Tag: The Compound

Complicated and Annoying

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So, the great retreat has begun.  On Friday the pool guys showed up and closed it down for the season.  Of course there was some drama.  I had asked the guy in charge to tell his crew to patch three liner holes that had developed above the water line.  He warned me that one of them boded ill and meant I might soon need to install a new liner at a cost of gazillions of dollars.  I told him okay, but have them patch the holes anyway.  So of course, he didn’t tell them and so they had to go back to get more glue or something.

And Camera Girl’s house plants needed to come back inside soon.  So, I moved them into one of the decks in advance of dragging them up to the top floor.  This may sound trivial but some of these things are taller than me, awkwardly shaped for the stairs, covered with huge needle-sharp spines and incredibly heavy.  So, it’s always a ticklish chore.  One day I assume it will be the cause of my death.  What I should do is set up a temporary pulley system on the top balcony and let mechanical advantage do the heavy lifting.  But I’m too lazy to design it.  Maybe next year.

I also have a bunch of plants that I need to transplant outside.  Then it will be time to stow away all of the outdoor furniture and begin the winter-proofing of the exposed wood.  To be honest, I’ve never done a decent job of this but I’ve sworn a horrible oath to do it this year.  And then I have to winterize the lawn mowers.

And finally, the biggest chore I have to shore up about eighteen posts on the pool fence.  I’ve got a few kits and I’ll buy the rest but it will be a load off my mind to have that damn thing completely reinforced.  There are also two gates that need some work but those can wait.  A gate’s not much use if the fence around it is on the ground.

So, there’s plenty to do and things will be getting busy at work soon, so I’ll be stressed and agitated while I try to publish and market my brand-new book.  But that’s what life is all about; conflicting priorities and humans choosing priorities.  It’s what separates us from the Neanderthals and Denisovans.  We choose wisely.

I have a feeling I’ll be self-publishing the book.  I watched a video where the guy said that most trad-published books get an advance of only about $5,000 – $10,000 and since the publisher doesn’t market your book for you most of the work (other than putting a cover on it) still has to be done by the author.  Well, if I’ve got to drum up the buyers myself, I might as well keep 70% of the profits instead of 10%.  And that way I have the discretion to use deceptive sales tactics like increasing and decreasing the sale price whenever it suits my devious and even diabolical plans.

Well, I need to start making a Gantt Chart of this publishing and marketing process.  It sounds complicated and annoying.  So right up my alley.  I wonder if Donald Trump has any time available in his schedule to market my book.  After all, I’ve been of invaluable help to him in his campaigns.  But how quickly people forget.

I Have My Priorities

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So today was an early day because I had to head to the office.  I was already running late when Camera Girl walked out of the kitchen and said, “Don’t react or the dogs will start barking but there are a couple of momma turkeys at my bird feeder with about eight young.  Go take a look.”

So, they were under the bird feeders looking for seeds on the ground that the normal birds spilled out of the feeders.  But eventually they weren’t satisfied so they headed out into the fields.  Camera Girl saw them heading for the gardens and said, “They’re headed for the raspberry patch.  Do you think they’ll eat any of the berries.”  I answered knowledgably, “No they only eat bugs and small critters.”  Of course, they immediately attack the patch and clearly start picking ripe berries off the canes.  I didn’t look back at her but I think there was a look.  And I think there might have been a derisive sound.  I came back with her own famous statement, “Well, everybody’s gotta eat, right?”  So, I announced that I had to leave for work and made a show of ignoring the prehistoric creatures that had invaded my domain.

When I got home, I got the update.  They had not only picked all the ripe raspberries but they then cleaned up the ripe blueberries too.  Then they went down by the swamp and annoyed Moe and the rest of Camera Girl’s murder of crows that hang out there during the morning.  Finally, they walked the perimeter of the fields until they ended up near the road and then made a nuisance of themselves for the motorists until they finally crossed the road and headed for the next swamp in their path.

