|
A View From the Field |
June, 2005
June 30 I got to bed late last night, and Buster was having one of those nights, so I didn't sleep especially well, except between 7:00 and 10:00 this morning. I don't know what gets into him sometimes, but he just would not leave me alone, and I had a period where my left ear and right hip were both sore, leaving me without a side to sleep on.
It was a pretty morning this morning, with puffy white clouds in a very blue sky, and I guess one of my problems may have been that the temperature rose somewhat overnight and it got warm in the bedroom. It was rather windy, too, and shortly the clouds came together, and it's been cloudy for the rest of the day. The temperature was fairly variable, going up to almost 70º and down to the low 60s as the wind picked up. The NWS station is not reporting the true state of affairs, as usual. They had the wind almost calm when it was whistling around the house and pushing the bird feeders horizontal. And they report no gusts, when it is gusting into the upper 20s here. Tonight is supposed to be even windier, with gusts up to 40 mph or more. And there have been a few light rain showers all afternoon, which should continue.
I ended up not dong much of anything except putting dishes in the dishwasher. The phone line seemed solid and I was getting good responses this morning, so I decided to try to do my order again. Well...after screwing around for five hours, I finally called them and complained and got my order in with the discount, which was supposed to be online-only. They admitted they had done an "upgrade" on Monday and they had been having problems all week. Looks like a downgrade to me, but as I know very well, the hard and fast law in the software world is "never go back!" so everybody has to put up with the results. I also got a really apologetic email in reply to my email complaint of last night, and if I'd known they were going to forward it to the supervisors, I think I'd have been a bit more diplomatic and made some more suggestions. However, after seven or eight hours at at, I was rather frustrated, and maybe that will carry some weight, too. I perceive that software developers still don't test their changes, just like they didn't when I was working. There are some really stupid things about this website, though, that anyone over the age of ten would know are just not user friendly. I'm hoping they will clean up their act.
I did find where I had modified the security settings to prompt for all ActiveX controls and reset that. Much as it's nice not to get some of those ridiculous ads and things, I was getting tired of having to click to continue. Some of the sites I visit to read my comics use them, too, and I get really tired of their ads. Loading the ActiveX also slows down the loading of the rest of the page, too.
There was one site I was going to pay to join, hoping to get rid of the ads, but when I read their terms and conditions, it seems that not only were they going to not get rid of the ads, they were going to download cookies and some other stuff that sounded a lot like spyware to me, so I opted out...and sent them an angry email, too. There is no excuse for that - I joined two other sources and neither of them do any of that stuff, and besides they leave out the ads.
So that was the extent of my day, and if they weren't playing Mozart, I'd go to bed right now. It will probably be over by the time I get this uploaded.
It's going to be a wild and hairy night in the field tonight. June 29 It was a cool, humid, misty sort of day, not very pretty to look at. The temperature stayed in the middle 50s all day long, and there was some drizzle this morning. Icky.
I finally got all the trash together, and wrote some checks, so I made several stops in town. Of course, as soon as I got back, I started making more trash, but that's the way it goes.
I cooked tonight - my steak and potatoes recipe that I am still fiddling with. Last time, there wasn't enough liquid, and I overcooked it, and this time there was too much liquid and I undercooked it. So I'm still fiddling. It tastes good, anyway, and reheating should get the consistency a bit better. And now the kitchen is such an incredible mess that I will absolutely have to attack it tomorrow. I am a messy cook, but I don't see quite how anybody could be otherwise. Maybe other cooks just spend more time cleaning up as they go than I do. However, after chopping green peppers and onions and peeling potatoes, my back was a mess, so I didn't do much.
I actually spent six or seven hours trying to place an online order, and I finally gave up. Between the incredibly stupid website and the phone problems, and the system problems I have when I've been on the internet too long, it was clear I'd never get the order together. It was unbelievable. So I will try again tomorrow, and hope everything works better. That site used to be a good one, easy to navigate and quick to load, but it was redesigned by someone who believes everybody in the world has broadband, it uses ActiveX controls (which I have turned off for security reasons, although it's causing me so many problems, I may have to turn them on again) and Java, and the entire session is in secure mode. Some people just don't understand. Oh, yes, and I just discovered that it puts everything in cache and leaves it there. Sheesh!
Unfortunately, I seem to have misplaced the printed catalog, so I unless I can find it tomorrow, I'll have to make do. Thing is, there is a rather nice special offer on until tomorrow night, and there are a couple of things I want.
So it was a quiet day in the field, and now to bed...
June 28 I guess a long time in bed was what I needed, although I was wakeful. It was warm in the bedroom, and I had a hard time getting the temperature right, but I spent so much time there that I felt much better this morning.
It was cloudy in the morning, there was a bit of sunshine around 10:00, then it clouded up again, and the sun came out for a while between 4:00 and 6;00, when it clouded up again. There was no rain, The temperature started out around 65º this morning, but it dropped off slowly but steadily all afternoon, and it is now 52º and on its way down. I think it was pretty humid, but the cool temperatures made that not so noticeable.
In the afternoon, I got a call from a friend inviting me to dinner at Harbor Haus, and of course I couldn't turn that down. We spent the late afternoon together, had a wonderful dinner (of course) and a wonderful chat. So that was very nice.
Her coming impelled me to remove some of the clutter from the office, so I now have two more bags for the trash compactor, and I keep seeing things I missed that need to go, so I guess I will put together another bag and do that tomorrow. I do need to go to the post office tomorrow with the end-of-month bills, and I need eggs, so I will make it a real trip. It is nice to be able to walk around in the office again, and I think I can begin to bring in some of the other boxes.
I don't think Buster was very happy, but he hid out as usual and has only now come out of his hidey hole and started complaining. Too bad for him. Lesley is a nice lady and she likes cats.
So that was a nice day in the field, and it's cool enough that I expect to sleep well tonight.
June 27 I got up rather groggy this morning when Buster informed me it was time. If I hadn't had to walk, I probably would have gone back to sleep. I did sleep last night, but it was a night of weird dreams...really weird dreams. For one thing, I guess the news that MasterCard having credit card information stolen got me thinking about the people I used to work with, although none of them appeared in the dream. There was another one earlier that I don't remember. When I dream things like that, I often wonder what caused those connections to form in my brain. Weird.
Anyway, it was a beautiful morning, sunny and clear, but very warm and humid and hazy. There was a blue haze almost like light fog down the harbor. Eventually, it warmed up into the upper 80s - with a dew point in the mid 60s - and I put on my shorts and flip-flops and sat in the ugly chair and did not much but drink iced herbal tea and knit a few rows on the bedspread. I had all the doors and some windows open and the fans on in the office and the great room. That helped somewhat, but it was still awfully hot when suddenly, at around 4:30, the wind shifted a bit and the temperature dropped to 74º. That's about 12 degrees in ten minutes. Aaaahh...
