This tree oversaw the excavation of the car from a bunch of snow.
[daily log: walking, 2km;]
Category: Banalities & Journaling
Caveat: Tree #1490 “A shift in the weather”
This tree is the same tree as yesterday’s tree, but the weather changed.
I had an eye doctor appointment this morning, so I drove in the snow to town and back.
[daily log: walking, 5km;]
Caveat: Tree #1489 “The local gloom is an objective fact”
This tree was touched by the morning sun at around 8 this morning.
That’s the tallest tree on lot 73. It means that the sun is only a few days or a week away from touching the ground there, as the sun’s angle in the sky steadily increases with the approaching equinox. Because of our position on the north side of a steep mountain, for 13 weeks each year the sun is too low in the sky to reach us – we live in perpetual shadow. That’s one reason why ice persists so effectively on the road. Because of this shadow, the south side of Port Saint Nick (the environs of the vast metropolis of Rockpit, Alaska) is a fundamentally gloomier place than the sunny north side – that’s an objective fact!
Well the gloom is just about over. Which doesn’t mean an end to winter weather: we’re forecast a snowstorm this coming weekend.
[daily log: walking, 4km; dogwalking, 3km]
Caveat: Tree #1487 “Deep in the southeast Alaskan slushforest”
This tree was feeling white at the top of ten-mile hill.
Yesterday our telephone landline and DSL stopped working. It was puzzling and distressing because its shutdown was correlated with a moment when I was vacuuming the living room and had moved a piece of furniture, where the telephone happens to be plugged in. So at first I thought the failure of the phone was somehow related to my having accidentally unplugged it or something like that. But after a lot of troubleshooting and trial and error, it seems the whole telephone line (including internet DSL) is dead.
I called APT (Alaska Power and Telephone) but all I got was a machine. I left a message. Maybe because it was presidents day yesterday?
But then this morning I decided to mess around more with the wires involved. Specifically, I switched out the wire connecting the DSL router to the wall – it’s probably 15 or 20 years old, after all. And it had a kind of janky-looking connector on one end. Somehow, my brain works better in the morning than it had been working yesterday afternoon, and I got the right combination and suddenly our phone service was working again. So it was something I’d knocked loose after all – just needed the right things plugged into the right places.
That’s the main adventure here. A bunch of snow yesterday but then rain on top of that, and it all melted again. Just that continuous precipitation with temperatures in the mid 30’s, which seems pretty typical. Not a “rainforest” but rather a “slushforest” really.
[daily log: walking, 4km; retailing, 8hr]
Caveat: Tree #1473 “Abandoned among rocks and snow”
This tree found itself among rocks and crusts of snow.
Arthur has a daily ritual: at bedtime, he asks me “what’s happening tomorrow?”
Last night, I answered, “I’m going to work.”
“And what am I doing?” he asked.
“Not working,” I replied.
“Thank you,” he said, with immense sincerity and relief – as if it was I who’d offered him this reprise.
[daily log: walking, 5km; retailing, 8hr]
Caveat: Tree #1470 “Half-wet”
This tree was half-wet.
I overheard this, the other day, while entering the library in town. A man and his son were talking.
“Dad, when is this rain going to stop?”
“This rain will never end,” the dad answered, sagely. The dad clearly was familiar with the weather in Southeast Alaska.
[daily log: walking, 3km; dogwalking, 3km]
Caveat: Tree #1467 “The past is a beach on a distant sea”
This tree is a guest tree from my past. It’s a tree among others on a rocky beach on 무의도 (Muui Island), which is an island off the west coast of South Korea southwest of the Incheon Airport (I believe it’s here on the map). I visited this tree in August, 2015, with my friend Peter (who subsequently has visited me here in Southeast Alaska.
