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adventures / books / cycling / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
31
Jul 23

Too far removed for a basic service our neighbors get weekly

One thing you never think of as a fundamental, perhaps integral, part of modern life is garbage removal. This is strictly psychological, but no less important because of it. As I think I mentioned last week, the company that used to do the garbage pickup here closed the other account and immediately decided they don’t service this area anymore. Despite having done so previously, and working throughout the little neighborhood.

So I finally found, last week, a new company that services the area. We opened an account with them. Great! First order of business, getting new cans delivered. That was supposed to happen on Thursday, Friday, or today. This, you see, is important because the pickup is supposed to begin tomorrow.

You want that to happen, the normalcy of it. The expected routine. Wheeling the cans down to the street, wheeling them back up the next day. Knowing there’s a can out there to put your carefully sorted things in. It’s just normal.

Using an old storage bin to put a bag into, and then carrying it to the transfer station is less normal. We’ve been doing that for a month. The good news, I guess, is that we are somehow pretty efficient. In a month we’ve only done that twice, accounting for three kitchen-sized garbage bags. (Plus the recycling.)

Just as I write that we learn that the new company has stopped servicing the area. Despite what their website, and their customer service reps, said. Two databases queried; two misses. Also, we’re surrounded by towns and cities, and yet, in no service area? (Despite, again, the previous and existing … service.)

Hopefully these companies are better at doing business with the customers with whom they do actual business. They’re proving themselves lousy at working with potential customers.

It is once again time for the site’s most popular weekly feature. Time to check in on the cats. Phoebe is working on her camouflage game.

She’s making progress.

She’s also still discovering new spaces. to sit. I suspect she’ll come to like that little ledge.

It commands the room, has corner windows and will give her evening sun.

Speaking of discovering new space, Poseidon was genuinely surprised that he wasn’t wanted up there. Which is odd, because if he wants to be there, he probably isn’t wanted there.

The more familiar places are better, though I’m not sure he’s buying what I’m selling.

In other words, the cats are doing just fine.

We went for a bike ride on Saturday, and there is video to prove it.

Also, on these really sunny days, the photos amuse me. It’s all constant motion, of course. And The Yankee is easing back into her tri-bike now, which means we’re about to go even faster. (Which means I’m going to have work harder to keep up. Which means I need to get faster, and better fitness, so I can keep taking cool photos like this.)

The alternative to keeping up is catching up. Some days that’s possible. On the days that it is impossible, I just slow down and enjoy the ride, and take other photos.

Also on Saturday we headed north for a 75th birthday party. It was a surprise party for my godfather in-law. (My lovely bride’s godparents. Just go with it.) There was his family, his lifelong friends (my in-laws) a handful of his work friends, Italian foods and a homemade cake. We sat with a man who was pushing 90, and loved to talk about his grandchildren, and old handyman projects. Nice fellow.

After the dinner we repaired to the godparents’ home, and watched the kids swim. I coached one into doing flip turns. No doubt owing to my masterful teaching techniques, she had the basics down on her third try.

We left just before the rain. Drove for a bit in the rain, but then we were rewarded with some beautiful views.

And the front behind this storm system (which was in some places, dangerously breezy) is what broke the heat wave. Also, those windshield views.

We were back in the 80s on Sunday, today, and all this week. And because it felt comparatively mild yesterday, we spent the afternoon sitting outside, reading.

I finish May Sarton’s “Journal of a Solitude.” It’s an actual journal the poet kept for a year.

On the last entry, she talks about the coming New Hampshire fall, writes obliquely about breaking up with her partner. (Sarton, from what I’ve gathered from other places, was apparently a challenging person to be around. She wrote more about that part of herself, and its impact on this relationship, more than the relationship itself.) She seems to be coming to the realization that this breakup was a long time coming, and that she was meant to live alone.

She also sent off her latest collection of poetry, “A Durable Fire,” her 10th collection of poetry and her 26th book, the day before this final entry.

She says “When I began writing those poems I had had the dream that I would celebrate my sixtieth birthday with a book of joys, a book speaking of fulfillment and happiness. But on the final re-reading I saw clearly that it is an elegiac book, and that the seeds of parting were in it from the beginning. This where poetry is so mysterious, the work more … ”

Mystery of poetry? If the poet says so. The biggest literary mystery I can concern myself with right now is what to read next. There are many, many options.

So many options.

Just not for garbage pickup.

adventures / Friday / photo / video — Comments Off
28
Jul 23

Roasting near the sun

My first job, at 14, was landscaping a surgeon’s mansion. He was highly successful. He also married old money. They had an early model Rolls Royce Ghost in the garage. On each of the sweeping staircases there was an oil painting of their beautiful daughters. These were the people you saw in movies who didn’t exist, except that they did.

