My Evening, 12-29

My phone was upstairs, so I missed the reminder alarm for Kaleidoscope, and I didn't tune in until 6:45.  Napped afterward through part of Fresh Air.  Watched the first hour of North to Alaska; could have kept going, but wanted something else.  Listened to a Vin Scully game from 1969 on YouTube for close to another hour.     

My Day

 Dot dot dot... besides eight hours of paid employment, I also did the following:

Listened to the "Drear Poosen" episode of Jack Benny from 1950... the show featured "Michael Romanoff".  Right afterward, read an article (can't recall where it was) that contained a photo feature about "Michael Romanoff".  Coincidence?  I think so.  

Read an issue of the Toledo Blade from 1940... it had columns from Ernie Pyle (in South America) and Eleanor Roosevelt's My Day.  

Listened to a Cincinnati public radio station with an episode of Mike Whorf's Kaleidoscope, telling a half-hour version of the life of Eleanor Roosevelt.  Can't say when the episode was put together, but I listened to K'scope close to 50 years ago on WJR.  J.P. McCarthy from 6 to 10, Mike Whorf from 10 to 11, Karl Haas with Adventures in Good Music from 11 to noon.  

Listened to an Audm reading of an article from The New Yorker.  The article is dated 2020, but it's about aging...

Read a TNY article about the podcast 70 By 70, in which people older than I am describe life from their particular perspective...

Watched the last 15 minutes of a late-1950's episode of Date with an Angel, with Betty White, Richard Deacon, and Burt Mustin...

And at this moment, Trouble In Paradise (1932) is on TCM.  Are you detecting a pattern?

Podcast subscriptions to You Must Remember This, Sass Mouth Dames (both about Hollywood history), and Cocaine and Rhinestones, about the history of country music.  Living in the past, yep, that's me.

Quick Henry, the Flitch!

Watched "Remember the Night" last night, and the Wikipedia entry for that movie led me to a 1940 copy of the Toledo Blade.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flitch_of_bacon_custom

"A flitch is the side, or a steak cut from the side, of an animal or fish. The term now usually occurs only in connection with a side of salted and cured pork in the phrase a flitch of bacon."

And now I know... the rest of the story.

Why? (Why not?)

"All the things we do in our spare time are driven by a simple love of that past-time, hobby or pursuit. Those precious hours when we are not working should be filled with things we love and that we want to do. The moment that a past-time, hobby or pursuit starts to feel forced or work-like or that you’re just going through the motions, you probably ought to take a break from it."

Simply this

BB and I were doing the NYT Spelling Bee, as usual.  Sometimes we'd have little celebrations after one or the other of us would find a word.  Sometimes we'd lament that we were a letter short of a word, or that the word we found didn't contain the required center letter.  

At one point, I told her that with just one more letter, I could have had "dogsbody".  And I knew that she knew what the word meant.  Realized that she knew she didn't have to hide her intelligence and how much that meant to her after her first marriage.  She's happy.  I'm happy.

 

What's My Motivation?

After gaining a few pounds, and since Type 2 diabetes runs in the family, I went back on sertraline, which tends to suppress my appetite.  It worked:  I'm back to my normal weight.

But it also makes me lethargic, and combined with the change of season and its colder, gray days, I couldn't answer the eternal question:  "What's my motivation?"  Result:  no entries for a month.  

Do you have any secrets to longevity and staying in shape?

 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/20/sports/julia-hawkins-running.html

To stay in shape, just keep active. Keep your weight down and exercise. Have a lot of passions, things that you are interested in. Keep interested in a lot of things to keep you busy and keep your mind busy.

And look for magic moments. That is something that I have done in my life — think of the things that are magic moments that happen to you, like sunsets and sunrises, rainbows, beautiful birds, music and people’s lovely comments to you. All of those are magic moments and they are free for all. Be sure to keep your eye open for them.

KATE NV — PLANS (FOUND MUSIC ROOM OPENING)

Another day

In my recliner, satisfied that I got some things accomplished today besides work and in addition to the NYT Spelling Bee.  We all need to keep busy, right?  I know I like to.

