On The Funway

Snow tires are the best.

I had a 9am meeting here in town this morning. Ah, yes, after 10 years I have succumbed and am now serving on a committee to help the Town of Wales figure out what we're going to do with a piece of property the Town bought last year. When we scheduled this morning's tour of the house (built in 1875 or thereabouts), the snow wasn't expected to start falling until mid-morning. When I got in the Cardis to see if I could get up the driveway at 8:50am, there were already 4 inches of fresh white stuff on the ground. And, more importantly, on the driveway. The uphill, curved, 275' driveway.

For the first several years I lived here, there'd be a few times each winter when it took both a running start and multiple tries to get up the driveway after 2-3 inches of snow, before it was plowed. Heck, sometimes it would take a couple of tries even after it had been plowed and sanded, though the time I had to call AAA for a tow wasn't one of those.

Then I bought snow tires. I haven't had to back up and try again once since then, but I've also not tried getting up the driveway through 4 inches. I didn't know if I'd make it out this morning, but those snow tires carried the Cardis right up that hill and out onto Monson Road without complaint or hesitation. I didn't even hit that point of hoping, hoping, hoping the car had enough momentum to carry it up the steepest bit. It just plain went.

The Road Commissioner, who couldn't be at the tour because he and his crew are all out plowing roads, had plowed out the utterly flat, wide driveway at the house we were touring, which is right on Hwy 19. So we all had a place to park. Win. He'd even warned us all in email yesterday afternoon to not park alongside the road itself as the state highway plows and sanders would be coming through.

Seeing the house, getting a feel for the space and how much clean-up work will be involved...it was all great. I even got to wear my Geri Sullivan, Girl Homeowner hat a few times. From my early days at Toad Hall, I knew that a small tank in an attic crawl space that one of the guys didn't recognize is quite likely an overflow tank for the hot water heating system. And from my more recent years here at Toad Woods, I was able to point out the well pump and an inline water filter to a couple of the women as we were exploring the basement. And when one of the guys pointed out how a load-bearing wall had been removed, I knew enough about how support pillars should work to see the problem he pointed out in how the pillar had been installed. Doing it over so it's right won't be a big deal and the house itself feels both spacious and solid.

A good start to a snowy Saturday!

Number of Rubbermaid bins and cardboard boxes of Christmas decorations moved down the stairs from the Flamingo Loft: 8

Number of falls, missteps, and stumbles in the process: 0

Win.

I learned to be cautious while carrying things on stairs back in 1996, when missing a step while carrying a full laundry basket down the basement stairs left me with a broken foot. Today, I was extra careful. My friend Jonathan Adams is in the early days of his recovery from a broken hip, and I really didn't want to find myself in a position to share recovery notes with him.

The eight bins and boxes are now on the first floor of the Zeppelin Hangar along with the five bins and boxes that never made it up to the Flamingo Loft following Christmas 2013. That's a container for each of the 12 days of Christmas, plus one to grow on. Hmmm...perhaps I will make more progress trimming back on my trimmings this year. I started out full of Good Intentions on that front last year, but ended up pretty much trimming only the tree itself.

Onward! Here's to joy-filled holidays for all who celebrate any or all of the plentitude of holidays accompanying this time of year.

A few years ago, I had a handyman replace the outdoor floodlight fixture over the garage. Last winter, one of the light bulbs stopped working; I presumed it had burned out. I bought two replacement bulbs, figuring it wise to replace both at once (especially since the fixture is in a location I can't get to). I bought pricy, super-long lasting bulbs for the same parenthetical reason.

When the house painters were here, I asked them to replace both bulbs. They did. But the fixture didn't work. It has a motion detector and I could see a bit of an orange glow come on that seemed to indicate it was detecting motion, but no floodlights. My best guess was that there was something about my pricy, super-long lasting, fancy-dancy bulbs that didn't work in the fixture.

The guy at Lowe's thought any of their floodlight bulbs should work when I talked with him while buying lower-priced replacement bulbs. Of course, by the time I got around to doing that, the painters were long gone. One of these days, I really do have to buy an extension ladder....

The summer passed, with no floodlights, ever. I finally turned the switch off, flipping it every once in awhile wishing that hope might triumph over experience, but it never did.