I’ve always been interested in the turkey population because they provide an opportunity for interesting photographs.  But here they were adding insult to injury.  They not only didn’t eat any of the copious beetles that are afflicting my vegetables and flowers but they went out of their way to pillage my favorite summer fruit crops.  This is the thanks I get for never hunting them or setting the dogs on them or even making fun of their homely appearance, clumsy walking style or spastic flying abilities.

Well, truth be told they’re still in my top five species of birds I like to see around the place.  I like seeing the vultures (turkey and black) in the trees.  I like to try and get a shot of a Great Blue Heron fishing in the swamp and I also hope one day to lure some of the local ravens into a closer arrangement.  I’ve always thought they were fascinating creatures.

But there’s something appealing about a flock of turkey hens with their young walking around in Dunwich in the summer acting like they own the place and livening things up.

Yep, that’s true.  However, if they come near the berries again, I may just get some rocks and help them to move along at high speed.  At this time of year, I have my priorities.

Tomorrow is Another Day

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So today was a day of penance.  Sins of omission had to be paid for with sins of commission.  The pool fence has a gate with a closing/locking mechanism that requires the two posts and the door to be in rather finicky alignment to work properly.  Well, it’s been getting more and more out of whack for the last couple of years but I’ve been putting it off because … well because I’m a very lazy man.

But yesterday the pool guys opened up the pool so I figured I couldn’t stall any longer.  I had all my tools (drill, 200-foot extension cord, screwdrivers, pliers, wrench, two different socket sets and drivers, a small sledge hammer, wheel barrow, shovel, ear protection, eye protection, hacksaw) and the kits I was using to shore up the two posts and the hardware I needed to repair the gate.  The wheelbarrow and shovel were to fill a hole next to one of the posts.  I had dug it and filled it with large stones (~fifty pounds each) to hold the post in place but this wasn’t doing the trick.  So, I removed the stones and replaced it with dirt and compacted it with the sledge hammer.  But unfortunately, I couldn’t get at this post because of a large concrete planter that Camera Girl had filled with plants right on top of the post so I had to wrestle it out of the way.  Who knew concrete and dirt were heavy?

Finally, I could get to work on the posts.  But when I moved the planter, I must have covered over a hornet’s nest.  Because now they were looking for their nest and couldn’t find it.  So, they came looking for me!  So, I’m banging the reinforcing post into the ground and bolting it together and drilling holes into the post while dodging and swatting hornets.  So, I’m swearing and moving erratically to escape the bugs and Camera Girl sees me as she’s walking in the yard.  And she comes over to see what’s wrong.  But she blows up when she gets any kind of bug bite so I’m yelling at her to stay back.  So, she thinks I must be going crazy but after additional arm waving and hollering she retreats.

Finally, I finish with the first post and quickly manhandle the planter back in place and the hornets find their home.  So I go looking for Camera Girl to explain what was going on.  She yeah-yeahs me and tells me to get back to work.  The rest of the job goes fairly well.  Of course, I make approximately a thousand trips back and forth to my tool room in the garage because nothing fits and all the hardware is wrong.  But eventually the posts are square, the gate is straight and the lock works (more or less).  I put away all of the various tools and head to the pool to empty the skimmer for the first time.  But I can tell something’s wrong with the pump.  It sounds wrong.  I turn off the power and I see smoke coming from a union near a valve that the pool guys replaced yesterday.  The union cracked and the pump has been running without water for some unknown amount of time today.  I sigh.  Yep.  One step forward.  Two steps back.

As Scarlett O’Hara wisely observed, “Tomorrow is another day.”

Rufus Panhandles a Meal

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A funny thing happened yesterday.  I was heading out to take some photos of a patch of bugle weed that is in bloom.  I had my camera backpack on and I was carrying a small tabletop sized tripod.  And as I walked out on the deck in front of the kitchen a baby fox came walking past me on the upper driveway.  When I closed the door, he noticed me and stopped and turned.  What a strange moment.  Now Camera Girl loves to see the baby foxes when they’re denning in the swamp so I wanted to get a photo for her so I desperately tried to get my camera out of the pack and in hand but the little fox trotted toward the shed and disappeared before I could free the camera.  I followed him behind the shed and looked down into the woods and pond but he was gone.

