What you’re looking at here is the ring which joins the plumbing of my hot tub to the heater; the flashlight is necessary because even in broad daylight it’s pretty dark in the basement. As I learned three years ago, when there’s a leak it’s typically because a two-dollar rubber o-ring needs replacement. But my body has aged considerably in the past three years, so it was much more tiring and unpleasant than it was last time, and I experienced nearly as much anxiety around the process as I did last time despite knowing exactly what needed to be done. That’s how it has been with nearly every technical problem since Grace died; even when it was something she could no longer do (like crawling under the floor or climbing up on the roof), I could rely on her technical expertise to guide me, and because I had faith in her ability I wasn’t as reluctant to attempt things I’d never done before (like welding a steel structure together). In contrast, I now experience considerable anxiety every time something technical needs doing; I even put off changing the main water-system filter for the entire last year because I was worried something might go wrong (I finally did it recently and of course it was fine). About 30 years ago my friend Frank said that tragedies are multiplied by the inconveniences they spawn, and I’ve had the truth of that ground into my heart every time I have a technical problem, because every time it does and she’s not there to fix it herself or tell me how to fix it, I am reminded of the huge Grace-shaped hole in my life.
Posts Tagged ‘Sunset’
Diary #831
Posted in Diary, tagged Grace, psychology, STEM, Sunset on June 1, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Diary #830
Posted in Diary, Miscellaneous, tagged animals, recipes, Sunset on May 26, 2026| 1 Comment »
It’s that time of year when y’all are starting to get tired of pictures of chickens, so I instead present something completely different: pictures of eggs. A few years ago I was given four ornamental chickens by friends who decided to stop keeping poultry, and I’ve been surprised that elderly (they’re all at least 6) chickens not really bred for laying are nonetheless still laying more than the much-younger blacks, who have been extremely disappointing layers. One of the Ameraucanas is starting to peter out; she now lays only sporadic, tiny, vestigial eggs. But one of the blacks laid this enormous goose-egg-sized monster last week; I’ve included a normal large-grade egg and one of the vestigial eggs for comparison. On Friday night I decided to make eggs in a frame for dinner, and I used the giant (which turned out to be double-yolked) and three of the tinies (which had no yolk at all); that’s how I typically use eggs whose size grossly departs from the norm, because they’d throw off the amount of liquid in a recipe, but that doesn’t matter when one is merely cooking them straight. Plus it’s kinda fun.
Diary #829
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset on May 19, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Sunday was graduation day for the pullets. On Saturday night I left the nursery open, and when I went into the henhouse on Sunday morning only one of them was still in there; after shooing her out I removed the chick feeder, water bottle, heat lamp and timer, so from now on they’ll come and go with the other chickens, on a natural daylight schedule. It’ll probably be a few weeks before they start to follow the flock, and they’ll generally keep to their own clique until they start laying sometime in July. I can’t yet tell whether the turkey is a tom or a hen, but she’s bolder than the others because despite being two weeks younger, she’s already noticeably larger. But in any case, by September the hens will all be one flock (plus the turkey), and on the first day of autumn the timer-controlled heat lamp will go back on, and the cycle will begin again.
Diary #828
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset, video on May 12, 2026| Leave a Comment »
This has been a rather timid brood; though the turkey chick has been occasionally venturing out into the chicken yard since the first day I started opening the nursery in the daytime, it took over two weeks for the pullets to even begin venturing out at all. It was last Wednesday before I found them all out of the nursery for the first time, and the only reason they even went that far was that I moved their water bottle out. Then on Sunday I stopped refilling their bottle in the morning, forcing them to use the same water dispenser as the adult hens. I’ve also started to shoo them out of the nursery in the morning; they’re going to need to be out by Sunday, when they officially join the flock. The timer (which sounds unusually loud in this video) will be also put away then, to wait until the first day of autumn before it’s again put back in control of the heat lamp.
Diary #827
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset on May 5, 2026| Leave a Comment »
At this time of year, the chickens tend to dominate the animal news in these diary columns, but they’re not really doing anything right now; this has been a rather timid brood, so I’m currently engaged in trying various maneuvers to coax them out during the days, so they’re used to it before I kick them out of the nursery for good a week from Sunday. Axel is doing well; as of Friday I cut his trazodone in half again, down to 12.5 mg/day, a mere 3.125% of the dose he started with at the end of November. The only really noticeable difference in his behavior is that he seems a lot more attention-starved since I cut him down to 25 mg at the beginning of April, but I’m sure he’ll adjust, and I hope to have him off of the meds entirely by the end of spring. Last Saturday I caught Lilith sunbathing on the atrium roof, but by the time I got downstairs to grab my phone and back upstairs, she had decided to get up. She has become the main pest control cat now that Rocky is getting old (I believe he’s ten now), and I often see her ranging around the area, from the roof to the atrium to the basement to the paddock, and even out on the driveway. Several times a week I find that she’s left me tribute of a dead mole or mouse, and last Friday I went out in the morning to find a rather large and rather dead rat right in front of my boots; I’m glad she rids me of vermin, but I must admit it was a bit startling to encounter a dead rodent nearly as large as my foot before breakfast. The only real complaint I have is that I wish she wouldn’t devour birds in the atrium, because it leaves a mess of feathers sprinkled with unidentifiable but definitely avian offal that I then have to vacuum up. I was concerned she might attack the pullets, but they’re nearly as big as hens now so I think they’re safe, even though I’ve actually found her in the henhouse a few times.