I had a very unhappy day at work – one of those days when I am reminded that I never had any actual training to be a “matting and framing guy”, but rather, I’ve always been in a kind of “fake it till you make it” mode with this job. I made many mistakes, working on challenging projects. I made mistakes with cutting mat board, which I corrected but always is wasteful of mat board, I made mistakes with cutting glass, including an oversize piece that had high visibility since I needed help from my boss Chad to make it happen. I’ll have to go in tomorrow and try to cut the oversize piece again. Anyway, I felt incompetent all day. Such a salient feeling.
[daily log: walking, 5km; retailing, 8hr; breaking glass, 4pieces]
Caveat: Tree #1461 “Patien(ts/ce)”
This tree existed.
You can see the treehouse in there. It’s still structurally sound, though it suffers a leaky roof, which I need to fix sometime when things dry out and I feel a sufficient motivation.
It’s been weirdly warm the last few days. Highs in the low 50’s. Though still quite drizzly-rainy. More typical of July, here, than January.
Along with our weekly Thursday shopping trip, today, I went to the dentist. I hate the dentist. Not personally. I hate the experience.
My jaw hurts. In fact it’s hard for me, post-cancer, to keep my mouth widely open. Too many cut tendons or missing nerves in my mouth and jaw for things to work quite correctly. So that’s a layer of unpleasantness for dentist visits that maybe sets it apart.
I survived. And for once, Art had to be patient and wait around for me, rather than the usual other way around.
[daily log: walking, 3km;]
Caveat: Tree #1448 “Some days are harder than others”
This tree (slightly blurry foreground) is going to be gravely disappointed when winter comes back, which it will.
Art tried to take a walk and fell down on his face. Not really a cognitive failure this time, as far as I can tell – more likely just stumbled on a rock – bad luck (Friday the 13th, as Jan pointed out).
This was just on the road (Port Saint Nicholas Road AKA The Expressway), only steps from our house. I had been out on my own walk, with the dog, so I found him lying in the middle of the road when I got back to our house. At first I thought it was a log that had fallen out of someone’s pickup truck, because of his brown coat. Then I realized, and in the moment I found him, he was unresponsive. He did finally respond. It took about 10 minutes to get him to stand up – he’s too heavy for me to simply lift (and he resists my effort to try to lift him because he claims it hurts his shoulders, which is no doubt true, but having him cuss at me while I’m trying to help because it hurts isn’t helpful).
Finally I got him to the car. I got my wallet and such and we drove to town. We got him to the clinic (the sorta kinda “emergency room” on the island) after a 30 minute drive. He was still bleeding.
They cleaned the wounds (sorta), did some xrays, checked vitals. He’d broken his nose and there was gravel embedded in a deep gash between his eyes, and a large patch of missing skin on his forehead. After two hours (I suppose it’s just a matter of being “under observation” but of course he complained repeatedly at how long it was taking), they gave us some prescriptions and gauze and antibiotic ointment and sent us on our way. They want us to keep the wounds as uncovered as possible but keep them moist with the antibiotic. For the broken nose, they gave him an anti-inflammatory.
I knew he wasn’t feeling too terrible since he decided to spend the drive home criticizing my driving.
When we got home, I walked up to the spot where he’d fallen down 5 hours earlier. There had been so much blood. The drizzle had washed some of it away, but some blood was definitely still visible in the mud of the road.
Some days are harder than others.
[daily log: walking, 5km; dogwalking, 3km]
Caveat: Tree #1447 “As seen from above”
This tree is a guest tree from my past. I took this picture looking down from my apartment window in February, 2013, in the Juyeop neighborhood of Ilsan, South korea.
It was a dumpy apartment, but I liked that it was very close to work and the subway. It’s where I was living when I was diagnosed with cancer later that year.
Today I spent part of the morning fixing the septic tank aerator pump. Well… not fixing, exactly – more like replacing. The old one seems to have died, so I put in a new one, that I ordered on Amazon. The new one is installed, below – the old one is already removed.
[daily log: walking, 5km; dogwalking, 4km]
Caveat: Tree #1434 “The dog’s nose and the trouble it can bring”
This tree is growing out of a stump that has a hole in it where a dog stuck her nose.
