Eagles Over the Kennebec

Those who are not based on the East Coast of the US may be unaware that we are hosting yet another Nor'easter.  Nor'easters may carry snow, rain, or the ever-popular wintry mix, but the signature aspect of Nor'easters is wind.

Lots of wind of the steady strong variety interspersed with gusts capable of lifting tractor trailers off of the interstate and flipping them casually into the median.

Areas south of us are bearing the brunt of this Weather Event.  Barnstable, Mass reports a top wind of 93 mph.  East Bridgewater, Mass reports 5.74 inches of rain fell, yesterday; while Cobbleskill, New York saw 39.3 inches of snow.

Here at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory, we are experiencing a wind storm, with intermittent snow squalls.

The wind howled us to sleep last night, and it was still howling up a storm this morning while Steve and I were drowsing under the close supervision of three coon cats.

Suddenly, there was a thump.  Like this:

THUMP

"What was that?" I asked, without, yanno, actually getting up, because I am not one of those who runs toward the scary noise.

Steve, who is, was already looking out the bedroom window in the end-wall.

"It could have been that a bunch of wires was yanked loose from the house," he said.

"Have a bunch of wires been yanked loose from the house?" I asked, still not getting up, because, really, what would be the point?

"Looks like one of the branches of the pine tree bounced, and yanked out the wires; there's a weird tangle on the ground," Steve said.

For those who are not fully aware of the situation of our house, we are surrounded by pine trees, as is most of the state above Portland; and the various folk invested in wires very often just cut a tunnel through the branches so that the wires can be threaded through to their destination.  Not only did the wires from the pole to our house pass through a pine tunnel, but! when the across-the-street neighbor got his power run in, CMP cut a pine tunnel through one of the trees on his property, and also through our tree that already had a pine tunnel, in order to connect him to the grid-pole at street side.

Closer inspection reveals that What Actually Happened is that one of the neighbor's several long, tall pine trees snapped -- no; shattered -- under the assault of the wind.  There's at least ten feet of tree on the ground -- the pointy crown top on one end, and a wicked sharp sword of raw wood on the other.  Looking up, I could see at least four widowmakers hung up in the branches of the surrounding trees, and wires, dangling.

What appears to have happened is that the tree exploded, the down branch hitting the wire as it fell, tearing the connections out of the neighbor's house, bouncing on the shared wire hard enough to momentarily take out the cable connection at our house.  The down wires on our property appear to be old phone cables, and they are merely stretched down to the ground by the weight of a tree limb; connection to the house has not been severed.

Not really sure what's to be done right now.  Neighbor appears to be in good order, despite the loss of power.  Here, the cable reset itself, the power never flickered, and God She knows who we need to call about the down lines.  Clearly, they need to be removed.  On the other hand, they don't seem to be a threat; certainly, it's not worth calling someone out in the middle of a Nor'easter to do it today.

In Other News, I'm multitasking -- doing the laundry as I'm looking over our schedule for MidSouthCon, and starting to make piles to stuff to bring with.  One of the things we're tasked with is reading "good parts" from Liaden books, which ought to be. . .interesting.  I also need to brush up on my Epic Heroines.

I think that's all and everything of note for the moment.  Everybody stay warm, and safe, and dry.

So, of course Monday was Belle's birthday.  Her eighth birthday, so you see that she is, indeed, a Cat of Substance.  Festivities were scheduled, and everyone made merry, but not too merry, as it would have been a terrible thing indeed to wake the Birthday Girl.

The new remote starter has been installed in the car, and has already been useful, so that.

And!  Steve and I have discovered that Fifth of Five is rather more broken than we had thought, which would be why it just lies there, like a unrisen lump of dough, no matter how much we poke at it.  And this means that -- we need to start over.  This is not a step that we take lightly, and it's certainly not the news I wanted to take to Madame, but sometimes, there are no fixes.  So, we're taking a small breather, and wading in again.

In other news, Maine is melting.  It was 60 degrees today, on February 21, and the streets ran with mud.  Tomorrow, it will be cooler, and again on Friday, with the difference being that Friday, it will rain.

