There are tradeoffs to living in a coastal rainforest...'rain' being the chiefest.
Oct 13, 2009
Several storm fronts are moving into the Puget Sound region. It’s been overcast since yesterday afternoon, and the wind’s picking up today. We’ve got forecast showers this afternoon and evening, and showers predicted through to next…well, essentially every day until October 23. It’s fall in the Pacific Northwest, and I am so glad that the heating system is cleaned, the fireplace is cleaned (and that pilot light relit), my gutter guards are in place, et cetera et cetera et cetera. I’m all wintered up.
I’m starting to save up for a new water heater. This one’s fine; it just has a ten-year life expectancy, and this is its ninth winter. There’s a federal rebate for folks who install tankless water heaters (energy efficient, yay) that runs through 2010, so that’s what I’m going to go for. They aren’t cheap; but they last a long time, there’s less chance of leakage or problems with a properly-installed unit, and they use less gas when running so save money that way.
I am debating getting the flu shot. I had a slight case of flu last year; but I don’t think it was H1N1 - and this flu is killing people, and is quite nasty. I know that whenever I get the flu shot, I will of course get the flu (this is just how my life works) but I’ll have antibodies. Hopefully I can arrange things such that I won’t be “out of commission” for too long. And hopefully I can stock up on high-protein foods. I’ve already got several jars of cranberry-raspberry (because straight cranberry juice is just nasty) and chicken soup, peanut butter, bread, spinach, and chicken. I’ve lately been eating sandwiches of pita bread, feta cheese, baby spinach leaves, and shredded chicken. Healthier than fast food, and it keeps my system at full strength. But I’ve been dealing with a low-grade and persistent nasal problem for a month, and now I’ve got mild sinus-pressure headaches. This cannot be good. I worry what will happen when I get the flu shot. Mneh, best get it done and get it over with, dang it.
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The computer's working! (And I'm starting to break down.)
Oct 08, 2009
The tower is working!! The tower is working!! (Thank goodness.) I took it, and the new hard drive I bought, to Geek Squad and paid them to work their magic. I **might** have been able to figure it out on my own and saved about $300; but out of that $300 comes the brand new hard drive (three times as large as the old hard drive) and the sure knowledge that it got done…and I saved myself a lot of cussing. I’m also really glad that I didn’t have to upgrade to Vista. Yes, Windows 7 is coming out at the end of the month, and from all reports, it’s much better than Vista - but that’s like saying that a mound of poo from a vegetarian smells less bad than a mound of poo from a carnivore. One may stink less…but they’re both piles of sh1t.
I picked up the tower Tuesday evening, brought it home, set it down…and went to bed. It was the first night of really good sleep I’d gotten since the compu-death. Wednesday was spent reinstalling everything. I had all the original disks for everything except one program (my FTP program - not impossible to replace, not too costly either) and had to do a little bit of extra scrambling to find all the serial numbers. Now I just have to get the laptop talking to the tower and pull over all my data…and away I go. My only distress, and admittedly a mild one at that, was finding out that CS2 included GoLive, not DreamWeaver. Dang!! And I was kind of looking forward to installing DW and not using a separate FTP program at all. Ah, well: whenever I *do* end up getting a new computer/operating system (probably in about three or four years, if I follow my previous track record) I’ll get the CS bundle that includes DreamWeaver.
In other news, I feel the beginnings of a cold/sinus-something coming on. The logy tiredness, the low-grade headache that never really completely goes away, the sound of draining sinuses…bleah. Here’s hoping it doesn’t blossom into something uglier. I’ve been drinking more liquids, taking Source Naturals, and trying to think of high-protein foods to eat. There’s always the old standby, chicken noodle soup. (But after a week of CNS every day, it begins to pall.)
And in these economic times…I quit a job. It was ultra-part-time - about 8-12 hours a week - and I had a nightmare of a time getting the job in the first place. When my hours didn’t increase, but decreased…I figured that this was a sign. I asked about documentation, and didn’t receive any concrete response. Instead of beating my head against the wall for a job that was not what I’d originally hoped it might be, I told them that I would not be seeking to extend the contract. (Maybe that also contributed to the good night’s sleep: no more stewing over that situation, no more waiting, no more wondering, I just…resolved it.) My two other jobs are still going strong and showing no signs of faltering - one has had me put in additional hours this past week - so I’m not losing much income. Just the uncertainty of a difficult communications situation. I can do without that.
Now that my house has gutter guards, said gutters won’t be filling up with crud. The leaves fall on the roof, collect on top of the gutter guards…and are blown off when the wind comes up. Hah!!! No more dripping, no more overflowing gutters, no more crap maintenance from a company that does a halfassed job and leaves piles of went munk all over the sidewalk!! (At least - no more of such maintenance at **my** house.)
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the cats slowly reclaim the house.
Oct 03, 2009
I bought my cat a toy ball that has two lights inside it. When the ball is jolted hard enough, the lights activate. Ursa LOVES this toy. This morning I was hearing an odd thumping, and wondered what it was - well, after a few weeks of having it be “lost”, Ursa had “found” his toy again and was merrily running around playing soccer. (My brother also left yesterday morning, so timid Ursa is slowly coming out of his self-imposed exile.) Thump, thump, thwock, “mrow”.
Monkey, who is an absolute chickenhead, actually got to the point that she would walk up to my brother and carefully sniff his fingers - or, in the evenings when we were watching a movie, she’d jump up onto the sofa between us to get attention from both of her human slaves. For a cat who has always run terrified from houseguests, this is something of an accomplishment. (Fog, of course, would happily befriend anyone who might potentially give her treats.)
