Peeking into the rock

Some time ago I spilled water on my laptop. The computer is fine, but the keyboard is toast. I have spent a significant amount of time spread out over a larger amount of time tryintg to replace the keyboard. Not aided by the fact that the fellow I used to (up until this event actually) considered my computer guy kept spacing me out! Anyway after hearing for the fourth time that he had forgotten my issue, I took matters into my own hands and assayed the Dell website. No joy. I tried live chat. Nope, they don't support alienware with live chat. They gave me a phone number. I called. I spent the next two hours exhausting my recourses as one polite and thorough person after another in four different departments failed to come up with a replacement keyboard and sent me along to the next person in the vain hope that they would be able to help me somehow.

Tried googling it. Got nothing but references to new laptops or miscellaneous parts for laptops which are not alienware.

Gave up and planned on tunring the laptop into a desktop and buying a cheap used laptop for mobile writing. Keith (the young roommate I often refer to and seldom explain) suggested asking at a modder's forum. Brilliant! Not because it immediately panned out, but because it indirectly led me back to Tom's Guide, where I've researched many problems in the past. I signed up for the forums and asked if anybody had any suggestions for me, and within a couple hours somebody did.

It was a google search that returned my keyboard (and a similar but not identical one).

Same search.

Different searchers.

Different search results.

Because Google is so fucking clever and tailors its results to the searcher, see? This is so useful to the user, isn't it? The filtered, tailored view of the world? Getting exactly what google's algorithm has decided you really want and need, and not, for example, the exact thing you searched for, word for word?

Okay, anyway, the thing is, my keyboard is ordered and it should be fine.

On another front, everybody keeps asking me when I'm getting a dog. It depends on when I can convince somebody I can handle the kind of dog I need. Specifically, I'm waiting a few days so I can walk into the shelter office without any kind of limp.

I have one more disappointment to share with you--the tomato plants I planted this year, which were supposed to include "Black Krim," appear to all be some kind of orange cherry tomato. So no delicious black slicers for me this year. But my pole beans and zucchini are great!

It's a week and a half since Truffle had an abcessed tooth and two tumors removed. Today she is lively, happy, willing to venture out in the wet, and you'd never know she'd been through that, or that she had arthritis.

I betcha if it was me I'd still be complaining.

Also, you know how I said it was raining when I woke up? It's not still raining, but's it's still wet, and the forecast shows chance of showers nearly every day this week. It's not enough to break the drought, but every drop counts.

(normally it would be raining two days out of five or something for the last two months).

And I did a bad thing today. Yesterday I finished a four-day process of making candied orange peels and I had syrup left that had dripped off the orange peels. I coated walnuts with it and cooked them in butter and . . . ate them.

Also yesterday I saw poppy plants that were bigger than two fists together already.

And I went and watched adorable children dancing Greek dances, but that deserves its own post.

I collected about two liters of blackberries along the Arroyo Seco path by University Terrace Park today, and came home to make jam.  I almost lost it from spacing out.  But the jam, while too thick, is not burnt.  There's burnt jam on the bottom of the pot, but the rest of the jam tastes good (not amazing).  I think I should make another batch with the berries from Emma's house.  Also, since I am not scheduled at work this week, I think I should get strawberries and make strawberry jam for Emma.  And that will be pretty much it for jam.  Well, and lemon marmalade.  I'm not making apricot jam this year, because except for the strawberries I have a policy of not buying fruit for jam this year.  I've used wild plums and blackberries, and I can use my own lemons.  I decided that jam is not the best use for the Satsuma plums.  I have plenty of other projects for those.  And for the apples.  I used to think home canned applesauce was kind of a waste, but I ate all my applesauce last year and wished I had made more, so I suppose I will make more this year.  If the apples and pears at Emma's house are any good this year -- last year they weren't, and I don't know why -- I can do something with them too. 

I also have figs coming along, but Zack will account for all of them in desserts he makes for the Wednesday night game meeting at Connie's house. I have been dropping by there for a half-hour or so after I walk the dogs at Ocean View park, which has a little hillside path leading out of the dog area.  It overlooks the river and the Boardwalk on the other side, which is quaint and nostalgic for me because Ted and I used to live near there for a few years and when we worked at the Boardwalk we used to go there by crossing the railroad trestle near there.  You're not supposed to take your dogs offleash on the little hilly path but I had gone there several times and met several other offleash dogs there before I even saw the sign.  So I ignore it.