I think winter may be over.

Here's a photo from Belle's Birthday Festivities:

Today's blog post title brought to you by Cheap Trick, "Surrender."  Here's your link.

. . .or at least to Belfast Bay.  Can't really afford the day off right now, to go down to Old Orchard Beach.

But, we did go down to Belfast, after. . .Steve's dental appointment, and breakfast at Governor's.  The really nice thing about getting up Stupidly Early in the day is that you can get lots done before noon.  If, yanno, getting lots done includes driving down to Belfast Bay.

The day was warm and sunny, by which I mean 40F/4C, and it was so very, very good to get out of the house.  The tide was out at Belfast, but we walked around the park and the boat landing for a bit, looking out at the grey water, the seagulls, the ducks and the cormorants.  We did duly note that we are not to exceed 10 knots in passing a Right Whale, which species visits our waters all year round (who knew?).

Then we drove home through Brooks and all over that way, and it's hardly past noon.  Plenty of time to get some work done.  Plus, we were out in the heat of the day; temps are supposed to start dropping, oh, about now, and hit a low of 9F/-13C tonight.

Tomorrow's supposed to be somewhat cooler, and Wednesday, of course, we're expecting significant snowfall.

Yes, welcome to Maine.

So, today, Steve reads Fifth of Five while I do laundry and, oh, why not? Some tax paperwork, which, much like writing a novel, isn't gonna fill out itself.

For those who wonder what sort of Wild Goings Ons are perpetuated by coon cats in our absence, I offer this photograph of our hall, when we came back home this afternoon.

So, the Chromebook, which still lacks a name. . .

Polaris Office has stooped to renting itself monthly, and -- just no.  I therefore downloaded and rejected about a dozen other word processors from the Play Store, and was starting to suspect that Google was trying to quash all of the competition and force the unhappy author into Google Drive.

My last try was AndrOpenOffice, which I was warned might not be optimized for my device, and indeed it was a slow load.  Once down, however, it seems to be working just fine.  I'll give it a thorough test drive, and if it continues to perform well, will upgrade to the pro version.

The other thing I did was download Eset for Mobile, which I figured would install itself and get to work, as it has on both my tablet and my phone -- and there I was surprised.  Eset and Chrome seem to have some serious differences.  Who knew?

In other news, I've been going great guns on the short story which is not Fifth of Five.  At this point, I'm hoping that the novel will Grow Jealous of my involvement with Another Narrative and start Throwing Out Lures.  It's happened before...

This morning, I went with Steve to the cardiologist, where we received the sad news that the doctor he's been seeing for a while, who we both liked, personally and professionally, will be leaving on December 31.  Next appointment -- new doctor.

After the cardiologist, we went to breakfast at Governor's, and then came home.  I cleaned the cats' water fountain, wrote 1,000 words on that side story, ate lunch and zipped off to yoga.

I'm taking Gentle Yoga, which I took before, at a different location and with a different teacher, and I must say, the two courses could not be more different.  This instructor focuses on keeping track of what your body is telling you, and on breath.  The former instructor scarcely spoke of breath, save an occasional reminder to the class to remember to breathe, and not to stretch too far.

I am tending to find the present course's pacing a little slow; on the other hand, I've worked up a sweat by the end of it, so maybe I'll do fast later.

. . .and I think that's everything I've got right now, as I try to not keep too close an eye on the elections. . .

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Today's blog post title brought to you by The Grateful Dead, "Uncle John's Band," which has been my constant earworm for the last two days.  Here's your link.  You're welcome.

I seem to have mislain my (old and falling apart) copy of The Prince and the Pauper.  Fortunately, I downloaded a copy from Project Gutenberg some time back.

Let's see. . .yesterday was Friday -- errand day in town.  We had an early appointment with a loan officer, who thinks far more of our finances than we do; which is fine, as she herself said.  No need to spend up to the limit, after all.

After the bank, we went next door to AAA, and had the nice lady make our train reservations To Memphis And Back Again.  We have tickets and receipt in hand.  Note to self: remember to forward receipt to the con for reimbursement.

