Tales From An Alternate Reality

HalfshellHusband and I watched Voicemails For Isabella on Netflix this weekend, and really enjoyed it. It was funny and sweet, and the leads weren't impossibly young (yes, that's a thing for us).

On Britbox, I've been whipping through Hope Street as fast as possible, since it's leaving soon. Possibly today. :O It's about policing in a small, Irish village. I'm sorry one of the S1 actors didn't return for S2, but I like the cast overall. HSH and I have also been watching Jack Ryan on Amazon. So far, S2 and S3 just haven't been as interesting as S1, and it's hard to stay focused when everything is SO DARK (even with the overhead lights out) that you can't always tell what's going on. Ugh, Amazon. Give it a rest already!

I finished TJ Klune's The House In The Cerulean Sea yesterday. It was magical (literally), and I liked it very much. Theodore! Chauncey! I didn't find the romance aspect as believable as I would have liked, which is a problem I've run into with Klune before. He makes the main character sound so unattractive (here, he's a schlub) that it's hard to imagine anyone falling for him. Everyone else was charming, though, and there's a lot of humor and heartfelt feeling in it.

Now I've moved onto A Sorceress Comes To Call by T. Kingfisher. There is, as usual for most of her adult fantasies, an overweight woman in her 40s/50s as one of the main characters. I wouldn't mind that so much except that it comes off as relentless self-insertion, and I wish she would resist the urge. But storywise? So far, so good! I'm running out of her books, so I hope she's writing some new ones. :D

I saw a couple of baby quail again the last couple of days, and they just seem impossibly small compared to the adults. They could fit inside a chicken egg! And yet, they have feathers.

The "pile-driving" sound was going on again at my first cycling rest stop today. When I go downstream, I pass under the Highway 99/Business 80 overpass and a Southern Pacific railroad trestle, and then I rest under the Highway 160 overpass just before the Western Pacific railroad trestle. In the almost 40 years I've been biking on that path, I think the Western Pacific tracks have been in use maybe a total of 5 times? And that includes after an arsonist burned the Southern Pacific trestle during the Pandemic, and rail traffic had to be re-routed for 6 months during the rebuild (that trestle is concrete now).

Anyway, I actually spotted a piece of construction equipment from the project-o'-mystery yesterday. It was a small backhoe, working near the base of one of the trestle supports. Maybe they're replacing some of those supports? The tracks do angle in a way that puts them in the vicinity of the hidden noise. Because otherwise, the only thing I can think of that would be behind those bushes is... more bushes. And those do not need construction equipment!

We finished watching S2 of The Pitt yesterday. Disappointed that there isn't more! That show is so addictive. Now it's just The Glitch, Ashes To Ashes, and Leverage:Redemption in rotation. Time to add a 4th show!

I was able to bike outdoors 4 times last week, which was great considering that it was a single day each of the two weeks before that. Stupid heat! I've lost a little speed, but not too much.

I saw a cottontail bunny, and yesterday it was baby quail. They were so tiny, even though they were old enough to have feathers. One of the stragglers even took to the air! They don't seem to enjoy flying much, because they rarely do it. But they can. Just not very high. :O

I probably won't see any turtles downstream again, since the slough is almost dried up. The turnaround point there where I drink water and rest my left hand has some long term construction project-o'-mystery that I can't see, due to dense, high bushes. But whatever they were doing Monday sounded like it involved a pile driver. \o?

Sad to say, the property I pass going to and from the bike path has gotten rid of their sheep. We're in the unincorporated part of Sacramento County, so zoning laws are a little loose. I went past those sheep most of the last 25 years (across two different owners), so it's odd not to see them anymore. Heck, I still miss the horse that used to live in the pasture on Fair Oaks Boulevard (a very busy street in an area dominated by businesses).

In TV news, I wound up watching two BritBox series that I really enjoyed. One was Loverman (my weakness for Lenny James is unrelenting), and the other was The Cleaner (in which a crime-scene cleaner meets a lot of very strange people during the course of his work). We also started watching The Glitch with the Boy (Netflix), and S2 of The Pitt (what a show!). And for Father's Day, we went out for Thai food and then saw Disclosure Day. All of us liked it very much.

Well, I've had 5 days off and it's really been nice. Got more stuff cleaned up around the house and donated, AND we went to the passport application office today and completed the final step in the process. That's been on my TODO list for at least 5 years! :O Now, we wait. And hope they're speedy, because HalfshellHusband will have surgery on his right foot this fall, and it'll be months before he can go anywhere then. We may not wind up vacationing anyplace where we'd need passports, but it would be nice to have the option. And we WILL go somewhere!

I finished the Not-A-Hobbit-House about two weeks ago. It was a lot of fun to build, despite some areas that could have been sturdier (the trees!) and some wrong/ambiguous directions. Only missing one piece, a 2x1 flat white tile. I substituted a light gray one I had left over from the Magic Workshop set from a few years back. If I ever make it to the nearby Minifigures store, I'll buy a replacement.

