| Tilting At Windmills |
[Jan. 1st, 2020|12:00 am] |
| [ | The river is |
| |  quixotic | ] |
I'm going to start unlocking my journal now.
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| The Devil, It Seems, Is In The Details |
[Nov. 21st, 2009|09:13 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | rent house, the land | ] |
| [ | The river is |
| |  tired | ] |
| [ | The frogs are singing |
| | Bloom -- the primary alarm sound on my cell phone playing in my head | ] |
My Week Of Hell should be over by Tuesday. My living room is still inaccessible so all of my stuff is crammed in my bedroom. Thursday night we slept at a motel. We were going to sleep on my Landlady's side of the duplex last night because it's clean and empty, but G fell asleep here. So I scrunched into a small space on the bedroom floor and tried not to roll over and squash my cats. In spite of everything I slept quite well and I feel pretty good.
Today some guys are coming to shoot texture stuff on the ceiling here at my rent house (they are already late) and a contractor is putting sheet vinyl flooring in the bathroom and kitchen in the good house at the land (I have to meet him in a little under an hour). Tomorrow is interior termite control here at the rent house and Monday is replace bathroom fixtures and some other minor plumbing stuff out at the land.
In addition, I bought a new deep-cycle battery for the trailer. I plan to put it in today Hopefully I won't wreck this one. |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 19th, 2009|09:04 pm] |
We're staying in a motel tonight because the house smells like ceiling dust. and the living room is draped with plastic. The guy claims they will be finished tomorrow, but I don't believe him.
I got the living room emptied in the nick of time. I got two hours of sleep last night. I will sleep well tonight. |
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| When It Rains, It Rains Roofing Shingles |
[Nov. 18th, 2009|12:14 pm] |
I forgot that the appraiser was coming today. He was efficient and nice, even after he nearly got beaned by some shingles thrown down by one of the roofers.
Somewhere in there the water stopped working because they were installing a dishwasher next door. This would have been no big deal except that my water bottle was almost empty. So I dodged the falling shingles and brought in an old 2.5 gallon bottle from the garage and a drinking water bottle from the truck.
The appraiser is done, the water is back and the roofers are at lunch. I just took a break, now it's back to the salt mines. |
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| Up On The Roof |
[Nov. 18th, 2009|08:06 am] |
Today is my last day to empty the living room. But there are roofers making lots of noise and telling me I can't park near the house or set stuff out on the patio while I clean.
This is bad timing at its finest. |
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| Winter Is Icumen In! |
[Nov. 17th, 2009|08:48 am] |
There was frost on my windshield this morning.
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ETA -- I went to Wikipedia's entry on Summer Is Icumen In to get the correct spelling for "Icumen" and found the following parody by Ezra Pound. It's too good not to share.
Winter is icumen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm,
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.
Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
An ague hath my ham.
Freezeth river, turneth liver,
Damm you; Sing: Goddamm.
Goddamm, Goddamm, 'tis why I am, Goddamm,
So 'gainst the winter's balm.
Sing goddamm, damm, sing goddamm,
Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM. |
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| Too Much Of Nothing |
[Nov. 16th, 2009|05:46 pm] |
| [ | The river is |
| |  rushed | ] |
I noticed today that I hadn't posted in a while. I've been juggling getting flooring installed at the house on the land, dealing with getting landlord insurance for said house, getting a building permit for a storage container at the land (which involves hours and hours of waiting at the permit place), figuring how to put a 9000 lb container on the land so it will stay level, cleaning my rent house, meeting with contractors and such so my current landlady can sell the house really soon, and sleeping way too many hours every day, maybe because I'm feeling stressed.
I'll get back to LJ posting soon. But for now I'm busier than a one-armed paperhanger. |
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| Keep An Eye On Ida |
[Nov. 8th, 2009|07:57 am] |
From the National Hurricane Center:
HURRICANE IDA DISCUSSION NUMBER 17
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL AL112009
300 AM CST SUN NOV 08 2009
DATA FROM THE AIR FORCE HURRICANE HUNTER AIRCRAFT SUGGEST THAT THE
INTENSIFICATION OF IDA HAS HALTED...AT LEAST TEMPORARILY. THE
LATEST PRESSURE MEASURED ON A PASS THROUGH THE CENTER WAS 984
MB...AND THE INITIAL INTENSITY IS HELD AT 80 KT FOR THIS ADVISORY.
THE INTENSITY FORECAST SHOWS SOME STRENGTHENING IN THE SHORT
TERM...AS IDA WILL REMAIN OVER VERY WARM WATERS THROUGH THE NEXT 24
HOURS. BEYOND THAT TIME...IDA WILL BEGIN TO MOVE OVER MUCH COOLER
WATERS...BELOW 26C AFTER 48 HOURS...AND VERTICAL SHEAR WILL
INCREASE MARKEDLY AS STRONG UPPER-LEVEL SOUTHWESTERLY FLOW AHEAD OF
A MID- TO UPPER-LEVEL TROUGH IMPINGES ON IDA. GLOBAL MODEL GUIDANCE
SHOWS IDA UNDERGOING EXTRATROPICAL TRANSITION IN THE 48 TO 72 HOUR
TIME FRAME AS IT INTERACTS WITH THE TROUGH AND A SURFACE FRONT
ALONG THE NORTHERN GULF COAST. THE OFFICIAL FORECAST SHOWS GRADUAL
WEAKENING FROM 24 TO 48 HOURS...AND MORE RAPID WEAKENING AS IDA
BECOMES EXTRATROPICAL.
