Second Worst New Hobby

Recently I installed a geocaching app on my phone. You know geocaching -- people hide a box with a log book and then other people get the coordinates and go find the box and sign the log book. I've been feeling very lump-like lately since it's been too hot and smoky to run for about six weeks and I've been using the extra time to eat more.

So I decided to try geocaching. When I told my friends my plan one said "Do people still do that?", which is just further proof that I am the sign that a given fad is over.

Anyhow, instead of eating more ice cream for breakfast this morning, I grabbed the dogs and headed for a local spot. It wasn't that far away, just on the edge of town due south from me, and there's a park nearby, so I figured it would be a good one to start on. Also, the difficulty was listed as easy.

It wouldn't surprise me if someone pointed out a cache box in the background.

I probably should have picked a different cache when I read the past comment that said "clever hiding spot!". I'm the world's most unobservant person. Even wearing my glasses I could miss something in plain sight. And something cleverly hidden? Lost cause.

I looked around for a while. I'm a little surprised nobody called the cops. I never found the cache. The app said I was in the right area, but there weren't any more directions. So I took a couple pictures of my dogs and then I was going to take a picture of the sign at the end of the road but half an hour of GPS usage on my phone had killed the battery. Besides, it was getting hot. And I was trying not to get frustrated by my new "hobby".

Should we take bets on how many locations I can visit before I find a cache?

(It's still only the second worst new hobby because of the whole Pokemon-go fiasco a few years ago.)

Online Dating (Just Kidding) (Sort of)

One of my goals for August, yes, this August, is to start querying my novel with agents.

In a perfect world, this is the sequence:
1) I send a query to multiple agents describing my book.
2) One or more of them offer to represent me.
3) I carefully pick the one who will be the best for my writing career.
4) My super agent queries the book with editors at publishing houses.
5) The publishing houses get into a bidding war.
6) I get a seven figure advance.

In reality this is what will happen:
1) I send a query to multiple agents describing my book.
2) Half of them eventual send a form reply, the other half never respond, leaving me to wonder how long I should wait before I consider it a rejection.
3) I obsessively tweak the query and send it out to the next group of agents.
4) Goto step 2.
(See also, Dijkstra's "Go To Statement Considered Harmful")
5) Eventually I run out of agents to query.
6) I either self-publish or put the book in a digital trunk and forget it ever happened.

So yeah, good times ahead.

Today I was trying to figure out which agents to put in the first batch and I realized it's a lot like online dating. You start with a huge list of agents. You filter out the ones that accept the right genre and then you're down to something under 200. Now you have to prioritize them.

Do they have any clients you recognize? Do they have any clients at all?

Are there comments from other writers saying "Agents at this agency seem to last about two months and then disappear"?

Are they famous? Because maybe you'll have a better chance attracting the attention of a newer agent. Except the newer agent won't have the contacts that a more established agent would. But will an established agent even have time for a new writer?

Anyhow, I'm just going to be looking for an agent who's interested in what I have to offer and won't leave me buried in a shallow grave in a national forest.

That's not too much to ask, right?

Not Yet Funny

Related to this, I got this notice today:

Fingers crossed that Crow the cat does relatively well for another week...

Some Day This Will Be Hilarious

I currently have four cats and they all started as my bottle babies when I was in vet school, so they're all in their teens now. If you know anything about cats that information is enough to tell you they are well into the lymphoma years.

Crow the cat didn't eat anything last night and didn't eat anything this morning, so I took her in to find out what specific form of badness she has going on and whether it's something we can treat for a while. (Jury is still out on that part -- it's looking like either the bad form of lymphoma or the worse form of lymphoma, plus something else that is making her jaundiced.)

 Crow the cat, "helping" me write

While she was at hospital number one (before transferring to hospital number two), she bit one of the technicians putting her IV catheter in.

If that wasn't bad enough, she is two months overdue on her rabies vaccination. I mean, she's an inside cat, I haven't seen any dead bats in the house, and she's probably well-protected from all the vaccinations she's had in the past, but still.

If she dies within the next ten days (which I give pretty good odds on at this point), legally they need to cut off her head and send it to the state to test for rabies.

So, yeah, someday this is going to be really funny. Just not so much today.

The Marshmallow Toasting Has Been Cancelled

Apparently massive fires are the new normal for summers here. This map has the current satellite data for what started as the "Guinda Fire" and then became called "County Fire". (I'm not sure why it got the latter name since it's now in three counties, but I'm sure there's a reason.) When I went to bed last night it was estimated at 45,000 acres. When I got up seven hours later that had gone up to 70,000. It's only 5% contained which is just a step up from "Run For Your Lives!". The clear area in the middle of the orange/red oval is where it already burned over the weekend.

I live over on the east in Woodland. I think there's enough agricultural land that can be flooded that the fire won't get this far, but I'm not basing that on anything CalFire has said so I might be completely wrong. CalFire has their staging camp half a mile away from my house, though, so I suspect they don't think it's likely to burn either.

I have friends who are in evacuation zones and my social media is filled with people needing or offering transport and accommodation for horses and livestock in the affected area.

All I'm saying is that if I end up with a herd of goats in my back yard it's really not my fault...

If This Had Been An Actual Emergency...

