spacealien_vamp: (Default)
It has been far too long since I last updated, and I really have no good excuse. Honestly, it's because I was accustomed to using Dreamwidth only from my 11-year-old desktop computer, a computer that is now limping along and straining to keep up with the processing involved in opening websites. I associated Dreamwidth so strongly with that specific computer that it never occurred to me to access it from any other device.

In March I took a trip to Hawaii, where I visited various relatives. I enjoyed seeing the gorgeous scenery and spending time with people I typically only interact with online.

I spent the month of April at the Detector Dog Training Center in Georgia, getting a new working beagle. I went a little yarn crazy in my spare time, practicing weaving on various portable pin looms. I've tried patchwork quilting before, but cutting all the little pieces of cloth was so laborious and monotonous, I couldn't see myself ever sticking with it as a hobby. With the pin looms, though, I could make a bunch of little squares and hexagons by weaving them from colorful yarn, and they all have finished edges. Kind of like granny squares on a smaller scale, really. So I bought a bunch of patchwork quilting books as inspiration for designs to use all the little woven shapes. Yes, I have a hobby addiction.

My summer has been relatively uneventful. The big change is that I bought a new laptop, mainly so that I could play World of Warcraft while traveling. I visited friends and family in Michigan, where I played a lot of board games.

I tried growing sweet corn in my garden this year, since I now have wire cages to protect it from wildlife. That experiment was a partial success. The corn grew okay, but it ripened during the two weeks I was away from home. By the time I got back, it was past its prime. I could still eat it, but it was already starchy. I have concluded that, as long as I'm not going to be home at the height of summer, I'd be better off growing things that can be harvested later. Flour corn would work okay, but sweet corn is not worth the effort when I can buy it for cheap at local stores and have it at perfect ripeness.

One thing that is working out well is the squash cage that my dad built around one of my raised beds. I put a zucchini and several acorn squash plants in there with a trellis, and they are quite productive while safe from squirrels. I've already made lots of pickles from the zucchini, as well as eating some fresh. I'm trying a new type of acorn squash, and I'm hoping that it tastes good, because there will be a lot of it. (Also because when I was buying the seeds, I accidentally clicked on the option to buy 1000 seeds instead of 100. Oops.)

Now we're in September, and it suddenly struck me this week that I could call up Dreamwidth on my new laptop. What a concept!

Not that there's much happening right at the moment. Part of the reason why I don't have more to talk about is that I'm being drafted for ridiculous (in my opinion) amounts of overtime. There's a certain unstaffed time slot at the Oakland airport, and the airport is paying the overtime costs for customs inspection in order to allow planes to land during that slot. (If CBP were footing the bill, you'd better believe they'd assign regular staff pronto to avoid those extra costs.) The pool of people eligible to work that time slot is very small, so those of us who can do it are getting drafted repeatedly. It's exhausting and doesn't leave me much energy for other things.

It is a lot of money, though. So I'm splurging a bit and rewarding myself by going on a trip to experience the real Oktoberfest in Munich. It won't be a long holiday, but it should be an adventure.

I also went to the Palo Alto Art Festival a few weeks ago. It's always amazing to see the creative people out there. I ended up buying some ceramic kitchenware hand-painted with Japanese flowers and fruits, plus two original watercolors.

I should get a temporary reprieve from the overtime during October, when the new fiscal year rolls around. Maybe then I'll get more accomplished.
spacealien_vamp: (No)
I was recently notified by the University of Michigan that they are ending their file hosting service, which is where my website has been for the past 30 years.

The website is currently linked from this journal, though I suppose I will have to change that once it goes away. If there is any material that someone reading this wants to preserve for themselves (such as NatPack quote lists or fanfic), download it now, because it is all going poof.
spacealien_vamp: (Default)
I've been devoting early 2024 mainly to two things—World of Warcraft and weaving.

My first weaving project turned out relatively well, considering I'm brand new at the craft. I learned quite a bit about things such as making sure warp yarn is tight before starting, for example. I also had to come up with a way to measure length, since the project gets wrapped around a dowel as you go, making it impossible to know when to stop if you don't mark progress somehow. It's also tricky to make a narrow hem in relatively thick cloth that tends to unravel if you're not careful.

I'm working on my second project now, a pastel scarf using wool yarn that I originally bought for making socks. It took days to get the warp on the loom, because it's dyed in a palindrome sequence of colors that I had to try to line up by stretching it 10 feet across my living room. Then I began weaving using a pattern from a book that turned out to have some kind of misprint. I got about a dozen rows in and noticed that my result didn't look anything like the picture. Comparing the pattern on that page with other patterns in the book, it was clear that the printed instructions didn't make sense. I had to pull out all my progress and start over from scratch, this time using a pattern from a different book.

It's coming along nicely now, thank goodness. I'm hoping to get done in time for Easter, but since I'll be taking a two week vacation in March, that might not happen.

The third "W" this month stands for Wyrmspan, a new board game that I acquired. It's a spin-off of the wildly successful game Wingspan, a game that put women game designers on the map and started a global trend for nature-themed games. Wyrmspan is all about creating a dragon sanctuary, finding homes for a variety of painstakingly illustrated dragons in a series of caves on the player board. I went all-in on buying the deluxe extra bits, like shaped wooden tokens and rubber playmats instead of cardboard. Dragons are a particular favorite of mine.

