What Are You Doing?

As some of you may know, I'm not into $mas, but I thought I'd give you all a present.

Spoiler: merry $mas...

You're welcome.

 

Cheers. But I've got my spices organised. It's just playin' around with quantities.

From one of my health shops in Lonnie
- a stack of a moroccan spice blend
- 20% amount of the above of a chinese spice blend
- a splash of cumin
- a decent amount of tumeric
- himalayan salt and coyote pepper
- finely diced ginger and garlic

 

Eating kinder bueno and about to watch a new serie. Feeling cozy. Well, let's see what we'll see.

 

Laying down after working watching some Netflix. We're still deep cleaning and its still exhausting. Off for Christmas though so hopefully i can rest up tonight and get the house in order Christmas Eve then ham on Christmas.

 

It's that time of the week - cleaning day. Time to sweep and mop the floors, clean all the windows, organize the pantry, seek and destroy any pests. Started at 4 am, nearly finished now. Wife is helping, sorta. She's more of a distraction wearing yoga pants indoors....

Have the little fuzzball with us, too. Brother works, she has off from school. I swear, these kids have a day off every other week. Busy reading, that one, so all is quiet.

On account of all that shall be eaten tomorrow, today I'll fast. Wife wants to cook for the rest of the crew, which is fine by me, but I plan on gaining at least five pounds from all the pork shoulder, rice, potato salad, cool whip pie, stuffing, mac and cheese etc.

 

Doing the same...I mean not since four am but.......hey at least I`m cleaning. Slowly but surely much more tempered. Been neglecting a lot of things lately especially with this week at work draining me. I don`t want to let things drain me as much as they do going into 2020. Guess that has to start somewhere and getting things in order enough to have a small little two-person Christmas tomorrow seems like a good enough start. Devoting my day to that, while nursing a hell of a cough. Should be getting back to that now,

 

It's Christmas Eve here in Blighty, and I'm powering down. Going to pour a tipple and go sit in front of my tree and chill out. This is what all the pre-Christmas faff is for, in my opinion. This moment of calm, looking at a pretty tree. I look forward to this all year around.

Merry Christmas to everybody who celebrates it, for whatever reason.

My newest ornament ...LaBefana! (For my Italian friends.)

 

Similar to the Paths poem vid the other day.

Spoiler: A short good 'feels' animal vid...

 

I thought it was a Baba Yaga at first. :/

 

I have a Baba Yaga as well! On my dining room 'Russian' tree...

She's a wicked old woman, though ...always rides around in a barrel or a churn and eats people in Russian legend. La Befana is a good old woman, who gives presents to children.

 

Baked some bread for tomorrow. We're having Christmas dinner with my mom tomorrow, and then this weekend we're doing the Italian feast my dad did when he was a kid in New Jersey. Two Christmases, just like it's been forever now.

I'm also doing the stupid laundry stuff. My dad and stepmom are watching The Polar Express and it's fun listening to it in the kitchen from the living room. Both of them are super hard of hearing so it's up really loud.

In a little while I'll be getting ready to head to the Lutheran service I go to every year now. It's like their midnight mass, sort of, and it's put my heart and mind at peace for a few years. I don't believe in the God stuff, but the music and the general feeling of goodwill is always something I enjoy.

In case I don't get to say so tomorrow, I hope if you do celebrate Christmas it's a lovely time for you. If it's a difficult time for you during holidays, I hope it's easier for you this year.

 

Feeling a bit fuzzy from the benedryl for my stuffy runny nose,
and watching the Purge Season 2. About halfway through it
since it is only 10 episodes long.

Been feeling like crap for at least the past 4-5 days, and this
nose thing isn't making it any better.

If I miss you tomorrow, Merry Christmas.

 

"The Witch"?

 

Kinda, and in Italy she's depicted as a nice old witch, riding a broom ...but her name derives from Epiphany (6 December, when she 'appears' and leaves presents for children.) And her story has nothing to do with witchery at all.

The story is, she was an old woman who was housecleaning when the Three Wise Men stopped by her cottage, near the Epiphany time, to ask if she knew where they could find a baby, who was special, and was born under a star they were following. She said she didn't know anything about it and had never heard of such a child. They were carrying presents for the baby, and asked her to go with them, to help find the child, but she refused—because she had her housecleaning to finish and couldn't take time away from it.

So the Three Kings rode away.

