OHMIGAWD!

Larry has a hot tub!!!!

That's what he was trying to bring in the other day. The mystery toolbin or
wood storage is actually a hot tub.

I just peered out the back door because there's the annoying buzz/din of a
solar radio not quite tuned in vibrating through my office wall, and there
was the grey bin thing not moved inside or anywhere else, and there was the
naked upper portions of Larry, peacefully steeping and reading a book!!!

(My god and brrr! It's about 8 celsius out! He may be warm where he's in
the water, but all that exposed flesh above.....? Brrrrr!)

At least he may not be out there too long, because the radio noise is
really very bothersome...
As long as he remembers to turn it off or take it in with him!

v

The Larry Report

Actually, it was far quieter next door this summer. Less yarkie dogs
yarking, less Lawnmower Man chewing up lost civilisations.... I think they
went up to their trailer or cottage or whatever near Wiarton or Walkerton or
somewhere 'W'-y a lot.

Though he's had a sudden burst of end of summer energy. (Much like Charv on
his winter-fattening killing spree!)(Well, okay, not "much like".)

There was the House Tweaking van and sign, as all their woodworky bits got
repainted from the greenish of old to a dark brown. A little metal toolshed
seems to have bloomed in the back 40. The little wood Mennonite-made
toolshed from last spring has suddenly been stained dark brown. (KInd of
ugly. Neither a thick enough coat, not a thin enough coat, and kind of makes
me think of that Goodwill Brown that all furniture items had been painted
when you got them from Goodwill. That you then had to strip back off.)

Now, today, they've been trying to back a truck and trailer around the side
yard, which is far less possible now that he's filled it with little bricks
paths and gazebos and tree benches and stuff.... And it looks like they've
offloaded some kind of grey storage bin/box/toolsheddy thing. Not sure if
it's maybe to be a woodshed by the back door? Though they have a backdoor on
the otherside, which has a more level access, rather than down and around
the slope. Far easier to get wood to.

Or maybe it's a wee outbuilding for the Yarkies for winter? Larry did go
all crazy putting in a more permanent fence around their dog-run. (Once
David Rankine's little nature garden with wild sassafrass and wild ginseng
and native flowers.) I know that one of the Yarkies had a reputation for
being able to escape their old compound.

Admittedly, we've had our house-battening moments too. Darrell caulked the
roof of the Wendy-house. And we've had firewood delivered, wettish wood, so
Darrell's been shifting the remains of our dry stock forward so the newer
wood can be stacked at the 'back of the line'.
I dug my potatoes. (No way near Grondzilla-sized!) A lot of Barbie-doll
potatoes, and a small bunch of decent sized ones, and some in between.

Mostly it's being so wet that any outside job keeps being postponed. And
because it's cooler, even a dry bright day doesn't really dry things up
much. It's far easier to dig potatoes when you're not trying to dig in a
soggy mudpit.

I still have dyeing paraphanalia scattered around to gather up too. And
gardening bits and pieces. Essentilly, I still need some good old summer
weather!

v

Missing in Action

Yes, I should have at least posted some words in all this time. I set things
up so I could email blogs, because I thought that would make it easier. And
yes, it does. I still just don't say anything!
Perhaps it's because when I do sit down in front of the computer I'm so
frustrated by its sluggishness, 400 Mhz and almost zero RAM and a
2.something MB HD.... (Though I've functioned on this as a back up machine
before.) Or maybe it's because our dial up speed has dwindled to tin cans
and string speed.... (No, really. Messages tied to the leg of a snail would
be faster. Except I don't think snails have legs...)

We've harrassed good ol' Ma Bell so much they know us personally now. It
seems very likely there's some fault in the seals of the local junction box,
because ever since spring, it if rains, the service drops off. Sometimes
even quits. Our neighbours have given up on the idea of internet totally.
We're the only poor eejits still perservering! And of course, when the local
on-contract guy pops by to check it out, it's a day or two later, and the
rains are gone, and everything seems fine.
We've tried four different computers; two different styles, Mac and PC;
four different phone outlets; two different phone lines; even two different
ISP's, just for overkill's sake! Nothing helps. The last thing we can try,
which will be time-consuming and awkward so gets put off, is to replace all
the phone cabling in the house and all the jacks.

We don't even have the option of paying the big bucks for high speed - it
simply isn't available. We're in one of those little black holes where
no-one is supplying it. Sigh.

So, that hasn't helped my literary mood.

And when I finally did get a version of my computer back so I could access
my nice little camera again (really mine now, I've worked off the trade!),
it turns out the email problem is still there, and I probably have to load
the OS from scratch, so I'm still running life from the Village Idiot
computer.

And then, my old old computer was having a second chance at life, with a
new motherboard! (Thanks Russ!) Well, I haven't been able to manage to
collect it yet. Won't see if for a month. sigh.....
And with my luck, when I finally do get it home, I'll be up to my eyebrows
in the Christmas play at the Theatre, and not get a chance to really sort it
all out.

Thing is, there are solutions to all of this, and not just the simple but
more expensive one of just buying a new system that works. But a number of
them require me to figure them out, and that probably means doing some
research on the web (cause we got no libraries up here at the end of the
world) and then I'm back to being annoyed at my dial up speed.

Vicious circles.

But here, let's end the techno-whine before it makes Karen grumpy!

v