I am trying to hold off on buying too many more games, though, as I don't have space to store them. I'm making some progress by organizing the garage, but there are only so many things I can shove out there without worrying that they will be damaged by the elements.
spacealien_vamp: (Default)
Once again I have been derelict when it comes to regular updates. This is because I have far too many hobbies and not nearly enough free time to indulge in all of them as much as I would like. As WoW is in the middle of its weekly service downtime at the moment, however, I can tear myself away long enough to run through what I've been occupying myself with over the past several months.

Photography
In August I went to visit family in Hawaii for a week. I spent a lot of time with my fancy digital camera taking pictures. Since the time zone was three hours behind, it was relatively easy to wake up early, allowing me to take a bunch of shots of the sunrise over the ocean. I also got a bunch of pictures of waterfalls as well as closeups of various flowers, leaves, and mushrooms. This one is my favorite because I managed to get the flower in perfect focus (which was super hard, as the branch was blowing around in the wind) with a delightfully blurred yet still interesting background. That said, the sunrise photos are pretty spectacular. I plan to go through all the hundreds of pictures and have a few printed out to hang on the wall in my guest room, which has a Hawaii theme.

Computer games
I'm still playing Diablo IV, sporadically, but I have transferred most of my online gaming time over to my reactivated World of Warcraft account. Yes, getting sucked back into that after 10 years is probably a lapse in judgment. But the latest expansion is all about dragons. Dragons! I couldn't resist that. The sad thing is that my former guild is no longer active, though some of the members are still playing on other servers. At least the guild itself is still there, and my characters weren't kicked out of it.

Manga
I took a few weeks to get caught up on reading and reviewing the past year's worth of manga that I ordered online, but I have no place to put it anymore, as my storage is full. That set me on a mission to cull volumes from my collection...again. I've already gotten rid of any titles of below average quality in previous purges. Now I'm going through from A to Z, reading the ones that are borderline to solidify my opinion of them, and culling anything that's simply average. If they're inoffensive yet not memorable, they have to go. I've been making steady progress since summer, and I'm currently in the M section. (One might think that's halfway, but due to the distribution of author names, it's more like a third of the way through.)

Board games
I've acquired a number of new board games, and I'm busily playing through them with my parents. The game boxes also have a storage problem, as I have filled all my available shelves. Once the stacks of manga have been put away, that will clear up some space for the games, but it's still an issue. That concern has set me on the task of cleaning out and organizing my garage. It's a huge task, as the garage is crammed with stuff that I didn't have space for in the house, but I'm trying to tackle it a small section at a time. I managed to get rid of a bunch of useless stuff this past weekend, which is a good feeling. With space opening up there, I can shuffle things from my closets out to storage tubs in the garage, which provides the games with new storage options.

Fiber arts
I've picked up a lot of new yarn this year, and I'm continuing to work on various knitting projects. This summer I completed a sleeveless blouse, and I'm currently working on a pair of knee socks. As if that weren't enough, I ordered a 24" loom for myself for Christmas. I've been interested in weaving for a while, and I'm going to try practicing some small items. Did I really need another hobby? No. But it's knitting-adjacent, so I think I will enjoy it.

Traveling
I didn't get to go on an international trip this year as I had hoped, but maybe I'll get something scheduled next year. Visiting Hawaii was fun, and I'm planning to go back next March (if the annual leave draw lottery goes in my favor). I also went on a short road trip through Northern California with my parents in November, staying in Napa for some wine tasting and Mendocino for vegan cuisine. The redwood forests are truly amazing, though the curvy mountain roads can be unnerving, particularly in the dark with the occasional deer peeking out at the headlights. I've been living in the state for 15 years now, and I still haven't seen very much of it, which is a shame.

That pretty much covers everything (outside of work) that has been occupying me since my last post.
spacealien_vamp: (Default)
I just got back from the first half of my summer vacation. I had a few days off before my departure, which I used to clean and dog-proof the house as much as I could. I also had blackberries and rhubarb to freeze, a sink full of crabapples to turn into sauce, and the sour cherry harvest, which was more abundant than I had estimated. I ended up working on putting up fruits until 2am, and I had to leave the house at 3am to make my early morning flight. By the time of the departure, I had been awake for 24 hours straight. I dozed on the plane, but economy is never very relaxing.

When I got off the plane, I knew I was not wearing my glasses, but I thought I had put them in a pocket of my purse while waiting in the airport, so I wasn't too concerned. After my parents picked me up, though, I searched through my purse and couldn't find them anywhere. I had to spend the entire vacation with no glasses, which wasn't too terrible, since I only need them for seeing at a distance. I knew I would have to get another pair for driving when I returned home, though.

Surprise happy ending: On my first day going back to work, I found the glasses zipped into the pocket of my jacket. The temperature was in the 50s when I left home at 3am in the Bay Area, but it was 80+ the entire time I was in the Midwest, so I never put my jacket on while I was there, which was why I didn't find them.

Anyway, I started off by attending the Ann Arbor Art Fair, where I spent a considerable amount of money. I purchased two prints and an original multimedia (mostly oil) abstract piece that will be great in my living room. I left the larger pieces with my parents, who will be driving to stay with me over the winter and can bring them in the car.