It was a summer job, I was working for one of my junior high teachers. My mother would take me to a McDonald’s parking lot to meet that teacher each morning, and each morning it was already hot. Even in a little cooler there was trial-and-error about what would survive until lunchtime. My teacher and I would drive over to the really nice part of the nice part of town. And she worked all day, and taught me to work all day. She taught me a lot that summer. I learned how to wrap towels, like she had in the Peace Corps, to keep cool. I learned the best places to take breaks. She talked a lot about music and her kids and other normal things about life, too. It was one of my first instances of interacting with a teacher beyond the classroom model.

It was very, very hot that summer. Almost dangerously so. And these people’s property was large. By the time we worked from one end of their property to the other it was time to start over again. If I didn’t mention this already, that was a hot, hot summer.

I use that story, kind of as a joke, to explain how I knew I wanted to go to college and get a nice, comfortable indoor job. Really, I’d already realized I wanted to be in an office, looking sharp in a coat and tie. But that summer, and some later ones that involved a bit of real work, only reinforced the idea.

I was thinking about that, when I spent an hour or so late this morning doing very, very, light work, mostly in the shade, but still under a heat index of 100 degrees.

People out there doing real work in the heat deserve breaks and water and shade. It’s easy to forget how demanding some conditions can be. Whenever we have people in to work on something, I’m constantly bothering them about needing air or heat or ice or … whatever.

I think of all of those people I see harvesting crops in the fields. When I ride by them on my bike I slow down a little bit and try to see if I can pick up any conversation, prepared to wave if anyone looks my way. But, absorbed in the details of their work, they seldom do. We’ll go down to one of the farm markets this weekend, or next week, and pick up some fresh produce. We’ll enjoy it, of course, knowing it is up from the soil right around us. But I’ll also wonder how many breaks the hands get. Hopefully, these last few weeks, they’ve been getting enough. Hopefully that becomes the norm when the conditions call for it.

Fortunately, this heat wave is forecast to break at the beginning of the next week.

Until then, stay cool as best you can. Pool floats are good for that.

And since the weekend is upon us, I’m giving you permission to unwind. Here’s 60 seconds of wavy clouds from four feet under water.

It’s Friday; don’t forget to breathe.

cycling / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
27
Jul 23

Grab some pruners, let’s prune

I spent the morning with a pair of pruning shears in my hands. There were daisies to deadhead. There’s shade on that side of the house that time of day, and there was a great breeze this morning. All the daisies were cut back. It was actually a pleasant outdoor activity, given the heat wave. And now, hopefully, in another two or three weeks the daisies will show us new flowers for the effort.

The big decorative show shrubs also got a little trim. Some other weeds were pulled from the earth. A few more pokeweed plants, some vines, an oddly emerging tree sapling all came out. On the corner, there’s a trellis, it is in the sun at that time of day, which the sprawling roses enjoy. I noticed that amidst the thriving roses there was one, big, dead branch. That needed to be cut away, and I had some pruners right there in my right hand. So I did the thing where you follow it around the other growing things, through the trellis, and down to the earth. That’s when I found out why that one was dead. Someone had cut it, and left it in place.

In took me about two minutes to make four strategic cuts and carefully pull the thorny thing out of the trellis, and away from the happily growing roses. Why no one else had done that will just remain a mystery, right there alongside what that oddly placed light switch in the hall is supposed to do.

There’s an oak tree on the other corner of the house. It has a wonderful little fork right about eye height. Soil got in the crook of that tree somehow or another. And from that soil had emerged a strand of poison ivy. I had one bad run-in with poison ivy in the oughts, and so I carefully cut that back. Then I put away my bucket of weeds, my pruning shears and washed my hands. And then I took a shower, just to be sure. And then I washed my clothes for good measure. (And being careful, and more observant than I was in 2007-or-whatever, I did not get Urushiol on me.)

After some mid-day store errands, I took a little bike ride. It was the absolute hottest part of the day, which wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I stopped for a few minutes in the early going, and that allowed the sweat to pour, rather than evaporate in the wind.

This means sweat is getting in my eyes. And I am, of course, riding on brand new roads. I mean, brand new. I mean, pulling up more than one map to make sure I am following my plan. Because of the sweat stinging away, and alternating eyes, and because they are new roads, I did not follow my plan perfectly. But close enough. Trying new roads on your bicycle is such great fun.

