since i didn’t buy any xtc cd’s during the month of august, i decided to do a double-buy today. two for august; two for september.
sadly, ‘english settlement’ was “temporarily out of stock”. i hopehopehope it’s really just a temporary condition. ‘english settlement’ was the first xtc record i ever owned and i am quite attached to it.
Continue reading “making plans for a really huge xtc collection on disc”
according to the kil-mor lady, i have “woods cockroaches.”:http://www.doyourownpestcontrol.com/info/roaches/pick-woods.htm
i’m guessing my perpetually wet basement, into which i’ve carried old firewood, where i keep lights on all the time, might have something to do with this problem. guess it’s time to start turning off the lights and burning that firewood! too bad it’s a little warm…
given the seemingly huge extent of the invasion, i’m going to go forward with the nasty toxic chemicals in addition to other abatement activities. there’s just _no way_ i can get that basement to stop leaking any time soon.
i’ve also got an appointment for the roofers to come out, though not any time soon. and i’m getting a termite inspection. and i left a messsage for the tree guy. i am the yoshimi of house care.
last night after work, i went up into the attic to find a box for the monitor. i didn’t find a box, but i did find a leak. it was actually extremely fortunate that i went up into the attic and was messing around in that particular corner; it looks like the leak hasn’t been there long and there’s no real damage to the wood. i need to call the roofers _today,_ though.
i gave jason the monitor and then had dinner with “alicia”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/spicyleesh/ and “sarah”:http://www.ovenall.com/diary/ at dales. alicia was interested in the stuff we know about the relationship between food choices and mood, plus it was fun to hang out!
after i got home from dinner, i completely failed to do anything but sit on the sofa, watch hammer shows, surf, and pet the cat. which i feel kind of guilty about. which lead me to thinking, this morning, whether i could get through a day without feeling guilty? it’s already too late for today.
i took a shower and, yes, one of my 3-inch flying cockroaches was occupying the bathroom when i went in there, but politely flew away so i could bathe in peace. the fact that i’ve become as complacent as i have about them leads me to believe that perhaps some drastic action is needed before they completely take over the household.
i’d only gotten about four hours of sleep sunday night so i went to bed at 10:30 and slept, amazingly, for a very long time. something like nine hours. i woke up twice, once at around 6am to a wildly vivid dream of carrying moses around a huge house, trying to safely get him to my room, encountering many animals which either he would hurt (bunnies) or who would hurt him (a large skunk who bit my hand and would not let go). the dream had a happy ending; i got moses to my room and he was safe and sound.
i awoke again at my 8am alarm to a vivid dream that lonnie’s was not just a shop, but an astoundingly lame and run-down roadside attraction, complete with large fields of dirt, old vw beetles on hydraulic lifts that the kids could ride in, and a building containing, presumably, some kind of homemade museum, guarded by a “neon red and orange”:http://www.gowesty.com/pics/colors/plaidcolors/red_orange.jpg snake who chased me around. i lost my purse somewhere in all the chasing and whatnot, and was so very relieved to get past the mean snake without being bitten (he looked so very poisonous), and to find spacepod, who looked quite odd, like a beetle that had been stuck in a matter transportation device with a cobra ( “the car,”:http://www.xs4all.nl/~luukb/cobra01.jpg not the snake), causing a melding of the two (a la ‘the fly’, the jeff goldblum version). not to look mutant gift snake/insect hybrids in the mouth, i opened his door and he started right up, even though i did not have my keys.
btw, i have a twin mattress and boxspring in my attic that, it occured to me, i have absolutely no use for. it is in the vicinity of the leak, so it may be ruined, but if i determine that it’s still viable, does anyone want it?
Just spoke with the ‘rebuild our starlite foundation’ woman, carla. she had contacted a group called “timeless cruisers” to see if they’d display their cars one sunday afternoon, but her vision wasn’t really a full-fledged car show.
she sounds pretty overwhelmed. i’m going to meet with her wednesday evening.
she told me that there’s no power to the main building at this time, because all power ran through the screen. In fact, bob’s mobile home, which is on the starlite lot, had to be rewired with its own utility pole put in, so he could get power to his house. it’s a mess.
she thinks her avon fundraiser will probably raise about $25k of the $50k that is needed in all– but that $25k will have to cover any expenses that are incurred in the fundraising, including i think paying the people who work there while there’s no money coming in to support them.
they are looking at the second saturday in september as a possible community cleanup day, and the second or third sunday in september as a possible day for a car show. that wouldn’t be enough time to do a car show the way i was thinking of it but the display-only thing that she was thinking of could possibly be arranged by then. we’ll see.
i think those folks can use all the help they can get.
this morning i woke up in the midst of some dreams, but not too early (dreamed that crazy-guy-who-dissed-me threw a catered party at which we had to give up our keys and prove to the caterer that we weren’t drunk before she’d give them back). had a nice breakfast on the back porch with kitty, then cleaned up a little in the back yard– not everything i had cut down had been bagged and dragged to the curb.
went to ooh la latte and worked for a few hours. got the nbeast registration form done quicker than i thought i would, plus the nice hat-wearing guy who works there was playing all kinds of great music. (he complimented my shoes last week and even knew they were borns!)
came home and decided to work on curtains for the westy. actually, as it turned out– curtain. one down, nine more to go! i think the rest will go a little faster. it’s the first real little bit of _creation_ i’ve done for the van… the rest has all been restoration, maintenance, and destruction. the new curtain is installed; it looks a little out of place but i think it’s adorable anyway 🙂 it’s too dark to take a picture now, but i’ll get some snaps maybe when a few more are completed.
for the record– sewing black snaps onto black fabric with black thread is kind of a pain!
