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A View From the Field |
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February 3 Another night, another 6000 words. This is going to be the longest part yet, to make up for the last one that was the shortest. I think I stared at the floor for quite a while, because I didn't turn out the light until 1:00. I slept well, and at about 9:00, I got a call from the electric company that they were going to service my generator. I dozed for a while, but I was up before 10:00. Not enough sleep again.
I knitted my square and got dressed, and the guy didn't show up until after noon. Then he left without telling me what he found. I guess it will probably self-test around 12:30 on Fridays now, but we'll see next week. I hope he would have told me if he found anything bad, but I would like to know how many hours I put on it last year. Lots, I'm sure. I figure at least 60. Even though it contributed to my current financial problem, I can't tell you how happy I am that I have that thing!
I didn't do much. I thought I was going to get a Schwan's order this afternoon, so I didn't go to the post office, then they didn't come. Something weird is going on there, and I don't have it figured out yet, but I did call them and we'll see what happens. I wanted that order - it had some things in it that I'm running low on.
I converted last month's journal to Word, although I didn't edit it. And I finally washed a couple of pans that were in the sink and put some more to soak. That's all.
The weather was blah and very un-wintry again. The temperature was around 35º all night, then it slowly fell all day, until it's 28º now. There wasn't much of any wind. It was mostly cloudy all day, although it seemed to clear up a bit around sunset. We've lost a whole lot of our snow.
I reset the end points of the camera last night, and I did it again just now. We now have 9h40m of daylight - we've gained over an hour in the past month! How nice. The only thing that ever bothers me about winter is how short the days are, and it's nice that we're on the upward leg now, almost 3 minutes a day.
Jasmine tried a couple of times to come upstairs, but every time I was going toward her and she beat it. I sent for some of her favorite dry food, and it came today, along with a box of neat little toys. A long time ago, I had some foil balls for the Christmas tree that a certain black friend of mine just loved to play with. These are the same idea, but they're much smaller and so light they almost float. I hope she likes them. Maybe I should hang them from a little tree.
One problem with Jasmine occurred to me today. I've always had ESP with all my cats. I can tell what they're thinking and they can tell what I'm thinking. I can sometimes tell what Jasmine is thinking, but she has no clue about me. One thing that causes is that she comes out when I'm about to get up and move, and she has to run away, because she has no idea that I'm going to get up or where I'm going. I don't know if she has that problem because she has no ESP, or just that she didn't learn to use it when she was a kitten. Anyway, there is just no communication between us, and I'm afraid that won't ever change. Poor Jasmine. If only she knew.
So that was another day, and I'm going to write for a while tonight again. I still have quite a bit to write on this story, and I'm getting anxious to get on to the next parts, which are older and need a lot more rewriting.
Now it's a dark, partly cloudy night in the field and it still feels more like March or April.
February 2 I wrote another 6000 words last night. This part isn't very hard, since I'm doing a lot of transcribing. Then I took a bath, so it was very late when I got to bed. I slept very well, but I woke up around 10:00 and had to walk, so I decided to stay up. Not nearly enough sleep, and I'm really tired now.
I got dressed with the idea of going to the post office, where there is a package, but then I forgot about it until it was too late. Well, tomorrow. Otherwise, I didn't do much of anything. Too tired.
It was another blah day. There was a ray of sunshine early in the morning, but it soon went away and it was another dark and dreary day. The temperature went up to 36º and stayed there and there was almost no wind. Blah.
Last winter was the windy winter. This winter is going to be the warm winter, unless the next two months reverse the trend. If I'd wanted winters like this, I'd have stayed in Detroit. Blah.
When I got up to go to the powder room this morning, Jasmine was sitting in the hallway, and this time, instead of ducking downstairs, she ran toward me and ducked under the sofa. She was bound and determined she was coming upstairs. A few minutes later, she started talking to me, and when I looked up, she was sitting on a step near the top of the loft stairs and peeking out between the railing rungs. She looked at me a bit suspiciously when I walked by her, but when I kept on, she just sat there and watched me go back to the studio. I don't know where she went then, because I wasn't looking. She may have spent the day in the loft. I hope so. I noticed yesterday that it's cool in the basement, and the loft should be about the warmest place other than the bathroom. What a strange little kitty she is!
So that was another wasted day, but oh, well. Now I think I will write a bit more and try to get to bed at a semi-reasonable hour. It's a dark, cloudy but warm night in the field.
February 1 I wrote around 6000 words last night, but then I started reading ahead, and I ended up getting to bed ridiculously late. So it was ridiculously late when I got up and it was a sort of a lost day, I guess.
I did half a square on the stole, and I did my surfing. Oh, yes, and just now, I finally set up the gallery files for 2012 and put out there the two pictures I saved from the camera. One was for January 15, which was a very nice sunset. I saved the last picture from yesterday, too, because it was so foggy down the harbor that it looked almost like a painting. So that task is done. Now we'll see if I can get it all uploaded right.
One of these days, I'm going to have to try letting FrontPage do the upload. Since I've had the new hardware and software, it's been apparent that most of my file problems on the old machine were due to Windows ME, and not due to FrontPage itself. Apparently the old software had a maximum number of files (2047) it could handle, and I exceeded that two or three years ago. The website doesn't take a lot of space on disk (about 72mb), but it does have a lot of files (nearly 5,000). I'm not quite brave enough to try it tonight, though. I want to write for a while.
The weather was blah, and I didn't go out. The temperature went from 30º to 33º, and while it was windy overnight, it wasn't today. It was cloudy and dull all day long, and there wasn't any sunset. Blah.
The final snow total for January was 67", and 120" for the season. That's a little behind last year and so far February doesn't look good, either, but we can't ever tell. All I can hope is that it starts snowing hard, soon.
I didn't see Jasmine, but she was in the great room when I finally made it to the kitchen, and she told me so.
I finally got downstairs late this afternoon, and although I didn't do everything I wanted to do down there, I did check the machine room, which looks all right, and I looked for my cotton yarn to make washcloths out of. I didn't find it, so maybe I never took it down? I don't know, but I'll check the closet tomorrow. I shopped the freezer and brought up some good things to eat. I'll be back at my noodles tomorrow. Sometime I'll cook again, and I do want to cook up a bunch of rice and freeze it, but for the time being, I'll be eating the frozen stuff again.
So that was my quiet day. Ron emailed me and it seems like our snow blower may have more problems than he originally thought, but if he, Marty and Mike can get it back together again, we may have nearly a whole new blower except for the housing. It will be expensive, but it may be a good thing. We use that thing a lot.
Now it's a dark, quiet night in the field. last updated 02/03/12 08:24 PM
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