There was, alas, a casualty from the power outage I mentioned last week. The following Monday, we realized that the large freezer in the garage, which came with the house, was clearing experiencing a meltdown. Not a minor one of the “oops, I left the door cracked open” variety which causes a build-up of ice… the previous build up (from one of those incidents) was clearly melting over the entire contents of the freezer.
At a pause in the mad scramble to squish the contents of a larger freezer into a smaller – and not empty – one, I paused to Google the freezer model, on the off chance that it might be reparable. I haven’t located the serial number, so I don’t know the exact age… according to the search results, the Sears Coldspot freezer model was replaced by Kenmore in 1976.
Needless to say, I was flabbergasted, and have progressed from wondering at its sudden demise to appreciating the quality and extended lifespan of this freezer. We will certainly miss it.
I realize, even in the United States, this is a privilege. But even this privilege has quirks.
You may recall that we had solar panels installed last summer, including a backup battery. (I did incorrectly say we weren’t pushing power back into the grid.) On Saturday morning, as I lay in bed cuddling the cats and scrolling my social media feed, I heard the power go out, and immediately kick back in. As is customary when our power flickers noticeably, our 2.4 GHz network dropped, sending a notification from our thermostat app that it couldn’t communicate with the thermostat. (The thermostat and printer only work on the 2.4 GHz network; almost everything else runs on the 5 GHz.) When I eventually got up, I knew I’d need to reset it through the admin portal.
When I did get up, my first responsibility was to feed the cats. This is where I noticed things being weird – one of the lights in the kitchen weren’t working, others were fainter than usual, and on one, two of the three bulbs weren’t lit. I wondered what sort of power outage would knock out some – but not all – of the light bulbs. This was before caffeine and it didn’t click yet that the power was still out.
While taking my morning shower, the water pressure dropped. That worried me – the well circuit was supposed to be on the battery, so why hadn’t it come back on? (Noting that the circuits were supposed to be accurately labeled shortly after I bought the house; now I’m fairly sure the “well” circuit is actually the water softener’s outlet.) After my shower, I scrambled to check the circuit breaker and the reset by the well. You may recall I gained some experience with our water pressure about a year and a half ago, when a pipe rusted through on Christmas Day. All I was sure of at that point was that the water pressure was really low, and it was way too early to call anyone to help troubleshoot it.
Eventually, I looked at our solar battery and realized that the blue icon I was seeing was not its normal display. Annoyingly, I couldn’t find anything online explaining what the different icons are. That display combined with having to manually light the gas stove are what made me realize that our power was still out and the solar battery was working as designed.
I made myself a micro breakfast to minimize water usage – I had water in the kettle from Friday and grabbed a snack bar. About twenty minutes after I finished, the power kicked back on with all the normal beeps and clicks that come with a power flicker. Including the need to reset the 2.4 GHz network again.
Shrubs, bushes, trees… whatever. We thought it would be wise to grow more food in our garden, so in addition to the vegetable beds (which we are not currently planning to expand), we added several fruit-producing, well, twigs at the moment. Except the peach, that is almost as tall as me, and we have an American plum that just arrived today that is taller (and not pictured, since it’s not in the ground yet).
A blueberry surrounded by leftover bits of a holiday tree.
The other blueberry, also surrounded by leftover bits of a holiday tree.
A hazelnut tree
The other hazelnut tree
A peach tree, with the mulberry tree behind it.
A shrubbery! Wintergreen, to be specific, with a fingerful of pink berries.
A red currant bush
The holiday tree remnants around some of the twigs are to increase the acidity of the soil… yes, we deliberately saved pieces when we discarded the tree in January. Where there are two of something – hazelnut and blueberries – it’s because that’s needed for cross-pollination; otherwise, we’d just have a couple sad bushes with no fruit. And now we return to the bit where gardening is built on hope… and patience.
When I started the sculpture for this year’s Tiny Art Exhibit at the local library, my intention was to use some of the clay to make something that looked like weaving. As I started assembling the pieces, I changed my mind – the instructions said we could use other materials besides the ones provided, which in this case were white and black foam clay, and tan (normal?) air-drying clay. I’ve never worked with the foam stuff before, it was weirdly poofy, and I didn’t think I could replicate a weaving pattern with it. Shaping a human-ish body was difficult enough.
‘Ah-ha!’ I thought. ‘I have toothpicks and embroidery thread! And I did take like two weaving lessons in middle school.’
I was already committed to this plan before I remember that my weaving lessons involved the actual weaving rather than setting up the warp to work on. And my goodness, toothpicks are tiny. Setting up the warp was a bit aggravating, the weaving less so once I found a rhythm to it. Since my intended title was “Weaving her next story,” I knew when I started that I didn’t need to fill the entirety of the warp, just enough to show some color variations… you know, show that it’s actual weaving.
I love how this turned out and have dropped it at the library already. That said, I do not recommend weaving on a toothpick loom… pick a large template.
45 (connected) days in, I effectively have a usable shawl as I work on my temperature blanket.
I’m actually 47 days into it, but as you can see in the photos, 2 of those squares aren’t connected to the rest. I connect each square to the previous day when I finish it, and when I complete a row of 15, I connect it to the other rows.
