Category: May 2018

Things you don’t want to hear your husband say about your car

“What noise? I don’t hear any noise.”
And…
“I don’t know what that noise is.”
Followed by…
“How do you get a mouse out of a fender?”
Followed by…
“Maybe it’s a snake.”
At that point I said something non-family friendly and went inside to google houses for sale in large urban areas.
Luckily I had already gotten back out from underneath the car, where I had been helpfully peering at the undercarriage, or I would probably have seriously hurt myself in my haste.
When I next looked up from my computer, both my husband and my car were gone. I hope they both survive the ride.

The boat’s back in the water

Turns out I was pretty sad about pulling the boat out of the water last month. One of the biggest issues was the marina could not get our bill right; every month it was such a struggle. Plus, that marina gets really busy during the summer, and it just all seemed like too much. So we pulled it out and put it in storage, but what’s the use of a boat in storage in the desert?

So we’ve decided to try it again, with a different, much smaller marina. It’s quiet and peaceful out there, and hopefully we’ll manage to get out there some weekends this summer.

But oh, did we have a struggle getting it into the water! Typically we’d trailer it with the Jeep, but we wanted to spend the night in the camper van in the campground out there (the boat’s not quite set up yet for overnighting). The camper van is a big vehicle with excellent towing capacity, and actually tows better than the Jeep does. But the ramp at that marina was so gradual, that we could not, for the life of us, float that boat off the trailer without submerging the back of the van!

John backed the trailer into the water (I’m not very good at backing trailers long distances) and then we switched out drivers so John could wade into the water and guide the boat off the trailer. But it wouldn’t budge. He shoved and shoved. I backed it up another inch or two, and pretty soon the exhaust was blub-blub-blubbing in the water and I was terrified we were going to wreck my precious camper van! I frankly wouldn’t care if we dumped that old Jeep into the lake – we’ve been talking about buying a new 4Runner for at least 5 years. But not my camper van!

He told me to pull forward a little and then back quickly and suddenly brake hard, all the while keeping the rpm really high so the water stays out of the exhaust system, which involves giving it lots of gas and some clutch at the same time at just the right amount of each.

Uhhhh…I’m not a very coordinated person. I don’t usually get brakes and gas pedals and clutches confused, but I’m not usually backing a boat into a lake, with instructions that include “quickly” and “suddenly”. I tried a couple of times, but then I was just like – this is not my forte. The laws of physics have always been a bit non-intuitive for me. (Although after that experience, when the Mini Cooper dealership asked me if I was sure I could drive their manual transmission loaner vehicle while mine was being worked on, I was like, oh yeah, got that nailed.)

Anyway, John took a turn at the wheel and I waded into the water, holding the bow line (and occasionally ineffectively pushing on the boat) while he tried to jerk the boat off the trailer using the physics of momentum.

Pull forward, back fast, brake hard, jerk (blub, blub, rev, rev)…forward again, back fast, break hard, jerk! Each time I was afraid we were going to ruin the van or the boat or both. At first it didn’t seem like we were making any progress, but then I realized the boat had moved an inch. Pull forward, back fast, brake hard, jerk (blub, blub). Another inch, but still not budging. Again. Again. Again. The boat is now crooked on the trailer and had progressed a total of about one foot. John set the brake and got out to help me push. Push-push-nothing. Not floating, not budging. Ugh. Pull forward, back fast, brake hard, jerk! Again and again.

Finally the boat floated with a wild twist off the trailer, and I about couldn’t hold it with the bow line (when something is that heavy, any type of momentum is a lot, even at very low speeds). The boat slid backwards and sideways toward the near dock while the bow spun toward the opposite dock. At first I thought it was heading toward the opposite dock, but then I suddenly realized that although it had spun toward the opposite dock, it was actually moving backwards. I was going to be caught between a moving boat and a dock (not a good place to be), but I didn’t have time to get up onto the dock to fend it off. I managed to jerk the bow in the direction of the dock, which was counter intuitive because I was trying not to hit the dock (and me), but it slowed the spin and brought the boat under control. (John missed all that because he was driving the trailer back up the ramp.)

