Motion Detected 3/5/21

Thoughts by Richard Bleil

Motion detected at the back door. Technology today is amazing. I have an electronic home security system, and a separate electronic video doorbell all of which is operated through my home network. Watching a truly stupid movie my system informed me that there was motion detected at my back door. There really should not be any, so I turned on my rear camera only to discover I had a feline visitor. Or Star, my cat, did.

I saw my first couple of squirrels a couple of days ago as well. I’m holding onto a few food items to feed my backyard buddies. It’ll be fun to see how many friends I have. I guess I’m looking forward to meeting them.

Now that spring seems to have sprung, I’m thinking about what I need. I’ve decided to get a back yard shed because there is no room in the house for lawn tools like a lawnmower, so maybe today I’ll go take a look. I’m also considering a car port, but at least a shed. I also have a chemical to try to drive moles away from the home. With the soft spots I’m sure I have some kind of burrowing creatures, but I don’t want to harm them.

Speaking of doing no harm, I think it’s time to let my little house guest Rocky go. For those who don’t know, Rocky is a little field mouse that was wreaking havoc in my cabinets. I put a few humane traps out and captured the cutest little field mouse. I got a small creature cage and food to keep him for a brief time. I didn’t want to release him when it was bitterly cold and there was no food available, but it feels like it’s time so maybe, tomorrow, I’ll go for a drive in the country and set him free to survive or become part of the food chain. I never caught any of his family or friends, which makes me wonder how he was here, apparently alone.

Today was difficult. I had to take my vehicle in to have the brakes serviced, but fortunately it’s still under warranty so there was at least no charge. Of course, I have been dwelling on what happened at the college. I’m still hurting, and probably will be for quite some time. On the other hand, my midi keyboard arrived today. Seeing the writing on the wall, I knew I would need something to take up a little bit of my time, so I reached out to my artist friend and asked her if she can teach me how to write music. She claims I paid for ten lessons I’ve never used, so I guess we’ll try music. I was so excited to get it, but I cannot, for the life of me, get it to work on my computer even though it’s designed specifically to do so. Most of the time, you plug something into the USB port and it just loads the necessary drivers and works. I spent an hour on this and couldn’t get it working, so I guess I’ll just give up on it. No music lessons for me.

My magnetic stirrer heating mantle also arrived because when you’re depressed, spend money. This will work with distillation equipment I have purchased for my Renaissance Fair character that I wanted to use for a demonstration. But it doesn’t work. Just my luck. But I did figure out at least the general area where it seems to be failing so I think I can fix it. Actually, that will be fun. Then I’m going to try steam distillation on various things, such as citrus fruits.

I think that, maybe, I’m taking on too many projects because I’m trying to move on. I am something of a workaholic, and when I’m depressed or blue, I throw myself into my work too hard. At this point, I don’t have a job (and since I’ll no longer be teaching, I guess I’ll end up with a low-responsibility routine job) so I’m just trying to keep myself busy. Heck, I’m even planning on building a workbench in the basement, although there’s some work I need to do before I can get to it, although I did just have a brilliant idea for it. Since it’ll be very long, there’s no reason to make the top a consistent height. I’m going to make half of it lower than the other so I can more easily do things like drilling on it. So, let’s hope I don’t go insane. Oops, too late.