You may be wondering why a couple of the squares have more than one color. I decided at the beginning that I wanted the blanket to reflect where I was – rather than my home address – for each day. The multi-color squares reflect the highs for travel days, where there was a difference between my starting and ending locations, with the added bonus that one of them ended up with my university’s colors. Specifically, those are for our trip to Florida for a cruise at the beginning of March. I suspect travel in winter or summer will have less temperature variance than our spring trip did.
We recently flew to Florida for a short vacation, spending a couple nights in Palm Beach and a couple more on a cruise ship, Margaritaville at Sea’s Paradise. It was refreshing to step away from the early spring weather in Illinois weather for a few days, digging out shorts and sandals that sit unused for half the year in our climate.
The layout and size of the Paradise was similar to the Alaska cruise from last summer, which made orienting ourselves on the ship fairly simple. We had an inside cabin again, and as luck would have it, it was at the end of a hall and the three cabins around it were being renovated… no neighbors!
Given the name of the cruise line, there was no real surprise at the extensive Jimmy Buffett music, vibe, and decorations to the ship and its events. One of the drink packages (not sure which one, as I didn’t buy into it) had blender-shaped cups! There were parrots outlined on our sheets, painted on some of the ship’s walls, and a parrot on a directional sign near one of the pools, among many others.
The theme just about made up for the terrible website interface, lack of an app, and what felt like imperfect communication efforts – largely due to the poor website and no app. (The contrast was stark given last summer’s Alaska cruise.) The shore excursion information in particular was barren, including enough information to entice a purchase (with a 10% discount for booking ahead), but missing key details such as the departure time – we had to stop at the Shore Excursions desk after boarding to get that. Alternately, it would presumably have been on the tickets delivered to our room’s mailbox with the daily newsletter around bedtime… except our guided sea kayaking excursion (and a couple other options) were cancelled due to high winds. More annoying, from my perspective, was the lack of disembarkation information on the website; it made selecting our return flight difficult since we didn’t know what time we’d be getting off the ship. In fact, we didn’t receive that information until around bedtime on the second night. (Yes, we probably could have asked at the Information Desk. But we shouldn’t have to, it’s as important as the embarkation details.)
That said, the overall experience was good. The food and entertainment were top notch, particularly the live show we attended on the second night, which was a non-stop 45-minute musical tour of the Carribean. While my nighttime photos weren’t great, the clear sky and visible constellations were a lovely experience. And our alternate to the cancelled kayaking turned out to be a relaxing day at a delightful location. If we land on another Margaritaville cruise in the future, I would lean towards their longer cruises (4 or 10 nights) instead of hopping down to Florida for the two-night cruise.
This is Calvin. Calvin’s transmogrifier experience did not go quite the way he expected, resulting in his current bear shape with one dragon(?) wing.
Calvin is a “Frankenstuffie,” a result of a recurring event in Capricon’s makerspace using donations of damaged stuffed animals. By the time I arrived midway through the event, the rest of the winged creature was divided between two other Frankenstuffies. Coincidentally, the only damage to this bear was one missing arm – which was actually in the tub next to him – so replacing it with the (conveniently correct side) wing seemed both logical and absurd.
The naming of plush – like cats – is usually a difficult matter, but I happened to attend a Cheshire Moon concert that evening, which included a performance of Calvin’s Girl, inspiring an easy and obvious choice for the name.
While some of my colleagues in Brazil are celebrating Fat Tuesday as Carnaval, and people in New Orleans throw a Mardi Gras festival, in Chicagoland we celebrate Paczki Day. According to Google Translate, “paczki” is Polish for donut, though it does specifically seem to refer to filled donuts, as that’s what was available the evening before at our local grocery store, with a plethora of filling choices. A quick Google search shows that the ingredients are a little different from a basic donut recipe – these are perhaps a bit denser and maybe should be sold in smaller containers, but all I saw were 4-packs.
Realistically, I know I could pick up a single paczki from a local bakery… if I wanted to pre-order or wait in a long line. These things are popular!
Oddly, I had lived in the Chicagoland area for most of a decade before I learned about paczkis. I was working at a bank – in IT, of course – and as part of a project to computerize some of the paper process, happened to be assigned a branch visit in a heavily Polish-populated area on Paczki Day. It’s not a holiday I remember to celebrate every year, but I noticed this year that the marketing was in full force at the grocery store a couple weeks early. In fact, it was early enough that I doublechecked the calendar to make sure I hadn’t misremembered the date!
What other types of celebrations have you seen for Fat Tuesday?
There’s a one-day Economic Blackout planned for today, 28-Feb-2025, partially in protest of the current administration’s attempt to rollback diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) efforts and boycotts of some large companies that have simply dropped their DEI efforts in response to the government’s discriminatory efforts. Many of the targeted businesses have been pulling in record profits for the past few years while increasing prices for the average consumer. Additional business-specific boycotts are planned for later this spring; some of them are detailed here.
Will this really help? I don’t know, I don’t recall seeing something like this done before. My thought is it can’t hurt. It’s a starting point, nothing more.
How else can you help? You could reach out to your representatives and senators, whether to thank them for voting against cutting our support services (my paycheck shows deductions for Social Security and Medicare, why should they cut those to give billionaires bigger tax breaks?) or reiterate your disappointment in their votes. You can find a local charity to support – a food bank, an LGBTQ+ organization, or something else – that will be picking up the slack as our tax dollars are misappropriated to help the rich.
You could even generate an Activism Bingo card if you want a checklist to work through.
