darkoshi

[From last week]

It keeps occurring to me that I have a problem with scope creep in my daily life, along with self control. When I start working on something, it's very hard to convince myself to stop, even when I didn't intend to spend a long time at it and have many other things that I wanted to do. (Not enjoying the work doesn't make a difference, as I like to get unpleasant tasks finished and done with as much or even more so than pleasant tasks.)

One example: I turn off the A/C and open the windows to let some fresh air in the house. It's been hot outside, so they haven't been open in weeks. Now's a good time to do it as no one else is here to be bothered by the heat. One of the windows I open is hard to push up, so it hasn't been open in a much longer time. Its sill is caked in dirt and dust, so I decide to quickly wipe it clean.
Then I decide I may as well clean off the sills of all the other windows too while they are open, even though they aren't as dirty.
Then I decide to vacuum the rug which is full of dog hair, since using the vacuum cleaner makes the air smell unpleasant, so it's good to do it while the windows are open.

Another example: I wanted to do some work in the yard. Around 3pm I heard thunder; rain looked imminent. I quickly went outside to get at least a little bit of work done before it rained. It ended up not raining. I ended up working in the yard for the next 6 hours until it was dark.

Sleep Deprivation

I really need to get my sleep habits in check.

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A dandelion in the yard, with full puffy seed-head.

The temptation to blow on it. Ah, it would be so nice! To see them float gently away in the air!

The responsible voice in my head telling me to pluck it and place it carefully in the trash, before the seeds disperse and grow into a swath of dandelion plants which I'll feel duty-bound to spend time and effort pulling out of the ground later this year or some other.

A compromise. Pluck it and take it inside. Blow on it in the house, where the seeds will eventually get vacuumed up.
Ah, they are like little parachutes falling slowly down to the rug! So cute!

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I discovered that when word-wrap is turned in in Notepad++, the wrapped text keeps the same indentation as the first word in the paragraph! That makes it so much easier to read, compared to Notepad's word-wrap.

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Writing with a pen or pencil on paper, sometimes my hands feel so awkward and clumsy. Sometimes the marks end up so malformed. I wonder if it is due to being so out of practice or due to losing flexibility in my hands.

(I am still having a lot of trouble with my hands and thumbs.)

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I made pretzels yesterday, from a box mix my mom gave me 7 years ago. I'd known it would take a lot of effort to make them, and also that they wouldn't turn out as good as the kind I used to eat in Germany. I was pretty sure this box mix was more like the kind of pretzels you get here in malls. I had made pretzels from scratch once before, long ago, and those weren't as good as German ones either. So the box sat in the cupboard all this time, waiting till I had the will to make them.

Anyway, the packet of yeast in the box showed a best-by date of 2017 and likely wouldn't work well on its own. Luckily, I had a jar of yeast in the back of the fridge which I'd practically forgotten about. Its best-by date was 2011. So I used the yeast packet plus several tablespoons of the yeast from the fridge, which seemed to work just fine.

The pretzels turned out looking just like the image on the box. Success, I guess. The taste... I'm not sure how to describe it; not very good but edible. Sort of salty and yeasty. I plan to make lunches with them, sliced in half and topped with vegan cheese and deli slices.

I've discovered that heights bother me less at night / when it is dark. Today I cleared pine straw off the roof, using an extensible pole with a rake-like attachment while standing on a ladder leaned against the roof. The sun set before I was done, so I continued while wearing a headlamp (yay LED bulbs which can shine bright for hours without using the batteries up).

Usually doing the side above the garage feels scary to me. But today in the dark, notwithstanding the flood lights and headlamp, it didn't bother me. Doing this task after dark has another benefit - not having the sun glare in my eyes.

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It reminds me of an amusement park ride I was on as a child. I'm not sure, but it must have been Space Mountain at Disneyland. It was like a roller coaster, but indoors and in the dark. Normal roller coasters terrify me due to my fear of heights. But this ride didn't bother me and was fun.

Both my yard and Qiao's has clumps of this bush: Nandina, also known as "Heavenly Bamboo".