The boat is now safely in the new slip.

We took it out on the water briefly, but we didn’t actually sail it; we didn’t have time to get the mast and sails set up, which is a big process. We just motored for a bit.

Then coming back in, the outboard motor died, twice. You have no control over a moving boat when you have no motor, because the outboard is what provides steerage. We nearly hit the boat in the slip next to ours. I had to leap out onto the end of the bow to fend off. The same exact thing happened when we were trying to dock it last time when we were pulling it out of the water, and we almost hit a boat tied to the dock, and a couple people on the dock had to help us guide it in.

So that’s it, I am not tolerant of an undependable outboard. (Remind me someday to tell you about Alaska, OMG.) So I’m not going out on that boat again until we do something about the outboard situation. John wants to set up a second outboard, an electric motor for trolling (going slowly dragging a fishing line). That sounds great to me. I can’t abide the noise and smell of the gas motors anyway. Of course the electric trolling motors are limited in speed and distance if you’re actually trying to get somewhere. But it’s a sailboat; we can sail!

I have no idea when we’re actually going to have time to purchase and install another outboard. But meanwhile I can at least be happy that we do, in theory, have a boat on the water.

Musical Tables and Chairs

When we moved out of our rental in Placitas, we moved into two different houses; John’s original house in Placitas, and my new townhome in Santa Fe. That required sorting all our stuff.

In general, I took the older, smaller, funkier furniture up to Santa Fe, and left the nicer, newer, larger furniture for Placitas. That makes sense for several reasons. First of all, the Santa Fe place is just smaller and funkier! And, we don’t consider the Santa Fe townhome as our primary or permanent residence. Also, the older, smaller, funkier furniture tended to be furniture that I had collected more than 12 years ago, before John and I met. Since I had picked it out on my own, it isn’t necessarily his favorite (sort of like how his house isn’t my favorite, but that’s a different topic).

My sorting method turned out to have limitations. We owned 3 tables – two full sized rectangular tables with an extension leaf, and one small round table. By my system, the small round one, which I purchased in approximately 1997, should have gone to Santa Fe (smaller, older, funkier).

But the Placitas house has both a dining room and a very small breakfast nook (more like a half-circle bump out) that isn’t remotely large enough for a regular table, so we put it there instead. The breakfast nook is John’s favorite spot, so it definitely needed a table.

Instead, I brought up to Santa Fe an old, full-sized table I got cheap on Craigslist in Albuquerque in approximately 2007. (This mediocre photo was actually taken to show how well my new new rug matches the curtains, but it’s what I’ve got that shows the table.)

Here’s a better photo of the original craigslist table up in Santa Fe, although in this case, the photo was taken to show the new lights. Who takes a picture of an old table?

We initially put in Placitas the newer, nicer table, which we had bought new for the house in California. Here’s a photo of it in the California house. It’s hard to believe I owned a house that looked like that.

Here’s the same table in Placitas. (Yes, there’s still moving boxes in the living room.)

Turns out, John doesn’t like the newer, nicer California table, because when the expansion leaf is taken out (because the Placitas dining room is much smaller than the one in California), the table legs are in the way of the chair legs and people legs! Bump-ouch. Plus, it’s more modern in style than is ideal for either house in New Mexico.

So what to do?

I decided to buy a small round table for Santa Fe, and bring the older Craigslist table back to John. I went to my favorite local store (Jackalope), and accidentally fell in love with a full-size rectangular table instead of a small round one. And it was 60% off!

I couldn’t resist. Look at that lovely wood grain pattern.

It’s very basic in style, which matches the casual, traditional, rural feel of New Mexico. In my mind, it is our nicest table, and it’s definitely not a small, round one that I envisioned for Santa Fe, so we brought it home to Placitas.