I have a 17″ Sony Trinitron CRT monitor that I need to get rid of. I pretty much can’t sell it because everyone wants flat panels now. But it’s a beautiful monitor, has no problems, will work with a PC or with some Macs (depending on their video card/connector setup). I probably still have the original box.
If you know of a charity that could use this, or if you can get some good use out of it, it’s yours. I’d rather give it to a charity or a friend than go the freecycle route, but freecycle is my next step if none of y’all can use it.
well, i decided to go back to being a sub for this semester. my plan is to ask for a regular shift again in the winter.
i’ve pretty much decided that i do want to do something to help the starlite, though i’ll need to talk to those avon ladies first i think before i plan anything!
so that, coupled with “nbeast,”:http://nbeast.org work on my house and yard, the halloween party, the “old north durham web site,”:http://oldnorthdurham.org many long-promised but never delivered items for the “radio station web site”:http://wxdu.org (like, _a new web site_ ), and the “westy,”:http://spacepod.org/9WESTY means that i could use an extra evening free every other week.
it all kind of culminates in october, or at least nbeast (which is driving certain aspects of the westy project) and the halloween party (which is driving a lot of the house stuff) do, so my hope is that i’ll be _nearly bored_ in november and december. or else i’ll be completely burnt out and unable to do anything but watch re-runs of “mad about you” on tv.
someone on the diesel vanagon list posted pics from some incredible gathering of vw transporters in france (guessing from the url). (in europe, ‘transporter’ is what the ‘vanagon’ was called… and i think they had available many more variants than we did.)
anyway, “here’s on painted dark blue,”:http://vw.transporter.free.fr/galerie/2004/hockeneim/foto43.jpg which gives me an idea of what 9 Westy might look like once painted.
reprinted completely without permission from the Herald-Sun, since this is the only way I can keep this information around for more than a few days.
bq. “A Sunday fire may have destroyed the movie screen at the Starlite Drive-in. But a group of Avon representatives are doing what they can to raise it from the ashes.
bq. The screen was destroyed when the exhaust of a riding lawn mower ignited materials in a shed at the base of the screen Sunday afternoon.
bq. “We want to get this back up and running so everyone can have it the way it was or better,” said Carla Strawser, an Avon representative. “Hopefully, insurance will cover it when it gets up to standards.”
bq. The representatives will begin contacting local businesses about a fund-raising drive this week, Strawser said. All profits from Avon sales will go into the drive-in fund. Tax-deductible donations also may be made to the Save Our Starlite Foundation at any Triangle branch of RBC Centura Bank, Strawser said.
bq. She asks that anyone seeking information about donations call her at 451-2525. ”
today i wailed on my back yard. the bamboo grass that has taken over both the yard and the beds was knee-high, even waist-high in some places. i mowed most everything, then got the weed whacker going and razed one long bed, the back beds, under the hollies along the side, and the patio.
i took down some volunteer trees. i do have a few that are too big for me to take down without a chainsaw, but a couple of them might be ok to leave. i might need some help id-ing them so i know how big they’ll get. i’ll post pictures later.
i had one bed of hostas that was drowning in bamboo grass and grape vines. i was pleased to find that the hostas were still there, doing well under the weeds. i have a new-found respect for the hosta! my ferns, as well, were still peeking up through the weeds. i really love ferns and have always wanted to plant a lot more– but of course i never get past maintenance (or reclamation), so nothing new is ever planted.
i have decided to make a major change to the one long bed along my property line. i took all the plants down to the ground and plan to mulch it with newspaper/cardboard and mulch, like sarah is doing. that way, hopefully it won’t get overgrown again, and i’ll have the option of planting herbs next year if i get to it. i always feel especially bad about that bed, because it borders a neighbor’s yard which is usually very well-maintained, and i’m probably making his life harder with all my weeds. plus he has to look at it.
the previous owner of my house went in for a style of landscaping that i have decided i really don’t care for. some things i can change and some things– like the holly border– will have to stay. perhaps having my own plantings and having plants that i like will make it easier to be motivated to do yard work.
i would really like to plant a bunch of tulips. i believe that’s something i would do either next month or in october. if any of you know anything about tulips and have some pointers, i am all ears.
i wish i could work on it again tomorrow because if i had another day i could really bring it completely back. but i have to do the waaayyyy overdue “nbeast”:http://nbeast.org/ registration form tomorrow, and that may well take me all day.
i _was_ supposed to go out of town this weekend for bug-related stuff, but i decided this week that i just had to stay home and work on things here. looking out at the yard, i’m awfully glad i did.
*update:* photos on “my flickr account.”:http://flickr.com/photos/spacegrrl/