The “little toilet bobbly thingie” I referenced in the pee post last week is apparently officially known as a ballcock. Heh heh. Ballcock. Anyway, thought y’all might want to know.

So, thanks to Haddock, I am now aware that my feeds are apparently awry, and I apologize for that. I think it has something to do with the latest version of Wordpress, which I recently upgraded to, since things are going haywire on the back end as well. At any rate, hopefully those of you who can’t read this because it’s not showing up in your feeds will eventually head to the main page and see this. The direct feed for this ain’t livin’ is at: meloukhia.net/feed, and you may want to update your feed readers to reflect this. There are some other direct links too; you can use your feed reader to find them, if you feel thus inclined, by typing in my URL.

Speaking of which, I do like the latest Wordpress, although it is kind of irritating that it’s making the site go all wonky. For those of you who use Wordpress, it is a good idea to upgrade to the latest version just in general, and it was an easy install. I realize it sounds sort of silly to be plugging the new version of Wordpress when I’m having site problems, but I’m not sure it’s fair to blame Wordpress for all of those problems. So, uh, go upgrade.

For those of you who are completely mystified by the above two paragraphs, here’s a story about rearranging furniture:

So, the thing is, I like to rearrange furniture. It’s kind of a thing with me. Usually, every six months or so, I totally rearrange my house. I start to feel restless when everything remains in a static position, and I get antsier and antsier until I abruptly decide it’s time to tear the living room apart, usually late at night, and then I get all sweaty and covered in dust and then I am filled with a sense of deep satisfaction.

The problem is, I can’t do that in my new house, because my new house is very small, and it has a highly restrictive floorplan. When I moved in last year, I arranged everything in what seemed like the most logical way, and everything is still arranged in pretty much the same way, despite the fact that I moved in almost a year ago. This is…unprecedented for me.

A few weeks ago, I rearranged the objects on the shelves in the kitchen, attempting to channel my frustrated desire to move furniture around, and it really wasn’t very satisfying. The problem is simple: I want to change the way my house looks and feels by moving things around, and I can’t, and I’m starting to feel like I’m suffocating, which makes me bemoan the myriad issues with my house even more.

For example, they could have put in a half-story to make the upstairs lofts useful, but they didn’t. So instead I have what seems like a lot of space upstairs, but I can’t use it, because the ceiling is too low. And they could have made the bathroom, I don’t know, a few square feet larger so that you don’t feel like you’re making out with the hot water heater when you take a poop. Oooh, and they could have put ventilation in the kitchen, so that the house doesn’t always smell like whatever was most recently cooked.

The fact of the matter is that I bore easily, and I think that rearranging furniture allows me to pretend that my house is different, as well as allowing me to work off some excess energy. And the thing is, I don’t really want to go through the headache of moving, because it’s a pain in the behind, so I’m stuck in this furniture configuration and it suddenly feels very oppressive. In short, I’m bored with my house.

I thought about moving my desk upstairs, because there is just enough room to sit on my ball and work up there, but I think I would feel too cloistered, what with the ceiling sloping in on either side of me. And then I would have to skulk upstairs to watch movies, which doesn’t sound all that pleasant. Plus, it’s going to get wicked hot up there this summer, because this house only has one window that opens. And, seriously, ONE WINDOW? It’s not like this is Siberia, people. Cross-drafts are actually a good idea, and I’m not talking about the drafts that whistle through all the cracks in the winter.

So maybe I could move my desk against the west wall, and unstack my bookcases and line them up against the wall that the desk faces now. But then I would have my back to the window, which I think would give me the heebie-jeebies.

I think I might be going stir crazy. Maybe I’ll just burn all the furniture and fit the house out Japanese-style.

Christ is risen!

My friend Annie just got her first article in the New York Times national edition, which is pretty darn sweet, if you ask me. I might even say it’s totally awesome. I will admit that I’m a bit jealous, but also immensely proud of her. I guess that’s what a degree in journalism will get you. At any rate, the article is about the mill site, and an attempt to bioremediate the dioxins with mushrooms, so it’s not only cool, but also interesting.

So go read it!

Whatever can it be?

(Cat shown for scale.)

I hate you.

Seriously. Please stop. With the chainsawing. I don’t know what you are chainsawing, because there are no trees in close proximity to my house, and you are definitely in close proximity to my house. The only thing I can think of is that you are bucking up timber for someone, which I think would classify as a light industrial business, which I think means that I would be justified in reporting you to the authorities for being as annoying as all hell.

Please don’t make me do that. I know that most of you hate me already because I don’t like things like your loud music, your screaming children, and your horrible dogs, and I am pretty vociferous about that. And that’s cool, really, I am mean I understand, I am not a very likable person.

But the chainsawing needs to stop. It has been going on for three days now. I’m beginning to wonder if you are conducting a social experiment to see how long it takes to drive me to the point of murder.

Sincerely,

s.e. smith

Well, that was exciting.