After that, we went to the vet to pick up some cat food, to Tractor Supply for ditto, and to Hannaford, to pick up prescriptions and foodly things.  Came home, and had crab cakes and fresh steamed green beans for supper.  Mmmmm.

We hired a buyer's agent, who has taken our modest list and will begin lining up showings, and I actually got some work done, too.

This morning, I read a short piece that will soon be posted for subscribers on our Patreon page (Belle participating by sitting on my lap, and purring.  Loudly.  Listeners will probably be able to hear her.  I hope they'll be able to hear me.)  When I finish this blog post, I'll do the dishes, and then! -- I'll sort laundry.

No, I don't know how I stand the pace, either.

Fifth of Five now at 37,000ish words out of a probable, oh, let's see. . .100,000?

Captain Waitley wasn't quite what Portmaster Liu had been expecting.

No, scratch that, in a lot of ways, Captain Waitley was exactly what Portmaster Liu had been expecting: short for a Terran, tall for a Liaden, lean for the height she did have; shoulders showing attitude under a Jump jacket older and bigger than she was. Whatever else she was – and recklessly negligent wasn't off the table, in Portmaster Liu's not-exactly-objective opinion – Theo Waitley was definitely a member of Boss Conrad's extended family, Clan Korval. Portmaster Liu had been spending a lot of time lately with the Boss and the Boss's little brother, the Road Boss; she knew the family look when she saw it.

...that I did work today, which is notable, and now it is noted.

The work consisted of digging three holes, which isn't as easy as you might think, those of you who unaccountably do not live on two acres of glacial moraine, or at the very least two acres of shale thinly covered with what we'll call soil.

Why, you ask, was I moved to do work on a fine Maine morning when I ought to have been, um, writing?

Well, I'm glad you asked that question. Alert readers will recall that several days ago I acquired, in defiance of both the Lawn Guy's Assistant, and the neighbor's road-crossing, if not actually free-ranging chickens, plants for the Cat Garden, which has, through the direct intervention of said Forces of Nature more or less become a Weed Garden.

It had been hot and humid the last few days, not at all the sort of weather to encourage a sedentary and overweight author of more than middle years to go outside and dig holes in the garden.   So, I left the plants, in their pots, in approximately the locations I had chosen for their eventual homes.  I watered them each day, but they were looking sort of droopy and sad by this morning, so it was just very fortunate that today was gorgeously blue, and breezy, and dry, and of a temperature that someone who lives in Maine would find reasonable for July.

So! Three holes.  Not exactly in the locations previously chosen -- did I mention we live on shale?  Also there are trees, and trees have roots.  Lots of roots.  No, really; look it up.

In between the rocks and roots, then -- three holes.

One hole for the Cherry Pops Bee Balm which replaces the Murdered Bee Balm of yesteryear.  Bee balm attracts butterflies, hummingbirds, and, well, bees.  This particular sort claims to be deer and mildew resistant.

One hole for the Wishing Well Plantain Lily, aka Hosta Wishing Well.  This plant attracts hummingbirds and has a mounding habit, so I envision a Mountain of Hosta in my future.

The third and final hole -- actually the first dug -- was for the White Frost Hemerocallis -- aka a day lily with a curly yellow trumpet not only bigger than my head, but damn' near bigger than Trooper.  It is two feet high.  Who can say no to a two-foot-high day lily that has flowers the size of a coon cat?  It's big enough to be sentient.  Indeed, I have some hope that it will be writing next year's book.

I will also mention here that I have received and have been testing various bug repellents.  It is in my mind to go with the least application that is still effective.  To that end, I began today with the bug repellent bracelet, fully expecting that I would need to come inside and upgrade.

In this, I was disappointed.  I did hear one rather insistent buzz, but closer inspection revealed the author to be a hummingbird, who was apparently under the impression that he was paying me for these plantings, and I could pick the pace up a bit, if I didn't mind.  Or, given hummingbirds, even if I did mind.

So, having now made the record complete, I believe I'll. . .

. . .do some work.