Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"No culture on earth outside of mid-century suburban America has ever deployed one woman per child without simultaneously assigning her such major productive activities as weaving, farming, gathering, temple maintenance, and tent-building. The reason is that full-time, one-on-one child-raising is not good for women or children." -- Barbara Ehrenreich

"No culture on earth outside of mid-century suburban America has ever deployed one woman per child without simultaneously assigning her such major productive activities as weaving, farming, gathering, temple maintenance, and tent-building. The reason is that full-time, one-on-one child-raising is not good for women or children." -- Barbara Ehrenreich

Went up on the roof early yesterday to try to reposition the plastic before the rain started. Wunderground.com indicated a wind speed in the low single digits; on the roof I'd guess that it felt more like 15-20 MPH[*]. I spread out the plastic again (it had gotten bunched up by wind over the last couple weeks) and added more ballast. I also poured a bottle of Lysol at the spot I currently suspected was the main water-entry point.

The rain started while I was up there, with sleet mixed in. Indoors, I got more water coming through than expected -- less than the previous rain (after the plastic had blown out of position) but considerably more than the first rainfall after I put the plastic up in the first place -- and what came through the ceiling was sudsy. So I think I was right about the location.

I was exhausted and achy. I crashed before 20:00. Woke up a couple of times in the night unable to figre out which night it was and too stiff to roll over to try to look at a clock. Twenty-eight hours of rain later, the storm system passed. The sky brightened. I thought about climbing up to have a look, but then the WIND came, and more clouds (zipping past higher clouds), and hail, and rain. I heard things rolling and sliding across the roof. A few doors upwind, I heard a window break. I saw the roof on the (vacant) house at the end of the block tear, a huge flap of tar/paper/asphalt/whateverthatstuffis peeling up and coming to rest against the far railing of the fire escape there (part of which is a pair of railings marking out a walkway across the second-floor roof). I wonder whether I can find the owner's phone number to warn him that he needs a roofer too.

Then there was calm, as the shockingly sharp trailing edge of the black cloud deck went past, and a little while later, even louder wind, rattling the windows then rattling the walls (though I no longer heard stuff scraping across the roof -- maybe all the ballast has already blown next door?), a crawl across the bottom of the television screen warning of high winds and downed trees, and a report of 22 MPH wind on the web. I presume that's the street-level wind speed, not the rooftop wind speed ...

Halfway down the block is a house being rebuilt (no roof yet) and one being renovated. When the workers aren't there, a sheet of plywood covers the front doors. One of those sheets was lying on the sidewalk a few doors farther down, last I looked.

My Internet connection is laggy/bursty. I'm not sure whether that means the antenna is being rocked out of place and falling back into alignment, or something completely unrelated is going on -- none of the gaps has been long enough for my SSH session to die, fortunately. (The base for the antenna is heavy. Several cinderblocks bolted together, with bricks shoved into the holes in the cinderblocks.)

For a night with almost no automobile traffic, it's a noisy night. And I'm (still) achy and tired.

[*] I need to buy, build, or become an anemometer. I'm thinkin' I should drive around a while with my arm out the window and ome eye on the speedometer to calibrate my skin.

Went up on the roof early yesterday to try to reposition the plastic before the rain started. Wunderground.com indicated a wind speed in the low single digits; on the roof I'd guess that it felt more like 15-20 MPH[*]. I spread out the plastic again (it had gotten bunched up by wind over the last couple weeks) and added more ballast. I also poured a bottle of Lysol at the spot I currently suspected was the main water-entry point.

The rain started while I was up there, with sleet mixed in. Indoors, I got more water coming through than expected -- less than the previous rain (after the plastic had blown out of position) but considerably more than the first rainfall after I put the plastic up in the first place -- and what came through the ceiling was sudsy. So I think I was right about the location.

I was exhausted and achy. I crashed before 20:00. Woke up a couple of times in the night unable to figre out which night it was and too stiff to roll over to try to look at a clock. Twenty-eight hours of rain later, the storm system passed. The sky brightened. I thought about climbing up to have a look, but then the WIND came, and more clouds (zipping past higher clouds), and hail, and rain. I heard things rolling and sliding across the roof. A few doors upwind, I heard a window break. I saw the roof on the (vacant) house at the end of the block tear, a huge flap of tar/paper/asphalt/whateverthatstuffis peeling up and coming to rest against the far railing of the fire escape there (part of which is a pair of railings marking out a walkway across the second-floor roof). I wonder whether I can find the owner's phone number to warn him that he needs a roofer too.

Then there was calm, as the shockingly sharp trailing edge of the black cloud deck went past, and a little while later, even louder wind, rattling the windows then rattling the walls (though I no longer heard stuff scraping across the roof -- maybe all the ballast has already blown next door?), a crawl across the bottom of the television screen warning of high winds and downed trees, and a report of 22 MPH wind on the web. I presume that's the street-level wind speed, not the rooftop wind speed ...

Halfway down the block is a house being rebuilt (no roof yet) and one being renovated. When the workers aren't there, a sheet of plywood covers the front doors. One of those sheets was lying on the sidewalk a few doors farther down, last I looked.

My Internet connection is laggy/bursty. I'm not sure whether that means the antenna is being rocked out of place and falling back into alignment, or something completely unrelated is going on -- none of the gaps has been long enough for my SSH session to die, fortunately. (The base for the antenna is heavy. Several cinderblocks bolted together, with bricks shoved into the holes in the cinderblocks.)

For a night with almost no automobile traffic, it's a noisy night. And I'm (still) achy and tired.

[*] I need to buy, build, or become an anemometer. I'm thinkin' I should drive around a while with my arm out the window and ome eye on the speedometer to calibrate my skin.