Sunrise Chronicles

This month I hit a big milestone--I have finally paid off the first $150K of my mortgage. Whee! Just 9 more years to go for the remaining $200K. Probably less, actually, since I can funnel more money into it starting next year, after I pay off my car in December.

It's time to begin getting back to work in the garden. I did some pruning over one nice weekend in January, but it has been super rainy since then, so I haven't completely finished that task yet. I planted a bunch of cold-weather veggie seeds last week, so those should be ready to go in the ground before too long. I'm probably going to plant fewer beans this year, as I have picked up a ton of tomato, squash, and cabbage varieties that I want to try, and I only have so much space.

The city has had a lot of issues with package thefts and car break-ins over the past few months. I decided to invest in a couple of security cameras, one for the porch and one for the driveway. They seem to be working well so far, though they mainly just pick up random stray cats and raccoons cutting through my front yard at night.

We had a bunch of issues with getting management approval for a new schedule at work, which put a lot of stress and uncertainty on the whole team, but it has settled for the time being. As the handler with the least seniority, I'm stuck on the least desirable shift for the foreseeable future. The new hires still don't have dogs, though there are rumblings that the training center might try opening on an experimental basis soon. Fingers crossed that they can get training classes up and running before too long.

Not much else is going on around here. Reading, writing, watching TV, and cooking take up any free time that's not monopolized by the dogs. I did put together a recipe for whole grain vegan bread that has turned out very well, so I'll post that next.

I managed to schedule the last of my use-or-lose hours this month, so at least they didn't all go to waste. Not that I could go anywhere with my two weeks off. I ended up staying at home the entire time, continuing my efforts to tidy and organize all my belongings, most of which have been in boxes in the closets for years.

I started by thinning out my English books. That gave me room to haul my Japanese novels out of storage and sort through them, putting the survivors on the freshly emptied shelves. Then I went through my filing cabinet and old papers saved from as far back as high school. I had crazy old useless stuff, like a file folder containing credit card statements from 1998, or my old Sprint telephone statements (which I switched to paperless in 2010 and then switched to Verizon in 2018). Membership information for the Northwest Airlines mileage club (Northwest merged into Delta in 2008). A pages-long memo from 1986 detailing how domain names are determined on DARPAnet...which, to be honest, was probably one of my brother's printouts from college that got mixed in with my stuff. That's not even getting into the binders full of fanfic printouts from FK/HL/DS/KF:TLC fandom years.

In any case, I filled my recycling bin and had it emptied twice, and it's nearly full a third time. I gave a box of novels to a co-worker, and I still have about five more boxes awaiting disposal. I have a huge stack of papers with things like my social security number on them that need shredding. I was able to clear enough space in my closet to put the boxes of board games that I'm trying to cull from my collection in there, instead of them clogging up my bedroom floor. (I sold a handful at a Thanksgiving weekend game convention last year, and I was hoping to sell more at game conventions this summer...but of course those were all cancelled. So they stay in boxes.) I cleared off my computer desk, which had been buried under layers of junk mail and scrap paper going back three years.

The next big project is to clear out my linen closet, which is full to bursting. I'm kind of afraid to tackle that one, but it needs to be done.

Another thing I did recently was buy a new pillow. I'd been using the same memory foam pillow for ten years, and it was fine for falling asleep on my back, but as soon as I would roll over onto my side, my shoulders would scrunch up. The new one is a high-profile pillow specifically for side sleeping, and it is amazing. I sleep so much better now.

Things at work are...stressful. We still don't know what our schedule is going to be next year, as our chief has been on vacation for weeks and thus hasn't made any decisions. Still no word on when the canine training center will open for the new hires, but with virus surges all over the country, things aren't looking promising. Upper management has brought the hammer down on everyone about safety precautions; we are now no longer even allowed to talk to anyone outside our immediate work group (for me, that means canine handlers) unless absolutely necessary for work-related reasons.

(I guess I got that new pillow just in time. I'm going to need my sleep.)

Not much happening in the garden this time of year. I need to harvest the fall veggies; I have a selection of potatoes, cabbage, turnips, bell peppers, and Asian greens that are ready for picking. Once those are done, though, there won't be anything else but winter pruning until February.

Well, July 4th was as excruciatingly miserable as I had expected. Illegal fireworks went off all night long, terrorizing my dog. I tried running out into the street to see if I could get pictures of the perpetrators to report them, but most of the fireworks were being set off several blocks away. I did suspect a neighbor a few houses down, but whatever they were doing was behind one of the ubiquitous 6-foot redwood fences, so I couldn't get any proof.

