Category: 2018

My friend at work buys old mechanical gadgets and restores them. She brought this typewriter in to show us. Isn’t it beautiful?

Greetings,

Currently, the IT Helpdesk is unable to access the helpdesk voicemail box to respond to voicemails left there requesting technical assistance.

Kai is fine, and got his stitches out today. While we were at his vet, two emergencies were going on. A very nice man was waiting while his dog underwent emergency surgery after being mauled by a coyote. Both coyotes and mountain lions can pose a danger to even large dogs. Small dogs are also targeted by bobcat and huge owls. We have LOTS of bobcat and owls – you see them all the time. I’ve seen owls with jackrabbits larger than my littlest poodle, Rosie.

We have a formidable looking courtyard wall, but it won’t keep out any of those critters.

The wooden part (latillas, pronounced la-tee-ya’s), are sometimes called coyote fencing because they are harder for the coyotes to leap up on (and they don’t like going up and over without seeing where they will land). But we have a mixture of block wall and latilla, and the coyotes could easily get up on the block wall and columns. (Oh yes, coyotes will definitely jump that high, easy-peasy.)

BTW, that courtyard is looking pretty sad at the  moment, but someday there will be flowering vines on that wall, and trees and pathways…

Anyway, back to the hazards of pet ownership. The other nice couple waiting for their dog were in equally bad straights. It was an elderly couple on a long road trip from South Carolina. They had put their dog’s insulin in a hotel refrigerator and it froze. They thought it wasn’t working right, so they gave their dog extra insulin. Their dog was peeing inside (which he NEVER does), so they thought he had not enough insulin and too much glucose causing thirst and peeing, so they gave him more insulin. Then he didn’t eat dinner or breakfast the next day. By the time they got him to the vet his glucose levels were dangerously low and the vet is literally trying to save his life.

I’m guessing that the fact that the dog peed in the house was probably due to a low-glucose seizure. My dog has occasionally had a seizure and it’s hard to tell what’s happening – he is just lays there and may lose bladder control. My dog doesn’t have diabetes, he just has a very occasional seizure (he’s had about 4 in his life).

Anyway, I felt really bad for the older couple, because they misjudged what was happening and did the exact wrong thing, and made it so much worse. They might have accidentally killed their dog. They didn’t want to admit that they gave him extra insulin but they knew the vet needed to know. They obviously felt terrible. There’s nothing worse than accidentally causing harm like that.

One time years ago, I accidentally gave Darren too much medication. I’m sure I was given incorrect directions at the doctors office, but I’ll never really know how the mix-up happened. I was supposed to be gradually increasing his dosage, so there weren’t clear instructions on the bottle. Darren was fine in the end, but it was scary. That was years before my sister became a doctor. Now we have a built-in second opinion!

Anyway, back to the vet story – those dogs were both still in surgery and intensive care when Kai and I left. I’m friends with the vet (they rented our house in Placitas when we lived in California). So when things settle down, I’ll text her and ask if those dogs pulled through. I’m hoping so.

Here’s Kai, snoozing away on the couch next to me, on this fine Sunday afternoon.

And Kira on the other side:

And Rosie on the rug below.

A coworker was mentioning that every summer LANL (Los Alamos National Labs) hires a bunch of summer students and there’s never anywhere for them to live. This I believe, because when I decided to go back to work last summer, I got an interview up there at LANL, so I looked into housing options. It’s awful. Prices are as bad as the Bay Area and the housing stock is depressing. There’s simply nothing available for any price. When I got the offer from NMED (New Mexico Environment Department), and I hadn’t yet heard back from LANL, I figured, you know what, Santa Fe, here I come! Even though LANL pays a lot more, I just did not want to deal with the Los Alamos housing market. Plus, there’s the whole major difference between working for the government vs. working for industry, which is a different topic, for another post.

Anyway, because the housing is so impossible in Los Alamos, a lot of LANL employees commute from Santa Fe. The students are all looking for somewhere, anywhere, to crash for 3 months. Meanwhile, I’ve got this cute little townhouse in Santa Fe, that during the summer I only use Monday night through Friday morning. In the winter I’m here more, because I don’t like to commute on the freeway in the dark, so I don’t go down to Placitas until Saturday morning and come back up Sunday afternoon. But in the summer the commute is a lot easier, so I’m in Placitas more. Sometimes I even go down to Placitas mid-week.

