Nothing Much

We have frozen pipes this morning.

Saturday morning it was cold in the house when I got up.  Thermometer said 54 inside.  I made a face, started the fire, started coffee and huddled under a blanket to read my morning comics.  Half an hour later my brain suddenly kicked me and I realized that if the house was 54 inside then the furnace wasn’t working (we keep it set to 60).  A check of the thermostat confirmed it was reading the same temp, and that the furnace was indeed not kicking on.

While we were waiting for the repair guy to show up for the Saturday emergency call I got a phone call from my mother.  My grandfather had been in the hospital since before Christmas with pneumonia (which I’d known), but he’d taken a turn for the worse and his lungs had shut down.  The family doesn’t believe in extra ordinary measures, so he’d been given two days to live.

A check of every airline and travel site I could think of netted me 0 tickets out of Syracuse on Saturday, and 1 on Sunday….to the tune of $3k.  Maxing out the credit cards was certainly an option, but with unknown repairs needed to the furnace $3k was out of the question.  Tickets flying out Monday were much more reasonable, but still not plentiful.  My mom called me back to say that the earliest they could get out of Boston was Sunday.  I told her that when she got there to take an evaluation of what was going on and I’d decide what to do then.  If they were saying he was holding on well and might last another couple days I’d get a ticket out then.  If not, well, I’d arrange to come down for the service.

The furnace repair guy arrived, turns out that the only thing wrong was us being new to home-ownership and furnace maintenance.  The furnace was fine, the feed line from the tank is just short enough that it won’t pick up fuel when the level in the tank drops below about 7 inches…..fee for the repair guy $120, and another $100 or so for kerosene from the local gas station to get us through to our scheduled delivery next week.

I took a deep breath and went back to looking at flights out.  Called my work to give them a heads up that I might be calling out with no notice at some point this week due to a family emergency.

About 6pm Saturday my mother called to say that my grandfather had died.  Even if I’d been able to get a flight out within an hour of her first call I’d have likely still been in the air when she called the 2nd time.  So now I’m waiting to find out when the service will be.  He wanted to be cremated and did NOT want any huge service or ceremony, so likely it’ll be quick.  Its still up in the air as to whether I’ll make it down or not.  Planes are flying, but with the cold sweeping the country who knows how long that’ll last, and what it’ll do to the ticket availability……

I added the BirdTrax gadget to my side-bar today.  Looks like a cool little gadget that helps keep track of bird sightings in the area.  For the moment its reporting sightings within 50km of Shoppingtown Mall in Syracuse NY, as I figured that was a generic location.  That might change depending on my mood…..

My spam count has suddenly increased dramatically again.  This time its mostly the fake drug spammers.  10+ a day most days for the last couple weeks.  If you posted a comment and it got held for moderation and you don’t see it posted to the blog it may have gotten caught up with the spam, please either re-post it or email me and I’ll see if I can find it in the spam folder!

We’ve had a pretty nice fall, weather wise.  We had an early mild frost mid September, that barely touched anything except heavily shaded areas.  And then it was gorgeous.  Temps in the upper 60’s and 70’s, lows just cold enough you wanted a coat.

Its finally come to an end.  These last few days its been colder and colder, the high progressively chillier and chillier though the lows only barely touched the freezing mark.  Then last night it froze.  I’m not sure what low we actually hit, but our thermometer said 22 degrees at 8am this morning.  I forgot to bring in the pumpkin yesterday before dark (I worked extra hours and by the time I remembered it was already full dark), so that’ll be coming in today.  And tomorrow I’ll dig up the remainder of the carrots.  I can safely assume everything else is dead.

Course, this coming Friday we have a predicted high of 67…..

Final garden tally:

1 cantalope (the rest rotted on the vine for no obvious reason)

0 watermelons (they looked good…till they all split before they were ripe)

2 pumpkins (one tiny)

1 batch of hot peppers (mixed hot wax and jalapeno), enough to make 1 batch of jelly (I usually get at least two, and last year I got 3 batches)

a random assortment of carrots, some did better than others

8 onions ( I only planted 10)

several zucchini, enough to keep us in zucchini muffins for the winter no problem

popcorn: the popcorn planted in the containers did pretty well though I had some fertilization problems, the popcorn in the ground mostly drowned, however I had 0 problems with ears being stolen.  Though I can’t prove it I suspect that the fact that it wasn’t sweet corn means that the critters weren’t drawn in.  I WILL be doing popcorn again next year.

Sunflowers: did pretty well despite the rain, we’ve got several heads of seeds drying

Berries: the ONLY survivors from my original plantings are my mixed assortment of blueberries.  Between being drowned, then scorched, and then drowned again, everything else died.  The blueberries aren’t huge, but they’re alive, putting out new growth, and even had a few berries this year, I’ve been highly impressed, especially since one of the varieties is a fancy thats only barely tolerant of this sort of climate.  I planted new berries this year using tires as raised beds.  They all survived the summer rains and one of the golden raspberries even produced some late berries!

I’ve made a deal with a local repair shop to get used tires for free.  As many at a time as I can fit in the back of my Dodge Caliber.  Which means 4-5 large truck tires or 8-10 car tires per load.  I’m picking them up after work every day till I have the shed as full as I’m willing to get it, and then I’ll spend my free time this winter cutting sidewalls.  Nothing will be planted in the ground next year, everything will go in “raised beds” courtesy of those tires.  Filling them with dirt is going to suck.  I’ll have to see if I can arrange a couple pickup-loads before the ground thaws in the late winter so that we can drive right on back and shovel it into the tires from the truck bed.  But I think it’ll be worth it in the long run for the garden.  And I need to figure out how to handle the weeds.  Standard weedbarrier just doesn’t hold up well to that sort of abuse.  I’m thinking some cheap tarps held down by the tires and cut under the tires to allow roots through, but we’ll see what I can get, and I’m not sure about the run-off from those…..

Not much going on  here.  I’m still without a desktop.  Mostly because I’m picky about what I want in a computer (for example Windows 7 and NOT 8 thank you very much) which means that the new computer isn’t going to be the cheapest one on the market.  I don’t need anything HUGELY high end, but it has to have Win 7, and it has to be able to handle the graphics and video work I do.   And we just don’t have that much spare cash at the moment.  BTW, on the same note: Don’t bother with Dell’s financing.  Apparently they tell everyone that they’re approved and THEN lock the account till they finish their verification process (which can take weeks) during which you can’t use the account to purchase a computer.  They pissed me off enough that once we DO buy me a new computer I can promise it won’t be a Dell, dispite the fact that my last two computers were Dells and in general I like their product.

Anyway, some pictures I’ve taken recently:

I know, the header’s screwy, the guy who writes the theme I’ve butchered to create my own has modified his code, and without my computer I don’t have the tools I need to fix it.  Though if this takes to long I may end up installing them on hubby’s computer so I can fix it.

On the same note, anyone know of any GOOD resources for learning PHP?  I really just need to break down and create my own theme…..

I found out a month or so ago that one of the guys I graduated highschool with had been diagnosed with cancer.  I wasn’t told what kind, and I didn’t pry. 

We weren’t close friends, but when there’s only 14 students in your graduating class you get to know someone fairly well.  But I’d not kept in touch with him either.  He went to college across the country from me, and we didn’t keep in touch.

He passed away Sunday August 11, 2013.   He was 34.  He’s survived by his wife, sister, parents, grandparents, and a load of cousins and other relatives.

Edit: wow, I was really out of touch.  It was his wife who’d been diagnosed with cancer.  His death was unexpected.  At this time his cause of death is unknown.  His wife passed away this morning (August 13, 2013).  Now I really feel like hell…..