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Wow, two posts in under 24 hours. Days off will get you that. I did poke in for about an hour today to gather mail and check almost 48 hours of email (I turn off the Outlook link to my phone for weekends and holidays), but other than that, half my July third and all of the fourth and fifth have been client-free. I took a little extra time off Wednesday because Eleanor went in early for an ultrasound and was pretty wiped out after it. This one was, shall we say, a little more thorough than the ones the obstetricians do during pregnancy. No results expected until next week, so we have a little stress to accompany everything else.
Which "everything else," these past few days, have included:
The Critters.
We discovered a few nights ago that, for the second straight summer, a mama bunny had deposited a nest smack in the middle of our back yard where Chief Inspector Pepper could get to the younguns. Eleanor promptly surrounded it with fencing-
- and we've put the pup on leash whenever she goes back there so we can supervise her poopervising. As of yesterday, we thought Mama had moved the brood, but both of us (not to mention the dog, and the cat who just tried to get out) have seen clear evidence to the contrary. So we're still running our livestream of NICU Buffalo: Wabbitat until further notice.
Not to be outdone, Zoey, before her attempt at Escape Artist just now, decided to get in on the varmint act and brought up a dead mole from the cellar. The picture's on Eleanor's Facebook, if you care to see it.
Also not to be outdone: when Emily headed home on Tuesday, she got as far as Altoona PA when she saw a kitten in the middle of an expressway lane on US 220. So of course, possessing our DNA, she pulled over and brought it into her car:
Kitteh was apparently freaked enough by the whole business that she climbed INSIDE the dashboard. (I used to drive that car, and couldn't figure out which vent was big enough to accommodate even that small a cat, but apparently there's enough of a gap between the plastic of the dash and the air vent.) She called me in a total panic about what to do- I looked up the local Humane Society number, but she'd already tried that and they were little help. Finally, a car came along to help: turned out to be a couple of local stoners, who calmed her down, directed her to another rescuey local place, and helped make sure she got there, where kitten was extracted. Her prospects weren't good, they said, but at least she made it to a place of safety and comfort.
And if that's not enough Circle of Life for one post? Meet Claude:
(The one on the right is to give an idea of size.) He's been up on that ceiling since at least mid-June, never straying from that spot. You hang out around here long enough, you're gonna get named, and that happened earlier this week. He's one of the better tenants, earning his keep by guarding the house from arachnophobes (several of whom have made their pyromanic preferences about him quite clear;) and eating bugs in the bathroom. He doesn't caterwaul, demand feeding at 4 a.m. or wake me up walking on my face (although others have speculated that he probably does, just quietly).
----
The heat, AND the humidity.
If there's anything for any of these animals to worry about, it's how freakin' hot it's getting. After a relatively cool June and a perfectly lovely 70F-with-a-breeze day Sunday, the thermometer and hygrometer have been inching up all week, to the point where we're on the verge of our first 90F day of the year with oppressive humidity to match. Walking the dog before 8 this morning, I was already working up a sweat; a 9:15 workout wound up stickier than usual because their A/C went out before the previous class (at least someone had grabbed a fan from the nearby Lowe's for our group). So far, though, the air at home and office have been holding up, but while occasional hot days in July are tolerable, we must keep reminding the coal burners and other Luddites that this is not normal.
-----
The Stranger Things of Netflix.
One place where things are never normal? Hawkins, Indiana. Stranger Things dropped its entire third season on Netflix yesterday, and we got through the first three of its eight episodes last night. The kids are all a year older, the plot now involves allegations of Russian interference, the soundtrack is preoccupied with 1985, and the biggest new character isn't a he or she but a definite It: The Starcourt Mall, just opened, with all the shops and features of that bizarre aspect of late 20th century life. The producers were able to retrofit a mostly Dead Mall in Gwinnett, Georgia, turning its J.C. Penney wing into a nearly perfectly preserved sector of middle class suburban white American culture. This piece (spoilers for the series in the link) notes that the actual property is in Dead Mall Spiral now, dead body in the food court and all, and that there's talk of tearing down the whole mall for, believe it or not, a cricket stadium. (I presume they mean the British sport and not just a bunch of insects squaring off against each other.) Some have called for the transformed mall to be left intact as a tourist attraction; unfortunately, it's in Georgia, where the crazed locals and their legislators are too determined to set the clock back to 1855 rather than 1985, so I doubt they'd get too many visitors from our neck of the woods.
