Water Hyacinth

Our water hyacinth has finally bloomed! I don't think it ever has before, not in all the years we've had it.

So, here's a garden celebration.

You can find out when the tide is going to be high

or low on this site, but you have to understand that no one involved is responsible for anything at all, most especially not the effects of continental drift or changes in global sea level.

Doctor Who: Turn Left

Tense, unexpected, and full of Donna.

Marvelous!

Also great: those glimpses of tentacles or something reaching over her back (It's a pity they then had to show us the giant beetle later) and the truly creepy "fortune teller."

Alternate 'what-if's' are always interesting, and after the Eccleston era's "It's all my fault" bits, it's good to see a "Yeah, but look what would happen if the Doctor didn't intervene" show.

But what's this about paradoxes abounding around Donna? Have we seen that? Have we seen any indication of it, even? Any hints that, looking back, will make us all go "Ah! So that was what all that was about." I'll reserve final judgment on this bit until season is over, but right now it seems completely faked; we're supposed to buy that it has happened because the writer says it has. That is downright annoying.

And what does the Doctor mean when he says she's making a hobby of parallel universes? I don't remember any parallel universes in the Library, just a crazy computer's simulation, one thousands of people ended up in. Why is he making a fuss over meeting her twice? He always goes to trouble spots and she was looking for him. It doesn't seem that unlikely. Ok, so he also met her grandfather twice--does that mean there is something special about him too?

And will the rest of the season live up to this episode? Will it actually answer the questions? Will it make sense? Will it manage to do so without a deus ex machina? Will they actually be able to pull off the "coincident-prone" Donna idea? Will Donna survive?

Doctor Who: Midnight

A belated and very short review...

The Good: It was creepy, claustrophobic, and overall, clever. The Doctor was in more actual and convincing danger than he has been in a long time.

The story did a good job of establishing these people as a normal group of people--they had no Deep Dark Secrets, weren't psychotic, were not alien plants. They were just ordinary, mostly friendly people on a holiday. Their turn to paranoia was thus unexpected and chilling, and it worked.

The brief exposure to the real Skye. I liked her. Her fear was believable, I wanted her saved, and I was sorry when she died.

The Bad: The sacrifice-of-the-week. I mean, really. These days it's like they're auctioning off the chance to sacrifice oneself for The Doctor ("For only $999 you too can bring a tear to his eye!"). It's getting old.

The So-so:

Not identifying the alien and giving no indication of its motives. I hate to nitpick this, I really do. I mean, I understand atmosphere, and I have been known to get all bent out of shape over the contemporary insistence that everything in a story have a logical, scientific explanation. But... but. Here we have beings who are alive where there is no life and never has been life--ok, I'm willing to believe that; Doctor Who is all about the unexpected. But... these unexpected aliens (or maybe alien singular) recognize warm-blooded, corporeal-type beings as life right away and have the ability to possess them, the desire to do so, and the malignant wish to drive them mad. Why? Do they make a hobby of driving one another mad? Do brain waves all look alike in the dark? What is going on? Why target the Doctor first? It's not a completely insurmountable difficulty, but it niggles.

The Doctor not knowing the Hostess' name. Our gregorious outgoing Doctor? No way. And why wasn't she wearing a name tag anyway? And am I supposed to wonder this in the middle of a really touching (semi-cliched) line?

The completely unfair complaint of the week: No Donna. There is no way the story would have worked with her present, the Doctor had to be isolated for it to play out. But we only have Donna for a very short time, I'm barely reconciled to that, and I thus reserve the right to quite arbitrarily resent any show without her.

8-Ball Dissection! Read All About It!

It's late & I'm tired, so I'm not going to post all about book-making.

Instead, I'm going to link you to an article on the inside-workings of an 8-ball.

Have a good dawn/morning/afternoon/evening/night/whatever.

*Giggles

more cat pictures

Stagecoach: Wells Fargo and the American West

Just finished it. It was a decent read--nice bits and pieces of history in there and overall well written. The earlier chapters are the best there, full of unexpected bits--I love the advice for stagecoach travelers--and odd insights.

