Ramblings of a rural(ish) geek

not very hard right now, but they tell us that it will continue for the next 12 hours or so. OTOH, it really hasn't rained since last week, and J and his band of helpers got the shed framed and sheathed before the rain started. This weekend, we get to shingle and paint and wait for it to settle enough to put the floor down.

I have ushered two UMS concerts since I last wrote -- a string quartet concert at Rackham Auditorium, and a solo pianist at Hill Auditorium, both very good. Now the UMS season is done. I missed most of the spring concerts due to my own performance schedule. The one concert that I was available to usher was cancelled by the performers. (OK, there were some shows that I had little-to-no interest in, and they'd have to actually pay me to usher.)

I have been working in the garden the last few days, and my right thumb hurts halfway up the forearm. I know why, and I also know that there's nothing to be done for it, other than to not weed. Which really isn't an option.

The neighbor's chickens have been wallowing in my strawberry bed. As long as that's all they do, and they continue to do it at the end where the plants died over the winter, I guess I'm OK with it. The chickens aren't supposed to get out, but they have three kids under 10, and one or more of them cannot/cannot remember to latch the chicken door.

and chilly today. It was warm yesterday, but it's been on the cool side for April most of the week. (I wore my winter jacket to rehearsal on Monday. Good thing I did, because it was snowing when we came out.) I ran errands on Wednesday in the nice weather because I don't like doing them in the rain, especially when I've got a stop at donation centers on the list. I got into the garden yesterday after work for weeding. In a garden I haven't really worked on in a couple of years, so I didn't get a large area done. It will take a long time to finish the spring garden work at that pace, but I will eventually get into areas that don't need as much work.

We've had three voters drop their ballots at the township hall, even though the envelope clearly says STH. We've also had three voters return their unvoted ballots to STH, telling the clerk there that "I don't live in ST, I don't vote in ST." So I wrote up a letter saying "Yes, you *do* vote in ST for school elections. Here's your ballot again. We sent you a letter in early March telling you that there would be a ST school election." and re-sent their ballots. Another 2oz stamp and a trip to the PO because people won't read their mail, or contact either township hall. (At least now I know that a ballot envelope + mailing envelope weighs 2oz, so I don't have to wait in line, I can just drop it in the box at the PO.)

which is to say "there will be weather". Whether it makes sense or not is something else. Yesterday morning, it was 35F when I went to work. Yesterday at 3pm it was 70F and I had some windows open. This morning at 8am it was 26F (yes, I'd closed the windows when it started to cool off yesterday). On the plus side, at least it didn't rain or snow or wintry mix. It's still below freezing at 1pm, but it is at least mostly sunny. The cats are glaring at the cold outside while sitting in sunbeams.

The daffodils are showing buds, and a couple of them may open today, but I won't be surprised if they don't. There will most certainly be daffodils blooming by Sunday. There are still more branches down in the yard, but I'm going to go pick them up tomorrow, or maybe even Sunday. Today is "move crap in the basement"(*) day, and I can't do both. I also have to go pick up cat meds.

* -- A desk that's been in the corner is going to work because it's a better size for me to run an election on than the table I've been using, and so I have to rearrange that space. And sort out stuff to Just Go Away. I took four boxes away earlier in the week, and there's another box for the Friends of the Library sale. (which they're not accepting until next week, so it's in the living room.) I need to ask my sister if she wants the "Cool-est" cooler that she Kickstarted and then they wouldn't ship to Alaska. It's been in my basement since Mum moved to NC. (Sis hasn't driven to the CONUS since Mum got it.) There's also Grandma K's china that I want out of my basement -- I already have Gramma B's china, I don't need two sets of 1930's Federal/Montgomery Ward china!

Chilly and damp, but no new snow since Sunday. It rained yesterday - never really hard, but we got over an inch by the time it stopped. Most of the snow has melted -- only the remnants of snowpiles, and the drifts in shaded areas. The cats are not terribly pleased with this -- they want *dry* weather, thankyouverymuch.

The sandhill cranes are back - they were in the yard on Sunday morning when I went out to fill the birdbath/hang the birdfeeders. I haven't seen them yet today, but they sometimes get a late start when it's dreary.

DC was out sick this week, so I got to do her things as well as mine (payroll and filing, mostly). I had to have J come in and put on his IT hat so I could get software installed on my computer. sigh.