Even worse, that wasn't the end of it. Fireworks kept going off nearly every night the rest of the month. Come on, people, the holiday is over. They still haven't completely stopped. Two went off last night, sending my dog into a panic that took me a half hour to calm. More loud bangs went off tonight.

In other news, our Weather and Safety Leave has been completely cancelled, which means we all have to show up for work full time again. A handful of new flights have returned, but not nearly enough to keep the entire staff occupied. We spend hours sitting at our desks entertaining ourselves.

It's quite a shame, because I could have used that time to work in the garden. My crabapple tree was particularly productive. I made 7.5 pints of crabapple sauce, and I still have two bowls of fruit left that I plan to turn into juice. I picked the white grapes last week, and after giving some away to three different neighbors and taking some in to work to share, I still have two gallon-size bags of them taking up space in my refrigerator. I need to harvest and process the purple grapes this weekend. I planned to do it today, but it took me so long to harvest the last of the spring root vegetables, plant out late peppers and fall potatoes, and water the whole back yard, I was too tired to keep going in the 90-degree heat. I'll have to get an early start in the morning.

The other thing taking up my time is that I'm trying to get rid of excess possessions. I did a purge of my clothing and managed to get rid of a lot. Next I need to get through the boxes of VHS tapes from the 90s that have been taking up nearly two entire closets since I moved here.

My big plan for August was to attend Gen Con in Indianapolis, but of course that was cancelled. I did participate in the online convention, which was interesting (though not at all the same). I learned about a few games that seemed interesting, and I got to play online with some friends. That was a fun stay-at-home weekend, and it did give me an excuse to use one day of annual leave.

Since all of my vacations this year ended up cancelled, I'm going to have about 4 solid weeks of use-or-lose annual leave by December. Reportedly the House passed a measure that would allow us to carry all of those extra days over to next year, but the Senate hasn't passed it, so we're all stuck with tons of leave that we're just going to lose. The problem is, we can't all take it at the same time, because only one person from my department is allowed to take off any given day. We all reserved the days we planned to take off last year in December so that we could stagger them. At this point, there aren't enough days left in the year for everyone to take all of their leave. I might be able to squeeze out a couple weeks in November...just to stay home and watch TV, I guess.

Speaking of TV...my cable service has been quietly eliminating channels from my package since mid-July. No notice or explanation. I'm watching shows one day, and the next I try to turn it on and I get a message that I am not subscribed to that channel. After the fourth channel disappeared, I got fed up and reduced my service down to the smallest package they offer, which is basically just local channels. I've mostly been watching PBS shows these days, and the change will save me $40/month. I'll miss the Hallmark Mystery channel, but they weren't airing anything new anyway.

There isn't much else going on. We're supposed to have two supervisory canine positions posted, but our chief is balking at posting the openings because he doesn't want to "lose" people. (If two handlers become supervisors, then he will have to allow people to apply for the two empty handler positions, and he considers those staff members "lost" even though we all work for him.) None of the new handlers can get dogs yet until the training center in Georgia opens back up for classes, and there has been no status update on that front. We're trying to include them in as much activity as we can, but there's only so much they can do without dogs.

Now I just have to get through this weekend's heat wave. Hopefully I won't get hit with a rolling blackout, the way other neighborhoods have. I try not to use too much electricity during peak hours anyway, because I signed up for the time-of-use plan that makes non-peak power much cheaper for charging my car. Plus I don't have an air conditioner, just an electric fan. But it's still not fun to have the computer shut off unexpectedly.

The big news for the canine department is that our supervisor has been promoted to a position at a different port and will be leaving in about three weeks. They haven't yet notified us who will be taking over as the canine supervisor. The airport is adding a few new flights from Germany and Japan starting this week. Not enough yet to cancel our Weather & Safety leave, but I'm sure business will ramp up as time goes on.

I got the bill for my FEMA flood insurance last week, and my eyes bugged out at the $3400 premium. I pulled out last year's to compare, and it was an increase of $235. I dug in my filing cabinet and found my first bill from when I bought my house back in 2011, and at the time it was $1800. So in the course of 9 years, without having made a single claim, my flood insurance nearly doubled. I spent some time making phone calls and ended up switching to a new provider that was willing to offer me essentially the same coverage for only $1300. I feel pretty good about that accomplishment, though I kinda wish I had thought to do it years ago.

Apricot season has started. Last year, my tree produced only a handful of fruit, and it all ended up going to the wildlife. This weekend I was able to harvest two large bowls of apricots. There are still a few more green ones on the tree that should ripen up in another week or so. Once I get all the fruit, I'm going to have to do a big pruning job on the tree, because a lot of the branches have gotten too tall to reach. Also this weekend, I froze several more quarts of rhubarb and canned several pints of mulberry juice.

