The Raven's Roost

We're about to go run some small errands and try to get back ahead of the line of storms coming our way. This thing has been spawning tornadoes, and we've been getting emails from NWS-Jax since Friday. And here it comes. The weather emergency alarm just went off. But I also want an iced mocha latte.

Around here, Little Treat Culture is alive and well.

I'm going to try to get my next day of Over the Mountain finished this afternoon. I was also thinking that particular format might be a good way to flesh out St. Felix, though I hate to abandon the first storyline. IDK, what do y'all think? (St. Felix being the fictional Florida town I sometimes write and draw comics about, and where my 'radio station' WFLX-AM is located.)

Off Topic, but Rick Astley did a really good cover of "Pink Pony CLub." Check it out here. Is this a rickroll?

I think I'm going to go outside and look at the paving work we got done yesterday. We laid down two crossing paths that will go between the four raised beds and hopefully keep more of the weeds down. Once we've built the bed frames and put them in, we'll lay another set of paths around the outside, though we might have to buy bricks. We've almost run through all the old bricks we had.

Huzzah, I finally feel normal again. I didn't even think about it when I got up, I just realized as I was drinking some coffee ... nothing hurts. So I guess I'll go for a run today.

We finally got some trees cut down and split, since we had a little break with nice weather before this monster cold front moves in. The dead bay laurel turned out to be too spongy to burn - it actually burst when it hit the ground. Going a little further back, Fox found a sick and damaged pine, but we ended up having to cut down a healthy one as well. We normally don't like to do that but it made felling the sick tree super easy, and now we have twice the firewood. We managed to get all that cut up and split before rain moved in. We're not super-human, we just have a hydraulic log splitter that mounts on the tractor.

I haven't been writing or doing anything much creative this week. I've got a friend's character card I need to play around with, and I want to finish up a day in Over The Mountain. I've spent more time just reading and letting my brain soak up things. I ought to be able to do some of that today, considering I've gotten a lot of major chores finished up and I feel physically and mentally well again. Not to jinx myself, but I don't even have any back aches from dealing with all those logs.

This thunderstorm is nice. I love a good storm.

The lady whose wallet we found? The package came back marked return to sender - unable to forward. I guess we did everything we can do. It's weird the stuff like that you find. I'm keeping a running count of iPhones we've found (3) and I say this because the stretch of highway where Fox picked that up is going to officially be ours soon. The county accepted our "adopt a highway" application! We were requesting the stretch of 315 heading to SR21 where we most often run, but that was taken, and we got the section just to the south that goes towards McRae. We run that too, or I do more often that Fox does. I pick it because it has some hills, and if I go far enough south, there's a small church with an outdoor water fountain. Anyway, I'm going to be picking up trash by the highway, just like my guidance counselor said I would! I should call her! :D

I haven't updated Over The Mountain in a few weeks because I not only hit a busy time in life, but I was also up against a species of writer's block. The same character shows up twice in one day, and she has items both times, AND one of the encounters is a side quest to find a lost item.

Just playing the game straight through is fun, but I may go back and rewrite some entries later to make the story make more sense. I may end up with Chekhov's Entire Armory. I rewrote my character's profile, making her special ability "finding lost things," though using that power is exhausting and I'm self-imposing an interaction penalty on the next day's rolls. The game suggests you have a collection that you can occasionally show off to get positive interactions, and I've made mine jewelry.

While trying to think up some of these items, I came up with some silly items, just for fun, that are more at home in a traditional fantasy RPG setting, but I'm sharing them here for laughs.

• Boots of Blistering Speed - doubles the wearer's movement speed when the wearer is on fire.
• Bag of Bobcats - looks like a normal traveler's bag but can be used to unleash a swarm of bobcats. Also not useful for storing anything, because whatever you take out of the bag is a bobcat. If you're the kind of person who likes precision, roll a d100 for how many bobcats, or two d6 for 11 - 66 cats.
• Potion of Insect Controlling - allows you to speak to and command one (1) insect, which could actually be pretty useful in the right circumstances.
• Potion of Uncomfortable Wakefulness - it's a Jolt Cola - increased movement speed and perception but roll a 1d6 for how many health points you'll lose.
• Potion Helmet - holds two potions and allows you to consume them without using an action, +1 armor but also -5 charisma because you look like a dork.