After they were out of sight, she had second thoughts, and experienced a great longing to go and look for the baby too. She ran out of her cottage after them, still clutching her broom and wearing her apron, but she never caught up with them. So she now travels the world, carrying presents for any children she comes across, but she's still looking for that particular baby to give a present to.

Lots of lessons in that story, actually.

 

Getting ready for my first British Christmas with the future in-laws.

I'm super nervous...

Also listening to my Placebo CD that Lost got me - because we accidentally time traveled for Christmas.

 

The cable pouch seems to be alright, at least according to my sister .

Merry Christmas and peaceful holidays to everyone! Additional to everyone with a cold: Get well soon!

 

Staying up waaaay too late. It's 4:20 am Christmas morning! Merry Christmas, everyone! Anyway, I'm going to have to go to bed sometime. Good thing I slept a lot today - I won't need much now. Nothing much to do Christmas morning, anyway. Nothing starts until I'm up, anyway, because I'm running the show, and me and roomie have nothing planned except a big feast, and that's the way we like it.

 

Enjoy the feast! We'll be eating ours in a couple of hours, just in time to avoid the Queen's speech!

 

Finally. Just one more day until Christmas music is banned again. Thank the gods.

Started cooking early. Just have to finish the potato salad. My tiny family is coming over to eat and trash the floor with tape and colorful wrapping paper.

Have a good one, folks.

 

Never heard of this bloke before. Watched the 1st 50 mins yesterday.
Always a joy to see there are still exceptional thinkers within the mess that is human society.

Spoiler: Vid: War on sensemaking pt 1...

 

I'm listening to Christmas music while basking in Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cakes' sugar rush. I need to shower soon to go to my mother's house, but for the moment, I'm enjoying being in a quiet time for myself.

 

I crawled out of bed! Yay me!

It's 11:15 am. I have to do laundry, but I'm going to wait until It's A Wonderful Life is over, 'cause I like the sugar rush in it. Puts me in the mood.

Merry Christmas to all of you!

 

That hell of a cough turned into a loss of voice and just overall crappiness feeling by the end of the day. Feeling better today back to just the cough and some flam but still been taking it easy. Just pecking at stuff. Did some more minor cleaning, went out bought some more medicine at the only place open, and watching a Twitch stream atm. Not getting as much done as I had hoped but still working away at everything. Still a good holiday and a good start. Gonna get up in a little, finish some things up, and see about dinner before early bed for tomorrow.

 

Trying to digest everything I ate the past 24 hours... accompanied by 3 other mellomakarona (a traditional, christmas cookie-like... thing) and white wine. I ate too much! I look like I'm pregnant! I'm such a glutton when given the chance.

 

Spoiler: The young bird incident of 2019...

Yesterday arvie The Contessa asked me to check the creek pump, as she once again had low pressure to water her potplants. A fickle system that I'm figuring out on each resolved issue; she had good pressure in the morning. Upon venturing outside, she was scolding Longshanks for killing a small bird. Odd, for she has zero empathy towards the country mice and rats that live in our house as she inflicts severe pain upon them from the poison she constantly lays down, but she's nearly in tears when her cats do what they naturally do as they hunt prey, and the dying is a lot quicker and less painful.

Anyways, when summer's been around for a bit, the creek can become quite low and the foot valve needs at least 100mm of water. I wasn't aware at the time, but 2 years ago, all of Tassie had severe drought for the previous 5 years. All the dams were down to around 15%. Water restrictions were going to be inforced but the drought broke that summer and all dams were overflowing in a few months. We've had lots of rain since then. Some months with rain nearly every day.

Back to the creek...due to the fallen treetrunk and large broken off branches that had fallen into the creek a year or so ago, over time, the rain has carved out a nice deep hole for the foot valve, thus it wasn't the problem. Despite the slow trickling creek, the foot valve area, dark and cool from the trunk and branches, was still 200mm deep. I filmed a large Playpus frolicking in this pool a few months ago.

As I continued to examine, both the consistent decent trickle from the sprinkler and the revs of the pump clearly pointed to a clogging issue. As advised by the agricultural hardware store where I get my plumbing freak on, I'd initially installed a filter near the garden tap, which can be manually switched over to eject any accumulated debris, thus one doesn't have to be concerned about sprinklers and hand sprayers clogging up, or having to take the filter apart to clean.

