Author Archives: bilborg

About bilborg

I am who I am, there's plenty of data on this site to tell you more. Briefly, I'm a husband, computer geek, avid reader, gardener, and builder of furniture.

A Princess and her Pea

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Lexi, protected from peas

Lexi, protected from peas

There’s better be a pea under there…

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Dragonfly

Dragonfly

Last night, when all was quiet, I finally got a around to putting together the Metal Earth Dragonfly model that I picked up from Amazon weeks ago on a whim, inspired by Jenny’s 1000 Ferris Wheels post. It’s good to have a focused distraction from time to time. The work took me away from myself for a double handful of minutes, and reminded me that I can focus when I make the effort. There’s been so much going on that I’m spending more time putting out fires than planning and tending what is needed, long term. But all will come right again.

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Yesterday: more plumbing – I replaced the last of the original faucets in the house. The master bathroom was the sole holdout with a builder-grade piece of crap. But now I’ve got a shiny new two-handle Kohler in its place, and I replaced the drain as well, since that was past due, too. Today: shopping, harvesting tomatoes, making salsa, and attending a birthday barbequeue for a friend was the fullness of the day.

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DoD announced no new casualties in the last week. Ciao!

Tiring

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It was a good week. I pulled out another five gallons of mostly tomatoes on Tuesday, and made a pot of red sauce with most of them. Others I took to work and assorted other Friends of Tomatoes. Then there was Saturday…

Saturday started off with Marcia having decided that since she had terrible luck fishing at Centennial  Lake, nearby, we should BOTH go, early on a Saturday. Early, in my case, meant waking up not before seven – it was a long week. So, out of the house before eight, and at the water’s edge casting by about 0830. This, however, pissed Marcia off righteously:

A small bass on my second cast

A small bass on my second cast

Yeah. Marcia still has caught nothing but weeds at Centennial, but now at least we know there’s fish there.

Once back home, a bit before noon, I got out into the back yard and pulled in TWO bloody five gallon buckets of mostly tomatoes. Here’s what the haul looked like after I’d washed it up:

Ten gallons of veggies

Ten gallons of veggies

The pyramid of larger tomatoes on the left has already been rendered into another full pot of red sauce, including sage, rosemary, and thyme (also from the garden). The only other ingredients in the pot of sauce are a couple of diced yellow onions and a head of garlic, minced, some olive oil, and about a teaspoon of salt. The whole house smells of delicious right now.

Last night was work: about five hours of supporting onsite network upgrades that got me home about 0245 this morning. But the work was, in the end, successful. So we’ve got that going for us.

Today: shopping, replacing a broken faucet, working on that red sauce, and still to come: a haircut.

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DoD announced no new casualties in the last week. Ciao!

Summer’s Back

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After a couple of unusually cool weeks to start out July, we’re into Summer normal for the DC ‘burbs: 90’s for heat and humidity. Yesterday, silly me, I did yardwork anyway. That broke me, but I did get in another 5 gallon bucket of (mostly) tomatoes:

5 gallons of tomatoes, etc.

5 gallons of tomatoes, etc.

I think that’s going to end up being a red sauce. Time will tell.

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DoD announced no new casualties in the last week. Ciao!

Midsummer fun

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Five Gallons of Veggies

Five Gallons of Veggies

That’s the big fun: I pulled a five gallon bucket of veggies out of the garden today. But … that’s the only fun. Busy bloody weekend is over, thankfully. Fixed a leaking fridge water feed, which now looks like this:

New fridge water feed

New fridge water feed

A ball valve and a copper feed pipe is much better than a vampire tap, a needle valve, and a plastic feed line. I got the leak stopped and water back on in the house by about 8:30 Friday evening. The water to the fridge was restored by Saturday mid-morning.

Thereafter, yard work on both days. I’m exhausted and ready to get back to work so that I can relax and recharge.

In other, most excellent news, it seems that Bloom County is returning to life. Huzzah!

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DoD reported no new casualties in the last week. Ciao!

In the Dark

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Well. Dark-ish, sort of. Metaphorically. We still had electricity. But no phone, no Internet (well, except the cell phones), no TV. Our FiOS connection went down on Friday, and stayed down until a tech got here today and replaced some of the equipment. I used the enforced ludditic interlude to do some work in the woodshop, including sanding and finishing:

Finishing the new side table

Finishing the new side table

Sanding and some finish applied on Friday (when it rained). More finish applied with intermediate sanding on Saturday (when it rained), and final assembly today (when it didn’t rain, but I was waiting for a FiOS tech). The final product is a new side table for the living room that lives between the sofa and the easy chair:

New living room table

New living room table

Most of the evenings on Friday and Saturday was spent comforting the mutt against the trials and tribulations of many booms from all directions (fireworks of variable legal status).

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Our condolences to the family and friends of Senior Chief Petty Officer Jason P. May, 38, of Chesterfield, Michigan, who died on June 29, on board USS Essex (LHD 2), of non-combat related causes while the ship was at sea.

More Rain

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Well, not today, exactly. Nor yesterday, as such. But we had a pretty good storm roll through on Saturday. Sunday … (yes, yes, the day I forgot to post on, again. Sigh.) Sunday, I was talking to my folks, and realized that since we returned home from California in the waning days of May, some 31 days past, we’ve had 11.7 inches of rain. Our weather has been positively tropical. I’m looking for mahogany and teak trees to start growing before my very eyes!

We got a few more tomatoes out of the garden, about twenty HUGE FREAKING cucumbers, and what looks like the last of the zucchini. Weirdly, all of the zucchini plants look like they’re dying … and dying differently than prior years. Hmmm. I do expect to be making some salsa by the Fourth, however.

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No new casualties have been announced by DoD in the last eight days. Ciao!

