Miscellania: Deep Sea Edition

I came home last night to find what I thought was a rather large fish all wrapped up in the refrigerator but when my brother returned home he explained it was actually two fish that, while large for the refrigerator, were actually fairly smallish representatives of their species. It seems a friend of his has a boat and goes out in the deep Gulf (900 feet/275 meters) which is where he caught some tilefish. Our chilling tilefish are each almost two feet long; full-grown adults are often up to five feet. So it looks like this Memorial Day grilling will be seafood.

Not my brother's friend. Just
an example of  a largish tilefish.

So far Rainy Season has been hit or miss and the construction workers across the way have managed to dodge the occasional storm to finish installing doors (except the garage door), basic plumbing including vent pipes, basic asphalt shingle roofing and, possibly, basic electric. Some interior walls are up. Last week, one guy on a family roofing team across the river was killed by lightning and one of his brothers injured when they thought a storm had passed and went back up to continue their project. Two other brothers were there but unhurt.

This last platelet donation went reasonably well. Only a few complaints from the machine and none from me. I turned down the T-shirt, the penlight flashlight and the coupon for lunch at the hospital commissary but I did accept the $25 gasoline gift card which I gave to my brother. That's not a regular perk but something they offer based on cumulative donations although I don't know what my total is at this point except it's not whatever I thought it was.

Tomatoes and peppers are coming along nicely. The mangoes are starting to overwhelm. I seem to always have 8-10 on the counter at any one time waiting to be processed. Mango salsa for the tilefish!

The Clockwork Calendar

The weather folks announced Rainy Season is scheduled to begin this week. So far the clouds have rolled in on schedule every afternoon along with occasional thunder but no actual rain, yet.

In anticipation, the builders not only put up the under-roof on the new house across the way last week, but also managed to nail down the tar paper covering and install the windows so the interior is mostly waterproof now (although there are no doors either on the house or garage). The interior framing is installed as well but I haven't seen anyone around in close to a week now.

Meanwhile, while we're waiting for the rain:

There are butterflies everywhere. Mostly sulphurs and zebras of various shades of black and yellow. I saw a beautiful copper colored one this morning, like a small, dark Monarch, that blended in well with the dead leaves.

We have several buckets set up along the front walkway, three or four with tomatoes and a couple with peppers. We picked a couple of cherry tomatoes already and there's a nice bell pepper that'll be ready in a day or two. Others are ripening and more flowers are blooming every day. I've already chopped up a couple of ripe mangoes and there are more turning yellow-red. We have several green ones my brother brought in but I don't know if they fell or if he just picked them unripe. They're starting to soften so I'll cut them up and see if they're edible as is or if I have to cook them. So far this year, they're all on the smallish side but, if the rains do come as predicted, they could still grow more.

The bucket of sticks in water by the front door, which is just one of several scattered along the side of the house, has come to life after a couple of years and  seems to be blossoming into frangipani. As a matter of fact, they all are. The bougainvillea is in full bloom as is the desert rose and a dozen or so lilies between the house and the walkway. And the new coconut palm and banana tree have both outgrown their pots. (The banana's easy but the coconut will have to be placed far enough from where people and cars normally go so falling fruit doesn't kill or injure someone or damage a vehicle.)

The only downside right now is that the clouds have brought humidity to go with the heat and so we've had to close up the house again after a couple of glorious weeks and turn on the A/C.

Update: Right after posting this the clouds rolled in, the lightning struck and thunder roared and the rain came pelting down in sheets so thick you can't see the road out front. Rainy Season, right on time.

Redneck Studies: Consistent Randomness

In addition to my long-standing observations regarding the native redneck's (i.e., my brother's) inability to pursue any project to completion, I have also noticed a distinct tendency toward increasing randomness in his immediate surroundings.

On occasion, and for no apparent reason, he will go through the pantry and move cans and boxes of supplies from one shelf to another. I can't determine if he was actually looking for a specific item since nothing ever seems to be gone or used. They're all just moved. It happens, to a lesser extent (possibly because he hates leaving the door open), with the refrigerator as well.

Similarly, the lawn mower and various other yard implements can be found at any of three or four possible storage sites, not dependent upon where they were last used.

Late yesterday evening, he suddenly began stomping around the house in a foul mood, opening various drawers and going through the recyclable trash in his room and the kitchen. Being the first Sunday of the month, he had decided to pay a bunch of household bills. and now couldn't find them. We're talking mortgage, utilities, storage unit(s), credit cards--the works. He ransacked the house, and then his truck, and then the house again before giving up for the night. I know he was afraid he might have put them in with the other trash paper and thrown them out last week.

This morning he got up early and started rummaging through his truck again, scraping it out down to the floor mats. When I went out the first thing I noticed was a stack of envelopes sitting on one of the lawn chairs by the fire pit he never quite finished installing so I said, "I see you found all your bills."

"No I didn't."

"What's all that stuff on the chair, then?"

"What chair?"

"The lawn chair. There's what looks like a pile of bills and a bag of pistachios on it."

"That's probably the bills." He left off cleaning the truck* and went inside still pissed off but now at himself. Your welcome.

We've had a run of a few absolutely glorious days, warm, sunny, dry and breezy, perfect for sitting outside. I did so a couple of days ago with a book and iced tea, reading and watching the blue jays and mockingbirds fight over ownership of the bugs in the lawn (blue jays are more obnoxious and tend to win), and saying "Hi" to our black snake as she came home in the early evening from wherever she goes during the day (she stopped about four feet away when she noticed me and we acknowledged each other for a few minutes before she made a wide semi-circle to go around and back to her woodpile).