I just could not keep the perspiration from my eyes, and after a half hour or so of that, a strange, full-body sensation came over me. I think that all of the eye rubbing and eye irritation felt a lot like how you feel just after a real big, long cry. And, suddenly, the rest of me figured that out. Now my chest and my lungs and my stomach and everything else is paying attention. What’s wrong? Is something wrong? Something is wrong. Should we be concerned? Emotional protocols activated. We’re tightening everything up! The mind wanders, even when you aren’t aware of it.

Before all of that, I saw what has to be the largest excavator east of the Mississippi. I know there’s not much here to use as scale (other than those two big tractors) just remember, this was mid-bike ride, and I was using one eye at a time.

When I found that closing both eyes was the most comfortable condition, it was time for this little recovery ride to end. Fortunately, I was in the neighborhood. Down one hill, around the corner and up the driveway. Do you know how hard it is time your stop, so you don’t foolishly ram your garage door while riding with your eyes closed? Neither do I, but I thought about trying it.

This was the temperature when I got back inside.

Here’s the thing. I could do that four or five more times and be just fine. A lifetime in sticky subtropical climes means you can easily adjust to the condition. Only, I don’t want to be in a heatwave for that long anymore.

Hours and hours later, I still feel red-eyed.

In the early evening I deadheaded the daisies in the backyard. I pruned a bit on the big beautiful hibiscus bush. I watered a few other plants. And then I set out to fix this door.

This building is a little decorative garden shed. It isn’t wide enough, or deep enough, to walk into. But there are some handy shelves in there. Great for fertilizer and other gardening accessories, and we intend to do that. But, if you’ll notice those two planks right in the middle of the door. They were missing from the door. Today was the day I got around to studying the problem because, really, I want to store gardening accessories in there, but you need to be able to protect them from the elements. So I looked at the door, figuring I could just cut some thin lumber, bluff my way through the tongue-and-groove and have an actual, functioning door, even if it was badly mismatched.

But then I found the two original pieces of lumber.

There are two morals to this little story. The first one is this. The tool you have is not *always* the best tool. Pruners are not staple removers. It seems that the previous owners tried to reattach this wood with staples. They protrude from the outside in, but they did not make it into the cross brace. They were, in fact, just in the way of things. So I pulled out one staple with the pruners and thought, This will work just fine and then, buoyed with the overconfidence that comes with luck, I managed to stab myself in the left thumb.

So, if we’re keeping score, I have now invested blood and sweat into the new house. Tears, TBD.

Here’s the second moral to the story. The easy, quick, good-enough, halfway solutions to small problems you make will one day be noticed, and questioned, by others. (By now, I could write a dense pamphlet on some of the previous owners’ decisions. Nothing huge, or uncorrectable, but a lot of it curious.) Better to do it right. Or better. Aim higher than good-enough, is the point.

The door on that little gardening building has been repaired. One more thing off the list. (And it’s a fun list! This is going to be fun to accomplish and remove things on this list!) And my thumb, which is perfectly fine, is sporting a cool bandage.

And now there’s a cat laying on my left forearm. That’s either cuddle therapy for the scratch on my thumb or a sign that I should shut down the computer for the night.

adventures / cycling / music / photo / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
26
Jul 23

Ray Stevens was an overdue mention anyway

We started this morning with a bike ride. OK, I started this morning with a PB&J, and then we went on a bike ride. The first 10 miles felt great, just following my lovely bride, jumping ahead on the little hills because I can, but sitting up and waiting for a second or two for the red flash to come through.

The corn is nice and tall. The sun is high. The roads are quiet. Everything is going great.

Somewhere around mile 13 my legs reminded me that they have been underused of late, and they stopped pedaling well in protest. It was squares from there on in, and I have to ride more, I know it, and my legs do, too. But the views were lovely.

And even though my ride was feeling clunky, I did remember to take a photo of this sign which surely means … something.

I think it’s recounting the local legend of the bird that celebrated the building as a deity, and brought it fish sacrifices, in the hopes that the building would give plentiful thermals in return. Silly bird.

Around mile 18 my legs rallied, if only for a moment, and then they stopped being productive at all. There was no more hanging on the wheel. No more catching up, not even on the gentle rollers. I was merely dropped. I managed to set four PRs on Strava. She set PRs on five Strava segments.

After that, The Yankee went for a run.

I sat in the shade.

Today was, I think, the first day I didn’t do anything involved with house settling. That’s about the tasks, not the mentality. That may take a while, I guess. But I did make a list of things to do tomorrow. And a long term list of things we might want to do, one day. Also, I did some paperwork for work, but there’s not really a good tale emerging from paperwork. Not one like this …

Late this afternoon we took some garbage to the garbage taking place.