I spent several days visiting friends and playing board games, which was great fun. After that, I stayed with one of my brothers while preparing to attend a wedding, in which I would be a bridesmaid. I played quite a lot of Diablo 4 on my new Steam deck.

My mom came to my house with me, as we were offered a chance to stay in Hawaii at my uncle's house while he's away on a cruise. We'll head there together next week. As soon as we got home, I tried to heat something for supper in the microwave, and the microwave died. It was fine while I entered the cook time, but as soon as I pressed the start button it went dark. I reset the breaker in the circuit box, but that had no effect, and I tried plugging it into a different outlet, which also did nothing. I was able to order a new one, but it won't be delivered until Wednesday. Curiously, I was just reading a blog post about kitchen gadgets and how the one "fad" appliance that has stuck around longest has been the microwave, even though most people only use it to reheat coffee. I use mine for WAY more than that. Living without one, even for a few days, is quite inconvenient.

I love my appliances. When I heard that the company behind the Instant Pot filed for bankruptcy, I bought a second (larger) one immediately. I've had my 3qt unit since before the pandemic, and I use it all the time. I didn't want to risk that breaking and not being able to get a replacement. My juicer was invaluable for preserving all my cherries. There's no way I would have been able to pit them all between 12am (when I finished the applesauce and could start on them) and 2am. My multipurpose toaster oven has almost entirely replaced my gas oven. My Vitamix is probably going on 8 years old and I use it nearly every day. So when I read responses to that blog post where people were denigrating the appliances like, "I can do all the things it does with a regular pot on my stove!" I just shake my head. Sure, you can cook on the stove. But you can't cook on the stove and then leave the burner on while ALSO taking the dogs out for a 2 mile walk or running to the store or weeding the garden or whatever other tasks need to be accomplished away from the stove.

There's not enough time in the day for everything as it is. Anything that saves me time is valuable.

We're getting new uniforms at work. They announced the change back in January, but nothing was available for purchase at the time. They finally updated the ordering site with the new items (since our yearly purchasing period ends this month), but they say it could be up to a 5 month wait to get the order. I was able to order the new shirts and insignia, but frustratingly the website bugged out every time I tried to add the pants to my shopping cart. Hopefully that gets fixed in the next couple of weeks.

I'm looking forward to spending a week on Oahu. I'll be taking my good camera, so I'm hoping to get some nice pictures.
spacealien_vamp: (Default)
Salt-fermented loquats
Verdict: Edible, but nothing special. The flavor just doesn't have a decent punch to it, probably because loquats aren't very acidic in the first place. I pureed them together with some vinegar and spices to make a blend similar to honey mustard sauce, which is pretty tasty (though in the future I will peel them first, because even pureed, you can taste the fiber).

Ume syrup
Verdict: As an alternative to umeshu, it's a nice change and relatively simple, just ume and sugar. I canned 4 cups of it and that still left me with some in the fridge to use.

Ume miso
Verdict: OMG, this stuff is fabulous. The blend of flavors makes it taste like wine-infused Asiago cheese. I could eat this with a spoon. I am definitely making more miso so I can do this again next year.

I bet miso would be good with my sour cherries coming up in a week or two...
spacealien_vamp: (Fangirl)
So, Diablo IV has eaten my life for the past couple of weeks. Though the game isn't perfect, it is definitely a time sink. The graphics are stunning, and the ability to customize the characters' appearance is remarkable. The story is darker than I prefer, and a lot of the quests are super depressing, but that's the aesthetic they're going for intentionally, so in that they are succeeding quite well.

One of the niggling things that bugs the heck out of me is how illogical some of the default keybindings are. (Q for healing potions and not the Quest Log? WHY???) Fortunately, keybindings can be changed. The game also introduces mounts for riding across the countryside, which is great...except the enemy monsters set up roadblocks across the paths, forcing you to dismount at intervals. Ugh. Again, why? On the other hand, the new ability to teleport to any activated waypoint from anywhere on the map is outstanding.

At this point, I've finished the main campaign quest line and unlocked the "Nightmare" Tier 3 difficulty level. I'm still questing at Tier 1 easy mode, though, because I'm not a great player. My reflexes are terrible and I don't min-max my skill tree. I just enjoy running around Sanctuary (the Diablo world) picking various herbs and decking out my character in pretty armor. (The game now has herbing and mining for materials, like in World of Warcraft. I wish it also had fishing.)

In other news, I'm steadily working on losing the weight that I put on while I was a supervisor. It helps to be working my dog again, because that's a lot of exercise. The other thing I'm doing is refraining from eating all the doughnuts and cookies that people bring to the office (which is hard, because the snack distribution table is literally right next to my desk). I've only got about 2 pounds to go to get back to what I was in January.

My garden is in the height of loquat and raspberry season at the moment. I'm running low on freezer containers again and will probably have to resort to plastic freezer bags, which I try to avoid, but glass takes up so much space (and occasionally cracks). I'm trying some salt-fermented loquats to see how well that works for preservation. (Umeboshi is super popular, so why not other fruit?) I'm also making loquat miso as another experiment. I bought more canning lids, so I'm going to make a bit of raspberry jam, though my jam/pickle cupboard is still pretty full.

The drip irrigation system that my dad installed for me is doing a great job so far, particularly for the raspberries, which are much happier this year than they were last year.