Anyway, you see where I’m going with this. I’m thinking a summer student would be ideal, because just when they start getting annoying, it will be time for them to leave anyway. John’s being politely supportive, but he probably thinks I’m nuts. Our finances are ok, why would I get a roommate? Mainly because I think it could be fun and interesting (yes, and probably annoying at times).

Or maybe I’m trying to substitute for my kids (see previous post for surreal Japan article). There’s a young woman at work who reminds me very much of my daughter, and I actually think that improves my working experience, to have someone around who is like Laura somehow. (I’m not sure what Laura, or my coworker, think about this substitute arrangement.)

And also – regarding finances – we are fine, but my kids are working dang hard with no help. I believe in “reward-rather-than-rescue” and my kids are really deserving. Laura’s working full time, and taking on additional duties at work, and in graduate school on top of it. Darren is taking on an additional workload because a coworker of his has been out for awhile with some sort of medical issue. Darren’s also looking for a roommate because his rent went up. And Laura just rents a room. Luckily, her roommate is lovely, but her roommate’s dogs are incontinent. The kids are both doing the very best they can, and life is not easy, and I want to try to help them.

But it’s hard for me to justify taking our money, the majority of which John earns, and funneling it elsewhere, when he wants to retire soon. And somehow, in my brain, if I make “extra” on some side venture, then maybe I would feel ok about diverting that amount. Which is also why I’m thinking about taking on another client or two (I currently have only one and my website says I’m not taking new clients). For awhile I was working overtime at work, and did not have time for clients, but I’ve recently been able to cut back to a regular 40-hour week. So I’ve put up an application form on my website, in an attempt to do a better job of screening potential clients, and maybe I’ll take on one or two more.

All of which is the backstory for today’s post about our weekend. We had a long list of stuff to accomplish in Santa Fe. You’re thinking – “I thought you were done with that house?” and yeah, the Santa Fe townhome has less that still needs done than the house in Placitas, but you know me, I’m never done.

Even before this new crazy roommate idea, I wanted a screen door to the backyard. The weather has finally turned nice (I’ve been exceedingly grumpy about the weather for 4 months; during all of January – April, I just did not like New Mexico and wanted to live somewhere else, anywhere else, but that’s a different topic.) Finally the weather is nice again, and there’s nothing better than having the back door open to the patio in the warm weather.

Now you’re wondering if Sam finished the brick patio yet. No, he hasn’t. It’s been months. He provides as many excuses as he lays brick. But it will be lovely when it’s done (if it gets done).

Anyway, back to my story. In addition to installing a screen door, there’s lots of little things (moving furniture, installing towel racks, additional shelving, etc.,) that I wanted done to make it easier for me to consolidate all my stuff into only one of my two bedrooms and only one of my two bathrooms. I had sprawled out and taken up the entire townhome. But seriously, I don’t need a house in Placitas AND an entire townhome to store all my stuff. Some of my stuff from my office will go down to Placitas, some will go into the living room and the master bedroom.

I will mostly miss the beautiful closet that John built me in the office. 

Which I had been using mostly for my shoe collection, LOL. Obviously, I have more shoes than absolutely necessary.

But I can move all my winter shoes to storage in Placitas, and my summer shoes into the small master bedroom closet.

John’s been working hard to help me with the upgrades, but things never go as smoothly as hoped. My backdoor is an odd size and the screen door ended up to be a bitch to install, involving drilling, plaining, sanding, painting – way more than just a drop-and-go installation. Of course.

It turned out great, but now we’re not going to have time to install the shelving I wanted.

John’s currently working on the master shower, which I rarely use. The temperature doesn’t stay consistent, resulting in a more interesting shower experience than desired. The hall bath is larger, and that’s the one I typically use, but that’s the one I’d be handing over to a potential roommate for her “exclusive use”.

Meanwhile, in case you’re wondering, Kai is recovering very well from his surgery, and I’m taking him to get his stitches out today!

I don’t usually just repost links, but this article is fascinating.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/japans-rent-a-family-industry

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).

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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.

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.