Though there are apparently a number of things my sinuses dislike, such as mold spores and possibly some plants, I’ve never really suffered from the traditional allergy symptoms; instead, I usually developed terrible sinus headaches which, if not stopped in time with pseudoephedrine, generally led to dizziness and violent nausea. In New Orleans I had to treat such headaches about once a week year-round, so you can imagine how mightily pissed off I was when the nanny state decided I needed to ask permission and be recorded in a government database every time I bought the medicine I could not function without. When I moved to Oklahoma, the headaches became far less frequent, but I still got them about once a month or so. Since I moved to Washington state, however, I very rarely get them, and when I do they tend to develop much more slowly, so I have plenty of warning and can take my medicine before things spiral out of control. But since I’ve been living at Sunset full-time, I’ve noticed that I sneeze a great deal more than I ever have before, and last Thursday I started suffering from the itchy, watery eyes I’ve heard other people talk about, but have never experienced before. By Friday morning I was so congested I had to breathe through my mouth, and no amount of nose-blowing produced even the slightest result; it was as if someone had implanted a big, dry sponge in my sinuses. Large doses of several kinds of antihistamines and decongestants produced no results until Saturday, and by yesterday it had retreated into a mere sniffle and my eyes were back to normal. I have to assume that a change in weather had triggered the release of pollen or spores from some plant not found in the South, resulting in a new kind of allergic reaction for me; it’s not fun, but I have to say it was a helluva lot less unpleasant than being so sick I need to retreat to a dark bedroom to sleep it off.
Posts Tagged ‘Sunset’
Diary #728
Posted in Diary, tagged drugs, Louisiana, nanny state, Oklahoma, Sunset, Washington (state) on June 11, 2024| 2 Comments »
Diary #727
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset on June 4, 2024| Leave a Comment »
The three new pullets have almost fully joined the flock; they go in and come out with the other chickens, and are starting to scratch with them too. They mostly keep to themselves on the edge of the flock, timidly scratching for the corn I throw out, but at least they’re mostly hanging around in the same area as the others instead of hiding in the alley behind the henhouse. In about another month, they’ll start laying these little pullet eggs, and by the end of the summer they’ll be just like the others (though it’s not unusual to see even the adult hens keeping close to the others from their brood). And then by the end of winter, they’ll be old ladies I need to protect next year’s pullets from. And in case you’re wondering what Cicero and Louie are up to there, they learned long ago that if they come to the fence while I’m in the coop and beg for corn, I’ll throw some over the fence for their lunch.
Diary #726
Posted in Diary, Miscellaneous, tagged cops, holidays, psychology, rape, Sunset on May 28, 2024| 1 Comment »
Longtime readers may remember that Memorial Day is generally bad for me emotionally due to some very bad memories associated with the day. But since I moved to Sunset full-time, it hasn’t been nearly as sharp. Part of it is probably just time working its magic; it’s been almost thirty years now, and though the feelings stayed intense until beyond the 20-year mark, the trauma seems to have receded far enough into the past now for the feelings associated with its anniversary to be more manageable. Another part is that living here keeps me a lot busier than living in Seattle did, and having a more rigid schedule than was possible when I was still working full-time provides me with a sort of fence that helps to keep memory monsters out of the yard of my conscious attention. And then there are aggravating factors; I think in the past, other stressors tended to hitch rides with the bad memories, creating one big bandwagon of unpleasantness every last weekend of May. But in the past few years I’ve managed to cultivate a better emotional state in general, so those other bugaboos are neither as noisy nor as active as they once were. I’m not going to tell you that this past weekend was perfectly peachy and funk-free, because it wasn’t (as evidenced by the fact that I thought about it enough to write this column); however, neither was it as bad as such weekends have mostly been in the past. And that is definitely something to be thankful for.
Can You Picture That?
Posted in Diary, Miscellaneous, Music, tagged STEM, Sunset, video, Washington (state) on May 17, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Aurora borealis shinin’ down on Dallas
Can you picture that? – Paul Williams
Most of y’all probably know that the world enjoyed some intense auroral activity last Friday night due to unusually powerful solar storms; what made this manifestation especially unusual is that it could be seen well outside of its typical range, even well down into the US South (as far as Florida!) So I thought I’d share a few more of the pictures I took from my office window.
Diary #724
Posted in Diary, tagged STEM, Sunset, Washington (state) on May 14, 2024| 3 Comments »
Ever since I moved to Seattle in 2015, I’ve been hoping to see the aurora borealis, but no luck; even had we not been at the wrong part of the sunspot cycle, Seattle’s light pollution would have made it unlikely at best. So I was pretty jazzed to hear last Friday that the biggest solar storm since 2003 was generating intense auroral activity worldwide. I went outside about an hour after sunset, then again about 11:30, and was disappointed both times; since it wasn’t very cloudy, though, I figured I’d check again later. So when I got ready for bed and went upstairs about 1 AM, I looked out of my office window (which faces east) and saw a faint green glow shimmering in the sky. I shut off my computer and desk lamp, then the lamp beside my bed, and as my eyes adjusted to the darkness I was rewarded with a much brighter glow. I watched for a while, gazing up in wonder at the gorgeous light show the sun, the Earth’s magnetic field, and the laws of physics were putting on for those who cared to look up, and found that my understanding of what caused the phenomenon actually enhanced my appreciation of it. I thought that it might be too faint for my phone camera to capture, but was delighted to discover that the exact opposite was true; the images in my camera were actually bolder than what my aging eyes could make out unassisted. By the time I decided I really should get to bed it was almost 2:30 and I had taken several really good shots, posted them on Twitter, and texted them to several friends I knew would appreciate them; I only hope I don’t have to stick around until 2035 to see it again!