When I checked the Weather Underground, I found there was a strong thunderstorm warning until midnight. and around 7:00 it reached us. Times when I really wish I had my weather station, because the winds were incredibly strong. I spent some time watching the bird feeders and the thermometer, but since it was coming in from the west, they were all right. One of the things I love to watch in a heavy thunderstorm like that is the wind pushing curtains of rain across the water, but for a good 20 minutes, it was raining too hard to see the water at all. The trouble with thunderstorms in the daytime is that it isn't possible to see much of the lightening, although there was one bolt, near the end of the storm, that I suspect probably hit the tower on top of Brockway, and I caught a bit of that. Thunderstorms are so much fun!
Buster didn't think so, of course, and he complained, but since I was eating duck (left over from last evening), and i gave him a few bits, he settled down pretty fast. Now, however, he has gone off to the north end again, which is all closed up, and much more congenial for him.
And when the thunder and rain had moved off to the east and the wind died down, I just stood in the window and smelled for a while. There is just nothing that smells like the mixed hardwood and pine woods when the rain is over and the temperature had dropped. I wish I could bottle it and spray it around me all the time...I can get high on the smell of woods. Aaaahhhh...
Immediately after it stopped raining, the goldfinches were back at the feeders in numbers. I guess they aren't taking any chances with the rest of the evening. And they are probably right. The storms seem to be coming in waves, and there was one over Duluth a while ago that I bet anything is headed in our direction. The radar maps are in color, from green for light rain to purple for extraordinarily heavy. The one that hit us was just red, which makes me wonder what a purple one would be like...
Needless to say, the phone line was down during the storm. When I tried to reconnect, you wouldn't believe the static I heard, and every time there was a bolt of lightening, there was a burst of static. I don't think that should happen, if the lines are wired right, but who am I to say? You didn't miss much, although I'm afraid there will be a lot of missing pictures on the website. The window was so wet and the rain so heavy there wasn't a lot to see. You had to be here.
So now it's quiet and nearly calm again, but there is another wave on its way. With the southwest winds we've had, the storms come right up the Keweenaw, like they were following US-41 or something. It's neat to watch, if I can keep the phone connection up long enough to see it.
I began loading the dishwasher again, but otherwise, I didn't do much. It was too hot. I do not like this weather. I did keep the north end closed up all day, because it was actually cooler there than outside. I doubt that's the case now, and I will probably open at least the porch door.
I suspect that breeds confusion when I say it. My screened porch is between the kitchen and the bedroom, and there is a door from the kitchen and one almost across from my closet, right around the corner from my bed. That door is frequently a lifesaver, since it funnels the air into the bedroom and bathroom. If I can keep some windows open in the window seat and in the bathroom, there is a nice cross-draft. One of my aims when I was helping design this house was to be sure there were no places that didn't have some kind of cross-drafts. The bedroom is somewhat of a problem since the head of the bed backs up to the porch and there is sort of a dead spot there unless the wind is out of the northwest, when I really don't want the windows open at all. However, if everything can be open, I get pretty good air circulation, and with the ceiling fans drawing the hot air upward, it is about as comfortable here as it is anywhere when it's hot and humid.
So now I think I will open things up for a while, to try to get as much hot air out of the house as I can before I go to bed...which I don't think will be too late tonight. This weather makes me very sleepy, and in fact, I toyed with the notion of taking a nap this afternoon. However, I haven't yet learned to nap in the ugly chair, so mostly I just sat.
It's a dark and stormy night in the field...
June 26 It was a little warmer last night, and I didn't sleep quite so well, but it was another beautiful morning, so I got up anyway. It was lovely and sunny until about 3:00 when the clouds began to roll in. That was not forecast, so I'm not sure what it means for the weather tonight and tomorrow. The temperature peaked out in the mid-70s at about the same time, and it was a lovely afternoon. I can take mid 70s with a nice breeze.
The wind is from the south now, and the forecast for tomorrow is not good - hot and humid - but we'll see. One never knows up at the tip of Keweenaw.
I did some reading - I have a lot of magazines to catch up on - and some beading, and I put away all the clean dishes in the kitchen, so that is done and we can start over again.
I have been meaning to report on the bird situation. I have heard the loons several times, once in the middle of the day, which usually means they are in distress. The chickadees and the nuthatches have finally discovered the feeders. I have mentioned this before, but I always get a kick out of the nuthatches. They stick their beaks into the feeder and slash around and pick out seeds and throw them away - onto the deck - until they find just the one that suits them before they fly away to open it someplace else.
The result is seeds on the deck, and there is now a little chipmunk, as well as two squirrels, foraging around. One of the squirrels has a docked tail, and I noticed this evening that it seems to have had some kind of injury on one side. It does all right on the ground or in the trees, but it doesn't seem to want to go flying through the air like the others do. I wonder what happened to it. Out here in the wild, it could have been any kind of predator. It was hungry tonight, but it just couldn't bring itself to jump into any of the feeders.
After dinner, I spent some time in the ugly chair, with my feet up, reading, and that was nice.
Harbor Haus was busy tonight, so the season is beginning, and I made my reservations for next week, just to be on the safe side. Sunday and Monday. Yum.
I also saw the Isle Royal Queen (III?) come in, and it appears that they are not going so near the shore anymore and it appears that Harbor Haus is not getting everybody outside to dance for them anymore. That has been going on for over 20 years, and I wondered how long it would last. I must ask Chris. I have been going a bit earlier this year, and I haven't been there when the boat comes in. Anyway, there was no blowing of horns or anything tonight.
So now it's time to call it a night once more.
June 25 I slept incredibly well last night - only two wakeups - but I decided to get up around 9:00, and I should have stayed in bed. So I was rather blah all day long.
It was such a beautiful morning, that I wanted to enjoy it, and I did. It was sunny without much wind and just under 60º, and that's about the way it was all day long. We did get to the mid-60s, but not for long. The wind (such as it is) has now shifted around to the north, and it's supposed to get down to 50º or so tonight, with a lovely day tomorrow again. Next week...well, we'll see. The trouble with the weather forecasts is that they are mostly for the middle of the peninsula, like from Houghton to Calumet, and frequently they don't apply to us. The marine forecasts are better, but they don't have air temperatures.
So I didn't do much. I had started the third bracelet yesterday, but I realized I was using black thread when I should have been using brown. I try to blend the thread color with the beads on the edge of the bracelet, and this one has copper on the edges. So that set off a search, which ended when I realized that the brown thread was with the rest of my beading tools all along and I just didn't see it. I just wasn't all here today, I guess. So I've restarted it, but I kept having to rip out rows - one row three or four times - so I finally gave up on that.
I just moved over to the ugly chair, fetched the pale blue sweater from the bedroom and knitted several rows while I watched the sky and the harbor. There are some clouds and hardly any wind, so this end of the harbor is like glass. Pretty.
I can report that I think my legs looked some better this morning, so the combination of antibiotics is finally beginning to work. Good thing, too - the last thing I want is to have to go back to Detroit and a hospital. No, thanks!
Buster spent most of the day asleep under the east window of the office, near to me, where he could smell the fresh air and not be cold and hear all the birdies. There is at least one song sparrow that has been singing almost constantly all day long. Or I think it is a song sparrow. Serenading Mrs. bird on the nest, maybe.
And that is all I have to report. There was a wedding at Mariner tonight, so the restaurant was closed. I think that will be the last of it, though, since next weekend is the start of the real summer season here, and they need the public.