A neighbor from a couple blocks away happened to be passing by my house and saw that I had a kale plant gone to seed. She asked if she could have some of the seed pods, and I said she could when they were ready. She came by last week to take some and brought me a few tomato seedlings (varieties unknown) and scallions from her garden in exchange. I also said she could take her pick from my rooted fig tree cuttings. It's nice to have neighbors who are into gardening.

One of my volunteer potato plants set a bunch of fruit last year, so I harvested a lot of seeds. I planted a bunch of the seeds out in a tray on my porch to see what kind of tubers they will produce. Something (probably a squirrel) stepped in the tray and disturbed the soil a couple days ago, but I don't think it did too much damage. The cool thing about potatoes grown from true seed is that each individual plant could be considered a new variety, since it can then be propagated through the tubers as clones in perpetuity.

Just one more month to go before my summer vacation. My neighbor across the street has said that she should be able to feed my dogs while I'm gone.
spacealien_vamp: (Default)
So, that 5K word estimate I made last time turned into 15K+ words, but I did eventually finish. My third novel has now been posted: Blood of the Master. I also finally got around to making a basic author page.

My term as an acting supervisor came to an end on Saturday, so I am now back to my position as a beagle handler. I was worried that my dog might be out of practice, since she only got to work at most one day a week since February, but when I took her out on Sunday she did great. I will definitely appreciate being able to walk around and get exercise again; as a supervisor, I had to stay near a phone pretty much at all times in order to deal with emergencies like people calling in sick or maintenance personnel requesting access to locked areas or whatever.

My garden is going to be rather basic this year, mainly beans and squash with a few potatoes. I had planted out a bunch of pepper seeds a couple months ago, but just as they were beginning to sprout this past week, snails ate them all. @_@ I planted my squash inside chicken wire cages this year as an experiment to see if that will protect them from squirrels. If the method is successful, I will probably buy more cages next year.

The fruit season is beginning. I harvested the first raspberries today, and a lot of the loquats are ready to pick, though I'll probably have to deal with them next weekend. It's also time for the ume harvest, though I ran low on alcohol for making infusions (and I have a bunch of jars from past years still), so I will try making syrup with them this year instead. Cherries, blackberries, and crabapples will be coming up next.

I'm working on knitting a decorative blouse, and it's coming along nicely, though I did make a slight miscalculation in that I made the length of the back the same as the length of the front. Since the front has more distance to travel from shoulder to waist than the back does, they should have been different lengths to account for it. I'll know for next time. Meanwhile, I'm thinking I'll use short rows to give it an asymmetric hem, transforming the flaw into a design element. Hopefully it turns out well.
spacealien_vamp: (Fangirl)
I'm a little more than halfway through my stint as an Acting Supervisor. It's not quite as bad as I imagined it would be, though the petty interpersonal conflicts that we have to deal with are mind-boggling. I do get called on to resolve issues with passenger complaints, but fortunately listening and then responding in a calm yet firm voice that we have to follow the rules tends to settle things. Mostly my responsibility revolves around sitting by the phone in case someone calls in sick or has some other emergency. I also have to lock/unlock doors a lot.

Babysitting the phone for hours every day has given me a good amount of time to work on writing my third novel, which is coming along well. This one is my Ode to Forever Knight (plus a bunch of other subplot stuff). The rough draft is nearly done, maybe about 5K words left to go, presuming I don't get carried away and drag out the ending. Then will come the editing, continuity checking, and creating a cover picture. I was hoping to have it all ready by the beginning of May, but it might take a bit longer.

I just recently returned from spending a few days at Disneyland with my parents, my brother, and his family. I have to say that the Avengers stuff at the California Adventure Park was fantastic, and the Star Wars area at Disneyland is stunning. I kind of just wanted to walk around absorbing the scenery. And the shopping was fun too. I had a difficult time not buying ALL THE THINGS. I settled for a few T-shirts and a subdued/reasonably tasteful princess-themed sweatsuit. (I may be pushing 50, but Mulan is kickass at any age.)

I've also been spending a lot of my time knitting. I went down a serious rabbit hole, favoriting yarn shops on Etsy. Sometimes I pass time just scrolling through pictures of hand-dyed yarn and drooling. I'm nearly done making two pairs of alpaca wool socks for my dad, and I'm also working on a pair of knee socks for myself. I have a bunch of plans for knit blouses in mind, too.

Not too much to say about the garden yet. It has been so cold and rainy this year that I haven't even planted anything yet, though I should get some seeds started this weekend if I want the summer things to be ready. The storms we've been having are crazy. We drove past some of the flooded areas on our way to Anaheim, and we had to take some circuitous detours around all the damage. (We would have been screwed without GPS.) The one thing that has been growing like whoa is the rainbow chard. It doesn't mind the cool, wet weather much, so I've been getting multiple harvests from it.

I played the open beta of Diablo IV last weekend, and that brought back all the old memories. Diablo II was what got me into computer gaming decades ago. I had picked up Diablo III when I bought my Nintendo Switch, but I hadn't actually played it in that format because I got sucked into Animal Crossing. So this week I've been making up for that by playing through the quest campaign. It's much easier to maneuver the character around with the Switch controls (compared with using a mouse for the PC version), but the inventory UI drives me NUTS. I'm accustomed to opening my inventory and seeing all my items and empty slots displayed, but on the Switch you can only see 4 items at a time. It's maddening.

