Hi everyone! I am just checking in. I am still alive, just buried under homework. I am churning out paper after paper after paper that I wonder if the professors even read. Just finished a take-home midterm. Next up is a paper on GIS (Geographic Information System) mapping technology. (The is a program in emergency and disaster management.) So all that’s happening here is that I keep the clothes washed, the dishes done, and that’s about it. My closet project is abandoned until the end of the semester. All the tools and supplies are in a heap on the living room room, and I just walk around it. I am trying not to make exhaustive lists in my head of everything that needs to be done to called this apartment finally renovated. If I do that, I get discouraged. So right now I am not looking past the closet project.
I did abandon the schoolwork last Saturday to attend Das Rheingold, the first opera in Wagner’s Ring, because I bought the tickets 15 months ago. Wagner’s Ring is so popular there was a lottery for tickets. AN OPERA LOTTERY, GUYS, AN OPERA LOTTERY. Holy cr@p, the Metropolitan Opera production was the no-expense-spared Star Wars version of Das Rheingold with stunning special effects, lighting, and staging. Especially the water effects for the nymphs swimming in the Rhine River, and for the clouds surrounding the gods in the mountaintops, and for Thor dispersing the clouds, and this staircase that looked like a rolling wave for the scene where Odin and Loki travel from the mountains to the underworld. Next week I have a ticket to attend the second opera, the Valkyrie. I read somewhere that when Valkyrie premiered back in the 1800s, a contemporary reviewer complained that “The Ride of the Valkyries” was a tasteless piece of music, and Wagner replied, “Of what use would be a tasteful Ride of the Valkyries?” That line has always stuck with me.
OldMtWoman, I hope you will be safe during this “bombogenesis” that is supposed to be the equivalent to a Cat 2 hurricane. All your preparations sound exhausting. I can’t imagine how you homestead in such a remote place under such tough conditions. When I read about how you and others on this forum homestead, it is a window into a way of life that seems so demanding and challenging and I am filled with admiration. About our manhole fire: Turns out 61 houses lost electricity for a while. The fire was caused by corrosive snowmelt/icemelt product put down on the roads. It mixes with water, drips down into manholes, corrodes electrical conduits until a fire starts. The electric company PR person acted very blasé about it, like it’s perfectly normal to have a GEYSER OF FIRE erupting on one’s street.
Muffy1938, your raised garden beds sound wonderful! What a lot of work, but it sounds like they will be glorious. There are several tragic-looking planters around my building, with dead plants in them, and this year I am planning to plant some seeds in them. No one living in this building will object! I’d like to plant morning glories, and maybe cosmos. Spring is on its way here in NYC. The temp is staying above 32 at night. The daytime temps are usually in the 40s occasionally hitting 50s. I am so looking forward to the better weather. Pretty soon I will take down the thermal curtains and put up the summer curtains and take down the storm windows. Looking forward to the Macy’s Flower Show in Herald Square. And, sorry about your email being posted on the dark web. I guess that must have happened to me as well. Today I got notified that I had successfully opened a free wifi account at a shopping mall in Australia. I contacted them and they closed the account.
grannyj smith, I cracked up when you said you had to go to town for buttermilk because your husband was complaining he has not had blueberry buttermilk pancakes or banana bread in over a week. That sounds like one pampered husband. I hope he appreciates you.