PixlBit

Have a random update from last week.

Rangerish stuff: - I looked up at my roof last Thursday and realized I really needed to clear off the snow ASAP. I had some ice dams forming along the eaves. I called the hardware store and amazingly, they had three roof rakes left in stock, and no, they wouldn't hold one for me. Luckily, I live five minutes away. Sixty dollars later, I walked out with a flimsy aluminum roof rake, some assembly required. I ended up getting a splinter under my thumb nail rummaging through my bucket of tools and cut my hand on a sharp edge of the rake part while I was tightening the screws and bolts. With a blood sacrifice to the maintenance gods, success was assured. But my left arm felt like it was going to fall off at the shoulder by the time I got the job done. And my landlady will reimburse me for the cost of the roof rake.

Also on Thursday, I got a call from Michael next door telling me to look out the window at the compost pile. I looked out, and there was a small, skinny coyote digging in the compost pile. Not sure if it was after the compost itself, or digging for the rodents who tunnel into the pile. Either way, it means that the wildlife is getting desperate in the cold and deep snow for them to show up in the yard in broad daylight. I opened the window for a better look and it took off like a shot and hasn't been back since. I really don't want the coyotes to get comfortable around the house, Bandit is getting old and wobbly and wouldn't be able to defend himself if they showed up and ganged up on him. I took some beef fat that I'd poured into a can along with some seriously freezer-burned meat that I should have thrown out months ago and dumped in a spare dog dish and hauled it out into the woods away from the house. I would never do this normally, but it's been an exceptionally rough winter on the wildlife here and if it keeps the predators in the woods and not in my yard, I'll do it until the weather gets a little better.

Reading: A bunch of fluffy girly romances you don't want to know any more about, and more Louis L'Amour books. I think they balance each other out, lol.

Playing: Still playing Tales of Xillia 2. I'm really liking it. I'll write more about it in a separate blog entry.

Listening: Lots of parodies about the weather. And Social D. Jason works for a company that sells men's suits and has to dress up for work. Every time he wears this one particular suit, all I can hear in my head is "Machine Gun Blues", so of course I have to listen to Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes.

Watching: Saw a fun, mindless Norwegian movie on Netflix called Ragnarok. I've forgotten a lot of my Norwegian and had to have the subtitles on, but a lot was coming back by the end of the movie. Caught up on my favorite TV shows via Hulu Plus, and started watching Gilmore Girls. It's not a series I would have considered watching, except I kept seeing references to it in terms of the books mentioned on the show. It's very cleverly done, and Jason likes it, too.

Well Pixlbit Nation, I'm off to type my next catch up blog.