91625:

kontextmaschine:

Doing a bit of decorating and wondering, to what extent am I even supposed to have ashtrays anymore? I’m not particularly expected to have spittoons or antimacassars.

They’re small and ornamental.

Yeah, and then how do I balance their ornamental value catching eyes on an otherwise empty horizontal surface vs. utility catching ash in proximity to places smoking people might want to occupy? Should I have some deployed for every obvious place to settle? In reserve, like drink coasters?

Doing a bit of decorating and wondering, to what extent am I even supposed to have ashtrays anymore? I’m not particularly expected to have spittoons or antimacassars.

Yeah, really just appreciating how much better living in my house is than just a year ago, and I haven’t even gotten to the real renovation yet

Might go with rose as my bedroom incense scent, biggest issue will be the temptation to start making constant Utena references

The table’ll only seat 5, food for large-party entertainment will be the grill out back

Hasami porcelain place settings for 5

Just appreciating how much better the house and my life experience in it has gotten in the past year

Okay, more bittercress and other weeding today, all the stuff of interest rn is the very preliminary growth of stuff that’s tiny when mature so you’ve got to look real close.

Think I can make this the last year for it and even all the clovers but one, then tomorrow year will be last for the final clover and crabgrass (and that only so long cause I’m always giving it freshly-turned earth to establish in)

Then more Blueberry Hill smashing, first reaching in to remove the even-pressure-treated-still-rotting fence boards I used to frame it and then turning the loose-ish piles of brush into denser flats of branches and twigs, probably 2 more days of that then I gather up the last of the year’s leaves to pile on.

Then inside, everything’s done in the more peripheral rooms so I’m sorting the kitchen, emptying cabinets and drawers I haven’t addressed since move-in and restocking them in light of what I’ve learned of the room’s rhythms of use

kontextmaschine:

Ah, okay, after I exhausted the sampler I got some more frankincense sticks but they were underwhelming, got some others and not only are they more appropriately fragrant but more long-lasting, and I set up a short vase to keep them ready by the burner that really balances out the look of the mantelpiece

Ah, okay, after I exhausted the sampler I got some more frankincense sticks but they were underwhelming, got some others and not only are they more appropriately fragrant but more long-lasting, and I set up a short vase to keep them ready by the burner that really balances out the look of the mantelpiece

Yeah in comparison to yesterday which was an inside day but I filed a lot, I’m just not doing shit today.

Today’s home quality advance was sorting a bunch of records, cutting the stub of a trunk lower in hopes it sprouts shoots below and forced wider by last year’s in pursuit of support when the trunk stub serves as mount for a table, and getting a double-stick incense burner and starting to figure good scents for the front room – from when I got into cologne I realized I’d been underappreciating smell as a sense to accessorize into. (So far I’m favoring frankincense)

kontextmaschine:

Every year I have to fear this is my mimosa tree’s last

Like it would be a problem coming down and also it wouldn’t make my sidewalk a mess for 3 months of the year anymore but also it would open space for a tree to define the property’s character

At the point where I’ve picked all the lowest-hanging fruit so when I undertake the day’s “make the house better” task it represents real permanent improvement in quality of life

House clean enough that a good chunk of the stuff left consists of things I was waiting to find the thing to use with and those other things, now findable

I <3 this new chair but until I get a setup with a swing-out cross-shelf I absolutely cannot eat here

There’s no doorbell. It would be totally in character with everything else in the house if it was installed in a “handyman” fashion that does technically work just not as well as if it was put in by anyone who knew what they were doing. The unit isn’t really in a draft or the airflow of a vent or the sunlight, the only temperature fluctuation is from the heating itself, and it consistently varies by time of day in a way that doesn’t really make sense if it was trying to (over)compensate for itself at any given point

As I must’ve mentioned before, my thermostat must be in the walls measuring temperature that’s reactive to outdoor conditions as much as if not more than indoor, perhaps down by the high-thermal-mass foundation walls, because the felt heat setting set to the same temp will vary from a few degrees too hot to a few too cold over the course of a day, yet the precise timing of this vacillation will change from day to day in ways that must somehow relate to the weather.

Anyway yesterday was the only time I’ve felt it smoothly comfortable from afternoon to morn, which must somehow have to do with the crazy wind.

somni-omni:

kontextmaschine:

My furnace only turns off between runs about an eighth as long as the runs themselves.

Between this and that 110s-level heat wave the last year, I am definitely getting my walls (and the roof) insulated when I have them opened. Fuckin’ globally warmed-ass weather.

It’s more that my house is old and the previous owner was not that good at DIY fixes, but yes the weather is causing a list of future remodels that will focus on insulation. New siding, doors, roof, etc. Rent would’ve been cheaper*!

*ymmw

It was kinda a “worst house in the best location” thing where I went into it knowing a lot of stuff would need work but it’d be livable in the meantime and I could get exactly what I wanted for the lowest total price in the end. Tons of halfass “handyman” work here, too.

kontextmaschine:

kontextmaschine:

Some freezing rain expected soon, so guess it’s a good thing I trimmed all those trees down below design weight with a minimum of branches to get iced (and that the neighbors’ tree already fell into my yard two years ago)

And christ, the wind is nuts; there’s def. going to be some branches coming down around town when they start to ice up. Well, in case the power goes out good thing I’ve got a bunch of good blankets.

Especially glad I took off all the ones directly overhanging the roof in manageable chunks (bc if my needs start to outgrow the house with time I was gonna have a gambrel or mansard roofline put on and finish the attic, and if I left it there it’d just keep wasting chunks of the spring growth-from-reserves on stuff that’ll get cut off eventually)