The waste people decided they don’t manage service in this neighborhood anymore, despite having just closed a contract with the previous owners. And despite evidence — actual garbage cans that will go out tomorrow — of all of our nice neighbors receiving said service. We called this company twice on different days and times, just to see if that was a fluke, but it was not. Not sure what’s going on with that company, but I invoked Smith’s First Rule of Economics.

Don’t make it hard for me to spend my money with you.

So I found another company. Feeling very proud of myself, I shared this information. I didn’t know what the relative rates were, but it turns out this contract will save us a few bucks. They’ll start pickup next week, and deliver one of those giant cans later this week, supposedly. Which meant we took a few bags and some recycling to the transfer station today.

Transfer station being a term that sounds better, but isn’t necessarily an improvement in the olfactory region.

Being a warm summer day, we enjoyed our evening outdoors, and then had a fine steak dinner. It was a wonderful day, thanks for asking. I also introduced my lovely bride to Ray Stevens today. It was a topic that just evolved from a regular conversation. To my great relief, she found him funny, too.

I don’t know what comedy track we’ll get into, but tomorrow could be even better!

music / photo / tabs / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
25
Jul 23

Shocking! I felt shocked! (Because I shocked myself … )

The people that sold us the new house had a giant corner wardrobe in their bedroom. They didn’t take it with them. Left it right where it was. The day we moved in, we moved it to the basement. I had to take it apart, disassembling it around the hard-working movers. They had to carry it, in four pieces, into the basement. Down the stairs, out the front door, around the side, into the garage and downstairs. They strained. They struggled. They did it with good cheer. We felt bad. We tipped them pretty well. We were going to do that anyway, but after that we huddled and agreed to tip them a bit better still. They earned it.

Only, they didn’t reassemble that wardrobe in the basement, where we will use it as off-season clothes storage. So, late last night and early this morning, I did that work. (Sorta?) It had been three-plus weeks (time flies) since I took it apart. I was in a rush to tear it down back then and I didn’t document where in the MDF all of the little metal parts went. Also, IKEA doesn’t have it listed anymore, and I’ve no idea what they sold it as, so I can’t easily find the manual online.

Today, though, the giant four-part wardrobe is reassembled as three individual pieces. Maybe I’ll make it a two-section wardrobe later this year, when I swap out the clothes. But at 2 this morning, I felt like I’d done enough with it.

Today I raked up the grass clippings from the lawnmower, and stuffed them and a bunch of weeds, mostly pokeweed, in a lawn bag. I also discovered we have an electric fence. Every day there’s something new to discover, and that’s fun. Still don’t know what the extra light switch in the hallway does, but I digress. I was out at the shed and found a small solar panel, pointed west, with a little red cable running to a white cable that runs around the shed, right about at big toe height. It is energized, and it’ll give you a nice, moderate, shock. Not as many volts as you’d get grabbing a hot wire in the house, but a little more than static electricity. No pests in the tool shed, then.

I called the company that makes the solar panel. A nice woman there said this little unit could power a fence that covers three-quarters of a mile. Electric fences don’t take a lot of power, of course, but that’s just remarkable.

Soon after, someone came by to take all of these bad boys off our hands.

It only took three tries to give them away. A guy who came out last week to do some work on the house carried some off to use in his flowerbeds. I advertised them on a Facebook group. Move! Store things in them! Build forts! Put them in your flowerbeds!

A woman agreed to swing by, but she disappeared. From the chat. She disappeared from the chat. I’m sure she’s fine.

So I found another woman who needed boxes. She took them in two trips today. In between, the sky looked like this.

And then, almost magically, those clouds moved on, burned off, disappeared. It was all but instantaneous. The sun came out, bright as ever. And then it rained through the sunshine. I stood in the window and watched it. And, after the shower had passed, I glanced in the large room where cars are normally parked. The boxes were gone. We no longer have a squished warehouse. We now have a garage. About the same time, my lovely bride finished setting up the gym. (Can’t wait to renovate that one of these days.)

We’re making progress every day. So much so that we feel confident in having a bike ride tomorrow. It has been so long since I’ve been on my bike I’m mildly curious if it is, in fact, just like riding a bike.

I need to make some progress on this front as well, closing tabs in my browser, that is. Good for me, then, that it is Tabs Tuesday. These are a few links that I’ve kept open for too long. They might not rise to the level of making a bookmark — which comes at considerable cost, if you read this sentence wrong — but they could be worth memorializing. So I put them here. Let’s see what I’ve been holding onto.

