The Beer Garden

It was supposed to start hitting three digits tomorrow, with the heat lasting for three days, but along about 10 AM, the thermometer was already showing close to 103.  We had some stuff we couldn’t put off today, but the rest of the week, we’re pretty much planning to stay inside with the A/C running!  Friday’s supposed to be cooler, and I’m hoping that part is accurate.

I found the CD with my beloved Word Perfect, so I’ll finally be getting that installed, along with Paradox, which is on the same disk.  Then I’ll have to see if I can find my "Books" database disk — if not, I’ll be having a debate with myself whether or not I want to go through all the work of re-constructing it and re-inputting everything!  I suppose the one good thing about the heat wave is that I’ll have absolutely no desire to do anything outside, or very strenuous, despite the A/C.

The dogs, of course, are upset with us, but it’s much too hot to take them out for a run — especially Sable, who’s right around 14 and black, so the heat really bothers him.

Whee!  Found the database disk, and the computer I was using before was also XP Home Edition, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to bring it up with no problem.  Wish me luck, please!

Worst comes to worst, I’ve always got a couple of jigsaw puzzles to play with …  

After the Friday Goat Visit, everything I thought about posting yesterday seemed rather dull, even anti-climactic … but something that unusual, by definition, doesn’t happen every day, so back to the ordinary.  At least my strawberry plants should be safe after today, when his owner said they’ll be putting up a higher, and electrified, fence!

I’ve started prepping the flower beds for next year, when I’m planning to plant evergreen ground cover (preferably something with spring/summer flowers that’s very good at choking out weeds!), since with all the time we spend out at the flying field, I can’t keep up with them and the veggie garden both.  Suggestions for Zone 7 that meet those criteria would be extremely welcome!

The little hill we built up around the small pond is going to be turned into all-strawberries — not very weed-resistant, of course, but I’m a sucker for fresh strawberries, or at least fresh-frozen, and I’m hoping that will give me plenty for the winter, along with my blackberries.  I’m not sure how long it’ll take the blueberries I planted this spring to start bearing, but eventually I’ll have those, too.

And, assuming I can find plans within my skill level, I want to make an around-the-tree bench for the maple tree out back.  I’m getting tired of having to move the standard bench every time I want to sit in the shade!

Back to skeining and dyeing some of the crochet cotton I got at a yard sale yesterday, then back to sewing what trim I’ve finished onto two more T-shirts.  I’ll be kind of glad when I get them all done, ‘cause I’d really like to do some tatting with beads, which just wouldn’t look right on T-shirts!  So that’ll likely go for Christmas ornaments to donate to the Senior Center’s craft sale in November.

When we got back from our treatment-and-shopping run this morning, and I went out to take some trash out, I heard this odd noise behind me.  When I turned around, here’s a white goat with a brown-and-white head coming toward me!  Friendly little guy, didn’t want to leave me alone, but I did go inside to call the neighbors/landlord/-lady, who seem to know everyone in the county, but they weren’t home, so I gave Mr. Empire a call.  He came out, and the goat was just as friendly to him.

We knew there were goats living down the road, so he took the car and went to check with them while I goat-sat, so the stray wouldn’t get out in the road again and get himself killed.  He found someone who said they thought the goat was theirs, so we stayed out with it … which turned out to be a rather challenging proposition for me, since the goat decided it liked my strawberry plants, and required regular shoving away from them!  

The neighbors finally got home, and recognized the goat as belonging to someone other than the folks we’d been waiting for — these live just north of the cornfield from us.  Not ten minutes later, here comes the young owner on a Gator.  The goat wasn’t too thrilled about getting in, so Carl gave him a hand, holding the goat while the owner drove, and Audrey took the car to bring him home.

So my strawberry plants are safe … unless the goat gets loose again before they get his pen’s height increased, this weekend, so he can’t jump out!

 

We made it to the State Fair today, taking advantage of the second Senior Citizens’ Day, which saved us $12 right there.    Mr. Empire was having problems with his feet, after walking too much yesterday plane-hunting, so I went through the goat and sheep barns alone.  I was hoping to see some Pygora goats, but no such luck … there were pygmies, but no Pygoras.

On the other hand, I did finally see a live Merino in the sheep barn — there are so few Merinos in this area that he had to be entered in "Other Colored Rams".  He was gorgeous, white with brown — most of the other colored sheep were gray to black shades, and no other specifically fiber breeds.

We both made it through the horse barns (they were on the way to the pony and miniature horse judging in the Quillen Arena), and sat in the arena for about a quarter hour waiting for the Grandstand and exhibit halls to open.  I wanted to see the needlework, and did, but by that time Mr. Empire’s feet were really bothering him, so we cut things short with a quick trip through the exhibits in the Grandstand (enclosed part under the seating), which was on the way to the car.

Actually, the second day of hours in the 90+ heat was getting to me, too, so I was just as glad — I cannot handle temperature extremes, either way, as well as I used to.  Ah, well!  At least next year I  won’t  be getting radiation treatments, which have me tireder than I should be to start with!

Just managed to get my outgoing e-mail working.  Very simple fix of a problem caused by operator over-confidence.

Note to self:  If you haven’t done something in a long time, read all the instructions — don’t count on remembering everything, and don’t stop halfway down the page thinking you’ve done everything!

This wasn’t one of our better days at the flying field.  Ron was flying his Senior, aka the "workhorse" since it carried parachutists, cameras, my gliders, and occasionally other loads, when for no reason we can determine, it shed its wing and went down.  He was flying straight and level, not doing aerobatics or anything to put strain on the plane, when it happened.