It's a lovely, cool, calm night in the field tonight, and I'm going to bed.
June 24 One of the simple pleasures of life has to be stepping into a tepid shower on a hot, humid night, when I am all sticky and icky and uncomfortable. It doesn't hurt to step out into a strong, warm wind, either.
However, that's about all I can say that's good about last night. It was windy and over 80º all night long, and while I did get to sleep for a while, after I woke up the first time, I only dozed. I had to get rid of that 24 ounce bottle of water, and besides, every time I woke up, Buster came up and complained. I'm not sure what his problem was, but it's been a couple of years since I've had to sleep with the windows open, and it apparently discombobulated him completely.
Then around 6:00 this morning, the wind took one of those sudden shifts I love to watch, from southwest to almost due west, and the temperature dropped at least 12º in about 15 minutes. Aaahhh... So I closed the windows and promptly went to sleep for over three hours. It did warm up a tad for a while, but then the wind settled down from the northwest, and it has been like that all day long.
The high temperature got maybe to the mid 70s, but the wind really kicked up - 18 to 24 mph - and that kept it so comfortable that I had one window in the office and the porch door open, and that's about all I needed. It was rather humid, but with the moderate temperature and strong wind, it was very comfortable, thank you. The sun was out almost all day long, and it was a pretty day.
I guess it's supposed to be even cooler tomorrow, but I won't complain. And it's going to be cool enough tonight that I'll be able to sleep comfortably under the quilt.
Now, that's my kind of weather!
Not that I did much, but that's all right. I washed the dishes and the pots and pans, which will clear up the kitchen again for a while. I finished the bracelet I've been working on for so long, and I redid the ends of the original one I made by that pattern. I had messed up one end, and I hadn't made it long enough, so I took care of those things. I've started another one of the same pattern, with a copper background and a blue and green rope-effect in the center. I think it will be pretty, too. I will try to take a picture of all three when it's done.
I was looking a a bead web page about sunset, and I turned around and went running outside with the camera. This is what I saw. Sorry for the TV antenna in the second shot. The sun is actually setting between the two trees to the right of the first picture, so it isn't possible to see right down to the horizon, but it was a very pretty sunset - the first of the season.
So that was my quiet day, and I am looking forward to a good night's sleep tonight and another nice day tomorrow.
June 23 Now, this is the kind of weather I hate.
About 6:30 this morning, we had a wonderful thunderstorm, with lots of noise and buckets of rain. And it had almost stopped thundering when there was one crash right over the harbor that woke me out of a doze. Oh, well. However, when I got up about three hours later, the water still hadn't dried off the windows, and I knew we were in for it, even if it didn't get very warm.... At that point, the temperature was 60º and the dew point was 59º...about as humid as you can get.
It warmed up nicely, thank you, and topped out at an official 84º, but the dew point was about 68º. The only thing that kept it tolerable was a strong southwest wind. It has, mercifully cooled off some since, mostly because the wind has died down and the cold, cold waters of mother Superior are lowering the temperature.
I actually kept the house closed up until mid-afternoon, when the sun began to heat it up inside to the outside temperature. Solar heat is only good sometimes.
Then I made the mistake of cooking. I had been having a yen for chicken, so I decided tonight was the night to make one of my favorite chicken recipes. It was hot in the kitchen anyway, and when I turned on the stove, even with the exhaust fan, I began melting down. So after a very nice dinner, thank you, I broke down and put on my shorts and flip-flops, ugly legs or no. Nobody will see them but Buster and me anyway, and we know what they look like.
I also eschewed alcohol, for the first time in a long time, and am now sipping from a nice big glass of ice water. Sitting quietly has cooled me down considerably, but my underwear and the back of my hair are still dripping wet.
I would be rather uncomfortable anyway, because it became obvious last evening that almost all the bites I thought were mosquito bites are in fact black fly bites, and they have all formed blisters and itch like crazy. However, as I proved last summer, it is a very bad idea to break those blisters, and if they do accidentally break (like the one right on the point of my elbow) the thing to do is get them to heal over. The blisters make it hard to scratch.
The thing is, you can see the mosquitoes and you can wave them off or swat them before they bite, but black flies are little and sneaky and you don't feel them until they're gone. It seems like the Adolf's works better if you can get it on as soon as possible, which I didn't do, except for two I got on the side of my neck yesterday afternoon. They don't itch so much and while I have nice welts, I don't seem to have blisters there. Nasty, nasty bugs!
I didn't do a lot today but fold clothes and rewash the things I didn't get the spots out of. I think I will try a bit of beading after I finish this. I am nearly finished with the bracelet, and it would be good to get done with that.
Buster seemed pretty happy, but then he likes to be warm. He spent the afternoon socked out on his chair on the porch, seemingly quite comfortable in the heat and the sun.
It may be a tad cooler tomorrow - I hope so! - but it will probably still be humid since we may have some more early morning thunderstorms.
By the way, I just looked at the weather history, and if the current temperature in Houghton is correct (90º) it breaks the record set in 1966. Oh, dear, I'm afraid it's going to be one of those summers...
However, being right beside the lake does help, even if only a little bit. And as I know very well, June doesn't tell anything about the rest of the summer. I can remember incredibly hot Junes and incredibly cold Augusts...and vice versa.
Anyway, the southwest wind has died away, and the breezes swirling around are leaving the harbor nearly calm and the temperature tolerable, at least for now.
And I would still rather be here and hot than in Detroit and stuck in stale air conditioning, with my bedroom too hot to sleep in.
June 22 I can now report, from personal experience, that the bugs are horrible this year. I was outside for a few minutes last evening and again for a few minutes this afternoon, and I got chewed to pieces. They seem to be mostly mosquito bites, which itch like crazy for about three days then go away, although I did get several black fly bites which will no doubt aggravate me for a week or more. When I wanted to go back into the house last evening, I could hardly get in for the mosquitoes swarming around the door, and I brought several inside. Fortunately it was cool enough that they were moving slowly, and I was able to get them all.
So I itch all over, and that's not comfortable. Time to treat myself to some Adolf's, I guess. What I have never understood is, I have a number of areas where I have no feeling, from various surgeries, but the bites still itch. Very weird.
I spent a quiet day today, mostly on the telephone, finally getting my subscription addresses changed...and discovering as usual that one never got changed at all, even though my notes say I called it in before I left here last fall. Customer service ain't, I guess.
I was outside this afternoon because when the phone line crapped out, I decided it was time to attack the "Network Interface Box". I discovered that there is in fact a customer entrance to it, which is where the connectors are, and it opens with any kind of screwdriver you happen to have. Oh. However, the tech had opened his side and run the wire up from the bottom inside the whole cover. Fortunately, it is just plastic and it bends, so I was able to get the wire out without ruining my connector.
And I have to report that it was just as bad while it was jury-wired as it is when it is wired correctly...just as I suspected. There is definitely a problem with the software - it leaks data so badly that every so often it can't make a connection and the computer needs to be rebooted - but that's not the whole story. In the month between April 26 and May 25, when I wasn't here and only the camera was running, the computer redialed 152 times. That just isn't right. I guess I will have to attack SBC again.
