Here We Go Again

The garage is as near to completion as it will be until the spring, after we finally got the people door properly painted and installed. There was a major delay there - it should have been done in mid December, except the door was delivered NOT painted and had to go back to the manufacturer because installing a bare untreated wood door in winter would be a very bad idea. And then nothing happened over Christmas and New Year, obviously, so it was actually the end of January when it came back. (And then it was another 2 weeks before I got around to making this post, because I've been in Writing Mode.)

It doesn't look it here because of the sunlight, but the people door is actually the same colour as the garage door, and the outside lights were installed at the same time too. So it's now a fully functional garage. The outside walls will be painted later in the year when it's not so cold and wet, so that the paint will actually dry, and the green roof planting still needs to be done. And after the roof is done, we can get the planting on the slopes alongside it done. But we can at least put a car in it now!



The garage door opener inside has a red light on it, so at night you can see a red glow through the upper windows and it looks like a portal to hell. Keep out if you value your life 😁

It's been very damp here over the last week (and before that too). I got a free day off work yesterday because the Snoqualmie river got a lot bigger and the town I work in is currently an island. Not exactly unheard of for that town since the three roads into it all run alongside the river or cross it, but it's the first time it's happened in a few years. Last time was 2019, I think?

Heavy rain is supposed to hit again Sunday and Monday, which is sad, because that's when I'll be doing the Christmas Bird Count. Most years we get snow over in the mountains, not rain, but this year it's still too warm. So we'll be out in the grey and the damp and the mud, and the birds will sensibly stay in the bushes. I suspect it will be a low count year...

I was away for five days, two of which were the weekend, but work continued for some of them. We now have all the beams in place and lumber between them - the shoring is basically complete! So now the massive drill and crane have been removed (improving access immensely) and the true process of excavation has begun...



There will be a post on my long weekend away when I have photos organised :-)

The big storm that went through on Tuesday evening took the power out for pretty much everyone on the east side of Lake Washington. Ours died just before 7pm and we got it back Friday evening.

We're used to power outages - lots of trees around here and the power company doesn't bury the lines, it hangs them on poles, right by the trees. They normally only last about 24 hours though. For the first couple of days, we're all, 'Que sera sera' but by day three tending to a wood fire and reading by solar powered lanterns after 5pm gets tedious. As does washing dishes by hand and cleaning cat litter trays, because the automated ones aren't working. At least we have a gas hob, so we can still cook and heat water.

The cats were deeply unimpressed by the whole experience. The heating vents don't work, the heated cat beds don't work, the water fountains don't work, the litter trays don't work - stupid humans, why don't you do your job and make things perfect for cats?

18 year old Kuro who has slept on my bed since he was six months old slept IN my bed for two nights for the first time ever. When the power's been out in the past, he's always preferred to stay on top of the covers, but now he's a skinny old man with not much muscle or body fat and he feels the cold more. Last night, with the power and heat back on, he crawled back inside the bed again at 4am, so I may have created a monster...

Kuro and Yami sharing a blanket in front of the fireplace. Normally their relationship is more tolerate than appreciate, but the cold makes for more willing bedfellows apparently!

( Cat photos )

Yesterday was not my sister's 60th birthday, but it was the day we celebrated it. We spent the afternoon in a room at a pub in Chorley. At one point I went to the toilet and there was one stall with the door closed and three other women standing outside it giving her advice on her boyfriend through the door. Around 6pm we were walking through the town centre to a different pub carrying bunches of balloons and various other bits of clutter with random strangers yelling across the street, "Happy Birthday, whoever it is!" and it was all so very Lancashire.

It's so annoying the way that radio stations change. You've been listening to Star 101.5 The Best of 90s to Now in your car for years, and then one day, surprise! That preset button is now a country music station called Hank FM.

There's no announcement. Star don't tell you, 'Hey, we got outbid, sorry, we'll be gone next week.' It's just sneaky. And then you have to try and find another decent radio station for that preset button.

I'm about to vanish for 6 days - by this evening, I'll be on a tiny little island off the northern coast of Vancouver Island which is mostly off grid. No phone service, generator power only. Technically there is internet, but very low bandwidth - I should be able to get text email, but the owners beg us not to try and send pictures. That level of slow. Remember the fun of the old dial-up days?

It will be Saturday of next week before I'm around again in the normal way. See you all then!

The very first smartphone I ever bought was an early iPhone, because at the time, they were the only company making good smartphones. It worked well, then reached the point where the storage wasn't enough, and there was no way to increase it.

The second smartphone I bought was a Samsung S3, because Android had caught up by then, and Apple are evil and a nightmare with their proprietary formats for music and well, everything, and they charge way too much. That phone was awesome. I dropped it many times and it didn't care. It was bombproof. I could expand the memory just by switching out the SD card. I loved it.