Here's the inside, with the Frodo, Smeagol, and Gandalf mini-figures that HalfshellHusband bought as anniversary gifts to go with the set (which was a Mother's Day gift from our son):


The interior lighting was a missed opportunity in the directions. It's shown as something you "slip" into the middle roof piece after that gets built, but there's no way to do that. You'd have to include it during the build. Too late now! (That's kind of a shaky area of the set). As a result, it's not bright enough to see that this "Dwarf Cabin" (Hobbit House) mysteriously contains a boombox. \o?

This is the view of the rear when the roof is entirely closed. It has 4 hinged pieces that let you open things up, which is pretty neat!


And a view of the front, with the door partly open so you can see inside a little. I left some parts out of the build, namely the giant orange dog (that is completely out-of-scale with the rest of the house) and the signpost that states "Roantic Home." Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha! You have to love the Chinese companies who create these knockoffs. They don't fully understand the culture of the target customers, so misspelling aside, it apparently isn't clear that while you might name your home something like "Bag End," you wouldn't post a sign describing they type of home you intend it to be.


All-in-all, I thought this was a terrific set. And while LEGO makes a set for "The Shire" (at $270), it does not make a Hobbit house. Especially not for $36! :D

After a week of hot temperatures, I was able to bike out in the world again. My downstream trip a week ago revealed horrifying areas of stripped-out pavement about 1.5 miles from my first turnaround point. That part of the bike path needed repaving, but the prep-work left scarred, ancient blacktop behind and 4" high bumps going between pavement shifts. Ow, my wrists!

Fortunately, they repaved in the intervening week! Usually, the prep happens and then months go by without follow-up. :O It was nice to have it fixed, since I need the maximum distance there. It limits how much looping I have to do to 1) avoid tons of other people on weekends and 2) keep to the shade as much as possible on hot days. As a bonus, I rode past what looked like a helmet resting on a log on the way back. That was a turtle, and it's been years since I saw one in that area! My only other key sighting down there (decades ago) was a giant, wide pink mouth that I thought must be the world's largest squirrel. Nope— a river otter! I haven't seen one since.

I also went past (and not over) a King snake a couple of weeks ago. It was a handsome specimen that looked exactly like this. It's the first one I've ever seen, and it had the same distinct diamond patterning. There are tons of other pictures online that show versions with more black than cream or with banding instead of the diamond shape. Not honestly sure how those are all the same creature. \o?

For indoor "sightings", I just finished A Taste For Murder (featuring gorgeous Italian scenery and food, and Warren Brown looking like a gone-to-seed Robert Downey Junior). That was fluffy fun. Then I binged No Offence, which I loved. The cast was great (boy, did Viv grow on me) and it has a fun, ceilidh-worthy theme. Now I'm watching I, Jack Wright. Nikki Amurka-Bird is everywhere, somehow.

For those wondering about In The Grey (our last date night, a couple of weeks ago), that was typical Guy Ritchie. Flashy, trashy fun, though Ritchie's habit of previewing his "cleverness" gets old. Too much Eiza Gonzalez and not enough Henry Cavill. Gonzalez was basically the MacGuffin, pretty but forgettable and not a great actress. I see she was also in I Care A Lot, which we just finished, and I didn't even recognize her, so yeah. \o?

All right, back to the weekend chores!

I only work Monday-Thursday, so this would normally be a 4-day weekend for me. I'd thought we might go somewhere for our anniversary, but that was when I thought Memorial Day was NEXT weekend. So, maybe in June?

I feel like I missed most of yesterday, due to filling out Disability Accommodation forms and routing the needed ones to my doctor. What's happening is that my company is demanding people go into the office to work a minimum of twice a week. But after the pandemic, my division (and probably most) shrank the office space and radically changed the environment. Instead of having individual cubicles (which kept getting smaller over the years), the office now consists of rows of long tables with people packed in side-by-side. Most of the employees are software or hardware engineers, so this is the worst possible environment for getting that kind of work done! And with my ADHD, particularly the problem I have with visual distraction, I will not be able to get any work done there. You can use headphones to combat noise distraction, but without high cubicle walls, there's no way to hide the movement of all the people next to, in front of, and behind you. Plus, I don't think you should have to fight an unreasonable office environment just to try to do your job. :( So, I'm requesting to be exempted from the in-office policy and allowed to just continue working from home. Fingers crossed, because otherwise I'll probably have to retire earlier than I want to. :(

For intentional viewing, I recently finished a couple of TV series on Amazon Prime. The first was the one-season New Blood, where the bromance and humor really made the show. The second was In My Skin, a drama set in Wales that involves a teenager trying to cope with high school, a bipolar mother, and a vicious alcoholic father. It was very good, and it was interesting to see the wiry Rhodri Meilir playing another villain (he's also in the first season of Hidden). Now I'm onto A Taste For Murder (scenic fluff set in Capri) and may be continuing with 35 Diwrnod? That last is a Welsh mystery series where the language is entirely Welsh, but you miss part of the dialogue because notifications like "Beti speaking" obscure parts of it. Some idiot missed the fact that if you can't hear WHO is speaking, it's still more important to know what they're saying. \o?