I work in three locations: (1) home,  (2) a big corporate office with lots of people (who were all busy watching the World Cup matches on Monday), and (3) a very small office that is part of a big building that has one of the company's switch hubs. Today I was at the third one. Some days I'm the only person in the office, but today they were having some sort of training so there were a few extra switch techs and managers around. This was my day:

- While the building is near both the beer factory and the jelly bean factory, there aren't a lot of places to grab food and there aren't any vending machines in the building, so one of the managers ordered pizza for the group undergoing training. This started a multi-call tracking effort because the pizza guy couldn't find the (unlabeled) building but wouldn't answer his phone. At one point the pizza restaurant was going to make more and send someone else because they thought something had happened to the first guy, but he did eventually show up.

- We had company-provided ice cream bars to celebrate the fact that our region didn't lose a multi-company comparison. (There was a fair amount of head scratching as everyone tried to figure out how we pulled that one off. But yay, ice cream.)

- The switch techs are an interesting bunch. There are usually only one or two in the building at any time, and they cover shifts over 24 hours. Those requirements tend to select for people who don't mind being alone all day long and don't do much socializing. So... yeah.

- Yes, I realize I just described my ideal working conditions. But these people are even more isolated-cabin-in-the-woods than I am.

- In the afternoon the senior manager came by and said "We're having a fire drill." In most buildings that would be accomplished by someone notifying the fire department they were conducting a drill and then setting off the fire alarm, but apparently there is a possibility if they do that in this building the fire suppression system might go off. So instead we just waited until the training was over and went to the conference room.

- Once in the conference room the pressing question was what cost code to use because half the people were now on overtime. (I'm salaried so that didn't apply to me.)

- In the event of a fire, the switch techs are supposed to clear the building and then everyone meets under the sign at the far end of the parking lot. If there aren't any switch techs present, any other employee is supposed to clear the building. Since I can't access 90% of the building, if I'm the only employee present, any contractors that are too stupid to leave the building when the fire alarm goes off will just have to burn to death.

- If there is a bomb threat we're supposed to call 911 and also corporate security. On a landline. I have no idea how one contacts corporate security, but since I never answer the phone I don't see how I would ever have to deal with a bomb threat.

- If there's an active shooter we're supposed to either stay where we are or run away, unless the shooter is outside waiting to pick us off as we run out the door. By the end of this part of the meeting I was pretty much planning never to come to work again.

- If the building ever does need to be evacuated, nobody is allowed to go back inside until an executive director gives the all-clear. The nearest executive director is in southern California. Nobody could figure out how this was supposed to work. If we ever do evacuate I'm taking all my stuff with me because we won't be getting back in the building any time soon.

- Then one of the... less socialized, let's call him... switch techs told us that he had packed up ready to leave one day when a contractor in the yard needed to use the restroom, so he let him in the building then had to wait 25 minutes for him to come back out again. He concluded by saying he wished there had been a fire alarm that day because he would have been able to just leave.

- Half the people were staring at this guy because why would you tell that story? and the other half were staring because...

- "What was he doing in there?" one of the other switch techs asked.

- "Men don't ask each other that!" another switch tech explained.

- The conversation then moved to describing the (extra large!) burrito that must have necessitated that bathroom break. Many people chimed in.

- I realized after a couple minutes of this discussion that these people were all getting paid overtime for this.

- We eventually concluded the fire drill without leaving the building and I went back to my cubicle.

Revenge of the Universe

We've arrived at what is nearly the longest day of the year, which means Saturday was time for my semi-annual attempt to be social, otherwise known as Elisabeth and Noah's summer solstice party.

(Note -- they actually usually have parties for each solstice and equinox, but being around people more than twice a year seems promiscuously social to me. How they cope without my presence I don't know, yet somehow they get by.)

(Note #2 -- nobody is skyclad during these parties)

Even though our lot sizes are about the same, my house is easily twice the size of theirs, so their backyard is huge. When I got there it was still light (and windy!) outside (because... summer solstice) so Elisabeth was showing me around so I could see the various tomato gardens. Last year we had a weird year and both of us had a bunch of huge healthy tomato plants that produced a sum total of five tomatoes. This year she compensated and planted tomatoes in the same way that other people put in sod. I, on the other hand, did my usual thing of forgetting to put plants in the ground until May, so my tomato plants are all still six inches tall and seem to be considering whether it's worth the effort to grow and produce tomatoes or whether they should just go live in their parents' basements. I suspect by the end of summer Elisabeth and Noah will be secretly piling tomatoes on front porches and running away before they are caught. Usually only zucchini plants get you into that sort of trouble.

Anyhow, while we were out there a large dead maple tree limb crashed to the ground. Another limb had come down weeks before and they knew this one needed to come down and the wind finally took care of it. Other than bending a rose bush it didn't cause any problems and Noah dragged it to the side of the yard.

We went inside to eat -- for the first time it wasn't over 100 F outside, but it was so windy there were worries about the umbrella blowing over. The grilled corn was great, and all the other potluck food was tasty.

The umbrella blew over.

Then another huge maple limb (apparently healthy) crashed down on the same poor rosebush. We collectively decided we would stay out of the yard. Usually there is a candle-lighting portion of the solstice party, but clearly that wasn't going to happen in that wind anyhow.

And then yet another maple limb came down. At this point not even the dog was allowed to go into the yard to pee.

Then another person finally made it to the party with a flat tire, so Noah went out front to help her put on the spare while the rest of us stayed safe from the suicidal/homicidal maple tree.

The spare was also flat.

By the time they got back from the gas station to put air in the tires, it was pretty late, so two groups headed toward the door.

Group one came back in less than a minute and asked if anyone knew how to use jumper cables because their battery was dead.

I was honestly a little surprised when I left that my car hadn't been hit by lightning.

I think that's enough socializing for a while.