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The Solstice of Minor Disasters
Dec. 22nd, 2023 02:00 pmFirst, a couple of weeks ago I was looking for the extra plastic lids to our glass leftover saving containers, because the current plastic lids all have cracks in them, and I asked people in the household if they knew if we still had any, or if I should proceed with the order I had just started online, and someone said "cancel that order and wait until solstice." So, I knew what I was getting...
Second, we got hard-to-find granola bars as a gift by ordering them online. A week after receiving and wrapping them, the intended recipient learned that this particular set of granola bars had been recalled for salmonella. So, that gift was a wash. At least we got our money back.
Thirdly, my gift to Perry was going to be an Instant Pot. I ordered a used one on eBay, because it seemed like a slightly greener thing to do, and Perry might like that. But, it arrived damaged, with an enormous dent in the side. So I had to start a return process there. At first I had thought it was the seller's deception, but careful examination of the box did reveal dents that corresponded pretty well to where the blow probably originated. The box dent then snapped back into box shape, so it wasn't obvious until you looked carefully. So there went my present. Valerie found someone on a Facebook Freecycle type group giving away a smaller version of Instant Pot and snapped it up. So we gave him that. I wasn't really sure which size I should have picked anyway.
Finally, a mile or so into my traditional "bicycle ride to Solstice Way", my derailleur cable snapped, so I had to alternately walk and coast back home. Fortunately, we had a spare and we were able to install it, rather than having an unscheduled trip to the bike store (which would have been open, because the nice thing about celebrating a weird holiday is that of the else's celebrating, so stores are open. But they might not have been able to fix it the same day.) So I got my ride after all!
We lit the fire midafternoon, and it turns out that the trees in our neighbor's yard have been growing over the past 20 years that we've been doing this, and so we ended up doing it inside our porch, and didn't really want to smoke up the house too much, so we delayed making the "2023" shingle until today when we could do it in the morning when the sun was not over the trees. Not sure if that counts as a minor disaster or not.
I took pictures of many things, because this was the first solstice without Jocelyn. She is performing in California for three weeks. So I sent her a text with pictures. She wanted to try lighting the fire from the sun, for which we sent her some supplies earlier, but she was unable to because it was hazy so the sun was insufficiently bright and point-source, and then later it was raining, so the sun was insufficiently available. Kind of fun that in Massachusetts we had bright blue skies and in California it was raining.
( Photo blast )
Second, we got hard-to-find granola bars as a gift by ordering them online. A week after receiving and wrapping them, the intended recipient learned that this particular set of granola bars had been recalled for salmonella. So, that gift was a wash. At least we got our money back.
Thirdly, my gift to Perry was going to be an Instant Pot. I ordered a used one on eBay, because it seemed like a slightly greener thing to do, and Perry might like that. But, it arrived damaged, with an enormous dent in the side. So I had to start a return process there. At first I had thought it was the seller's deception, but careful examination of the box did reveal dents that corresponded pretty well to where the blow probably originated. The box dent then snapped back into box shape, so it wasn't obvious until you looked carefully. So there went my present. Valerie found someone on a Facebook Freecycle type group giving away a smaller version of Instant Pot and snapped it up. So we gave him that. I wasn't really sure which size I should have picked anyway.
Finally, a mile or so into my traditional "bicycle ride to Solstice Way", my derailleur cable snapped, so I had to alternately walk and coast back home. Fortunately, we had a spare and we were able to install it, rather than having an unscheduled trip to the bike store (which would have been open, because the nice thing about celebrating a weird holiday is that of the else's celebrating, so stores are open. But they might not have been able to fix it the same day.) So I got my ride after all!
We lit the fire midafternoon, and it turns out that the trees in our neighbor's yard have been growing over the past 20 years that we've been doing this, and so we ended up doing it inside our porch, and didn't really want to smoke up the house too much, so we delayed making the "2023" shingle until today when we could do it in the morning when the sun was not over the trees. Not sure if that counts as a minor disaster or not.
I took pictures of many things, because this was the first solstice without Jocelyn. She is performing in California for three weeks. So I sent her a text with pictures. She wanted to try lighting the fire from the sun, for which we sent her some supplies earlier, but she was unable to because it was hazy so the sun was insufficiently bright and point-source, and then later it was raining, so the sun was insufficiently available. Kind of fun that in Massachusetts we had bright blue skies and in California it was raining.
( Photo blast )