But John didn’t like it there. It’s quite blond, and John prefers darker furniture (and flooring, curtains, etc.,) than I prefer. You may remember this – this has come up before. Remember the tile saga? Well, the brick floors downstairs are dark reddish, and so is the beautiful, dark red mesquite we ended up with.

So we took the beautiful new blond table back apart again and drove it up to Santa Fe, and swapped it out for the craigslist table, which we brought down to Placitas. Admittedly, does look quite nice in John’s house, because it perfectly matches his new cabinets.

And, miracle of miracles, my new, rustic blond table fits (barely) in Santa Fe. Except, big problem – it didn’t come with chairs.

There were chairs in Jackalope that would have looked very nice with it, but they wanted nearly $200 each for them. Each. For a chair. One chair. Four chairs would have cost way more than the table! Here’s the chairs I didn’t buy:

I went back to craigslist. A young couple are moving to Portland and selling their New Mexico style, funky little square table and 4 chairs. I didn’t want their square table, but all of it combined was less than the cost of one chair at Jackalope. Sold. They even tossed it all into the back of their pickup and brought it to my house for me, while I followed behind them in my Mini Cooper. They didn’t even bother to tie the furniture down, and mid-trip one of them reached out through their window to lay down one of the chairs, which was threatening to escape (oh, to be 22 again).

The funky little chairs are perfect!

The small square table that came with the chairs is in my garage. And the California modern dining table (minus the extension leaf), and two of the six chairs, is currently stuck in the office in Placitas (yes, the office does still look like that). Anyone want a nearly new, modern style table with six chairs? We would like a desk in that office, so we can unpack!

Here’s a photo of our desk when it was in California. I still can’t believe these California photos. They make me sad. But, moving on…

I figure I can put the square table from the young couple in the office in Santa Fe. That will free up the desk, which we can then bring back to Placitas. Thus, the musical tables and chairs continues for another day.

At work this week

It was unusually stressful at work this week! My boss was gone, and so were the other two managers under him, leaving me as the only manager for the entire compliance & enforcement section. I barely know enough to do my own job with their help – much less do their jobs without any help.

All was fine until late on Tuesday afternoon when I got a complaint call from a member of the public who lives near one of the big gas plants. She said the “fire was out” and it “smelled really bad” of “rotten eggs.” Translation – she was smelling hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and the flare did not seem to be burning.

In high amounts, H2S is a very dangerous, lethal gas. Was the flare really out? Was some sort of huge pubic health catastrophe unfolding? Or was this just a routine complaint call? (Because, lets face it, gas plants stink.) We get complaint calls about this particular plant all the time, because for whatever dumb reason, the local planners allowed a subdivision to be built immediately across the highway from the plant. There’s not much for planning departments in rural New Mexico. (Note to self – never by a house near a gas plant for any reason, ever.)

My agency tracks and monitors routine air emissions for the long-term, overall health of the environment (and people in the environment). We aren’t set up to deal with emergencies. And presumably the safety controls, which are mandated and overseen by other agencies, were in place – realtime monitors, alarms, etc. Presumably in a real emergency the alarms would be going off, triggering an emergency response from the local emergency services.

Presumably. But still. The flare was out? Some flares are only used when needed (emergency flares). But this flare was supposed to be running 24-7.

So we set about trying to contact someone at the plant. But since we handle routine emissions reporting, our contacts are usually at the company headquarters, not the actual facilities. We figured we could ask someone at the company headquarters for a local contact at the plant, but in this case, the company was headquartered in Texas. It was 4:30 pm in New Mexico, which is 5:30 in Texas. Would we even be able to reach anyone?

I’m brand new, I know next to nothing about gas plants, and I’ve got to figure out how to react to this.  I needed staff from other teams to help. They were understandably a little reluctant to do anything out of ordinary, because their bosses were gone and they have their procedures and processes in place and they didn’t want to deviate from those. Their process generally involve taking a few days to look into the issue, familiarize themselves with the permit, check to see if there are other complaints logged in the recent past, check to see if the company has recently reported excess emissions, make some inquires, etc., because we do routine monitoring, not emergency response.