Not as lively as, say Orphans Preferred, and I have a hardish time seeing on company as central to the US development, but I still suggest checking it out of the library and giving it a read.

A Few of My Favorite Things

Green olives stuffed with garlic
Peanut butter pretzels
Cheese
Dark chocolate.


Yum.

One Reason I Love This Place

Taken a few days ago.

Found by Margaret Peterson Haddix

While I was at the library the other day, I noticed that Margaret Peterson Haddix has a new book out, Found, the first book in a new series. So, of course, I grabbed it.

It's a fun read, with the Haddix's usual array of strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths include an intriguing mystery, an interesting premise, and strong protagonists. The brother-sister relationship between Katherine and Jonah is well done, one of the best portrayals of sibling relationships I've read recently. It starts with a bang and is a genuine page-turner, lean and strong.

Weaknesses include the too-familiar scenes of hysteria. Yes, I'd panic too if I were locked in a cave outside time, but at the same time, the response here very much resembles similar scenes in the Hidden series; she's moving toward an authorial tick. More seriously, there is also a certain hand-waving about the basic premise/solution to the mystery. It does, as I said above create a fascinating dilemma and I am looking forward to seeing how the story plays out. I also find, however, that I can't quite believe it, just as I could never quite believe the third-child persecution and hysteria in the Hidden books. There's a certain tension between wanting to let go and just enjoy the plot and not being able to get the disbelief to remain fully suspended; it keeps sticking its toes on the ground and demanding my attention.

Another Bit from the American West

I just started Stagecoach: Wells Fargo and the American West. So far, it's pretty good. One bit in particular caught my attention. Traveling to San Francisco, William Tecumseh Sherman caught a boat which ran aground on a reef. Wading ashore he found a lumber boat to take him the rest of the way. It capsized.

"Satisfied that she could not sink by reason of her cargo," he wrote, "I was not in the least alarmed, but thought two shipwrecks in one day not a good beginning for a new, peaceful career" (Fradkin, 20).

Extreme Photoshop

The trouble with extreme photoshop edits is that they are just so much fun.

More From the Wetlands

Can you spot the stingray?

Turkish Delight, a rambly little trivia post

I cannot remember a time without Narnia.

My parents started reading the books to me before I was five1 and read them pretty much yearly to me and my sisters2 throughout my growing up years.

One side effect of all this was a curiosity about British food3,but most especially about Turkish Delight. I wanted to know what fabulous sweet this was that Edmund loved so much.

I pictured a number of delicacies, finally settling on something more or less like baklava--something I also didn't taste until years later.

Finally, I decided to do the sensible thing and buy some. It turned out to be harder than I expected. Most stores hadn't even heard of it. This was before the movies, mind you. It may be easier to find now. A friend eventually bought some offline, and we tried it together.

It was gooey, a bit gelatinous, very sweet, and not much else.

My sister has recently decided to skip the whole hunting bit and just make some for her students. Consequently, I've now seen at least one recipe for it, and I can tell you why: This wonder consists primarily of cornstarch and sugar with only the smallest amount of rosewater, or maybe some other flavoring, to justify its existence.

My advice? Read the books, read them often, read them out loud to your kids if you have any, watch the movies, and eat baklava.

1.Likewise with The Lord of the Rings. A good many other books also made their way in and out of yearly rotation. Does anyone wonder any more how I ended up going to grad school?
2. My brother got to hear them a few times, but by the time he came along, the evening read aloud time had pretty much been taken over by other things. He does still love to read, but he missed out on a lot coming last.
3. Sardines on toast? C. S. Lewis makes this stuff sound so good when he writes about it that I'm almost tempted to try, on the other hand, look at what happened when I tried Turkish Delight. Or, for that matter, Yorkshire pudding (a sort of giant, un-popped popover), which I made once because James Herriot spoke of it so often and so fondly. It is possible some things are better left to the imagination.

Hieroglyph

About the previous post

I was going to post a much smaller section, but each time I reached for a divider, I said "But that would be to leave this out, or that, and in the end, I put the whole section up.

Be glad I'm not posting the whole poem.

"Only through time is time conquered."

