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D.O.P.-T.

The much abused privet-like bush under the dining room window, which I'm considering trimming, has emitted lots of its little white rose-like flowers. Not all over, in patches.

"I think the protagonist had hay fever or maybe yellow fever, I'm not sure which"

Well, that kinda covers the gamut of illness there, so maybe figure it out?

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Current Mood: contemplative

A couple of thoughts about work

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Rainbow Waves. This was a picture I started a long time ago - with gouache paint. I added the pen to it today and it seems to be done. I think I have an idea now of a new project I want to work on since the "LIVE" project is over. I want to work a little bit every day, every single day, even if I only put a line down, but it has to be SOMEthing. I have 2 different kinds of 5.5" by 8.5" books with heavy watercolor paper in them - hot pressed and cold pressed. I'm going to work my way through them, not with the rule that I will have a page done each day and move on to a new page the next day like I had been doing, but that I will spend time every day adding something to them no matter how small. I can't give up art-a-day. It makes me feel too good.

Women's group today. We played Shut the Box for a while before we left for lunch at Pub 76 in Stoneboro. I had a really good meal of grilled shrimp over cilantro rice with a spicy pineapple sauce. Tomorrow Jan and I are going to Chloe's Paint and Sip in Oil City and have lunch with Chloe beforehand at Baked Goods from Heaven. I'm spoiled.

Thursday 12 June 1662

Posted by Samuel Pepys

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1662/06/12/

This morning I tried on my riding cloth suit with close knees, the first that ever I had; and I think they will be very convenient, if not too hot to wear any other open knees after them. At the office all the morning, where we had a full Board, viz., Sir G. Carteret, Sir John Mennes, Sir W. Batten, Mr. Coventry, Sir W. Pen, Mr. Pett, and myself. Among many other businesses, I did get a vote signed by all, concerning my issuing of warrants, which they did not smell the use I intend to make of it; but it is to plead for my clerks to have their right of giving out all warrants, at which I am not a little pleased. But a great difference happened between Sir G. Carteret and Mr. Coventry, about passing the Victualler’s account, and whether Sir George is to pay the Victualler his money, or the Exchequer; Sir George claiming it to be his place to save his threepences. It ended in anger, and I believe will come to be a question before the King and Council. I did what I could to keep myself unconcerned in it, having some things of my own to do before I would appear high in anything.

Thence to dinner, by Mr. Gauden’s invitation, to the Dolphin, where a good dinner; but what is to myself a great wonder; that with ease I past the whole dinner without drinking a drop of wine.

After dinner to the office, my head full of business, and so home, and it being the longest day in the year,¹ I made all my people go to bed by daylight. But after I was a-bed and asleep, a note came from my brother Tom to tell me that my cozen Anne Pepys, of Worcestershire, her husband is dead, and she married again, and her second husband in town, and intends to come and see me to-morrow.

Footnotes

Read the annotations

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1662/06/12/

Update

Not a lot happened. Baby steps are being made in clearing garden beds and getting them replanted. Beetles are still being picked off flowers and dumped into soapy water. This morning there were only a couple of dozen beetles, not 100's. Progress! I'm finding that especially the cucumber beetles are hatching in the late afternoon and evening. If I do a round of bug removal at sunset I get most or all of them.
The cows have finally moved into the pasture around the house. Apparently there is still lots of water in the stream along with piles of feed, so no cows have hiked all the way up to the house for water. When they have eaten all the yummy (possibly still faintly green) grass near the creek, and perhaps when it gets a little warmer and they want the breeze on our knoll; I'm sure they will come up here.
To prepare for the cows the fish needed to be moved. Cows regularly drink the stock tanks, even the 500 gallon one, dry. This is not good for fish health. Yesterday early morning I bailed out and dumped the 170 gallon tank. There should have been two fish in it. There were none. I was pretty sure that one fish disappeared several weeks ago, but the other was seen three days prior. Down at the 500 gallon tank I couldn't see any of the 3 fish that should have been there even though I'd siphoned a lot of water out. The water was pretty murky. This morning there was a glimpse of one fish. Other chores came first, but along about noon I bailed the water level down to about 6 inches and eventually captured two fish. They are now getting used to cleaner water in their bucket. In a few minutes I'll go set them loose in the 170 gallon tank. It is sparkling clean having been scraped and scrubbed and refilled. As a predator preventive, and to give them a bit of shade, I'm going to put a shade cloth tent over the tank. It would probably be best to adopt out the two remaining fish, they are at about 3 1/2 to 4 inches and have become extremely enticing as lunch for a variety of critters.