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| Normal Is Not So Bad |
[Oct. 29th, 2009|12:12 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | headache, health | ] |
| [ | The river is |
| | tired | ] |
| [ | The frogs are singing |
| | a loud ringing in my ears from the pain meds | ] |
I woke up this morning with a bad migraine and a painful ear infection. I took meds, fell back asleep and woke up a few hours later to the realization of how just great it is to not be hurting. Never forget that when it comes to pain, normal can be pretty wonderful! |
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| They're Finally Gone |
[Oct. 28th, 2009|05:00 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | rent house | ] |
| [ | The river is |
| |  hungry | ] |
| [ | The frogs are singing |
| | Magnetic Rag by David Laibman | ] |
The house inspector just left. There was also a termite inspector. They both seemed to me to do a very thorough job.
The woman who is thinking of buying the house is really nice. I hope she gets it. The inspection turned up some stuff, but nothing too awful.
We'll see what happens. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 28th, 2009|11:50 am] |
I gave up and took some Aleve for my ear. It feels better now. I hope it is really better soon. But feeling better is good too. |
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| Scrub-a-dub-dub |
[Oct. 27th, 2009|10:03 pm] |
My ear hurts. It's infected again.
My bathroom is sparkly clean. My landlady is trying to sell this duplex and potential buyers are coming tomorrow, so I've switched from decluttering/organizing to cleaning house. I hope she sells it. She's really nice and she started a restaurant in a nearby town. She wants to live near her business, so she needs to sell this place. She's the best landlady in the world, so I want the house to sell so she's happy.
I'm decluttering so I can get out of here myself. I have tons of useless junk to separate out from the good stuff. It's quite a chore, but I'm making progress. In time I'll be able to walk out of my trailer on my own land and look at wild flowers like these any time I want to:
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| Back Corner Of The Upper Meadow Of The Tumbledown House |
[Oct. 26th, 2009|11:16 am] |
It's cold and wet, which is my least favorite weather. The raindrops are so big they look like snowflakes. It's rained over two inches since last night and some musky-smelling animal has taken shelter somewhere nearby and the house is full of their odor. So I decided to post some sunny day photos from earlier this month. These two photos were taken in the same area. The shed in the second picture is just outside of the left edge of the first one. I was going to put a 40 foot storage container where these flowers are, but it doesn't make sense to bury the flowers, so I'll put it somewhere else.
A couple of weeks ago there were mostly four-o'-clocks:
Last Saturday it was all sunflowers:
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| Military Issue Grasshopper |
[Oct. 25th, 2009|07:56 pm] |
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| Weather Update |
[Oct. 22nd, 2009|03:03 pm] |
It's sunny and clear now, but it rained about an inch here at my rent house last night. It rained much harder to the west, enough to make the LCRA, our local river authority, open some floodgates and let some of the flood water into our reservoir, Lake Travis. They say the lake level will rise about eleven feet. Lake Travis, is huge, so that will be a lot of water. Hopefully it'll keep raining once or twice a week, the lake will fill back up and the aquifer will get recharged. I doubt it, but it's nice to dream.
Here's some of the areas rainfall totals for the storm. These are from today's Austin American Statesman: Willow City near Fredericksburg is the rainfall leader over the past 24 hours with 6.38 inches. Sandy Creek near Kingsland had 5.94 inches during the same period. Burnet had 5.31 inches, blanco 5.13 inches and 4.95 inches at the Pedernales River near Fredericksburg.
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| Today On The Land |
[Oct. 20th, 2009|11:54 pm] |
My first scorpionfly (I thought it was a moth at first):
A colorful beetle on a sunflower:
And a spider with its dinner:
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| Cracked |
[Oct. 20th, 2009|07:37 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | rent house | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | the living room | ] |
| [ | The river is |
| | stressed | ] |
| [ | The frogs are singing |
| | a ringtone from my cell phone -- playing in my head | ] |
In a little over an hour, a guy is coming to fix the ceiling here at my rent house. One of the panels of drywall has come loose and is threatening to fall down. So, in my own haphazard way, I have been cleaning up the living room. I didn't do as well as I had hoped, but the guy will be able to get his ladder in place to do the work.
The ceiling is textured with what I'm fairly sure is asbestos. When I lived by the creek, a lot of the asbestos fell off of the ceiling and I lost most of my belongings, so is is causing me some anxiety. I've bought disposable tarps to put over everything and cleared the sliding door that is right next to where the work is going to be done. I plan to create a positive pressure system to blow any dust out the door.
I keep reminding myself that it's not exposure, but repeated exposure to asbestos that is the problem.
I just want to move out of here. The cleaning I did this weekend has helped me move toward that goal. So I guess it's all for the good.
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| Sagan's Song |
[Oct. 15th, 2009|11:38 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | nature, video | ] |
| [ | The frogs are singing |
| | A Glorious Dawn | ] |
This is a wonderful video tribute to Carl Sagan with a special guest appearance by Stephen Hawking.
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