The weather was heavenly again. It was clear until early afternoon, when the clouds started to build up, and there was a good southwest wind, and the temperature got into the middle 70s, which was very nice. Then around 7:00, the wind picked up and the temperature dropped off drastically and is now on its way down to sleeping temperature again. Nice. I can stand the warm temperatures if the humidity is low and the nighttime temperature is reasonable. I think it will be tonight.
About tomorrow I'm not so sure. They are predicting upper 80s and thunderstorms for most of the day (you'll understand if the camera isn't updating regularly - it's worse in the rain), but I really doubt it will get that warm here. I hope not. The harbor is too cold to swim in yet.
So now I will go and nurse my bites.
June 21 Happy summer solstice. It was a simply gorgeous day for the first day of summer, almost completely clear all day, with just enough wind and lots of sun. It got into the upper 70s in Houghton, although it stayed in the 60s here.
I arose fairly early, but I didn't get a very early start to town, but that was all right. I hit Wal-Mart at a good time and got a good parking place (parking is difficult with all the construction going on), and I was able to find everything even though it was all moved around from last week. What an incredible mess it is there!
Of course, I got the wrong printer cartridge - I wanted a color one, and got a black and white one instead - and after inspecting the tool department, I realized that what I need to get into the telephone box is not an Allen wrench at all...and they didn't have what I need.
I did find the restrooms, but the ladies was being cleaned when I got there (what a dumb time to clean a restroom - right around noon!), so I had to wait until the "family" restroom got free, but that was all right, too. I got some photo paper; I realized when I got here that evidently I left my package of photo paper at the other house, and I do occasionally print up a picture or two to show people.
I didn't go wandering around as much as I did last week, so I wasn't quite so tired when I got out, or I didn't think I was. Then it was off to the Ming Bistro, which was better the second time. I was much later (around 1:30) and there was more, better stuff than last time. However, after I sat down, I began sweating profusely, a reaction, I guess, to all the walking followed by getting into a very hot car. Anyway, it was a pretty good lunch.
There is a place that sells natural supplements right near the restaurant, and I stopped there and got some vitamins, although I'm not sure I'll continue with them. They are pretty expensive, and I think I can only get them there. I'd rather have some that I can get all over. However, in inspecting packages in Wal-Mart, I discovered that the only ones they carry that have anywhere near the same formula as the one I can't get also have stuff like ginko bilboa and gingseng and some other things I don't want. There are warnings in my oncologist's office about those things, and they asked me about them before my surgery. Don' wan no stuff like that. I'm not sure what my final solution will be.
At Econo Foods, I mostly bought wine and cat food - forgot about meat - and I stopped to top off my gas tank. I guess my car is finally getting broken in after 4 years. It now has over 30,000 miles on it, and my mileage is up over 19 mpg - pretty awful in the total scheme of things, but pretty good for a full-sized SUV.
It was 78º in Houghton when I left, but it was only 75º in Calumet, and it was lovely to just open all the windows and let my hair blow around. Every so often I would get a whiff of some nasty burned gas or diesel, but mostly it smelled like sweet grass, which is a smell I love.
I stopped at the legendary Ace Hardware store in Calumet, and lo and behold, they had just what I need - a set of hex keys. I got English measurements, and I hope SBC doesn't use metric on their screws. Anyway, this is a set that folds up into a small package like a jackknife, which I thought would let me put more leverage on the screw. I also found a nice push broom, which I've wanted since I've lived here to sweep the garage floor, which has a lot of mud ion it, and the basement, which has a lot of everything on it. Wal-Mart doesn't know what a push broom is.
Then I started for home, and I was tired, and my feet were very sore. My feet swell when I walk, and my shoes, which just fit, get too small and make my toes hurt. I haven't figured out the answer to that one. Going barefoot isn't much of an option, I can't wear Birkenstocks (my feet are the wrong shape) and flip-flops aren't much of an answer. So I hobble around with very sore feet sometimes.
As is usual, the temperature dropped steadily on the way home, and it was only about 65º here. It was a pretty good ride, with not much traffic, although I did follow one local in a real rattletrap of a truck, who wouldn't go faster than 40 mph on the covered road - maybe his truck wouldn't go any faster than that. He turned off at the Mountain Lodge, so I didn't have to follow him all the way to Copper Harbor.
It still delights me to come down that last hill in to Copper Harbor and look out and see all that beautiful blue water. It was really beautiful today.
So that is about all I did. I didn't want to walk around much after I got here, so I opened a couple of doors and just sat and enjoyed. The temperature is now dropping into good sleeping range, and the full moon should be showing up soon.
That is an interesting moon, the most southerly of the year, according to Sky & Telescope. So it will be shining in the south windows of the office, and I won't see a lot of its light in the bedroom. I still have not seen Venus, which is weird. I guess I will have to brave the bugs and go outside sometime in the next few days, because over the next week or so, Venus, Mercury and Saturn will get steadily closer together, until sometime next week, I think, they will be practically on top of each other, and I want to see it. I've only seen Mercury once, and I want to do it again. I will have to dig my magazines out of the box they're in and check out where and when to look.
It's dark and calm and beautiful in the field tonight.
June 20 I didn't sleep as well last night as I'd hoped. I had some trouble getting the temperature right, since it was the first night with the porch door open. So I was up several times. Besides, my legs were itchy (still are).
So in due course, I got up and eventually put in a call to the doctor. Unfortunately, he didn't call back until after 5:00, and I wasn't going to start for Houghton at that hour, so I will start the other antibiotic tomorrow. We never did know if it was the second one (the one I'm taking now) that did the trick or if it was the combination, but it looks like it must be the combination. So I will be taking off for Houghton tomorrow morning.
That's OK, I guess. I'm running low on wine and steaks, and there are a few other things i want to get at Wal-Mart, if I can find them.
One thing is a set of Allen wrenches. I have put in several pages to the SBC tech and he hasn't called me back, and my computer phone connection is a wire running out the window. It isn't doing a thing for the connection, and it would be really nice to be able to close the window. But the box on the outside of the house has an Allen screw holding it shut, so I can't get into it to rewire it myself. I'll give him one more chance, then I'm calling SBC and raising some hell. This is ridiculous. The line is still lousy, and despite what the tech thinks, it isn't in the house. And I want my wiring put back the way it's supposed to be.
I also called for Charlie again, but he was out, and he didn't call back. I really need that wireless broadband.
Sometime late in the day I finally remembered that I need to wash, so I started with the jeans, and when they were washed, I put them in the dryer and forgot to turn it on. So it will be a while before I get to bed. The one disadvantage of having the laundry room so close to my bedroom is that it makes too much noise for me to sleep...but that's a small price to pay for having it right there. I think maybe I'll sit in bed and read while the last loads dry.
The weather was nice, if a little cloudy. It was cloudy this morning, then cleared up during the middle of the day, and now it has clouded over again. The temperature here got up to the low 70s, and there was a nice northwest breeze for most of the afternoon. I don't know what was going on over at the holding ponds, but the reports from the official weather station were as screwy as I've seen them. They were reporting 79º and variable wind this morning when it was 64º and breezy here. Then it warmed up here and they were reporting around 60º. I sure do wish I could see a weather station in my near future, but it doesn't look likely.
