So, on Sunday when I went to get Little E out of bed, he was bouncing with energy. After all, he had Sonic and Tails and Knuckles with him. Wait, what!? He wasn’t supposed to get Knuckles until Christmas morning.
This is a story of how karma occasionally delivers a pretty stout bitch-slap decades later. Let’s rewind a bit. … Read more
So last night it was below freezing well before bedtime. The dogs came in extra early last night. They’d go out and screw around and woof at stuff that no one could see a couple more times, but it’s generally speaking that time of year where I let them in around dark and we’re all one big happy family consisting ot two dogs, five cats, and three people. Now, trying to keep everyone in that equation warm is a whole different ball game – especially since we’re going into this winter with concrete floors and still no central heat/air. (That part of the story is a bit long and complicated, and unlikely to resolve itself anytime terribly soon.)
Once again, the trio of space heaters has been deployed: one near the boy’s room (which will very soon wind up in his room), one in the master bedroom, one in the living room. It’s sort of an unspoken thing that the kitchen and my office/game room/computer room will spend the winter operating on the same principle as the control room at the TV station where I used to work: there’s stuff in those rooms that makes its own heat. (That being said, the window in the computer room urgently needs replacing – it’s one of the only windows on the house that we haven’t replaced yet, and it allows a lot of cold air in, enough that I’ll probably start closing the room off at night to limit the “damage” to that one room. I doubt the computers will overheat…
At any rate, I set the space heater in the living room up to run until it heats things up to 76 degrees, and then shut itself off. That’s kind of an academic limit, since it got below 20 last night, and with the concrete floor, it was struggling to maintain 70 degrees in the living room.
Yeah, winter’s gonna be fun in this house. I bet we’re less than a week away from Gabby no longer complaining about her kennel being situated next to the clothes dryer. Right about now, that particular spot sounds like some primo real estate.… Read more
The geekiest Christmas tree in the county lives again! It stalks the countryside, looking for fresh victims! No, wait, that’s my dog.
So yesterday, my wife dropped this item in my lap and said, “Here you go.” I pointed out that we’d already bought lights for this year, and besides, we still had lights left over from last year.
She shrugged and said “They’re indoor/outdoor, do whatever you want with them.”
I paused and stroked my chin thoughtfully. “Can I have that in writing with your signature on it?” I asked.
“No,” she said, and turned to go. “I’m not that dumb.”
Dammit, people. I was so close to having all the resources I needed to start filming my spec pilot concept for Disney’s Tron Kitties.… Read more
Winter seems to be arriving ahead of schedule. When it gets down to where water outside will freeze, the dogs come in. Gabby is still too hyper to not be kenneled, while Xena just hangs out by my door. I put a space heater in the doorway to my bathroom tonight to heat that “hallway” connecting the bathroom, my room, Little E’s room, and the rest of the house; it’s more of a glorified alcove than an actual hallway. I’d put a blanket on the concrete floor for Xena to sleep on – she likes her blanket, and this is her blanket.
And this was our conversation:
Mrs.: You’re going to put this space heater here?
Me: Yeah.
Mrs.: Are you going to move Xena’s blanket out into the living room?
Me: Nope.
Mrs.: She won’t like that heater blowing right on her.
Me: I’ve moved things around so the blanket won’t catch on fire. She’ll still sleep in the hallway. She’ll be fine.
Fast forward a couple of hours later…
Xena (hanging off the edge of the blanket so the heater blows right on her): ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz… Read more
Picked these up tonight. Could. not. resist.
Of course, they’ll only ever be plugged in and lit up on the tree. Yep. Sure thing. Just like those colorful LED snowflake thingies in Little E’s room. Yep.
I’m scoping out a similar set of lights for the boy; they’re little R2-D2s. 😀… Read more
I spent a lot of time this weekend outside, trying to see the Peresid meteor shower. I was only rewarded with about four sightings, even though I live out in the sticks and can see the Milky Way across the night sky, but one of them looked like it was about to leave a mark. Whew. Exhilarating stuff. Two things brought my meteor-gazing to a halt: the clouds creeping in, and my own Canis Major and Canis Minor deciding that it’s playtime since I was outside.
Many years ago, I wrote and recorded a piece of music that I called Perseids for no readily apparent reason, and I can now report that it fits the experience rather well.
[audio:https://www.thelogbook.com/earl/music/percyy.mp3](More sonorous synthesized sounds can be found here.)
Speaking of music, I’ve spent recent weeks delving into the works of Erik Satie. It’s been a while since I “adopted” a classical composer wholesale, but it’s not unknown – in my music directory, Rachmaninoff is right above Radiohead, and Rimsky-Korsakov can be spotted between R.E.M. and the Rolling Stones, probably squirming in his seat the whole time. Actually, what’s happened in the past is that I’ve adopted a lot of Russian composers, totally by coincidence; it wasn’t like I scoured the classical section looking for someone with a vaguely Russian sounding name that I hadn’t heard of before. Apparently I’ve been bumping into Satie for quite a while without realizing it. Contemplative, quitely troubled stuff. That fits the experience of being me rather well at the moment too.… Read more
I’ve been talking for some time about tearing down my man-cave, only for a variety of reasons it hasn’t been happening as fast as I’d like. Today I emptied out, moved, and refilled one of the heaviest, most awkward pieces of furniture in my house, a 6+ foot tall bookshelf that my folks got for me, and my dad built for me, one Christmas in the ’80s. It matched a computer desk and printer table which are no longer with me. It’s still in one piece, reasonably attractive, and it’s damned solid. And yeah, the fact that I remember watching my dad build it while knocking back a beer and cursing a lot has something to do with it. I do the same thing with build-it-yourself furniture, minus the beer (though as I get older, and the printed instructions gradually become more incomprehensible, I have to admit that the temptation is sometimes there). … Read more
The daytime temperatures are hitting the low 100s like a boss. The nighttime temperatures are doing good to get below 80.
It’s time to do some cooking.
In the car. … Read more
Dinner (by very specific request from Little E):
…apples, raisins, carrots, bananas. Thanks to his recent repeated reading of “The Berenstain Bears Eat Too Much Junk Food,” Little E is convinced that everything is junk food. I’ve assured him that this stuff is not, and so he loads up on it. C’mon, kid. It’s summer vacation. You’re a preschooler. These flavor blasted Goldfish ain’t gonna eat themselves. … Read more
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