So we got in the car and drove to the wooded area behind the corn, where it looked like it had gone down.  After most of an hour with no sightings at all — unless you count others’ plane fragments — we went back to the pit area to get our walkie-talkies, and Ron took the signal flag the club uses when it’s not possible to help the searching pilot without it due to non-visibility (such as deep in the corn, which is over everyone’s heads!)  I went up to the observation deck to play spotter, with a couple of other pilots pointing out where in the trees they’d seen the wing go in.

Still nothing.  More other peoples’ fragments, but still no trace of the Senior, so he called it quits; we’ll try again after a strong wind, or come fall, when the leaves begin going bye-bye.  We don’t really expect to find any of it again — good odds it went down in the big pond behind the woods — but it’s worth the effort of another look later.

I’m always saying I have too many things I want to do, right?  So how come I downloaded two fantasy RPGs yesterday?  One was "only" 21 meg, so it finished before bedtime, but the other, 62 meg, I just started and went to bed while the computer did the work.

No, I don’t really need any more time sinks, but I keep hoping … I really enjoyed the original Might & Magic game, then its requirements rapidly outgrew my computer’s capabilities, so I had to give it up.  I guess I just keep hoping to find another game with a similar mix of monster-bashing and puzzle-solving, even though I haven’t managed yet.  Too many Myst variants or strategy-type ones, both of which leave me cold.

Not that I’ll be able to do much with ‘em right away; as soon as I finish this, I need to go pick and freeze blackberries, then see if I can come up with a small rock garden design for the little cacti that Audrey gave me — just re-potting them doesn’t seem to have done the trick, unfortunately.

 

A lot of SF and fantasy stories have companion "animals" of various shapes and levels of intelligence, a good number of which are emotionally bonded to their humans, and vice versa.

This is all well and good — I like such stories, and wouldn’t at all mind having one of those friends!  I’ve noticed, though, that with a very few exceptions, they are treated as nothing but an appendage of the human.  That is, even those that are supposed to have distinct personalities don’t show it much, if at all.  And most aren’t even given living conditions (by humans, anyway) that reflect their true intelligence.

Let’s take the Companions of Valdemar as an example.  They’re horse-shaped, so by necessity, they share a lot of equine attributes … but the reader knows, at least in the later books, that Companions are deceased Heralds who chose to come back in that form.  They deliberately keep it from their Heralds, but even so, they have human desires and tastes, not just equine.

Even in the early "Last Herald-Mage" books, there’s a bit of understanding of that; Vanyel teases Yfandes, in one spot, about her vanity, and grooms her and puts on her dress tack so she can flirt with another Companion.  At his parents’ home, she attends his mother’s outdoor sewing circle/musical recital, and is referred to as a "great lady".

But she is still housed in an ordinary stable, from all descriptions, even at the Palace, except that the Companions can come and go as they please into Companions’ Field, rather than being secured in their stalls.  There’s also repeated comments of, "She’s not a horse!"

Most of the time, though, that’s exactly how the Companions are treated, like horses that happen to mind-talk to their Heralds.  There’s almost nothing that shows individual personality, taste, or the like.  Yfandes is at least a little vain; might she not care to wear jewelry, or "civilian clothing", at times?  I bet she did as a human, and since Companions retain their personalities, I’d like to see something on that order.

I won’t accept that it would take too much extra wordage, either, given the pages and pages of clothing descriptions in at least some of the later books!

If I didn’t already have so many things on my plate, I swear I’d be doing a fragment or vignette about some sort of Partner for my Imperial Rangers — gods know, they need something like that! — just to show one possible way to demonstrate that companion "animals" can be true individuals and still work that closely with a bonded partner. 

As I mentioned yesterday, this is State Fair Week, and I’d planned to go on Senior Citizens’ Day … which turned out to be today, something I didn’t find out till almost 7 PM.  Fortunately, this year there’s going to be another one on Thursday, so I’ll be able to get in for nothing then.  Getting old does have some advantages!

Actually, in a way I’m glad I didn’t know today was a Seniors’ day, because it was also one of the few days with little enough wind that I could spray weed-killer without the risk of getting it on plants I don’t want to kill, so I did that instead.  Not that I was particularly careful in the flowerbeds; I’d already come to the conclusion that I can’t take care of everything the way I want to, so I’m prepping to put evergreen ground cover everywhere except the lawn, a couple of small "specialty" beds, and the veggie garden.  So that means weed-killer the rest of this year, and Preem next year before I plant the ground cover.  

And I spent the rest of the day doing productive things too, so I’m feeling pretty good in spite of missing the first Seniors’ day.   

I finished the spinning of the Golden Embers merino/kid mohair top late yesterday, and Navajo-plied the first bobbin-full this morning.  I’m kind of putting off plying the other one; I’ve had this around for so long I think I’ll actually miss it when the last plying is done!

Instead, I started spinning up some of the black Borderdale I found a few days ago.  I’m thinking about three-plying two of the gray with one black singles, though I won’t be able to be sure until I actually try it and see how it looks.  I think it’ll come out effectively a heathery dark gray, hopefully enough for a nice tunic-style sweater and matching hat.

When we got back from the open house, I took advantage of the still-cooler-than-usual temps to clear junk out of the chest freezer in the ex-chicken house we use as a garage.  I didn’t defrost it — not needed — but I did get rid of a lot of stuff I’d realized wouldn’t get used, mostly green tomatoes and cantaloupe.  

One of these years, I have got to figure something to do with green tomatoes that we’ll actually use, and some way to preserve cantaloupe other than drying or freezing … I dearly love cantaloupe, but so far, my attempts at preserving what I can’t eat just make it unappetizing.  (Yes, even with just one plant, I can’t keep up!)

That looks like about all for the moment, so I’ll see y’all tomorrow.