Outdoors:
We took the bikes out late last night and sure enough, as soon
as we reached the top of the hill a couple of hundred feet or so from the
house, there’s a skunk in the middle of the road. It stopped and looked at us
and I wasn’t sure if it was going to approach us, turn and run away, or dart in
front of the bikes so I turned around and we made a few rounds around the
circle. When I saw another one about to jump out in the middle of the street
down past Bob and Virginia, we went home.
Never before have they been like this. They’re everywhere! This
is my sixth summer here yet I never was deterred from going out late at night
due to being overrun by skunks. Again, it’s like something doesn’t want me out
there. First it used my health to keep me home and now it’s skunks. Go figure.
That’s okay, though. I still have the treadmill.
Sleep:
Today I slept okay but yesterday the bud slipped and something
loud woke me up. But that’s okay as I only have 5 more years of this shit,
right?
I just wish I could remember my dreams better! Lately, it’s like
I have a faint idea of something that I dreamt but then it’s gone before I can
fully grasp it enough to put it into words.
Programming:
Tom now has the flippers to his pinball game able to flap.
Pets:
And the new bedding verdict is in! This paper/wood shaving mix
is definitely the way to go for the pigs. Yes, they are able to make more of a
mess when they run around since the stuff is lighter and fluffy but the Roomba
can handle vacuuming it up easier than the big chunks of paper. Just did a
partial replacement and the biggest thing I like is how it handles piss. With
the paper bedding, you get clumps stuck to the base and you have to really
gouge it up with the dustpan. Not with this stuff! I should be able to stretch
2 bales to last a month, so $20 a month for them. So gonna get a subscription
going! :-)
I’m now testing the lower level of the rats’ cage with this
stuff to see how much they kick out. It may not be suitable for them but time
will tell.
Also, using this bedding on the pigs would eliminate the need
for the hand vac and playpen since I can work around them with this bedding.
The liners would be good for if we run out before the next bale arrives. I
don’t think they give a shit whether they sit around at home or in the pen
since they’re not explorers, as long as the rats can’t chase them. Gonna
reshape the pen at some point into a fun climbing jungle gym for the rats. I’ll
make a point of handling the pigs every other day or so, so they stay used to
me and aren’t home 24/7, day after day.
Thoughts:
Thought about it some more and the biggest potential problem
with rural would be barking. I know damn well, especially in the west, they’re
all going to have large dogs that aren’t allowed indoors. Yes, I would take
Jesse’s mutts over the traffic here because they couldn’t wake me up. But that
in itself was still incredibly annoying and to need to have sound machines on
all the time just to drown it out. As we saw in Arizona, even being in the
middle of a 10-acre ranch you could still hear some dogs. So since I don’t
expect we’d ever get a piece of land that big if we chose rural since we don’t
want to venture too far from civilization, barking would probably be our worst
problem there assuming we didn’t get sonic boomed which is worse and comparable
to the traffic here. I would think, though, that in an area that has many 1-3
acre lots, the barking would be maddening. While the most important thing
is keeping ferociously loud sounds away from the bedroom, I would still like to
have as much of my cake and eat it too as possible by not having to listen to
shit like that all day long. I hear landscaping every day and while that’s
annoying it doesn’t go on hour after hour. So both volume and frequency matter.
Sweeps:
Is entering the expiring sweeps for the month worth the spam and
congratulations on other people’s wins? Yeah, I guess so. I’ll get to the 250
or so expiring ones in a few days.
Writing:
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