The corn is three feet tall and starting to tassel. (It's a flour corn variety that never gets more than about four feet tall.) The beans are putting out flowers. Nothing from the tomatoes yet, as the largest is only about a foot tall right now, but the peppers are perking up with the recent warm weather. I ordered some shade cloth to protect my strawberries and other tender plants from the sun, but there was some kind of delay with the delivery, so I'll have to be extra vigilant about keeping everything well watered.

My beagle had his last post-surgery checkup on Friday, and his calcium ion level is normal, so he's free from vet visits until his next vaccinations come due.

Last time I made 8 cups of loquat jam. This weekend I picked four more bowls of loquats. After hours of chopping and removing seeds and 90 minutes of cranking the Victorio strainer, I was left with 8 PINTS of loquat puree. As our lockdown has been extended through May 31, I decided against using up all my sugar to make more jam, so I just put all the puree in jars in the freezer. (Fortunately, my parents cleared out some space in there during their visit in January.) There are still more loquats on the tree. I don't know what I will do when they are ripe. And my tree is just a baby (compared to others in the neighborhood). It's going to be rough keeping up with all the fruit when my tree gets bigger.

Note: 6 tablespoons of loquat jam mixed with a cup of homemade coconut yogurt makes an excellent lassi drink. Seriously delicious.

I made potato/cauliflower curry this past week, and I'm planning to make several pints of sweet pickled cauliflower tomorrow. I have more cauliflower in the garden ready to be harvested, so I'll use that to try the buffalo sauce idea, now that I've made a jar of hot sauce with my peppers. I've done multiple things with the asparagus, including a tofu scramble and a batch of beer-batter tempura. I'm thinking of using it as a pizza topping next. The chard is ready to start harvesting, as is the rhubarb and some early strawberries, so I will have plenty to keep me busy until cherry and blackberry season starts in a couple weeks.

Plums will be after that. Fortunately, they can easily be dehydrated.

I'm starting to get a few flowers on the volunteer passionfruit plants that I let grow to replace the one that died last year. I may have fruit from that this summer/fall. The grapes are also looking promising.

I still need to make wire cages for the strawberries. I've been putting off doing that in favor of finishing up knitting a sleeveless cotton top. I'm fortunate I have all this time off to tackle these tasks, but there's always more to be done.

Two weeks into sheltering in place, and I'm barely scratching the surface of things to do around the house. So far I've been spending most of my time reading ebooks from the library and clearing space on my DVR, with spurts of working in the garden when the weather is good. I spread compost around and dug up all the volunteer potatoes so that the raised beds will be ready when it's time to plant the beans and corn in a couple weeks. I also got a bit of cleaning done.

I haven't yet touched the mountain of manga and novels that I have sitting on shelves waiting to be read, but I may start doing another manga purge next week. Once I have more space, I can put away the stacks of read-but-not-filed manga that have been cluttering up multiple surfaces for months. I did empty out a basket of old receipts and junk mail, which is progress, because then I could stuff some manga into it.

I haven't done much knitting yet either. I have three projects in progress, and a bunch more in mind to work on when those are finished. I've also been wanting to haul out my paints or my colored pencils again, but that's a low priority. Even with the quarantine, there just never seems to be enough time to do everything.

I took my beagle to the vet as I mentioned in my last post, but before they could do the surgery, they tested his blood and found high calcium levels. This required sending the blood out to a lab for further analysis. I finally got the results back today, so now I can go ahead with re-scheduling his procedure. The surgeon has a spot available next Wednesday, so hopefully I can get it done then.

My food supplies are fine...I grew up on the story of the Ingalls family and the Long Winter, so I tend to hoard food even at the best of times. Even though I didn't get a chance to go grocery shopping before the lockdown, I'm doing okay. The only thing I'm running low on is sugar, and I still have probably a week's supply left, plus a couple quarts of honey and some maple syrup and molasses for good measure. A neighbor said she'd pick some up for me when she did a grocery run, so I won't have to go out shopping for a while. It's fortunate that I stopped buying dairy milk back in December; I don't have to worry about constantly replenishing any perishables.

At work, flights have almost completely dried up, so they're starting to give the staff paid time off. I got two days off this week, and I'm scheduled to get another three days off next week. Since so many people have had vacations canceled (sadly, my trip to Europe among them), the union is pushing management to allow people to carry over more unused vacation hours to next year. I'm now hoping that my August plans don't get canceled too. It would suck to go a whole year without taking any vacation time.