In 2018 I was forced to replace it, because half the apps I used refused to work unless I updated them, and then when I tried to update them, they said my phone was too old and was no longer supported. I cursed blue bloody murder, because I that phone was fantastic and it still functioned 100% perfectly. I'd had to replace the battery once because it started to swell - I ordered a new one online, switched them in 30 seconds, and that was the only trouble it ever caused me.

So five years ago, I bought a Samsung Galaxy A6. I cursed again at how much it cost (though still a LOT less than I would have paid for anything by Apple). I liked the way it worked (Samsung do good interfaces), but it had that shiny screen and case instead of the matt ones of my old S3. I dropped it once, if you can call it dropping - it slipped out of my fingers while I was sitting in the parked car (because everything's shiny and slippery), it slid down the side of the seat - and that was enough to crack the screen. Since then it's been held together by ever-increasing amounts of sellotape.

Recently the battery started to swell - that wasn't an issue in my old S3, but newer ones are harder to get into. A little online research told me that it's possible to order a new battery and change it with some effort - but if the screen's cracked, taking it apart becomes a nightmare.

I said screw this shit. I ordered a refurbished A6 online that cost me a hundred dollars. At that price, I don't care if it falls apart in a few years, or needs replacing because the battery swells or the apps throw a hissy fit - at twenty or thirty bucks a year, so what?

My response to companies making tech that needs to be replaced every few years is to say fuck you. I'll just stop buying new phones. The only people making a profit from me will be the companies selling them second-hand.

Same with printers. The first printer I ever bought was fantastic. Used it for years, simple, easy, hassle free. I only replaced it because I moved to the US with different plugs and voltages. The one I bought in the US worked well for quite a few years, until I replaced my PC and there weren't any drivers available for the new version of Windows. So I was forced to buy another - which has been finicky from the start, constantly needs head cleanings and other faffy things, then eventually reached the point where it was dropping lines and no amount of head cleaning worked.

So I said fuck it. I won't buy another printer, and now I just print everything out at the local library instead. I don't even have to pay unless I go over 10 pages a week. I have the hassle of having to go there, but I combine it with visits to other local shops so I'm not driving there for printing alone.

It's really annoying when we know how to make things well, but capitalism and corporate profiteering make things stop working so we have to keep buying. Some people can't afford to keep buying. I can, but I damn well refuse. And when I refuse, it helps keep the other resources in place so they're there for the people who can't. The whole damn world should go on anti-shitty-tech strike.

We just finished watching the first episode of the latest Black Mirror series, and in how many different ways can I start saying OMG?

I've loved Salma Hayek for years, ever since I first saw her in Desperado. She rocks. And as far as I can tell for an actor I really know nothing about, from what I read, she seems to be a more than reasonable human being? But she's absolutely AWESOME for doing this. Reading this script and everything involved, and saying, 'Hell, yes, I'll do that!' She really is that fabulous. I am sold.

And Charlie Brooker. How long ago must he have written this? At minimum a year, I assume, with time for edits, and casting and filming, then post-production edits, and for the whole series. Then it comes out practically simultaneously with all the stuff that's emerged this week about what the SAG were asking to people to sign and...

Hey, Charlie, can you please stop writing Do Not Create the Torment Nexus? Because every time you do, people create the fucking Torment Nexus. Just dodge that enormous orange-red ball next time, yes?

Every few years, I develop some crazy new fannish obsession. It’s been happening since I was seven years old (not that I knew what name to put on it then – I was nineteen before I discovered there was a thing called ‘fandom’ and other people like me). And every time it happens, it completely disrupts my life.

I become almost incapable of doing anything outside life’s absolute necessities, and compulsive watching, writing, thinking about whatever shiny new thing has hijacked my brain. So many other things I normally love to do go out the window – the hiking, the diving, the yoga, the socialising with RL friends, they’re all suddenly on the back-burner until that first rush of insanity starts to fade.

It was fine when I was a kid, and people expect you to be weird. It was definitely NOT fine when I was a teenager, and conformity is everything. As an adult, I can confine the most fanatical aspects of it to certain boxes, so it’s only obvious to the people I allow to see it, and not, say, my employers (though they get the side benefit of an irrepressibly happy me).

It's weird as hell, and it’s never exactly convenient. But at the same time, it’s AMAZING. I become a total Tigger of a person with an endlessly bouncing brain. Whatever mundane, tedious things I need to be doing, I can be transported out of them in a second just by shifting into the fantastic new world in my head. It becomes impossible for me to be anything other than excited.

I’ve fallen deliriously in love eight times since I met my spouse, and never had to go through a messy divorce, or find somewhere new to live, or argue over who gets custody of the cats. And the characters and the worlds I fall in love with are fictional, but the chemicals in my brain, that ‘dizzy, dancing way you feel’ as Joni Mitchell so perfectly puts it, they’re 100% real.

I can't conceive of how boring life would be without that. If life was just day to day reality, and work and grocery shopping and thinking maybe I should get my hair cut this week. How would it be possible to live permanently in the physical world, without an escape route? Without fantasy and idiocy and other equally crazy people to share it all with? I can’t imagine being any other way, and I love it :-)