bits

 

  

I got Esme a Greek drachma for her birthday, and a book 'How to Tame a Fox (and build a dog)' - 'oh, it's about the silver fox project!', she said.  I thought she might find it interesting and it is nice to have something to hand to page through instead of just relying for it to be on the internet.  The coin isn't worth much, but I told her that - to our eye - she has been growing up quite wise for her age, and that we were proud of her.  And the owl is the 'owl of Athena' the Greek goddess of wisdom.

Grandma also gave her a few coins, which she is going to look up, and a pretty card with some for 'her shark fund', which is based on a joke I had made a few years ago about her going into an antique store and coming out with a wooden duck sculpture, after saying 'Now watch, I'll find a shark or something', to which I had to draw a comic about that.

I've got a cake in the oven for her for dinner tonight, and hopefully serve with bacon and eggs and cherries.

I found a little app called 'golingo' that is speaking exercises in multiple languages.  It only recognizes about 80-90% of my spoken French - maybe room for improvement, maybe error in the system.  It only gets about 50-60% of my Welsh and it has abbreviations like 'ut wyt ti' for 'how are you' instead of 'sut dych chi'.. don't know if that is North vs. South or modern street vs book learning etc etc... anyway, it's kind of a cool addition to learn something from.  A friend tried it for Greek, and didn't like it much at all. *shrug*  

I have been studying still a lot of Japanese, a bit more Czech, and French and Spanish (on the golingo), and went and dipped back into Latvian / Lithuanian vocabulary and had not forgotten too much of that.

I had given myself such a headache yesterday, trying to cut back on coffee for other health reasons for a few days... drinking juice and water and diluted tea, but it wasn't enough as I ended up with a raging migraine and all of the other fun joint popping and earache and other inflammation that happens when I try to stop coffee.  Back to half-strength today and I have to avoid the work coffee because it is just too strong and dark, it will get me right back to square one.  

tiny bit

 Did the postal route today, mostly normal bumping along and got done about three o'clock.  I started doing some more Czech again with the Japanese, because my grammar on that always starts to invert when I stay away from it too long.  Not much else.  I'm still pretty sure I have tomorrow off, but not sure what else I'll do.  Need to finish more laundry, and clean a few areas.  I'm pretty sure Mark wants to do some more grocery shopping - I grabbed a few things that can only be gotten at the one store in the post office town, in anticipation that we would get more at the other town tomorrow.

Made tacos for dinner, or at least - a semblage of them...  also want to go have a bath with the V05 coconut stuff I like and got some of today.

I've been having some pretty odd and very realistic dreams.  One of them the other night was drawing out 52.00 from a bank just before closing time, and trying to count up what I was given, which was a large array of very non-standard coins as well as some bills.  One of the coins looked like a silver walnut shell.  I was asking the bank teller, who wanted to go home, how I was supposed to add all this up and know I had the right amount?  There were also three dollar coins and even a 2.50 coin which I thought simply had to be complete fantasy - but no, there really were some three dollar and 2.50 dollar coins back in early America - although they were gold, and the ones in my dream were silver, with a face on the front and a bird on the back though, which was accurate and probably robbed from my brain actually knowing that quarters are like that (and the other coin types were modelled onto the quarter dollar, 'quarter eagle' is the 2.50 and the 'eagle' was a ten dollar coin!)

 

I doubt Esme will read the blog, but I did buy her one specialty coin for her birthday- a real coin from a foreign country, as a sort of souvenier.  I'm hoping it will come in time, it's not expensive at all but it looked cool and I saw something about it being a modern coin but resembling 'remarkably' the ancient variety of coin from the region in an archaeology article.   As in it was kind of lost knowledge that the ancient coin had a drawing on it so very similar to what they picked for the modern coin.. but people in 2024 are still pretty amused by the similarity.  

 I know that this is more for 'I would like her to have it' than her actually wanting it - but it's something that could last compared to a new stuffed animal (she has a thousand) etc etc..and it is harder to buy for a teenager, especially when they 'don't want anything' everytime you ask.  I've gotten her 'numismatist' things a few times over the years, some just because they were cool (the Dutch coins), one (the mercury dime) for nostalgia because my grandmother had given me one as a necklace,  the pennies I had saved as a young child that were wheat backs and then one year we even gave her several rolls of 50 cent pieces and a collector book for them just to prove to her that they were indeed real and still quite available.  Her grandmother gave her a few that she had brought back from Germany and Japan as well.  So, even though she's not really interested in coin collecting, she's mildly interested in the fact that I've made her a coin collection over the years *ha*  and we put it in a nice glass display case that she keeps, along with ticket stubs and other bits like iron patches or cards etc. from places we have went over the years.