In short, it's been pretty much perfect outside and my brother had decided to do the bills outdoors and got everything set before he went inside, became distracted and completely forgot what he had intended to do and where. He'd walked right by them on his way to his truck and never noticed because, to my knowledge, he's never sat outside to pay the bills before. It was just another random (though thoroughly supportable) notion.

*And will not continue, now, until he can't find something else in the future.

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters!

The workers on the new house going up across the way finished blocking up the outside walls last Friday, the same day a load of prefabricated wood a-frame roof trusses arrived. Exactly the right number and exactly the right sizes to mock up the garage, the main body of the house and the gable on the opposite side from the garage. They're obviously working from a standardized, factory approved plan.

Yesterday morning the crew, or perhaps a new one made up of carpenters instead of masons, showed up to begin installation and this morning they were done which was a good thing because the rain came down in sheets around noon. They all left for the day.

It's supposed to rain again tomorrow so they probably won't be back to cover the framing with an actual roof until probably Friday when everything should have dried out.

But, at least, it is starting to look a bit like a house.

Suburban Zooarcheology

I came home yesterday evening to find my brother had lopped off more than a dozen fronds from the pineapple palm out front. It is now possible for a full-size adult human to walk around the tree without ducking. (He did a similar chop job with the orange tree by the driveway last week that went even further. I'm not sure whether he got carried away with the pruning or he was cutting it down and just stopped part way through. See: Redneck Studies: The 70% Complete Solution.)

There's a good view of those nasty spikes

I discovered two things as I gathered up the fronds and placed them by the side of the road for trash pick up.*

First: Pineapple palm fronds have long, thin, spiky and incredibly sharp stiletto-like leaves at their base which are quite capable of stabbing one in the hand, thigh, calf or anywhere else that gets too close and they will draw blood.

Second (and less painful but much more interesting): A 'possum up and died under the pineapple palm. I found parts of its disarticulated skeleton pressed into the ground. I have the skull, both halves of the mandible, both femurs, and several vertabrae (probably lumbar, but I can't be sure without others to compare them with). No ribs, no tail bones, no other leg or foot bones although I may just have missed them since they would be very small and it was getting dark.

The bones I do have are in perfect condition. No breakage, no scratches, no teeth missing. And clean. The animal must have died a while ago because there was no soft matter anywhere. (There was the very faintest odor which was sufficient to intrigue Paribanour when I went inside and presented my hands to her but it was faint enough that the other cats were totally uninterested.) skullsunlimited.com is asking $50 for just a skull (of course) and mine is every bit as good and I have the other bits, too.

These are from washington.edu and not mine, but mine look just like this

They're all laid out right now on a fertilizer bag by the front door until I can find a proper way to display them. Some sort of shadow box or something. In the meantime, I'll go back out under the tree and see if I can find any more pieces.

UPDATE: I went back out last evening while it was still light and found the pelvis, more long bones (not sure which), some more vertabrae including tail bones, and several ribs. Still haven't seen any of the very small foot bones.

* We get three trucks coming through on trash day. One automated truck for recyclables in their designated container, another automated truck for non-recyclables in their separate container, and one truck with humans attached picking up "yard waste," basically anything plantish larger than lawn clippings that used to be growing on the property.

Watching the Concrete Set

The new house being built just down the road seems to be going up in fits and starts. Each separate step seems to take half a day at most, followed by days of prepping(?), planning(?), scheduling(?) the next step.

The first load of concrete was used to make the outline of the foundation for the entire house, including garage. The first load of cinder blocks, several days later was placed to encase the line of concrete. A few days after that, the small bulldozer came back and refilled and leveled the space enclosed by the wall so the actual poured foundation would be only a few inches think instead of the foot or so height of the wall.

In the only case of two things happening at the same time I've seen so far, while the bulldozer was bulldozing, a crew with entrenching tools dug up the road median and the verge on our side (down by Neighbor Dan) which is where the the city water mains run. They didn't dig up the street itself so I suppose they bored under the pavement in order to run their pipes. I didn't see it happen but everything's filled in again so there must be a connection set up.

Last week more cement mixer trucks came by and poured the foundation for the house and garage and also put in the driveway. That took a little more than two hours, including the smoothing and leveling. The entire work crew spent the rest of the day sitting around watching the concrete set. I suppose wet cement presents an attractive nuisance and we certainly have kids in the area who would take advantage of the opportunity to put footprints, hand prints, initials and other graffiti wherever they thought they could get away with it, but surely one guard would have been sufficient, no?

Yesterday, several skids of cinder blocks were dropped off and, already today, the outer wall of the house is up over six feet high.

They may not work often, but when they do, they work fast.

Jump Starting the Cats

We turned on the air conditioning for the second time last evening. Just for the night. It was muggy and sticky and my brother wanted to get a good night's sleep as he had to get up early this morning. So we went around closing all the windows and the front door and cranked up the air, mostly to remove the humidity.

Prior to this, the cats had been flaking out in various locations. Mittens was in my room lying on a bookshelf by an open window. Jasmine was splayed out in the foyer not even pretending to look for lizards and had to be shoveled inside so we could close the door. Paribanour was installed in her usual spot atop the TV. Not one of them had so much as twitched for more than an hour.

The dehumidification was palpable almost immediately. I put down their evening kibble.

Within minutes they were chasing each other around the house, banging into furniture, bouncing off the walls and skittering around their humans. Up the end and across the top of the couch, onto my chair and over me, through the kitchen into the dining room, down the hall crashing into the closet door and then racing full-speed back through the living room into my brother's room and another crash. Repeat with variations.

After about twenty minutes of frenetic mayhem, they all collapsed in the living room.

The air conditioning is off again, for now.