Rehearsals for the next LCCB session started this week. I will not be playing that concert (the Farmington concert is at the same time!), but I've been asked to play tenor for a few weeks to get the new guy familiar with the music. They have Jerry Bilik coming in to work with them in April, so I'll stay through that, then step away until late May. Section leader thinks I may be playing TSax this summer.

Very little snow left on the ground (just remnants of the really big piles), and it got warm during the week -- above 50F! sun! Also rain! and wind! Yesterday (Friday), though, the weather changed. Chilly, damp, windy, ice accumulating on the grass and the decks. Today at least it's not precipitating or blowing, but it's still very damp, and my back is quite unhappy with it. (I had to run errands on Friday, and even though I was properly dressed, it still bothered my spine.)

The cats appreciated the warm & sunny days, but were very annoyed with me yesterday and today. Sorry, guys, I don't like it either!

LCCB concert coming up on Sunday. There is one passage that I will be sitting out -- the guy who doesn't know how to play soft (CI) is playing it wrong and thus making those of us who are playing it correctly sound wrong. It's annoying. And then there's another passage where the part is written "one only, pp". At rehearsal Tuesday, DM asked another section to play cues, rather than just having me play p or mp. hmph! We'll see how that works on Sunday - I expect we'll run that section as part of the sound check to see what the balance is. I mean, I'd rather have someone else playing cues than have CI flailing, loudly, at it, but if I can make it work by just playing a little louder....

I skipped FCB rehearsal on Monday -- FPS decided that after school activities could go on as scheduled (they'd cancelled school because the DOT hadn't finished plowing the roads at 5am, by 3pm most roads were at least passable); but it was going to be two-swear-word cold by the time I got out of rehearsal, much less got home 60 minutes later, and I'd been getting "road closure due to crash" messages all afternoon on all of the main routes. I decided to follow the first rule of Winter Driving, which is "don't".

LCCB rehearsal was cancelled on Tuesday afternoon, as the director and president kept getting emails from people saying that they weren't going to make it to rehearsal because they were still snowed in (Livingston County is really slow about getting the secondary and back roads plowed). And it was going to be one(very strong!)-swear-word cold at the end of rehearsal.

But the work of elections and local government goes on, so off I trundled, extra mug of hot water in the bag so I could have not-coffee-flavored tea. (True, I *could* put a kettle in the kitchen, but I'm the only one who'd use it, and it's easier to put hot water in a travel mug.)

The cats have been pleased with the sunbeams to sleep in -- Annabelle has been snoring in a sunbeam for much of the last week. Ji comes into the south room to bask for a while, but then goes back to sleep in his nest on the bed. After glaring at the snow-covered outside.

Two days of sight reading is hard on the brain. Add in going back to work after a couple of weeks away, and I have been a bear of very little brain most of the week (except at work, I hope).

There was a message from County Elections when I got in on Tuesday "your reimbursement numbers don't match. why?" The answer to that, I am afraid, was my error. Two of them, even! A random number entry error that I managed to commit every time I added up the column, and a missing timesheet that made it hard to reconcile. But I tracked down the missing timesheet and fixed my math error and everything is now correct! whee!!

Also on Tuesday, a different email from County Elections about a possible May election for less than 400 of our residents-- how much work we'll need to do for it is very unclear at the moment. The school elections contract we have with Ingham County says that we may be responsible for administering the AV portion of the vote, but it's not at all clear *how* we are to do that. I have asked Ingham County Elections for clarification. (In a perfect world, all we'd need to do is provide Ingham County/SCS with voter information and they'll take it from there, but I doubt it'll be that easy.) At the very least, we'll have to notify affected voters about the election and that they will not be voting at the Twp Hall, but we can't do that until we know how IC/SCS wants us to handle it. So we hurry up and wait.

The weather has been very odd. Very warm for January, rain and wind. The piles of snow in the yard are long gone, most parking lot snow piles are gone as well. The pond is almost completely melted -- the remaining ice "sheet" is about a quarter of the pond surface. I've put a couple of armloads of branches on the burn pile since the wind let up, and there's still more to pick up. But it's much colder today than it was yesterday, and I didn't have my gloves on, so I only did one load today. And it has just begun to snow. (probably not going to stick, but it is indeed snowing.)

The cats are displeased by the weather --they both want to go out when it's not raining or snowing, but it's been cold and/or windy. This morning, Annabelle meowed and scratched at the side door until I let her out. A couple of minutes later, she was at the back door wanting in. It takes her about two minutes to get from the side door to the back door...

