You're Doing It Wrong

These are photos I uploaded in January around the time I discovered I couldn’t post without fixing something.

At the end of tomato season I clipped a giant bowl of green tomatoes and put them on the window sill. Most of them turned reddish eventually and we ate them in our salad. By the end they don’t taste very good and the texture is mostly chewy skin. It’s just summer nostalgia.

I’m not sure what’s going on with this picture. Maybe I intentionally blurred the background? It looks also frosty, or maybe snowy but also like a very dirty window. The only time I ever think about washing windows is when I see photos I’m getting ready to post.

These were the very last ones in January.

Friends, it has been a journey.

On the one hand, I had a hairy and soul-shredding aging parent situation.

Things aren’t perfect, as you would expect, but things are stable and less stressful. For now.

On the other hand, this website had been breaking behind the scenes and I knew about it but mostly ignored it. Sometimes I would log in and click around and then contact support and then pull my hair out and then go back to ignoring it.

But then it got to the point where it couldn’t be ignored and was way beyond my skill set. I contacted support some more.

Imagine if someone contacted me and said: You’re good at making apple pie. Can you help me make an apple pie?

And I said: Here are a bunch of recipes.

And they said: But I’m having trouble with the crust. I can’t make it work. Can you help me out?

And I said: Here are a bunch of recipes.

That’s more or less what support is like.

Bob got me in touch with a former colleague: St. Fellene of WordPress Studies and we have been clicking and updating and deleting and databasing and she has helped me get this thing working again. Hallelujah!

I have some ancient drafted posts sitting here that I will roll out and hopefully I will get back to regular posting 1-2x per week.

Happy Spring!

I’ve said before I have tons of notebooks of all sizes stashed around the house. This is an old one that I found in a box.

It’s hard to believe there was a time when it made sense to have a notebook to write down your favorite URLs and passwords.

I don’t know if there’s anyone that still checks in here that doesn’t know me IRL.

Shortly after Thanksgiving my dad had a major health crisis and since then a huge chunk of my time has been a support system including much time at his side in the hospital. He’s not getting better or any worse – just a never ending series of decisions between terrible options.

Wow. It has been an eventful month. A little too eventful for me, but we made it.

This is the aftermath of one of the burn piles in Orleans. I am so sad that I didn’t get a before picture because it was gigantic — so gigantic it looked dangerous.

As I am typing this we are still in group play of the World Cup, my favorite sporting event so lots of matches still to go.

River bar flower.

River bar view of Orleans bridge. October 2022.

Derby match : Timbers v. Seattle.

We won.

Did I already post about this? Not intending to diss the neighbors because they are nice and friendly. This like a lot of my projects.

This dirt was deposited in April. I remember because we had that late snow and it looked like they had a giant snow mound in front of their house.

The dirt was there until at least August. It would have taken me that long, too.

Local view of Mt. St. Helens.

During the summer I went for a lot of walks along all different parts of the neighborhood. It’s amazing how many people have vegetables or fruits right in front of their house or on the parking strip. I always like to check out what other people are growing and early in the season measure their progress to mine.

(I have no photos. Never occurred to me to grab a photo of a neighbor’s squash or blueberries.)

Big bear at Tishawnik.

Twice in the past couple of months I have been asked to do a survey for an app I am already using and the survey asked me ‘how much would you be willing to pay?’ about 5 different ways.

Deer at Tishawnik.

Like how much would I pay for different additional features?

What would be the most I would pay?

If the app only cost x amount would I think that it was cheap and crappy? (My words.)

Am I supposed to be able to answer these questions? Especially when they are sprung on me in the middle of a survey?

I already feel like I am being monthly subscriptioned to death. There are extra features that I would pay for to use but I would not use the extra features enough to justify paying an even bigger monthly fee.

Also, pro tip: if you cancel a subscription, they always lure you back with a discounted rate.

Here’s another clip of Skunky out by the shed in September. Now we are getting a lot of opossum movement out there but so far I haven’t gotten a good clip.

TV Shows that you’d think I would like:

House of Dragons — watched one episode. Did not continue.
Ring of Power — didn’t even watch one. No interest.
Welcome to Wrexham — like way more than I even expected. Really good. Recommend. Don’t need to like soccer.

TV Shows I did not expect to like:

Reacher — haha. Watched one episode for curiosity and was hooked. Loved the cast and characters.
Star Trek : Strange New Worlds — it’s not that I expected to not like this as much as I didn’t expect to continue since my “to watch” list is so competitive. Loved it. Perfect to wind down after work. A problem is introduced at the beginning. In the middle things seem dire. By the end it’s all worked out.

I like when the Find My Friends app shows your friend in the middle of the water. We were on the River Cruise.

Hope you are having a Happy Thanksgiving.