We do have one staff member who is located out that way (a long way from Santa Fe), and it was suggested to me that we send him out to take a look. But he works for the monitoring section, which doesn’t tend to overlap much with our compliance and enforcement section. I figured it didn’t hurt to try, so I approached his boss, who said, no way. It wasn’t part of his job description, he wasn’t qualified, he didn’t have protective equipment, and what would he do anyway?

I just really wanted to reach someone at the plant to figure out what’s going on! So somebody obligingly put out an email, while others were searching for phone numbers. It turned out that an employee at the plant saw the email on his cell phone almost immediately, and got right back to us.

He said the flare isn’t out. Whew. That’s a relief, but what’s going on? Why are we getting reports that the flare’s out?

Turns out that when an acid gas injector unit* goes down (isn’t working for whatever reason), and a higher than normal percentage of H2S is therefore being flared off, the flare burns at a different temperature, causing a low bluish flame, which can be invisible against the sky. This made it look to the public like the flare was out. And, because the process isn’t perfect, they could smell small amounts of H2S.

A difficult week for everyone!

*Technical notes in case you’re curious:

An acid gas injector sends the acid gas back into the ground. If a plant produces small amounts of acid gas (H2S and CO2) it can be relatively cheaply injected back into the ground. More advanced and expensive processing can convert the H2S into sulfur or better yet, sulfuric acid, which has retail value. This particular plant has been encountering an increasingly high percentage sour gas, which contains H2S. The terms “sour” gas and “acid” gas mean almost the same thing. “Sour” gas has H2S in it, acid gas is any type of acidic gas, such as H2S, or CO2, etc.

Because the components of the incoming gas to this particular plant are changing, they will probably need to upgrade their processes, which will be very expensive. But they can’t just go on flaring it all off, because that process emits SO2 (sulfur dioxide). SO2 is one of the six “criteria” air pollutants that are regulated by EPA (and thus, by us).

—

On a more amusing note, I was in the “Friday Family Foto” yesterday. Every morning everyone gets an email with an environmental newsletter attached. The staff who send it out usually add a comic from the internet (usually dogs or cats with funny captions). On Fridays, instead of pulling something from online, they send out pet photos they’ve collected from us, and write their own captions.

 

 

Kai (and my Mini Cooper) are both fine

Both my dog and my car had surgery yesterday. $1,500 later, I have a working dog and car. Yay!

The car’s been in the shop since last Thursday. Luckily they had a loaner available. At first the service manager said he didn’t think he had one, then he looked over at me in this appraising, sort of “actually, you’re pretty old” sort of look, and then he said, “Can you drive a stick?” Yeah, I’m pretty old. I learned on a 3-speed on the column. I have over 30 years experience driving with various types of manual transmissions. Although why they would buy a stick shift for a loaner car, I haven’t any idea.

Anyway I’ve been driving this for the last few days:

Vroom-vroom-vroom!

Right after I got my own Mini back, I went to pick up Kai. Before they brought him out, they gave me the post-op lecture, explaining that he would be groggy, listless, with low appetite at first.

Ha, ha, no. They brought him out and he was all hyper-whining, excitedly pulling at the leash, his feet slipping on the floor, out of his mind like he always gets whenever there are new people around. I looked at them and said, “Groggy?”

There has been no dent in his appetite either. Kai is as food obsessed as usual. You would think we were starving him, instead of allowing him to slowly gain weight as he ages (particularly with John feeding him a lot lately, lol).

Here he is shortly after surgery. His tail’s down, but that’s just because he was waiting for dinner, which was taking longer than he thought necessary.

Floating table umbrellas and other things San Diego

I went to San Diego recently to visit family.

We were eating outside in the wind (it wasn’t that bad, really, nothing like New Mexico). Suddenly the umbrella from the nearby table lifted up, up out of the stand. The bottom end of the umbrella lifted all the way above the slot in the table, hovered above the table for a sec, tilted, turned, and came floating over, crashing down on top of our table and Laura! She saw it coming – Alex and I didn’t know what hit us. You can see it, top down on the ground behind them. They gave us Laura’s food for free ,LOL, no one was hurt, and it just goes to show you – California gets wind too!