I had wanted to weed whack the fence between the horse pastures and the cows, but having been sick last week I hired two guys to do it. They did a good job. I did find a downed tree that had to be cut off the fence and got that taken care of. SOP is to walk all fences before turning on the power, and then walk them again once the power is on listening for the snap of a loose connection. Yesterday, while checking the fence, I found a second tree on the fence. This morning Kim came to be my safety monitor while I ran the chainsaw. It only took a few minutes to get the tree out of the way. Kim mentioned it would be nice to have a branch that was hanging into the arena pruned up so I went off to get the pole saw. The pole saw (chainsaw) dumped 1/4 cup of gas on the driveway gravel, which it REALLY should not have done. Off to the repair shop with it! An hour later one of the two weed whackers, which was running perfectly day before yesterday, refused to start. It's selector switch: off, start, run; just flopped around. With two broken items I suspect I should drive to Cloverdale and get them into the shop.

Yesterday morning was consumed by a trip to Fort Bragg to have my back worked on. Both back and my neck feel better; along with my thumb which entirely quit hurting. While at Dr Richard's I asked if there was a pet shop that sold fish. I stopped by a really clean and neat feed store and picked up 6 tiny feeder goldfish. They are happily swimming around in Firefly's water tank. They are way too small to be tempting as a meal. Once the cows are gone for the summer some of them can go to the overflow tank. That will be a month or more from now. Along with goldfish there are mosquito fish available, but goldfish are much tougher fish. Goldfish will survive long, long after mosquito fish die and they do just as good a job at eating up mosquito larva.
The most recent Dahlia to open is lopsided but really lovely. Definitely one I'll keep.

Postcard of the Day

Current Mood: angry

LA Protests and WH military response

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Think the rot set in with spell-check, honestly

Okay, am v depressed by all the ongoing hoohah around AI and the people using it rather than their own brains, quite aside from Evil Exploitation aspect -

- but on intellectual pollution, having been moaning inwardly, banging the floor with my ebony cane and beating my head on my antimacassar for a considerable while over the awful errors that appear in prose because the word is correctly spelt but it is THE WRONG BLOODY WORD.

That the person who created that text has not picked up on, sigh, groan.

Insert here a lament for the decline in copy-editing and proof-reading, which might have spotted this sort of thing and corrected it.

I am a little worried that we are now have generations who do not know what words actually mean, because spell-check has not said anything .

This is brought to you by having encountered the term 'itinerary' deployed for something that is not, as far as I can see, a journey, but the programme/timetable for a meeting. Perhaps there is some sense of a progression to be made???

(The mermaids signing, each to each: that is why I cannot hear them.)

Finished Prodigy

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Just Another Day in Paradise (Wednesday)

If I’m writing about my adventures a day behind, I should probably make a short list of the things I’ve read to start with. I finished listening to Blood Ink Sister Scribe last night. I will admit that I got a little bogged down in the middle of the book, re-read Trouble and Her Friends (for an up-coming podcast,) and then listened to the second half of it. While I’ve been up here, Martha Well’s Network Effect came up for grabs as an audiobook, so I downloaded that during one of my daily treks to the lodge for internet.

Yesterday started with a nice canoe trip around part of the lake. Shawn and I like to get up early, around 6:30 or 7 am, and do a near-silent drift along the lake. It often pays off in terms of animal sightings. Yesterday we had our first truly sunny morning, and we saw (we counted) ten turtles in various spots sunning themselves on logs. On our return trip, we got the piece d’resistance: a river otter! The river otter was actually in the lake with us and bobbed up a couple of times (almost like trying to stand in the water) to try to decide if we were a danger or not and then disappeared under the water.

Super cool!

It was pretty darned magical, even though at that point in the trip around the lake we were fighting a chilly headwind so strong that if we stopped paddling the canoe would start to go sideways.