Read a couple of articles that had been printed to PDF and put aside in a folder named "You saved this for a reason", but just hadn't gotten to yet.  Today I did.  

- New Yorker, 1995, Curtis LeMay.  Left to wonder how we avoided full-on nuclear war while he was in command.  

- Some Asian business site on how China is in a corrupt real estate bubble.

Saved in that same folder, I listened to a podcast with Tom Scott talking with Donald Fagen.

In the news, electric rates are about to shoot up.  I checked the files for information about our contract with First Energy.  First, I learned they're now called Energy Harbor.  PG found paperwork they sent in 2020 setting down in black and white our 3-year contract for 100% wind-generated power at a fixed rate.  Can they add surcharges for times like these?  If they can, no doubt they will.

Wrote something for Fenek, the Special Needs cat.  Turned in something for Flash.

Prepared a half-dozen photos taken on Black Friday and posted them on the Flickr site rented by TP.  

Tonight after supper, drank a Pepsi and watched S01E07 of The Defenders, guest starring Frank Gorshin.  Pat watches the mysteries on Amazon Prime, I watch the movies and TV shows that aren't yet out of copyright, but are posted anyway on YouTube.  Occasionally I put on Netflix for Mank or The Sparks Brothers.

Want to remember:  at 4:15 or so, Good Queen Swirly came upstairs into my home office and jumped into my lap.  Can't remember the last time she did that.  And every time I reached over to the keyboard to type, she'd stretch her neck and rub her head insistently against my hands.  No typing, keep petting me!

My Day

This is a period between acute crises.  Both of us are healthy, and there's enough money so that we want for nothing.  We're happy, best friends.  

Work keeps me busy enough during working hours, and after 5:00 I'm not running to a doctor, an emergency room, or a hospital.  Good times, right?  

It's OK, I'm telling myself, not to have some cause occupying my mind all-day-every-day, the way the cat story page did for several years.  

So tonight after supper, I put on YouTube, intending to watch Louisiana Purchase (one of four Bob Hope movies in the top 10 for the year 1941, I learned today).  Yes, there's a bootleg version out there, and I bookmarked it this afternoon.  Instead, I found Idiocracy first and watched that, followed by another episode of The Plot Thickens/Lucy, and then the January 16, 1960 episode of The Jerry Lewis Timex Show in full-color videotape.  No commercials, though, but I don't doubt that I can find John Cameron Swayze someplace else out there in the great big rabbit hole that is YouTube.  But not until after I see Louisiana Purchase.

Easy Like Sunday

 

#Caturday

Taken November 10, 2018.

Pandemic update

It's been a few months between haircuts, longer than usual for no good reason.  I just got around to it today.  The time before in July, I had to report in but remain outside until it was my turn, and once inside, masks were still required.  

Today, there was a small sign on the door telling customers that they either had to be vaxxed or masked to enter, but not requiring anyone to stay out while they waited.  Having gotten a booster last Friday, I was good to go.  

One other difference:  as a newly-minted senior citizen, I paid the 65+ rate today.  Since I'm still working, it's just a nice touch now.  After the job goes away, it'll be more of a necessity.

Traditional Friday Cat Blogging: Katrina

 Katrina (2008-2018)

Throwback Thursday: 10 years ago today at Tabby's Place

 

Tinkerbell (November 18, 2011)

Van Lingle Mungo

RIP, Dave Frishberg.  There's a version he re-recorded with just his piano as accompaniment, but this is the one I like more, the one I heard on J. P. McCarthy's show on WJR as a kid.     

Woman Cat Wednesday with pure white Ali

 Taken November 12, 2010.

Tabby's Twofur Tuesday: Fern (front) and Brittany in tubes

 Taken November 5, 2010.

Man Cat Monday: Mittens

Due to an outbreak of ringworm, Tabby's Place is limiting its visitors to a small number of volunteers.  Until it's under control and I can return to take pictures, here are some from the past.  This is man cat Mittens, who resided in the lounge until he passed in 2013.