Still debating whether I want to buy Diablo IV. The beta was a lot of fun, but there was a substantial amount of lag. It's not great to start a big boss fight only to have the game freeze and wind up dead. I'm sure most of that is because of the server drain of so many thousands of people all trying to play at the same time, but wifi connectivity issues on my end can't be discounted either. Also, my mouse hand started cramping up after playing for two evenings. Plus the dogs hate it when I ignore them and will come up and nudge my elbows seeking petting while my character is in the middle of combat. (The border collie even tried to climb in my lap at one point because he DESPERATELY needed attention.)

Also, I can't play computer games and knit at the same time. Life is hard.
spacealien_vamp: (Default)
It has been a number of months since I've posted under anything but my Japanese manga filter, so I have a lot to update.

I took a week off work in May to declutter the house and work in the yard. I got a lot accomplished, mainly in the garage, where I cleared out a pile of old broken appliances and took them to the recycling center. I also reorganized storage, which let me clear out some space in my kitchen cabinets and make things I use often more readily accessible.

In the process of the decluttering, I had hoped to start on the project of digitizing my boxes of VHS tapes from the 1990s. That's when I discovered that one of my two VHS players was dead. Dead dead. Wouldn't even power on. I also discovered that my video capture card freezes recording when it encounters static--not a good trait when digitizing from VHS. I ordered a new one that supposedly had the best reviews, but it was SO user friendly that it didn't offer any customization options at all, it was just "push button to record, then push button to save." I tried it to record a 3-hour video of my performance in a high school musical, but when the recording was done, it encountered an error when I tried to save. Since the "push button to save" didn't work, and there were zero other options, I just had to close out of the software and lose the entire file. I tried an alternative video capture method, but it dropped a lot of video frames and altered the sound to keep it synchronized, which made all the voices sound funny. Watchable, but not enjoyable.

I returned the capture device and ordered a different one, but by the time it arrived, my week off was over. I still haven't had time to go back to that project. I did throw out a box of VHS tapes that I decided I didn't really need anymore, which allowed me to move around some stuff in the closet, but there's a lot more to be done.

My garden has had good points and bad points. I lost an entire pear tree to fire blight, which made me really sad because the pears were delicious last year. I've ordered two more to replace it, trying to get varieties that claim resistance to fire blight. Critters (squirrels and/or raccoons) ate all of my sweet corn, all of my persimmons (which wouldn't even have been ripe until November!), nearly all of my apples, and most of my squash. Fortunately, I have a bumper crop of crabapples and figs, so there's still some left for me after the critters stuff themselves. (I get the feeling animals come to my yard from miles around to chow down.) Oddly, nothing has been eating my tomatoes this year (well, aside from the spider mites, but they just drink the sap), so I've managed to put up lots. I also had a good crop of zucchini, cauliflower, and peppers.

The fireworks weren't so bad in June this year, but July was AWFUL. I didn't get a full night of sleep starting from the Friday before the 4th until 3 full weeks after the holiday. I finally discovered that my border collie isn't accidentally knocking breakable things off my desks, bathroom vanities, and kitchen counters. He's doing it deliberately. I think he's trying to generate noises loud enough to drown out the scary fireworks. I can't just close the doors to the rooms with breakable stuff, because then he scratches up the doors and door frames and even chews on the handles when he gets desperate.

I was so fed up with the destruction (nothing like cleaning up bits of glass from a shattered lamp at 1am because some joker in the neighborhood wanted to hear an illegal big boom after midnight), I splurged on a special crate for high-anxiety dogs. It was freakishly expensive, but hopefully it will keep him safely contained on nights with excessively loud noises. At the very least, it will keep him from stepping on bits of broken glass or shards of ceramic cookware.

I took two weeks off in August to visit friends and family in Michigan and attend Gen Con, the board gaming convention. That was a good break. I have about 4 days' worth of use-or-lose leave that I need to spend yet, which I will probably end up taking in November. We're dealing with a bunch of staffing issues and budgeting issues and various other changes, such as the fact that our contracted kennel went out of business and we had to move all our dogs to a new one. As happens every year, all my coworkers who volunteer for overtime are reaching their cap and can't do it anymore, which means they have to draft people (like me) who don't actually want to work the extra hours. That state of affairs lasts until the end of the fiscal year, September 30. On the bright side, I just got my bump up from Step 7 to Step 8, so those overtime hours are worth a few dollars more.

I'm continuing to pour what money I can spare into paying off my mortgage, since the return on that is far better than my other savings or investment options this year. I just have to keep back enough to make the property tax payment, which keeps increasing every year.

A couple weekends ago I went to the Palo Alto summer art festival, which was quite grand. I didn't buy much (just a pair of non-pierced earrings), but I saw a lot of inspirational work. One artist had gorgeous pieces that were essentially layers of Japanese washi paper with some simple origami and a splash of ink. The prices for the items on display ranged from $150 to $350 each. I was tempted to buy one, but then I thought about it and decided I could do something similar myself and have it completely customized to my taste. Thus, I have started collecting materials to try my hand at making my own paper from scratch. It turns out that a lot of the things I already have growing in my yard are good materials for making paper. (This isn't technically a new interest; I recall buying a washi-making kit when I was in Japan 20+ years ago, though I don't think I actually used it.) I'll just have to find the time to squeeze this in among all my other hobbies.
spacealien_vamp: (Books)
It took far longer than I ever expected to get this done, but I can finally announce that my second novel is finished and posted to Amazon. This one involves a mild F/F romance.