Almost immediately after making landfall, Mason and I hopped in the car and headed off to nearby Judge C. R. Magney State Park to revisit Devil’s Kettle.

Shawn elected to stay behind. Her knee, which has been performing like an absolute champ this trip, has been getting stiff and sore after canoe rides. She bends very well for someone who is really only about six months out of knee surgery but getting in and out of the canoe from the dock is more of a challenge. The idea of doing all those stairs down—and then back up again—to see the first set of falls felt like a bad idea to her. I don’t blame her, but we still felt sad leaving her behind even though she said it was okay.

Mason and I have been to this state park before, four years ago, but I was not yet a member of either the Passport or the Minnesota State Parks and Trails Hiking Club. I brought my state park passport along and got my stamp!

Image: passport stamp

I was glad Shawn did not come once we started the hike. I’m here to tell you that being fat and asthmatic is no real barrier (so long as you have your inhaler, are generally mobile, and are willing to take it slowly,) but I do not think Shawn’s knee would have survived the uneven, sloped parts of the trail, NEVERMIND the stairs.

Speaking of being fat, I did have at least one stranger feel free to tell me that I was “doing great, honey!” But you know what? I was! So, I decided to ignore the fairly pointed assumption about my general health based on my size, and said, “Thanks! You, too!”

The effort is always worth it, however:

Image: famous Devil's Kettle.

If you have never heard of Devil's Kettle before and why it's so fascinating, feel free to read this article about the mysterious kettle that takes water in but maybe sends it straight to hell... https://www.treehugger.com/the-mystery-of-devils-kettle-falls-4863996

Mason and I had a lovely hike back down. I’d swear, actually, that I took the stairs back up much faster this year than I did four years ago. This is not to say that we didn’t pause on any of the landings that are on offer, but I made very steady progress and never felt like my heart was pounding out of my chest or any of that. I honestly think it helped that the weather has been quite cool up here, so while I worked up a sweat, it never felt overwhelming. TMI? But I’m kind of proud of myself, I guess? Especially after that lady’s “encouragement.”

On our way back to Gunflint Trail and the Lodge, Mason and I stopped in Grand Marais for lunch. This trip is a gift to Mason for graduating from university and so I let him pick the place. We stopped at Angry Trout to have fish sandwiches and an incredible view of the marina, if you can call it such, on Lake Superior.

Mason at Angry Trout

Image: Mason contemplating the menu at Angry Trout.

The drive back was uneventful and we spent much of the rest of the evening sitting on the dock staring out at the lake (or reading.) We have new “neighbors” in cabin two. They are two old duffers who are here for a guy’s weekend of fishing and catching up. Shawn, who was here all day, talked to them a bit. One of them is from the Twin Cities (Oakdale or somewhere like that) and the other is previously from the area, but has since moved to Arizona. He told us he left nearly 100 F / C temps. We made the classic joke about having brought the sun with him, since this was one of the first non-rainy days.

Normally, we don’t interact much with the other cabins, but the forestry service has done a lot of fire maintenance around the lodge and so all of the underbrush is gone, chopped down. It looks little denuded, and apocalypse-y and it also means you see more people coming in out of cabins from further away and have to make the tough Minnesota decision: “Do I wave? Do I have to wave? Oh crap, we made eye contact, I will lift my hand and wave. Oh, god, this is awkward, how long do I wave?” And, yes, I’m actually the family’s extrovert. But I’m also very aware that most people in Minnesota do not actually want to have to talk to strangers, especially when they are “up nort” on a fishing trip with their old college buddy.

More wildflowers!

Wild sasperilla?

Image: blue flower of some variety??

Current Mood: worried

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Bots and AO3

You might want to take a look at this warning:

https://verushka70.dreamwidth.org/121513.html

Following a path through the bracken in the rain

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Happy birthday,

ase!

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birds: laughing doves

Chicks of the laughing dove

It was their first day out of the nest, which they spent on a branch just opposite our window.

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For more information (in Russian), see here.

Found in the street

A few days ago, I was walking and noticed what looked like a clump of oak flowers. I forget what made me turn it over, but it proved to be this girlie:

(Maybe 3" high)

I propped her up against the base of the nearest lamp post. When I next went by that spot, I looked and she'd disappeared, so I figured whatever little girl had lost her, had found her again. But today I was there again and noticed a clump of oak flowers in the ivy next to the pavement/sidewalk ... so second best happy ending, home she came with me.

