83 thoughts on “Alive”

  2. 0.o
    That is one of the less reassuring reassurances around… not allowed to “daaaaaay uvuh fay-vuh” where “nothin’ can save ya”, got it?

    1. I get the impression she’s overworking herself on the new house. She might need to take a day or two off each week.

      1. I worry, too, but she does have two keepers, one of which already put a foot down on the Colorado trips– and I know from the other side how it can be less less bad to struggle through when you probably should be resting, than to “rest” and get nothing done including rest because you’re so spun up.

        The mental health aspects of being ABLE to stop because That Which Must Be Done is done is a big consideration– get to that point, and you can get a lot of resting done in a shorter time than if you’d stopped when you should, but couldn’t *rest*.

        2. I wanted to work on the house. It’s now mostly just unpacking, and a few details, but…. I was tired. It’s hard for an introvert to people for three days, even with people we love.

          1. *nod* Recovery time is necessary when people’d out. Post holiday time feels like the internal battery is blinking (recharge NOW or ELSE bad tings happen).

  5. What are you doing paying any attention to us on Boxing Day? Go have fun with Dan and your kitties.

  9. I think someone smuggled in more plastic flamingoes. With the usual result: there are more flamingoes off in the lake in the distance. Some of them are blue.

    Remember, plastic flamingoes come to life about here.

      1. Just bad taste. It’s just flamingoes. Go figure.

        Perhaps we should just have Fluffy stage another BBQ

        1. Roasting plastic in a dragon fire.
          Minions snapping at your toes.

          [I think I’ll stop while the hole is shallow.]

          1. That’s the problem with the Godzilla, sooner or later it burns. The sea serpent in the minion pool has shrimp and the aardvark has a whole cow.

  10. Happy Boxing Day.

    Not sure how much post holiday boxing day is going on around here. We have a rare Snow Day. Stalling out at 4″. Still coming down with flaky snow, or spitting, but warmer (34 F) that there is a (very) little ground level melting. Started just between 11 PM and 12 AM 12/25, but only had a skiff early this AM. Weather report has us getting snow for another 3 days.

    1. Boxing Day?
      file:///C:/Users/Richard/OneDrive/Desktop/Foxtrot%2012-26-21.JPG
      I dunno does that work …
      ~

        1. Frankly, I can think of a few classics I would include …
          Fat City (1972) – Stacy Keach, Jeff Bridges
          Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962) – Anthony Quinn
          Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) – Paul Newman
          Champion (1949) – Kirk Douglas
          The Set-Up (1949) – Robert Ryan
          Body and Soul (1947) – John Garfield
          Gentleman Jim (1942) – Errol Flynn
          Golden Boy (1939) – William Holden
          Battling Butler (1926) – Buster Keaton
          ~

          1. What no “The Quiet Man”. Boxing, Horse Racing and a lovely red headed actress to boot!

    2. Snow day? Hah!

      Let’s see.
      Wednesday we had 5 inches of Cascade Concrete (very wet snow)
      Friday, 5 more of the same.
      Saturday, 2-3, this time dry. Cleared the deck in the afternoon.
      Sunday, we shoveled 5 inches off the deck after lunch, and there’s another 6 that replaced it. It was cold enough so that it’s not that heavy, but the berms off the deck are getting too damned high.
      Running the snowplow with the tractor might be interesting.

      Kat the 7 month puppy isn’t fond of having to go potty when snow contacts her nether bits. Can’t say I blame her. At least, as a short-haired border collie, she doesn’t get much snow sticking to her, and so far nothing is sticking to her feet. Angie used to come back with ice balls stuck to her furry paws.

      I have to get the roof rake out to do a first pass clearing of the solar panels. At least mains power is still up for the well.

      For an arid area in Exceptional* Drought, I think this is more snow than we had all last winter. It will might be enough to recharge the aquifers. I hope. A bit more of this and we’ll be able to bitch about the snow without the obligatory “I know we need the water”. 🙂

      I know we need the water. 🙂 🙂 🙂 Arrgh!

      (*) When Death Valley says “Join the club”.

      1. Yes. BUT we have a foot. In. The. Willamette. Valley. Willamette Valley does not get snow. We could shovel the cars out of the driveway. Why? The public neighborhood street isn’t, and will not be plowed. Yes, your side of the mountains really, really, need the water. Looks like Ashland, and points south, got about as much as we did. Which is too bad, because Shasta Lake needs a LOT of water. (Looking at road cams. The road cam at Expressway & Beltline should be indicative of how much we have, but it seems “light”. But any snow on our roads is a problem.)

