Seems one of the two trees was already completely ring-barked, so the handyman only protected the other one with chickenwire. Since then the beaver has been back more than once to work on this one, and you can see it's made a lot of progress.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 08:22 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Office Depot is bringing me something today, and they said it would be sometime between 8:30 AM and 7:00 PM. As Daffy says, Thanks for the sour persimmons, buster. At least Safeway gives me a 4-hour window, and if I was willing to pay more I could get a 1-hour window.

(It's a plastic floor mat to go under my desk chair. I've gone through three of those in the last few years, and my current one is a broken mess. This new one is going to be 1/8 inch thick, and I hope it'll hold up better than the others did. They were all thin and flexible. Each time I bought a new one, I thought I was getting something that would last more. The last one was polycarbonate, and it only lasted about 6 months.)

UPDATE: OK, 11:30. Not too shabby, and now I can take a nap.

UPDATE: The new one is much better at producing static electricity. Since it's on the floor next to my computer table, this could be a problem.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 10:18 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Having wiped out all the small trees, they're getting ambitious now. I think they may already have ring-barked the one on the left, and they're giving it a good beaver try for the one on the right.

Those maple trees stand a good 75 feet tall and their trunks are probably 10 inches in diameter, so it's no small job for a beaver to bring one of them down. It'll be interesting to see how they progress.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 11:00 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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A year ago today I had my stroke. A year ago tomorrow I went to the hospital for it.

I don't apologize for waiting. I didn't really understand what was happening to me, the first day. My left leg and left arm seemed weak, but I was still able to scramble my eggs for breakfast, and I could type, albeit with difficulty. That was a Saturday, and my physical condition continued to deteriorate until the following Wednesday (in the hospital), which was the low point. By then, my left arm and left leg were virtually useless. I could still move them, somewhat, but I couldn't use them for what nature intended. (Nature gave me hands so I could type, right?)

Three weeks of therapy got most of it back, and the high point was about last spring. Starting in the summer, I began to lose control over my left leg again. I can still hobble around -- even without my cane, when I need to -- and I can carry a plate from my kitchen to my computer table. I can carry the groceries from the door to my kitchen when they deliver, and I can unpack and store everything. I still have full control over my left hand (nearly as good as it always was) and I can type just fine. But the last time I took a long walk was August, and I wouldn't want to try it now. Even short walks (taking out my garbage, or walking to the laundry room) are a problem especially if I'm trying to carry something.

And I can't stand for long periods of time. About ten minutes is my limit; then I get an increasing amount of pain in my lower left back that only goes away (nearly immediately) when I sit down. I figure that one of the neural circuits which controls one critical muscle is only connected to part of the muscle, and the part of it that's working accumulates fatigue poisons.

Bummer.

I don't generally bitch about my life here, but this is a special occasion.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 08:06 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Any Minecraft players around here? Ubu Roi is looking for a few good miners. (Sorry, I don't play the game myself.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in linky at 09:45 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I always do this:

The plan was to give a bag to each kid that shows up. But I bought too much. As is usual around here, I got just one group of five kids. (Could be worse; last year I didn't get anyone.)

It's now past 8:00 and I don't expect I'll get any more. So what am I going to do with all that?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 07:09 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Looks like we're about to lose another tree. I'm a bit surprised it hasn't gone over already.

I think that when a human engineer lives a good life, he's reincarnated as a beaver. Look at all the advantages:

No venture capitalists

No one nagging to have an IPO, either.

No government regulations

Imagine! The beavers are making all these changes to the environment, around creeks and streams, and they don't have to comply with EPA wetlands regulations!

And no Environmental Impact Statement!

No schedule

For a beaver, a project is done when they're finished with it.

No bosses

Beavers work on whatever they want to work on. And amazingly enough, they accomplish a lot.

Lots of sex

These are rodents, after all, and rodents are legendarily lusty!

UPDATE:

No marketing department

Beavers decide for themselves what features to provide in their finished product.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 11:46 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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The beavers got another one of our trees last night.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 08:22 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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My prescriptions ran out, so I put in an order for a refill yesterday. This morning they sent a text message to my phone telling me they were ready, and just now I walked to the pharmacy and back.

My left leg isn't working as well as it was a couple of months ago; I'm losing ground. And the pharmacy is a mile away. I was afraid I might not be able to complete the round-trip, but I made it.

However, my legs really hurt now, and I'm having a hard time even hobbling around in my apartment. And my right hand (which holds the cane) is sore, too.

But I got a treat: I stopped at the Panda place on the way back and bought some Orange Chicken. I just ate half of it; yum.

Yesterday morning I woke about 6:30 and realized the power was out. So I went back to bed, and when I woke again the power was back on again. My torrent computer runs 24-7 and it's a laptop, so it kept running when the power went out (switched to its battery, without rebooting or anything). In addition to uTorrent I also keep an instance of PingPlotter going on it, pinging mee.nu, so from that I know that it the power went out about a quarter to 5, and was out for about 3 hours. No idea what happened, but given that it took out this whole area, and how long it was out, probably a major stepdown transformer blew up.

When I first woke up, one way I knew the power was out in the entire area was that my phone could only see one wifi hub. Ordinarily there are about 20.

And then last evening my internet connection went out and was gone for about an hour. That's always a pain.

But everything's OK, and I have enough pills for another 3 months, and I'm getting a grocery delivery tomorrow. I sure live an interesting life, don't I? Loads of thrills and chills.

It could be worse. I could be Brickmuppet.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 01:00 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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1 Isn't life always better when you're not a muppet?

As for the leg, I do hope it improves. 

Posted by: sqa at September 24, 2013 01:15 PM (rdcLU)

2

It could be worse. I could be Brickmuppet.

That's just plain cruel.  Accurate, but cruel...

Posted by: Siergen at September 24, 2013 04:12 PM (Ao4Kw)

3  It really could have been worse. It was threatening rain the whole time I was gone, and I could see drenching showers happening in the distance, but it was completely dry where I was.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at September 24, 2013 06:39 PM (+rSRq)

4 Yeah, I'm 12 years younger and not looking forward to it.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at September 25, 2013 08:15 AM (RqRa5)

5 "My left leg isn't working as well as it was a couple of months ago; I'm losing ground."

Is that common for recovering stroke victims? I wish you well.

Posted by: topmaker at September 25, 2013 04:04 PM (2yZsg)

6 I don't have the slightest idea.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at September 25, 2013 06:38 PM (+rSRq)

7 Suddenly the phrase "Threatening rain" made me think of a gangster cloud saying "What a nice day, be a shame if something happened to it."

Posted by: Mauser at September 26, 2013 12:43 AM (TJ7ih)

8 #7-  I've actually seen that in a couple of RPG settings, where the local storm/weather god is, for all intents and purposes, Mafiosi.

Posted by: metaphysician at September 26, 2013 04:53 AM (3GCAl)

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Fifteen minutes ago the weather app on my phone switched its icon from "thunderstorm" to "rain". Ten minutes later I started hearing thunder, and it's still going on. (But rain hasn't begun yet.)

I wonder if the power will go out?

We don't get a lot of thunderstorms around here. It's not like Boston, where we got several per year; around here they're about as common as snow storms (which is to say, not very).

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 10:14 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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