Individual stalks of it aren't too hard to pull out when they are young. But when they get taller and start growing a bunch of stalks in a small area which is what they do, they are very hard to get rid of. I can cut them down, but they grow back (like everything else in the yard, so frustrating!). It has a curiously yellow wood. It gets small white flowers, and clusters of red berries, which I thought must at least be good for birds. But per the Wikipedia page, Nandina, the berries are toxic to birds and animals!

I haven't seen dead birds in our yards, so hopefully the birds know to avoid them.

Now that I know it's not even a good food source for birds, I'll be even more ruthless in cutting it down.

Ooh, I need to try this next time - an "over and under" method:

This video shows how to do it with the hose on the ground:

Video title: How To Wrap Cords and Hoses "the right way"
Posted by: Jeremy Manry
Date posted: Feb 14, 2017

This video shows how to do it holding a lighter-weight cord in your hand; the hand positions are shown more clearly here:

Video title: HOW TO WRAP CORDS & CABLES
Posted by: Builds with Brian
Date posted: May 14, 2020

My allergies started acting up again lately. Yesterday while mowing leaves in the yard, I wore a face mask. My nose didn't get runny! It did require finesse, though, to situate my safety glasses to where they wouldn't fog up.

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I used this method for cooking some very old kidney beans:
Food Storage Friday - Cooking Old Beans

How old? I have no idea!*. As they were so old, I used twice as much baking soda and let them soak in the baking soda water overnight. Then I did it again today with fresh water and baking soda and a 4-hour soak. Then I finally cooked them in a pressure cooker.

It worked! They got soft.

*I'd stored the beans in a neat Korean glass jar, which is vaguely familiar to me, but which is also so old that I don't remember where it came from. The label on the jar is for hot chili paste, which I'm sure I didn't buy nor eat.

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Vegan Ready-to-bake Cinnamon Rolls! From Kroger, Simple Truth Organics brand. Tastes pretty good. I mostly got them for the nostalgia factor.

I also have fond memories of ready-to-bake biscuits. The kind with all the flaky layers that you could peel off one at a time. Maybe I'll find vegan ones like that someday. But then again, I have them still in my memory, so I don't really need to.

Vegan Ready-to-bake Chocolate Chip Cookie dough! From Kroger, Simple Truth brand. I'd seen them before, but this time the price was actually reasonable. I haven't baked them yet.

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Often the thing that gets me out of bed on a weekend morning, because I've been lying awake for a while thinking about doing it, and I feel an urgency or desire to do it, such that it keeps me from falling back asleep... ends up being something I don't do at all that day.

But I did cut out and dig up 3 root balls of quince bushes, in an attempt to kill them so that I won't have to deal with trimming the spiky shoots anymore, the ones that scratch my arms and pierce my hands. (However there are still 3 more quince bushes on the other side of the yard, and another in the back yard.)

The quince bushes that got the pretty blossoms. Dark pink on one bush, and white I think on another.
I'm such a killer.
(although they might yet grow back; I wouldn't put it past them).

It's disheartening, watching a plant grow and admiring it, its uniqueness, its symmetry, its beauty. And then another day deciding that I have to kill it because it's gotten out of hand, or to avoid it getting out of hand. Like all those spiderwort plants in my front yard. Like those .. wild lettuce? some kind of tall thick stemmed dandelion-leafed plants (-> Lactuca canadensis) that were growing all over my yard this year. One of which is still out there by Qiao's back porch because I had too much heart this afternoon, after pulling up so many others. I hate having a yard that I have to kill, kill, kill. Again and again.

The azaleas have been pretty, as well as the dandelion plants.

Translated video description: Flen in Sörmland has long had a hidden existence. In the summer of 2019, the residents gathered to change this with the help of GB Glace, which has its ice cream factory in the middle of Flen. Over one night, together and with joy, they managed to create a whole new image of Flen in Google Street View, visible worldwide. This is the video that shows how it went.