From T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, a section from Burnt Norton

II

Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.

more cat pictures

Coming Soon....

One project I actually haven't talked about here much (if at all) is Aurora's Shoe Store, a mod for Baldur's Gate II--well, it was for BG2, but then Miloch1 joined the team and now it is for BGII, TuTu, and BGT.

Anyway, it was and is a fun little mod2 that adds a new character and some new shoes to the game. Those of you who play CRPG's have probably noticed that the cities tend to be a bit lifeless. If they're not giving the PC quests, the inhabitants don't have much to say.

Thus, Aurora, who was meant to have a few extra lines to entertain people while they shopped for their boots--a major focus of the mod, by the way, just not the part I had the most to do with. Oh, I enjoyed writing the descriptions3, but it was Aurora who took off for me. She was fun to write--bold, brassy, and saucy, she ended up with more than the minimum amount of conversation initially planned. I think it works, too, and helps give the idea that the city's inhabitants are more than window dressing .4

Oh, and she now has two assistants: The crabby gnome, Tomthal, who tends the shop at night and his cheerful cousin, Karaea, the shop's traveling saleswoman. Neither one of them says anything like as much as Aurora, but I think they add a good bit to the game--and make it possible to keep the shop open 24/7, which in Athkatla is no mean feat. I mean, how many people do you know who would tend an outdoor booth at night in a vampire-infested town?

What with one thing and another, though, it has taken longer than I thought it would--a lot longer. I thought it would be out last summer, and it looks like we might manage this summer. Thus, it is quite exciting to see that the shop now has its own advertising banner, courtesy of Khayman, the artist. At least, I'm pretty sure the above is its final form. When everyone has weighed in and it is definitely-for-sure its final form, I'll probably add it to the margins.

Just what this blog needs, right? More stuff in the margins.

1. The man responsible for making the shoes actually do what I said they would do, and for making the fighters fight, and for a score of other details.

2. A mod, for those of you who do not play computer games, is a fan-made addition to a game. It can add characters, quests, items, harder battles, some stuff I've probably forgotten to list, or all of the aforementioned.

3. Take these, for example, "Stinky Feet: His feet stank. They really stank. After several years of snide remarks and requests that he sit somewhere else, anywhere else he decided to take advantage of the situation. He is still remembered as Stinky Feet, but they say it with respect now. "

They turn foot odor into a weapon. How often am I going to get the chance to do that?

4. They are, of course, but there is no need to rub it in. The poor things are self-conscious enough about it already.

5. No, there is no footnote five up there. I just felt like adding another one.

Psst...Want to Buy Some Sunglasses?

Wow.

I didn't know real people really did this--I thought it was only on the Muppets, or maybe shows set in New York.

But yesterday someone walked up to me and, speaking in a low voice, offered some sunglasses, Gucci lookalikes, cheap. Or, if I didn't want those, he had any number of knockoffs, all at bargain prices.

Unfortunately, he wasn't wearing a trench coat.

I suppose that is too much to expect in Southern California.

Sparkling Toothbrushes

Several years ago, I was standing in line with my then very young brother. I was hot, tired, and cross. He was four years old and wanted everything in the store.

He especially wanted the lollipops right next to the checkout line, and I remember snapping at him that, no, I was not going to buy him any candy, not even if it did light up and play a tune.

At which point, the man in line behind us got quite excited, grabbing one of the lollipops and looking at it carefully. He was, he explained, an inventor and thought this was one of the neatest ideas ever.

I would like to say that I immediately felt much happier, bought my brother the lighted candy, and walked out into the day singing.

Truth is, I stayed crabby--mostly. But I remembered, and it did remind me how much the small, silly things in life matter.

And what does that have to do with toothbrushes?

Well, I needed a new one, and I needed a smaller one. So I got to looking at the kids' toothbrushes, and I found one that lights up and flashes.

It was that or Batman--a tough choice, but in the end, I got the one that lights up and sparkles, because the small things matter.

And, besides, it's fun.

A Moment of Awe

I don't go into Bed Bath and Beyond very often.

