C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 83

And the snippy charity driver left all the heavy stuff…

And left it in the driveway.

The next time they call us to ask for a donation, they get coal in their shoes, and the edge of my temper.

We’ve called another charity I like better anyway, and we hope they’ll send a truck to take it.

Success! We got the chaise longue up from the basement…

Plus a 100 lbs of chair. Several air filters, boxes of kitchen stuff, pillows, bedding, you name it, all sitting out on the drive waiting for the charity truck…

We now have a mattress to dispose of. I vote for setting it in the drive labeled ‘free!’ We don’t live on an arterial for nothing!

House cleanout…

We are moving furniture out for a charity pickup tomorrow. And the rain we have had for several days is going away today, so we will be able to get that monster couch up from the basement and the exercycle out as well.

Wish us luck.

Note to self: the drain goes on the bottom.

Assembly of the large Matala Biosteps filter—unaided by anything but the pretty-bad picture on the box—the instructions had a way of leapfrogging over the critical bit, like, which is the FRONT of this thing?—went fairly well.

And it did run nicely, and I have clear water.

Backflushing, however, poured everything back into the pond.

We have now come to our senses and realized that the most obvious thing, after we figured out all the rest of the really arcane stuff correctly—is to make the bottom hole the drain, and the TOP hole the inflow.

It was very wet and soupy getting this corrected.

That is all.

Ann Crispin has died…

Gave a lot to young writers. My dealings with her were few, but always positive.

The field is losing too many lately.

Lake Cruise last evening…we had a nice little party…

It was overcast, thunderstorms in the distance, which means cool (good) and no sun glaring. We got one of the two tables on the topside right beside the wheelhouse. The only downside was that we drew the Mish-an-nock, which at 120 feet (Drakes Golden Hind was 60, I believe) is just too stable…but! in reserve, they had 2 of the pretty faceted mugs that I wanted! Jane got them to search them up. Being the large-scale party barge, I suspect the Mish-an-nock gets the best of the supplies. They run two bars, one above, one below, but the menu is the same on all the cruises, salmon, beef, salad and bread—good stuff. And the cheesecake is really, really good—that’s where I committed my sins, well, that and the wine. A wee bit too much; and neither I nor Jane should have been driving—

So we didn’t. Our friends Patty and Mike (teetotalers both) drove; and we also had Tim and Cheryl with us…a great time had by all. Patty complimented me on my choice of birthday celebrations. We had also asked two other people—but alas, we kept e-mailing and they kept e-mailing, and their e-mails just were not getting to us. So perhaps we will reprise the party for them—or whatever people would like. Jane’s birthday is coming up next….

Jane reports she gained 5 lbs last night.

I’m not looking at the scales today!

Off to the lab this morning…vampire alert…the windshield washer, and the pond filter…

Blood test. The doc keeps track of my thyroid stuff. No food after 5 last night, off to the lab at dawn…

Spent the trip over trying to figure how to run the windshield washers, since it’s been dry and dusty and it’s a sunrise…got the back ones to work.

Finally took the manual in for reading material. If you operate the washers like the Subaru did, you get the rear window washed. To wash the front ones you pull the whole lever toward you. Nice. And if you do it while the lights are on—there’s a headlight washer. I find that improbably amusing. But—it is a safety thing. It’s just something I tend to take care of on the road with a scrubber when I stop for gas.

The neat thing is we’ve gone 210 miles and are still on our 4th gallon of gas since we bought the car. The tank holds 10. We’ve been watching it go down. We still don’t know if the tank was completely full when its odometer started (it had 21 miles on it when we bought it) so we don’t know if we’ve gone 189 miles on that tank since we got it…or 210…but either way, we’re happy. Ordinarily we’d have bought another 40.00 worth of gas between mid-July and Sept 1, and we haven’t reached halfway on the original tank. We’re still real happy with the car.

I shed 2 of the 4 pounds I gained. Jane has us trying this Sensa stuff, which is supposed to curb appetite, to reduce the urge to snack…we’ll see.

And—we finally got the new filter (additional filter) running on the pond, and it’s good! I had to run all over getting hose for it, but so far so good. When we started, we had 10 baby fish I could practically hold in one hand, and we had a skimmer rated for 3000 gallons, which was what originally I thought we had—but we don’t: we have 5000 gallons. So now that Ari requires a salmon net (literally) and several of the others mass nearly as much, they produce a lot of waste. You can about double the waste of your pond if you have grown koi. So I got a sits-on-bank filter that runs about 2000 gallons an hour—and voila! Clear water in the first 24 hours! I’m happy!

Sad news. Fred Pohl has left us.

A witty, sincerely nice guy. I’ve seen him get overloaded by a concom that should have known a writer needs, like, time to eat—and never a complaint. He’d do it. He was genuinely a fan as well as a heck of a writer and thinker.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013...

mmm…birthday steak…gained 4 pounds…

Overnight. Which was a shame, because that morning I’d hit the lowest weight since 1980.

Waa. But I think it’s only water weight. There was probably onion in the sauce and my fingers feel a little swollen.

Today we have a picnic at friends’ place. Then the annual lake cruise. I so look forward to that! We do not consider b’days as a single day—more like a week!

And Shu put on some weight, too. He came trotting through the house last night proudly carrying a treat packet. He was so cute he got some.

But this morning we found he’s been stashing another packet under the mudroom carpet, and had chewed his way into it, the little foodaholic! Seishi stays thin despite my best efforts to put a little more beef on him, and Shu is Neutron Cat…a major weight when you pick him up.

KiltedRob asked about bookplates…

We pretty well always have them if you have the patience to wait. I have some in stock.