It rained off and on all night, a welcome sound. The road has been getting really badly rutted out in places, and without rain to help pack the sand down, the churned up sand just gets soft and fluffy. The dickhole who rides around on an ATV at night isn't helping, either. The digital weather station says .13" since midnight and I haven't looked at the standard gauge yet, my reading time is eight a.m.

While we're away at Marathon Weekend it's supposed to get freezing cold here, so now I have to try to figure out what to do about my citrus trees. I don't think I can leave them covered the entire time we're gone, but I also don't want to impose on Jamie's good will by asking her to cover them. And the younger trees may not withstand the cold as well. The yuzu is finally starting to come back healthy, and the key lime is actually giving some fruit, and I'd hate to lose all the money and work.

I debated with myself whether to try to get my blood draw done this morning, but the way it's raining, I don't really want to deal with it. I have some last minute cleaning and prep things I want to do before the power goes out - which it likely will. Yesterday I went with Fox and while he did his PT I managed to buy some ethanol-free gas for the generator and fill up a couple of the diesel jugs for the tractor. I also filled one of our water bottles at Walmart which was not crazy yet, but they were out of toilet paper and bottled water. There was still beer though, LOL.

Trash pick up is supposed to be going on today until conditions become hazardous, so we'll see if they get mine or if I'm skipped over again. We did manage to finish the trash shed, so it's tall enough for the county-issued cans, but the doors are also on it. We prefer to protect the generator, so it goes into the shed where it can be out of the rain. It does have adequate ventilation in there, but then we also have an older model without the carbon dioxide sensor.

Today I'll start taking rain gauge readings every four hours. By tonight things should start getting rough, but the track is trending more to the south, which pulls it away from us. And of course there's much cooler temps after this thing. Seven weeks until Space Coast :D

Speaking of - I found some scrap denim, and I plan to do my "Dorie's Marathons" hashmark patch with a permanent marker. I can also do the word marathons in the style of the Metallica logo because why wouldn't I? I'm probably listening to Metallica while I run anyway.

I'm not feeling as much need to stress bake, but I'm going to make a tray of granola today. I'll probably feed the sourdough. Hmm. I would have sworn I saw a link yesterday to a recipe for sourdough cinnamon muffins, I need to go look for that.

The next update should be out at 11 am, but ... YIKES. Helene is looking pretty nasty now that she's getting more organized. Hopefully the storm moves quickly and doesn't just sit in the Gulf picking up strength. On our side of the state, we should be dealing with the equivalent of a category 1 or 2 - still nothing to trifle with, but not that bad. We've got gas for the generator, food, and I'll be spending the rest of the day just doing small tasks that will have us ready for whenever the winds pick up tomorrow. If everything continues as expected, by around 2 in the afternoon, we specifically here will start feeling tropical storm winds, and by Friday morning, we should be out of it.

This thing had my anxiety spiked pretty badly yesterday, for some reason, but today I feel much more on top of things. This is certainly not my first rodeo - I have attended numerous rodeos prior to this one. But anxiety is kind of unpredictable.

Fox still has physical therapy tomorrow for some bizarre reason. I was thinking of going with him (Wawa stop!) but I think I'll stay here in case it gets worse than expected and I need to go pick him up at the hardtop on the tractor. Cars and trucks may get stuck back here, but nothing is stopping that tractor.

The analogue rain gauge had 1.8 inches of rainfall. The digital gauge on our weather station reported 1.67. The lightning strike detector reported 945 strikes within its detection area.

*annoying pep squad voice* Can we go for FOUR DIGITS?? C'mon, you can do it!

