I spent a Saturday morning and early afternoon at the library. I had to run a script on the Cardinal Scholar repository which, because of its more than a thousand items, takes a very long time. And I had to restart its server after I am done. So, until it was finished, I was stuck in the library.
I discovered the day before that IPR had ditched the RealPlayer server that it has had for ages, and which had not made IPR very popular online. IPR now makes its signal available using the PLS playlist format at both 128K stereophonic and 48K monophonic. This saves me from having to install RealPlayer on the Macs here in the library. It is no longer necessary, now that Mac users can listen to IPR in iTunes.
The past couple of weeks have not been good, weatherwise. We have Sirius Days right now, with hotter and wetter air than we have had in years. It is good that I have a job in an air-conditioned building, and a car with decent air conditioning. It is not so good at home, where my air conditioners strain in vain to cool down and dry out the air. As it stands, it is hard to breathe that hot and heavy air. It’s keeping my folks indoors, too.
This hot-and-wet guarantees nasty storms. Yet, we have had few of them in Fairmount, mostly because the storms dodge the town, going to our north or to our south. But when the storms do come, they seem odd, with the rain hitting the glass on the back door. This has never happened before. I was wondering what was done to the back roof to bring that about.
Last Thursday I discovered why my cat was not eating the dinner I put out for her the evening before: The ants were doing that for her! There was an ant highway going from the cat’s food bowls through the kitchen into the living room to the foyer, where they were emerging out a hole in the carpet along the edge where the foyer meets the living. But meanwhile it was a half hour of:
I put the cat’s food and water in a place other than where it was in order to throw off any ants stubborn enough to return to the kitchen.
It has been a long vacation this summer during the last days of June and the first days of July. The weather was very pleasant and sunny that week, to which summer retorted by bringing on the heat and humility, starting on Sunday.
The big event for me was the reconstruction of the back roof of my house on Thursday and Friday. I have more to say on this here.
I want to add that the roof looks clean and sturdy, which makes the front roof look dirty from the algae growing on it. My attempt on Sunday to clean those tiny weeds off the front roof with what was supposed to be oxygen bleach has failed.
I visited my local state park, Mounds State Park, on Tuesday morning. I have more on that here. Given it is bound by a junkyard, an airport, and a bunch of seedy subdivisions, it did not sound as promising as it turned out to be. The fact that my sister the teacher visits it often, and that I did not have enough time to prepare for a Purdue visit, was the clincher.
Friday was when I did a visit, not to Purdue, but to its bookshops (Von’s and PUB). I did not buy much, though: Two books by Guy Delisle and a book on how to become the ‘quinessential gentleman’.
Speaking of my sister the teacher, on Saturday I decided to watch the town fireworks from my sister’s side yard this year. Watching it there had the advantages of visibility over the park’s trees and a quick exit when the booms are over. Oh, and the availability of insect repellent to ward off the misquitos. The disadvantage was the Justus private park across the street, whose people who paid to park there would not shut their yaps!
On the last day of my vacation I made an appointment at the vet for my cat Thyme; I discovered that the local egg farm, where I used to buy my eggs, has been closed for years; and I went to Muncie to eat, buy some dress shirts (my current ones are old, worn at the collars, and spotted with food stains), and get some new dress shoes.