I’m slowly reconstructing my working environment. One of the things that happened while my brother was here was the death of my hard drive (slightly assisted, but still a hard drive/OS difference of opinion.) I’m working off of my Vista-sporting laptop, which means that while I can surf the web, none of my legally bought software (Adobe Creative Suite 2, with my image and HTML editing software) can be installed upon said laptop. I am not a dreadfully happy camper. I’ve been looking for open-source alternative tools to use until the tower is back up and running, and while I found a substitute for Photoshop (GIMPShop), there doesn’t seem to be any good free HTML editors in the open-source world. This is kind of a problem, as HTML editing (and PHP, and CSS) and image editing are two of the big things I do on my computer. I’m hoping - praying - that the computer guru can get my Windows XP installed, with the brand new nifty 500 GB hard drive, and I can simply go about merrily reinstalling my software. However, that’s a nice lovely thought - but it might not happen because Windows XP is no longer supported (so drivers for other hardware just ain’t available) and so I might have to accept that my alternatives are Vista (shudder) or Windows 7, which doesn’t release until the end of this month.
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Still not dead yet. Not king, either...
Sep 15, 2009
...it’s just not at this blog right now. I’m playing over here, primarily. It takes a long time to catalogue one’s entire mineral makeup collection…and even longer to photograph it all and write up each color. (I think that portion of the task will take me several years - because I’ll go in fits and starts, so as not to burn out.) I’ve managed to force myself to experiment with color, find some duds, find some truly amazing combinations that no one in their right mind would have thought worked, and assuage my OCD and my extreme love of color.
It’s kind of sad, in ways. Whenever I’m having a bad day I rearrange my colors in their storage bins, or dream up new combinations to try, or come up with themes and then try to create looks for said themes. Yes, sure, it keeps me off the streets; but it’s about as useful to society as snake shoes. Except for the parts where I’ve helped several small woman-owned businesses by buying a lot of their products (and helped two large, non-woman-owned businesses continue to peddle their wares, even if said wares are more than a wee bit overpriced. Huzzah for outlet stores!!)
So here’s me, getting all girly halfway through my life (instead of in high school, when everyone else did. But let’s face facts: no high school girl is going to be able to legally support the makeup addiction that has overtaken me in the past two years. Whereas a single employed fairly well-paid childless woman with no debt to speak of - except the mortgage, which I just picked up last year - most definitely has the money to support such a habit.) I acquired so much makeup so fast that now, when I go into the various boutiques and / or visit the webstores, I just head straight to the “what’s new” section and, more often than not, don’t find a single thing that I don’t already own, or already own close variants of, or find simply inadequate. (Example of that last: Bare Escentuals will be releasing a quite nice-looking makeup storage chest for holding one’s mineral makeup collection. It’s very pretty, it looks very nice, and it’s too small to hold more than a fifth of my total collection. Like I said, wholly inadequate.) So while I’ve been going through Real Life, none of it’s been bad…just busy.
And colorful. And sparkly. (But not in a vampire-trope kind of way.)
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Keep on keepin' on
Jul 22, 2009
THE WEATHER IS PERFECT. PEOPLE OF THE WORLD, WHATEVER YOU ARE DOING TO THE ENVIRONMENT RIGHT NOW, NEVER STOP.
- via badbanana
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...and I'm sure it was quite unintentional.
Jul 02, 2009
I check in on my former hometown's news-site from time to time. Today there was a headline about a federal judge acting to move the decision about California's Proposition 8 - which attempts to legally prevent persons of the same gender from forming a social/legal/financial unit - to the US Supreme Court. In November 2008, a statewide ballot prohibiting same-sex marriage passed. A group of people sued to challenge this. In May, the state supreme court said that it could not arbtrarily overrule what the voters approved, and the ban was upheld. Now the fight is being taken to the US Supreme Court.
The news-site has had random rotating ads on its articles for quite some time. The placement is completely random...so the ad I was served, as I viewed the article, was completely serendipidous...and absolutely perfect.
I think that disallowing marriage - the formation of a social, legal, and economic unit - for persons of the same gender is senseless. There are many people who claim that marriage is a religious institution and that since many religions preach against homosexuality, then the only people who can experience the sacrament of marriage are two persons of opposite genders. There's a flaw in this logic, though. What additional secular legal rights or responsibilities does a 13-year-old Jewish child get when they go through a bar/bat mitzvah? None. And what additional secular legal rights or responsibilities does a Roman Catholic child get when they go through the rite of first communion? None. There are plenty of religious ceremonies that do not grant any changed legal status outside the religion in question. The barrier should work both ways: because, hey folks, the social concept of "marriage" was in place long before the thirteen tribes were wandering the desert. Marriage has a religious component for some, but hardly for all. Marriage is a matter of property rights, inheritance, and mutual legal/fiscal/social responsibility...which, no matter how much the church might like to control that, it doesn't, and hasn't directly for quite some time. The whole idea of excluding people from anything just because they're not exactly the same as the majority of the population is, in my mind, extremely anti-Christian. It's petty, it's meanspirited, it's elitist, it's "I want to be special so I don't want *them* to be able to have the same rights as me, even if they're not causing anyone any material harm, because they're different", and it's very much against the inclusive school of thought preached by the individual, or group of individuals, whom history calls "Jesus of Nazareth".
So the placement of this ad, on this article, made me smile:
And really, what would Jesus do? He'd wish the couple well, is what. He'd attend the wedding if invited, is what. And he'd look with confusion, if not mild exasperation, upon anyone who said, "But they can't get married!! That's not Christian!!"
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