Christina DLR
@xtinadlr.bsky.social
Writer. Scientist. Solarpunk. Chicanx. Friend of Silica. Co-host of the podcast Solarpunk Presents
Spouse has an old school friend coming over for lunch. Is it acceptable to answer the door with a Hi, Nice to meet you, Welcome to our home, Please don't kill the wolf spider in the bathroom It's practically family at this point.
We ordered a couple of tiny patches for repairing a thermarest and they came in a big box with a 5-lb, 1000-page catalog of more than everything you could ever want for camping with car or mobile home. I did not know there are tents you can pitch ON THE ROOF OF YOUR CAR.
Bored with mere mice, Ninja has moved on to killing time.
OK, it's not the snowmageddon some of you are getting right now, but, still we're snowed in! Sad how little it takes to make the road disappear and the little hill impassable except with chains (which no one here has).
Today's the first time I've faced the conundrum of shovel a couple of inches of snow every couple of hours or do all ten inches at once at the end of the day. Advice?
I finally granted Ninja, our teenage cat not yet wise in the ways of the world, access to the cat door. She's so excited about this development, she's gone out and come back in about 75 times in the last two hours. I'm giving it until nightfall until she wears out the batteries!
Although, I'm not sure if this is because they took the day off or because at this point there are no mice left within a 200 meter radius of our home.
Yay! We've made it 24 hours without the cats bringing any mice, dead or alive, into the house.
The downside of the cat door: in just the last 36 hours, the cats have brought 5 dead mice and one live mouse into the house.
Needing to recover from On the Beach, I am now slogging through The Night Circus, which is turning out to be all tell and no show and all stage and no action. I mean, seriously, how many words does one need to go through to describe nothing that actually happens?
O.M.G.... On the Beach turned out to be the most depressing book I have ever read. And I have read a lot of books.
Just started reading On the Beach, because I hadn't before and haven't seen the movie(s) either. It's a lot of honorable people behaving honorably while living out humanity's last doomed days. Not terribly realistic yet also fascinating, but ultimately really depressing.
Ah, for the heady days of youth, when there was a reasonable gap between the sugar rush and the sugar crash.
The final thing I learned in 2025 is that that grey, bean-shaped thing that cats leave behind even if they eat everything else about the mouse, including the fur, feet, and tail, is the gall bladder. As you might imagine, it's really bitter.
Somehow it's fitting that it took me a couple of decades to read Momo from start to finish.
Yesterday I heard my other neighbors calling Chairman Meow "Sancho", because CM's official name is a Chinese expression for "long life" (because they've lost several cats already to deadly streets here), which I guess vaguely sort of sounds like Sancho.
I know it's probably totally unoriginal, but I'll never not find it funny that my neighbor's named their cat Chairman Meow.
Yay! The house is ours again. MIL and cousin/boyfriend left yesterday after 72 hrs, which was long enough for her to throw a tantrum about me, but not long enough for me to have a meltdown about her. I think this means I won. :)
Reading War of the Worlds for the first time and, it's weird, I keep having to reach for a dictionary!
Spouse is going down with the awful cold going around. If I manage to hold off long enough before I catch it, I might be able to quarantine myself for the 4 days MIL and her boyfriend are here (they invited themselves) for Xmas.
So, I made the rum raisin pie. It turned out exactly as expected: so rich it could only be eaten in 1:1 ratio with vanilla ice cream.
I was having a bad baking day yesterday, but "Who? Me? Measure?" Spouse, after mansplaining my mishaps (which at least resulted in yummy, if wonky GF cookies), killed the yeast in his stollen dough because he'd soaked the raisins in too much rum. Though this is partly my fault. I bought Stroh.
Sometimes you need the weekend to recover from the week, other times you need the week to recover from the weekend.
I was today years old when I learned there is such a thing as rum raisin pie. The pictures looks terrifying. Are there people out there who actually like this kind of pie????
From us (Spouse most especially) to all who celebrate, a very happy Turkey Day to you.
We've got a dogs and cats, living together situation going on over here these days.
Halloween party prep = vacuuming up real cobwebs before putting up fake ones.