On Monday, my neighbor came down to work out with me. (We've just started doing this; hope it sticks!) It was dark when she left, and she asked me to turn on the light. I told her it wasn't working and flipped the switch to demonstrate.

The floodlights came on, of course. They've been coming on regularly (when they should) for 48 hours now. They go off a bit more quickly than I would prefer (or that I remember them doing before), but they come on! I should know better than to look at this gift pony's teeth any more closely.

"Should know better" so rarely trumps "because curiosity."

I don't know enough about electricity to know if shorts or other wiring problems can be temperature sensitive. The Interwebs tell me that resistance typically increases as temperature increases, and, as a Wikipedia article says, "As a consequence, the resistance of wires, resistors, and other components often change with temperature. This effect may be undesired, causing an electronic circuit to malfunction at extreme temperatures."

Only it seems that my circuit resumed functioning as soon as it got cold. Besides, Massachusetts spring, summer, and fall temperatures can hardly be considered "extreme." Even this cold snap isn't extreme.

And if there were damage to the wiring, caused by mice or squirrels, for example, it hardly seems likely that there are rodent electricians in my Flamingo Loft, repairing damage done by their cousins.

So why did the fixture stop working as soon as the new floodlights were installed...and why did it start working 6-7 months later?

1) Skin'n'bones Jinx is happily eating food with salmon oil added to it. Early signs are this is successfully dealing with the hairball issue. She doesn't feel like she's gaining weight, but she continues to act healthy and she's barely barfing at all, so I hold onto hope as I continue coaxing her with luxurious canned food.

2) Continuing on the cat front, they have both been demonstrating what mighty hunters they are of late. Tillie showed up at the patio door with a small bird in her mouth. Jinx seems to have taken that as a challenge and showed up in the same spot two day later with a bird nearly three times the size. Not to be outdone by her daughter, Tub o'Tillie bagged a chipmunk a few days after that. The mighty hunters of course want to parade their prey around inside. I've learned to check their mouths before opening the screen to let them in. If they catch it inside, they're allowed to gloat inside. But their outdoor kills can stay right there. Tillie continues her utterly adorable habit of picking up a catnip mouse and parading around the house loudly meowing what a mighty hunter she is before dropping the mouse somewhere near me.

3) Susan and Gavi expect to arrive here at Toad Woods this Friday afternoon (whee!), giving us a couple of weeks together (triple whee!) before Gavi moves back to Smith for her Junior (Yowser! Junior!) Year. (How the heck did that happen? She's wondering the same....) After Susan heads west, I'll have about six days before Jack shows up from Chicago for the September Brimfield show and the New England Carnival Glass Association's annual convention in Leominster.

4) Three days after Jack leaves (unless he decides to stay for it), the 23rd First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony takes place on Thursday, September 12, at Sanders Theatre, Harvard University, in Cambridge, MA. Big fun in person (do come if you can!) and also from the comfort of computers everywhere via the live webcast. Details of the 2013 ceremony and, if you'd like a sense of what to expect, or just a warm-up while waiting for 6pm September 12th, here's the video of the 22nd First Annual Ceremony last year:



5) So, yes, lots of socializing these next 5 weeks. All during a busy work time, of course, but that does tend to be how these things go....

6) I've been approved for a streamlined HARP refinancing of my mortgage at a welcome, lower interest rate (while also knocking a year off the length). Closing is scheduled for Thursday afternoon. Fingers crossed all goes as smoothly as it has so far!

7) Training for the upcoming social whirl has included two recent BBQs with friends, one with an added pool party thrown in. Also, a sunny afternoon with Ben at Citi Field enjoying the Mets beating the Phillies 5-0, with all of the scoring thanks to 3 home runs. Fun. And a rainy evening with debgeisler and benveniste at LeLacheur Park waiting for the last of the Jack Kerouac bobbleheads, then bailing instead of waiting another sodden hour to learn the game was cancelled due to rain. Also fun.

8) Things have been going well on several fronts, including my return to knitting. Once I add two short sleeves, two pockets, and three buttons to a dress for my great-neice, it will be ready to send her way. It's pretty certain to get there before she outgrows it.

