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:

Still looking forward to Camp NaNo but still finishing up my last project. That will be done at the end of the month for sure.