Easy Like Sunday

 Creamsicle (adopted November 2014)

Progress

PG and I have lived in this house since 1998, and now we are going through the possessions accumulated in this house over the past two dozen years, looking for that which we may donate, or at the very least, organize better. 

The latter applies to my collection of CDs.  I did that whole bit when burning your own CDs became a thing, hooking up the turntable and the amp to the most powerful PC we could afford in 2000.  But maybe I got carried away, because in addition to copying albums like What Price Paradise, Cupid & Psyche '85, and The Blues Brothers from the original vinyl, I accumulated concert bootlegs from my favorite band and put them on disc, too.  Using a proprietary program similar to Audacity was even fun, cleaning up the sound before loading a blank CD and hitting Record.  

And then everything sat for a decade or so while music rental via streaming overtook owning physical copies of the album.  But now, as I said, we're looking at downsizing before long, and that's all the reason I need to finally get the whole collection better organized.  

Before, boxes and boxes of CDs were piled in a closet, while others were stacked on small shelves and racks here and there in PG's PC room.  Finding something, as I learned when I succumbed to nostalgia and went looking for those old discs, was hit or miss.  Now, most of the pre-recorded pop, light classical, and new age we mostly bought twenty years ago -- the most recent appears to be Sunken Condos, from 2012 -- is shelved neatly in a bookcase in the corner of my office.  The rest, ambient music for pre-sleep, is in the bedroom.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

Other progress:  a burner on the cooktop burned out... well, longer than a little while ago.  Fortified by YouTube, I purchased a replacement burner and prepared to install it myself.  That determination lasted until I actually pulled out the entire range and started unscrewing the screws that held the cooktop in place.  Way too many wires, too many opportunities to mess it all up.  But with three other working burners, there was little incentive to find a pro to get the job done.  

But in the interest of keeping busy, last week I went looking on Angi for an appliance repair specialist, and found one.  Steve came out a couple of days later and navigated the whole weird agglomeration of wires and connections and installed the replacement burner in 75 minutes flat.  For that, he charged about two dollars a minute, which I put on the credit side of our Trump/Biden free money ledger. 

One more thing:  a bigger expenditure is on its way.  After talking to flooring and window replacement companies, PG and I have settled on the big outgo:  a replacement for the HVAC system that came with the house.  Presumably we'll get that cost back when we sell, and being able to point to a new Energy Star HVAC system will count for something at that time.  The cost will be more than the free money ledger can handle, but not more than our cash accounts will cover.  Investments will remain intact.

Remember when?

OK, we all know that the pandemic isn't over yet.  A good many persons still wear a mask in enclosed public places, and both PG and I have just gotten our post-65 booster shots (Pfizer for her, Moderna for me).  But except for medical facilities, no one's taken my temperature at the door for months and months.  And here's another real-world reminder that (thankfully) the peak of the pandemic is behind us -- the one-way aisles of mid-2020 are gone.  (This sticker remnant is at the local PetSmart.)

#Caturday with Bucca

 Bucca

Traditional Friday Cat Blogging with Puffy

 

He's ready for supper, but is waiting for his mate, the little black pooshka.
February 17, 2020.

Throwback Thursday: Mr. Kelly, 11/6/2005

 

Wordless Wednesday: Backlit proso millet

 

Twofur Tuesday

Top:  Morning Quality Time in bed with my little buddy Nelson.

Bottom:  A good memory of Quality Time at Tabby's Place with Fuzzy.

 

First frost

 

Easy Like Sunday

 

These were growing next to a trickle of a stream that flows through the township yard-waste recycling center.  Chicory I know about, and how hardy it is, determinedly growing where not much else does.  But marigolds?  They're usually found where they were planted, namely on some homeowner's property.  Did a bird deposit seeds here, or was this someone's intended yard waste that didn't go along with the plan?