        Technically son is suppose to go to work this afternoon. Snow is melting, he might have been able to get his Hyundai Veloster N out of the side driveway (more likely he’d take one of the Santa Fe’s). Also a B* getting home tonight at 2 AM with the ice sheet that will be forming. BUT he has been running a low grade fever since just after midnight Christmas morning. Dad took him to Urgent Clinic for Covid test (rapid one? HA HA HA), yesterday afternoon, but won’t know that result for 4 or 5 days. (Not Flu and Strep.) Still had the fever as 4:30 AM when he heads to bed (dog had to go out so I was up). So he’ll call in sick the rest of the week. Doubt it is Covid, but these days you don’t go to work if you are running a fever, even if medication suppresses it (which it isn’t). One of the few positive outcomes of the last two years.

        Oh. My mom’s house … has a flat roof. It starts snowing again, I’m going to be walking over there to shovel snow off. She’s 87. Hubby’s 70. Son is sick … Mom isn’t home. If I’m lucky the neighbors will beat me to it, knowing she isn’t home. Shades of ’69 (difference then is, I was 12).

        Snow is a hard NO from all 4 cats, and the dog isn’t real happy either. She also does not like the cold on her nether regions, plus at a foot deep, she plunges in to her neck.

        OTOH … Retired. Not going anywhere. We haven’t lost power. All is good.

        1. (Recalls video of Portland dealing with an ice storm several years ago. VBEG. Almost felt sorry for the person sliding down the hill on his butt. Almost.)

          Our total dump has ended at 14-16 inches, with the bottom layers very icy. I got a bit of plowing done, but $SPOUSE called a priority interrupt and I switched to helping her clear the deck. All the easy spots to dump snow are full, so it’s time to do the more strenuous methods. Crap.

          If the Forester can’t handle the mild hill, I’ll delay for a day and plow the road. Being retired does help with non-critical errands.

          The dog has learned a less aggressive squat for peeing. OTOH, when she gets the zoomies, she’s having a ball.

          1. I thought we’d turned the corner last night after she did her harder business and went into the zoomies. (She is 5, this next spring. Smaller dog, so I’ve encouraged the zoomies.) Nope. Back to protesting today. Did get a picture of 3 of the cats, the younger ones, at the open slider. They had been pawing to go out. You can almost see them thinking “What the HECK is this stuff still here?” Melting for now. But we are suppose to get cold (freezing), and more snow, tonight.

            1. They didn’t drag you through the whole house looking for The Door Into Summer? 😀

              Mine will sometimes refuse to go out the back door and demand to use the front door under the covered porch.

              1. Not this bunch. Not yet. But this has happened in the past with other cats. The older two are almost 2 years old. They have not been outside free range. Supervised visits to the backyard, but not turned loose. That was coming when the 3rd showed up. Just starting the supervised visits with her. This snow would be a perfect “here you go” free range start, but it is too cold to leave a door or window ajar for them to come and go. The forth cat, age 7, is buried somewhere until weather warms up, if not dries out. The youngest is more outdoor savvy than the middle two. She was a lot older than her rescuer’s thought, outdoors, not chipped (she IS NOW), no fliers, etc.; but either a very friendly feral or got dumped as an older kitten. Very friendly with household members, but not to visitors, and the latter includes her original rescuer’s. Even us, if we’re gone a more than a week (process starts over when we get home).

  11. We’ve got a newborn. What is this live of which you speak?

    (Though fair, mom and grandma are doing nearly all the work right now… All I’m really dealing with is watching #1, tally characters and a practice fanfic that’s decided to take a hard left from high fantasy to horror…)

    1. What was that story with the computer nerd (and maybe the girl he wanted to impress) and the (semi) autonomous missiles in orbit (around the earth or moon). The missiles kept begging to be turned loose with the message: “Let me go, let me go, let me go” (three times) then “lover.” If the missiles didn’t get the proper response to “lover,” they attacked.

      Is this like that?

      1. I’m afraid I’m very dense and so am missing something, but this is what I meant

        In Dublin’s fair city
        Where the girls are so pretty
        ‘Twas there I first set eyes on
        sweet Molly Malone

        She wheeled her wheel barrow
        Through streets broad and narrow
        Crying cockles and mussels
        Alive, alive, Oh!

  14. It depends, I suspect, on how you define “alive”?

    Alive with dread? Alive with anticipation? Alive with vermin? One of these things is not like the others.

    [Insert Colin Clive Clip]
    ~

      1. Meh – I aten’t dead. Double vision has abated, PTL, but energy levels are for [expletive].

        Thanks fer askin’.
        ~

        2. Eh. Long as it ain’t bolts and springs you’re probably okay. Bits and bobs in the right places, chugging right along? Could be worse. Stay healthy while you can manage it. Alternative sucks.