Camera Girl was out shopping.  When she got home, I told her about it and she was very excited.  She always enjoys when any foxes show up on the property but especially when pups (kits?) are around.  So, she was thrilled when a little while later it returned on the driveway.  And she went and got a bunch of chicken scraps and started feeding it.  I told her to be careful and keep her distance.  A fox walking around in the open in the daytime is a questionable occurrence.  They say that rabid animals tend to show up during the day so I cautioned her.  Well, before you know it, she’d fed the creature and then she put out a small bowl of milk and at that point I’m afraid maybe it’s moving in with us.

I went out with my camera and saw him ducking in and out of a space under the shed.  I got a few not-so-great photos and watched him for a while.  He was young and he didn’t look that strong.  I tried to imagine how a kit that young would be on its own.  I wondered if the den was under the shed but I never saw any sign of the parents or den-mates.  Could his parents have been killed?  It didn’t seem likely.  Was he sickly and abandoned?  Maybe.  After a while he didn’t reappear so I went in.  Camera Girl left out more food and milk.  But by nightfall it was still there.

Last night I heard about how exciting it was that the little fox was about.  I warned her that it wasn’t so good having it around.  I told her it was a health hazard for the dogs to have a wild canid around spreading various diseases they could catch.  She yes-yessed me but I could tell she was hoping it would stick around.  I was preparing myself for the headaches this new “pet” would cause me.  Oh well.

But today Rufus was nowhere to be found.  Even a fresh portion of food and milk wasn’t enough to lure him back.  Is he gone for good?  Maybe.  Camera Girl is disappointed but I can tell she still has hopes.

To be continued.

Wednesday, Wednesday 02APR2025

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Ah, the Spring Honey Do List.  The most fiendish accumulation of annoying indoor and outdoor chores imaginable to the fevered brains of wives.  I had just finished what I thought was my chores for the day and had taken a shower when I saw Camera Girl raking the leaves off of the edge of the woods and her flower beds.  Now there is no more useless pursuit than raking leaves out of a forest but what can I say?  Female fastidiousness is as powerful as it is inexplicable to the mind of man.  When I saw the piles of leaves she had raked I foresaw her stooping to pick up all those leaves and painstakingly haul them to the other side of the property to her mulch pile and knew it would take days and break her back.  So, I rushed out and told her to leave the leaves(!) to me and I’d chop them with my push mower.  Hearing that I would be doing this she then proceeded to finish off the other woods for the sake of completeness.  Ah Chihuahua!  Well, no good deed goes unpunished.

But honestly chopping leaves with my trash mower is kind of fun.  After four to eight passes (depending on how wet they are) the leaves just about disappear into thin air.  It’s remarkable what steel and kinetic energy can achieve.  And I did get to see all the plants she uncovered along the woods.  The day lilies are about four inches tall.

The hostas near the woods haven’t appeared at all and some small woodland plants are already out and about.

After she left, I spent another half hour disintegrating the remaining leaves.  When I returned inside Camera Girl came running over and thanked me profusely for sparing her all that stoop labor of moving the leaves to her mulch pile.  And I thought to myself, “I am a good person, amn’t I?  Why else would she be so happy.  So, over the course of the evening several times I reminded her of how nice it was of me to come to her rescue and take care of the leaves.  But what I noticed was that after each iteration of my reminder her gratitude seemed to diminish.  And, in fact the decrease accelerated.  At the end I believe it tailed off sort of like the curve of y=1/Xn where n= the number of reminders and y= her enthusiasm for the reminders.  So, her enthusiasm approached zero as a limit but never quite reached it.

I brought up this observation to her.  She used some Italian hand gestures from her distant past and went back to the cooking tasks that she was busy with.  It’s a shame that her high school back in Sheepshead Bay didn’t do a better job of preparing her mathematically for her life ahead.  Being able to graph and recognize the various curves of common functions is a basic requirement of our technological age.  But we all have to be flexible and adapt ourselves to people as we find them.  And that is a tenet of my relationship with her and I remind her of it from time to time.