Later, this dog found a dead animal carcass lying by the road at the pond (the spot I call “Rockpit City Park”). Of course she tried to eat the carcass. Subsequently, almost instantaneously, she vomited and had diarrhea, but soon she was feeling fine again.
It really makes me angry how people leave carcasses by the road. It’s irresponsible and disrespects neighbors.
[daily log: walking, 3km; dogwalking, 3.5km]
Caveat: Tree #1431 “The road home”
This tree stood aside as I commuted home as the sun set at 3:30.
[daily log: walking, 4km; retailing, 6hr]
Caveat: Tree #1429 “The little house by the sea”
This tree is down at the neighbors’ house. I took it a few days ago, when things were snowier.
Today, it rained a lot. The snow has washed into a kind of slush underlain with ice.
We went to the neighbors and had a Christmas dinner. Other neighbors came from farther down the road, too. It was a very low-key Christmas.
[daily log: walking, 4km; dogwalking, 3km]
Caveat: frame.work
A few months back (in September), I finally received a new laptop computer, that I’d ordered last year. I’d ordered it so far in advance because the laptop is made by a new company that is making an effort to sell open source laptops that come “bare” (without operating systems installed). That company is called framework (link). I thought it was such a cool idea that, given that I was hoping to buy a new laptop anyway, I went to the effort to pre-order.
My last two laptops have both been lemons. There was the “XNote” – a South Korean domestic brand, which was just a piece of garbage running windows 7. And there was the rather pricey HP laptop I got right upon returning to the US in 2018, that had several disappointing issues (including a useless battery and having Windows 10 installed on it, which is a tautologically defective operating system). HP specifically managed to make the warranty service so arduous as to effectively prevent me from availing myself of it, so I was stuck with it. I’ve been using it, these past years, as a desktop (hence always plugged in, and therefore without any need for its broken battery). I reformatted the harddrive and put Ubuntu linux on it, and it runs fine, such as it is. But for what I paid, it remains an intense regret.
So I was in the market for a laptop, I guess. But it was in the back of my mind and a low priority. For financial reasons, too.
But this framework idea appealed to me. I have strong feelings about “open source” and “right to repair”, and this new company seemed committed to these principles.
I received the laptop with some internals uninstalled – so it was up to me to put it together: a kind of faux-“kit” computer. Here are some pictures. I installed the “hard drive” (actually solid state), the memory. The CPU and wifi were already in. I added some little plug-in doo-dads that make up the external plugs for it.
Once it was all together, I stuck in a USB stick with a Linux install ISO on it, and installed Ubuntu and got it working the way I like.
I held off reviewing it because once it was all set up, I didn’t use it very intensively for the following few months. But during my travels down south, last month, I got to use it quite intensively, and it proved 100% reliable and without disappointment. That’s the first computer in a decade and a half that I can say that about (“knock on wood”).
Here it is yesterday running some updates (at command prompt screen, of course). I like linux because I get to completely control that.
Caveat: Tree: 1426 “Snowy day along Ilsan-ro”
This tree is a guest tree from my past. 10 years ago, next week, on December 28, 2012, I took this picture in my neighborhood in Goyang City, South Korea. It was snowing.
Art and I went to town today for our shopping day, and spent some time at the Veterans center, too – longer than usual. Art normally just drops in there if he chooses to go there at all (it’s open every Thursday), but today he seemed inclined to hang out for a while.
The road to town continues to be horrible. It’s like doing a bobsled course in the car, between about 6 mile and 8 mile – pure ice.
[daily log: walking, 5km; dogwalking, 3km]
Caveat: 쌀떡볶이
The gift store owner, Chad, is aware of my background as a former resident of Korea. He and his wife apparently have membership in some kind of international junk food subscription service. It’s kinda of eccentric and cool.