Year of the Dog

I'm already outlining the third volume in the series, which may be somewhat nostalgic for those who knew me way back in the 90s, as it teams a former vampire hunter up with a vampire cop. (Spoiler alert: I'm naming the vampire Nat.)

(Frankly, I'm already outlining the next ~5 volumes simultaneously, which is kind of nice because that lets me plan bits of foreshadowing, but it's also very distracting and adds to the delay in getting anything completed.)

In other news, I have succeeded in scheduling a full week off work, starting on Friday. The plan is to stay home and do some intensive decluttering and gardening, the way I could when we were (briefly) under lockdown in 2020. I also have a ticket to see Neil DeGrasse Tyson give a talk in San Francisco, so that's exciting.

I'm going to try to take another week off for the same thing later in the summer. Squeezing it in around all the days my coworkers are taking off is tricky, but it looks like there's an open spot in September I might be able to nab.
spacealien_vamp: (Default)
I keep thinking about posting, and every time it seems like I should just wait a couple more days until something notable happens that would be worth reporting, and then several weeks slip by.

There have been a couple major updates recently. The work on the sewer line in my backyard was finally completed, and my dad reassembled the raised beds that had been removed to allow the work to be done. Potatoes and raspberries were planted. I have a number of squash, pepper, and tomato seedlings that will be ready to get in the ground within the next few weeks.

Our chief's plan to hire new supervisors from outside the area failed miserably (no one wants to move here, since it's ridiculously expensive if you didn't get in when house prices were low a decade ago), so he finally relented and promoted one of my fellow handlers to a supervisor position. Along with various other staffing changes, that means I'm moving up in seniority on the team. Hopefully that means I'll be in a good position to achieve a favorable work schedule from now on.

I've also been working on getting my second novel ready for uploading to Amazon. It took longer than I anticipated to put together the cover picture, but I finished that over the weekend. Now I just need to do the final edits and formatting on the text. If I stop procrastinating, it could be ready to go next weekend.

I keep watching news on Japan's travel restrictions, with fingers crossed that I'll be able to take a vacation there again eventually, but it seems that it won't be anytime soon. Perhaps next year. In the meantime, I'm accruing a lot of annual leave and have few plans to spend it. If this year is anything like last year, I'll end up burning my use-or-lose time just staying home and doing things around the house or yard. Next fall I will bump up to the next tier of leave earning as I hit my 15-year mark, so I'll have even more time to burn if travel doesn't go back to normal by then.

I've been working on baking different kinds of bread over the past couple months, and I believe I have two recipes polished enough to post for posterity. One is for a tofu-enriched dough that can substitute for a brioche-style soft bread (I've been using it as a base for cinnamon rolls), and the other is a plain whole wheat baguette.
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January was warmer than usual. We had enough nice sunny days that I got all the pruning finished. I also planted a new olive tree and two artichokes in the back yard. I harvested the first blood orange from the tree I planted two years ago, which was exciting. I'm looking forward to a bountiful supply of blood orange juice in the coming years.

One thing that has interrupted efforts in the back yard is trouble with the sewer lines. The pipes from my house have been causing issues and need to be replaced, since they are (mostly) original and have been deteriorating since the house was built just after WWII. That was compounded by the fact that the city's sewer main (which runs through my back yard) was blocked and backing up into yards all over the neighborhood. This has caused plumbers to be in high demand, while simultaneously they are in short supply as many of them have been out sick with Covid. I have a contract with one company to replace my pipes, but they may not get around to it for a while. In the meantime, this puts a big chunk of my backyard garden in limbo, as they will have to trench through some of the raised beds.

Work is going through some upheavals as the 5G rollout put a lot of the airlines into disarray. Multiple flights were cancelled out of fears that the new technology would interfere with the functioning of the aircraft. Flights are returning, but passenger counts haven't bounced back yet. Multiple staffing and budget issues continue to be factors making it difficult to plan very far ahead.

On the bright side, I still have some space in the front yard for planting out the first cool-weather crops of the year. I lost my fall peas thanks to all the sewer line issues, but there's still time to plant more. I can also get some Brassicas started.
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Lots of updates since the last time I posted.

The biggest news is that I completely paid off my car. Yay! Now I can put extra funds into other things, like paying off my mortgage faster. (My brother keeps insisting that I'm better off financially if I put extra money in a high interest investment account. Maybe so. But there's something to be said for not having that mortgage as a point of constant pressure--in case we have, like, another government shutdown or something.)

The last of the quinces were transformed into fruit leather. Now I just have to plan for next season's planting. I'm replacing my diseased apricot tree with a bunch of raspberries, and I ordered a ton of strawberry plants. The kiwi berry is gone, and I'm thinking I'll put artichokes in its place. This month will be dedicated to pruning all the trees and grapes in preparation for spring.