Now I need to do some work on the photo albums before we go out tonight (dinner and In The Grey).

Our daughter's Mother's Day present finally arrived, and it was a complete surprise! Also very creative, and true to her snarky sense of humor. It's our family, in LEGO people!



She and our son were on the same wavelength: "Do you know what would be funny?" he said during the individual figure unboxing, and it turned out she had thought of the same thing. The short person with the child-sized legs is ME. Because I'm only 5'6" in a family of 5'10", 6'2", and 6'4" giants. :O

The accessories were well-chosen. Our daughter has a camera, our son has a cat, I have a computer, and my husband has a banana. She apparently was laughing herself sick over picking out that banana, too. :D

My son and I went to Scandia Fun Center and played a couple of rounds of mini-golf before it got too hot. We were both unpredictable and relatively bad, as usual. He got a hole-in-one and shot a few holes under par, but also got a 7 on a couple of them. I managed par or under on a few, but also got 9 on one of the holes, so he managed to beat me. Putting is my nemesis. :O

We were done outside by about 1pm, and went inside to use the free arcade tokens that came with admission. Then we came home, and I got caught up on a couple of chores. Late afternoon, HalfshellHusband and I watched The Proposal, and then all of us watched Moana and ate takeout Thai food for dinner. Our son was the only one who'd seen Moana before. "Meh" to all of the main character's songs, but The Rock's "You're Welcome" was fun and catchy and I loved the crab's Bowie tribute number, "Shiny". Also, the deranged chicken sidekick was hilarious.

Our daughter called in the evening, and it was nice to talk to her (she lives about 12 hours south of here). Then I opened presents, which included a LEGO-style set titled Dwarf Cabin. It is actually a hobbit house, but you have to love the technically non-copyright-infringing name choice. I hope to start it today!

They've been tearing up the streets in our neighborhood to install a new metered water system for about three years now? There's the jackhammering to break the concrete for the installation, then they patch, and then after months and months they come back and scrape off the street surface (loud) and repave. In theory. The main street in front of our house still only has the patches, and it badly needs repaving.

The side street has been completed through the repaving, but today we're in our second post-completion jackhammering episode. The first time was a couple of weeks ago, where they opened the pavement around pipe accesses (who knows why?), and then repaved. Now they're back again. WHAT are they doing over there, and why aren't they ever done?

I got very little accomplished this weekend apart from my ongoing project to cull pictures from our 7-8 photo albums. This is because we HAVE so many albums, and also because I haven't been adding things to them since I started taking pictures with my phone instead of a digital camera (about 10 years now). I need room so I can print out some of those cloud photos and add them. I finished albums 2-4, removing probably 160-200 photos from before we had kids. So, that's progress. The next project will be to buy full-sized photo albums for the kids, and move the pictures over from their mini-albums. I made a series of small albums for both when they were little, so they could have their OWN photo books and stop messing with the family ones. We have about 10 of them, and they're taking up a lot of shelf space. Better for the kids to have their own grown-up versions.

TV-wise, I rewatched Barbie recently (still love it!) and finally saw the first Avengers movie. So much Loki! Then we watched Avengers 2, which we also hadn't seen. NO Loki. :( And HalfshellHusband and I went to see The Devil Wears Prada 2, which was a surprisingly worthy sequel. The fashion was more weird than swanky this time around, though. The tassel jacket! The long, heavy tweed dresses! The runway ridiculousness! But Meryl Streep still looks fabulous. I honestly think that bright silver hair is more attractive than her usual blond color, certainly at this age. It's really striking.

Back to the salt mines now. Not getting enough done this week, just nebulous investigation and idea-rejection. :(

I managed to avoid running over a snake today, which is a plus. It was around 83F, and they tend to come out in the heat... and then lie on the pavement in the shade. Most of the time, I wind up running over them because I think they're a stick and it's too late to avoid them anyway. :(

This one was not a rattlesnake, thank goodness. And it was a chonk! Wow.

I also saw some turklets. It's that time of year! These were young enough to be cute (which doesn't last long). And I spotted the aftermath of a fish hoping to chomp a black butterfly that was hovering over the river.

Being early May, the wild grape buds are out. They have a sweet, peppery smell that is nothing like actual grapes. The cottonwood trees are also releasing fluff into the air, and that can come and go for a month depending on how often we transition back into winter weather. Soon, squirrel mating season will be running full tilt, and I'll have something else to dodge while biking out there. But in the meantime, I hope the sweetness of spring lingers a little bit longer. :)