I was in there today & had to stop in front of the towering wall of kitchen utensils to give it its due reverence.

The Spiderwick Chronicles

The library's got quite a collection of these, and I checked out a few last week. They're quite fun, well-constructed little stories that draw on a lot of the older, fiercer fairy tales, build the suspense well, and finish of nicely within a scant hundred pages, which is incredibly impressive.

And they're lovely books too, easy to hold and with beautiful covers.

I was confused by the apparent presence of two book ones, but further research (ie a quick look at Amazon.com) shows that there are at least two series.

The Terns Are Back!

I took a nice, long bike ride today and visited the Bolsa Chica Wetlans. It's one of my favorite places, and I have not been for months. I have no idea why it has taken me so long between visits.

I had not planned on going when I set out, but it was a lovely, sunny day, and the ocean was shining in the sunshine and when I reached the point where I had planned to turn back, I saw the terns circling in the sky. I love the terns, they're lovely, white, graceful, quarrelsome creatures who don't mind flying close to humans but object very much to the presence of another tern in the area they have designated theirs.

So, instead of heading back, I went on forward and crossed over to the Wetlands.

I stood happily on the pier, watching the terns wheel and fight and taking dozens of pictures which showed them just about to dive, or circling and thinking of diving, but never quite managed one that actually showed them diving. Oh well. Maybe next time.

I was happy to spot a stilt nesting. Maybe this time I will actually get to see the chicks, and the terns are busily nesting in their fenced off area, waiting for their chicks.

And there was a stingray in the water. Watching a stingray swim by always makes me happy.

Puzzle-Box House

I want a house like this.

Actually, what I really want is to help build a house like this--same house, different articles, in case you were wondering.

From "The Wasteland"

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
--But who is that on the other side of you?

Death of a Bore by M.C. Beaton

Because I often do enjoy books the person who recommended Beaton to me suggests, I thought I'd give the author another chance and started in on Death of a Bore. I lasted for 38 1/4 pages.

I don't think I second the recommendation.

From the Book of Common Prayer

Visit this place, O Lord
And drive far from it all snares of the enemy.
Let your holy angels dwell with us to preserve us in peace.
And let your blessing be upon us always
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen

From the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

The Broken Hourglass work made me dig my copy out & give it another read.* It's a lovely Dover Thrift Edition. I've gotten all snobby about editions and annotations & etc lately, but deep down,* I still still adore Dover for putting out all sorts of different classics in nice, cheap, highly portable editions.

Anyway, I still like the first quatrain of the first edition as much as I remembered.

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.



*Partly curiosity partly looking for inspiration for tavern names; exact quotations are out, but I was hoping for ideas.
**Maybe not so very deep down as all that.

Death of a Dreamer by M. C. Beaton

I just finished reading M.C. Beaton's Death of a Dreamer today. I liked the dog, the cat, and the first chapter.

The rest, not so much.

Anansi Boys

I didn't go to the library yesterday--I finished rereading Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman, instead.

It's brilliant.

I'll try to post some bits here just to give everyone an idea of the flavor of the writing & I'll add: It's got lots of good bits, but it isn't just good bits, it's a really good book. I like most of what Gaiman has written, and I think even the stuff I don't like is very well done, but I think this is his best so far.

*Yes, he's also the one who wrote "Chivalry," the short story that begins "Mrs. Whitaker found the Holy Grail; it was under a fur coat."

Bits and Pieces

Having finished Orphans Preferred, I find myself in the position of having no library books left to read. This means I will either have to make an unscheduled trip to the library--an appealing possibility--or finish rereading Anansi Boys for the fourth or fifth time, which is also tempting. I love that book.

***

I spent a large chunk of today happily tangling myself up in writing a mystery subquest for The Broken Hourglass.* I had it all nicely plotted out and then partway through realized not all of my alibis and motives held. Back to the neat, tidy outline I'd printed out yesterday, pen in hand, scratching stuff out, filling stuff in, and generally making a mess before I could start writing again.

I have done very little with mysteries so far. I wrote one for the one in the Trio, but it is much more straight forward. I've always known mysteries took a deal of plotting, and doing it this way means keeping all lines of questioning in my head at once. I think I have it all plotted out now, but I've some witnesses yet to interview.