I just finished upgrading this ain’t livin’ from Movable Type to Wordpress, for a myriad of reasons which I promise I will detail at some point. As often happens, things have turned out to be much more complicated than they were supposed to be, and I am learning all sorts of things along the way.

For the next few days, some parts of this site may not function as expected. I definitely want to hear about it when you encounter problems. Please leave notes in the comments if you encounter weird stuff, and I will do my best to fix it. I also hope that you guys enjoy the look and feel of the new site, because it required a lot of work and I am rather fond of it.

To keep you occupied, here is a picture of a cat:

Now I’m going to go back to trying to get things functioning reasonably normally again!

So when I hit the post office today, I found not one but three package slips in my box! Good God.

Many thanks to the senders of The Travelling Horn Player, The Immense Journey, and Flanders! These came just in time, as I think this weekend will be quite grey and dreary, and I’m looking forward to reading them. I’m almost done with Lord of the Flies, which I’ll probably review this evening or tomorrow, and then I’ll plunge in.

Keep the books coming, and I’ll keep readin’ ‘em.

Dear gentle readers,

First of all, for those of you who do not know, Northern California has been struck by severe storms. As of this entry, 50,000 people are still without power, and I happen to be one of them.

PGE has seen fit to restore power to all of Fort Bragg…except for my block. Power is going to be restored to my house at some point near Wednesday, or so the rumour goes. The parents of my childhood best friend have kindly allowed me to use their shower and internet for the evening…rest assured, I am writing about my experiences with the storm and power outage, and there will be exciting photo posts up as soon as I have power.

My updating may be a bit sporadic until I get power back at my house, and I do apologize for that, but I think the extenuating circumstances make up for it. I’m actually going a bit crazy in my ice cold house with counters covered in cheese because the house is now colder than the fridge. I’m really grateful to all of the people who have kindly allowed me to eat in their restaurants even though I am stinky, shower in their homes, and abuse their internet to try and get some work done.

I also want to give the PGE service crews some major credit; I am not very happy with PGE right now, but their service crews are working really hard and in extremely dangerous conditions. It’s not their fault my power is out; apparently no less than three service crews have visited my neighborhood to try and figure out why we don’t have power.

In addition to sweet storm photos, including blog entries written on Harvest Market shopping bags, look forward to reviews of The Cunning Man, Murther and Walking Spirits, If He Hollers Let Him Go, Oryx and Crake, and Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. There may also be an apostrophe rant in the future, but I can’t make any promises.

I hope that all of you are well, wherever you are, and I look forward to having Internet again so that I can share my adventures with you.

-Meloukhia

I went on a bike ride on the Haul Road yesterday, because I knew that I would be idling around the house all day today waiting for the electrician. Well, not idling, actually, I am working, but the point is that I wanted to take awesome nature pictures to post today, since it’s sort of what I do on major holidays. Not that New Year’s is a major holiday for me at this point, it’s more like “hey ho, another year, another chance to screw up,” but maybe this will be the year I won’t screw up. Maybe this will be the year of awesome, when wonderful things happen. Also, I wanted to go on a bike ride because I haven’t gone out in a week or so, thanks to the invasion of the masses. All of whom I enjoyed seeing, but my great plan with Tristan of going for a bike ride or two while he was out here was apparently foiled.

At any rate, it was beautifully sunny yesterday, and quite toasty, at least from my perspective in a windbreaker on a bike, although the pedestrians might have felt differently about the whole affair. However, the surf was pounding; the National Weather Service says rain tomorrow, and I don’t doubt it with surf like that. So I took a bunch of pictures of the surf, although it was difficult to convey the sheer scale.

You have to remember that I was on top of a very tall cliff, and not close to the edge, but a fair ways from it. These cattails are right by the road, and that little outcropping was, uhm, far away from me. I am very bad with distances. So those waves were huge. I could see the spume and foam coming up over the edge of the cliff, which was quite impressive.

My Chinese mother calls cattails “hot dog plants” incidentally.

Here’s the same wave seconds later, cresting. See? Big.

Here’s a gratuitous foam shot without the cattails in the way, so you can really see the action. I really cannot fully communicate how incredible it was with pictures. As I mounted up and headed for the trestle, I thought about how excellent is is to be living at home again, and how thankful I was for being able to tootle along on a bike ride on a sunny day in a place that I love. I spent the leisurely ride back to the trestle gazing at the surf; I noted that most of the other people along the road did likewise.

From the trestle, I spotted these peace signs. It’s a little hard to tell, but there really were two. And the waves are still very large, although they happened to calm down right as I took this picture, probably to belie my claims of how huge they were. If it seriously gets storming, hopefully I can go to Jughandle and take some pictures of storm surge for you’all, then you can really see how we roll around here. Wet. And wild. That’s how.

I hope that all of you had a pleasant New Year’s, and that excellent things happen to you in the coming 12 months. I sense a great deal of excitement ahead (Iowa caucuses only three days away! Will there be an Edwards upset?) and I look forward to sharing it with you.