"När Flen tog Google Street View i egna händer" (Watch on YouTube)

Video title: När Flen tog Google Street View i egna händer
Posted by: GB Glace
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzABuiImLXk
Date posted: Jul 19, 2019

I'm sure they're visible somewhere, but I wasn't able to find the people shown in the video, in the actual Google Maps Streetview. In many places, the streetview doesn't even seem to work right as I can advance to an intersection, but then it doesn't let me go anywhere from there.

But I did find this which amused me:

https://www.google.com/maps/@59.0568429,16.571043,3a,75y,161.84h,81.16t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sAF1QipP4eySlGmhTyGvgKecMO3C3de970JzG_RyGgRW-!2e10!7i7680!8i3840

https://www.google.com/maps/@59.0568422,16.5711295,3a,75y,211.41h,87.79t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sAF1QipOCQXskx8--pijMmURkW16KOX7dvAQXtSYQ6wVv!2e10!7i7680!8i3840

Woman and 2 children: Yay, the Streetview car is passing by, let's hold up signs!
Man: Let me quickly vacuum the yard so it looks good!

Someone left a thank you on an informational entry I posted over 5 years ago about the lint filter on my old washing machine. Yay, that's why I post those kind of things sometimes. To help anyone else who may encounter the same problems I did.

Today I used my lithium battery-powered leaf blower (Greenworks model 24282). Sometimes it sucks my clothes against the bottom side where it pulls air in. When that happens, I shift it further away from myself. But today it sucked in the drawstring on my pants, tore off a piece, and started making a bad noise. So I turned it off.

This evening I extricated the piece of drawstring that had gotten stuck inside the unit. After removing the nozzle, I could see the piece by looking in through the front of the unit with a flashlight. But it was stuck so tight that pulling on it with long tweezers and a long-necked pair of pliers wasn't able to get it free. So I opened the blower up. It has 13 screws on one side which hold the 2 halves of the housing together. After removing the screws, I couldn't get the halves apart at first. Finally I noticed there was a plastic warning sticker* under the handle, right over where the halves joined together. That was also holding them together. Cutting a slit down the middle of the sticker allowed the halves to came apart easily.

Pulling on the drawstring as I'd been doing before had gotten it stuck worse. It needed to be pulled out inwards from the center of the fan, rather than outwards. With the unit open, it was easy to do.

*One of the tiny icons on the sticker even warns against wearing loose clothing. Though without looking at the manual as I'm doing now, I wouldn't have been able to figure out that's what the icon represented. Another icon warns about long hair... yikes, that would be worse to get stuck. The blower is so light and easy to use (and unlike other tools, doesn't have any sharp blades; it only blows air!) that I hadn't thought of it as potentially dangerous.

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Now I feel inspired to try fixing my dryer (I did once before already, so have an idea what the problem is). But starting to dismantle a dryer at 3am is not a good idea.

Friday morning, a storm blew through the area. The strong sound of the wind woke me up. No damage here from that one.

Saturday afternoon, another storm blew through. It came on quickly; I hadn't been expecting it. Loud wind, strong rain. It uprooted a pine tree in the back yard; the tree fell against some other trees and damaged a section of fence. The storm also caused many power outages in the area. Our internet went down before the power did.

Saturday night, another storm blew through.

After I worked on the fence:

Two other sections of the fence were also damaged by falling branches, but only a little along the top poles. The house was not damaged.

Sometimes I stay up very late to finish something that I've already wasted/spent so much time on today, that I really don't want to have to waste/spend time on it tomorrow too. Maybe this way, tomorrow I'll get around to doing what I really wanted to do today.

I did at least get some things accomplished today which I had planned on, namely raking the yard.

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These are the good-tasting corn puffs (Mikesell's "Puffcorn Delites") I found recently at Big Lots (but they only had this one bag left), which have no added flavoring:

Here is another brand, Simple Truth Organic "Sea Salt & Butter Flavored Baked Puffs", which I found recently at Kroger. Note that the front of the package says "Vegan" even though it also has "Butter" in the name.