        4. Rodney Dangerfield: I went to the doctor for a checkup. When he was done, I asked him, “Doc, how do I stand?” He said, “That’s what puzzles me.”

          1. Rodney Dangerfield was great for those kinds of lines: One of my favorites: “I moved into a new neighborhood and asked the cop on the corner how long to get to the nearest subway station. He told me, “I don’t know, no one has ever made it that far’.”

            1. “These guys ain’t so tough. The football team at my school, after they sacked the quarterback, they went after his family.”

  16. I don’t know if anyone noticed, but I’ve been away from the blog for a few weeks. Anything big happen around here that I missed?

    1. Were you here for the gofundme?
      Otherwise, some interesting guest posts,lots of discussions….you know, the usual.
      Anyway, welcome back.

      1. >> “Were you here for the gofundme?”

        I had temporarily dropped out when that started, though I found out about it from Instapundit. I missed my chance to donate to it but hit her tip jar a couple of days after it ended to make up for it. I think it was shortly after that that I completely ran out of spoons until now. Damned holiday rush gets brutal towards Christmas.

        >> “Anyway, welcome back.”

        Thanks. 🙂

            1. laziness is one of the three great virtues of programmers

              –
              Really? Missed that memo.

              Welcome back.

              Year end at my last job was always a scurry. To prep for the new year (to be fair each account only did it once a year), and help with all the accumulated oops that the accountants *waved off over the year, but now are critical to fix “right now” before the county, state, and federal, auditors showed up, their second quarter. Only to have it start all over again in June. Actually who am I kidding. By the time I left “year end” emergencies stretched out the entire year. (Calendar, Fiscal, and Federal Tribe).

              * Not like the process didn’t have warnings that something was suspicious. Critical errors were stopped. But there were warnings that if they didn’t bother reading the reports … Naturally we also got calls about the stopped critical errors that didn’t go through because, well they didn’t go through (again, did not read reports).

      1. You mean the Shifter short story?

        Yeah, I know. That was the first post I’ve commented on in weeks. I referred to you as our resident beef on the hoof, remember? 😛

          1. >> “Typos with hooves.”

            Still beats facepalms with hooves, no?

            >> “A successor in hiding, perchance?”

            Yeah, because EVERYONE wants to be heir to the legacy of “random internet guy 52,370,891 with an unpronounceable name and a silly generic avatar.” 😛

  17. Glad you’re hanging in there! Take all the time you need to rest with the kitties, a good cup of King Harv’s, the local fun spots, or whatever else you need. We can wait.

    2. Just learned Nephew has it. Co-worker got ill and a day later he had minor fever and sniffles.
      Said he was a bit tired too, but other than that, nuffin.

  20. She lives!

    Sarah, you can go ahead and write the promo post about when you feel like writing it. We’re not going anywhere.

    Around your old stamping ground, by the way. Went to some kind of hot springs place southwest of Denver a couple days ago. The point, apparently, was that one could go into the water even when it was cold out. All true, though the novelty wore off pretty quickly. Not an experience we much cared to repeat.

  21. Well, Peter has announced that he is going off grid from Christmas Day to New Years Day so your taking just a single day is probably all right. But he, much like myself, is a very old man with health issues. So, you being a spry and youthful hottie (with a great rack) we are going to need you to get right back on this horse tomorrow and deliver cockles and mussels of great value.
    By the way, stumbled upon Heart of Light and am half way through it. Alt history with a bit of fan fiction thrown in, so from quite a while back I assume.

  22. I got sick with the throat crud that was going around my workplace, was holding it off okay, and then pretty much turned into a puddle of goo at Christmas, such that I wasn’t actually able to celebrate. Called in sick yesterday because still a puddle of goo. Feeling tons better this morning and will attempt work.

    Shrug. I don’t think I’m all that sick; I think it was the exhaustion that did it.

    1. Apparently it is “Miami Valley cough.” And lots of people have it. And there’s no way to clearly distinguish it from a cold or a non-Coof coronavirus.

      But you should wear masks anyway, because they will keep you safe even though they don’t. (Yeah, found the shills in that news story.)

  25. Speaking of alive, Em just got back from her first cataract surgery (right eye) and everything is good.

    Left eye on Jan 10th.

      1. And the post op was good too. Deo Gratias. Now we just have to get the left eye done in two more weeks.

        1. Any idea why? I know I’ve already had to have cataract surgery, and my CPAP machine has the effect of slowly and gradually blowing my sinuses out through my tear ducts, so I have to wash them out with Johnson’s baby shampoo twice a week.

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