Now it is under 60º here, and it looks to be a good sleeping night.
I didn't go down into the garden, but I did see the white Siberian iris that I thought I'd lost. Unfortunately, it is behind the purple ones, instead of in front of them, so it isn't too obvious. The peony flowers are swelling, and they should be out in a few days. That will be a bouquet, for sure. Too bad it's white. I also noticed that there is a very lovely lupine growing right beside the steps off the deck outside my bedroom. For some reason, I always thought lupines needed to be in damp locations, because they seem to grow mostly in the drainage ditches around here, but it seems they are more hardy than that, and they're growing quite well in my field. OF course, everything is, here, because there was so much rain earlier in the spring.
And tomorrow is the solstice, so summer will be official and we'll begin the slow slide down to short days and long nights. Just another reason I was so disappointed that I didn't get here in May like I'd planned. I love these long evenings. Well, maybe next year I'll be moving in about that time...
So that is another quiet day in the field.
June 19 Well, I even sat down in the ugly chair (gosh, that's a comfortable chair!) and tried to do some knitting, but I'm not going to fight it any longer. I'm going to bed, even if the sun is still an hour from setting.
I guess it all began because I woke up having to take a walk at about 4:30 am and discovered Buster in the bathroom with a mouse. So I got on my glasses and turned on the bathroom light, and discovered that he had managed to damage it already and it was moving pretty slow, I think on three feet. It ran into the corner under a little shelf I have there, and between us, we cornered it long enough for me to pick it up in a tissue, and then I had to walk down to the great room and put it outside. I don't know if it made it or not, but at least it didn't die inside the house. I noticed when I got up for real that there were some bloodstains on the floor, so Buster wasn't very careful with it. It was a very little mouse.
Anyway, that got me thoroughly awake, and I didn't get back to sleep for some time. So even though I got up late (nearly 10:00), I didn't feel restless, and in the middle of the afternoon I gave in and took a nap. Buster doesn't like it when I do that - he thinks maybe I'm sick or something - but he eventually settled down beside me and we slept for over an hour. One nice thing about getting older is that I can actually nap during the day if I'm tired. One of these days, I'll be able to nap in the ugly chair, and then I will have arrived.
Or maybe it actually began earlier in the night. I woke up around 2:00 having had a dream about a weed that wouldn't stop growing and couldn't be killed by any means, even weed killer. What an interesting nightmare. I guess that was because I was thinking about the weeds in the garden before I fell asleep. And those hounds tongue things are about that hard to kill, although they don't grow all that fast. I mean, what would one do with a plant that couldn't be killed and any little part of it would grow into another plant? Shades of my old science fiction readings...
I felt better after my nap, but I'm tired again now, so I'm not going to fight it any longer.
It was a really beautiful day. It was sunny, although there was a haze in the sky, with a nice wind out of the southwest, and the temperature got into the middle 70s with low humidity. Really lovely. So of course I have had the house opened up all day, and both of us enjoyed that.
When I got back from dinner (whitefish again - I didn't feel like anything heavy) I filled the bird feeders, which had gotten depleted. I think it was all the goldfinches, but we'll see tomorrow. I may have had a nocturnal visitor, in which case, I'll have to start bringing things in at night. That's a pain, and I don't do it unless I have to.
So it was a sleepy day in the field and it's time to try it again.
June 18 It was another beautiful day in the field, mostly sunny, with very little wind, and a temperature that got up into the low 70s...warm enough for me to open up the house and air it out, although it's cooling down now.
My principal task of the day was to finally write my condolence notes and a couple of bills and take them to the post office. I am pleased to report that it is possible to get mail from Houghton to Copper Harbor in one day. The rest of my antibiotics were mailed Friday morning, and they arrived today. Amongst the mail were a couple of forwarded bills, one of which was due the day it was forwarded. So I will have to stop at the post office tomorrow (since I forgot to go on the way to dinner tonight). Since my pills arrived, today's mail had already come, so the next pickup will be Monday, sometime after 1:00. One gets so one knows these things when one lives in a remote area.
When I got up this morning, the harbor was glassy calm, and it was so pretty. During the day there was a little wind ruffling the surface, but this evening it has calmed down again. The sky is sort of hazy - not the best seeing - but clear and there is a nice, fat gibbous moon shining in the office windows. It was just a perfect day to sit and watch and listen to the birds.
I did finally make it down into the garden this afternoon, and I took a few pictures of the flowers. The peonies aren't out yet, and only two poppy flowers on one plant are out, so there will be more later. The Siberian Iris are making a very nice show and filling in very well, although there is only one plant of the medium blue ones, which is disappointing. Last year there was also a white one, but I didn't see that - maybe it's a bit later.
There is still one iris that has never bloomed, even though it is growing and spreading. I think I will have to scrape away some of the dirt on top of it. The root may be buried too deep. And one little peony seems to have disappeared. It's really hard to tell exactly what's there, because the grass and other weeds are a couple of feet high around and in the bed. I have some work to do. A few little rose bushes survived, too, but they are almost buried in weeds. I have some work to do.
It turns out that my garden seems to be going to be in a very good spot. I've noticed that it always seems to be warmer and less windy down there, which is great for the flowers, if not so good for the gardener. I really do hope to slowly get it back into some shape. The pond is about half full of green, yucky water, and it needs to be pumped out and cleaned up. I have my work cut out for me. I have always liked to garden, when I was up to it, and maybe that will help get me back into shape. However, it's not safe to go out there without a bug shirt on right now, especially when one is stirring up the weeds.
There is an interesting bird (?) calling outside right now. I wish I was more knowledgeable about birdsongs. I do have two CDs, and maybe I can play them sometime and figure out what I'm hearing. There aren't a lot of birds that fly at night and call.
Speaking of that, I have forgotten to mention that I have heard the loon call three or four nights since I've been here. It's never more than one call, but it is definitely loony. And I think I may have seen an eagle, but he was sailing almost right over the house, and he moved so fast I only caught glimpses of him. Whatever it was was pretty big, and I don't think it was a vulture.
I had intended to wash clothes today, and I just plain forgot. Tomorrow. I am getting low on jeans that fit, and the laundry bags are full, so I guess it's time.
And that was another quiet day in the field. I could stand a lot of weather like this.
June 17 We made up for our active night the night before last by having a very quiet night last night, and a very quiet day today. It stayed cloudy all night last night and into the morning, before finally clearing up late in the morning.
I had the slow breakfast, read my magazines, and generally didn't do much else.
The weather was pretty, mostly sunny with a few high clouds, and temperatures in the middle 50s with not much wind. Just before sunset, there were some cirrus clouds and contrails in the sky, but they seem to have gone away, and the slightly gibbous moon is shining brightly in all the windows. Maybe I will get to see Venus tonight.
So that is a really quiet day in the field.
June 16 It was a very active night around here last night. I had just gone to bed when a lot of thumping and skittering told me that Buster had a mouse, but it didn't last too long. Then around 3:30, there was more thumping and skittering, and again around 6:30. Three mice in one night! After the third one, I heard crunching, and it seems he scarfed down a whole bowl of dry cat food. Needless to say, he slept all day today. As usual, I didn't find any bodies, which I guess means he chased them back where they came from. Or I hope he did. I guess my nose will tell me if they didn't make it.
