ahmik | Reading

The dog woke me up a bit earlier, probably because it was a bright morning this time. (There was an intense dew.) Mama Violet hadn't yet arrived for her breakfast, but I caught sight of Monty lying in the oxalis near the side fence.

weofodthignen

Definitely what passes for winter here. Leaving for a morning walk in cloudy, chilly weather, I noticed a red camellia lying on the ground. And at noontime we got a Spare the Air alert for tomorrow and Thursday.

weofodthignen

Mama Violet was there for breakfast again, then spent the rest of the morning in the cat bed on the chair on the porch. The mail got delivered; I imagine the mail carrier got a bit of a fright. She is very hissy-faced.

weofodthignen

One house has already sprouted candycanes in a flowerbed, and another has a (minimally) decorated tree on the porch. Today seems to have been the day for putting up the outside lights: I walked past one house where the front gable was getting bedecked and another where a light string was being threaded around the points of the white picket fence. Maybe it was too sunny yesterday.

weofodthignen

Sunny and a smidgen warmer. Got to see and feed all three cats. The dog barked at length at the house that now looks down over the privacy fence into our back garden. Nobody living there yet; they'll get to know her voice once they do.

weofodthignen

Sunny enough today to put my laundry out, and for the dog to not only spend time in the back garden but to lead me on a long, meandering walkies through the park. And I swept the still dank driveway, and the pavement.

weofodthignen

More rain overnight.

A pomegranate tree on my usual walking route has started dropping fruits on the pavement/sidewalk. Unfortunately they split open. This morning there was a small one, so I hoped it might be intact, but it wasn't. I could easily pick one off the tree, but that would be wrong.

The oranges are also starting to fall. A couple have had bites in them. The one I found this morning hadn't, and unfortunately was ripe enough and fell from high enough that it had smashed open. There are fallen lemons under some people's trees that have smooshed onto their driveways and paths so they look like sherbet.

weofodthignen

The housemate did early spring cleaning. And found the tail for the Kit-Cat clock somewhere in the papers and stuff.

weofodthignen

I think it rained some more overnight, but things were drying out by late morning when we took a walk. On which a Russian blue lady wearing a pretty pink collar came along the fence to me and volunteered to be petted.

It was pretty enough out that I dug up some soil, mixed in some compost, and potted up two geranium cuttings that I've had in water in the back porch for ages. Hopefully they'll survive. Monty watched me with interest and I told him I'd give him some food when I finished, but he didn't hang around.

weofodthignen

We must have got a respectable amount of rain overnight: there was again more than half an inch of water in the bucket. It rained lightly off and on all day, including catching us on a walk around the park. The sunniest bit was breakfast time, when I found Mama Violet and Monty waiting for their breakfast on the porch. The water bowls had caught some rain and needed changing; when I returned with fresh water, Monty walked up to the front door and looked as if he was about to go in. I nipped in fast instead; the dog was lurking on the other side. I don't want the dog assassinated.

weofodthignen

First Prudence, then Monty too, waylaid me in the driveway to cadge some food. Obviously the weather had dried out enough for them to come out again.

An elderly couple in England, living in social housing, have been test subjects for a novel heating source: a data centre in the garden shed. Heat is transferred to the house via a closed loop of oil in pipes. A breezeblock shed, not the usual wooden one. They also got solar panels, which surely helps their electricity bills too. But still. They love it.

arlie

The United States elects people for a lot of roles I'd consider to require a technically competent, non-partisan person, whose skill at doing the job might be unrelated to their skill at winning elections - or worse, the need to run for (re)election might incentivize bad behaviour in the job at hand.

One of these roles locally is the county assessor - the person in charge of deciding property values for purposes of taxation. The previous incumbent has retired suddenly, or perhaps died, so we had a vote for a short term replacement. There were 4 candidates, only one of whom I'd ever heard of - he's been sending out small amounts of election ads. I don't like what he said about his background, and I like his proposed policies even less. His latest election email contradicted itself, presumably trying to be all things to all people. I also strongly suspect he's proposing to implement changes that are far beyond the scope of his office - i.e. he can't do what he says is the biggest reason to vote for him.

This individual was one of the top two in the recent vote. There will be a run off soon, with ballots arriving in early December. He'll be one of the two on the ballot. I don't know who his opponent is, but I'd vote for any of the other three ahead of him, and will make a point of doing so.

( Read more... )

weofodthignen

Raining again this evening. Supposed to stop for part of tomorrow and then resume. Yesterday the dog took me on a long walkies through the park. Today was too grey and chilly and she noped out.

I expect a fine crop of toadstools. The one amaryllis clump that never flowered this year has already sprouted leaves.

weofodthignen

Late last night, we were doing a jigsaw when suddenly a car alarm went off. A rare sound around here. Straightforward urgent honking, not the Viper sequence. It sounded awfully close, so I looked out of the front door and it was the housemate's car standing there in the driveway honking and flashing its lights. The car is not supposed to do alarms. Luckily she was able to shut it off immediately. There was a package on the porch, but it had been carefully placed, not thrown, and if the delivery person tripped and fell against the car hard enough to trigger an alarm for the first time, I'd have expected the person to have been still lying there groaning, or at least have dented the car. Plus it was awfully late for a delivery; the package probably got left closer to 5 pm. Daylight revealed no damage to the car or skid marks in the wet leaves (which I swept up today).

So I have three guesses:
* A super-huge raccoon jumped on the car in the exact right spot to trigger something.
* Someone's key frequency is a close match and they enabled something or did something in close proximity to the car.
* The car's senile.

weofodthignen

It rained most of the day, straight down, so my umbrella is now drying out in the back porch room. The bucket there got over half an inch in it. Unfortunately half an inch is also all the National Weather Service page shows at Moffett Field, and in widely separated measurements, too—looks as if the gauge there is broken like the one in Los Altos. But the same outfit told the Murky News that we got 1.45". More than Mountain View and also more than San Francisco.

So I get a week off watering, but I have to sweep leaves off the porch as well as the driveway.

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Skapi's Porch

Tinkering and Pottering since 1956

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