Well, not quite, but it quit and then got very hot. I use a Dell. If you recall the viral internet pic of the Japanese businesssman recoiling in horror from a burning computer, you may remember that Dell and several other computers were getting batteries from, I think, Sony; and there was a little thing called The Battery Recall.
Well, it didn’t catch fire, but it could have. I’m glad Jane noticed how hot it had gotten, or we might have had a fire.
We had breakfast on the patio this morning, but a check of the water temperature showed 50 degrees, so we have officially stopped feeding the koi. Their systems shut down at 52, and while, in the sunshine, they are up and moving about and picking at the pond algae, that’s their choice, and it’s not going to give them the gastric problems of tummies packed with food. They are heading for hibernation. Sigh. They eat out of our hands, now. They’re such little pigs. But we’ve got to let them eat just the pond algae for a while.
We hope to leave the filter running through leaf-fall, and get all the leaves out via the skimmer, before we shut down the waterfall and pull the pump for the season. At that point we’ll install the heaters, which will switch on any time the water heads for 32 degrees, and keep a circle of water exposed to the air, open to release the co2.
They probably won’t really eat again until April.
Let’s see…what else? I got my glasses ordered. I’m getting two pair, one to help my visual acuity when I am wearing my monofit contact, and one for without. Ordering them from Costco, they’re not that expensive: nice but plain frames: I don’t wear them in public much, mostly when I’m working; and if they get dinged up, (I’m murder on frames) I won’t let them get as dinged-up as the last pair, which had sprung badly and was no longer straight. It was a question when one or both earpieces would actually fall off.
It says something that I actually ordered the glasses and the old ones have still not shown up. They are sincerely lost.
OSG dropped by and we went to Swinging Door last night. I didn’t have to cook. 😉 But today I thought I’d buy some deli ham, and went to Safeway. Safeway has lost their mind. I got the last ham at Freddy Myers for 1.91 a pound, admittedly on sale; and very nice sliced roast for 5-something. Safeway was charging 7.98 a pound for deli ham. I bought two ready-made sandwiches and came home. This was a mistake. Jane and I ate the sandwiches and now don’t feel so good. They were Wonder Bread sandwiches, and we’re not used to that kind of bread, I think. Ugh.
At any rate, Safeway is off my list of places to shop: their 10 cents a gallon off gas gets used up fast at that rate. I think I’ll drive the extra mile to Rosauers, or 3 miles over to Freddy Myers, if it comes to that. The only thing I’ll still buy at Safeway is bread—not the Wonder Bread sort: the very nice Artisan Bread they’re willing to sell half-baked and frozen like a brick. Pop that into a 420 oven for 20 minutes and it is to die for.
Well, we had better lay in a supply of mulch ASAP. The promised rain has not arrived, but it’s nippy out there, and we’re going to need to cover those new plantings and mulch the roses. We’ve also got a pair of young tree peonies that need coddling. The moonflower may not bloom before the first frost, though it’s trying: the morning glory on the other side of the gate has been blooming its head off, and the two vines have almost met atop the arch.
I have ordered a new power unit. Pity: the one that ‘sploded was the one that isn’t done up in electrical tape from having its cord caught in the recliner mechanism. It was the pristine one.
I refuse to buy deli meat at Safeway. For starters, they don’t know what the concept of freshly sliced, flat deli meat is. I can deal with it in the case, as long as its flat. But since they can’t and won’t do flat, I go elsewhere for that item. They do, however, make some decent whole grain sliced loaves of bread that I’ll pick up if they’re on sale.
Avoid their deli sandwiches at all costs. They’ve never tasted right to me, and aren’t worth the money they want for one.
I have to say that my experience with flying insects is from leaving the window wide open so that the cats can go out to their run. (I live in coyote and hawk country, so they have an enclosed run. When you have a 5-pound cat, hawks are an issue. Plus, the 5-pounder is also a fearless hunter, and I don’t want to decimate the local bird and lizard population, although I wouldn’t mind letting her take on the gophers!) And I might have been able to live with the flying bugs, but the multiple black widows that showed up in the house convinced me that it was time to get a screen and put a cat door in it. And to bring out the chemical pesticides, instead of my normal “live and let live” attitude. I still keep an eye out for those really messy webs. They are the surest sign that there’s a widow around, since the spiders seem to come out mainly at night.
Oh, and just recently I got to rescue the latest cat toy. Somehow my little Rana-cat managed to catch and bring a tiny little lizard into the house. Teeny-tiny, about the size of a large cricket or a small grasshopper. I assume that it made the mistake of getting either close to or in the cat run, and she just decided it was funner to play with it inside. I thought it was dead when I first saw it, but it did scramble off when I tried to scoop it up on a piece of paper. I finally got it into a cup and put it outside under a bush, where I hope it is still living.
It was probably an anole: they’re a very tiny lizard, green to brown, lighter belly. Lizards have pretty good recuperative powers, even regenerative powers, to regrow missing pieces, at least to a modest degree, so there’s a very good chance you did exactly the right thing and your little rescuee will survive.
I’m pretty sure that it was a baby either Western Fence Lizard (what a unique name!) or Common Side-blotched Lizard. I have several in the yard, in various sizes. I’m assuming that the teeny ones are this year’s crop, and that the big ones are the parents. I also assume that, if other reptiles are any indication, the parents may very well be a bit of a threat to the babies, in which case putting the baby under the bush was possibly not a good idea. There seem to be many lizards that hide under the bushes. Especially if the cat can be trusted… she likes to pounce on the bushes. Lavenders, so not exactly “bushes”, but really good for little lizards to hide under.
Actually, having looked at the pictures some more, I’m leaning towards the side-blotched. They like to sun themselves on the sidewalk in the morning, and then go climb on the stucco walls.
http://www.californiaherps.com/identification/lizardsid/commonlizards.html