Retro

Note to Self V

Cheese is not a substitute for being spiritually centered either.

Ping

There is a noise.  A pinging noise.

There are all sorts of noises here in the Shadetree apartment, many of which do not have any direct analogue to the noises I experienced during the seven years I lived in Sealand.  Gone (thus far) is the howling of the swamp wind, the rattling of the near-paneless window casings, the distant honk of horns and wail of sirens from the cars on Route 33.  Audible instead is a dull intermittent roaring that might be the furnace pumping steam into the radiators, and the hooting of trains as they amble through the crossing in the center of town, and the sounds of teenagers catcalling to one another behind the pharmacy, waiting around for someone who will buy them smokes.  And also a certain amount of door-slamming and conversation from the surrounding apartments, recalling nothing so much as the days I spent in my college dormitory back during the Time of Legends.  The front door of the apartment, for all its seeming heft and size, is apparently hollow, and the antechamber between the four apartments is echoey;  anything that happens out there can be heard clearly in here, as if there was no door at all.  The walls, for their part, aren’t precisely thin, but they’re thin enough that you can hear the television or the stereo or vigorous conversation through them, especially at night.  Jack has come out of the bedroom once already after I’ve gotten him settled, alarmed by being able to hear the voices, and thinking there are people in the room with him.

The pinging noise, though, I can’t figure out.  It doesn’t sound like an alert, such as a smoke detector with low batteries.  It doesn’t sound mechanical.  It sounds distant, as if it is coming from outside the building, outside the entire complex, and despite that, is loud enough to be heard.  It is high, and very clear, and very intermittent;  it pings once-  PING!-  and then the ping fades, and it remains inaudible for a few minutes, whereupon it will ping again.  As if a submarine was cruising at conning depth through the concrete outside, and firing off its sonar occasionally to check its surroundings.

Maybe I’ll put my coffee in a mug and go out and find it.

The Legend of Zelda: the Wind Waker

SL: That Ol’ Rockin’ Chair

I have no idea either.

As It Turns Out

… sometimes you have to wash the dishrack, too.

Another Round

This year’s batch of hard cider is finally in play.  The raw stock was unusually sweet, and I boiled it a bit too long, concentrating it even further, which resulted in an unprecedented 9% potential alcohol level when I took my initial readings.  The yeast we’re using these days is very slow acting, so it’s unlikely that we’ll get to a full 9% conversion by bottling time, but it might get there by itself sitting in the bottles, and that may not be a good thing.  It averages six and a half to seven and a half percent most years, and the one year I remember it being eight and a half percent was also the year the alcohol taste became unpleasantly noticeable…

On the other hand, I dropped an unsterilized piece of plastic wrap in it, too.  (Thankfully not the blue cheese wrapper.)  So all sorts of interesting things could happen.  Guess we’ll have a better idea in a week or two.

‘Keetyblogging III: Recovery

Little Chickenshit finally came out of her cage today, for the first time since Helena died.  Not sure what the motivating factor was;  possibly hearing other birds outside.  I had one or two of the windows open to circulate the air after being sick for the past few days.

She’s sitting on the corner of the couch between a high pillow and a bookcase, picking at various things.  The location has a similar sense of enclosure to that of her cage.  Also, it’s hard for her to move:  her claws have never been clipped, and they get caught on anything fabric-like, requiring some exertion on her part to free them.  But she won’t let me help her, at least not until she gets tired and hungry.  So here we sit.

I figure it’s good for her.

It’s Going Around

Wow…  Never heard the Economic Advisor on Civ 5 use the phrase “pissed off” before…

Note to Self IV

You need the pin number printed on the mail-in version of your car registration renewal to access the on-line registration renewal!

SL: Total Raving Geekfest

This is a shot of the lounge in the “Doctor Who Zone” at the New London sim, during the broadcast of the Davros radio play.  (You really have to click on the 1500 x 2000 version to appreciate it.)

Only…  wait a minute!  Who’s that over there in the corner?…

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!  Sooooooooooooo busted…