It was an informal Jamaican place, and the food was great.

Now the next set of photos I’m not going to write about. They are pretty explanatory. Cute kids at the beach 🙂

Oops. I love how colorful San Diego is, but this is a bit too much color:

It was worth it though.

Here’s some pictures of our trip to Balboa Park:

And one more time, this time without sunglasses; there you are!

Here’s far too many pictures of koi at the Japanese Garden, for John, who loves koi:

 

This one’s my favorite:

And here’s far too many pictures of the Botanical Building (one of my favorites). It was closed last time John and I were there, so these are also for John:

And a couple pictures of my brother’s garden:

I think the white flowered one is dragon fruit (if not, someone will correct me). Here is a photo from last November that shows the fruit, it’s a pretty amazing color:

This is the local community center – it’s an upscale area.

And here I am with a niece!

My old dog’s getting older

Kai got homemade sardine sauce on his kibble today (homemade from canned sardines; I didn’t go out and catch & smoke those little fishes myself). He won’t get any breakfast because he’s having surgery done tomorrow. He has a growth under an eye that the vet believes is cancerous and rotting teeth that need pulled. He’ll need general anesthesia, which is dangerous for an old dog.

I was having trouble deciding whether I wanted to put him through that. But then when John was gone last week (John’s been gone a lot again recently), and I had the dogs in Santa Fe, I noticed that Kai was crying when Kira was playing with him. Kira is our youngest dog, and I don’t think she means him any harm, but I don’t understand why she doesn’t have an instinct to back off when he cries. John’s home now, so we have them separated; Kai is in Santa Fe with me, and Rosie and Kira are in Placitas.

Anyway, based on the fact that Kai is in pain, I decided to go ahead and give it a try. It would be very sad, but not the end of the world, if he doesn’t make it through surgery. My main goal is to keep him comfortable – not to extend his life at all costs.

By the way, while I’m on this difficult subject, let me digress and mention, for posterity, that’s how I feel about my life also. If I’m brain dead or terminal, I just want to be made as comfortable as possible and let go with reasonable expediency (morphine – yes; feeding tubes – no.)

Anyway, not to unduly upset anyone – we are anticipating a fine outcome, a speedy recovery, and another few good years for Kai-boy. I’ve got more of that sardine sauce all ready when he’s ready.

Meow Wolf

Meow Wolf is an experiential art forum in Santa Fe. I guess. I made that up. No one knows what Meow Wolf is.

The first time I went to Meow Wolf, around Christmastime, it was way too crowded and overwhelming. Darren walked out mid-meltdown, and I followed shortly after. For someone with sensory integration issues, it can be assaulting. It’s deliberately confusing and somewhat creepy; weird music with groans and thrums, confusing secret passageways, and it’s visually nuts.

The second time I went to Meow Wolf, I enjoyed it quite a lot more. First of all, I knew what to expect. Secondly, it was far less crowded. Thirdly, I just followed my friend around, which made it easier than trying to proactively interact with Meow Wolf!

No, sorry, I don’t know what this picture is of. I guess that’s the point.

I don’t even know if I’m posting this right side up.

Look at that expression – awesome!

Meow Wolf had one final surprise in store for me. If you’ve never lived alone, you won’t know what I mean, but if you live alone, and no one has been in your house for several days, and suddenly something is different – something has appeared – it is utterly disorienting.

I was talking on the phone with Darren one evening, when suddenly I was shocked to discover this in my house.

It’s innocuous enough, a bookmark and a refrigerator magnet, hiding on the far side of my refrigerator, and I quickly realized my friend had thoughtfully left it for me. But when I very first saw it, after no one had been at my house for several days, my mind just kept trying to make sense of what it was seeing. What is this? Why is it here? How did it get here? Nobody’s been here! It materialized!

Meow Wolf is an experience.