I've had a moderately eventful couple of weeks. The first thing that cropped up, of course, is the coronavirus (aka Covid-19), which beautifully illustrates why the board game Pandemic is so realistic for me. My airport is one of the designated access points for travelers from China, where employees of Health and Human Services have been checking people for illness as they enter the country. Working there is like being in one of those outbreak movies, with people (passengers and staff) walking around wearing masks everywhere.

This event has had multiple side effects. A lot of them have to do with flight schedules and rerouted passengers and immigration primary inspection times--things that impact my work but don't have much relevance to other people. However, one element that did affect my family is that my parents had to change their flight plans and return home a week early, so that they would have a full two weeks of incubation time (just in case) before they go help my brother with a new baby in March.

Fortunately, the sweater that I made for my mom was finished in time for her to take it with her. (Okay, so I cheated and left all the finishing--seams and buttons--for her to do. But I did the knitting part.) I plan to make a matching pullover for my dad, but I have a couple other projects to finish up first.

One other thing that has been going on at work is that Netflix is there filming for their original series about border security. They'll be around for another week, and then they'll reportedly come back for a couple more weeks in May. I haven't personally been on camera, but I've been around while they've filmed other coworkers. It should be interesting to see what kind of shows they put together.

The weather has been nice, so I've started seedlings for early spring crops, like beets, turnips, and daikon radishes. My dad helped build a number of new raised beds for my yard while he was here. Two of the raised beds are intended for strawberries, and the strawberries (which I ordered last fall) were scheduled to be delivered the same day my parents left. I waited all evening, but they never arrived. The next morning, I checked the FedEx tracking number, but it had stopped tracking the package somewhere in Iowa several days earlier and just had a message "no delivery date."

Thinking this was odd, I called FedEx to find out more details. I suspected it was a weather delay, but as this was a package of live plants, I was worried they might be affected. The person on the line just said their system had a note that something had happened to that delivery truck. I asked if they were going to notify the shipper (I mean, they never notified me, but maybe?), but they wouldn't tell me that. They just said they'd tell my local office to investigate and call me back with more information. (I'm not sure what they thought my local office could do, since the package stopped in Iowa.) I called the shipper myself and told them. It was a good thing, because it turns out they had a total of six packages on that same truck. FedEx never called me back with more information, but the shipper did, and they told me the delivery truck had CAUGHT ON FIRE.

O_O

Fortunately for me, the shipper sent me out another batch of strawberry plants to replace the ones that had been on that ill-fated delivery truck. This incident lowered my opinion of FedEx, though. They knew something had happened to the truck, but they didn't bother to notify me or the shipper. If it hadn't been a time-sensitive order, I might have waited days or weeks, figuring it would get to me when the Midwest weather cleared up.

Anyway, the replacement strawberry plants arrived in time for me to plant them over the weekend. Now I just have to build protective cages to keep the critters away once they get established.

It has been a busy month. After four weeks of regular overtime (and very little sleep--because the beagle demands to be fed the same time every morning, regardless of what time I get to crawl into bed), the chores stack up. And the holidays hit. With all the extra money I earned, I was able to splurge on some nice conveniences during all the holiday sales. Right now I have a mountain of cardboard delivery boxes stacked under the dining room table, waiting to be broken down and either recycled or used as weed barrier in the yard. (The beagle keeps trying to climb on them to reach anything on the table.)

I had a brief trip to visit gnine and xparrot. We played some board games, talked about manga, watched anime, and discussed future plans. It was a lovely time, and I wish I could visit friends more often.

We were finally able to reserve annual leave for next year, so I'm locked in for a trip with my family to Europe and another trip to Gen Con. Various staffing changes are going to make life interesting and somewhat unpredictable for a while, though. At least it seems we're not having a government shutdown this year, so yay.

Now I'm looking forward to my parents arriving tomorrow for their annual winter visit. I'll be working on getting things straightened up around here. It's amazing how easily clutter builds up on all flat surfaces.

Where has October gone? Here I am thinking it has only been a week or two since my last update, and a whole month has slipped by.

The month started off with me getting drafted for involuntary overtime, which is the peril of a name that is at the beginning of the alphabet. I always start at the top of the draft list when money resets October 1. After that, I put in for overtime assignments strategically on days when I would be ready for it, to help move my name down the list so I don't get drafted again when its inconvenient.

I've been spending a lot of my spare time knitting socks for my nephew's birthday present. I'm hoping to finish the final one today, so that I can get them mailed soon. This is hard to do, because as soon as I sit down on the couch and pick up a project, I have two dogs that suddenly demand full attention and petting.