(edit for grammar. sigh)

No trick-or-treaters. To be fair, the porch light was off and the front curtains were closed, but I was outside for a while before it got really dark and didn’t see any unusual traffic. The neighborhood hasn’t had a critical mass of appropriately aged kids since DB started high school, and so most people take their kids into town where they’re expected.

i was at the office until 5 doing random bits of election setup. Yesterday, MR and DN came in to help — MR and I did outside stuff, DN did inside stuff. Monday we will put up the interior signs and get the stuff we can’t do until Monday done. The absent voter board isn’t coming in until noon on Tuesday, although I’ll probably go in earlier (I’m not chairing it this time, which pleases me!)

I caught a cold last Friday at Hill, so I masked at work and slept in the living room, and skipped rehearsal on Tuesday. J developed symptoms late in the week, but I think it’s a different virus because they’re different from mine. BC came in to work on Tuesday with a mask, as well — laryngitis and congestion.

Frost this morning, lasting well after sunrise. No ice in the birdbath, but that’s because there wasn’t any water in it. I thought about going into town for Half-Off-Candy Day, but decided that I didn’t care that much. I’ll see what’s left when I do the grocery run on Wednesday afternoon, and that will be good enough.

I got the NW garden cut back to just the things that have seeds or flowers still on them. I pulled the phlox (pulling it out in the fall gives the daffodils a chance to show off in the spring), cut back the coneflowers, and thinned the goldenrod. Because the phlox is so thick, and I never did get the daffodil leaves cleared in the spring, the soil out there was not rock-hard, so I was able to pull a lot of grass. It's sunny today, and I really should get out to the east garden and finish cutting back things there, but we actually got rain yesterday(!) and I don't want to walk in a wet garden. They tell us that it may rain some more this week, but dry on the weekend. When I have another concert, and a whole pile of Halloween decor to prep for it.

The Livingston halloween concert yesterday went pretty well. The french horns won the costume contest - they were "very French horns", and had wine bottles and baguettes and French flags and berets. We did our swan costumes, again. I suspect we'll be doing them until they stop making the swan hats. Some of us had 'baby swans' - the section leader wound up with two beanie baby swans, and gave one to me. I need to find a better way to wear it for next year -- I don't want to pin it to the hat, but the shoulder thing I came up with this year wasn't stable. Maybe a framework on the hat? We played music from a lot of Westerns, and I was wandering through the pet section at Meijer, and there was a cowboy outfit for a dog with a small black cowboy hat. I bought it for my swan....

I have been working on my FCB costume. Actually buying bits for it this year, because I just don't have time to build anything. To be fair, the bit I got this year is a wig, and those are hard to make.

BossClerk is really starting to look for a proper Deputy Clerk (one who lives in the township and can actually follow her as clerk), so I've been doing a lot of job tracking (it's 90% filing). The hard part of finding a Clerk is that it's really two jobs in one (Accounts Payable and Elections), no benefits, and for all that it's the highest paying job at the township hall, it's still not a lot of money.

Two outdoor concerts this week. Both in sub-optimal conditions. Monday was not-hot but really humid (80F, dew point 78F); Tuesday was hot and humid (85F, dew point 73F). Monday was no shade but more often than not a breeze; Tuesday was shady but no breeze. I had my "stroller" fan on my stand both days, but really only ran it on Tuesday. Once I'd cooled off from setup on Monday, I didn't really need it. Played better on Monday than on Tuesday, mostly due to actually being familiar with the music. :)

And now I am done with that until September (there is one more LCCB performance scheduled, but I will be out of town for it). I have unloaded the chairs and music stands from the car, and put them away, as well as putting the tables/place markers/wagon into their storage places. Have determined that I really should at least wash the plexiglas sheets, but that can wait until the weather gets better. Also need to sort the LCCB music into the files. (They send PDFs every season for printing or tablet use, and I don't like reprinting things, so I have a file box in the music room.)

Very little else to report. It's been hot and humid (thanks, heat dome!), so I've not been doing a lot of work in the gardens. Picked up a couple of loads of weeds from around the pond, cut back the daisies I could reach without wading into that garden (wasn't dressed for it, and I've learned my lesson about that. Milkweed + QAL + rough daisy leaves = a very itchy couple of days.)