Down the road, we have a neighbor working on some property he bought a few years back and is slowly building on as money allows. The family lives in Jacksonville, but he's originally from New York. Fox and I were both curious about what was being done, and Fox wandered around back there pretty extensively. I started to ... but left when I started noticing the trail cameras. Turns out the guy DID see us on his cameras, but when we spoke to him in person he was quite nice about the whole thing.

We'd come back from a run, and he was asking about biking in the area. Turns out he has a knee injury that prevents him running, so he bikes to keep in shape. He ran track in high school in upstate NY, and mentioned his track team used to do cross country runs from their school ... and the turnaround point was the front gate of Yoko Ono's farm.

I guess Yoko is upstate New York's six degrees of Dolly Parton. Where I'm from you are either related to the Partons, a good enough friend of the family to be allowed on their property (which is where my family fell, we used to go out there sometimes when I was really small and Mom says I spent most of my time chasing the Guinea fowl because I wanted to pet them), a general friend of the family, someone who watched Dolly perform early on Cas Walker's show, etc.

Anyway, this guy has decided that Fox and I are all right, because he occasionally texts Fox stills from his trail cams wanting to know who some of these people are. In a few cases we both had no clue, but one is a kid from next door who was probably out looking for his dog. The dog escapes at any given opportunity and I don't complain about it much here because it's a pug. Aside from being very unfortunate-looking it's not much of a bother. It looks like God took a normal dog and punched it in the face.

Oh man. It's already 71 out there. I need to go run. The humidity isn't too bad yet, but we're coming up on the worst of summer, when the lows at night barely get below 80. While it is a Suck-a-palooza out there, it's also kind of fun come autumn at RunDisney to listen to people from Up North complain about how hot it is, while Fox and I were just saying, "Wow, it got nice and cool this weekend! Only in the 60s? This is great." LOL

This morning, the heaters set up for the younger fruit trees are cycling on and off as expected. Drips are dripping. The front deck is slippery with, I assume, ice, though there isn't a lot of obvious crystallized ice everywhere. The birds are noisily appreciative of the seed and suet I've put out. And I have a decent fire going, though it could probably stand to be stirred and have another log put on it. The problem is that both Crowley and Feisal are curled up on me, so I am a cat hostage.

It may only barely touch 40 here today, so my long run is going to be interesting. By "interesting" I mean "ass-cold." I have base layers, gloves, and all that good stuff so I'll be fine. I will probably also set up the Keurig to make me a peppermint mocha, so when I come staggering in like I've just come from the South Pole, I can just hit the button and have hot coffee by the time I've backed up to the fire and thawed my butt cheeks out.

Looking at the Facebook groups, a lot of Trail Angels have opened their homes, and a lot of churches along the trail opened their facilities to get everyone inside overnight. I still don't think I'd exactly want to be camping in this stuff, though.

In gaming stuff, Little Nightmares 2 is incredible. The first game was unsettling but this one is actually kind of scaring me, and I'm a ghost story and horror film fan. My only technical issue is that sometimes Mono's jumps seem hard to line up, but that may be "end user error." While going through the School, I felt like I could smell the musty, dry skin smell of some of one of my kindergarten teachers - that claustrophobic smell of dust and old crayons. I'm now working my way through the hospital, and the Patients are just a whole lot of "NOPE fuck that nope nope nope." So far, five stars.

I made some peanut butter cookies yesterday by an internet recipe. That was my big mistake - I have an old Betty Crocker's Cooky Book from 1963 and it has never failed me. My cookies taste fine, but the texture of the dough was completely off, and some are really crumbly, even after baking. I'm thinking of making some cheddar cheese rolls to pack tomorrow if we still want to go out for a short hike.

It's weird seeing the photos and video coming in from south Louisiana - I lived in some of those places and they're just ... gone. I worried about that sort of thing happening, obviously, but for it to really happen and just obliterate entire communities is kind of mind blowing. There's nothing, no infrastructure, no homes, no power, no (drinkable) water, no roads. I'm tempted to start searching for news and stuff myself, but I also irrationally feel like it's not really any of my business any more.

