Author: thecapeblog

Looking from the deck:

Eastern Redbud————–Spruce————–Dogwood————–Red Oak

Red Maple————————————————————Birch

Sugar Maple————–??————–White Pine————–Pin Oak

Should also be a Silver Maple.

I’ve been awake since a little after 1. Fluffles was roaring and hungry, so just as well that I was up to feed him.

I’ve got a chest cold that started some time over the weekend. Felt awful yesterday but a bit better now.

We’ve been gathering estimates on home improvements. Ron was very impressed with one proposal to finish the basement with non-organic materials. It would increase our living space by almost half, so an excellent investment. Now, if we can figure out how to afford it.

We set up an Easter egg hunt for Emme and James, which they enjoyed. Did the transfer station.

Had the best Easter “dinner” afterwards: soup, sandwich and Fritos at Subway, courtesy of Ron.

I planted the ten baby trees we got from the Arbor Day Foundation.

Ron ground up meat – a 2.2 pound “5 buck chuck” and a couple of steaks – with Nonna’s old meat grinder. Excellent hamburg at about $3.70 a pound after discarding fat and tendon, and having practiced a bit, we’ll do better next time.

Tackled the horrible upper left hand corner at Edgewater this afternoon: blackberries, cat briar, poison ivy, branches. Filled the big tarp. Had a vision of a handsome stone fireplace with a flagstone patio in that very spot.

More immediately, I wanted to clear this so we could deal with the felled tree on the other side of the fence.

It’s hard to tell from the photos, but there were many dead branches and dozens of shoots that I cut down using only a manual hedge clipper. The humus underneath is absolutely spectacular, though.

We brought Peter some bread and drove Emme and her friend Alex to the mall. Went shopping at Sears, got some great deals, including jeans for Ron, a polo for me and a nice collared shirt for Peter.

Ron treated us to a terrific lunch at the Greek Orthodox church in Centerville.

A gentleman came by to take measurements for an A/C proposal.

We had our first experience with HomeServe today and were mighty impressed.

The tech did an inspection of our furnace and gave it the okay. He also rigged up a holder for the filter, which will (I hope) cut down on the amount of dust in the house.

The filter was never properly fitted, so he fabricated two clamps from some steel metal. We were so pleased we gave him a round of applause!

Campanula persicifolia ‘Telham Beauty’ C. p. ‘Grandiflora Alba’ , pale yellow Perennial Foxglove, Digitalis grandiflora, Allium moly, the yellow-flowered Ornamental Onion shown in the foreground.

Did some more cleanup at Edgewater yesterday. Our crocus are quite pretty, and I haven’t planted nearly enough.

This being end of the month, we are pinching pennies. Ron got his normal retirement package today.

Picked up the defunct leaf blower at Botello.

Finally remembered to Pledge the kitchen cabinets.

I enjoy living in a pretty area with good air, nice views and beaches.

I do not understand the people here and think either I’m insane or mass lunacy has infected almost everyone I’ve met here.

To whit:
– The personnel director who claimed that “courting favor” means “sexual harassment”.
– The research institution which won’t launch corrections that I made – as an unpaid volunteer – to a website that currently displays inaccurate information.
– The company that found nothing wrong with firing everyone over 40 from their IT department.
– The town IT department that bought a web application because “we like the guys who wrote it”. Meanwhile the “guys who wrote it” charge citizens $19 per transaction if you want to pay your taxes or fees online. And I would have written it for a lousy $600 abatement.
– The sisters who publicly flayed me because I developed a website for their organization’s benefit. For free. And have hosted it. For free.
– The local affiliate of a national political organization who roundly criticized me because I pointed out that their national leadership ignored three weeks of requests for support, yet refused to give the group access to data it needed. Oh, I was an unpaid volunteer.
– The boss who was furious because I hadn’t finished a pet project. Because I’d been tied up with a lame-brained idea that my supervisor wanted me to work on.
– The “friend” of ten+ years who I visited in the hospital once or twice a week for six weeks who obliterated our friendship because I upset her party “guests” when in fact her guests weren’t upset at all.
– The neighbor who verbally abused me because I planted a rhodie too close to her property line – and then ignored my suggestion that we pay for a surveyor (Ron and I hired him anyway and the rhodie is well within our property).
– The entrepreneur who fired me after I performed a 36 hour charrette restoring a database that had been compromised because the hosting company which his fair-haired boy hired never did a backup.
– The government agency notorious for its lousy PR, gossip and back-biting that was infuriated when I asked for permission to work during the same shift that the janitors were there, repeatedly ridiculed my (Microsoft) technology and finally terminated my contract when I objected to having thermostats set at 78 degrees in a dungeon-like room with six desks and only one tiny window – during the summer.
– The company that bad-mouthed me after I completed a project within spec, on time and under budget because I didn’t “fit the corporate culture”.
– The business plan judge who said I shouldn’t bother to start a company because I’m “not very pretty”.
– The business plan coach who said that every entrepreneur HAS to be a salesperson whether they do it well or not.
– The people who think business plans are important (Babson, the top school in the world for entrepreneurship, says they’re a waste of time).

There has got to be a syndrome to explain this. Something along the order of “You should know how to read our minds and since you don’t, we hate you.” Or “We live in the 1950’s and you don’t, so we hate you”.

Do I have Asberger’s? Or is there something about this environment that makes reading minds a particular social requirement?

I’ve had this weird swelling in the socket above my right eye for about five days now. Cold bothers it, heat helps it, and it doesn’t interfere with my vision.

We were going to see Helen Caldicott speak in Plymouth tonight but opted to watch videos of her presentations instead. Well, at least we could hear her.

We helped out last night at the Woods Hole Folk Music Society. Really nice concert and enjoyed working with the group.

I made chicken pie and killer soup with the 5 buck cluck from Roche.

Our Toro leaf blower is shot, can’t find parts even though I bought it less than 3 years ago.