The Raven's Roost

I have been out of school for a very long time now, and I still enjoy setting up a "summer reading program." Sometimes I decide to read as much as I can of a particular author's work, or I pick a subject. But it's the same kind of buzz as getting to go to the book fair, with adult money.

I'm finally starting to feel like writing again, some of it in a paper notebook, some of it in a Google Document. I liked this piece of advice from, I believe it was Jordan Peele, who said that his first drafts are mainly dumping sand into a sandbox where he'll later build his castle. That's been an immense help. Given the crushing perfectionism I grew up around, if something requires fixing and revising, it's shit and you're a bad person. Writing in a paper notebook also helps with this because it's much harder to edit on the fly.

This summer I'm revisiting Arthurian tales, which were always a major interest of mine. I've got TH White's novels (replacing older copies I lost), and Mallory's Morte d'Arthur. I tried reading Lawhead's Pendragon cycle once and found them kind of tedious, but I may take another run at them. Stemming from Mallory, I've also got my grubby claws on The Medievalism of Lawrence of Arabia because I'm an academic at heart and love dense books I can mark up. And I love Ned.

Utterly unrelated to Arthur, I've also got Michel de Montaigne on deck. Well, he may be unrelated, or he may not be, we'll find out. In the "odds and ends" category, I'm reading 48 Laws of Power as someone who will never wield power over anyone else, but is very interested in knowing when someone's trying to use it on me.

Last year's summer books were a little disjointed and I never picked up on a theme, so it's nice to feel like I have direction this year.

I'm done base-building and today starts "official" marathon training. Not exactly much has changed, but I can't just blow off workouts. I'm also comfortably down to three strength sessions a week of four or five different lifts instead of the longer and more detailed ones I've been doing since January. Today's run is a 40-minute easy pace, which I'll be doing on the treadmill because it's still miserably hot here. My rule of thumb right now is that if it's over 75 when I get up, I run on the treadmill. Unfortunately for me, the recent hurricane has dragged an area of high pressure over us, bringing relentlessly hot temps. There's a glimmer of hope later this week - I see lows between 69 and 71 coming up - but I'm not going to hold my breath. It's still tempting to run speed sessions outside, because it just doesn't feel like you can really exert any power on the treadmill.

The garden's getting to that ragged late-summer stage that's kind of depressing. I need to till under a couple of beds and start preparing for our actual growing season here - winter. The garlic didn't do well in the heat, so I'm going to try that again, and I'm going to designate another bed for potatoes. I have eight Everglades Tomatoes that are coming along well and need to either be in pots or in the ground soon. There are still two pumpkins out there on the vines, but I've harvested four so far, which is a decent haul. I'm debating whether to start more. Fox is going to be moving the burn pile further to the east so that the flat area we've made can be converted into more veggie beds and/or a larger trellis area for pumpkins or grapes.

The mosquitoes are a nightmare, though, and those big tiger-stripe ones are out. UGH

Henry Thoreau wrote that he could hear whispers of autumn even at the height of spring, and so it is here. The big golden Orb Weaver spiders are starting to build webs, which is usually a late summer thing. The poplars *may* be starting to turn? I can't really tell so I'm going with "not yet." There's a huge Orb Weaver web near where Fox has been working, and we were looking at the spider with a bug she'd caught when a larger fly (like a horsefly or a sandfly maybe?) flew into the web, stuck for a second, but then pulled away and flew off. I wonder if that fly has any appreciation for how much luck was on its side that day.

Sorry if I'm whining, I just do not like summer.

The air conditioning is out.

Happily, we found a local repair company that works relatively longer hours and were able to talk to them last night. It was probably around 10 by the time we were done opening the unit and looking at it. We thought the compressor might be bad, but when Fox described the problem to the tech, he said it might be the starter. If so it's a fairly easy fix. He should be here later this afternoon.

It's a newer system and still under the manufacturer's warranty so we're not that worried about it. It's just annoying to be without AC right now. It's "only" around 86 at the moment, but with the blinds down and fans on, some parts of the house are staying acceptably cool.

No real idea what would cause the starter to fail, but we've been having a lot of problems with the power lately. Okay, not "problems," exactly, but a lot of little power surges and fluctuations. We can tell sometimes because lights flicker and you can hear things shutting off, but it's most obvious with Fox's computer, since you can hear the fairly loud clicking sounds it makes as the power goes on and off and the battery backup tries to compensate. I have no idea what Clay Electric has done or what this is about. In 2019 they conducted a series of repairs and renovations on the rural parts of the power grid, including getting most of us hooked up with those wireless meters. It was great through storm season, as the new system proved to be pretty robust. The only major, extended outage we've had was when a truck hit a utility pole and literally pulled down a couple hundred yards of power lines.

Between being hot and having depleted blood volume from donating, I'm extremely lethargic right now. I've also been weirdly compelled to drink and have probably been downing twenty ounces each hour, but I'm finally feeling non-thirsty now. I have a treat for later in the fridge - the Topo Chico mineral water I like was on sale at Publix.

It's kind of nice having the windows open and being able to hear the outside world, but I like being cool in summer. Besides, it's always a lot of fun the first day we open the house in the fall - the cats love it.

At least the humidity isn't bad right now, LOL.