On top of that, when I got up this morning, I discovered that there was a mosquito in my room overnight, and I now have a small bite on my foot in a spot that was only accessible when I didn't have any shoes on, and an enormous welt on my neck, about two inches above the biopsy scar. That one has been driving me crazy all day. I guess it's not possible to keep all the bugs outside, especially when one moves as slowly as I do, and better mosquitoes than black flies.
So it was a quiet day. I did manage to get to the post office at last, and I now have some reading material and some bills to pay. I had thought about doing some filing today, but I just never got around to it. It isn't going away, but the amount is getting out of hand.
It was a pretty day, although it wasn't as sunny as had been predicted. There was a nice northwest wind that kicked up some little whitecaps on the harbor, and the temperature might have made it to 60º.
I did meet Ron at the post office - he's the guy who spent the winter up here - and he tells me that he and one of the other people who want to stay here are working on the planning for keeping the road open. Evidently there are some other people on the road along the lake who might well want to live here permanently, so we may have a real colony, and we may be able to split the costs amongst quite a group. That would be good, because it's not going to be cheap. They are planning to discuss it at the annual meeting, so I guess I really will have to go this year.
This evening, I finally called Debbie, and we talked until the battery in her cell phone gave out. I was going to try to call Nancy, but there was nobody home there. I hope she is all right.
Tomorrow I really must get down into the garden and see what's there. I can see the pretty plum-colored iris, and the coral poppy, and the Siberian iris are coming out. The beautiful blue iris has buds, but there are a lot of weeds in the bed, so I need to see what there is to do there. I don't know how much gardening I'm good for, but I do mean to try. The weather is too good to be inside all the time.
It was a rather pretty sunset tonight, although I didn't get to see much of it because I was on the phone. As frequently happens, there is a cloudbank over the land, but it seems pretty clear over the lake, and the sun came out right before sunset and turned the trees across the little bay at this end of the harbor all golden. There were some pretty low clouds and some of them turned nice and red. Nothing I could take a picture of, but nice to look at.
So another nice, quiet day in the field, but I don't think there will be any stars tonight.
June 15 Over the past 36 hours, from midnight on the 14th until this morning, we have had 1.24" of rain, according to the NWS. It's enough to make one feel a bit moldy, or at least soggy. Last night turned out to be a sort of wild one, with several very heavy showers, and winds strong enough to cause the lake to be speaking most of the night. Not a roar, you understand, but a definite shout.
I seem to sleep very well under those conditions, and I only had one night sweat, a minor one, although I was up any number of times. I was so thirsty when I left Econo yesterday afternoon that i drank two different kinds of pop on the way home, plus some more liquids of varying kinds after I got here. Of course, I was so exhausted that I would probably have slept under any circumstances, but I did so pretty well.
It is a good thing I got started on my antibiotics yesterday, because it seems like I have a small patch of cellulitis on my right leg, as well as the large patch on my left. The only explanation I can give is that one blister did break (it leaked all over my bedding), and the way I twine my legs around when I sleep, I suppose it got on my right leg. Well, now all I have to do is endure until the pills take hold. Cellulitis reminds me in many ways of the shingles. Where it is just beginning, it itches like crazy, but if you scratch it, not only does it hurt, it may break the blisters and spread the infection. Not nice stuff at all, and in a way cellulitis is worse, because if the bacteria get into your bloodstream, you're in bad shape. What I didn't realize is that apparently, once I had it, I'm at greater risk for having it again. So my legs itch, and I can't scratch. Sometimes, I just rub them with the palm of my hand, and that helps some, but not much.
I was up at a reasonable hour this morning, but I guess I ended up not doing anything - just recovered from yesterday, I guess.
The weather was gorgeous. It was still cloudy this morning, but along about 11:00, the clouds started going away and the afternoon was perfectly clear and beautiful. IT wasn't very warm - low 50s - and there has been a strong wind out of the north-northwest, but it was a pretty day to watch. Just about 8:30 another cloud came over, but that is supposed to go away and the night and the next few days are supposed to be perfect Keweenaw weather - sunny and not too hot and not humid at all, with enough breeze to keep the bugs under control.
You'd never know it from Buster. He slept the entire afternoon on the couch, which was either in or near the sun, and when he got up from there, he came into the office and went to sleep here. His natural period seems to be something like 48 hours - he'll be wakeful for nearly an entire day, then sleep for nearly an entire day. Not like normal cats at all...but then, he has a lot of Siamese in him, so I guess that's the reason.
I spent a good part of the day searching the internet. For probably 40 years, the vitamins I have taken are Theragran-M. For the last few years, I have been able to get them at Wal-Mart, but when I looked for them yesterday, they didn't have any. Neither did any online source I could get to, although there are plenty of generics out there. I wonder if they have been discontinued? I am not hung up on that particular brand, but the combination of vitamins and minerals in it seems to be good for me, so I'd like to continue it. I guess the thing to do is to take the breakdown with me when I got to town again and see if any of the Centrum flavors is about the same (Centrum is about all there is anymore). I could send for one of the generics, but there are a ton of them and I don't know a thing about any of the manufacturers. That sort of thing isn't regulated much, so I'm a bit suspicious.
Anyway, that, and restarting the phone line when it went down, is about all I did all day. I did a few rows of beading and one row on the bedspread, but that's it. I'm not quite sure what my problem is, but I'm having a hard time getting interested in any particular crafts. I presume that eventually this will pass, but right now, I feel bored, and all I've been doing is play games, and that's boring, too, after a while. I can't think of anything in particular that I'd like to do. Very strange. I guess I'm still recovering from my frustrating May.
Anyway, I seem to have gotten my hours straightened around pretty well, so I guess I'll try to keep it that way. It's hard when the sun doesn't set until nearly 10:00, because I'm used to going to bed in the dark. Not that I'm complaining, you understand. We are blessed with nearly 16 hours of daylight these days, and it hardly seems right to waste any of it.
The bird feeder was overwhelmed with goldfinches today. There was one point where every perch on the finch feeder, every perch on the big feeder, and the thistle socks were all occupied! I think there were hummingbirds, too, but they come and go so fast I didn't see them very much. There were a couple of evening grosbeaks around, and one of my little red squirrels made several trips into the platform feeder. Most of the feeders are still full, but I'll have to check the platform feeder tomorrow. It may be full of shucks by now. They are fun to watch.
So another quiet day in the field, just enjoying being here.
June 14 - Flag Day I didn't sleep so well last night. I guess I got started on my antibiotics just in time, because I was having night sweats all night long. It was one of those cool humid nights where I had trouble getting the covers right anyway, and makes me think about long-sleeved summer-weight nighties. I think I've mentioned that in prior years. What I needed was something to cover my feet (always) and something to cover my arms and my neck and leave the middle part uncovered. Two sets of sheets, or something?
Anyway, I could have slept for several hours more this morning, but I got up reasonably early, which was good. Not only did I have a long conversation with the Wal-Mart pharmacy, I remembered that tomorrow is the 15th and I had checks to write.
