Translated from the English
“Do not be afraid, we are merely children.”
It being 2011, only a few people recognized Sophie’s costume. Others asked her if she was an Amish girl, a pilgrim girl, or a nun. Only one person got it immediately–a German woman who saw her in school on Dress Up Day and said, “Mein Gosh! Whednesday Addams!” And then, to Debby’s delight, launched into a series of Addam’s Family quotes.
Dear City Cousin Steve,
We took great comfort in hearing how your harvest progresses. Ourselves, we put the ripe maters on the garage floor, on paper or cardboard. We’ll put them in a paper sack or wrap them loose in paper if they aren’t ripe to get the bacterial bath going. They’re slowly but steadily rolling in–the wet weather’s here and we’ve been pulling them as soon as they’re pink, before too many can crack or the slugs can get them. I think, from our “compact” sauce tomato plant that grew to a compact 4′x4′ space (and that was with me hacking it back), we’ll pull in about 25 lbs. We’ll let the Sungold cherry keep popping them out as long as it likes, harvesting as it produces.
We have a hawthorn in the uppermost corner of our tetrahedonish back yard where I also heap leaves that decompose (which don’t include the oak leaves from the grandfather oak next door) and grass clippings (yes, I snip each blade with scissors, because all life is important and deserves to look its best). The hawthorn’s job is to drop dead spiny branches on me or hide trunk spikes just outside my peripheral vision. But it’s the only tree actually in our back yard–all the rest are neighbor trees overhanging our fences, so the wife says it stays. And heaven knows you can never have too many nemeses.
I was surprised to dig out about 8 pounds of yellow finns from our sprawling potato plants last Saturday. In a good year, the 4 plants would have produced much more, but this wonky summer boosted foliage growth for the tomatoes, not leaving much light for 2 of the potatoes (and never giving the eggplant a chance). I need to read up on storing them. I only brushed off the dirt and put them in a paper sack in the garage. I don’t think there’s an issue with a little dirt left on potatoes after harvest, but want to check. We have a dedicated 2′x5′ raised bed in the back yard (a sort of gated community for our potatoes) I hope will be more prolific. I’ll gather those in the next couple of weeks.
It was a good year for beets and peppers, a moderate year for basil (we grew Genovese, globe, and holy), and mediocre for pole beans and carrots. The carrots partially suffered from crowding by mutant marigolds, partially from the cool weather, and partially from poor soil in a raised bed that I think has been infested and is being drained of nutrients from below by neighboring tree roots. Or a subterranean inter-dimensional portal.
Otherwise, Aunt Lou and Uncle Marion send their best. Marion’s gout is receding like the economy and he says he’ll be marathoning in no time while Lou is on pins and needles waiting to hear back on her doctoral candidacy. Luckily, Mom and Dad still aren’t talking to each other. And Wags the pig lives up to his name every time we mention your’s. Look out for the dust devils and don’t let your students fill your head with nonsense.
All the best,
Suburban Country Cousin Kurt
I took Noah to see the new Three Musketeers movie today. If I’d wanted technical analysis of the swordsmanship or acting, I would have taken Travis (who knows something about each). If I’d wanted the “Oh Jesus, Come On!” reaction, I would have taken Jordan. But I wanted to see the Universe in Action via the pleasure of a 12 year old boy. Nothing like your kid leaning on your shoulder one second and then popping up with a “Did you say that! Hilarious! Those cannonballs bounced! Wouldn’t the airship explode if they shot flame at it? Oh who cares!” (To be fair, 23 yo Adam would have done the same, but without leaning on my shoulder.)
Yes, Three Musketeers with airships, bad dialog, mustache twirling, bosom heaving, and some nifty swordplay layered with slomo violent but bloodless ballets all in a wrapper we couldn’t take our eyes off. Dumas as live action anime. A terrible movie. We had a great time.
We bought a new laptop on Saturday. The Dell D830′s motherboard power connectors were fried–I can think of several reasons how that happened, but the end result is unchanged–the battery worked but the AC system didn’t. Rather than spend 200 to $300 on a replacement motherboard for a 4 year old laptop, we went shopping at Fry’s.
Here come the acronyms. Keep your head down and eyes open, and you’ll be okay.
Any more, you can buy a very nice, modern laptop for $500 or less, across brands. In our case, for $490 it’s an Acer with the brand new AMD A8 quad CPU, a 500 GB hard disk (that’s a half terabyte for those excited by nomenclature), 4 GB RAM with an extra 512 MB VRAM, DVD writer, with Windows Home Premium installed. My only complaint is that the display doesn’t have the nice black tones/level of contrast that the Dell had, but Debby is fine with it. The computer is primarily for her use (and secondarily for her two in-home charges Noah and Sophie), so her opinion counts more than most.
We also saw comparable workhorse Lenovo and ASUS systems for between $400 to $500 (with the slightly older hyperthreaded Intel i5 CPUs and nicer displays but no VRAM). I won’t buy another Dell unless I have money to shell out for a physically solid system–the cases and keyboards on the less expensive Dells are flimsy (or “cheapshit” using the term I grew up with ). There are solid models in other brands, but they were either outside our budget or Orwellian with proprietary drivers and utilities.