I was confused by the "natural butter flavor" ingredient. I thought that meant "flavor derived from butter". So how could the product be vegan? Because of that uncertainty, I only took the photo of it while in the store, and did not buy it.

So today I spent some (a lot) of time trying to find out what "natural butter flavor" is, and can it be vegan? Also, how is it different from the "artificial butter flavor" which another brand of corn puffs used to include and which had previously been implicated in causing lung disease (mostly in workers in microwave popcorn plants, but there was also at least one case of someone who ate a lot of microwave popcorn who got it)?

Short answer: Yes, apparently both artificial and natural butter flavor can be vegan. I'm still not sure if they are always vegan though, or if in some cases they also extract a flavoring from butter and call it "butter flavor".

Both artificial and natural butter flavors are basically the same chemicals; the difference is only in how they are produced; from what source and through what process. Either can be one of several different chemicals.

Diacetyl (butane-2,3-dione) has been voluntarily phased out from most, if not all, microwave popcorn brands, but the FDA still allows its use. In popcorn, diacetyl seems to have been replaced by acetylpropionyl (2,3-pentanedione); however, the latter appears to have the same dangers as diacetyl. (Other pages I read suggested that it may not be the specific chemicals themselves which are the problem, but rather that inhaling any particulate matter like that can be dangerous.)

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Microwaving prepacked microwave popcorn results in the production of a number of volatile organic compounds and particulate matter (abstract, 2007/01)

4 major popcorn makers to drop toxic chemical. Companies working to remove buttery flavoring linked to lung disease (2007/09/05)

Chemtura Resolves Butter Flavor Cases (2010/08/30)

Respiratory Disease Among Flavoring-exposed Workers in Food and Flavoring Manufacture (abstract, 2012/07)

The diacetyl substitute, 2,3-pentanedione, has comparable toxicity to diacetyl, and other members of the a-diketone family have not been evaluated for respiratory toxicity.

Update on flavoring-induced lung disease (abstract, 2016/01)

Attempts to decrease the risk of lung disease have included the use of flavoring substitutes; however, these chemicals may cause similar injury ... Diacetyl substitutes cause similar peri-bronchiolar fibrotic lesions in animal studies.

Is Microwave Popcorn Bad For You? Cancer & Butter Flavor Risks (2017/11/06)

If diacetyl has been mostly phased out, what’s the new “butter flavor” made of and is it safe?

That brings us to the next concerning compound…
4. The “butter flavor” acetylpropionyl

You won’t even know whether popcorn is made with this. FDA labeling regulations don’t require specific flavors to be identified by name.

Since it’s possible to find acetylpropionyl and diacetyl in nature, manufacturers can list both of these chemicals as "natural butter flavor" or simply "natural flavoring."
They don’t even need to use the word artificial. Even USDA certified organic microwave popcorn can use them.
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Technically known as 2,3-pentanedione, acetylpropionyl is molecularly very similar to butane-2,3-dione (diacetyl).
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Toxicity reports on acetylpropionyl were not even published until 2010. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) says in a peer-reviewed paper that:
"…acute inhalation exposures to 2,3-pentanedione cause airway epithelial damage that is similar to diacetyl in laboratory studies (Hubbs et al. 2012)."

On "Natural Butter Flavors" (a blog post)

Artificial butter flavoring (Wikipedia article)
Obviously, I'm not the only one who assumes that "natural butter flavor" means something that is derived from butter.
This article says: "Butter flavor" redirects here. For natural butter flavor, see [the article on] butter.

Artificial butter flavoring may contain diacetyl, acetylpropionyl, or acetoin, three natural compounds in butter that contribute to its characteristic flavor.

The Flavor Rundown: Natural vs. Artificial Flavors

The FDA broadly defines natural flavors to include any flavor isolated from natural sources like plant material (fruits, roots, bark, herbs, etc.) or animal products (meat, dairy, etc.). Artificial flavors are any flavors that are not defined as natural, even if they have the exact same chemical composition as flavors isolated directly from nature.