This is pretty clearly a girl bear. Not only is she very petite, she has two hair ornaments, and one of them, plus the tuning end of her guitar, feature hearts. There's a flower painted around the painted hole in the guitar body. One of the hair ornaments is an ice lolly; the other is an even smaller critter, with a circular body and rabbit-like ears. The guitar and the ice lolly are multiple plastic pieces fitted together: the plate at the base of the guitar strings as well as the tuning block, the white bottom half of the lolly, even the front of its stick is a yellow piece. The hairpiece animal has black painted eye-dots and a raised dot nose; the bear herself has two eyes and a slightly smaller nose, affixed in the traditional manner for small stuffed bears' eyes, but the nose is just a little below the eyes, a snub-nose effect.

Very carefully designed to be irresistably cute, to extract pocket money from little girls—or adult collectors. I suspect she's part of a Japanese line of collectible plushies being sold at Asian malls in the Bay Area. Or maybe she's just a very cannily designed tchotchke produced in such bulk that the detailing doesn't cost too much at all.

Certainly works. Anyone with any nurturing instinct would be drawn to her. But the economic implications make me wince. Remember, she's tiny. (See the book and onions in the background.) She's small enough that she might be meant for a backpack zip or a keychain, but I don't see any sign of a torn-off attachment. And her legs and arms are rudimentary, stiff shapes under the fuzz, probably a plastic frame. This isn't a bear to hug and take to bed, but something to covet, and amass, and leave sitting on a shelf.

She'll go on my shelf now.

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wednesday

I haven't written anything here since last Friday. We went to an art show on Friday evening at Clarion Uni. They invited 3 alumni artists to be part of a summer show. Chloe was one of them. I am so impressed by Chloe. She is succeeding as an artist and I am very happy for her. It rained most of the weekend. On Sunday we drove over to Chloe's old house and helped her move her studio stuff to her new house and clear out a bunch of old trash and burnables. We had a huge blaze going in the backyard. I stood in the rain tending the fire - throwing stuff on it. I wasn't cold even though I was soaked but later that day I was feeling very stiff and my back was really sore. I was glad to just stay home on Monday and recover.

Saturday's and Sunday's: Shadows and Not Fit For Human Consumption. I'm enjoying using the Uni-ball pens with watercolor. The pen marks repel watercolor if you paint over it.

Monday's and Tuesday's: Self Portrait - Reflection in Black Glass (I was using my phone as a mirror - just a black screen) and Leaves.

Today's: Sprig.

Wednesday 11 June 1662

Posted by Samuel Pepys

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1662/06/11/

At the office all the morning, Sir W. Batten, Sir W. Pen, and I about the Victualler’s accounts. Then home to dinner and to the office again all the afternoon, Mr. Hater and I writing over my Alphabet fair, in which I took great pleasure to rule the lines and to have the capitall words wrote with red ink. So home and to supper. This evening Savill the Paynter came and did varnish over my wife’s picture and mine, and I paid him for my little picture 3l., and so am clear with him. So after supper to bed.

This day I had a letter from my father that he is got down well, and found my mother pretty well again. So that I am vexed with all my heart at Pall for writing to him so much concerning my mother’s illness (which I believe was not so great), so that he should be forced to hasten down on the sudden back into the country without taking leave, or having any pleasure here.

Read the annotations

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1662/06/11/

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Oregon Trip, Days 7 through 13

1) The next day we were headed to Eugene by way of a stop at Silver Falls Park. This was our first bust of the trip, in that the falls required a walk to get to them. We had not found the entrance to the waterfall area easy to find either as we were looking for the wrong name. However the drive into the forest had been quite nice and we had time before check in at the hotel anyway.