The weather is sending lines of thunderstorms across Florida though, and keeping the temps down somewhat. Last night the lightning was messing with the internet radios - it didn't strike a tower or really take anything out but the electromagnetic interference made the net spotty. This was after Fox was telling me about some uptick in solar activity that might make the internet spotty at best, or at worst destroy all technology and life as we know it.

I'm still putting out hummingbird feeders for now, though I think by October they should be gone. We have migratory birds from north of here that pass through, so I leave mine up a bit longer than I probably should. They got sort of gross while I was gone, and one had ants. I replaced the nectar yesterday and we have visitors this morning, but that one feeder may stay down for the season, since the ants will be persistent in trying to get in it. By next spring I should be able to put it back up. I'm also hearing the Red-shouldered Hawks calling a lot in the morning. Yesterday while I was running I heard them shrieking about something both on my way out and the way back, so maybe they were upset about me. Or maybe they just like screaming. AND I have also seen a lot of bear tracks since we got home. The security cameras don't show anything, but I see a lot of prints in the road. Maybe they don't really bother with our house any more since we lock our trash up.

And I finally got my ears stretched up to the sizes I want. I can't go as large with the upper holes as I wanted originally, since when they were pierced in the first place, they kind of placed the piercings too close. But they look pretty cool now that they're all stretched enough to look stretched, and I have a matched set of glass plugs.

War & Peace arrived at a USPS facility in Jax early this morning, so it might be here tomorrow, but more likely next week. I thought about waiting for the beginning of the year to read along with the people doing A Year of W&P but I have never done great in group settings in the past, so I'm going to strike out on my own as soon as it arrives. I got my tape flags and my notebook, I got this. I should get a little trolley for it like Charlie Brown in Happy New Year, Charlie Brown but there aren't that many people who would think that's funny. I haven't seen that cartoon in so long now I can't remember if he was just reading it because he procrastinated the whole time, or if he was doing it voluntarily. A major part of the humor in Peanuts was children doing adult things as if they were adults - remember the parents and teachers are just empty air in the comics, and a muted trumpet on TV, so you could argue that there aren't any adults in Peanuts. But anyway, like I said I can't remember if Charlie Brown was assigned W&P for a class (which is funny because it's WAY beyond a kid his age) or if he picked it up for some other reason.

I received a certificate from the National Weather Service and CoCoRaHas for five years of reporting my rain gauge data! I knew that they recognized long-time gauge readers, and the email sometimes talks about folks who've been participating for twenty years or longer. One even mentioned that if you report regularly and then a natural disaster happens in your area, often the people who use the data will log in, see that you haven't reported, and start worrying about you. "I hope number twenty-nine is okay." I've had to keep a paper record after hurricanes and then fill my reports in once power and internet came back, but I can imagine waiting to see all the stations start popping back up after that. Anyway, certificate. That was pretty cool - I might even get a little frame for it.

We had to go run a short errand this morning but back home now. My desire to go anywhere has almost disappeared completely. Fox found out that the room rates at IcelandAir hotels are ridiculously low right now - like $83 a night? Those rooms often go for $300 and up, but IcelandAir runs some seriously nice hotels. And this one's in Akureyri with a fjord view. But I have to spend two weeks in quarantine upon landing, then trying to get back into the US will require a Covid test, so that's a mess. Plus ... I couldn't really get excited about it. I just don't really want to travel anymore.

But if you want to go to Akureyri it's super cheap.

I also tossed something into the collection plate over at Old Gods of Appalachia, so I've been enjoying that. I'm considering bumping up my support level next month so I can listen in to their live Discord events. While I'm recovering from the marathon run I've been doing daily three mile walks, just to keep moving. And I listen to a couple of episodes as I do. I'm trying not to listen too much because I don't want to run out, but I know I'm going to get to the end of the season eventually, LOL.

I'm killing some time at the moment waiting for an Instant Pot batch of black beans to cook. Once they're done they go on the stove with an onion and some chipotle peppers and become taco filling for tonight.