 

 

 

I happened to still have these pictures on my desktop -- The 'dimes' I got her one year for Christmas, they are from the Netherlands and were just in the 'these are cool' dish at the local pawn shop.  I had went there to get an American 'very fine' graded mercury head dime because my grandmother had given me one of those and over time it was lost, so I wanted to give her one like it and tell her the story about how that one had been made into a necklace.

I also ordered her a book I DO think she will like, that I saw in a scientific article about foxes.   And she did pick out a game on the computer that she did want, and I got that for her.

bits

 It's almost the end of another week.  Went out and got the animal feeds today after work, but on the way back I stopped at a gas station and suddenly the car wouldn't start.  I called the mechanic and he tried to walk me through some checks - the battery had charge but the ignition in the Buick Century would not even click - no lights, nothing.  So, he asked me tighten the connectors to the battery but I didn't have the proper tools in the trunk (same as Mark originally didn't have the right things to change a tire with it the first time that happened).  So, he was good and came out to find me at the gas station and showed me that really was the problem - the negative connector had started to come loose every once in a while.  It's one of those new-fangled types, not the good old fashioned kind the other two trucks had that could be turned with a simple wrench - you have to have the right socket set for it and a small handled one at that because you have to reach down into the machine a little ways.  He told me that was an issue he saw with that car before - and ones like it, but showed me how to fix it and what tool I need to get to put in the trunk.  

 

Mark comments that the 'new fangled type' is on a 2001 car, and the types on the other 1998 and 2004 cars were adapted after-market back to the older style.  But the 'new fangled' I am talking about has been around nearly 25 years - and the new-fangled NOW is even worse for repair-ability by yourself.

 

So, got home, made dinner and fed animals, didn't do the laundry, and only did the minimum work on the monthly budget - like the car knew I got a paycheck *ha* no, not really, and the mechanic didn't charge a lot for the 'house call', but he definitely deserved something for coming out at 5 pm and helping me get home.  It's already been a long night, and tomorrow is coming at the same time as usual -- headed to bed.  I've borrowed Mark's socket set to put in it just until I buy one - but am not expecting to have the same issue with it tomorrow.  It was so strange to have it happen today with no warning - it might have been a little less power going up a hill between the feed store and the gas station that I looked at the temperature gauge and said 'its not overheating, why is it sluggish?' and that was the only thing that made me wonder what was going on - the radio played, the lights on the dash were on, and it didn't sound any stranger than usual except on that one hill.

Still doing Japanese on all platforms (two duolingo, clozemaster).  Getting a few more new words finally on the highest duolingo profile.  Listening to a channel called Anime.Mex? that is spoken Spanish commentary and also Spanish subtitles  over the spoken Japanese from the anime soundtrack.  The animes they are reviewing tend to be sort of more 'explicit' ones than I usually watch or read, but I know that is a very large portion of animes out there, as well.  And I am getting much better at following the slang and colloquial conversation.

bit of bits - When I come in from outside at work the empty darkness is 'green' in the building, but I found it much more interesting that the darkness of the cardboard boxes when the green overflare begins to go away is now red.  That happened to me twice, and I'm walking through that without a flashlight - the darkness is black, and the boxes look just faintly red, so I'm getting through it in the dark not just by memory or feel but by 'seeing'.  I'm not quite sure what that is - it goes away and everything becomes just black, but it was eerie the first time and the second time it was like 'there has to be some reason for this, infra-red, latent heat?   Mark and I have noticed many times I 'see' infra-red in full light (especially sunlight) as a mirage reaction.  I can tell when something is hot by looking at it, but it doesn't look red in the light.. it looks wavy or 'vibrate-y' is about the best word for it.  

 Also, I found a place today that you can stand and hear someone clear as a bell who is standing on the other side of the warehouse, some thirty feet away - but when you begin to walk towards that person the sound stops echoing like that and they get quieter, then of course louder as you get nearer to them again.  That was VERY strange - I turned the corner from my office and thought my boss was right there by the wall, or maybe just inside that office there - and looked down the hallway and she was on the other end of the building talking to someone else.  It's either vents or just plain perfectly-bouncing echoes as it is a metal building.

witterings and ramblings

 

A few things I wrote elsewhere I wanted to keep hold of: 

My brain is always going a million miles a minute, it feels like.. so this is just a taste of trying to put some of that down into text.

What is the concept of time?