I wish I could load it up on the computer afterwards to test out how it plays on screen before I send it in, but I don't know WScript , so that's out.

Actually, I was slow off the mark with the mystery. First I had to read up on the Byzantine military to find out what to call the captain of a city militia. In the end, jcompton beat me to it on the search (wounding my researcher pride ;) ), and the answer is a tessarius, but I did get to read some good bits, first, about various empires and emperors and organizations (probably one reason he beat me to it; I bet he had the good sense to go straight for the answer).

And then I had to go read up on corny pickup lines to fix a niggling bit from yesterday's writing. That, of course, meant getting distracted by an article about college students who did a deliberate experiment with bad pickup lines to see whether or not they worked. No, I can't remember where it is to bookmark it, but their conclusion was "sometimes" and "it depends." So now you know.

****

My sisters dug me out of the WhoDunnit this evening so we could take a walk on the beach.

And now it is time to walk the ever-faithful Cinder.

All in all, it's been a good day.

*Yes, I probably am going to keep including the link for a while. I'm excited & want everyone else to be ,too.

Another lolcat

more cat pictures

Orphans Preferred

I finished Orphans Preferred, and I recommend it. It is lively, interesting, and informative, something very few books manage.

And I learned quite a bit about the Pony Express, about which I must confess, I knew almost nothing before. I did not, for example, know it was a private venture that lasted only eighteen months, and I certainly did not know about the camels.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love libraries? Orphans Preferred is one of many fascinating books I would not have read without them. I first saw it at a bookstore a couple of years ago and tagged it on one of my library accounts. It wasn't until recently that I got around to putting it on hold, and I would never have bought a hardback by an unfamiliar author.*

*Actually, I rarely buy hardbacks and generally buy books at used bookstores (another favorite place), but that is another story.

Camels Wearing Boots

I am currently reading Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express by Christopher Corbett. So far, I've enjoyed it. My favorite bit so far is the bit about a pre-pony attempt at getting the mail across the continent:

"The next step was camels. . . . . This was a stroke of genius, so the thinking went. Camels were ships of the desert, after all. They could walk tremendous distances without water. They were patient and strong. They were proven and reliable. . . . But the rocky western terrain proved too hard on their hooves, accustomed to soft desert sand. The camels had to be outfitted with leather boots. The leather boots slowed them down, and the camels did not want to wear them anyway" (35).

Can you imagine trying to put boots on a camel?

The mind boggles.

Glee

I'm writing for The Broken Hourglass! I have been wanting to for a long time, since it was announced, in fact.

But I was working on my dissertation then, and did not have any reason to think that they needed any more writers.

Now I am happily writing quests.

My Sister's Back!

My sister came back from Mexico on Friday.

I'd almost forgotten how much fun it is to have her around.

We went to the beach first thing, so she could make up her beach-deficit and later headed to Target so that she could make history buy buying the second bathing suit she tried on. I mean, really, who picks out a bathing suit that fast?

After that, she and I engaged in the sport of shoe-mockery before heading home.

Did I mention that she's fun to have around?

My apologies if you actually like these shoes, but that little bar connecting the heel to the toe--what's with that?*

Too Short a Time

Recently, I have been forced to acknowledge that I own two very old animals.

I don't like it.

Rafiki's death made me aware again of just how old he was, and how old Malaika is. Birds don't age visibly, so there are no outer markings to give warning.

On the other hand, there are plenty of signs a dog can give. Cinder's muzzle is now almost completely white. She's got noticeable cataracts. She's going deaf. She still dances and jumps around at walk time, but... Last week, she took a four mile round trip walk with my father and sister. Used to be that was a lark for her, and even last month it was no big deal. This time she was demanding rest stops on the way back.

I don't like it.

I don't like it at all.

Couldn't resist

more cat pictures

Herb Gardens and Happiness

As part of the general chaos of the last few weeks, the strip of garden under our yard was dug up. To give the plumbers credit, they did their best to keep things intact, but, well, bulbs don't like to be dug up. In an odd sort of way, it's a blessing in disguise, because the few gladiolas that did manage to bloom before then put up a pretty poor show.