We spent two hours at the berrying today.  The dogs actually got bored after a while and came and stood around me with eager expressions -- like, Can we go do something else now? But when other dogs came along the path they were happy.  I think that's the only place in Santa Cruz city where you can take your dog offleash and get in a mile-long walk.

I'm killing time because I'm getting Emma at about one o'clock in the morning and I didn't put myself to bed earlier and now there's no point.    She's essentially working a double shift this week, and by double I mean double. I did that once -- I worked spinach season at the freezer plant and ten hour days at the small leather goods factory.  I did it because it seemed romantic and I thought it would only be for three weeks because spinach season was really short.  But it went on for more like two months and I was really wiped.  And then one year when I didn't get a teaching job and I was subbing half-heartedly and we were pretty strapped Ted worked as a manager at a fast food joint at the same tinme as he was a cook at the University.  He did it for a few months and then I put my foot down, because while he was doing that I couldn't get a real job because there were the kids and all the stuff around the house to take care of and he was exhausted all the time and I had to take care of him, too.  Most people who moonlight for a long time take on a part-time job for their second job, not a full-time one.  But Emma's only doing this for a week, fortunately. 

I always think in ":we" instead of "I" when I think about doing things or going places, even though "we" has to mean me and the dog(s) nowadays.  Sometimes I remind myself of that Star Trek Next Generation episode where they captured a single Borg soldier and he was completely freaked out about being separated from his pod or whatever it was called. 

I'm all sticky from handling the blackberries. 

Another project I want to do is to take cuttings from the prune tree in Emma's yard, because those are very nice and you don't see that variety around here.  Most of the fruit in Emma's yard is suffering horribly.  I suppose it's from neglect but I have seen neglected fruit trees that had better and more abundant fruit.  I don't see any sign of disease: just mostly empty branches, and last year most of them except for the plums and blackberries did not develop much flavor.

She's ready!  I'm going to get her now.

There are two kinds of blackberries (at least) growing along the Arroyo Seco Canyon trail (that sounds so heavy-duty and hiking-boots grand, doesn't it? But it's an asphalt path along the edge of a city park), One of them is ripe right now. So when I take the dogs down the trail I collect berries, usually getting a good handful each time. That's my fresh fruit -- I feel guilty bujying anything when I haven't finished off the pears and peaches I canned last summer (I did finish off the plums). This summer, I think I'm, drying more of the fruit if I get similar windfalls to last summer.

The sides of the trail are completely lined with these berries, and poison oak, and there's a patch of native honeysuckle. Native honeysuckle is smaller than the thug kind, and has a purplish flower that grows in clusters. It's lacking the heavy fragrance, but it has the sweet nectar: a smaller drop, to be sure. Also it doesn't have the thug growth habit: instead of sprawling all over and choking out everything in its path, it grows gracilely up through the underbrush and sends a few slender waving branches into the air.

I've always been immune to poison oak. When I was a little kid I was horrible about it. I would cart around the leaves and show them to people to harrass them. I didn't realize then that poison oak rash can be really serious for people. Then I also learned that immunity can sometimes go away without warning, so it became clear that it was not a good idea to test that. So I avoid poison oak like other people, except that I don't worry about it when I do. I don't want to find out the hard way that I'm nt immune any more, and I don't want to be spreading the oils anywhere where people might have to touch them.

So I'm pickign these berries and keeping an eye out for the poison oak, which is really lush and beautiful at this time of year, with big, tender leaves and goregous sprays of yellowish-green berries. And then I notice a soft touch at my elbow, which is uncovered because I wasn't thinking about how I'd be picking berries and should wear long sleeves to protect against the thorns. The soft touch is a big fat beuatiful tender poison oak leaf. I'm disappointed that I've failed to notice it before. All the way back up the trail my elbow itches, in that phantom way that your head itches when people are talking about lice.

That was yesterday. I don't have any rash today, though.

On another note, Emma still has a nasty black eye from getting head-butt by a big dog on Thursday. The hospital visit cost, with discount for paying up front, two and a half times as much as the one in Prague. And I'm not sure that the doctor's fee isn't separate . . .