"I've been thinking about this for years, since a dream I had in high school. Time is a fractured crystal/matrix on tangent point with the three dimensions of physical space, and -of itself the fractures in its own matrix become something like the Droste effect light going into infinite mirrors within mirrors - there is loss and duplication within the fractures of a magnitude we cannot quite grasp."

 I did have this dream - it was what, 1996, 1998?  somewhere around there, I remember looking at my computer in my mother's house and wondering how I could capture even a tiny bit of the idea to save it for later... I sat down and wrote 'The Crystal Matrix' and 'The Philosopher of Crystal Valleys' somewhere around that time.. and the type of dream still returns to me once in a while - and I can never quite grasp it - it falls apart the more I try to understand it.  I've written a bit about it in my book 'Time in December' in some ways, but had to mold the idea to fit the story in a way that was slightly more specific than the whole concept.  I do like the scene in the movie Interstellar (or, as I more commonly think of it, the movie with the girl named after Murphy's Law)... but I don't feel it quite hits the right 'umami' taste of the 'real thing' I experienced in the dream, very very close to the idea, but something was missing

 

Charlotte this morning : 

"Charlotte's blue heeler side was showing this morning - definitely herding dog there - I slept in today because it was Sunday and she was completely focused on getting me outside to feed the chickens, nose bump, alarm snooze, beleaguered sigh with chin on bed, nose bump, hard stare and excited eyebrows every time I move... okay you're FINALLY up....circle to door, sigh, head to stairs, ok.. yes human the coffee (but, chickens? you know about the chickens, right? *head twist and circle*), okay the cookie, I like cookie too.. but... chickens? Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, turns circles.. *I get the chicken feed in the container* OK oh boy! *nearly soar through air on the way to the door* we're finally feeding the chickens! If that dog could fly, she would have all the way to the coop with me."

Mark says I could make four panel cartoons of this sort of thing.. and that is the best I can do in description.

 

And, about the night before last : 

"I had this dream last night where my brain was trying everything to wake me up, zombies, extra limbs, fantastic glass objects with light streaming through them in a temple where the water was rising, going through books that don't actually exist, seeing people in an office that I knew were TV actors and saying hello to them as their characters, walking through mazes that defied gravity, crowds of unfamiliar people, a ghost, papers and signs in foreign language, vehicle issues where my key didn't want to work, logging into work terminals with the wrong password, trying to open combination locks from years ago - just one puzzle/problem thing after another and each thing I faced I was like 'ok'.. go through the motions, get through this thing and you just know something else will show up etc.. but none of it actually pushed me to awake - and then, I picked Esme up at the bus stop during the rain in my mail vehicle (instead of my normal one) which the mail vehicle doesn't actually have a seat there, and I never take it home in the first place ---- and THAT did it --- it was such a surreal mix of real and 'wait, what - that isn't how this goes, this is never how this goes' that it finally did wake me up. And I thought.. wow, zombies, extra limbs, Japanese and Escher-type mazes didn't do it, but being in the wrong vehicle at the bus stop does. *that's my brain, I guess*"

... "still what makes me almost/ (the most) amused is that all the far-beyond-reality stuff doesn't 'faze' my sleeping brain, it just tries to find the way around it as if I am already knowing it is a dream and 'meh, these things happen' etc.. but the actually almost real normal thing but still 'hey the details are wrong' task was what shook me awake. In the dream I was asking myself 'is the stripe on Esme's coat just like that, I don't think it is....' and enough of those mismatches made me question enough to kick me out of the dream entirely" 

 

I really wish I could explain the glass figures - they were absolutely ethereal delicate, breathtaking and luminous - like sundial-shaped shells - - I worried if I tried to pick them up they would shatter just from the pressure of the touch - they were sitting on a shelf in front of some clerestory windows, but the water was coming in from the stairs above, rising in the sunken temple area (blue-green stone, similar to the minecraft underwater temples) and I needed to get out of there and continue my 'quest' - I think at that point I was looking for a bookcase to put the books in my office that I was sharing with several characters from Fringe and Warehouse 13, but really in the dream, I understood that my brain was playing with me there with the actors/celebrities/characters and the books that didn't exist were foremost on my mind (if I can see them and they are books I can make them again etc.) that if I was going to have them for a while yes I did need a bookcase... and then of course other things happened, in the crowd there was a girl in a yellow dress, who was asking me questions and I suddenly decided I could phase us into a ghost mode and get through the crowd and bring them to where they needed to be and warn them and some other people about some things, give them some philosophy etc. which was fairly basic, and then continue on my quest, saw my mail van, delivered some mail, sorted out codes, had the combination lock question, 39, 11 and I don't remember the last one, maybe 5 or 45, I didn't get it open - it was from ten years ago, and then I saw my daughter and two other girls getting off their bus, but not at the bus stop, and picked her up, but her coat had the wrong stripe, and I didn't recognize the other girls, and that my van doesn't have that seat there is a shelf there (which has happened in dreams before, conflation with another vehicle) and then I was still right-hand driving and somebody on the side of the road wanted us to pick up furniture in the van and I was dubious that it would fit or that I could lift it, but I got out and loaded it up with superhuman strength, and realized the texture of it was all wrong and at that moment I was investigating why it didn't feel correctly under my hand and that kicked me fully awake