There was a nice thunder shower at about 6;30, and another around 10:00, when I was about to leave, but it had pretty much stopped when I pulled out of the garage at 10:30, with the camera and the coolers in the car.
I was pretty much the only one on the road for most of the way to Houghton. The worst thing I ran into was a work crew on the covered road who were evidently replacing culverts and digging up the road in spots. They didn't do a very good job of patching, either. I did have to pass one lady in a pickup who was going at a very sedate pace. Well, maybe she knew her vehicle, but I can go faster than she was. It drizzled for a while, but most of the water was being splashed up from the road.
That Wal-Mart is an incredible mess. They are enlarging the original building on two sides, and they've moved the entrance down several hundred feet, but the worst part is that they are in the process of moving everything around, and already I think the store is twice the size it used to be. I never did find the electronics department. I had to replace the color cartridge in the printer, and I wanted to get a backup. I also never found the bathroom. So by the time I got out of there, I was exhausted, had sore feet, and needed to pee.
I don't know if this is the final configuration or not, but if so, they have less drugstore type items and cleaning supplies, but more sewing and crafts stuff. Right now, it is a terrible mess, the layout makes no sense at all, and it's so huge I may have to go to other places that are smaller. Or work really hard to get into shape.
So then I went to the Ming Bistro. Ming Gardens closed for good last fall, and the buffet is the only place open now. i was rather disappointed. They had a rather strange mixture of dishes, including some really American stuff, and it wasn't all that good, I thought. Some of the dishes had suffered from being in the steam tables too long. And I did laugh - there was one that said it was chicken with broccoli that had only broccoli in it - somebody had come by and taken all the meat and left all the veggies. And while I was eating, some people came in with two kids - one little boy, not talking yet, who was a screamer, and a little girl who enjoyed running around the table in circles. It's nice that people take their kids out to restaurants, I just wish they'd do it when I'm not there. I will probably go back, because it will take me a few trips to get the routine down. I took only one plate, but I noticed that most people took a few things on a plate - like appetizers and soup - and went back for the other things. Probably that's a better way. I did enjoy the vegetable Lo Mein, and the sesame chicken, and there was one spicy dish with beef, chicken and green peppers that was good. I don't know if they have the same thing every day or something different every day.
Then it was off to Econo Foods, and I laid down $200 stocking the pantry. I needed things like potatoes and onions, as well as JD, and the early summer fruit is in. I also wanted to put some real meat in the freezer for the future - chicken and round steak and things like that. I don't think I'll be spending quite so much the next time. Or I hope not. Thankfully, Econo has not changed their entire layout: they did that last year. I know pretty well where everything I want is located, it's just that it's a huge store and there's a lot of walking. Evidently I looked so exhausted when I was checking out that the packer, who I think is something other than a packer, asked me if I wanted package pickup! That is a nice feature of that market, and I've used it before when I had a huge order. They roll the cart outside at one end of the store, and you can pull your car right up to it, and they will help you load. I don't use it much because I have to sort through the stuff and put the cold stuff in the coolers, but it has been a lifesaver.
Anyway, by the time I got out of there and packed up, I was truly exhausted, then I had to stop for gas. As was the case last summer, their gas station has the lowest prices I saw, and I tried to check every station I passed on the way down. $2.16 is relatively comparable to what I saw in Detroit for self-serve, considering the transportation charges. Actually, the place to get gas, if possible, is in Baraga, where the Keweenaw Bay Chippewa have a nice station with very low prices. However, I wasn't going to drive another 40 miles just go get cheaper gas - that's self-defeating.
When I got out of Econo, it was drizzling or something, and it was very foggy, so foggy that the top of the Quincy mine hoist was lost in the clouds when I got there. It was less foggy in Calumet, but from about Phoenix north, there was fog, but not too thick.
South of about Phoenix, the lilacs are just about gone, and the daisies are coming out. The mountain ashes are in bloom, however, and the lupines are at their peak. If it clears up any time soon, I'd like to drive down Lac LaBelle road, where the ditches on the north side are just full of lupines, and they are gorgeous. I only have the dark blue ones in my field, but where they were planted by the oldtimers, they come in blue, purple, pink and white. I wouldn't mind a field full of them. I noticed, when I stopped to get my newspaper at the end of the road, that a few of the early wild roses are out, so I guess I will have to get down into my garden, just to smell a while.
It was a bit warmer in Houghton, of course, but temperature here was in the middle 50s all day long and is now dropping off. We just had another heavy rain shower, and I guess that is supposed to go on all night and maybe tomorrow morning before it finally clears up and warms up a bit.
So that was my exhausting day. Now I need to take my pill bottle and crawl up to the north end and into my bed. Wow! Am I tired!
And it's a foggy night in the field.
June 13 That worked so well last night that I think I'll try it again tonight. I got into bed with a washcloth under the heating pad, and I read for a while. The hot compress made my leg extremely painful while it was on, but it felt much better overnight, which was nice.
I had hoped to stay awake until Venus came out, but along about 10;30 I got too sleepy, so I called it a night. I did go down to the great room to see where the moon was - it was high up behind the trees. Zzzzzzzz..........
Around 3:00, when I took a walk, it seemed to me that the northern horizon was unusually bright, but if there were northern lights, they were behind the trees. It didn't keep me awake.
I got up at 8:30, which was nice for a change. It was a truly gorgeous morning, with not a cloud in the sky and plenty of sun, but it was quite cool - the temperature started out around 55º, dipped to 50º around noon, and has now risen back into the upper 50s. By about 10:30 there were some puffy little clouds in the sky, then they went away. Along about 4:30 some clouds loomed up in the west and it has now clouded up, and there is a line of showers southwest of us and heading this way. So it will be a cloudy night, and I guess it's supposed to be showery tomorrow, too.
That's too bad, because I called the doctor, and he called in a prescription which I have to pick up tomorrow, so I have to go to town, rain or shine. Another reason to get to bed early.
I spent some time watching the birds, although there weren't many. There were some goldfinches, and there were a few hummingbirds, all male. The highlight of the day is that I've had several evening grosbeaks at the platform feeder. They are very pretty birds, and it's fun to watch how easily they can shuck a sunflower seed. They evidently turn it around with their tongues (I wasn't sure birds had tongues, but evidently they do).
The other news of the day is that one of the poppies is out, as well as one iris that has never bloomed before. It is a dark, velvety plum color. I will get down to take pictures, but I did some things in the kitchen today, including the broiler pan.
So now it is cloudy and dull again. It always interests me that the storms are coming in from the west, but the breeze is from the east. I think that will probably change.
So a quiet Monday in the field, and now to bed.
June 12 Tonight, I'm going to do this early and go sit in bed with my leg elevated and a hot compress on it. It seems I have my cellulitis back. Tomorrow I will be calling my doctor, and if he won't fax me a prescription for the two antibiotics I had the last time, at least he can tell me what they were so I can pass it on. Poo. I'd hoped I was over these minor medical misadventures for the summer.