9) Still ahead: moving from my current (old and failing) laptop to a shiny, newer, refurbished laptop ('cause I love, love, love the 17" screen on the MacBook Pro). Alas, moving to a current OS means moving away from Eudora, the email program I've used ever since I had my own email account. Arrrgh. I dread this. I know many have gone before me, carving the path and leaving lots of info and advice in their wake, but I utterly dread this. It's time to do it anyway. So, yeah, minnehaha K., it's not that I went ahead without learning from your experience, it's that my powers of procrastination are mighty.

10 and final) After living here a mere nine years and trying five different hair stylists interspersed with cuts by Brenda Wodnick at Zina's every time I made it to Minneapolis, I landed with Massachusetts stylist #6 for the win. My hair looked great at Corflu thanks to Krissi at Jeffrey Robert Salon in Sturbridge, and I have my third appointment with her Wednesday afternoon. I was with two of those previous five stylists for longer than I've been with Krissi, but only twice before in my life have I been as happy with my stylist as I am with her. Brenda (~1992-on) and Jimmy (back in the early- and mid-1980s). So, yeah, one more piece of ongoing satisfaction and happiness worked out. Whew.

Onward!

"Let's pretend it's easy this time and see how it goes." -- fredcritter

I just looked at my list. My incomplete list. All I need is about week for each and every one of the next seven days. And I need those seven days/weeks to then squeeze down into the space allocated to Monday through Friday. This Monday through Friday.

Eep.

It's likely to be like this for awhile. From until after Chicon most likely. Reminder: the Hugo voting deadline is Tuesday, July 31st. There's a spiff countdown clock on the Chicon web page with the online Hugo ballot and also on the home page. It's telling me that I currently have 1 day, 19 hours, 8 minutes, and an ever-diminishing number of seconds to get my vote in. Why, yes, that's on my list, and the hypothetical seven days for every one don't include any further reading time of that spiff Hugo voter's packet. It also disappears from the Chicon website when voting is closed, so if you've been meaning to buy a supporting or attending membership, get the packet, and vote in the Hugo's, now's the time.

I'm celebrating my 30th Fanniversary at Chicon, co-hosting with Matt & Kelly Strait in the Minnesota Magpies suite late Thursday night. More details on that to come. But probably not this week….

Speaking of Matt & Kelly Strait, they're reviving Rune! Huzzah, huzzah, calloo callay! Write early, write often. Ditto that for fanart.

Other quick headlines of note: I haven't seen the moose, but it's certain we have a bear. The next door neighbor shot nearly 5 minutes of video as a gorgeous, healthy-looking black bear stood a good 5-feet tall while chowing down on the food in one of their bird feeders a recent early morn.

There's no sign that the bear has come up on my deck to help harvest the black raspberries ripening there. Yet. I haven't looked closely enough at the blackberries toward the back edge of mowed lawn, or other black raspberries on the property to see if the same holds true there.

And so life goes. With gusto!

Hope to see you on the Funway....

The back story, for those just tuning in:

May 30, 2009: The Very Bad Lawnmower

August 29, 2010: Rock 1: Lawnmower 0

I've been researching lawnmowers online during spare moments over the last couple of weeks. My splendid next door neighbor mowed the lawn here at Toad Woods before I returned from the midwest, but that was 6 weeks ago. The property reverted to looking abandoned and I really did have to do something to correct that.

benyalow helpfully suggested setting a forest fire to burn all the grass. Alas, the GT friends who could manage such a trick while still leaving the Zeppelin Hangar standing are most of a thousand miles away, so I turned my attention instead to the question of whether last summer's decisive battle in the 7- Year Rock War had done in just the blade or the whole engine of The Very Bad Lawnmower.

The first "Geri Sullivan, Girl Homeowner" moment came when I approached the mower with Liquid Wrench and implements of destruction and bolt removal. Squirt, squirt. Bang, bang, bang. (The Liquid Wrench bottle advises that judicious application of hammer to bolt can help in the loosening process.) The adjustable wrench didn't do it, but the Vice Grips were up to the task. Color me competent. I love it when tools are my friend.

Blade in hand, I headed to the Sears store in Auburn. The back-up to get on the Pike was the worst I've ever seen -- don't know what was going on there -- but rather than joining hundreds of cars a half-mile back, I quickly hopped back off onto Hwy 20 and took the back roads east.

