Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

This past weekend, we acknowledged the move into Summer (without much Spring) by dragging the swamp cooler outside (it's on wheels), removing the racks from the sides, and using the garden hose to blast off most of the accumulated build-up on the racks. We also got some cooler cleaner to tackle the accumulation in the bottom. Much of it is hard-water build-up, but some is from an anti-foaming/air freshener cake we'd been using. I got most of it cleaned. Because so much of it was in the pads in the side of the cooler, we bought new pads and Lisa cut them to fit into the cooler.

Sometime in the next few days I'll do the other half of the switchover, which is to move the remaining firewood from the ready box on the porch back to the wood box, and to put the ready box inside the wood box until we need it again, probably in October. That gives us more space on the porch. Oh, and I'll finally finish digging the last of the ashes and cleaning the glass on the fireplace. Earlier this year during our first warm spell, I cleaned it out, only to be surprised by a spring snowstorm and the need to restart the fire.

This morning would have been excellent for train photography, such as maybe the passing westbound morning California Zephyr, because BNSF happened to have pulled every car from the two-track mini-yard in front of the house, and the Mountain of Ties is gone. However, I was too busy with Day Jobbe to spend time shooting photos. Besides, when Amtrak went by, I was busily trying to get the wood stove a bit hotter, and couldn't get outside to the porch fast enough to wave at the train as it went by.

Speaking of the temperature, we're very lucky that the temps are trending upward a bit. I've been opening the woodbox door in the morning to let the rising sun melt the ice and dry out the logs stacked in there (they got a bit wet and icy while in the utility trailer). And we haven't had to use quite as much wood to keep things warm. This is also good because I'm too busy with Day Jobbe right now to go into Reno in the mid-afternoon early enough to try out the wood supply place. Fortunately they are open Saturday morning as well, so that's our current target.

ETA: That must have been the "Fernley Flyer," not Amtrak, that went by when I was working on the fireplace. At 7:45 PM this evening, as Lisa and I headed out for a walk, the westbound Zephyr came by, almost exactly twelve hours late. The train had a Union Pacific freight locomotive on the point and only one of its usual two Genesis locomotives trailing. (Presumably the Amtrak crew would have been in the trailing cab, where they were responsible for providing "hotel" power to the train behind them, while a UP crew piloted the train westward.) That's a messy day indeed. Probably one of the Amtrak locomotives failed badly on the road, and in an inconvenient place, leading to big delays while UP dispatched a locomotive and crew to rescue them.

While watching the Superb Owl (online, from the comfort of my home, far away from the madness that took over the Bay Area this past week), it occurred to me that the replay challenge system in American gridiron football should take a page from the challenge system in tennis. You should continue to be charged a timeout for an unsuccessful challenge (albeit that Carolina was robbed on their first challenge; it should have been ruled a completed pass), you should not be charged anything for a successful one. In other words, if you have time outs left, you should be able to challenge. None of this, "You were right, but you're only allowed two challenges per half whether you were right or not."

The day went quite well for me, particularly inasmuch as I did not bet on the Big Game, for I would have lot my money. Instead I spent the morning and early afternoon unloading firewood from the utility trailer and doing chores around the house, then getting myself all set for game watching, along with indulgences such as pickled eggs, German sausages, good cheese, and salsa and chips. And I didn't even need to use the antacids.

I got home around 8 PM last night, including a long stop in Sacramento to visit and talk with my sister. Lisa had already gone to bed because her sleep schedule is very disrupted.

( Digging Out of a Piled-Up To-Do List )

By the time we got the minivan window replaced, Lisa's day was nearly done, so we headed back home. We have grocery shopping still to do in Reno/Sparks for Thanksgiving and to try and refill some of the canned food larder that is now somewhat depleted, so I reckon we'll have to go there again tomorrow, and we haven't actually unloaded the firewood. (I've pulled out enough wood to keep us warm tonight and tomorrow morning. The full unloading job is an hour or so of Lisa handing wood to me over the fence and me packing it into the wood box.) But the most urgent stuff is done, and we're feeling better. And I'm much happier doing these domestic chores than I was much of the past two weeks.

As some of you may recall, we had a water main break this past month. It's fixed how, and this month's water bill came: 7000 gallons. The previous month was 4000. Given our usage patterns here, we have a hard time believing that we were using 4K gallons, so our theory continues to be that there was a leak all along, and that last month it just got bad enough that we noticed and had it fixed. We'll see next month where the level goes.

Lisa finished breaking up one of the many wooden pallets we have acquired. The Douglas Fir firewood is packaged shrink-wrapped on pallets. Waste not, want not: we burn the pallets, too. One pallet lasts roughly one day at our current burn rate, although it's not as cold as it has been so we haven't needed to burn at maximum rate.

You may recall that a couple of months ago we broke the non-sparking propane wrench we use on our the propane tanks on the travel trailer. A few days ago, the eBay search I put out on the item (the Sav-A-Nut wrench, made by a now-defunct business) popped up, I put in a bid, it won, and it came in costing less than the shipping, which is a pretty good bargain. I'm going to keep the search active, though, because given that they don't make that wrench anymore, it might be good to get a spare or two.

I spent a lot of time today sleeping, but even I can't sleep all day, so I managed to get a bit of record-keeping done for the SF & F Translation Awards and then went out for some minor shopping. Since in a few weeks (assuming I get an opening into the place I'm hoping to move), I probably won't have a full kitchen, I'm taking advantage of still having one to do some relatively adventurous (for me) cooking.

I went through all of my key rings and while I was able to remove three keys that appear to be to locks that no longer exist, I cannot identify the key to the Reno locker. Lisa will go through her keys as well, but for now we'll have to work from the assumption that sometime after we stored stuff in the locker on the Sunday of Renovation and this past Saturday, we managed to lose the locker key. That's very annoying.

At the moment, I have more keys than ever, because I'm carrying everything for Fremont, Fernley, and the Oregon buildings as well as things like my locker in Yuba City and my office in San Mateo. Eventually I hope to be able to retire at least the Oregon keys.

The clothes dryer in my apartment started making unhappy rattling noises while I was drying the last load of my laundry a few days ago. I thought it might be some sort of load imbalance, but even running empty it still rattles once it warms up. I reported it to the property manager and yesterday got a call from the appliance repairman. Unfortunately, the earliest he can be here is Friday morning, and by Noon Friday I hoped to be on the road for Oregon. That means I won't be able to dry the laundry I need to do by Thursday to pack for the trip. It's a minor annoyance — there's a laundromat only a short distance from here — but an annoyance nonetheless.