Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

When I showered earlier, the water felt scalding hot on my hands, but barely lukewarm on my shoulders and back. So my hands must have been very cold. (I was wearing a fuzzy sleeper and slippers until then, but my fingers were exposed on the keyboard.) It took most of a ten minute shower for the sensation to balance out again. Probably not good.

Later, noticing how cold I was feeling again, I found a thermometer ... 283 K (10 C (something chilly F (50 F, okay?))). Hmm. A smidgen more than a quarter of a tank of heating oil left. Hmm. 10 C. Hmm. Guess it's time to burn a little of my precious oil. Half an hour later, it's three Kelvins warmer (55 F) and feels a lot more comfortable. Turn off furnace, note that I've used less than a sixteenth of a tank in that half hour. *whew* It's going to be an interesting month.

But my house has developed a new trick that I forgot to write about a week or so ago. When the pressure gauge on the furnace gets up to forty pounds (I presume that's actually PSI but it just says "pounds"), a valve opens and splashes water on the top of the furnace and the basement floor. :-( And the rest of the time it just drips a little. I've put a bucket under it (fortunately the top of the furnace does not seem to get hot enough to melt the bucket), and since I'm only running the thing in really short bursts anyhow, I just empty the bucket before I turn it on. But it worries me, of course. Is the valve supposed to open at 40 pounds, and some mysterious glitch is causing the furnace to build up more pressure than normal? Or is the valve opening too early, having gotten old and weak? Argh. And I'm pretty sure my service contract isn't in force any more since I wasn't able to pay last winter's last oil bill and they're sending lawyers after me for it.

By next winter I really must have the fireplace useable. Need to come up with money for chimney cleaning (and probably re-lining) and useful fireplace hardware so that the thing actually heats the house instead of just looking pretty and sending heat up the chimney. Hey, by then the tree that fell on Sheepie's house should be dried out enough to burn nicely, right?

My father used to work at the University of Maryland, and he used to take the family to Terrapin football and basketball games (even a soccer game once). Lots of trips to Byrd Stadium and Cole Fieldhouse when I was in middle school and high school. Earlier today a series of tangential thoughts brought me to memories of how, when we wound up sitting behind the band at basketball games, I would lean forward as far as I could and try to read their sheet music, hoping to memorize enough of it to be able to reconstruct the tunes from that starting place on recorder or electric-reed-organ when I got home. I usually failed to memorize enough, but most of the time I couldn't get close enough to the instruments playing the parts I most wanted anyhow. Still, I'd forgotten until today that I was that interested in any sheet music I could steal a glimpse of as early as that. (No, it's not an impressively young age or anything; it's just relatively early in my development as a music-geek. I learned standard notation and recorder in seventh grade, but didn't pick up guitar until twelfth grade.)

Remembering that has conjured other memories, earlier than the basketball ones. Composing my first (very very short) tune on the chord organ. Going through a book of Christmas carols to find the ones I could play using the notes I knew on the alto recorder. Wondering how many weeks allowance a galvanized steel washtub would cost because I wanted to make a washtub bass (later this changed to a dream of playing electric washtub bass in a rock 'n' roll band. But I haven't gotten around to building it yet. Maybe that should be a goal for this Spring -- finally build that electric washtub. I figure I'll turn the entire bottom of the tub into one plate of a huge condenser mic, and see whether I get away with that.). Watching the banjo player at Shakey's (pizza parlor chain) and thinking the banjo was the coolest thing. And once in a blue moon when I was small, watching my father pull out his trombone (which he gave up entirely, alas, before I picked up the guitar). Oh, and trying to figure out how to start a rock band using recorder, bongos, and chord organ, because that's what we had and I really wanted to be a rock musician.

I guess the music thing took root in me a long time before I got my hands on an axe. Hmm. I wonder what else I've forgotten.

Saying, "Mouse! Mouse!" is not very effective, especially if Perrine has her face in her food dish. Saying, "Perrine! Here! Look over here!" is sometimes effective, but never quite fast enough. (Assuming she's in the room, that is. If she's elsewhere in the house, "Perrine! Vien ici!" takes way too long, and she expects cuddles or a treat when she arrives, not hunting instructions -- I have to work on that.)

On the other hand, picking her up and holding her facing the oven when I open it so that she immediately sees the mice inside as they scatter, that works. She didn't catch them, but she immediately jumped down to check out the area, then stationed herself where she could see them if they came out, and directed all of her attention thataway, ears twitching at each tiny sound, and stayed there for half an hour.

I absolutely must teach her the word "mouse". Once she knows what I mean, she knows her job; I just need to make it easier to tell her.

"If you don't expect a single other person to fulfill all your needs, to make you happy, to turn your life upside down or make it all come out right, then you have to take responsibility for those things yourself. How much of the killer myth of monogamy revolves around the idea that the right romantic partner is the cure for all ills? That falling in love with someone who loves you will make everything perfect?" -- n0ire, on polyamory, a couple of hours ago

I went to the basement to finish draining the expansion tank. Perrine followed me, amused herself by climbing over boxes for a while, then got tired of watching me and started poking into various nooks and crannies. She found one of her toys that had been missing for a few weeks.

If you cover it in enough cobwebs, a ping pong ball is much less bouncy. It bounces once, then stops.

(She also tried to interest me in a game of chase, which she especially likes in the basement because there's so much stuff for her to dart under, but I can't run in these slippers.)

Thanks to a comment someone made on the Pentax-Discuss Mailing List, now I've got this stuck in my brain:

I'm going where the sun keeps shinin'
Through the pouring rain
Goin' where the weather suits my clothes

I'm sure if I pick my moment instead of grabbbing it at random, I can make it sound much more incriminating.