Diary #723
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset on May 7, 2024| Leave a Comment »
I’ve never had pullets grow as quickly as this bunch; not only are they already beginning to look like adult hens, they’re boldly shooting out of the nursery every morning and have already started exploring outside, as you can see. One of them is already clucking, which surprised the hell out of me because normally they’re still peeping until around the time they start laying, around midsummer; I wonder if they’ll start laying early as well? It wouldn’t surprise me, nor will it surprise me if the biggest of the three ends up being the alpha hen despite her youth, given that I’ve never seen one so bold at this age. The other two already follow her lead, and none of them are as nervous as most chickens; while most of them apparently find my moving around while I deal with their food and water every day to be cause for alarm, these three seem perfectly comfortable scratching near my feet while I work. Perhaps that calm energy will even spread to the older chickens, and wouldn’t that be nice? The only thing that remains to be seen before I give this breed my stamp of approval is how well they lay, but given that they haven’t disappointed me yet, I’m quite hopeful.
Diary #722
Posted in Diary, tagged Sunset on April 29, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Another sign of spring at Sunset: the apple trees are in full bloom! One of our neighbors started keeping bees a year or so ago, so the pollination is usually reliable around here. And though it’s still a little chilly most days, we’ve had a number of sunny days interspersed with the rainy ones. From now until the end of June, we’ll see fewer rainy days each week, and lighter rain when they come, and I have the feeling we’re going to have another good fruit year unless the heat of July and August proves excessive. I’ve never been a gardener, but I do enjoy having fresh fruit in late summer and early autumn, including tomatoes again this year. As time goes by and I perfect all my various chores and practices, I’m slowly adding new things (like the tomatoes, and composting) as I think I can handle them without packing my already-busy schedule too tightly; I am semi-retired, after all. So I just need to find the golden mean of farm work: enough to keep me active and supplied with the fresh foods I like, but not so much that I don’t have time to enjoy it. 
Diary #721
Posted in Diary, tagged Sunset, Washington (state) on April 23, 2024| 1 Comment »
Last year, I definitely took the shutters down too early because I unwisely let a warm week convince me it was time. So this year, I decided I would do it no earlier than Easter and no later than May Eve, essentially sometime in April; that seems right because I put them back on when the rains start in October. But the weather has been wackier than usual this year, so it wasn’t until this past Thursday that I decided it was time. We’re still getting some chilly nights, but the days are sunny and reasonably warm, and we’re past the really heavy rains now. It’s true that we’re definitely too far north for a screen porch like the ones that were ubiquitous where I grew up, but the atrium is a nice compromise: closed in enough for the cold months, but with a nice breeze and plenty of light in the few warm ones. And as you can see, Rocky agrees with me.
Diary #720
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset, video on April 16, 2024| 1 Comment »
On Sunday, I opened up the nursery so the pullets could come out, and plugged their heat lamp into the timer so it only comes on at night. As usual, one of the adult hens barged in there pretty quickly to eat their food (as though they had none of their own), but while the pullets usually cower from the hen, this time one of them actually pecked her! I was not entirely surprised, because that same one has pecked at my hand nearly every day when I reach in to grab their food dispenser for cleaning and refilling. And in that same vein, within ten minutes they were venturing out, which is very unusual; typically, they huddle in the nursery for days despite the open door, only venturing out timidly after a week or so. And while I’m glad to see that they’re bolder now than most chickens, that means I’ll have to watch them next year to be sure they don’t aggressively pick on the new chicks as their sapphire gem predecessors did.
Diary #719
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset, Washington (state) on April 9, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Regular readers know that I like seasonal weather to be seasonal. In other words, I like dark, gloomy, rainy weather in the winter, but when it’s time for spring I want to see spring weather; one drawback of living on the Olympic Peninsula is that winter weather often holds on here well into April, which offends my conception of an orderly world. But this weekend we finally started getting the first signs of warmer, drier weather, and the weather forecast predicts much more of the same in the coming weeks; as things stand now, I’ll probably take off the shutters a week from today or thereabouts. The animals are pretty happy about the weather change, too; Shiloh and Jonathan are starting to graze on the fresh shoots of grass, and though Louie has been sunning himself for a couple of weeks now, Cicero has arthritis in his right foreleg and I think the ground has been a bit too cold for him before now. But here he is on Sunday, enjoying the afternoon sun in the north pasture. So while we’ve already seen spring flowers and the Canada geese have been passing overhead for a week or so, at Sunset a sunbathing Cicero is our truest sign that spring has indeed sprung.
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