Finding the hotel in Eugene proved a challenge due to one way streets, blocks and blocks of dividers preventing turns, and similar names, or streets that changed name on each side of the boulevard. When we finally arrived at our hotel (where even the entrance wasn't easy to spot, confusing our food deliverer as well as us!) we were amused by the painting in our room which seemed to echo the driving experience. ( Read more... )

2) When I returned to the room, M and I made some microwave popcorn and settled in to watch Captain America: Brave New World. My two takeaways were that Anthony Mackie did a good job as Sam, anchoring the film and giving it heart, as well as no doubt influencing Sam's perspective on the world. The second is that the overall plot mirrored Winter Soldier in many ways. I didn't mind that, as I thought that the changes both said something about our present time compared to CA:WS, and it also made both the similarities and differences between Steve and Sam stand out more clearly. ( Read more... )

3) After, we watched The Eternals, which was new to M as she was curious about the adamantium source in the sea in Captain America. I continue to think that it's a pity this film didn't do well. I liked the story, as I like using the MCU as a framework for different kinds of tales. I figured my friend would like it too as she's fond of origin myths. And she did, appreciating the variety of characters in it, even though this is also a sort of weakness in that we don't have time to explore them all properly.

It's also a shame that we probably won't have a follow up to either credit scene.

4) On the last day of the trip, M and I drove down to L.A. together. We passed a lot of nice sights during our crossing of the CA-152 West. Some were entertaining, such as all the garlic farms in Gilroy advertising things like garlic ice cream and garlic honey (also 10 avocados for $1!) Some were just pretty. One was the San Luis reservoir, which was huge. ( Read more... )

5) My week+ since the trip has been fairly occupied with catching up on things, dealing with the bed issue, and frankly just being tired. I thought it was interesting that both my friends took an extra day off work after their return than they'd planned. I had less to jump into than they did but felt so draggy my first day back I feared I'd managed to pick up a bug, despite consistent masking. But nope, just tired.

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did way too little on my list today BUT

It's the day of the night of the first at-the-venue rehearsal for the chorus show for this season, and the first day off work for me, in.a stretch. Despite my having lotsa to-do, which I'm now gonna have to fill the next few days with, while having to get up at an insanely early hour one day to meet workers who start like so many workers do at some insanely early hour, I took it easy today. Haven't even brought in the box of cat food sitting on my stoop for 6 hours, one minute from now, as I type, or several minutes ago, by the time I hit post. I've showered, so there's that, and finally at something, but mostly I went through Letterboxd for 1986 and the 1920s and the 1800s (that part's easy) and then picked out some options from my watchlist shortlist list (which isn't that short) to check for available streaming and watch trailers of, and then I watched one.

I only watched it cuz I realized recently and only from my credit card bill cuz I'd shunted all email from them to a direct--to--not-in-my-face folder that I'm still getting my 99-cent--a--month Hulu (with stinkin' ads) subscription, which I thought I'd canceled months ago (cuzza the stinkin' ads). But today I got my ass logged back in there and watched Quiz Lady, which was really good, and just the ticket, and worth the time, including the stinkin' ad time, and the chunk of leisure time it ate up. I put in on my fave films of the last decade list and then looked up whether it was indeed one of the last performances of Paul "Pee-Wee Herman" Ruebens (so not the painter), and it was. While there I saw that he did a Bob's Burgers toward the very end, too, so that's queued up now--- he's about to make his entrance as the massage student, in S13, E22, "Amelia".

Wanna watch it, and was tickled to see him pop up in Quiz Lady (in a funny way), cuz I'd just seen another of my fave films of the past decade when I watched Pee-wee as Himself.

So the last few minutes before I have to put more clothes on and drive to some high school lord-knows-how-far from here I'll be spending taking in that last voice role and last TV part he contributed to the fun of the world before croaking.

All the awareness in the world that I'm blowing my time today doesn't make it less that great, as a day off. Hope the rehearsal is some version of icing on the cake. A little late to be figuring out (as I will tonight, sans cheat sheet) how few lyrics I know, behind the literal mask that will make my perfection a smidge less pressing, but, hey, that's okay. I've been alone with pleasing activities, apart from the pleasing kitty-cat cuddling (which is an "apart from" cuz it's not alone, not cuz it's not pleasing), and allowed to wallow in my own idiosyncratic combination of the natural sentence structure I can't engage with so effectively when communicating to others (see [pretty much all of the] above), nightowlism, these pink Crocs, and whatever-all else the fuck.

P.S. The end of Quiz Lady has my favorite ever of the tags telling what becomes of the characters after the credits have rolled and more time has gone by in their world.