#Caturday with Kit Charlemagne

 

Traditional Friday Cat Blogging: Cindy and Mary

 

Mary (2011-2021)

Cindy (2004-2020)

Sharing my lap on my last pre-pandemic visit, November 1, 2019.

Fresh greenery

The outer leaves show the signs of the end of the growing season, but this plant located next to the garage continues to push out new bright-green growth.

Woman Cat Wednesday Memory from Tabby's Place: Skittles

 

Skittles (1997-2016)

Some filter

In August 2019, evidently feeling flush with cash, I bought a Tineco Hero A11 stick vacuum.  Convinced a stick would be used more often than a full-power, but also a full-weight canister vacuum, time proved me right.  Where before I dreaded taking the canister up and down stairs, I vacuumed more often with the stick and picked up multiple dustbins of cat hair.

On Sunday last, I began to vacuum the bedroom, but after just a few seconds the motor shut off, never to start again.  Over and over I tried after cleaning all the filters I could reach, only to hear a brief fluttering and see a pink light (or is it red?) flicker before both ceased.  

So naturally, I went and bought another one.  PG reasoned that if we did get it fixed, we would have one for downstairs and another for upstairs, and if we didn't get it fixed, we'd need a stick because we didn't want to go dragging a canister around, would I?  

By the way, you've probably already guessed that the warranty was for two years, and that it had run out a mere matter of weeks before the thing crapped out.

The new replacement arrived last night and it works, and I also learned something else.  After removing everything I could remove; the HEPA filter, the dustbin, the battery, the pre-filter and the mesh filter, I could see some cat hair behind the grate separating the motor from the exhaust pipe.  There's no getting to it, either.  Not with a bent and re-straightened re-purposed paper clip, not with a buttonhook or something PG has for knitting that has a hook at the end, and not with anything else I tried.  

I learned about TORX screws (you know, the ones where the head looks like a Star of David), and particularly that while we actually have a bit with a TORX head, it's too large to fit the screws in the HEPA holder.  You can see the cat hair and the TORX screws in the photo above.  

Now, the questions are:  (1) can that grate be taken off, and if so, how easy is it?  It looks like a complicated project to get it all apart, but it couldn't have been that difficult to assemble a mass-market product like this.  What's the trick to it?

Next, (2) if I do obtain one or more screwdrivers that will remove everything necessary to get into that blocked-off area above the motor, will removing that debris be enough to allow the vacuum to vacuum once more?  I've shoved the stuff around off to the side, which should provide ventilation enough to work again, and the motor still flutters and fails.

So one, it's hard to take apart, and two, it may not be worth it after it's done.  Plus three, we've already bought an identical replacement.  It should be good for oh, say, two years and a couple of months.   

Wait a minute... why can't I just break the grate and fish out the trash with those huge tweezers I found downstairs?  To be continued...

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

I broke it and fished out the cat hair, and the result was exactly the same.  A brief clicking sound from the motor and a pink/red light.  I could have chanted incantations to every mythical Chinese god that ever was, and it would have done just as little good.  

OK, now I give up.  If their intent was to produce a product that would break down right after the warranty ran out, they succeeded brilliantly.

And I bought another one anyway!  I think that's going to be the last of the Trump/Biden stimulus free money.  Close to a thousand for a pair of garage door openers to replace the ones that came with the house in 1998... a service contract for the gas furnace that came with the house, about four hundred... a couple grand to remove two dead trees from the yard... a Secretlab Titan chair for my everyday home office, about four hundred for that... and a hundred here and a hundred there... but only $65 for the parts to repair a twenty-plus-year-old Weber grill instead of several hundred for a new grill, so there's that.  