April Fool’s Day 2025

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No thirty inches of snow!  No ice storm!  No baseball sized hail stones!  April Fool’s Day didn’t punish us here in New England.  It’s a bloomin’ miracle.  It’s a pretty nice day so Camera Girl handed me her “Honey Do” list.  The one item I’m stalling on is walking the property with a garbage bag and a stick with a nail on it picking up all the trash that has blown into the wooded areas.  As Sergeant Snorkel told Beetle Bailey, “If it don’t walk, if it don’t talk, police it!”  But it’s annoying.  It makes me feel very uncharitably toward the whole human race when I see what kind of stuff they toss out the windows of their cars.

So, I was driving down the main east-west road in Dunwich in a section that is full of blind curves and rolling hills when up ahead about a quarter of a mile I see something in the road.  I see it’s moving but it’s too short to be an adult human so I slow down.  “Could it be a child or is someone sitting or kneeling on the road?  And then I can see.  It’s a huge tom turkey with his feathers and wings all puffed up.  He’s in the oncoming lane and he’s staring me down!  So, I creep past him looking for his harem.  But I couldn’t see them.  Either they were shielded by the trees or they were gone.  But Tom was sticking to his guns and wasn’t afraid of me.  So, I left him there and in my rearview I could see him still standing there like some blithering idiot trying to act as crossing guard to an invisible flock.

After cutting down the raspberry canes last week I’ve been hoping to see some leaves sprouting up from the dirt.  So far nothing.

But the hellebores are coming up.  More confidently in the sunnier areas and tentatively in the shade.

And likewise for the daffodils.  We have three different stages of development depending where they are on the property.

The hostas near the house have just broken ground.

And this little crocus is bravely showing its colors.

So winter is climatically over.  I will now stow the shoe spikes, snow shovels, ice scrapers, snow blower, snow boots and all the rest of the paraphernalia that litters the mud room and move forward into the growing season.  And now that the ground is completely thawed, I can begin things like fixing fences, gates, damaged wood and all the other weather-beaten components of my poor house and adjacencies.

And I will move the lawn mowers to the front of the shed and contemplate that fateful moment when I drive the mower over the grass for the first time this year.  Right now, it’s unimaginable.  Some of the grass is overly long and soaked with winter water in the soggier areas of the west field.  Some areas are worn away by snow, ice and rain.  Other areas are dead and brown.  Cementing the whole thing over sounds like a better solution.  But in just a very few days the darn thing will revive and life will return.

And in honor of this projected return of life I have put out ten preying mantis egg sacs.  I purchased them from an American company that said they are Chinese mantids.  Well, why not?  Apparently, they’re already outcompeting the Carolina mantis right here in New England.  Who am I to stand in the way of Darwinian selection?

The only thing left to cap off the beginning of spring is the reappearance of the pond turtles.  They have not made their reappearance but Camera Girl will keep me apprised of their status.

“O brave new world that has such people in it!”

Dunwich Spring 2025 Has Sprung

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Today is Camera Girl’s birthday.  But being a woman, she doesn’t want to play up the whole getting older thing.  So, we call it St. Patrick’s Day and celebrate by having corned beef and cabbage.  But since boiled corned beef and cabbage is kind of blah, she makes it her own way.  It’s kind of Italian corned beef and cabbage.  The meat and potatoes are roasted and the cabbage is sauteed separately in olive oil with minced garlic and seasonings.  It’s really quite good that way.  This was also the day that the mallards returned to the puddle.

And the last of the great southern glacier melted away and left the great southern mud field.

I also used the warmer weather as an excuse to cut down all the raspberry canes in our garden.

This was a controversial act because depending upon whether we have summer or fall plants we will or won’t get any berries this year.  Apparently, summer berries take two years to produce berries while fall berries are one year berry producers.  If we have the two-year type then cutting all the canes means we’ll get nothing this year.  This will make me decidedly unpopular with Camera Girl and Princess Sack of Potatoes because they are big fans of this fruit.  But a man’s got to do, what a man’s got to do.  I was at an impasse.  I couldn’t tell what we had and figured solving it once and for all was the way to go.  May the Lord have mercy on my soul.  Well anyway, I’ll put out a bunch of fertilizer and try to maximize the growth we get this year.