Grandma Irene's puppies

 We got the heating and air person over, and an electrician, today to fix Grandma's wall heater outlet, the heater, and the central unit.  I had called them from work and then went over there to meet the heating and air person, but they were just finishing up when I got there.  Now her heat is working for the upcoming winter.  Esme has been helping out with these two making sure they get some lap time, communication and checking on their food and water with Grandma.  Grandma has called the white one Patches, and the black one with a few white bits Tippy.  They are both girls, and we estimated about 8 weeks old at the most.  They came from a neighbor who was visiting the other day, and she said he had a lot of them he was trying to give away.

a month

I've been working as the logistics clerk for a month now - and I like it.  There is a lot of data to analyze.  There's mostly always something to do, and it is consistent.  Since it is a very small company, the job is a bit of a mosaic of things that at a bigger company might be done by several people - but in a small company it is enough to keep one person busy.  So besides arranging and scheduling transportation for how orders are received and the products are shipped (the logistics part), I am also doing cleaning duties, ordering supplies, answering the phone and keeping the utility bills and other things paid by scanning them and sending them to their billing department etc. etc.. It's a job that needs to be done and I'm taking an 'ikigai' approach to it, not as in MY reason for being, but there is a reason there is a job there and it needs someone to do it, and I needed a job that I could be a good fit for - so I am going to show up and do it to the best of my potential.  

 I'm still a bit worried about snow and ice this winter, and getting there so early in the morning before dawn... but taking it as it comes.  And I'm still doing the postal route on Saturdays (under the same sort of it needs someone to make sure it is done, and to do it well, and that person is me, umbrella).  That's a little stressful for the managers at the post office because now, finally, the carrier I was subbing for the last few years is just now taking her vacation days for the year after saving most of them, and I'm not available to cover for them during the weekdays because I'm now doing the other job.  If she might have taken her vacation a little earlier in the year I might not have been so broke that I went looking for a second job!  But, then, I wouldn't be here doing this, learning these new things and would still be getting really inconsistent pay checks through this winter that is coming up, scraping by or falling behind instead of getting the bills paid.  

I am glad these two jobs did fit together this way and I will continue trying to do them both.  It is covering our bills, and giving me a better feeling for this winter.  Maybe after another month, the office job told me when I interviewed, I can plan to cover a day here or there for the post office and use my own vacation or time off from the office job to do it.  We'll cross that road when we get there.

Laundry, - we need to pull the washing machine away from the wall this weekend and unscrew the wall panel and see if we can see where that bit of water is consistently leaking from.  It might be from the machine itself.. or the drain hose, we're just not sure.  We are pretty sure it isn't from the valves or it would be constant, and it is a small amount of water that only shows up when we run the machine.  Mark and Esme even asked me if maybe it is coming from that vanity sink on the other side of the wall that we rarely use - but I was using it for washing my face almost every night up to a few nights ago - and there was no water.  I just ran a load of laundry tonight and there is a bit of water visible at the base of the machine right by the wall.  

 We turned on the heater for the house.  Trying to get Grandma's heating on, as well - she has two new 6 to 8 week old female puppies and her house is cold.  Esme went up there to give them some socialization and hold them in her lap, and I've asked her to do the same tomorrow while she is on break.  I went up there today, too - and spent some time with Grandma and the pups while trying to get the thermostat to kick in - it didn't.  The person who gave her the pups told her they were older, so we had given her food for older dogs.  Then we all saw them with our own eyes (Esme, me, then Mark) and we knew they were younger and needed different food.  Mark and I ran to the store yesterday and got the puppies the right kind of food and I put down a water dish today which I thought Grandma had done yesterday -- and they will need some vetting in another few weeks.  I checked with Mark and they do not need worm medicine for another week or two, but then they will need it every two weeks for a little while, a very small amount each, as they are very small and will be small even as adults.

I'm still reading the manga Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You, studying mostly Japanese the past few days on three different accounts (two duolingo and one clozemaster) and doing the Tetris game on my phone.