...these flavor additives are generally produced through chemical synthesis or industrial fermentation on specialized culture, which is optimized for flavor production, but is not the sort of media people generally like to eat. When produced through this culturing technique, diacetyl and acetoin are listed as "natural butter flavoring," but when they are produced through controlled laboratory synthesis, the very same components are listed as "artificial butter flavoring"

What is the difference between artificial and natural flavors?

Natural and artificial flavors are defined for the consumer in the Code of Federal Regulations. A key line from this definition is the following: " a natural flavor is the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional." Artificial flavors are those that are made from components that do not meet this definition.
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The flavorist creating an artificial flavoring must use the same chemicals in his formulation as would be used to make a natural flavoring, however. Otherwise, the flavoring will not have the desired flavor. The distinction in flavorings--natural versus artificial--comes from the source of these identical chemicals
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Another difference between natural and artificial flavorings is cost. The search for "natural" sources of chemicals often requires that a manufacturer go to great lengths to obtain a given chemical. Natural coconut flavorings, for example, depend on a chemical called massoya lactone. Massoya lactone comes from the bark of the Massoya tree, which grows in Malaysia.

But then why do some German artificial flavors taste different from the corresponding American ones, like Raspberry for example? And why do some artificial flavors not taste the same as the actual food they are based on? I suppose it is because the food includes many chemicals and flavors, while the artificial ones are subsets of those flavors.

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2018/12/27 2pm: Edited to add more info to the "Short Answer".

I finally took down the Christmas tree and decorations.

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The border grass (liriope) behind the house was tall and thick so I used the string trimmer on it. Swarms of mosquitos flew at me. Maybe that is where they hang out in the daytime, shading themselves from the sun between the thick blades of grass. Maybe that is why there are always so many mosquitos in the back yard. Now I'm tempted to uproot all the border grass back there and get rid of it. It's a pity as regular grass doesn't grow well back there, so it was always nice to at least have the greenness of the border grass along the house. Although it is very hardy, so it might grow back. Which is the bane of having a yard; even when you cut things down and cut out as much root as you can (and feel bad about how you're killing the poor things), they keep growing back.

Those darn hardy crepe myrtles. One of them which had the stump ground keeps getting a bunch of sprouts in the same place, apparently from old seeds. The other one which had the stump ground (or did it?) still has a big root underground which I was only able to partially hack away, and keeps getting a bunch of sprouts. The one which had the stump left, and in which I drilled holes to kill it, is no longer growing back in the middle, but keeps sprouting branches along the outer edge of the stump. This last time, I cracked off a lot of the stump's bark where the branches were growing from; hopefully that will kill it.

It's not even like I even had all the crepe myrtle trees cut down; I only had a few of them cut, to thin things out.

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Yesterday, fireflies and fireworks. Not many to see, only a few here and there. But a lot of thump boom pop sounds to hear. I did some taekwondo/stretch kicks down by the lake in the dark while looking for bright colors in the sky. I spied a mostly stationary light in the sky to my left, not too high up, partially behind some trees, which seemed to fade and come back every once in a while. I wondered if it was flares or a drone.

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Thinking about how gluten can be separated from wheat, to get low-carb wheat gluten, made me wonder if one could make gluten-free wheat flour (or rather, starch). The info at that link is what I found; ie. yes you can, or mostly gluten-free anyway.

Low (and high) FODMAP Foods for Vegans - for reference.

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I was surprised to read "While citric acid is usually made from corn, beet sugar or molasses, it can also be made from wheat." I had thought it was made from citrus fruit. Then, I was even more surprised to read that it is actually produced from a mold (aspergillus niger) (a black mold, but not the toxic one), which is grown on the sugary syrup produced from the corn/beets/wheat/etc. More details here: Overview of citric acid production from Aspergillus niger

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I was also surprised to read that several gums commonly added to foods are made, not from plants as I had thought, but from bacteria.