Diary #826
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset, video on April 27, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Though I’ve opened the nursery every morning for over a week now, the pullets are still largely uninterested in coming out yet. This is not unusual; there was a flurry of activity on the first day which resulted in one of the pullets going missing, but since then they have stayed where they feel safe. That includes the missing one; Wednesday I needed to drive into Seattle, so I planned to let them stay in the nursery that day. But when I went out to check their food and water, whom should I find wandering around the chicken yard but the missing pullet, very hungry and very vocal, but otherwise none the worse for wear. I was able to catch her and put her in with the others, and there she has stayed since. I have no idea where she went; I spent over an hour looking for her the day she vanished, to no avail. My best guess is that she managed to get through the narrow gap under the ramp and had been hiding under the house for three days; even though I crawled under there with a flashlight as part of the search, it’s a large area and even a thorough, hours-long search wouldn’t have sufficed to peer into every space under there large enough for a pullet. I’m just glad I didn’t lose her, and choose to view her mysterious return as a good omen for this year.
Mother Riley Meets Throwback Thursday
Posted in Miscellaneous, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged animals, blogging, Bluesky, consensual crime, cops, Never Call the Cops, psychology, Sunset on April 23, 2026| Leave a Comment »
I actually like winter, as one of four well-defined seasons; what I do not like is when winter is a bad guest which arrives earlier than it is supposed to or overstays its welcome.
– “Rain, Rain, Go Away”
Would that all of us could leave this earth so gently. – “Diary #668”
911…systems treat cops like Spam in the famous Monty Python sketch: a form of pork that you get with every order whether you like it or not. – “Dangerous Spam”
Smuggling is, was, and always will be a social good, providing to individuals what collectives and/or tyrants wish to deny to them or bleed them for wanting. – “The Tweets Go On“
Diary #825
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset, video on April 21, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Somehow, within three hours of letting the pullets out on Sunday, one of them managed to vanish. As you can see, one hasn’t left the nursery and two are huddled in the corner fretting (not an unusual behavior for the first week or so after they’re out). The turkey chick is more bold, wandering around the entire chicken yard. But there’s no sign of the fourth pullet. She’s not anywhere in the chicken yard, nor nearby outside, nor under the house, and I neither heard a ruckus nor found feathers which would indicate that something got her. My guess is that she managed to fly over the fence and ran off to hide in the underbrush, but I have no evidence for that; I reckon it’s just one of those things that happens when one keeps poultry.
Diary #824
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset, video on April 14, 2026| Leave a Comment »
For the past two weeks, the pullets have lived in their nursery in the henhouse; the heat lamp is still on 24 hours a day, and every day about noon or so I top off their food and change their water. This was taken immediately after doing that, which is why you can hear the water burping as the tray fills up. The reason it’s up on the cinder block is to keep them from clogging it up with shavings when they scratch; at this stage it’s the feeder which gets clogged instead, but as long as I clean it once a day it isn’t bad enough to stop them from eating. You can see that the turkey chick has now caught up with the pullets, and by the time they’re out of the nursery completely on May 17th, it will be noticeably larger. The next change, however, will be this coming Sunday; the heat lamp will go on the timer so it’s only on at night, and in the daytime I’ll open up the coop as it is in this video, then herd them back inside every evening. Every two days I’ll shorten the timer by half an hour, so their hours of darkness will slowly increase until it’s time to shut off the lamp for the summer, and by that time the hens will have stopped trying to harass them, and we’ll be settled into our routine until it starts to change again in late September.
Diary #823
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset, video on April 7, 2026| Leave a Comment »
As you can see, the chicks are in the nursery now. And even though the turkey is two weeks younger than the chickens, she’s nearly as big already. They’ll be confined full-time for two more weeks, then starting on the 19th they’ll be allowed to roam around the chicken yard during the day and only confined at night. Since they’re faster than the adult hens they can get away from aggressive hens in the daytime, whereas at night the door is closed so they’re cooped up in a small space. But after being near them for seven weeks, the adults generally lose interest, so I don’t have a pecking problem. And despite the turkey being younger, her (?) size will soon protect her.
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