Last night Cindy was making supper, baking some chicken. She walked into the kitchen to see smoke. It was coming out of the vent on the stove top. She opened the oven door and a cloud rolled out. But wasn't the smoke of burnt food. There was a glow coming out from under the bottom panel of the oven, and sometimes sparks. The heating element had fried itself.

We had to finish the chicken under the broiler, periodically turning it off and back on. It turned out a little well done, but not bad.

Today I took it apart to get at the element. I unplugged the thing, then removed the back panel. I pulled the connectors off the element. Then I took out the panel on the floor of the oven, and removed the two screws that were holding the element in place. Then I placed an order for a new one. $50, plus $12 for shipping, will arrive on Wednesday.



( But then it got worse )

I published this on Substack last weekend. You've seen the photos already, so I won't repost them, but if you wanted to read it with the photos, here's the link.

Winter is here, finally

Don’t get me wrong, I like Autumn. I like all the seasons, really. It’s the in-between seasons that I’m not a fan of. I suppose these days they’d call those the liminal seasons, as if I needed another reason to dislike that term…

But late Autumn is a problem. It’s all brown and grey, and mostly frozen. This weather was mercifully short this year, so I’m trying not to complain, but I was feeling a little bleak - my photography had dried up. I hadn’t shot anything new in a while, and everything I had done had been shared. I organized all my folders of images, and my “To share” folder was empty. That made it very clear I had nothing going on.

I would have been going to the lake, at least, to get a shot every few days, but the park was closed for deer hunting for nine days. So that was no fun.

But the weather weighed on me too. It feels like a sort of Seasonal Affective Disorder. But it’s not about the light, exactly, or even the cold, it’s about doing. Or not doing. And I wasn’t shooting.

But then it snowed! Snow is my favorite thing about winter. I don’t even take advantage of it like I used to. When I was a kid I would play all day in it, and when I was older I enjoyed cross-country skiing. Now I just like the feel of having it.

It’s so much nicer than drab frozen ground. And of course it makes for good images.

It started last Saturday morning. It didn’t come down very fast, but there was no wind so it all came straight down and settled on everything. It was so nice! I went out in the yard with my camera, and immediately felt better.

They predicted eight inches (on the low end), and I figured there would be less. By midnight we had less than four. But then it picked up and I was surprised to see around ten inches (25cm) on the ground in the morning. It was very heavy and weighed the trees down (and knocked out our power for a while).

But the snow covered everything and the sun was out. So beautiful!

Fortunately I got to spend a lot of time outdoors on Sunday. Unfortunately, most of it was spent shoveling, but that’s the price I have to pay, I guess.

Maybe part of my SAD is not seeing the sun. But it’s not just a problem with long nights and short days, it’s the cloudy days too. Because I really love it when the snow multiplies the sunlight.

Winter is the time for introspection, I guess…

Saturday, after I had been snowing for a while, I went out with my camera. It was not windy at all, so the snow settled on everything. I shot what seemed like a whole roll of film. ;-) I was feeling unsettled, photography-wise, since I had nothing - no plans, nothing to share. This made me feel better immediately.





( 3 more )

I had an early meeting, but forgot and slept a little late. I still made the meeting on time, but didn't have time to shower beforehand. I did that in between meetings. I wanted to start early because I had to take some time off to get my new glasses.

That took two hours this afternoon. I was having my new sunglasses fit, and new lenses ground to fit my existing frames. I got there at 2:00, but the person doing the work wasn't off lunch yet because I got the time wrong. I'd sear they told me 2:00, and not 2:30. But they fit my sunglasses first. That took 25 minutes, and then I had 45 minutes to an hour to kill. I decided to go home. It was a 15 minute drive one way, so that would give me up to half an hour at home.

I had to leave my glasses with them, so I opted to drive home with my sunglasses on, but it was a dreary grey day. At home I had to use an old pair of glasses. They are ten years old, and the close vision is bad, but the distance vision was still OK. On the home I stopped for gas, and then went over to the lake for a photo. Once home, I spent five minutes at work before they called to tell me my glasses were ready. They'd said 45 to 60 minutes, but it turned out to be 45.

New glasses are good. The sunglasses will take some getting used to because they're a bit wraparound so things get warped as I turn my head. Here's me in my new Dragon sunglasses:



When I first picked them out, the guy was taking me around the store collecting one I might like to try on. I found these and decided they were it, but the guy was still like, "let me run over there and grab a couple more." Sure dude, whatever. I like these. I thought they looked cool, and not the kind of thing I normally wear. The woman who fitted them for me said they looked "slick." But now I think they look like old man sunglasses. :-)

After supper I had a book team meeting for an hour. And then at 9:45 I had a work meeting with the team in India. Instead of me having to get up early, and them staying at work late, we decided I could call in the evening when I'm still wide awake, and they're on their normal work hours in the morning. And it turns out the team leader here is a bit of a night owl, so it worked out for her too.

Of course I have an 8am meeting tomorrow with that same guy in India. I will have hung around the house for a couple more hours, got a night's sleep, and (hopefully) gotten up and showered, and he'll still be at work.

Today was kind of a lazy day. Nothing too important was going on. We went to the local art museum to see a couple of exhibits that were closing after today. Then we went for a cold and abbreviated walk at the lake. I made final preparations for the big whisky tasting tomorrow. Cindy's been trying to get her new computer running right, and I made supper.

Last night was whisky night. It was the old group, Drammit, that used to meet quarterly, but gave up after Covid, and now meet maybe once a year. Mike wants to get it back to its old frequency, but I don't. Once a year is good, though I could maybe do twice. Plus he's talking about moving an hour or more away. We'll see.