Carrageenan (aka irish moss) comes from a red seaweed. I had previously discounted claims that it could be unhealthy, but now I'm not so sure, as it seems to be linked to inflammation.
Xanthum Gum, gellan gum, and curdlan are made from bacteria.
Guar gum, locust bean (aka carob bean) gum, and tara gum are made from plants.
Gum arabic (aka acacia gum) is made from the sap of the acacia tree.

Sources/more info:
What is Carrageenan?
Carrageenan and Gellan Gum
Gums in Foods Causing Health Problems for Many - very informative about the different kinds of gums in use.

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This was interesting, as I had never heard about it before:
Alpha-gal allergy - can be caused by tick bites. Makes one allergic to mammalian meat products. Based on the comments on this page, it can also cause reactions to meat by-products like gelatin, dairy, and even animal-derived magnesium stearate.

I've seen SW:The Last Jedi a second time, and have added some updates (tagged in italics) to my review post (many spoilers).

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I've finished putting hex fencing all around the bottom of Qiao's fence, to keep the dogs from digging out. I'm not convinced it will stop them, but it should slow them down. I'm almost finished putting small-mesh fencing all along the top of Qiao's fence, to keep the small dog from climbing out.

It's been very cold here these last days (below freezing), though not nearly as cold as in other places. I've found that as long as it is dry and not windy, I can work outside without the cold bothering me. My warm hooded winter jacket, along with my headband/earmuffs and fleece or flannel-lined pants, keep me quite warm. The worst part is that my nose is incessantly runny in cold weather. I have to blow my nose every few minutes, which leads to the skin around my nose getting dry and chapped. This year I've been applying lotion and creme to the skin, which has helped a lot. Not much cracked skin so far, and hardly even any blood in my snot.

For that matter, this was the first year I can recall not having any allergies during Fall and Winter. I'm not sure why.

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Qiao's internet went out shortly before midnight on New Year's Eve, and was out for over 2 days - AT&T finally got it working again this morning. I hate that when that happens, there's no place to check to find out what caused the problem, and what the current status is, and how long it will really take to get fixed. The automated phone message you get when calling customer support just says there's an outage affecting the area that should be fixed in 24 hours (but it wasn't).

When there are power outages, SCE&G is so much better in that regard. You can call an automated number to report the problem, and you can find out how many people are affected by the outage, and how long the remaining estimated repair time is. You can even choose to get a call-back to notify you when the power has been restored.

Our little dog is apparently able to climb chain-link fences again. Sometimes even in the flat sections, not only at the corners which I already blocked off. With my own eyes, I've only seen her climb half-way up the fence like that, but she's gotten out of the yard several times without there being any holes dug, and that seems to be the only answer. Unless she's climbing trees and jumping ::eyeroll::

So I embarked on an endeavor, attaching 2-foot tall sections of 1/2" mesh fencing onto the entire length of the chain-link fence, in the hopes that she won't be able to get her paws though the smaller mesh, and therefore won't be able to climb it anymore. It's probably not enough to keep our big dog from climbing or jumping, but so far the big one has only gotten out 2 times, and only together with the small one. So if the small one doesn't get out, I think the big one won't have any desire to do so. Hopefully.

But before I could even finish that project, she's started digging a lot again. So I have to reinforce the bottom of the chain-link fence more, too.

That's at Qiao's place. My place is a whole 'nother project, cuz she's gotten out of my yard twice too, lately, apparently by climbing as well.

It's enough to make one despair. But so far, I've been an almost bottomless pit of optimism. Along with some hysterical laughter, yesterday, over the image of this cute little dog staring at me with her head turned slightly to the side, silently saying "aren't I wonderful?". And over the thought of how all the many metal stakes, bricks, and rolls of mesh fencing (it seems like tons) we have deployed so far, all because of this little 20 pound dog.

I changed my browser homepage (which is a self-coded HTML file) to have this background color: #ff0080. I'd describe it as fluorescent reddish pink. It's so beautiful, especially with my links in contrasting yellow, and a browser theme in a complementary color. Having nearly the whole screen be that color has much more of a visual impact, compared to this small paragraph.