Beginning this week, the canine handlers are on a new schedule. I will have weekends off, at least for a few months. We'll see if we get to keep it. One of our two new official supervisors has reportedly already said that she doesn't like our schedule, goodness knows why. One of the things she wants is to have us all train at the same time, which is...impractical. You can't have people on a super early morning shift train at the same time as people on a late night shift, you'll be cutting into somebody's union-required 8 hours off. We'll have to wait and find out how that goes.

We finished our leave draw for 2022, and I managed to reserve all the days I wanted. It helps that I didn't need any of the major holidays, though I did get Memorial Day weekend for a local board game convention. I'm hoping to trade or auction a big chunk of my old games there to make space in my house. I reserved all the days for my season pass to the musicals playing in San Francisco, plus I got a ticket to a Weird Al concert. If I won't be traveling much, at least I'll be doing things nearby.

I finished writing the rough draft of my second novel. Once it's done receiving edits and I have a cover picture for it, I'll be able to post it.
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I see that I have neglected my posting for far too long, as usual. Harvest season hits hard at the end of August and doesn't really let up until mid-October. That keeps me busy picking and processing figs, apples, and quinces. (In fact, there are still two large bowls of quinces on my table that need to be processed into fruit leather soon.)

Then there's the novel I'm trying to finish before the end of the year. And Animal Crossing had the nerve to release a huge update plus an expansion, so that sucked up any free time I might otherwise have had available.

My parents came to visit early this year, rushing to cross the country before the snow started. They're hoping they'll be able to stay until next spring. Dad is keeping busy doing yard work, mostly ridding the place of weeds and trimming back overgrown plants. We were able to attend a cozy, outdoor Friendsgiving meal gathering, and it was great to see some people we haven't gotten together with in two years.

Things at work are still somewhat in limbo. They held interviews for new canine supervisors, and several of my fellow handlers applied, but we assume (though there has been no official announcement yet) that none of them were promoted. We suspect it's because our chief doesn't want to have to replace any of them. We've proposed a new schedule for next year, but it hasn't been officially approved yet. That's rather stressful, as we are soon going to have the lottery for reserving our days off for all of 2022, and it's hard to decide what days to reserve if you don't know what days you'll be working in the first place.

Speaking of which, in last year's lottery I had reserved the week after Christmas 2021. The vaccines were just starting to be approved at that time, and I was expecting that once everyone got vaccinated I'd be able to use that reserved block of days to take a trip to Japan for New Year. Obviously, that turned out poorly, so I'll just be staying home the whole time.

Having learned my lesson, I'm not planning any major trips for next year. I do have season tickets to the San Francisco Broadway performances, and I'm going to try to reserve Gen Con weekend (spending it visiting my parents if Gen Con itself isn't feasible), but other than that I have no pressing events to attend. Maybe I'll be able to go back to Japan in 2023.
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I had reserved two weeks of annual leave in order to attend this year's Gen Con, but then the convention runners decided to postpone it until September (hoping that more time would allow for more attendees to be vaccinated), which meant it was impossible for me to go. Instead, I used my two weeks to fly to Michigan for visiting friends and family. I loaded my bags with my own stock of board games until I hit the weight limit.

I used the digital boarding pass for the first time, rather than printing it out. It worked well most of the time. The one instance where I had an issue was upon checking my bag for the return flight. My app was set to use my fingerprint to log in for the boarding pass, but it was so hot that my hands were sweating, and the phone couldn't read my print with wet fingers. I had to resort to typing in my password with one hand (since my ID was in the other hand), which was tricky.

Also, TSA pre-check rocks.

Frankly, I'm surprised that the airlines are still feeding snacks to people on domestic flights. I can understand allowing people to bring their own food, but why give people more excuses to take their masks off? With as closely as people are packed in those seats, is it really worth it for a couple of pretzels? I declined all snacks and beverages both ways.

I managed to get lots of games played during the visit. It was great to see people, and there was lovely garden-fresh food too. The one hiccup was that a series of thunderstorms rolled through and knocked out the electricity at my parents' house for several days. Fortunately they had a generator they could use to keep the freezer and refrigerator running, and to charge phones, but it did throw a wrench into some plans. Since their stove is electric, it meant eating things that didn't require cooking. Plus, we couldn't play any games unless the sun was up.

My dogs were rather naughty while I was gone. A friend agreed to drop by a couple times a day to feed them and control the dog door, leaving them mostly unsupervised inside the house. I shut the doors to the bedrooms before I left, but they managed to get both doors open. The beagle found my stash of potato chips and ate those. He dragged my work treat pouch out to the back yard and ate the couple of treats that had been left in there.

My grapes had been just a few days away from being ripe when I left. I came back to find that squirrels had devoured nearly all of them. There were just a few of the Concord-style grapes remaining; I picked what I could salvage and made jam out of them this weekend.

I'm now starting to get tomatoes and figs. I should also be able to harvest the apples soon. Most of my squash plants died off, but I have a monster (20' long) butternut squash plant in the front yard that survived and is producing well. I'm thinking of planting beets and cabbage for the fall.

I'm still chipping away at decluttering. The game room is vastly improved. I can probably cull out a few more books if I try, though the biggest hurdle is the VHS tape collection.
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For once, I feel that I was relatively productive over the weekend. I managed to clear multiple boxes of things I was keeping "just in case" out of the garage. I'm hoping to get rid of more next week, after my recycling bin gets emptied.