I got up late this morning...in fact Buster was sitting beside me staring at me, I was so late. When we got up, it was a gorgeous summer morning, perfectly clear, with a temperature about 73º. It was extremely humid, but there was a nice soft breeze out of the southwest. So I went out one door of the porch and in the other one, leaving both open, and I opened up the house. It was lovely.
I decided this was the morning to put out the bird feeders, so I went and filled them all, which bothered my back. I was sitting recovering from that when the wind shifted to the west and picked up into the 15 to 20 mph zone and the temperature dropped from 73º to 60º in about 15 minutes. It also clouded over.
Buster went rushing around like something was after him, for some reason I don't know, but then it appears he settled down for a long summer's nap on the ugly chair (which I have not yet sat in) while I went rushing around and closed all the west facing doors. It's always fun to see how fast the weather can change around here!
By 1:00 the clouds had blown away, and the rest of the afternoon has been glorious - clear and sunny and breezy. The temperature rose as the afternoon wore on, and it got almost back to where it was this morning, although the humidity has all gone and it has been wonderful.
About two hours after I got the feeders up, a pair of goldfinches were eating thistle seed, so I don't think it will be long before the birds will be back, even though we missed all the spring migration (rats!). There were so many hummingbirds at Harbor Haus tonight that I came home and put out a feeder. I didn't do it earlier because of the wind, which has died back a bit now. I'm hoping to be able to sit and watch birds in a day or two.
Otherwise, I got the suitcases cleaned out and stashed away, and I did some beading, although it seemed like I had to rip out nearly as much as I put in.
Unfortunately, this weather isn't supposed to last long, although it's supposed to be clear tonight, for the first time since I've been here. Actually, it cleared up briefly about the time I went to bed (around midnight), and there was a nice crescent moon hanging over the lighthouse when I turned out the light. During the few clear times there have been, I noticed that Arcturus isn't in view from my windows yet and the Big Dipper is still relatively high overhead, so that I can't see it from the bathroom window. Venus and Mercury are both supposed to be in view now, although low in the sky, so I will have to see if maybe I can see them tonight.
So that was an almost perfect day in the field.
June 11 I'm going to try to get to bed a bit earlier tonight, but we shall see.
The day was foggy and hazy and humid, but the temperature was in the low 50s for most of the day, although it climbed up above 60º late in the afternoon. Sometime after noon a line of thunderstorms came through, rather quickly, and after that it almost cleared up again. Just now there was another, but it didn't amount to much - quite a bit of noise, but not much rain, and it almost looks like the sky is clearing again over to the west.
I spent most of the day monitoring the phone line, because when it got damp and began to rain, it was almost impossible to keep it up, and now, with the latest storm, it's happening again. What a pain!
However, instead of doing clothes, I put away all the food I brought - or I think I did. I may run across a bag here and there, but most of it is safely stowed away in the pantry. I also moved some things around in there, consolidated the cat food onto one shelf, and moved the extra paper goods down to where I can see them. In doing that, I resolved some confusion that resulted from having two houses. I knew that somewhere I had bought a ton of reseal able plastic bags, but when I began looking for them on Champine, it seemed like I had hardly any except for the very largest. Now I know why. They are all here. Oh. So maybe I can remember that I shouldn't buy any more bags here, but I need all sizes on Champine. Maybe.
At least that is done, and tomorrow I can put the crates and the extra pop out in the breezeway. Apparently Tom was afraid things would freeze in the breezeway, since it isn't heated - and he may have been right - so he brought all the boxes of pop into the house. Since I'm not drinking much caffeinated Coke any more, I have a lot of excess. I took out of the fridge what had been in there and replaced it with caffeine-free pop and lemonade, and while I was doing that, I wiped up some very sticky stuff on the shelves, I think where either pop cans or wine bottles leaked. And I rearranged some things in the Fridge.
Well, I guess I did do something.
I also did some beading, but I had done several rows when I realized I had made a mistake i the pattern before I tied off the last thread, so I had to pull out about an inch, weave in the old and new threads, and start over. I am not quite back to where I was when I started ripping, but at least the pattern is right. Then it got sort of dark, and I got hungry, so I stopped.
I ate in, a little steak and some veggies from the freezer, and it was nice. The only downside is that now I have to clean the broiler pan again.
It was fun to look down the harbor today. It seemed that every so often a very dense streamer of fog would come in the channel and lay across the water and up into the hills, then it would sort of spread out or go away, and then there would be another one. I did save one picture, from early this morning, that shows the effect. That was before I was ambulatory, so I didn't see it myself, Nobody else saw it, either, because the phone line went down, apparently when the first picture tried to upload, and I had to restart it when I finally got down to the office.
From the regional radar, it looks like we will be having storms off and on all night, and I'm not going to get to bed very early, either. So we shall see. I like to watch lightening at night.
So it was another quiet day, but the weather was interesting, and another task is done.
June 10 It was another late night last night, and it wasn't all my fault. I tried five or six times before I could get the journal uploaded. I kept getting errors that closed FrontPage or Explorer and I ended up rebooting before it would load properly. Heaven knows why. That's what makes computing so much fun.
I awoke rather late this morning, and I didn't really want to get up, but the sun was shining and I thought I might as well enjoy it. It clouded over for a bit, then I got to doing something else and when I looked around it was all sunny again and the temperature got into the upper 60s, and it was so nice that I opened up all the doors to air out the house, which rather smelled like fried pork sausage.
Around 5:00 I thought I heard a rumble of thunder way, way off in the distance, but there was only one. It's truly amazing how far sound carries over water. From the radar maps, I could see that there was a line of severe thunderstorms on its way toward us, and shortly the sky began clouding up and by 6:00 it was really dark and threatening. About 15 minutes later, the rain came marching down the harbor. I still find one of the neatest sights is to watch a rain squall start at the mountain and come across the harbor until it finally hits here. It's a sight one just never sees in the big city, and I still think it's cool to watch.
I had to jump up and close the doors, because not only was the wind rising, but the temperature dropped precipitously to around 56º - in a matter of five minutes or so. That's neat to observe, too.
I need to note that from the time the rain began, it was almost impossible to keep the phone line open. Although it didn't come up right this morning, from the time I restarted it until the rain, it had been pretty solid. I don't think the problem is with the wiring in the house.
It was still raining at 7:00, so I had pretty much decided not to go out to dinner when Cindy called to say that Shirley was at Mariner, and where was I? So I went, and discovered that the dining room was open, and I got to indulge in salad bar and fish, along with some good company.
I had stopped at the motel after I went to the post office, and I got to see the nice new things they have done, including some new furniture, and beds now anchored to the wall, a very large mirror in the bathroom, and new flooring in the bathroom. I didn't say it to Shirley, but I was glad to see that they have now anchored the beds to the wall. It seemed like, when my mother and I were living in room 33, every time we came, somebody had moved the beds around and either they were shoved almost together or one was nearly at the back windows. Now they are fixed in position and there will be no more rearranging of the furniture. She has also gotten some new bedspreads and some bed skirts, which look very nice.
I know Sully never thought it necessary to do any updating, but even in Copper Harbor, it is necessary to keep up with the times. I suppose she has raised prices somewhat, too, but room rates up here are all modest compared to most other pl |