The garden is nearly done for the year. There are just a few quinces left on my fruit trees and a couple of late-ripening sweet peppers. The kale is also at the harvest-ready stage. The garlic and onions that I planted a few weeks ago are starting to sprout. I need to work on digging up and transplanting more of my flower bulbs while the weather is still warm. I'm giving a bunch of the extras to my neighbor. I'm hoping to fit three more blueberry bushes in my front yard where a cluster of flowers used to be.

I've been trying to find time here and there to play through some of my games with solitaire rules, so that I can decide whether to add them to my Top 20 list for this year's People's Choice countdown on BGG. I'm also culling as many unplayed games as I can stand from my collection for potential resale. I've got 4 cardboard boxes of them set aside at this point, and I should probably pull a few more off the shelves.

Last weekend I went to the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival. I took the bus there so I wouldn't have to deal with parking and spent all morning browsing. I spent quite a bit of money on new yarn, artwork, and some jewelry. I was ready to go by early afternoon, so I walked back to the bus stop at 3:45 and waited...and waited...and waited. The traffic was pretty terrible, so I knew the bus could be delayed, but I ended up waiting two solid hours and not a single bus ever came. (I saw 3 buses stopping across the street going the other direction during that time, but none returned.) Another couple waiting at the stop with me finally called for an Uber, and they let me ride back with them. (I called the bus company the next morning when they opened to lodge a complaint, but I haven't heard back from them about what the issue was.)

A lot of stuff is happening at work. One handler transferred to another airport and a second handler is out with an injury that needs surgery, so we're all shifting our schedules around to compensate. Additionally, one of the things that I do for the team is put in time recording all our data into a spreadsheet and analyzing it for trends. Our supervisor recently challenged the value of that task, saying that the action of recording and analyzing data in itself doesn't produce any tangible results. _@ (No...it just informs the decisions that everyone makes about how to allocate our time and resources...) He has asked for a formal presentation in front of him and our chief to explain what specific benefit the data analysis provides.

Plus I still have to decide what to bring to our annual Halloween potluck. So there's that distraction.

It's amazing how things get backlogged when one takes a nearly three-week vacation.

First of all, I had a lovely time visiting my family in Michigan. I had a chance to see all of my brothers and their children. We also did lots of activities, including a trip to Frankenmouth (where I spent a chunk of money on yarn and knitting supplies), a campfire with roasted marshmallows (for the non-vegetarians), a piñata filled with little presents for everyone, a trip to the movies, and several board games.

After the family visit, my parents and I drove down to Indianapolis for Gen Con, the world's largest board gaming convention. (Essen may vie for top attendance, but technically it's a trade show and not a convention.) I also visited a couple more yarn shops along the way and spent gobs more money. (But, see, yarn is squishable and can fit in my luggage. Board games, sadly, are not.) I got to see some friends at the convention, and I played a bunch of games. I participated in the math trade, where I traded out a bunch of items from my collection that I never use in order to get some new (to me) games to try.

By the time I got home on August 6th, the garden had entered prime harvest season. First up were the grapes. I have an Early Concord vine that was super productive this year. I spent hours across two weekends harvesting, cleaning, and juicing the grape harvest. I gave a couple quarts away to neighbors, took some in to work to share, kept a quart in the refrigerator for myself, and canned the rest. This was all from one vine. I have two more rooted cuttings that were too young to produce this year, but they will probably start next year.

It has been suggested that I should start turning some of the grape juice into wine...

Then the beans were ready. They didn't fare as well as I had hoped--a combination of being invaded by a beagle during the growing season and not getting watered while I was gone--but there was still a fair amount of work involved in harvesting, shelling, and sorting them all. Once that was done, the weather had warmed up enough to get the figs going. Even with the predations of wild animals, I am still getting a bowl full of figs every day, and those need to be sliced and dehydrated for storage (or given away to neighbors and coworkers).

Last weekend I got my first good crabapple crop. I processed them into a delightful pink sauce. The regular apples are just starting to blush red. They should be ready to pick over the next couple weeks.

All of these harvesting activities have to be squeezed into my free time, which I have less of than usual, because we are approaching the end of the fiscal year. The people at work who normally take all the overtime jobs are now reaching the cap, which means they are no longer allowed to have overtime assignments. Someone still has to do the work, so they draft people for the jobs. I generally don't work much overtime during the rest of the year, so I'm near the top of the list for getting drafted. In particular, I get drafted to process the late-night flights at the Oakland airport. It's not what one might call HARD work, but it does involve driving across the Bay in the dark and not getting home until past midnight, sometimes as late as 2am. This will continue until either A) I earn enough money not to be on the top of the list anymore, or B) everyone resets on October 1.

In the meantime, I try to work on the yard in spurts, between catching up on sleep and starting some knitting projects with all the new yarn I bought.