So they bring in to me, the other day, this box full of Korean junk food – the kind you’d see at any 7-11 in South Korea. There were these one snacks in that box that I remember buying quite regularly in the store in the first floor of my apartment building: 쌀떡볶이 [ssaltteokbokki]. It was quite amazing, to get a package of these in Craig, Alaska.
So I got them and ate them, and it made me nostalgic.
Chad and Kristin are very cool bosses.
Caveat: Tree #1422 “The air was cold”
This tree was down at the ice-covered beach.
The air was so cold that the freshwater running down from the river was freezing on the surface of the salty sea. Then, as the tide withdraws, it leaves the sheets of ice lying on the beach.
I’ve been struggling lately, feeling discouraged by my various projects and obligations. Not just discouraged… bored, too, I guess.
I spent a few hours today trying to start our generator. I thought it would be easy. A brief power failure this morning reminded me that it was something I wanted to make sure worked. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. It’s brand-new – I’m not sure what’s wrong with it. And it’s too cold outside for me to want to spend more time troubleshooting it (I’d rather not start a gasoline engine indoors!).
There’s a quote attributed to Vincent Van Gogh: “I take great care of myself by carefully shutting myself away.”
This is relatable, today.
[daily log: walking, 3km; dogwalking, 3km]
Caveat: Tree #1421 “Resuming the dogwalking habit”
This tree stands along the road a little bit west of our driveway.
The neighbors’ dog and I took a walk. Here she is resting a moment at the top of the west driveway.
The continuous rain-snow-rain-snow thing seems to have ended. Now cold air has arrived from northeast, and things will get very cold, but clear.
[daily log: walking, 3km; dogwalking, 3km]
Caveat: Tree #1420 “And in the distance, there are mountains”
This tree is along the snowy road. I took it a few days ago. More recently, the snowy road is an icy road.
Art and I went to town today, to do our “Thursday shopping” one day late. We didn’t go yesterday because I thought the roads would be too icy to drive easily. I thought the same thing today, but we went anyway, because I saw forecasts of a snowstorm coming, and I thought: “Well, the roads aren’t going to get better, they’re going to get worse.”
Indeed, the road was very icy. I drove very slowly, only slid around a little bit a few times, and the scariest part – the 6-mile hill – was much better than the other parts. I think some good Samaritan must have spread some salt or sand or something on the steep parts of the hill. We survived. And shopped.
[daily log: walking, 2km;]
Caveat: Long time, no update (on that other blog)
[The below is cross-posted from my other blog]
I have neglected this blog [i.e. that other blog] for the last 6 months. That’s bad.
I occasionally think of things I’d like to blog here, but I get lazy or distracted with other, non-geofiction stuff, and never get around to it.
For now, I’m going to try something different. I’ll try to do a “low effort” post once a week. We’ll see how long that lasts.
One of these low effort posts will involve pointing to something I (or someone else) has mapped on one of the map servers (Ogieff, Arhet).
This week: yesterday, I uploaded some work-in-progress on the city of Saint-Raphaël, Ooayatais. It’s far from complete, but I decided that instead of hoarding the work on my desktop computer, I’d go ahead and post it in its incomplete state. Even so, yesterday’s upload was about 70k objects. (https://opengeofiction.net/#map=14/-46.6363/146.7445&layers=B)
Note that in the screenshot, coastlines are not yet updated. There’s something going on with delayed coastline updates, which, as admin for the site, I should probably look into.
Caveat: Tree #1418 “Time at the beach”
This tree has been hanging out near the beach for a very long time. That’s the blue-green sea, in the background there.
The road to town was so horrible yesterday (coated with ice) that I decided the smartest option would be to play hooky from work today. Fortunately I have an understanding boss.
[daily log: walking, 3km;]
Caveat: Tree #1417 “The icy road”
This tree was there beside a road utterly covered in slippery ice.
