In the garden, and RAIN!!!!
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Thursday, December 25, 2025 04:27
VIEWED: 1005090
PAGE 241 of 1154
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Been virtually swimming for the last few days here too Brenda. :(
Went through a few more boxes of stuff and got rid of almost all of it. Got one can full for garbage day.
I think I am going to get rid of the patio furniture set I bought years ago. It was a cheap piece of crap I got from KMart and time hasn't been too kind to it. On top of the patio pavers that were all but ruined by the ants, it's just an eyesore right now. I think I'll keep a few of the chairs for now, just to have something to sit on, but that'll be something huge I can get rid of along with the trash this week since I have no plans on ever taking that with me.
Going to try getting through a few more boxes and consolidating my artwork tomorrow. If I get through that, I'm going to try to spend some time organizing stuff in the garage with all those nice boxes I cleared out.
I looked at the "keep" boxes I've got and it's a bit more than I'd like to have. I already have a plan for getting rid of three of them. I don't think I'm going to be able to get rid of more than that though. But I do need to think hard about it because once all that is done I need to keep in mind that whenever I do move I have to pack up clothes, toiletries and kitchen stuff that I use regularly and I'm not packing up now. That's going to be quite a bit of extra boxes on top of what I already have.
Speaking of clothes, I hope to go through all of them next week and get rid of about half of them. When I started doing all of this my plan was to keep any clothes I wasn't going to ever wear again for packing material to protect fragile stuff. But now that most of the stuff is packed I don't have to do that anymore so a lot of that can go in the trash or to goodwill when I get to it.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Goodwill for old clothes is a good idea Jack.
I clothes shop at my local Salvation Army thrift shop. Last time I was there I picked up a couple of pairs of jeans.
Got more shredding to get to hopefully over the weekend but we shall see. Also started going through my earrings. Found three that lost their mates and one set is broken. Had to get some cleaner for them as they are pretty grungy. I'm keeping a few then donating some along with some rings I've got. But I think I might keep one or two of them. I've got a nice ying/yang pinky ring that I am keeping and snake one too. Have to find that one first. A turtle thumb ring that I won't be able to wear again. So it can go.
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Quote:As I recall last fire season was pretty bad.
Originally posted by Brenda:
We've been lucky in BC this year. Fire season hasn't been too bad. Few places were on evac notice but after a few weeks those were pulled as everything was under control.
There's been snow up around Fort Nelson which is the Northeastern corner of the province.
Not suppose to be a lot of rain if it shows up down here.
So rain's headed south to you but just a bit of it ...
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regarding the two big earthquakes a few weeks back ...
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-08-19/earthquakes-foresh
ocks-seismology-new-study
Scientists finally know how big earthquakes start: With many smaller ones
By Rong-Gong Lin IIStaff Writer
Aug. 20, 2019
3 PM
The vast majority of earthquakes we feel come soon after smaller ones, according to new research that provides unprecedented insights into how seismology works.
Sometimes days or even weeks before most temblors of at least magnitude 4.0, scientists have found, smaller ones start rippling beneath the Earth’s surface — activity that can be detected thanks to an advanced computing technique.
“One of the biggest questions in earthquake seismology is how earthquakes get started,” said the study’s lead author, Daniel Trugman, a seismologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Previously, scientists observed that only half of all moderate quakes had smaller precursor events. This new study of earthquakes in Southern California of at least magnitude 4 between 2008 and 2017 found that at least 72% of them followed less-powerful quakes. “Elevated foreshock activity is pervasive in Southern California,” the study concluded.
“It is surprising,” said study coauthor Zachary Ross, an assistant professor of geophysics at Caltech. “It’s important for understanding the physics of earthquakes. Are they silent until this big event? Or is there a weakening process of the fault, or some evidence that the fault is changing before this larger event?”
The study shows the answer is likely the latter explanation.
The discovery gives scientists a better understanding about how earthquakes are generated.
Knowing that even moderate quakes probably occur after a series of less-powerful ones gives added weight to the idea that earthquake sequences can grow, not unlike a spreading disease epidemic. In fact, the study shows the foreshock sequences ranged from starting three days to 35 days ahead of the mainshock.
The finding doesn’t mean we should suddenly be worried about small quakes. Statistically speaking, only 5% of earthquakes are followed up by something worse. It also doesn’t mean researchers are any closer to predicting the exact timing and epicenters of big earthquakes.