Camera Girl was out feeding Moe the Crow and his wife Flo the Crow when she noticed that a large raptor was in one of the trees over the puddle.  After being alerted I sprang into action and captured some poor-quality photos through the balcony door window and a lot of intervening branches.  I think it’s a black vulture.  So now carrion birds are joining the menagerie.  Only in Dunwich.

Well things are moving forward and spring is in high gear.  We had a bunch of rain and so far, the Compound seems to have escaped any major winter structural damage.  And considering how much more and higher speed wind we’ve had in the last three or four years that’s encouraging.  This winter there have been nights when sitting in the living room and listening to the wind howling like some combination of a freight train and a banshee has been a little discouraging.  I mean I hate to be one of those old guys who claims that things were so much better when I was a youngster but honest to goodness, I think with the wind it must be objectively true.  And as a climate change denier this is inconvenient.  Although it’s as likely for the climate to be warming or cooling without the help of anthropogenic factors to blame.  So, it is nice that we can start to emerge from our winter cocoon and begin to enjoy the outside world again.

And so, slightly ahead of the calendar I hereby declare that Dunwich Spring has sprung.

Bridging the Gap

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The summer doldrums have officially begun.  Until Labor Day the only interesting news will consist of Donald Trump being prosecuted, persecuted or whatever the Left wants to call their absurd gestapo action in multiple jurisdictions.  So, we’ll have to interest ourselves in “other things” until then.

And that is what I’m scratching my head over.  Book reviews, movies, television, plays.  Science, music, religion.  I’ll have to widen my net to capture things that normal humans interest themselves in.  And that’s all to the good.

This weekend we will be hosting some of the Minions.  Their parents will pull up to the top of the driveway, toss them out of the vehicle in duffel bags, hit the horn and speed away into the night hoping for the best.  Camera Girl has cooked mass quantities of pasta sauce, meatballs and sausage and thereafter imperial tons of spaghetti will be cooked and consumed.

She has procured from various local libraries DVD’s featuring questionable cartoon characters from a selection of eras ranging all the way back to the 1970s.  I have begged for a boycott on any further screenings of Scooby Doo and his associates.  The answer I received was noncommittal.

The pool will be “opened” this weekend but I expect that for the first week or two the water will be suboptimal.  Specifically, it will be opaque and green.  I tried to sell Camera Girl on a trip to the regional zoo.  She shot this idea down claiming kids don’t like zoos.  Hmmm.  Maybe she’s right.  Maybe we’ll go the reptile zoo instead.  I know kids like reptiles.

We’ll probably have a baseball catch one of the days but I’m hoping we can get in some time at the pool table.  I think a good sense of geometry and dynamics is useful for any growing boy.  Plus, it’s been pretty warm for the last few days and the basement tends to be cooler.

It’s time to find out if the Minions are already slaves to their electronic devices.  As far as I know these younger descendants aren’t yet tethered to smartphone entertainment devices.  But I’d also like to cut back on the television time too.  I’ll make it the long weekend objective to try and bridge the multigenerational gap using non-electronic media.  I might even introduce them to the concept of human speech as a means of communication and entertainment.  I might even (shudder!) bring down a book from the shelf and read aloud.  Hopefully it won’t have the local constabulary at my doorstep demanding equal time for whatever woke PBS kid’s series is currently topical; Gender Fluid Jenny or Fern Affirmed or whoever.

I think I’ll start the weekend with a seminar on geographic and demographic topics in Middle Earth.  I’ll skip Beleriand at this time.  The Silmarillion is too depressing for the young ones. I’ll highlight various topics with video presentations from Peter Jackson’s motion pictures.  I’ll start with the Numenorean kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor and use this as a jumping off point on the branches of the royal family.  Of course, there could be extra points for anyone who can specifically identify how many generations separate Elrond and his multi-great nephew Aragorn.