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I discovered that it is much easier to pull out small tree saplings using a pair of pliers, rather than only my gloved hands. But my hands got the same achy, because instead of pulling out all the easy ones like last time, I was pulling out harder ones.

With bigger pliers, maybe I could even pull out some of the ones with bigger trunks/roots... say up to nickel-sized? Maybe there's even a special tool for that.

I spend so much of my free time doing yard work, and it feels very pointless. Other than the work it requires, it's nice to have a yard and trees and flowers, etc. But if I didn't have dogs, I'd seriously reconsider living in a place where I have to take care of a yard.

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Little Secrets : dark chocolate candies with a sugar-shell coating. Yummy like M&M's, which I haven't had since becoming vegan. I hadn't remembered how nice it is to feel the crispy crunch of a thin sugar shell between my teeth. The packaging doesn't mention it, but the sea salted peanut, classic dark, and raspberry flavors seem to be vegan based on the ingredients. Some of the others include milk. Ahh.. their FAQ says they don't label them as vegan because the sugar was produced with a non-vegan refining process (ie., bone char filtered).

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I'll have to try this:

How to stop stumps from growing back, organically! - drill holes in the stump and apply epsom salts, and replenish the salt every week or so.

Another idea - after doing the above, cover the stumps with black plastic / garbage bag and weight it down with bricks, to both block sunlight, and to keep the salts from being washed away by rain.

How To Use Epsom Salt For Stump Removal - this page says to put a little bit of water in the holes with the epsom salt.

How to Mix Epsom Salts to Kill Stumps - this page says to use a one-inch extra long drill bit... Oh, that must be a spade bit.

Ah, man. I know I'm getting old, when while pulling weeds in the yard, I think to myself "You know, I think I'll get that stool from inside to sit down on". Because bending and unbending my knees is no longer such an easy effortless thing.

Today I learned that cutting down yellow dandelions right before they go all seed-heady doesn't stop it from happening. Instead, it makes it happen even faster. In retrospect, it makes sense.

I actually had wanted to gather the cut stalks yesterday and trash them after using the string trimmer to cut them down, but didn't have time. Today after coming home from work, I was surprised to see a bunch of white fluffy spheres at ground level. But at least they hadn't blown away yet, so I was still able to gather most of them up into a plastic bag.

Earlier yesterday, I had driven by a yard which was full of dandelion seed heads. When I saw that a few of mine were getting seed heads too, is when I decided that I'd better cut mine down before I had seeds all over my yard.

I like having a smallish patch of dandelions, but I don't really want a yard full of them. So I try to compromise by letting some of them grow in that one place where they've always grown, part of the year, and weeding them from the rest of the yard.

There's more to this story, about how the dandelions are like my christmas tree, but I need to go to bed.

I replaced my refrigerator's evaporator fan motor, because the old one was intermittently squealing, and I had a feeling it would stop working altogether in the near future.

I should know better than to start a task like that at 9:30pm when I have to get up for work the next day. I finished around 2am. The new motor and fan are working, and are sounding good.

Much of my time is spent looking up information on the internet, to make sure I do it right. Sometimes I find useful information. Sometimes I don't, and decide to bite the bullet and do it the way I think is best. Some of the time was cleaning gunk out of the freezer compartment, while I had all the shelves removed and out of the way. A good bit of the time was deciding how to handle the wire connections, since they were different on the old and new motor.

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When I order stuff from Amazon, I often have it delivered to my mom's house, as delivery people are sometimes scared of the dogs at my house. My mom was telling me of a package that had been delivered. She said the return label said it was from Amazon Fulfillment Services. Then she asked me if it was something sexual. LOL. She's fluent in English, but it isn't her native tongue. Maybe she's been wondering that every time I got a package from them, and finally asked.

Today she tried to convince me that people in the South pronounce Augusta (Georgia) with an "N" in front, like "Naugusta" or "Nugusta". I've never heard it spoken that way (unless they are saying "in Augusta"). But she says everyone here pronounces it that way. I'm still dubious. There's a North Augusta on the South Carolina side of the border. Maybe some people refer to North Augusta as Nugusta? But I didn't find any mention of that online.

