ㅁ I wake up each day and realize I'm a dog. It's so exciting.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Month: December 2021
Caveat: Tree #1064
This tree is not far from the dog’s home (Mike and Penny’s house).
[daily log: walking, 4km; dogwalking, 3.5km; retailing, 3minutes]
Caveat: Dogwalking #9 and other studly pursuits
Art and I had a busy day today. We had lots to do in town. But first, I walked the neighbors’ dog.
The dog always runs down to our dock when we get to our house. I think she likes the smells of sea-creatures and such. We saw the morning sun touch Sunnahae mountain.
Maya likes to climb over the big snow embankments generated by Pat’s road-grader-as-snowplow. Of course, she sometimes gets stuck.
Eventually, she liberates herself, and then takes a moment to slow down and reflect. Maybe.
Art and I drove to town and first we went to the doctor, at SEARHC. After that, I dropped Art at the library and I took the Blueberry (Chevy Tahoe) to the mechanic shop. The Blueberry got brand-new snow-tires with studs. This does wonders for my peace-of-mind and confidence driving our road-as-bobsled-track back and forth to town.
You can’t really see the snow studs in the picture – but they’re there. You can see the tire’s brand name, though: “Snow Claw.” A reassuring name.
While the car was in the shop, I did walking errands in town. I went to the sporting-goods store and bought some new gloves of the sort I like to wear when working. I went to the bank. I went to the post-office. And I even stopped by work and helped a random customer looking at some of the factory-made picture frames.
Then I fetched the car, fetched Art from the library, and he and I did the Thursday grocery shopping and got a pre-made, bake-at-home pizza from the local pizza establishment. This last was our “normal” Thursday in-town routine.
Then we got home as the sun was setting, and had our pizza.
Caveat: Poem #1964 “Progress”
ㅁ The sun leaves early. Then the pale dusk hangs around. At last, the stars show.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1063
This tree saw aging snow and a malingering, waxing moon in the purple dusk after the 3:30 sunset.
[daily log: walking, 2.5km]
Caveat: Poem #1963 “The inevitable evolution of things”
ㅁ I have made some friends that I have since failed to keep; time becomes neglect.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1062
This tree bent over the road-to-town, and a deer in the distance, that was jogging along.
[daily log: walking, 3km; retailing, 6hr]
Caveat: Poem #1962 “The sign of the shovel”
ㅁ There's no surprise I spent all the night dreaming of snowshoveling.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1061
This tree tolerated some snow.
[daily log: walking, 3.5km; retailing, 6hr; snowshoveling, 0.5hr]
Caveat: Poem #1961 “Ah, the life”
ㅁ The power was out. So I spent the day reading and shoveling snow.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1060
This tree was near a dog at play in the snow on the beach. Can you see the dog? She’s a black speck on the distant beach on the neighbor’s lot. I took this picture standing on the dock.
We received so much snow.
The power came back on this evening at around 7-something. That’s good – I was feeling anxiety about our water-system’s ability to survive sub-freezing temperatures without electricity – we have thermostat-driven heating mechanisms on the pump and pipes.
[daily log: walking, 4km; dogwalking, 4km; snowshovelling, 3hr]
Caveat: Dogwalking #8 amid the snowpocalypse
We have been without electricity since last night. I walked the dog today and shovelled inappropriate amounts of snow. And read a book – a paper book.
This blog-post will lack pictures for now, as I’m posting this from my phone.
We’re warm but off our routines. Fire burning, car’s launch path cleared. Pat plowed the road, but only our road, and I’ve heard the stretch from 5 mile into town is quite bad. Not sure if I’ll go to work tomorrow.
Caveat: Poem #1960 “You read about it first, here”
ㅁ Looping in circles: I dreamed I started a blog. Yes. Another blog.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1059
This tree is a local interpretation of the Charlie Brown Christmas tree.
In fact, I’d brought my young coast redwood in from its outdoor spot a few days ago, worried it would freeze to death with so much snow and ice. And I thought, that’d make a good Charlie Brown Christmas tree. I watered it with some snow from outside, just for the photograph.
I’m going to wait and see if Arthur notices it. I’m predicting a 60% chance he doesn’t notice (and/or, if he does notice, he decides not to comment in any way).
[daily log: walking, 3.5km; dogwalking, 4km; snowshovelling, 1.5hr]
Caveat: Poem #1959 “Forty-fourth stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon thought to herself, what a life: struggling and fighting through battles and strife. Now she could rest for a moment at least, gazing down past the old trees toward the east.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter,
Caveat: Tree #1058
This tree was over a dog – the dog is quite far in the distance down the road, but she’s there a black speck of hyperactive doggedness.
We got a lot of rain last night, on top of the snow. It didn’t really melt the snow – rather, the rain landed on the snow and froze.
Then the weather added some more snow on top of the ice layered on the snow, making a delicious layer cake of bad driving conditions. I was glad not to have to drive today. Here is a picture of a rain-sculpted chunk of snow on top of a post.
[daily log: walking, 4km; dogwalking, 4km]
Caveat: A printer to call my own
Arthur has struggled, recently, with issues with his old printer that he has set up down in the kitchen. Several times I tried to figure it out, but at least once he reset things such that whatever I had done failed again.