Anyway, the plumeria seem to be doing all right, and I spent Sunday afternoon happily tearing out the remaining bulbs and putting in an herb garden.

There are now four bell pepper plants (two different kinds of red, a yellow, and a "chocolate,"), a curry plant, thyme, winter savory (I don't know how to use that, yet, but it sounds neat), and chives.

In smaller pots and more suitable areas for their temperaments are sage, basil, and lemon balm.

Anyone looking at this plot and others around back would conclude that 1) We really like garden knick-knacks and 2) We really like tomato cages. Both statements are true, in a way. We do own a lot of pseudo-birdhouses, painted rocks, and bits of driftwood, and we do own a lot of tomato cages.

However, this hypothetical individual would miss a very important aspect of their use: A suitable array of cute, but uncomfortable, garden knick-knacks keeps a certain cute and fuzzy dog from deciding that the nice, soft dust and some trampled down plants would make a good bed. Tomato cages are not only good supports for tomatoes and green peppers, they are also a good way to keep people from tromping on newly-planted roses and, like knick-knacks, keep the dog from sleeping on the plants in their vicinity.

Doctor Who: Silence in the Library

This was a lovely, creepy, unexpected episode with lots of odd, interesting, unexplained bits

I hope the second part can live up to it.

I'm worried about Donna. I don't think she's dead yet, but I'm afraid we'll be losing her(2), and I don't like that. She's a vastly better companion than Martha, and even better than Rose-and-Jackie, whom I loved(1)

I do think they slipped a bit at the end, though. Dark, formless shadows are seriously creepy; as the Doctor says, the monsters are not in "every shadow, but any shadow." Then, right at the end and for no particular reason, the shadow-things possess a skeleton-in-a-spacesuit, so suddenly, instead of running from "any shadow" the heroes are running from--a shambling skeleton with a glowing jaw. A lot of creepy-show makers do this: They go one step too far, tipping over from creepy to ridiculous, or at least into "meh."

Still and all, I enjoyed the show & I'm looking forward to the next part.

1.Rose is coming back. Is Jackie coming too?

2. And it almost has to be death. I mean, if Rose can be locked away in another universe and somehow make it back, then they can't have Donna disappear with any sort of similar drama unless they kill her--They've put her in a position where they have to up the ante. Of course, it's always possible that she'll simply choose to stay somewhere in the past or future caring for some batch or another of helpless aliens with the Doctor dropping by at odd moments, but that isn't the general trend of the show so far.

Trees

One of the things that frustrated me to no end when I first began to take pictures was my inability to capture trees.

Oh, I could take pictures of trees, and they would look like trees, but there was never anything in the image to say why I had taken the picture: Why that tree and not some other? What made it special? I kept getting images of leaves, bark, root, and sky all stuck together, but never anything that said "Tree."

Now, I finally think I'm starting to get it. The trees are beginning to show up as individual personalities, as groves, as single, knotted elders, as shapes against the sky, as trees.

Of course, perfection is still out of reach, but that is what makes it fun.

The Excitment of *Not* Having Our Pipes Burst

Last time I was home long enough to make an entry, I mentioned the gaping holes in the walls.

At the time, I was not able to post any examples, but the saga seemed complete without them--so, if you'll look to the left, you'll see the holes.

They've actually been closed now, leaving white plaster smears which, though not aesthetically pleasing in their own right, are better than the holes themselves, though I have to admit the copper piping is kind of interesting. It just isn't my chosen decor.

And, once again, there are layers and swaths of dust everywhere--and I'm typing rather than dusting. One is more fun than the other, and I don't think you need help guessing which.
Anyway, all this has been for the joy and excitement of *not* having our pipes burst.

Truly, my mind approves of the situation: It is much, much better to take care before the damage happens. It lacks, though, the sense of urgency that makes all the dust, noise, and confusion seem necessary.


And, all right, if pressed, I will admit that I like the new hot water heater that we got out of the ordeal. Really HOT showers are a wonderful thing.