Today…she is sunburned and headachy. And it leaks. There is a split in the hose somewhere about halfway along its length.
Jane worked in the hot sun for 6 hours laying new irrigation line.
by CJ | Jun 17, 2015 | Journal | 14 comments
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Oh, poor Jane, having worked so hard and then getting that leak!
Please take enough rest to recover before going after it.
Can you plant something thirsty there and just leave it at that? After all, the water is still going into the garden. Or is it leaking too much for that?
Leaks like that have a bad habit of getting bigger if not repaired. We had a small leak in a water line that eventually became a trout stream. Nonetheless, please recover before you try to repair, Jane!
THis is a serious leak. She has rested today, except for beating me to the washout of the fish filter.
It was just so unfair to see that this morning. Hole in the dirt where it is—made its own means to locate it, at least.
Poor thing. I hope you get it fixed. BTW is it to late just pour cement over everything and imagine instead?
Lol—no, we’ve nearly got it. Only now the problem is at the bottom of a mudhole. We are doggedly taking it easy until we regain our energy.
Entirely unrelated, this video about the Japanese and their concerns about the “deaths” of their Aibo robotic dogs showed up on one of my groups this morning. I thought it was an interesting insight into possible futures, so thought I would pass it along. I hope the link works!
http://www.nytimes.com/video/technology/100000003746796/the-family-dog.html?emc=edit_th_20150618&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=2732432
Worked for me. I think people tend to put emotional content into everything, in part because we’re set up to process emotional content. If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. We don’t just name pets, but cars, computers, furniture….
The somewhat(?!) tawdry following piece asks an android, “What do you dream of?” I was so waiting for, “Electric sheep”! FWIW, we’ve been simulating emotions on computers for over fifty years.
I can understand this. At one point, before we began to prepare to move north, we had 6 fish tanks, a 20 foot bird flight cage, a vivarium with lizards, two cats…and when we moved, we had our two cats. Found homes for everything. But no tanks. Nice view, the apartment. But I missed my fish. I ended up getting one of those Ecoglobes, with two tiny shrimp—less than half an inch long. And potted plants.
A move later and we had two cats and a tank. Now, with a house, we have two cats, a marine tank, a freshwater tank, a garden, and a 5000 gallon koi pond.
I can understand, if the rules say no pets, that you could get real attached to something that moved without direction, whatever it might be.
If the rules say “no pets”, after first proving myself to be a quiet and reliable tenant, I would explore precisely what is meant by “no” and “pet”. For example people have claimed that an aquarium is an interior decoration feature, not a container for pets.
What kind of lizards did you have?
Skinks. SMall grey skinks. Livebreeders in a vivarium with a little water feature and plants.
LEt me tell you how clever baby skinks are about getting away from mama and papa: fast, athletic, and apt to be found in the kitchen hallway—bits of dust and cathair that move…
It’s a very funny quirk of being human that we so easily imbue an object with a personality. Ships, planes, cars get names and personalities. Dolls and stuffed animals become a cherished part of childhood and sometimes into adulthood.
Real animals and plants can be even more so. I was unhappy when a valiant old tree in my back yard finally lost its battle to live and had to be taken down. The tree was there from the original owner. I just liked it. (I’m not attached to the other two trees still on the lot.) And I’ve always loved my cats. There’ve been many throughout my life.
It’s been curious for me, seeing my reactions to BJD dolls, coming back to that as an adult. They get a personality if I’m attached to them. Wiishu has a personality, for instance. … And R2-D2 and C-3PO, and certainly Data, do. … So it makes some sense (in a very human way) that we’d think of robotic dogs as having a personality. — I wonder how dogs and cats react to an Aibo or other robot? Do they act as if the robot has a personality, is alive? Curious idea. They might. An ape might.
When I was a little kid, I had a little toy dog, who ran on D batteries. His legs moved so he could walk. His head turned, he barked, and his tail wagged. He had dark brown fur over his shell. He was cute, and I called him Pepper. That little toy was well loved. I kept him when he stopped working. He became like one of the other stuffed animals I had as a little boy, but he mostly sat on a shelf, still out, still a little friend. His fur grew threadbare. At some point, he got a little shirt or cape, sewn by my grandmother, I think. (Curiously, it had an Asian feel, black and white with some stitching loosely like Asian characters on the hem.) Pepper eventually had to go, he got so worn. But he was a neat little guy. (By then, his plastic grey shell underneath was visible in places. He’d been stored a while.) — There was also an Easter bunny stuffed animal (pink and sky blue) and a teddy bear with unusual teal green ears who both stayed around until they were too old (they would’ve stayed longer, but got insect damage during a move.) There was also a very unusual toy elephant hand-made out of vinyl by my grandmother’s younger sister. I wish it hadn’t been damaged too, it was really something. Ahem, hot pink in places and sort of a taupe/grey in others, but a great little stuffed animal, very unique. It didn’t matter to me that he was pink; he was also grey, and I got him long before a boy much cares about details like that.
I still remember those from childhood. They sat on display or in a closet or drawer, when I became a teen and young adult. I was unhappy to have to get rid of them due to too much damage, as an adult. But even as a young teen, they were out in my room, on a shelf.
It’s a funny thing that we get attached, and give personality to “things,” animate or inanimate, living or simply…make-believe, or machines. Yet we do.