“The vast majority of time that you have an earthquake,” Ross said, “even if you see anomalous activity start up, it’s going to die down on its own — that’s most of the time.”
But understanding how quakes get bigger can only help scientists get better at aftershock forecasting. That would help the public understand when there’s a greater risk, such as when the chance of a large quake rises from a background risk of 1-in-10,000 odds to 1-in-1,000 odds, based on a previous quake.
“We are definitely moving toward forecasting that is statistical in nature,” Trugman said.
The discovery could also help improve the speed of earthquake early warning systems, Ross said. If the computer has detected microquakes close to a major fault, and knows that most major quakes are preceded by smaller foreshocks, that can help speed up the decision by the system to issue a warning in the moments after an earthquake has begun rupturing along a fault.
The breakthrough in the study, published earlier this summer in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, was made possible by the discovery of a new technique to find very small earthquakes — quakes as small as magnitudes 0 and 1, and some as small as magnitude negative 2.
(Quakes can now have negative magnitudes because this new technique allows for observation of quakes so small they were previously thought to be undetectable.)
Having a higher-definition look now allows scientists to detect many more foreshocks.
“This new information is coming from the tiniest magnitude events that were basically invisible before,” Ross said.
For the study, Trugman and Ross focused on 46 of the largest quakes in Southern California between 2008 and 2017 (while excluding those that were aftershocks of other larger events). They fo
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Quote:As I recall last fire season was pretty bad.
Originally posted by 1kiki:Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
We've been lucky in BC this year. Fire season hasn't been too bad. Few places were on evac notice but after a few weeks those were pulled as everything was under control.
There's been snow up around Fort Nelson which is the Northeastern corner of the province.
Not suppose to be a lot of rain if it shows up down here.
So rain's headed south to you but just a bit of it ...
Fire season was Kiki. And last year or the year before was the big fire up at Fort McMurray which is in Alberta that practically took out the whole town.
Rain arrived during the night. Woke up to a soggy morning and about to head out in it.
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I remember Fort McMurray! I saw three extremely creepy/god-awful videos from it (the camera that broadcast the living room as the home got swallowed up by fire, the porch fire that .would. not. die., and the fire creeping to a pickup in a line of cars trying to evacuate out) and they're still stuck like glue in my brain.
Here in SoCal we used to have a fire season, but now they say it's year-round. Last calendar year here was so-so for fires, but the northern half of Calif got clobbered. So far we're not doing too badly!! YAY!! They were saying that because of the previous '18-19 good winter rain season 
we'd have a bumper crop of dried grasses and weeds just waiting to burn. SO FAR ... not yet. Maybe because the air's been pretty humid. Though it'll start getting trickier once the dry Santa Ana's start blowing to offshore from the desert, which usually starts in October.
As much as I love the rain, you reminded me of how I hate being out and about in soggy weather.
I think I remember you do, too. So stay dry ... And warm!
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Another morning another box of stuff sorted through. Real sentimental stuff this time, so it took hours to go through even though I didn't stop to read most of it. Lot's of great photos I'd forgotten I had even had. About half of it is trash though, so that's good.
Need to sort through those 3 boxes I was talking about to pull out the 4 things I know I want to keep so I can get rid of the rest. It's a crystal glass set with golden trim. It was used in an episode of Killjoys and I know I recently saw it in a movie too. Shame to get rid of it, but I'm not going to bother with trying to sell it, my brother can't take any more stuff with his own hoard and it's got no sentimental value to me. Just a bunch of crap I don't need in boxes I don't want to keep anymore.
Probably going to put my patio furniture set out tonight. My friend is deciding right now if he wants it or not.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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At this end, I guess my status could be considered "making progress on all fronts" ... or maybe "running in place" ... it's a little hard to tell!
Time is so divided up, doesn't help that hubby derails things. Got kinda testy with him this afternoon when I was trying to figure out the Medicare maze and he kept wandering around the room bitching about this that and a third thing. As it turns out the Medicare software threw up some weird error that I couldn't get past, so I had to call. On hold for 45 minutes, then they hung up. Called again, on hold another 45 minutes and didn't get a resolution, just an appointment for ANOTHER phone call two weeks from now which may or may not resolve the problem.
Wrong insurance billed on something else, so I got a whopping $1000 bill. On top of all that, despite sinus surgery I have ANOTHER sinus infection confirmed by doctor today. I hope the culture shows something easy like staph, and not pseudomonas since that will require IV antibiotics.