Man Cat Monday Memory at Tabby's Place: Sylvan

 

Sylvan, September 2009

Easy Like Sunday with Mr. Kelly

 

Taken May 2007

#Caturday at Tabby's Place: Gabby (480)

Gabby, May 2009

Friday in the FIV-Positive Suite at Tabby's Place: Spaghetti

 Spaghetti

Throwback Thursday at Tabby's Place: Archer, 8/27/17

 

Archer, adopted March 2021

Wordless Wednesday: Fall flower

 Yellow Wood Sorrel

Twofur Tuesday at Tabby's Place: Pink things

 

Moggie Monday at home with Miss Nora

 

Easy Like Sunday with Kit Charlemagne (top) and Good Queen Swirly

 

No, not a cat today

The last time I visited Tabby's Place, I was in one of the solariums when I saw a small cat spring to alertness.  Following its intent gaze, I spotted the praying mantis it was tracking, just outside the chain-link fence separating it from the cats.

Fenek Friday

 Two more days, and I'll get to visit my friend Fenek...

Fenek

Throwback Thursday at Tabby's Place: Elliot, October 21, 2011

 

Elliot

Wordless Wednesday: Fall flowers in our yard

 

BB and Friend

Sunday, August 24, 2014.  BB in the Community Room.  Nothing in the notes to tell me seven years later the name of the calico kitten. 

Moggie Monday at home with Brave Nelson

 

I should be ashamed...

On Sundays, BB & I compete in tourneys of the online game WordScapes, in which a player finds as many words as possible among a given set of letters.  The words the player inputs either go toward solving the puzzle, or if they are not a part of the puzzle, they go into an extra-credit container that we refer to as the Bucket.  Find all the words in the puzzle, and you get credit for all legitimate words you found, including those in the Bucket.  

If the word you make isn't on their list of legitimate dictionary words, it is rejected and you get no score.  That happens more often than we would like, as from time to time a real English word gets the thumbs-down from the game's automated judge.  

Being in terms of maturity still age 11, I thrill to making word entries such as PEE, PEES, or PEED and telling BB, "PEE went in the Bucket."  Or occasionally I will say to her, "The game won't take SHIT from me."  

Tonight, I called over to her, "The game didn't take SNEW."  She responded just as I hoped, "SNEW?  What is SNEW?"

Having been properly set up, I followed through with the punch line learned when I really was age 11 or so, "Not much.  What's new with you?"

 

How to turn a five-minute job into two days (and still not get it quite right)

Notes taken the day after.  One of these days I'll have to polish them up.

 2020 Dell came with 256 boot SSD, 1TB data HDD.  Added 1 TB SSD on an adapter, 

In 2021, boot SSD is 2/3 full.  Data is well-backed up, (an SSD on the PC, a pair of external SSD that are backed up and one always in safe-deposit box), but not the boot drive.   Between the shrinking free space and the likelihood of HD failure, reasoned that it would just be best practice to come up with a replacement.  

Anyway, it sounded like fun.  I'd already installed Linux Mint on a 10-year-old laptop; swapped a failing HDD for a SATA SSD, and reinstalled Windows on it; replaced a SSD on BB's PC with an HDD that went perfectly smoothly.  Cloned to external enclosure, extra cost, but hey.  Sabrent brand, good quality, can use the enclosure again, you never know.

Did research, after Wirecutter and another recommendation, decided on Samsung 980.  

Samsung has its own proprietary backup/clone.  Used WD licensed Acronis True Image with PG.  Didn't like the other software found when uninstalling it.  Saw one believable forum post saying Samsung-cloned SSD wouldn't boot until other Samsung materials were deleted.  Leery of installing it.  

Want free, so Acronis is out.  Macrium Reflect highly-regarded.  OK, Macrium it is.  Even a short and to-the-point YouTube explaining how.  Sounds like it'll go smoothly.  Make it so.

* where is the clone function in Macrium?  It's not at the top, it's not in the menu, what did they do with it?  Re-watched Macrium YouTube, found it down at the bottom of the screen.  You boys hid it well, but not so well that John Moore can't find it.

* Clone took about 15 minutes.  No error messages.  Success.  Hey, wait a minute, it didn't use the entire 512GB.  256GB is unallocated and wasted.  Guess I'll have to re-size the partitions.

* why is the partition-resizing link greyed out?