I put the insect netting over the cherry tree. I should have done it last weekend, but I didn't have time. Hopefully most of the cherries were still sufficiently young; the fruit flies tend to lay their eggs 1-2 days before full ripeness. The main harvest should start next week. The early crabapples are also beginning to turn red, so they should be ready for harvest in another 2-3 weeks.

I cleared out a bunch of the passion fruit vines that were shading my Asian pear tree, and it's finally starting to wake up and sprout leaves. No fruit from that one this year, but I may get a couple from the pear that was in full sun.

I set up a dog bed and fluffy blanket in my bathtub. Now I can shut my border collie in the bathroom at night with a white noise generator to help drown out the sound of the fireworks. It seems to be working reasonably well so far for minor explosive events, though I suspect it will be insufficient on the 4th.

I got a start on cleaning the kitchen by scouring the stove and microwave. Clearing and washing the countertops will have to wait until next weekend.
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I had hoped that with pandemic restrictions being lifted, and people therefore not feeling as confined and in need of excitement, that there would be fewer fireworks this year...particularly since we are in another drought and the danger of starting a massive fire is high. Sadly, that appears not to be the case. The fireworks started up a couple weeks ago, and they have been sounding off sporadically nearly every night, starting around 8:30-9pm and sometimes going as late as nearly midnight. Every time a firework goes off, even if it's several blocks away, my border collie goes into a panic and it takes 30-60 minutes to calm him down again. In the meantime, he tries to climb every piece of furniture I own, particularly my bathroom vanity (he has already broken the soap dish by knocking it on the floor) and my computer desk, where he tries to hide behind the monitor. Not to mention my bed. It's not pleasant to have a panicking 50-pound dog stepping on one's face in the middle of the night.

Needless to say, I'm not getting a lot of sleep.

Work is going well enough. International travel hasn't picked up much yet. In fact, with restrictions on travelers from India, it has actually decreased. On the bright side, one of our new handlers has been scheduled to attend training to get his dog starting next month. We're hoping the others will be assigned to classes before too long, although that brings up another problem. Namely, vehicles. We placed an order over a year ago for new vehicles to cover the new handlers, but we haven't gotten any yet. With vehicle manufacturing shortages, plus staffing issues at the facility designated for installing the K9 containment systems and heat alarms, we'll be lucky if we get any new vehicles before 2022.

My garden is ramping up production. I'm currently being deluged by passion fruit. Unfortunately, my apricot tree is diseased and appears to be a lost cause. I've decided to cut it down so it won't spread anything to my other stone fruit trees. I haven't made up my mind yet what I will plant to replace it.
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It's been a while since I last posted, mainly because I've been waiting for my big news to be official. Inspired by posts from [personal profile] havocthecat, I've been spending a great deal of my free time this year writing a novel. I finally finished it, and after figuring out all the formatting issues, managed to upload it to Amazon as an ebook. It's an urban fantasy/cozy mystery with some mild M/M romance. It's intended as the first in a series, and I already have a good chunk of the sequel written as well. (Future volumes are linked by the setting, with different main characters, though supporting characters do reappear. The sequel is F/F.)

Heart of the Prince

Other than that, not much has been going on here. I'm shifting from the end of planting season to the beginning of harvest season in the garden. Turnips and bulb fennel are just about ready, as are the asparagus, rhubarb, and loquats. I'll probably pick the ume for making plum wine in another week or so.

Work is mostly holding steady. Classes are starting to open up at the canine training center, but there are tons of nationwide candidates and very few slots available. No one from my port has gotten a spot in a class yet.
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The month of March has been relatively eventful, compared to the rest of the past year.

The big news was that I got my vaccination shots, thanks to DHS classifying all of us as first responders. The first one was like a giant mosquito bite, with swelling and itching for a week. The second one made my arm hurt for a day and gave me a mild headache, but nothing worse.

The detector dog training center is gearing up to open classes again. None of my coworkers are scheduled to go yet, as far as I'm aware, but maybe before too much longer.

I've had a couple weekends of nice weather, so I've been able to get some work done in the garden. I planted out potatoes, cabbage, onions, leeks, and squash. The turnips and beets that I planted earlier are coming along nicely; the hoop tents of bug netting are working out great, though it took some scrambling to find enough rocks and bricks to weight down the ends so the netting wouldn't keep getting blown by the wind. I've got a small crop of both kumquats and loquats ripening. The yuzu tree that I planted last fall is starting to show flower buds, as is one of the pear trees I planted last spring. I'm not sure if I'll get fruit off them yet, but it's promising.

My next door neighbor decided to pull out their privacy hedge, which has been dying for years, and put in a redwood fence. The nice thing about that is, it leaves me a narrow swath of bare ground on my side of the fence where the hedge used to be. I bought some soil amendments for it and I'm working on getting it cleaned up to plant summer veggies and flowers there.

One disappointment is that I won't be going to Gen Con this year. I had tickets for last year's convention, which was cancelled, and the tickets rolled over to August of this year. Unfortunately, the scheduled convention dates, for which I already reserved annual leave, were considered too early to be safe. The convention was postponed until mid-September, when none of my friends can go because the school year will have started, and I don't have any leave reserved. We may get a chance to do something with just our small group during the originally planned period.

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