But onward thru the fog! as they say.
Managed to get one stripe painted on one wall to see how the technique goes, won't know till I pull off the painter's tape, plus we got and tested the angle grinder so I think we have all the tools and materials needed for stucco patching. Now, if I could only put together 3 or 4 contiguous hours I might actually get something effing accomplished.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
I remember Fort McMurray! I saw three extremely creepy/god-awful videos from it (the camera that broadcast the living room as the home got swallowed up by fire, the porch fire that .would. not. die., and the fire creeping to a pickup in a line of cars trying to evacuate out) and they're still stuck like glue in my brain.
Here in SoCal we used to have a fire season, but now they say it's year-round. Last calendar year here was so-so for fires, but the northern half of Calif got clobbered. So far we're not doing too badly!! YAY!! They were saying that because of the previous '18-19 good winter rain season
we'd have a bumper crop of dried grasses and weeds just waiting to burn. SO FAR ... not yet. Maybe because the air's been pretty humid. Though it'll start getting trickier once the dry Santa Ana's start blowing to offshore from the desert, which usually starts in October.
As much as I love the rain, you reminded me of how I hate being out and about in soggy weather.
I think I remember you do, too. So stay dry ... And warm!
I remember the videos too from Fort McMurray. Scary indeed.
Hope your area manages to avoid fires.
I do hate being soggy. Luckily being closer to everything now means I wasn't soggy at all today. Would have been 3x worse if I had to wait on buses to get where I had to go today.
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Shredding some old papers of my dad's this afternoon. I never knew how much the Veteran's Affairs stuck their nose into his business. From when I was 3 till I was 13years my parents bought 4houses and with each purchase the Canadian VA had to have a say.
Freakin' Ottawa.
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I hear ya on the running in place Sigs. I've certainly got my good days and my bad days, and at times it felt like I wasn't really getting anywhere, especially when I started this de-hoarding process. Then when everything is pinning you down and making you feel claustrophobic, life swoops in and gives you a nice suckerpunch on top of it.
But it will get better if you keep doing right. You'll bounce back. I hope you're able to work that insurance stuff out and get those sinus problems taken care of once and for all.
Sucks about the VA getting in your old man's business like that, Brenda. Interesting for you to know, but I'm glad you're still shreddin'. Time to get rid of all that crap you don't need!
Had a great productive day again today. Thursdays always seem to be my most productive since it's garbage day. :)
Got another two cans out and an old fold up chair with a cloth top that's been sitting in this house for 8 years and never used. It was a nice little chair and quite comfortable, but I discovered you can't separate it from the legs to wash it. It still reeked of smoke from back in the days when I smoked in my apartment and it had to go...
Mowed the lawn and killed it on the de-weeding and edging. Filled another can halfway full with it. Aside from my back patio pavers being destroyed by the ants, my property has never looked better from the street than it does today.
Also went through my old artwork and got rid of about half of it that was lousy and/or unfinished. Saved all of the good ones including my award winning stuff. Finished going through all of the sentimental stuff and culled that down to about 1/3rd of what it used to be as well and now have it in a small shell case of a box to protect it all from the elements.
Then I decided to get rid of the patio furniture. I figured I'd put it out a week early and give passerby's a full week to mull that one over. I hadn't washed the top of the glass table in probably 3 years. The sides of the table had a bit of green "algie" type stuff growing on it. The aluminum chairs had paint chipping off of them because when the wind would blow it banged them all over the place. I half though that would be on my driveway until next garbage day.
15 minutes later it was gone. 
Going to get rid of my elliptical machine. Paid good money for that 12 years ago and used it twice. I hate working out at home. I'm going to need to get a gym membership again when I get all of my affairs in order... especially if I don't get a highly physical job like my last one.
Got a great tan this week too.
Oh... and I got my energy bill for the month too. 4 less days on the billing cycle than last month, but it was $6 less than last month too. I used that blower fairly sparingly compared to thinking I'd have it on 10-12 hours every night, but I wasn't a scrooge with it and it was on more nights than not... at least for 4-6 hours.
It definitely costs some money to run it, but nowhere near as much as I had imagined it might after last month's bill. I've also made sure though that I was doing my best to turn my computer and TV off when they weren't in use as well, so I'm sure that helped.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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