row.

Advil!!!! Triple dose!

But one pond filter is now running!

Your new word for the day, southern folk! Graupel.

This is when it’s raining styrofoam. Or snowing little cubes of very light spongy stuff.

This is what we had, when we’ve been mid-50′s. We will be again this weekend, but the pond skinned over with ice in great wrinkles this morning, and we had a real downpour of graupel yesterday.

We are, however, getting out there to rake and de-mulch the roses (a leaf blower works best for that!) and generally to find out where we left things last fall when we were both down with the crud and unable to do much.

The fence guy is coming to do a final measure soon.

And we hope to get this show on the road.

We’re behind on accounting, still trying to get the credit cards entered.

And we are just fried…I have told Jane we are packing up the cats tomorrow and driving to Priest Lake, just a scenic drive to get us out of the house. That’s 80 miles from here, and 80 back, and maybe we’ll have lunch at the local BBQ. The lake gets its name from the Jesuits who had a post there way back when. And it’s got bears and moose and lynx and probably cougars and all sorts of birds and fish, surrounded by the Selkirk mountains, of which our own Mt Spokane is part…it’ll be a pretty drive. And we need some mental floss.