Marriage, Garden

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A bare majority of a group of old people (hereafter known as the Supreme Court of the United States, AKA SCOTUS) today says that some people, who want to marry other people, but weren’t allowed to because some other, other people are less enlightened … well, the people are now allowed to marry any of the other people that they want, and the unenlightened people can get bit. Or move to someplace where only unenlightened activities are permitted. There’s still plenty of that to go around.

Anyway, happy for my happy gay friends, both those I know and those I don’t. Y’all get married if you want, and be happy, if you can. I’m super pleased about this decision, and amused by Scalia shouting at people to get off other people’s lawns.

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Garden. Joy. Just sayin’ …

First tomatoes, and more

First tomatoes, and more

We’ve been eating out of the garden for a couple of weeks now: broccoli, zucchini, and cucumbers. But the latter are getting highly productive (as you can see), and YAY the first tomatoes are out of the garden, and making us both happy. Salsa can’t be far off… Ciao!

Stormtime

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Yes, yes, according to the calendar, it’s called Summer. But around here, it’s Stormtime. The calendar season of Summer coincides with the combination of heat, humidity and passing fronts that yields lovely, lovely thunderstorms. Well, *I* like them, more or less. Lexi, however…

Lexi hates thunder

Lexi hates thunder

For a while, she just sat there in the corner of the sectional sofa, facing the cushions, and shaking. Finally she yielded and tried to hide behind me (or between me and the cushions). That may have involved trying to excavate a cavity either in a cushion, or through my kidneys. Hmmm.

The other less fun thing about lightning is that the excess electricity can cause problems. Turns out one of the really loud flash/bangs was lightning striking a neighbor’s house. No fire, thankfully, but half of their electrics are out, and the surge cause me some interesting issues. I was working remotely at the end of the storm … then I wasn’t, when the FiOS connection went dead. No phone, no Internet, no TV. Normally not a real problem, since books are good. But I had remote work to complete last night, and remote work to do this morning. I did all of the reset steps – no joy. I did them again, no joy. So I sent an email via my phone, waving off the second stage of last night’s remote work. This morning I was up at 0600, and at the office before 0700. Did all of the work that needed doing, and simultaneously spent an hour on hold with VZ, only to find out that the earliest tech visit was to  be on Tuesday afternoon. Sigh.

I came home this morning after completing three hours of patching, rebooting, and testing. I walked the dog again, then went out to do the shopping. Back home at a little before noon, I executed another deep reset of the ONT (the external FiOS equipment), and wonder of wonders, it worked! Yay! So I cancelled the tech visit for Tuesday, and sent an email noting that I would complete a specific task myself this evening for work.

I did get the mowing and other outdoor work done yesterday, better done when the lawns are drier. Yesterday’s storm dropped over 1.5″ in about 2 hours. I hauled a bunch of zucchini and a few cucumbers out of the garden, and made some neighbors happy, as well as having zucchini for supper here.

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Our condolences to the family and friends of Pfc. Monterrious T. Daniel, 19, of Griffin, Georgia, who died on June 12 in Camp Buehring, Kuwait, in a non-combat related incident.

 

Heat

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Summer officially arrives next weekend. But so far as I can tell, it arrived this last week. 90+ degree temps, high humidity, big thunderstorms. Today, in fact, we had a storm line pass through that gave us a bunch of lightning and thunder, and 1.4″ of rain in 45 minutes. Note: Lexi really hates thunder. She spent the entire storm (and last night’s late storm) huddled against me, trembling.

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The garden is doing okay with this heat, though. I saw one tomato starting to turn color – that’s a good sign. Once I spot that, I’m usually about two weeks away from eating lots of yummy salsa, etc. Tonight, we had freshly killed broccoli from the garden, and tomorrow night, I’m expecting to pull out a bunch of zucchini.

Garden - 14 June 2015

Garden – 14 June 2015

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The surprise for me this Hugo season is The Goblin Emperor, a fantasy novel by Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette). While I tend towards the harder, SciFi end of the speculative fiction genre spectrum, this Hugo-nominated work grabbed my attention and held it all the way through. I’m looking forward to the next installment in this series. If I were king-maker for the Best Novel Hugo, I think I’d have a tough time picking between this and Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Sword. There’s still time to become a supporting member of Sasquan, and vote in this year’s Hugo balloting. Don’t fret about the ruckus. Just get the packet, read the works, vote for what you like. Given what’s in the Hugo packet, it’s $40 US well spent, any way you look at it. And if you’re a fan, you should support, read, and vote. You can ALSO pay the separate voting fee to become a supporting member (see the Site Selection tab on the Sasquan site) for the 2017 WorldCon, and vote for DC17. Just sayin’ …

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Our condolences to the family and friends of Krissie K. Davis, 54, of Talladega, Alabama, a member of the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) at Anniston, Alabama, and deployed to DLA Disposition Services Bagram as part of the civilian expeditionary workforce. She was killed on June 8, during an indirect fire attack on Bagram Airbase, Afghanistan.

 

Garden goodies

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The garden is still just getting rolling. The tomato plants are all 2′ high or so, and the pepper plants have all been suffering through the last week of rain and cooler temps. The cucumbers and squash are trying to produce fruit. But while Marcia’s cousin Barb was visiting us over the last week, we did get to enjoy some broccoli out of the garden:

Broccoli from the garden

Broccoli from the garden

There’s not much else to report – I had a busy week dropping back into the groove at work, and spent a few hours today working on lawns and gardens. Oh, yeah, I stripped out all of the cilantro from the herb bed. It was volunteer from last year, and producing far to early to be useful for me in salsa, etc. So I cleared that section of the bed and replanted from harvested seed. It’ll be coming up again as the tomatoes come into full production, I think.

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DoD announced no new casualties during the last week. Ciao!