Driving to town and back was stressful. I had to drive very, very slowly, and even still, I spun out once. I had a dentist appointment. The dentist did some extra x-rays, in line with helping provide me some peace of mind with respect to any possible recurrence of cancer. I’ve been experiencing more pain lately – I always experience some pain in my mouth and jaw (cut nerves from cancer surgery) – but lately I’ve been feeling more. So I wanted to make sure, as I’ve been worrying about possible recurrence – call it a touch of justified hypochondria. The dentist assured me that nothing looks out of place or abnormal, and I don’t have any cavities either, which is good because of my bone-necrosis (that complicates dental work).
[daily log: walking, 3.5km; retailing, 5hr; dentist-visiting, 1hr; ice-road-driving, 2hr]
Caveat: Tree #1414 “An eagle’s eye”
This tree has an eagle looking down at me.
I went in to work today, not a normally scheduled work day. But Santa was scheduled to appear. The store was quite busy, and children came through. We sold stuff at the gift shop.
Here is a picture of the gift shop “family” with the visiting Santa (known as Earnie).
Jan and I are wearing our uniform “elf hats”. The children are the owners’ kids – the owner Chad is kneeling at right.
[daily log: walking, 4.5km; retailing, 6hr]
Caveat: Tree #1413 “A high-speed dog”
This tree was witness to a very high-speed, excited dog was we walked along the snowy road. She was running quite fast, and I just got lucky with this picture as she ran past me.
I got some chores done today. I filled the cistern from the well – still a manual task, and with the input stream off the hillside frozen, we have to make sure we don’t run short of water. I wasted a lot of water playing with hoses and fixing the frozen pipe problem last Sunday. I also did some unplanned maintenance on one of the database for the map website I maintain. But I was pleased that I was able to troubleshoot and solve the problem, despite knowing next-to-nothing about the programming language involved.
[daily log: walking, 5km; dogwalking, 3km]
Caveat: Tree #1412 “The bustling downtown scene”
This tree saw steady snowfall blanket bustling downtown Rockpit, Alaska.
I got to resume my dogwalking habit today, as neighbors Mike and Penny returned from their own travels with their dog Maya. Art and I restocked our larders with a more substantial shopping trip to town than usual, and came home for our traditional Thursday pizza dinner.
[daily log: walking, 5km; dogwalking, 3km]
Caveat: Tree #1410 “The Korean redwood is an urban dweller”
This tree is a guest tree from my past. It’s in front of my place of employment in Ilsan (Goyang), Korea (marked by the long vertical orange sign with blue lettering). I took this picture in March, 2015. I believe it’s one of the dawn redwoods (metasequoia) that are so ubiquitous in newly urbanized parts of South Korea.
I went back to my job at the gift shop, today. I was deeply anxious that I’d forgotten how to do my job, given I’ve been away for a month. But it came back easily enough, as these things do. Perhaps being around Arthur all the time, I’ve developed an anxiety around my own forgetfulness, seeing more danger and decline there than is warranted.
[daily log: walking, 4km; retailing, 8.5hr]
Caveat: Tree #1409 “Ice”
This tree is adjacent to a culvert half-full of ice.
By the end of the day, temperatures were warming, however. There is mixed rain and snow forecast for tomorrow. And I’m off to work tomorrow – after almost four weeks… will I remember how to do my job?
[daily log: walking, 3km;]
Caveat: Tree #1408 “Frozen hoses”
This tree will be our Christmas tree – it’s a small sitka spruce I planted in a bucket.
I spent most of the day messing with our water system. I can’t say for sure, but my guess is that we had a plug of ice (frozen pipe) somewhere in the outdoor section of buried pipe between the cistern shed and house. So turning on the water supply was far from trivial. The day was crisp and sunny, with temperatures in the mid-to-upper 20’s.
First, I set up a giant construction-site-style heater to blow heat onto the spot where the water pipe enters the house. Counter-intuitively, the water enters the house at the side of the boat-shed, which is on the north side and “bottom” of the house. But it makes sense, since that was the part of the house that was constructed first. Here is the heater, a-heating.