Although if the air conditioning in the mall still works, it might be the only place for the locals to get out of the 130F+ heat down there....
Which "everything else," these past few days, have included:
The Critters.
We discovered a few nights ago that, for the second straight summer, a mama bunny had deposited a nest smack in the middle of our back yard where Chief Inspector Pepper could get to the younguns. Eleanor promptly surrounded it with fencing-
- and we've put the pup on leash whenever she goes back there so we can supervise her poopervising. As of yesterday, we thought Mama had moved the brood, but both of us (not to mention the dog, and the cat who just tried to get out) have seen clear evidence to the contrary. So we're still running our livestream of NICU Buffalo: Wabbitat until further notice.
Not to be outdone, Zoey, before her attempt at Escape Artist just now, decided to get in on the varmint act and brought up a dead mole from the cellar. The picture's on Eleanor's Facebook, if you care to see it.
Also not to be outdone: when Emily headed home on Tuesday, she got as far as Altoona PA when she saw a kitten in the middle of an expressway lane on US 220. So of course, possessing our DNA, she pulled over and brought it into her car:
Kitteh was apparently freaked enough by the whole business that she climbed INSIDE the dashboard. (I used to drive that car, and couldn't figure out which vent was big enough to accommodate even that small a cat, but apparently there's enough of a gap between the plastic of the dash and the air vent.) She called me in a total panic about what to do- I looked up the local Humane Society number, but she'd already tried that and they were little help. Finally, a car came along to help: turned out to be a couple of local stoners, who calmed her down, directed her to another rescuey local place, and helped make sure she got there, where kitten was extracted. Her prospects weren't good, they said, but at least she made it to a place of safety and comfort.
And if that's not enough Circle of Life for one post? Meet Claude:
(The one on the right is to give an idea of size.) He's been up on that ceiling since at least mid-June, never straying from that spot. You hang out around here long enough, you're gonna get named, and that happened earlier this week. He's one of the better tenants, earning his keep by guarding the house from arachnophobes (several of whom have made their pyromanic preferences about him quite clear;) and eating bugs in the bathroom. He doesn't caterwaul, demand feeding at 4 a.m. or wake me up walking on my face (although others have speculated that he probably does, just quietly).
----
The heat, AND the humidity.
If there's anything for any of these animals to worry about, it's how freakin' hot it's getting. After a relatively cool June and a perfectly lovely 70F-with-a-breeze day Sunday, the thermometer and hygrometer have been inching up all week, to the point where we're on the verge of our first 90F day of the year with oppressive humidity to match. Walking the dog before 8 this morning, I was already working up a sweat; a 9:15 workout wound up stickier than usual because their A/C went out before the previous class (at least someone had grabbed a fan from the nearby Lowe's for our group). So far, though, the air at home and office have been holding up, but while occasional hot days in July are tolerable, we must keep reminding the coal burners and other Luddites that this is not normal.
-----
The Stranger Things of Netflix.
One place where things are never normal? Hawkins, Indiana. Stranger Things dropped its entire third season on Netflix yesterday, and we got through the first three of its eight episodes last night. The kids are all a year older, the plot now involves allegations of Russian interference, the soundtrack is preoccupied with 1985, and the biggest new character isn't a he or she but a definite It: The Starcourt Mall, just opened, with all the shops and features of that bizarre aspect of late 20th century life. The producers were able to retrofit a mostly Dead Mall in Gwinnett, Georgia, turning its J.C. Penney wing into a nearly perfectly preserved sector of middle class suburban white American culture. This piece (spoilers for the series in the link) notes that the actual property is in Dead Mall Spiral now, dead body in the food court and all, and that there's talk of tearing down the whole mall for, believe it or not, a cricket stadium. (I presume they mean the British sport and not just a bunch of insects squaring off against each other.) Some have called for the transformed mall to be left intact as a tourist attraction; unfortunately, it's in Georgia, where the crazed locals and their legislators are too determined to set the clock back to 1855 rather than 1985, so I doubt they'd get too many visitors from our neck of the woods.
Although if the air conditioning in the mall still works, it might be the only place for the locals to get out of the 130F+ heat down there....