Seems like nothing too important happened Saturday either. It's been cold so I keep putting off working outside. Nothing too important out there, I just need to move firewood. I wanted to trim a pine tree, but never got around to it. Oh crap, I just realized forgot to bring one of the hoses in.

I spent all of Friday night working on the whisky presentation for Monday night.

Friday night was whisky night. A couple of friends in our regular whisky group haven't been able to make it to the past two or three meetings. John is a big fan of Talisker, which I featured at our last get-together, so I offered to bring them out. A couple others joined us. Small group, but that was fun. They were in Scotland last month, so we talked about touring distilleries there.

Saturday was warm again, and I mowed the lawn. In the evening we went to see the Violent Femmes. I had lost interest in seeing them because their shows were always so short. Like barely an hour when they were headliners. But for this one, they played their first and second albums all the way through, so I knew it would be long enough. Just two hours, including the 20-minute intermission, but it was good. Strange thing, though, was the couple in front of us who were seated and on their phones for at least half the show. And they weren't mindlessly scrolling Instagram or whatever, they were shopping. Like, how are you making up your mind about a product when you're at a concert? Is it really that easy to pick out a bra? Near the end of the show, "Gone Dadddy Gone" started, and the guy was dancing in his seat, and he finally got up. But the next one was a slow one. He remained standing, but was back on his phone, searching Amazon for a temporary heel lift.

After the show, as we drove north, we hit rain. There was lightning overhead. After an hour, when the storms had moved out over the lake, I went over to take photos of the lake. The storms had moved farther out than I expected, and I only got one shot where the lake was lit up by the lightning. I had my raincoat on but my camera was pretty wet. Seems to be fine. We ended up with 1.5" of rain. There was some wind because in the morning we had a lot of leaves in the back yard from the tree in the front yard.

Remember the trouble we had with the dryer last week? Today the washer decided it wasn't going to put any water in the tub. After a couple hours research and investigation, I decided it was probably the computer. That would cost $250 (plus shipping), and I think I could replace it without issues. But I'm not 100% certain that would fix it. The things are so complicated, it could be other issues. But most of those other issues should throw an error code? We believe it is nine years old. That would be likely to keep it going a few more years, but the dryer...

Cindy took the laundry to the laundromat. She brought it home wet because we had hoped that last weekend's efforts would have fixed the dryer, but it seems to be acting the same. It runs for a while, and then stops counting down. We open it up and the laundry is still wet but hot. I have no idea what could be causing this. The dryer is much older than the washer, but it is less complicated, so it ought to last longer, and has. But with both of them out of commission, we might just bite the bullet and buy new ones. Unfortunately, they're very expensive. So we need to think about it. Might call a repair person and figure out what it will take to fix them. They might know how simple or difficult the fix is, and have a guess of how long they'll be expected to last.

Until the end of the month, I have only four days with nothing on the calendar. That's seventeen days with something scheduled.

I had been thinking whisky night would be Friday night, but it turned out to be Saturday. So I did a little bit of housecleaning Friday night, and then more on Saturday. We went to Ronald McDonald House to hang our photography installation, then came home to clean. Went out for a beer, since one of our local hangouts was releasing a barrel-aged Octoberfest, and we didn't want to miss it. The temps were in the 80's that day, and it was really pleasant sitting outside in the shade. Afterward, I mowed half the lawn.

So then people came over for whisky. I had offered my collection of Talisker, and it turned out very interesting to get people's impressions of them all.

I was out a little early this morning, going down to Burns Commons to weed the gardens. [There's a small park in Milwaukee that has a statue of Robert Burns, and our Scottish club takes care of it. I've taken over managing it for our group.] A friendly neighbor to the park, who happens to know my dad, offered to help out, so it was she and I. I think we did pretty well in two hours.

After lunch I helped Cindy shoot a photo, then finished mowing the lawn, which I had started yesterday. Then I picked beans in the garden. Then I fell asleep while on the computer. Then I ran to the grocery store and then made supper. Then I spent a couple of hours printing two photos for an upcoming exhibition.

After all that, I was very tired. So tired my face was aching. It's strange because, while that does sound like a lot, not much of it was hard work. So I don't know what my deal is.

The weather has been fine lately. It was cool for a bit, and the forecasts of warmer weather kept turning out to be wrong, but it finally warmed up, and we had a couple of days in the mid 70's. It was warmer inland, of course, where it was in the low eighties. I wish I'd been home on the warmest day, to get the house warmed up, but I had other plans since the weather was good.

It was supposed to cool down again, but it's 70 now, so that forecast has also been delayed. Let's see what I can get done outdoors today.

We live out in the country, and haven't seen many cats over the years. Cindy says there's a long-haired grey one, but I'm not sure I've seen it. There's a white one with grey patches on its face and hindquarters, and a grey tail. Last week I saw it in the wildflower garden.

And then I realized I hadn't seen many chipmunks or voles this year. I don't always see the voles, but I didn't see any sign of them in the vegetable garden this year - no gnawed vegetables. And I don't think I'd seen a chipmunk since early summer. So I figured that must be because of the cat.

But then I saw the cat creeping toward the round garden, where I know there is a young rabbit. The rabbit took off, and I don't think the cat caught it. But then I realized if there are rabbits around, maybe the cat hasn't been catching the rodents? And soon we saw the cat get a baby rabbit out of the round garden. I didn't know there was a nest there.

The next day we saw a chipmunk out there. So never mind whatever I thought about the cat keeping the rodent population down.