Well, let’s see if I can freehand a map of Middle Earth.  As me old gaffer always said, “You’re nowt but a ninnyhammer, photog!”

Of Civil War and Moe the Crow

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What a beautiful day.  It hit seventy with almost constant bright sun, almost no clouds and, for once, no wind.  Walking around the yard today was idyllic.  The daffodils were mostly open and everywhere the tree buds looked ready to burst.

Now the calendar says it’s the middle of April but in New England that translates to the beginning of Spring.  And based entirely on my subjective criteria I hereby declare today the first day of Spring 2024 in the photogian calendar!

 

A raven has taken to chasing off Camera Girl’s pet crows (Moe the Crow and his stooges) and eating all the scraps that she puts out for them every morning.  Now, I’ve been a fan of ravens ever since I read a book called Ravens in Winter many years ago.  And after camping in Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, my admiration for them has increased.  Now that they have made their way to Compound, I am excited to have them around.  But I do feel bad for Camera Girl.  Moe has become a friend of hers.  When he sees her come to the water he comes down to the ground and she feeds him peanuts from the ground in front of her.  Ah, well.  Survival of the strongest.

Alright, enough of all that.  Had to get it out of my system.

I spent today catching up with some projects that had languished during my recent busy spurt.  I’ve got a contractor waiting on a contract and a check to repair the damage done by a 120-foot White Pine that flattened a part of the upper driveway fence.  A very sad story.  The highway crew cut the tree up on Friday and managed to cut the electric fence wire that keeps our canines from rampaging over the countryside.  The timing of the electric fence malfunction made it possible that it coincided with the earthquake.  But afterwards the physical evidence said, road crew.  I have so many enemies!

I saw some early reviews for the new picture “Civil War.”  The claim is that the movie isn’t just a hit piece against Trump.  I’d like to believe that but I don’t want to see it until it’s been reviewed by someone on the right side of the political divide.  I’ve been burned too often and refuse to pay to be insulted by Hollywood.  I’ve watched about ten reviews so I’m starting to believe it could just be a movie about how bad a civil war would be.  But the other factor that could keep me away is the heroes being journalists.  After all, how many good journalists have we seen in the last ten years or so?  One, two, maybe three?  Anyway, my research continues.  If anyone finds a right-wing movie review for it, please pass it along.

So, Sunday night I did surgery on my laptop.  The internal battery was dying so I had to figure out how to open the back on my computer and replace the battery without frying the system or cracking the motherboard.  As I mentioned a few days ago I bout my very own geek tool set and watched a few YouTube videos for similar (but not identical) laptop models and then bit the bullet and went in.

Everything went relatively easily until I attempted to pop the back off.  Most of it released but near one side of the hinge the damn thing was stuck.  Stuck good!  And this is just plastic so I was afraid if I put too much force on it the damn thing would crack apart.  So, I attempted to extend the pry bar deeper into the interior to give me better leverage but I was afraid that some internal component could be damaged and turn the whole computer into useless junk.  After what seemed like forever the stuck spot sprang open.  Afterwards I checked to see if I had broken anything.  I did find something that looked like part of a female coupling that broke loose.  I couldn’t find where it came from so I chalked it up to being one of those pesky “extra parts” that they put in complicate equipment and moved on.

Well, from there on everything went smoothly and the whole thing was back together in five minutes.  A few hours of charging and the thing was working flawlessly.  So now I am officially an IT worker.  I feel an irresistible urge to write a haiku in DOS.

There, I’ve gone about seven hundred and fifty words without mentioning the 2024 elections.  That feels pretty good.  I’m trying to figure out a good approach to write about the political situation strictly from a humorous perspective.  Since I have almost precisely zero practical effect on the outcome of the election, I feel that to entertain is the correct strategy.  But honestly, I’m still searching for the format and angle that pleases me creatively and would also provide enjoyment to the readers.  A work in progress.

So, I think I’ll go watch something fun.  Maybe Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes.  I like that movie.