(LOL, I notice that’s a happily married Japanese couple. He says, “She gives me directions, and I follow, so we’re a team.” Heheheh. Sweet couple. Nice sense of humor, and the love is clear even past the language barrier. Good for them.)
Off-Topic: I see the anime “.hack” series (several) have made it to digital/streaming, at least on iTunes, not sure of others. (The franchise is pronounced dot-hack.) But oddly, “.hack//Sign”, the only one I’ve seen (a complete series) and a story I really liked, is *not* yet available. I think it was the first that spawned the others. I will keep looking in hopes it will get released on digital too. (It’s on old, out-of-print DVD’s, a big, expensive boxed set, which is how I watched it years ago.) So I’d appreciate getting to watch via download/streaming.
The storyline involves a big plot twist at the end, and is about a virtual reality game world, so there’s story within story. Worth a watch if you haven’t seen it before.
—–
Fanboy and Fangirl alert: Star Wars Rebels season 2 starts on June 20th. — Though It’ll require Disney XD on cable or else download/streaming when services pick that up; should be about a week or less after airing, like the first season.
Grumbles: I want the Chopper action figure, but there’s still hoarding and lack of availability. No, I won’t pay $30 to $60 for a little action figure when the others are $9 these days. So…I will wait until Chopper is cheaper. heh. — Oh my, I was 11 or 12 when the first movie came out. A year older when ST:TMP came out.
Er, so much for the fanboy/fangirl alert. 😉
There’s this sort of kifish looking figure on Tatooine in the first movie. Only a real kif would outdo him quickly.
And…Han Shot First. 😉
You saw the auction of the early(-est?) Star Wars script featuring Luke(?) Starkiller? In it, Han shot first. I think Han shooting first gives Han a greater dramatic scope–his morality improves more. Lucas was very obsessed with toy sales, since he got a bigger piece of them than the film, so perhaps his rewrite was to make Han a morally acceptable toy for children. But then there’s Boba Fett, the “bounty hunter” cum mob enforcer, who is popular.
Yes, I’d seen that. Heh, and there were early drafts, even McQuarrie’s great production paintings, where Luke was a girl (without Leia) and Han had a lightsaber.
I do wish George would ressit the urge to keep re-editing and changing his films. Er, but that’s another topic.
In the film I saw as a kid, Han and Greedo are in that bar scene. It’s not too easy to tell, but Han gets his gun out while Greedo is talking. Han shoots Greedo, at any rate, and Greedo had his gun out, intending to shoot Han. I took it that Han shot Greedo first. I don’t recall if Greedo shot and missed. But what stuck was that Han shot Greedo before Greedo could shoot Han dead.
Interestingly enough, my parents both ddin’t seem too put out by this. They liked Westerns and were (of course) far more experienced with great filsm than I was back then. (I was 11 or 12, not exactly connoisseur material. Heh.) — Han was a rogue hero, an anti-hero, like some Old West cowboy or like Bogey, maybe. I don’t recall any great discussion opposing Han’s actions.
Personally, I take that as evidence that the viewing public are sometimes more intelligent than given credit for.
Yes, it makes Han have more of a character arc, moral growth. It means he’s a more complicated and realistic character.
But if some bounty hunter working for some underworld crime lord catches you in a bar and wants you to pay up on a big debt you can’t pay, and wants to kill you if you don’t? Isn’t that morally ambiguous already? It could be argued Han was defending himself, if he did shoot first.
So the argument to have Greedo shoot and miss, when they’re sitting scross a little booth table? Uh…even I couldn’t miss at that range. If, y’know, I were ever in such a situation. (Highly, highly unlikely.) Across a room or a street? Well…I can guarantee I couldn’t read a nametag or tell what color Han’s eyes were from that distance.
Heck, I liked Han more than Luke as a hero character, even though Luke was this wholesome farm boy aw-shucks sort of hero, and it was his coming of age story. I did like Luke, I just liked Han’s character more.
(Boba Fett had this costume and mystique going on, and marketing beforehand. IIRC, the Hasbro figure and the character got promotions in the fan club and on TV before he appeared in the (ahem) Christmas Special (I liked it back then, I was a kid) which was, IIRC, before he appeared in the 2nd movie. — So they did a great job of building up audience expectations of this villain character. — I was very excited to get the action figure through the fan club. Heheh.)
For that matter, Darth Vader is this iconic super-villain, yet he’s popular too.
Even if it had been very blatantly obvious that Han shot Greedo, say if Greedo never even drew, I doubt it would’ve hurt the character popularity. Just IMO.
I can understand how George would want Han to be morally good, not to go past a certain limit. Yet Han is a rogue who’s had a rough life, not a knight-in-shining-armor sort of hero, or a wide-eyed farmboy like Luke. And that’s part of Han’s charm; it makes him relatable, flawed, human, believable.
— I just thought of it: On the back cover of Pride or else Venture, some blurb editor compared one hani captain and hani generally, favorably toward Chewbacca and Wookiees in general. — Heh. Like comparing apples and oranges, but it did help sell books. 😀 — On the whole, I like hani a great deal and like Wookiees a great deal also. — Separate universes, separate characters, both pretty great aliens. (I still need to write that op/ed on the troulbe with Wookiees and speaking/translation.
Aside: How many electric razors do you wear out (and how many barbers!) if you try to shave a Wookiee? 😀 Could be hazardous finding out. Not to mention, gotta wonder what’s under all that hair. 😀
:: veers frantically back on-topic ::