Although, overall, this week hardly seemed much out of the ordinary, it
offered a number of unprecedented and/or unusual moments. We began the week
with my birthday. Sixty-two great big ’uns, that’s how many of these
particular days I have weathered. For my birthday, I bought myself a
Godzilla figure — something I’ve done only once in the past four
decades. It seemed the thing to do at the time. So, in the same spirit, for
Brugger’s birthday, I bought myself a MechaGodzilla (Kiryu)
figure. Lord knows, I can’t afford for this kind of thing to become a habit,
but at least the MechaGodzilla was pretty much free, due to having all kinds
of bonus points to spend at
Amazon.com.
Early in the week, a young gray fox came around to visit. I have, on occasion,
encountered foxes in the wild, but never one around these parts. It was a
lovely critter to see, yet I fear it came over to my yard because the fuckers
down the way are cutting down all the woods to make way for yet another
goddamn superfluous subdivision. I’m so sick of these shitheads cutting down
every inch of green space in this town I could fucking spit. It’s ugly,
harmful, disgraceful. You might be forgiven for believing I hold strong
opinions on this subject.
On a far more intriguing note, last night, Brugger and I spent a most
enjoyable evening at the home of our friends (and geocaching buddies)
Tom (a.k.a. Skyhawk63) and Linda (a.k.a.
Punkins19). We did, believe it or not, partake of some wine, and our
hosts provided a superb kabob dinner, followed by (fresh) strawberry shortcake
and an intriguing dessert wine. We had kicked back to relax around their newly
built firepit when Linda noticed an unknown phenomenon in the sky: a seemingly
endless train of lights in the sky, moving at high speed directly above our
heads. At first, we though perhaps it was the wreckage of the Chinese rocket
that had been predicted to crash to earth last night; these objects, however,
appeared far too uniform and perfectly spaced to be wreckage. And soon, we
noticed a perpendicular stream of lights farther south. Brugger immediately
took to
Google, and we discovered this was almost certainly SpaceX’s
StarLink
satellite train. Now, I tend to keep up with most such technological
developments, but I confess that this one had completely eluded my attention.
None of us had any inkling about the existence of such a thing. I found it a
bit disappointing that this was not the long-awaited Martian
invasion, but then, the odds against anything coming from Mars are a million
to one, as the quote goes. Unfortunately, the video I took provided only a
black sky and a lot of slightly alcohol-slurred exclamations from the group of
eyewitnesses. Similarly, my photos (example above) convey the spectacle only
slightly. Regardless, it was an unexpected and, at the time, exciting
experience for the lot of us.
Comparatively, it may be far more prosaic, but the house renovation continues
to progress slowly but surely. Early in the week, we had the downstairs rooms
measured for new flooring and the deck stained, the latter courtesy of
Carlos’ Paint Company (the same folks who did a bang-up job on our living room). I’ve put in
several evenings on various interior projects, and Brugger and I worked most
of the day yesterday, she prepping the downstairs bathroom for painting, I
painting doors and trim and putting up new blinds.
Now, I can only hope my houseful of giant monsters don’t get loose and undo
the labor and expense Brugger and I have put into all this.
I barely managed to touch
Georgia: The Haunting of Tate’s Mill, my
Ameri-Scares novel-in-progress, but I hope to get more time in on
it this week. There’s still a mess of estate business to deal with too, so we
shall see what we shall see. And that, I reckon, is that.
|
| Freshly painted doors in the living room |
|
|
Downstairs bathroom, walls stripped of wallpaper, ceiling blessedly
bereft of popcorn, mirror removed (so now it looks really tiny in there) |