.

This weekend, I:

- mowed my lawn
- washed out my garbage bin as had gotten gunky inside. I don't like stinky garbage cans. I took a photo of the bin's number, so that if it happens again, I'll know whether my bin was accidentally switched with the neighbor's or something. (Although it's mainly for curiosity's sake. I wouldn't actually go up to the neighbor and say, "Hey, I think our garbage bins were switched, because mine was clean inside, and this one isn't.")
- did more work on securing the fence against Serena at Qiao's house. This involves a lot of brick moving, and some pounding of stakes. It's about half done.
- cleaned Qiao's shower stall in order to apply tub grip to the floor, and then did the latter.
- watched Dirk Gently
- did some yardwork at Qiao's house
- turned on the heater for the first time this season and let it air out with the windows open.
- replaced fridge evaporator fan
- ordered Culture Club tickets - they are scheduled to play in Augusta in November

Other things I need to do soon:

- look up info on the non-presidential candidates for the upcoming election
- choose a doctor for myself

Crossposts: http://darkoshi.livejournal.com/669353.html

The house's side door has a motion-activated light fixture mounted by it. The lights always attracted moths and other flying insects. To prevent the bugs flying into the house, I always had to slip inside the door and shut it quickly, but sometimes moths still got in. Now I've replaced the two bulbs with LED bug light bulbs. It's amazing the difference that makes. Light! And yet absolutely no bugs flying around in the light! The light is yellow, but that's no problem. I should have done this years ago.

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Qiao bought a set of lithium battery-powered yard tools. At first the hedge trimmer looked scary to me, with all the sharp teeth. But it is easy to use. So easy that I have to remind myself to be careful with it. It's so much easier than using clippers to cut individual stalks, especially for the jessamine bushes on the fence.

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Cyber bank robberies... North Korea to blame?

North Korea Linked To $81 Million Bangladesh Bank Heist
Obama strikes back at North Korea

...or maybe not North Korea, exactly?
Vietnamese bank hit by cyber heist
North Korean Cyberhacking Redux: The Bank Heist Cases

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The unstoppable march of the upward inflection?
High rising terminal
(aka "upspeak")

A lady was talking on TV a while back, and I wasn't interested in whatever she was talking about, but was fascinated by her manner of speech. Her sentences kept ending on a rising note, as if she was asking a question even though she wasn't. It was much more pronounced than the audio samples on the first link above. When I recently came across that page, I realized that maybe it wasn't a peculiarity to her, but a common way of speaking, where ever she was from.

Then I realized the similarity of that to another manner of speaking which at first struck me as odd. Some people insert phrases like "you know what I mean", "you get me", "you know what I'm saying?", "you know?" in the middle of each sentence and/or after each sentence. They don't necessarily pitch it as a question, nor even slow down waiting for feedback - it just seems to be how they are used to speaking.

The rising pitch is similar, in that the speaker sounds like they are asking the listener if they understand or agree with what is being said, except without adding any extra words in.

Then again, maybe that is just my biased impression of it, and not what is actually intended by the speakers.

Vocal fry register : Speaking in the lowest register of your voice, where it makes a creaky grating sound. I do that sometimes, and didn't realize there was a term for it.

Apparently there's been a lot of criticism of how young women speak these days.

From Upspeak To Vocal Fry: Are We 'Policing' Young Women's Voices?

From the audio samples given in that NPR broadcast and elsewhere, women using vocal fry in their speech sounds totally normal to me, and not bad. The upspeak can be a bit disconcerting to me, but not much so. That one lady I mentioned hearing speak on TV had a much more pronounced and unusual version of it, which is why it fascinated me so much. I wish I had written down who the speaker was.

Crossposts: http://darkoshi.livejournal.com/657327.html

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Darkoshi's Enchantment

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Entries tagged with yardwork

work, scope creep, self-control

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up in the dark

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