After turning things on and off, as I also have a release valve opposite the garden tap, and seeing only a tiny amount of debris come out of the filter, I was somewhat stumped, and the only thing I could think of is there's a clogging issue after the filter and before the garden tap, within a 4ft vertical section of pipe with one right angle bend at the base. I noticed a disturbed swarm of ants, with eggs, around the T piece at the top and wondered if they somehow got inside the pipes and clogged it up with a mud nest.

While attending to all this, both Longshanks and Hunter remained on the yard side of the fence gazing intently into the blackberry bush situated right next to the vertical pipe and filter I was working on. I reasoned this is the area that Longshanks found and killed the small bird, but I couldn't see nor hear any birds hiding within the safety of the heavily thorned vines. Hunter eventually left, mainly because Longshanks frequently mistreats her. She knew she couldn't get to whatever was on the otherside of the fence, thus had no interest in hanging around Longshanks, who often unexpectedly attacks her. I suspect Longshanks also lost a few screws when the vet took his nuts.

I decided to unplug the pump cord and take the piping apart at the exit end of the filter to see if the clogging is in the filter module or in the vertical piping. Within the silence I could now hear a small bird constantly chirping away in the blackberry bush, which explained why the cats were so engrossed in that area.

As I began to take the piping apart, a tiny bird came out of the thorny bush and alighted itself upon the low hanging garden hose on my side of the fence. A finch looking thing but with tailfeathers as long as it's whole body and the tail standing vertical. I don't know this species' name. Based on the mild fluffiness and colour of its body feathers, I was sad to contemplate this is the young offspring that had just lost one or both of its parents to Longshanks.

It remained on the garden hose, only a foot away from me and seemed unafraid of myself, and of Longshanks who stood only a foot or so away from this young bird, though safe due to fence inbetween. It was looking and chirping at Longshanks, and I wondered if this brave bird was confronting Longshanks for killing its parent.

Due to its calm demeanor, I reached out and was amazed as it alighted onto to my finger. I stood upright and slowly raised my hand to my face to say hello, offer condolences and some guidance on the dangers of cats. Over the years I've seen many birds upset when feeling threatened or they'd just lost one of their kin, and this young bird seemed very calm, but also quite chatty.

It then hopped onto my head, so I slowly crouched down to attend to the pipes. As I did this it returned to the hose and continued to confront Longshanks, who was in full hunting mode, with ears straight up, eyes fixated on its prey, mouth twitching and making short meowing sounds, while slowly moving around trying to figure out how to get to the bird through the fence. I'd look up every now and then and repeat my remarks to the bird about how to avoid being killed by a cat.

I took the main pipe apart and fired up the pump. The clogging was in the filter housing. I returned to the pump house and unplugged the cord. Went back to the fence and unscrewed the filter housing. Moss had grown onto the stainless steel filter cartridge. I'd learnt another thing about creek pumps. It's good practice to turn the filter over to self clean mode every couple of months, and always after a decent flood, as that churns up more debris. But now I know the filter has to be taken out to manually demoss it.

The filter is now sitting in a tub of vinegar and I installed the spare filter cartridge I'd snagged when I bought the filter. With the new one installed, I reconnected everything, turned on the juice, and hey presto, high pressure again.

Back at the fence I go to pick up me tools, the bird is still up on the hose, but Longshanks finally figured out to head down a few metres to the fence bridge I made for the cats, and was now on our side slowing stalking his way towards the tiny bird.

I put my hand out and the bird once again alighted onto my finger, and standing up, I repeated by thoughts on cat safety to it. Though Longshanks was still several feet away, the bird took off down the paddock to the large tree behind the house, but flew low and right past Longshanks. I gasped as I saw this, and then another as Longshanks set off after it, but he lost sight as the bird was tiny and flew quite fast. Longshanks ran right past the tree, then stopped and looked around in all directions; he'd lost his prey.

I picked up me tools, walked down to the tree and saw it contained several of the same species; adults, and quite vocal. I imagined they already knew what had occurred, as they became quite vocal as Longshanks ran past, and perhaps one of them was the other parent. But just in case my speculations were wrong, I informed them that this bird had just lost its parent, or both, and perhaps they could take care of it. Once in a tree, birds are relatively safe from cats, even from Hunter who is far more skilled than Longshanks. They can see a cat coming from a long way off among the branches, and a cat can't quickly pounce like they can on the ground.

I wonder if I'll ever see that young bird again.