Ironically, I was the household member unhappy with purchasing new tech. We had to dip temporarily into savings that’s partially our safety net and partially our fund for an oft-delayed trip to Spain. But we set up a payment plan to replace the funds over a three month period with no interest. And Debby relies on the ability to move the computer with her, rather than go to it. So it was the right thing to do because it was possible. Not because it was fun. (I just read that last sentence, looked in the mirror, and asked, Who ARE you?)
The old Dell’s being parted out–the battery and keyboard to Adam for his almost identical laptop, 4 GB RAM to a friend, and the rest sitting on a shelf in case something other than the mother board on Adam’s system fails. We could have set the scavenged case to weather in the front yard, but, you know, the neighbors. And all.
Five days later with the Acer, so far so good. Now, the bad news. I tested out the CPU(s) and video last night with Mass Effect 2 (borrowing my son’s Steam account). Damn. Oh damn. Damn damn. It reminded me again why I limited myself to a netbook and installed Linux instead of Windows. If this game was on my computer and looked and ran this nice, I’d be down from an average of 3 pages a day to 3 paragraphs a day. I closed the lid (in my head, slamming it) and handed it back to Debby, admonishing her to keep it away from me. I know my addictions and depend on others to keep me on the straight ‘n narrow.
Home again from a week on the Olympic Peninsula, a refractory paradise where we (or I) fell in love with a beach (Ruby), visited what may be one of the best small museums in the world (Makah in Neah Bay), saw more moss in one place than we’ve ever seen along with spirits trapped in trees and a fairy ring (Hoh), ambled through the downside of Twilight’s popularity arc (Forks), ambled up to the center of a terran tiara (Hurricane Ridge) where a mountain goat herd pulled photographers in way too close (5 feet), et up some of the best pizza we’ve ever etten (Gordy’s in Port Angeles), and ended the trip far too soon.
More later. Back now to reconstructing a bathroom and writing more important things.
Entropy’s the theme lately, I guess. The thermostat’s clicking away again like a set of chattering teeth–only payday stands between it and its successor. The vacuum died. I could write a column about vacuums and planned obsolesence. I grew up with one of the old school Kirby’s that looked like it was made from melted down military grade weaponry and, short of the occasional replacement of motor brushes or roller, just roared and ran. Heavy on the roar–its job was to strike fear in the dust before it fed.* That same machine is about $1k now. Maybe I should adopt a former mentor’s model for replacing his toaster ovens–buy my vacuums cheap at garage sales or, now, on Craig’s List, that great garage sale in the ether.
The main bathroom is in severe need of a remodel–it’s in bandage mode, daily requesting a new countertop/cabinet, sink, paint job, fan, tub faucet, shower retiling, and tub re-enameling. (It’s an old steel tub, much cheaper and easier to re-enamel then tear out and replace.) Hopefully I can respond this year.
The ground under the house really needs a more thorough covering of plastic–the former homeowner, our real estate agent, employed a handy man who did a lot of great work before we bought the place, but none of it in areas where it wasn’t fun to do that work. I don’t mind crawling under houses, although with the furnace ducts, our’s is a bit of a maze.
We have some big trim on the front porch roof and around the garage that was designed to collect water and rot. I discovered it while painting the house this summer and patched it with Bondo, a solution that underscored its temporary nature by cracking and shedding paint. At least it’ll keep things together till this summer, even if it does make my suburban neighbors avert their gaze.
Our back deck and balcony off our bedroom are old and soft and splintery and ready for a tear down. I can replace the deck with stepping stones, but without the balcony, there’s no place other than the peak of our roof for a telescope–I hope to extend it a bit to give us a 360 degree instead of the current (estimated) 220 degree view (N, W, and partial S exposures).
It’s the old Tennesee Ernie Ford lament, owing my soul to the building supply store. And, maybe, IKEA.
* Vacuum as predator is the wrong metaphor. When I was a kid the Kirby, with its sleek motor housing and rectangular ramscoop head, reminded me more of a Golden Age rocket. As a little kid a couple of years into Science Fiction and Optimism, I would imagine it turning into something I could easily ride into the wild blue and never return on–at least not till dinner time. (Transformers are not remotely a new idea. That’s why kids love them so much–they connect with the primitive techno mage in all of us.) Perhaps we lament the absence of the future because we’ve stopped designing for it. The future, or at least the romance of the far future, was all around us in the 60′s and 70′s, in the lines of our machines (including cars) and many of our buildings. They were cruder or larger than many of today’s subtler designs, but they also had lines that our eyes and brains could trace and associate with fantastic promise. Today, most vacuums look more like the old Transparent Man and Lady science exhibits–see that HEPA filter, that’s exactly where the spleen would be on a person. And when the stomach fills up, you just pop it out and empty it in the trash. And in a year or so, just like PKD’s replicants, you toss the whole vacuum. That’s a different kind of future, stressing entropy over optimism.
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