Cody’s blog

This morning’s update has the fire at 80% containment, with full containment expected on July 3. All evacuations have been lifted and demobilization of resources begins today. I think I can start unpacking my bags.

I was in a horrible mood yesterday, I don’t know why. Probably just tired and stressed out. My morning run went very well, but after that, I totally lost steam. Mom came over on her way into town and waited for me to shower and get ready to ride in with her, but I was irritable the whole time, complaining about something in my eye and how tired I was. We got the mail, stopped at the grocery store. I bought lemons for lemonade, which I haven’t made yet, and a few other things, including candy, which I’ve been craving, but which I didn’t really enjoy eating when I finally got to it. We went to the Pet Lodge so I could get cat food, and while I was there, I bought a new food and water dish for the kitties that has a special screwcap and slot for a 2-liter bottle of water, to keep the water dish full.

Mom had told me about talking to one of the forestry service guys at the gate, who explained to her about how a real evacuation would work (I think they were annoyed with Merle evacuating us on her own instead of waiting for the fire department to decide if we needed evacuating). He said if we were really evacuated, a fire department car with a bullhorn would go up the road, warning everyone to leave. Mom asked what would happen if we were in town when the evacuation was called, and he said there would be someone stationed at the gate, and no one would be allowed to go back in.

That upset me because if we were both in town when the place was evacuated, what if they wouldn’t let me go back for the kitties? I couldn’t just leave them there. So I thought that if I got them one of those self-watering bowls, at least they would have water if they were stuck here without me for a couple of days.

I set it up when I got home and I think it will work very well. It has nice deep bowls for the food and water, and a little ridge between the two bowls to prevent spillover. I put a couple of bricks on either side of it to prevent Jerry from dragging it all over the place and spilling the bowls. I don’t have a 2-liter bottle right now (I even went back to the grocery store to get one, but they don’t have caffeine-free non-diet Coke in 2-liter bottles, and I didn’t want to get anything else), so I’m using a smaller water bottle, but one of these days I’ll find a 2-liter bottle to use.

After the pet store, Mom and I stopped at Baskin Robbins for ice cream. I don’t really like their ice cream, but it was cold and sweet.

Spent the rest of the afternoon lying around. Bleah. Stargate Atlantis was a rerun (because the season finale was last week, woe!). It was an okay ep, not one of my favorites, but not one of the really boring ones, either. Next week, the new season of Doctor Who begins (just as the season finishes in the UK), which will be nice to see, although I don’t love the Tenth Doctor the way much of fandom does, and have already been unavoidably spoiled by all the BitTorrenters who’ve already seen it.

Am also feeling cranky about being a season behind most of fandom in both my SGA and DW watching. But there’s not really anything to be done about it. Well, I could start BitTorrenting the shows so I could keep up with everyone, but I don’t want to. I want to watch the shows when they air. I can’t stop everyone else from BitTorrenting, so the only other option would be to unfriend or filter out everyone who does so I don’t have to read their spoilerish squeeing, but that would pretty much gut my friendslist, and wipe out a lot of non-SGA and DW chatter along the way. So… I don’t really have a good solution. Just carry on watching the shows in my own time and try to ignore the rest of the world, I guess.

Obviously, I am still feeling grumpy today. Time to take a deep breath and chill out.

Here is a picture of a large beetle of some kind that I took at the Desert Tortoise Nature Preserve back in May 2005.

I just cancelled my MySpace… it was getting to me more stressful to have it than not, since I never use it. It was just one more place to get messages I never answer. I set it up on a whim, but never really got into it. I’m kind of conflicted—it was fun being Rob Zombie’s “friend,” and so forth, but I didn’t want to interact with real people. I suppose I could have “unfriended” all the individuals and just kept the bands and such… but that wouldn’t be very nice to the people I actually know whom I’d friended. Or, what I could do is create a new MySpace and not tell anyone about it, and just use it to friend bands and movies and Fangoria and so on. Hm. I like that idea. I’ll keep it in mind for later.

Today is iPhone day! And I’m still waffling. As of yesterday, I’d pretty much decided not to get one, for the many reasons of impracticality already mentioned (expense of device, expense of service contract, not really sure the network would work here, already have large expenses this month and last month, wouldn’t use it enough to make it worth the cost), plus the latest, which is that in order to activate the iPhone using iTunes, one must have OS X 10.4, and I’ve only got 10.3. So I’d have to go to an AT&T store in Bakersfield to activate it. Or spend another $129 on 10.4. Bleah. But the overarching reason is that all the stress from the fire is making me tired and not in the mood for going on mad spending sprees. It wouldn’t be fun, so why do it?