Rather than make a battle over “printer configuration” I decided to proactively buy my own printer. It came in the mail a few days ago, and today, Arthur wanted to print something. So I set the new printer up, upstairs in the main room, but made sure it worked from his computer too. It took a bit of finagling to get the printer to connect to the wifi network – the instructions that came with the printer were quite opaque and atrocious. But once that was accomplished, it worked quite beautifully. Both Arthur and I successfully printed things to the new printer from our respective computers.
So now we can print this blog post, for example.
Caveat: Poem #1958 “The day’s start”
ㅁ I wake up early. Too early, but I'm awake. Might as well get up.
– a pseudo-haiku,
Caveat: Tree #1057
This tree (excuse me, what tree? – the one on that island way in the distance, which you take on faith) saw the sun set at the “62 pit” turnout on the Port Saint Nicholas Road.
When Art and I were in town this afternoon, I stopped by the gift shop, and Arthur actually came in and was sociable for a while. Jan took this picture of him as he came behind the counter at my frame-shop work area.
[daily log: walking, 4km; dogwalking, 4km; snow shovelling, 2hr; slip-sliding in a giant Chevy Tahoe, 1.5hr]
Caveat: Dogwalking #5 and other adventures in foot-deep, very wet snow
Since I didn’t have to go in to work this morning, I went to take the neighbor-dog-down-the-road, Maya, on a walk. We took a long walk, and I let her run off the leash (well, not holding the leash) some.
We were almost back to her house, when we met Pat, the road-grading lady. She was clearing some of the slush from the road. This gave me some optimism about the intended mid-day trip-to-town that Arthur and I always do on Thursday.
After dropping Maya back at her house, walking back to my house, I saw Pat had stopped. She was having problems with chains, too (like I did yesterday – see last night’s blog-post).
I spent about 2 hours trying to help her and her husband Fred, who drove up the road to help, while we tried to repair the chain problem – it had broken. I ended up dragging the chain (very heavy – these are chains for big tires) down into Arthur’s shop and we used a bench-mounted heavy-duty vice and a sledge hammer to knock a few of the links in the tire chain back into the right alignment. Then we took the chain back up to the road-grader and re-installed it on the tire.
Pat was then able to finish grading the road out to the 5-mile bridge, which made Arthur’s and my commute into town somewhat easier, though we still went very slow, taking almost 45 minutes each way, instead of the more typical 25 minute drive.
Caveat: Poem #1957 “Wisdom”
ㅁ There's no easy path. There are easy points of view. There are hard moments.
– a pseudo-haiku,
Caveat: Tree #1056
This tree, beneath glowering, snow-laden clouds, saw that I had tried to put chains on the Blueberry (the Chevy Tahoe).
I say “tried” because not once, but twice, the chain on the right rear wheel came off, and I had to get down in the snow and readjust it. After the second time it came loose, I gave up and removed the chains. In all, it took me more than an hour to drive to town with these delays, and so I was late to work. I came home without the chains installed, too, although honestly I really would rather have had the chains – it’s pretty difficult managing the Blueberry’s momentum on the ups and downs of the road when it’s buried in foot of slush.
It was a very stressful day because of this issue.
[daily log: walking, 4km; retailing, 6hr; crawling in snow, 1hr]
Caveat: oblivious popularity
The single most-visited page in my blog this year is an obscure blog-post I made in August, 2008, about a Japanese pop song I discovered by seeing its name on the screen of a stranger’s cellphone on the Seoul subway.
That’s weird. Such are the vagaries of the google search engine.
So here is the winner in the 2021 caveatdumptruck.com popularity sweepstakes. I’ve cleaned up the page a bit and added a link to the actual song, since I suspect most googlers are arriving on the page hoping to find the song.
Caveat: Poem #1956 “My corporeal hydrology”
ㅁ My body is full of blood. It races around, courses like a flood, rests at the edges like mud.
– an englyn penfyr,
Caveat: Tree #1055
This tree was near where I parked the car on the level driveway of lot 73, rather than in Arthur’s somewhat steep driveway, which is hard to get out of when there’s a lot of snow.
[daily log: walking, 3km; retailing, 6hr]
Caveat: the internet, explained avant-le-lettre
The style will often be strange, incorrect, overburdened, and loose, and almost always strong and bold. Writers will be more anxious to work quickly than to perfect details. Short works will be commoner than long books, wit than erudition, imagination than depth. There will be a rude and untutored vigor of thought with great variety and singular fecundity. Authors will strive to astonish more than to please, and to stir passions rather than to charm taste. – Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835)
Caveat: Poem #1955 “So it wasn’t that bad”
ㅁ I drove on the icy road, going slow the potholes, though, were all snowed, the clouds glowed.
– an englyn cil-dwrn
Caveat: Tree #1054
This tree saw a gift shop (lower right) and the setting sun at 3:30 PM.
[daily log: walking, 3.5km; retailing, 6hr]
Caveat: Poem #1954 “Reactionaries”
ㅁ Sad philologists mourn the loss of words unheard and rant against youth.
– a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Tree #1053
This tree is feeling a bit out of its depth.
This dog is on thin ice.
[daily log: walking, 3km; dogwalking, 4km]
Caveat: Poem #1953 “Progressives”
ㅁ Failed philologists walk dogs on snow-covered roads and write bad haiku.
– a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Tree #1052
This tree saw the sun touch Sunnahae mountain.
This dog also saw that.
[daily log: walking, 3km; dogwalking, 3.5km; snowshovelling, 1hr]
Caveat: Poem #1952 “Radicals”
ㅁ Bad philologists invent implausible tongues which no one can speak.
– a pseudo-haiku