* well, screwing in the new SSD isn't going well.  One screw's too little and the other one's causing the stick to bend, and that doesn't seem right.

* why can't I re-format the stick?  If I delete the partitions, then I can't use the clone function.

* Shit, it's not booting. I'm getting a BSOD and a bunch of options.  I don't know what to do, I'm just hitting escape and backing out of it.  Which (by luck) put me into the BIOS screen that allows me to re-set the boot order and give 1st priority to the Samsung 512GB SSD that replaced the hynix 256GB SSD.  

After that, it booted normally and I could use the PC once more.  So that much is good.  But there were a few niggling items:

Went back to the 256GB hynix, but even then, the same difficulty screwing it in.  I must be missing something.  Well, hell.

Up at 4:30 a.m. doing a tech-version of Mise En Place.  The screwdriver case; the box with the 512GB Samsung and all the screws (bless my heart, I did keep all the screws); the box with the Sabrent enclosure and its Thunderbolt wire.  

Back in bed, typing steps into Google Keep.  All involved re-doing something I did wrong the first time.  

More research, some new, some review.  Re-watched Macrium YouTube, saw the essential part of re-allocation.  Use the "maximum" button if you can, over the other 2 ways of using all the space possible.  Later, learned that re-allocation only works if you drag down each section piece by piece, not as an all-in-one.

Oh, that one screw is used to create space so the stick stays flat, and then you use the teeny tiny hold-down screw to go into the bigger spacer screw.  Whatever their names actually are.

Put the 2280 Samsung in the Sabrent enclosure, attach to PC with Thunderbolt wire.   Ah, now in Disk Mgmt, can't right-click and delete certain boot-dependent sections.  It only gives you the "Help" option, not the "Delete".  Well, I'll go up top and delete them there.  No, you can't delete them there, either.  Whatever that damn error message said.  Google that one, too.  

Fortunately, the #1 search result had all the necessary information.  It involved going into DOS (OK, they don't call it DOS anymore, but I remember) and making command-line entries to delete all the non-data sectors.  That worked.  When finished, the SSD stick had re-achieved virgin status.  

And *now*, I can re-start the whole thing.  Open the case, remove the Sound Blaster Z card to be able to access the 256GB hynix SSD.  That left a big hole in the back of the case.  What did I do with that part?  Must be with the rest of the PC spare parts, and that could be anywhere.

Unscrew the wrong screw.  Remove the hynix.  Find the spacer screw and put it in the 2230 hole.  (Maybe it's the 2242, I don't really remember.  Whatever the shortest one is.)  Re-insert the hynix, hold it down with the teeny tiny screw into the spacer screw.  That's what I should have done the first time.

Reboot.  The hynix is installed correctly and the BIOS references it first, so the boot goes properly.

Start Macrium.  Prepare to clone all six boot-worthy sectors from the hynix to the Samsung.   Save the OS piece for last so I can click the Maximum Size button so there's 450 GB free instead of 200 free and another 250GB unallocated.  Start clone.  Fifteen minutes later, clone is finished.

Re-open the case.  Remove the hynix, insert the Samsung.  Finish installation with the spacer screw and the teeny tiny screw that goes inside the spacer screw. 

Re-boot, get the blue screen, hit escape, change the boot order in BIOS so Samsung is first.  Re-re-boot.  Everything works.

Except that now in Disk Management, there's an X: drive that contains about 150MB, of which half is available.  How'd that get there?  

Error message:  can't access X: drive without permission.  Get administrator permission, then try again.  Follow this link and click on the Security tab.

There was no Security tab.  Google search says it's possible to unhide the tab, but obtaining permission involves going in to the Registry, choosing just the right entry and inputting a 1 where there is currently a 0.  Or there's another way that I can't remember, but sounded just as unappetizing.

Well nuts, I'll just delete it in Disk Mgmt.  Can't delete it in DM.  Can't delete it in Explorer, either.  Never mind, it's only 150 MB and it doesn't contain anything I need, I think.

Prepared the 256GB SSD, correctly screwed in to motherboard.