Next, I wanted to apply “reverse pressure” to the buried pipe. So I used the same trick we’d used last summer when I had to repair the main house water filter: I stretched a garden hose down the hill from the cistern shed to a spigot on the house directly. This pressurizes the water in the house while bypassing the buried line. Unfortunately, I had been unwise when we departed – I hadn’t put the hoses away inside the house. Instead, they where lying around outside, full of frozen water. I had to bring them in and let them relax in the bathtub for a few hours, to help them thaw out.
Note to self: next time, put the hoses in the house before traveling!
Once we had pressure inside the house, and with the heater warming the inlet area (a lot! I got the plastic rim of the sunken spot with the intake valve almost too hot to touch), I guess that was what was needed to thaw the ice in the buried pipe.
It was all exhausting – especially since I’d imagined finally getting home and having a lazy day, after all my adventuring in the wild lands of the south. About 3 pm I took a long shower with our restored water pressure, and almost fell asleep before Arthur and I had dinner.
[daily log: walking, 4km; hose-wrangling, 2hr]
Caveat: Tree #1407 “A long day of travel”
This tree is near the ferry’s parking spot in Ketchikan. It was preternaturally sunny but the temperature was about 25 F.
We flew from Seattle to Ketchikan, and then took the ferry across to Hollis, and a guy named Paul (who I know from his coming in the gift shop) helped jump start the car, because it wouldn’t start having been sitting in below freezing temperatures in the ferry parking lot while we traveled. So then we drove home. We are home.
[daily log: walking, 5km;]
Caveat: Tree #1406 “The tree below”
This tree is lurking in a forest down below Juli’s house.
Today Art and I drove up from Portland to just south of Seattle. We are staying at my stepson Jeffrey’s house, with his family – his wife and my grandkids. That’s an awkward sentence.
I’ll try to post at least one picture – maybe with tomorrow’s tree. We fly back home to Alaska tomorrow.
[UPDATE:] Here is a nice picture of the whole family: Yvonne, Aurora, Parker, and me in back, Bella and Jeff in front.
[daily log: walking, 2km;]
Caveat: Tree #1405 “Blizzards and rainbows”
This tree is in Oregon.
I drove down to Eugene on a day trip, to have a very short visit with my Aunt Janet and uncle Bob. We talked a bunch and had lunch. It was important to fit this in to the itinerary, despite the longish drive. Here is a picture of me with Janet.
The drive was rather intense. In moments it was raining, other moments, snowing, even “almost blizzard” conditions. Other moments the sun was in my eyes and there were rainbows. “Highly changeable weather.”
[daily log: walking, 4.5km;]
Caveat: Tree #1404 “Stump!”
This tree was there as Walter-the-dog practiced his “stump” trick.
I taught Walter this trick where he jumps up on a tree stump, during a past visit to Juli and Keith’s house – some years ago. He clearly remembers it.
[daily log: walking, 6.5km;]
Caveat: Tree #1403 “A small amount of snow”
This tree was lightly frosted by some morning snow.
Art and I drove to the VA hospital in downtown Portland, this morning, for an annual follow-up with the “poly trauma” team that has been monitoring his progress since the stroke/concussion/broken neck in 2018. The doctor was humorous and pleasant and had excellent communication skills, but I was disappointed with the degree to which the VA was rather unorganized with respect to Arthur’s current needs for some specialized follow-up appointments on various dimensions. Basically, they wanted to make follow-up appointments but were somehow not aware of, or not taking into account, the fact that we were only briefly here in Oregon and live in remote Southeast Alaska… as if we would travel down once a month for doctor visits. That’s not going to work out. So now we are just going to have to wait for a consolidated set of appointments, and travel again later.
The doctor said something funny, though, as we were small-talking about navigating the labyrinthine VA hospital campus: “Actually, this place is mainly just doors.”
[daily log: walking, 5km;]