At Sears, I opted for a heavy duty replacement blade and also talked with Ken Cardinal, an excellent lawn mower sales guy. If the blade didn't do the trick, I've narrowed my choice down to two rear-wheel drive, variable speed, self-propelled models. (Is key start worth $50? Probably not on my budget, but that doesn't stop the temptation...especially after the adventures that followed once I was back home.)

( And just what were those adventures, Unca Geri? )

This post truly needs photos, but if I wait for them, it'll never get made.

The outside of my refrigerator looks just like you'd expect a fridge to look after 7 years of my presence: a variety of magnets holding up a variety of photos, comics, business cards, news clippings (including the headline "A Fan is a Terrible Thing to Waste"), a bag of Genuine Dust Bunnies that were a gift from tagwn and Denny Lien upon moving into Toad Hall in 1983, etc. A bit over 150 separate pieces of kipple and magnets in all.

The inside of my refrigerator looks...empty. Well, not entirely, just all but. There are 4 bags/cans of coffee in the freezer that are deemed safe and not too ancient. Two cold packs. A miniature bottle of aquavit from I don't remember. The fridge has an as-yet-unopened bottle of "refrigerate after opening" apricot nectar, 4 bottles of bheer and hard cider, plus 2 bottles and 4 cans of ginger beer.

The inside is also cleaner than at any time since I moved in. Yes, I've cleaned it from time to time between then and now, but never all at once, fridge and freezer both. It doesn't look new, but it doesn't look so crammed and shabby, either.

What's next? A trip to the grocery store, of course.

The one that I claimed had a gas grill underneath it?

Well, the snow is gone and now I'm scared to remove the grill cover.

The cover goes over the grill and down to the deck itself. Normally, I can just barely make out the edge heat'n'fire-resistant mat under the grill itself.

I just noticed I can see one of the wheels compliments of a hole gnawed through the cover by some critter or other.

I suspect something larger than mice since mice would have had little problem ducking under the edge of the cover itself. Maybe the three feet of snow on the deck rather hindered that, but I have this feeling that the critter(s) moved into the protected space well before there was even a foot of snow piled up.

The hole is roughly 8 inches wide by 6 inches tall. Maybe that raccoon that took to climbing my back door and scaring the bejeezus out of me by staring me in the eye...from eye level...when I turned on one of the deck lights to investigate the noise? The one who showed every sign of wanting to move into the Zeppelin Hangar itself several months back?

Yes, I know. Anyone who chooses to live in the woods needs to be prepared or at least able to deal with whatever is or was under the grill cover. I'm Geri Sullivan, Girl Homeowner, after all. If nothing else, I can always get a fanzine article out of the adventure. Or an LJ post, at least.

I successfully drove up the driveway and to the post office to pick up the mail that had been accumulating since I last picked it up on Monday. (Mailbox is currently out of reach of delivery vehicle, even though I shoveled it out enough for 3-4 people to be able to walk up to it at a time. Well, before this week's storm, anyway. Now it needs more shoveling, but mostly it's a fruitless task at this point.

When I attempted to leave in order to come down to New York to visit the friend who's critically ill here, I didn't build enough speed up at the bottom of the hill and the car just plain stopped making forward progress about halfway up. This happens once or twice each winter. Usually I manage to back down successfully and get out on the second or third try. Not today.

I suck at backing up. Add to that a curve and a slope, and I'm all but hopeless. The car was in a snowbank within 50 feet. ( 4-part harmony on the next 2.5 hours complete with AAA followed by the 3.5 hours after that )

Saturday's forecast is for 3-6 more inches of snow'n'sleet'n'crap at Toad Woods. I'll probably leave the car at the top of the drive. It will be the first time ever for that. There's no doubt: the conditions clearly call for it.

...this was the view of my back deck.

Through the Back Door View onto my deck from inside the back door. That mound? There's a gas grill underneath. At least there was when it started snowing. That ridge along the back? That's the snow on top of the 4-foot fence surrounding the deck. In my less than informed but still somewhat knowledgeable opinion, it's a miracle my deck is still standing.

Click on the image to get to the Toad Woods gallery and then advance for six more pictures of snow, an icicle then and now, and a look at a resourceful oil delivery person....

There's an entire mountain range of plowed snow at the bottom of my driveway, and the side of the drive is lined with many other peaks. This year's snow leaves me extraordinarily grateful that I've never lived in Buffalo.