Sometime back I learned about the Artisans Cooperative, which emerged as something of a maker’s revolt from goings on at Etsy. Or, at least that’s what I seem to remember about it.

Artisans Cooperative is crafting a “better” online handmade marketplace, run as a values-aligned, member-owned cooperative.

OUR VALUES
1. Member-owned co-op …

2. Free and fair marketplace …

3. Inclusion …

4. Authentically handmade …

We are in the final stretches of development and getting ready to launch to the public in October 2023.

Good for them. And some of the merchants, the ones I’ve clicked through so far, anyway, do some amazing work. Like, East Ruin.

East Ruin is an archaeology-inspired art & design business for eco- and socially-conscious consumers who value alternatives to extractive production methods.

For a different sort of thing, there’s Maple Creek Vermont.

I started Maple Creek Vermont in the fall of 2020 as an outlet for my creative energy. For as long as I can remember I have had a passion for creating, building, crafting and making. As the son of a carpenter I have been around wood working my entire life and I worked to spend as much time as I could in the wood shop during all levels of my education. From the closet turned wood shop in my kindergarten classroom to the well appointed wood shop on my college campus, I have always felt at home making sawdust.

And check out StellaNCWorks. I’ll definitely be shopping here.

Pottery was the souvenir my parents brought back from every place we went, each piece chosen to represent that place, with the potter’s mark on the bottom. Embracing my home in NC is reflected in my own pottery. It seems appropriate, forming a chunk of the very land itself, through an intimate, engaged process, into a practical object that reflects the plants and animals that share the land. I am inspired by these plant and animal neighbors, by the idea that memories and heirlooms connect us to our loved ones, by things that are made by someone’s hands, and by shared humanity. I explore these ideas to create themes that celebrate the personal connection with nature and with other humans, and often use artifacts of these things—plant leaves, animal footprints, heirloom lace—to shape my work.

When I first started making my own pottery, it was driven by the need for a perfect vessel for a particular food: a plate for sardines with a line of mustard, bowls for pho, a big tea mug. Making clumsy pottery taught me lessons about making things better: about handle shape appropriate for leverage on a big mug, flat bottoms that don’t retain dishwater when drying upside down, shapes and edges that are comfortable for hands and lips. I make pottery for people who love the art in the practical, who love useful things made by someone’s hands.

(It also happens to be beautiful work.)

I discovered a bramble vine in the yard the other day. So now I’m reading up. Brambles: Pesky garden weed or delicious summer treat.

Brambles are bush-like, thorny plants with arching canes that are all in the Rubus family of plants. This includes the common blackberry, raspberry (including red, black and yellow) and the less common dewberry and thimbleberry. Many of these species are grown or bred for their wonderful fruit, and there are many wild-growing brambles as well. Wild bramble fruits are generally smaller than their cultivated, on-farm cousins, but are more packed with flavor! It’s almost “brambleberry” foraging and harvesting time now; if you see anything in the woods that looks like store-bought raspberry or blackberry, it’s safe to eat! There are no poisonous look-alikes to worry about.

There is good news and bad news about plants in the bramble family. The plants root easily, they spread out, and they give off fruit every year. If you are trying to establish them in your garden, you’ll likely be successful; they are quite vigorous. Another plus is that they are an incredibly rich (and common) source of pollen for pollinators of all types. Expect new plants to bear fruit in their second year.

And there’s always something new to learn about peaches, too. There’s so much to learn about peaches. They aren’t at all intimidating.

Less intimidating: the 54 tabs still open on my browser.

Just two more clips from last week’s Barenaked Ladies show. I didn’t include the encore. These days BNL brings out their supporting acts (Del Amitri and Five For Fighting on this leg of the tour) and they do a cover. They’re doing Steve Miller Band’s “Jet Airliner.” (It’s fine, I guess. Last year, though, they did “Handle Me With Care.” It was much better. Here’s the version they did in Cincinnati. And this is the version they did in Indianapolis.)

There was a freestyle rap, an Ed Robertson staple. And they mixed it into a medley with a Taylor Swift song. I am counting this as having attended a Taylor Swift show.

Tyler Stewart came out from behind the drums for the big finish. And it’s a pretty robust singalong. Think of it another way: this is a 40-year-old song, a staple of another band’s catalog, and everyone, or at least the guys, are all singing along.

When Joe Elliot screamed it in 1983 “Rock of Ages reached 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and number one on the Top Tracks Rock chart. No one forgets Def Leppard — who are playing seven dates across the U.S. next month.

But enough about music. There’s a lot more of that to come. Tomorrow we’ll dive back into the Re-Listening project, because I am very behind, and that’s making me itchy.