Prepared the 512GB SSD, correctly inserted in the Sabrent enclosure and attached to the PC with the Thunderbolt cable.

Boot PC, start Macrium, set up the clone process.  Press start, step back and let it do its thing.

Clone finished, power down PC.  Take out the 256GB SSD, insert the clone 512GB SSD.  Close case back up.  Re-connect power cord and HDMI cable.  Same with the wired keyboard and the wire to the sound bar.

Re-boot PC, fix the BIOS so it references the 512GB SSD first.  Let it boot.

Success.  (But what's that X: drive?  Ah fuck it, it's only 150MB.  Declare victory and go home.)  

256GB SSD can go into the safe-deposit box next time I go to the credit union.

So anyway, I learned something.

Los and Foundt

Previously, I'd posted a picture of a sunflower that sprouted from some uneaten bird seed.  This is the top of another volunteer in the same patch of ground.  It looks like a corn stalk to me, although I'll check with Google Images to try to confirm.  This is the very top of the plant.  

Now, the subject line has to do with the photo and others taken the same day.  On October 14, using my phone I snapped some pictures and a short video of the road construction taking place next to our development.  Later that day, I brought out the PowerShot and took several more of the volunteer corn stalk, taking them from different angles and distances to blur the background.  The angle of the sun and the shady background in this one turned out the best.  

I downloaded both sets of 10/14 snapshots to the laptop and assigned folders to them in FastStone.  Yesterday, I intended to come back to those images and looked for them in Adobe Bridge, but the folders were empty.  So what happened?  Might have been a glitch in Dropbox, and I might have deleted them by mistake, but I doubt that.  If they were all in one folder, maybe, but not two separate folders.  

I'd already deleted the road construction set from my phone, but at least the corn stalk shots were still on the SD card in the camera.  And if I was going to lose anything, I'd have chosen the former, which were just to document construction, over the latter. 

Infertile ground, for some

 

You'd think this spot would be a good one for growing things.  Seemingly well-located, facing the sun on the south side of the house, three decorative plants stand with bare stems.  I'm thinking they may not have survived the winter, and that would be more understandable.  

However, the earth is more hospitable there for a small patch of yellow wood sorrel that has pushed its way through the landscaping stones, and it enjoys an unobstructed view of the bright morning sun.

Fenek Friday

 

Fenek

The State of Me

Sleeping well, eating properly, enjoying the good things in life.  Today was one of those days I want to document and come back to when times are tough again.  

BB and I picked up a Wally Hog at noon, and went across the road to the Weis for Dove Bars and cat food.  Couldn't find good frozen peaches, but there's still time before the weekend, when I'll make some more praline peach muffins.  Couldn't find the caramel cone ice cream we've both taken to, but will keep trying.

Lots of wildflowers behind the new Air Products building.  Maybe Saturday or Sunday morning I'll take the DSLR over there and try for an image where red clovers, chicory, hawkweed and Queen Anne's lace are all in the frame, bits of color everywhere.  

Enough going on with taking and processing pictures, writing, and reading that I haven't felt empty or useless for weeks.  Next project begins Saturday, when the 500GB SSD arrives and I use Macrium to clone the 250GB Hynix that came with this Dell.  About 2/3 of the Hynix is spoken for, and there's nothing data-related on it, just apps.  

I never need an alarm clock.  If I'm in bed before midnight, I wake up well before the 8:30 start time for work.

BB just called up to me and asked if I have time to take a walk.  Be right back.

- - - - - - - - - - -

The good things in life.  About as far as possible from "And you may say to yourself/My god, what have I done?"

Still working on letting the past go, but lately I've taken to saying "You did what you did," and while it's a clunky mantra, it helps me remember to forget.

 

Throwback Thursday at Tabby's Place: Carrot

Lola the Rescued Cat devoted a post to Thanksgiving 2018 at Tabby's Place, and included was a portrait of Carrot in the solarium.  Not this picture, but in 2021 he still enjoys the fresh air out there.