However, this morning, I’m more rested and the lure of the iPhone is tempting me again….

I won’t get one today, though. I don’t want to drive into Bakersfield today, and there’s no point ordering one online if I can’t activate it online. I might as well wait another week (at least) until I can get into Bakersfield and get the work done on my truck, and then if I feel like throwing caution to the winds and celebrating with a very expensive new toy, I might stop at an AT&T store while I’m at it.

The latest news on the fire is 65% containment, 12,400 acres burned,  12 residences and 6 outbuildings destroyed. Now it says that full containment is expected on July 3—four more days. So, by next Friday the fire should be contained and the danger more or less over. That might be a good enough reason to celebrate with an iPhone!

I have nothing particular planned for today. I think I’ll stick close to home, do my run, and maybe a bit of housecleaning. Time to catch up with some chores that haven’t been done the last few weeks.

Here’s an old photo of my kitty, Felix. He was Socks’ brother. I lost him in July 2004, when he went out hunting one night and never came back. He was a sweet, good-natured kitty, and I still miss him. Being an all-black kitty, I never managed to get any very good pictures of him. I’ve lightened this one up, but it’s still pretty dark

I dreamed last night that I was running naked through the woods. I felt strong and free. I was climbing trees and looking out over the land. There were narrow dirt roads running through the woods, and the occasional car drove by, and I watched them from my perches in the trees, unworried that they might see me. I had my young body back—thin and unscarred. Don’t know where that came from, but it was very pleasant.

It was also pleasant to get a full night’s sleep and wake up refreshed. I didn’t sleep well last night or the night before, and yesterday at work was a horrible drag. I could barely stay on my feet, I just wanted to go home and go to bed. But I got through it, and made my planned stop at Kmart afterwards to pick up another carrier for Jerry. So now all the kitties have their own carriers, and if it becomes necessary to evacuate again, no one will have to ride in a cardboard box. I waffled for a while between the small carrier or the medium-sized one. I wish there were one in between: a medium-small one. The small one is a bit cramped for Jerry, but the medium-sized one, like the one I got for Spot, is too big. Oh well, they won’t be spending a lot of time in them, just long enough to get from here to wherever. And the smaller one will fit better in the back of my truck.

Latest news is that the fire is 60% contained. Eight residences have been destroyed, and five outbuildings. The cause of the fire is “human,” but no word on whether it was an accident or deliberately set. Probably an accident, it’s so easy to do in these conditions. The fire report mentions “extreme conditions” of wind and single-digit humidity, but that’s normal for this area at this time of year. The wind has actually been fairly light, which has made things a lot better than they could have been.

They seem to be gaining slowly, adding about 10% more containment each day. If that continues, it should be 100% contained in about four days. Things could always change, of course, but so far, so good for our area. The fire has continued to stay on the other side of the hills.

Today, I told Mom I’d come up to her place and fill the generator with gas so she can pump water. We filled all the gas cans on Monday, but she finds the 5-gallon cans too heavy to lift, and the 2-1/2-gallon cans have those hard-to-handle special shut-0ff spouts. She bought a hand pump to use, but apparently can’t get it to work easily, either. I haven’t been there to watch her use it to see if I can figure out what the problem is, but the easiest thing is just for me to go up there and fill the tank for her. I just need her to remind me when it’s getting low so I can go and do it.

Other than that, I have no particular plans, other than going to work this afternoon. Thursday is generally junk mail burning day, but I feel a bit averse to making fire today. I think I’ll let it go for another week.

I never got around to making an appointment to have my truck window and door fixed, but as things are, I’d rather not go too far from home as long as the fire’s still burning. I want to be able to evacuate quickly if it becomes necessary. So I’ll put off the trip to Bakersfield until next week. The fire should be under control by then.

It seems that Socks has finally learned to use the cat flap to get in and out. Yay! Just in time, because she apparently knocked down the twisted paper clips I was using to prop the flap open, and I can’t find them.

Here is a picture of Miss Socks, sitting on her bed in her room.

And a bit of sad news: Mrs. Beasley died yesterday.  She was a very old doggie, and it wasn’t unexpected. We are glad she spent her final year in comfort with the company of the kitties. RIP, Mrs. Beasley.