Kind thanks to everyone who has written to express their concern about how I’m doing.
Yes, January began on a back-to-back pair of extraordinarily painful notes, but neither are the reason I’ve been offline for about a month. The primary cause is that the contractor returned to finish the repair and remodeling work that was made necessary by last summer’s destructive hailstorm, and the project has, pardon the expression, snowballed.
As you can see from this photo I shot just a few minutes ago, despite the original “It’ll take two, maybe three days tops” estimate, the project still is nowhere near to being finished.
I also did not realize that this work would essentially require me to move out of the front half of the house for the duration, and living in and around everything that had to be moved has been a challenge. I was physically unable to get into my office for about two weeks, and despite what Internet evangelists would have you believe, working “wherever” with a laptop and a cuppa coffee is not the same—especially if the construction workers accidentally tear out your cable modem and knock out your Wi-Fi. (“I hate to complain, but did it occur to you that there might be something on the other side of the wall that was connected to that coax, before you decided to give the cable a sharp tug?”) For a time I was reduced to trying to work using my cell phone and a Bluetooth keyboard, which was really limiting. It knocked me completely off X/Twitter and Bluesky for about two weeks.
To be honest, that was very therapeutic. You should try it.
The day they accidentally knocked out the AC power was the most exciting, though, given that it was about 10° outside that day and the natural gas furnace will not run without electric power for the control circuits.
Oh yeah, this project also required putting six huge holes in the south and east sides of my house. The seventh hole, which they put in the laundry room wall right next to where the water main enters the house, was a bonus. It took me nearly two weeks to find it, as I couldn’t even get into the laundry room for more than a week, and once I could get into it again I could do so only during the evening hours. It wasn’t until the day I finally got into the laundry room in the morning that I noticed daylight streaming in where there wasn’t a window, and thought, “Hmm. That ain’t right.”
I packed the wound with bubble wrap secured by duct tape. I hope I found it before the field mice did.
A Nature Note: Field mice, in case you’re curious, do not hibernate. They remain active throughout the winter. You just don’t notice them because they’re usually active in tiny tunnels under the snow, but they are constantly searching for anything they can eat and any place to live that’s warmer than being in a tiny tunnel under the snow. They may be adorable, but they are also very destructive little pests.
“Victor” brand snap traps work. D-Con leaves you with tiny mummified mouse corpses you will be discovering in out-of-the-way places for years to come. Practicing “live trap & release” may make you feel virtuous, but all it does is leave the mice thinking, “Crap, that didn’t work. Okay, what’s the next plan for breaking into this joint?”
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There are many ancient questions that humanity has been asking since time immemorial. “Why is the sky blue?”* “Does a bear poop in the woods?”** “Is the Pope Catholic?”*** “If a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one to hear it, does it make a sound?”**** “If something happens but it’s not on the Internet, did it really happen?”*****
The question most on my mind right now is, “Will the contractors ever show up to finish this @#$(*&!!! job?” Well, maybe next week. Maybe the week after. It depends on the weather. It depends on the phase of the moon. It depends on…
But I suppose the question most of you are wondering is, “What’s going on with Rampant Loon Press and Stupefying Stories?” Well, we did actually release a new book this month: Heart of Dorkness, & Other Stories, a chapbook of short stories by best-selling author Henry Vogel. It’s a fun little collection—you should get it just to read the cover story, “Heart of Dorkness”—It’s also just the first in a series of book projects we have in the works for release later this year.
But I’ve been off the Internet for a few weeks, and as a consequence, almost no one knows the book release happened. “If it isn’t on the Internet, it didn’t happen.”
Going forward, we’ve got to change that.
Answers:* Because it’s -15°F and every bit of water vapor has frozen out of it. Otherwise it would be gray.
** Not by choice. As with field mice, bears prefer to poop indoors, where it’s warm.
*** As regards Pope Francis, that is a topic of considerable debate right now, but this is not the place for that conversation.
**** Only if it falls on a bear while he’s taking a poop.
***** It might be better to ask, if it’s on the Internet, especially on bluesky or reddit, is there a reliable source that can confirm that it happened?
